The Once and Future King, by T.H. White

So once again I sit here and try to think up words to describe what I’ve been reading. A hard task this time, because what I’ve read is quite an oddball in terms of literature. T.H. White’s masterpiece, The Once and Future King, is a fairly long conglomerate of semi-fantasy novels retelling of the legend of King Arthur as seen from the other side of the Second World War. This book is peculiar, at times quite dark, at other times very sad, but it must be said that it is quite justified in existing. Despite its length, its wild changes in tone and style, and its confusing subject matter, it is nonetheless quite easy to read, draws you onwards, and makes you consider a number of issues whilst giving you an insight into the complete tale of King Arthur.

          After the publication of The Sword in the Stone, a fairly comical and somewhat childish tale of King Arthur’s anonymous childhood and tutelage under the wizard Merlyn, T.H. White decided to continue his story all the way through the fantastic and tragic career of Britain’s legendary hero-king – The Sword in the Stone essentially forming the prologue to his whole narrative. As I have already covered this first book in a previous review, and discussed the implications of the two separate versions which currently exist, I will move straight on to the remaining books of this sprawling novel – of which there are four more. The second book, The Witch in the Wood – originally titled The Queen of Air and Darkness – takes place not long after Arthur’s coronation, and tells of his struggle to rule the divided and war-torn kingdom. The character of Queen Morgause of Orkney, Arthur’s step-sister and one skilled in witchcraft, is the figure who looms large in this book, and her four children, future knights of the Round Table Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth, take part in some of the most significant and memorable scenes. Aside from these factors, and Arthur’s struggle with the question of how to properly rule his kingdom, The Witch in the Wood is mostly just setting-up for the rest of the narrative in The Once and Future King.

          Whereas the plot of Book 2 takes place within a year of King Arthur’s life, the third book The Ill-Made Knight spans whole decades. In this tale Arthur takes a back seat while Sir Lancelot fulfils the role of protagonist, joining the newly-formed Round Table, becoming King Arthur’s greatest knight and confidant, winding up in a love affair with Arthur’s wife Queen Guinever, embarking on a number of quests (including one for the Holy Grail), and generally getting into scuffles with other, more stupid, knights – whom he inevitably defeats. Lancelot’s and Guinever’s affair is the main subject of this novel, lasting for many years and at times driving one or the other of them mad, while Arthur tries in vain to rule the kingdom justly and introduce his ideal of chivalry to his knights and barons. Book 4, The Candle in the Wind, brings the various threads of these stories together into a climactic and catastrophic conclusion to the whole story, as the rebellious members of the Orkney Clan (Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth, and the sinister Mordred) expose Lancelot and Guinever’s affair, destroying the unity of the Round Table for good and driving Arthur’s kingdom into civil war. Book 5, The Book of Merlin, I will discuss in a moment.

          The thing which started all this off, White’s first Arthurian novel The Sword in the Stone,

was a whimsical and humorous little fantasy which in many ways seems far removed from his subsequent, darker attempts to retell the story of King Arthur and his knights. If one is reading this work in its entirety, and has succeeded in getting through the first book, then the first indications of this darker direction for the story can be seen in The Witch in the Wood. The opening chapter involves the young Orkney brothers discussing their bleak family history, while their mother Morgause below them is boiling a cat alive as part of a magical rite. In between the narrative of Arthur debating simple politics and philosophy with Merlyn we get some more light-hearted scenes with the return of King Pellinore, of Questing Beast fame, and his overly British love-sick pining for a woman he has fallen in love with. These humorous scenes recall the lighter tone of the first book, but they are juxtaposed to incredibly dark scenes of the Orkney clan – one of which involves the children butchering a unicorn, an amazingly-written but nevertheless upsetting and slightly nauseating piece. These strange mixtures are gone by the time we get to Book 3, when the narrative has morphed into a full-on retelling of the Arthurian legend.

          Book 3, The Ill-Made Knight, is one of the hardest to get through. It’s still a good story, but I find myself caring less for Sir Lancelot than I really should be, and the plot seems to veer around quite a bit. This is probably a natural side-effect of trying to build a story around the medieval romances of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, and White has done well to give us a few gems of great storytelling and a nevertheless interesting story, but at times it feels that it lacks direction and one can get a bit tired of these unhappy lovers. All in all, though, it is with Book 4 that the story really comes together, when natural rifts in the Round Table, the Orkney Clan, and Arthur’s family all conspire to ruin everything that the good king attempted for the good of humanity. The story of The Candle in the Wind clanks onwards towards its conclusion as though inevitable, and Arthur’s dreams are finished for good. While again we find a little bit of clunkiness in this part of the narrative, the story progresses far more naturally here than in previous books, and it contains I believe some of White’s finest writing. The final chapter, in which Arthur stands a sleepless vigil on the night before his final battle with Mordred – one which he is destined not to survive – is truly a memorable conclusion to the whole narrative.

          I say conclusion, because when it was originally published as a complete work in 1958 The Once and Future King consisted only of books 1 to 4. The fifth book, the Book of Merlin, although it had already been written and intended for inclusion into the work, was left out of the final piece. White had been thwarted by his publishers, and so the narrative ended as a broken Arthur prepares himself for his own doom. The modern edition, however, now has Book 5 appended to the text as it rightfully should have been, and brings the entire story full circle. At the moment Book 4 ends Arthur is visited by none other than his old tutor, Merlyn the magician, who whisks the old king away to an underground room he once visited when he was still a child called Wart. There, sitting around a conference table, are all the animals he met and befriended thanks to Merlyn’s lessons – the owl Archimedes, the badger, the hedgehog, the grassnake, the goat, Balin the hawk, and Arthur’s old dog Cavall. These individuals, all sentient and anthropomorphic and therefore able to talk, have been discussing and debating about human nature and human failings for a long long time, and under the insistence of Merlyn have been trying to work out what to do with mankind. In the course of their debates, and their attempts to expose the king to modern political concepts such as Communism, Fascism and Anarchism, Merlyn and his council turn Arthur into an ant, and then a goose, to show him how politics works in nature. After heated debates, Arthur is led outside by the hedgehog to experience nature for the last time, before he heads back to his camp at the battlefield with new resolve about what to do. The final chapter simply recounts how, after the sudden breakdown of negotiations between Arthur and Mordred, the final battle takes place, Guinever enters a monastery, Lancelot becomes a hermit, and how nobody knows exactly what happens to King Arthur. A number of different stories for Arthur’s end, from different writers, are briefly detailed, as well as how one or two medieval kings of England reputedly dug up Arthur’s grave.

          The subject-matter and story of Book 5 is much more blunt and open about the allegory behind White’s story – the Second World War, and modern political ideology. Whereas in earlier parts of the story White attempts to be a tad more subtle (not too subtle, though), with Arthur’s attempt to tame what he calls the Principle of Might, or ‘Force Majeure’ – i.e. that Might is Right – through the creation of the Round Table, and then through rigorously upholding the written law. Book 5 throws any such attempt at allegory out the window – Merlyn and his animals are discussing modern-day international problems, trying to find natural examples of war amongst animals, and proposing solutions to the constant violence and oppression that exists in the human species. There is so much dialogue here, most of which comes from Merlyn himself, that one gets the impression that T.H. White has had enough of storytelling and simply wishes to get his undiluted opinions across to the reader. This is where The Once and Future King is at its weakest, as a complete story.

          Overall, the posthumous inclusion of The Book of Merlyn in The Once and Future King is a good thing, as it finally brings the story of King Arthur to an actual close whilst at the same time bringing White’s version of the story back to its roots, with Arthur’s childhood excursions under Merlyn’s tutelage. It means the story is no longer left hanging before Arthur’s final battle – though I have to say I do quite like this original ending, as it has a certain power about it. There are problems however, with Book 5, problems that hangover from the discussion I had about the two separate versions of The Sword in the Stone which currently exist. Unable to include Book 5 alongside the rest of the books, White must have decided to place what he considered to be the most important sections into the body of Book 1 – hence we find the sections where Arthur is transformed into an ant and then a goose neatly cut-and-pasted into Book 1. While this was probably a boon in the original publication, when Book 5 was appended to the text at later date the revised Sword in the Stone still contained these scenes, thereby meaning Book 5 repeats sections which have already happened. As well as that, Book 5 is still under the impression that the first edition of The Sword in the Stone is the one it is following on from, to the extent that it references characters and events which were edited out of the first book. The grassnake, which once had a chapter all to himself, was removed from Book 1 when it was included in The Once and Future King, and I believe that the goat, too, suffered erasure when Madam Mim, from whose clutches he rescued Arthur, found herself edited out of the novel. These oversights are only of mild annoyance, but it only shows up the poor editorial history of this novel when you read The Once and Future King and end up wondering who or what the hell T. Natrix is. In an ideal, ultimate edition of this novel, I feel that certain sections and chapters ought to be restored to The Sword in the Stone, whilst counterbalancing this with some of the better revisions White made to his earlier novel. It would be quite a headache to do, and of course we cannot ask for the author’s permission, but I feel that it can be done if a brave and competent editor were to take on the challenge. But alas! All we have to deal with for the foreseeable future is what we have at the moment.

          So overall, despite its variable plot, its weird editorial history, and its length, The Once and Future King is a brilliant work of literature. T.H. White’s style is simple yet graceful, reader-friendly but rewarding to appreciate, and his obvious passion for this story and setting can make up for any flaws that the novel may have. At times this book can give us raw and irreproachable beauty, moments of storytelling and emotion which far surpass anything I have seen from supposedly better writers, and there are things from this book which will remain with me for a long time to come. While White’s attempt to view his own chaotic world through the lens of a medieval fantasy is a strange idea which arguably is a bit trite, his devotion to the story of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, his love of medieval Britain and his sense of the natural world gives his own work a unique flavour that makes it genuinely worth experiencing.

         

Bibliorie

White, T.H. The Once and Future King – The Complete Edition. London: HarperCollins (1996 [First published 1958])

White, T.H. The Sword in the Stone. London: Fontana Lions. (1971 [First published 1938])