A Word In Edgewise: Cliff Notes for Our Times

Wanting to escape the harried here and now, I opened T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King” I’d first read in 1958 at seventeen. I settled in to recapture those halcyon days when the world was young and life was so much simpler. Seems it wasn’t. Older and wiser offered a deeper read.

Multiple offshoots of White’s tale include Disney’s animated “The Sword in the Stone,” Broadway’s “Camelot” and multiple others, but the book from which they were drawn was birthed in 1938, consisted of five parts, and laid fallow until published as tetralogy in 1958.

The year 1938 was a troublesome one for the world, as countless history books will tell you, as were the following eight, so White took his tale back into the 12th(ish) Century in the era of the Real? Mythical? Needed? King Arthur in a Britain White called “Gramarye.”

Like the film, the first section, titled “The Sword and the Stone,” follows young Wart (Arthur) and his education by tutor/necromancer Merlin who leads the boy on journeys through other animal, bird, fish and insect lives before he pulls that fateful sword from that legendary stone, and has kingship thrust upon him.

Once king, Arthur sought to end the rule of force majeureand the endless conflicts that celebrated war for the nobility and continued penury for the poor. He had the eyes to see that knights, covered in steel bunting, engaged but mostly survived, while their foot soldiers died in the thousands. That famous Round Table, having no sides, ensured no one was seated below the salt, but envy, greed, and mischief remained; the search for justice failed, and as many Grails were returned as there were pieces of the true cross.

Added were that nagging problem of his wife Guenever and his best friend Lancelot, and two other Greek tragedy Doom-bringers; Arthur’s unfortunate begetting by Uther Pendragon, and his own unwitting siring of son Mordred by his (unrealized) half-sister Morgeuse. Classical payment was to be exacted.

Arthur’s good heart and good intentions cannot heal the world’s wounds or soothe the pain humans inflict upon one another, much less address his own. Goodness in itself cannot right every wrong or bring happiness even to a king.

We’re not going to be relaxing anyway, so come to White’s Camelot and see Doom descend with class … and hope. It’s a marvelous read in any century. White’s prose is laced with humor; a polymath, his knowledge spanned many fields, his sensitivity able to inhabit his characters, whether it be Arthur turned into an owl or a youngster learning to fletch an arrow. Both considered war “useless,” but even as king, Arthur was powerless to stop force crushing justice or to build a bastion of peace to shield against anger and greed.

Malory’s title centered on Arthur’s death. White, cautiously optimistic, chose “Once and Future,” embracing the legend that the legendary Arthur did not perish in that final battle but was carried off to Avilion, from whence he will one day return and rule again. Will he appear bearing solutions to war, to hatred, to betrayal, brandishing Excalibur to sever the tangled bonds of honor and love? Above all, when?

Now would be a mighty good time, if it please, Your Grace.