T. H. White s The Once and Future King
The action in TOAFK takes place between the beginning of the thirteenth century and the
end of the fifteenth: from about 1200 until possibly 1485. While the young Arthur is at
the Castle Sauvage, Sir Ector receives a letter from Uther Pendragon dated “12 Uther.”
At this time, Arthur and Kay are probably about twelve years old: they have been on an
adventure with Robin Hood, are old enough to resent the attentions of the Old Nurse, and
still delight in throwing snowballs; the possibility is that Arthur’s birthdate is about the
same year as Uther’s ascension to the throne. When Uther’s death is announced, King
Pellinore comments, “Uther the Conqueror, 1066 to 1216.” This would seem to be about
four years later than the time when Sir Ector receives Uther’s letter, and would make
Arthur’s age around sixteen, roughly in coincidence with the traditional age of fifteen.
White’s forward limit of the fifteenth century is reached in memorable fashion when the
Bishop of Rochester expresses horror at the thought of Mordred using cannon against his
father, and King Arthur speaks to his page “Tom of Newbold Revell.” Set against the
actual events of these centuries, Uther (who is portrayed as a Norman) by virtue of his
appellation “the Conqueror” and the date of 1066 for his birth is made to be a kind of
William the Conqueror (Norman, 1066-1087). The remaining years of Uther’s reign seem
to cover the actual reigns of William II (William Rufus, Norman, 1087-1100), Henry I
(Norman, 1100-1135), Stephen (Norman, 1135-1154), Henry II (Plantagenet, 1154-1189),
Richard I (Plantagenet, 1189-1199), and John (Plantagenet, 1199-1216).
The condition of England when Arthur ascends to the throne is pretty much in keeping
with the way it was when John the Bad died: “Look at the barns burnt,” Merlyn tells the
Wart, and dead men’s legs sticking out of ponds, and horses with swelled bellies by the
roadside, and mills falling down, and money buried, and nobody daring to walk abroad
with gold or ornaments on their clothes. That is chivalry nowadays. That is the Uther
Pendragon touch.
This picture of England in chaos before Arthur is recalled later in terrifying detail: “When
the old King came to the throne it had been an England of armoured barons, and of
famine, and of war. It had been the country of trial by red-hot irons . . .”
For practical purposes, however, White’s idealized time is given the name of the twelfth
century: ” . . . If you happen to live in the twelfth century, or whenever it was,” he writes
in one place, and in another, “The Battle of Bedegraine was the . . . twelfth century
equivalent of total war.” Further, some of the events which he depicts as taking place in
Arthur’s reign occurred during the years 1066-1216: the evolution of legal writs and an
elementary form of trial by jury came about under the vigorous rule of Henry II;
Mordred’s ambition to massacre the Jews was systematically practiced under Richard I,
with the Jewish quarter of London being destroyed in 1215 under John. On the other
hand, the extravagance of dress which White describes when Arthur’s court “goes
modern” fits in well with the sumptuous costumes evolved under Edward III and Richard
II.
The Gramarye of this idealized century was inhabited by Normans (Galls), who had come
over with Uther, by Saxons, and by Old Ones (Gaels). The Normans, of whom Arthur is
one, comprise the chivalric aristocracy who with their Games-Mania and ritualized forms
of warfare act like fox-hunting squires of the nineteenth century.
By their unthinking brutality under Uther, the Norman/Galls have oppressed the
Saxons,who actually have preceded them in England, and have kept them as serfs in the
posture of a subject race (” Baron had been the equivalent of the modern word
Sahib! “). The Old Ones “Gaels” or Celts who were in England centuries before
either the Normans or the Saxons, have been harried to Wales, Cornwall, Scotland,
Ireland and Brittany. Merlyn gives Arthur a history lesson: “About three thousand years
ago,” he said,
“the country you are riding through belonged to a Gaelic race who fought with
copper hatchets. Two thousand years ago they were hunted west by another Gaelic
race with bronze swords. A thousand years ago there was a Teuton invasion by
people who had iron weapons, but it didn’t reach the whole of the Pictish Isles
because the Romans arrived in the middle and got mixed up with it. The Romans
went away about eight hundred years ago, and then another Teuton invasion of
people mainly called Saxons drove the whole rag-bag west as usual. Tlle
Saxons were just beginning to settle down when your father the Conqueror arrived
with his pack of Normans, and that is where we are today. Robin Wood was a
Saxon partizan.”
The general viewpoint of an idealized twelfth century imagined in the fifteenth is greatly
accentuated by White’s many references to actual kings as “legendary.” It is Arthur’s
destiny, with a nudge from Merlyn, to try to right the hideous legacy left by his father
Uther by quelling Force Majeure, or Fort Mayne, by replacing the philosophy of Might as
Right by a rudimentary justice which will take its most tragic significance when Arthur
explains to Guenever and Lancelot that if Mordred accuses them of treachery he, the king,
under his new code, will be unable to intercede in their behalf.
Into Arthur’s lifetime-from his idyllic childhood in the Castle Sauvage, his union with
Morgause, his marriage to Guenever, his mounting of the Grail Quest, and all the events
leading up to the final tragedy-White has compressed much of the actual history of almost
three hundred years, the centuries of the High Middle Ages. White’s technique is
beautifully visualized by Shakespeare in Henry V (a play which White himself said he
detested):
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carrying them here and there,
jumping o’er times, Turning th’ accomplishment of many years Into an hourglass .
. . (Henry V, Pro. Q1.28-31.)
The figure of Merlyn stands independent of White’s time-scheme. He has been born in the
future (”the only way to get second sight”) and is living backwards. His recollection goes
“back” to at least the mid nineteen-thirties, for he criticizes Arthur’s enthusiasm for war
with reference to Hitler. Through the brilliant device of Merlyn, White is able to make
use of ironic and humorous historical insights from the fifteenth through the
mid-twentieth century.
Anachronisms
TOAFK is full of anachronisms, allusions, and personal recollection. By envisioning for
Arthur’s story an idealized century imagined from Malory’s fifteenth century, White was
opening the door wide for all kinds of anachronisms. However, if one thinks of the time
scheme of TOAFK Arthur’s story as a kind of portmanteau into which is packed the
trappings of nearly three centuries of history between 1216 and 1485, then the concept is
easier to deal with. By a sort of accordion process the low points are dropped from
consideration, and the high points are made to seem closer together:
In the smoky vaults, where once the grubby barons had gnawed their bones with
bloody fingers, now there were people eating with clean fingers, which they had
washed with herb-scented toilet soap out of wooden bowls.
This sort of advance in table manners took much longer indeed than the few years of
Arthur’s reign and yet by compressing those years into “an hourglass” White succeeds
in his effort to picture Arthur as civilization’s champion. Besides, washing hands before
meals is pretty frequently mentioned in the High Middle Ages; with Arthur living
1216-1485, there’s plenty of time for the custom to take root! A glance at White’s Malory
essay in his journals reveals immediately the sensitivity which White showed to both
what he believed Malory to be doing and what he himself was planning to do to Malory.
In the event, of course, White did indeed follow his careful plan about anachronisms in
many places: in the descriptive passages about castles (Sir Ector’s, pp. 36-38; Morgause’s,
pp. 280-81; Lancelot’s, pp. 621-22), each of which is built in the architectural style of a
different century, and in the splendid panoramas of medieval life (pp. 442-47; 539-49;
559-569) which comprehends centuries of history. White usually stays within the
1216-1485 limits, but he occasionally drops back to take advantage of the years
1066-1216, or even earlier: the description of the Out Isles is one exception of this kind.
But in retrospect it is not the glory of these scenes which captures the imagination. Rather
it is the riotous mishmash of Merlyn’s backward thinking, and his beagling trousers, his
walking mustard-pot, Sir Ector’s gruff nineteenth-century colloquialisms and Palomides’s
Babu English that hold one’s heart in thrall.
Kurth Sprague, 26 December 1996
(ksprague@mail.utexas.edu)