‘The Sword in the Stone’ by T.H. White

It is a very long time since I have read a book written principally for children. I think I tried a Harry Potter in the late 1990s to see what all the fuss was about and remember being underwhelmed and abandoning it after a few chapters. This classic fantasy novel must surely have influenced or even inspired J.K.Rowling as so many features are similar to those in her books. We have a wicked witch, a good wizard, two young boys growing up and getting into all manner of scrapes and adventures, lots of magic, a talking owl and a large cast of eccentric characters, some heroic, others unheroic and some downright evil.

I read the book because it was chosen by one of the reading groups I am a member of, and like so many I read for that reason this was one I would never have considered picking up, but am now really glad I did. It is great fun once you get into it, stunningly imaginative, very well-written and designed I think to appeal both to children and any adults who might be asked to read it to them.

When I was a child I read quite a lot of fiction from the first half of the twentieth century, notably Athur Ransome and Enid Blyton, but in all honesty never really got on with books that included fantasy and magic. Just as today I really do not enjoy magical realism, I preferred plain realism as a kid too. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien always seemed to me to be extraordinarily over-rated and boring writers. But even so I am not sure how T.H White (1906 – 1964), who was just as popular in his day, completely passed me by. How could a very bookish child like me have been completely unaware of his work? I guess he must just have fallen out of fashion by the 1970s, replaced very effectively by the equally brilliant Roald Dahl who must also surely have been heavily influenced by him.

The first time I became aware of ‘Tim’ White’s name was pretty recently – certainly within the last decade – thanks to Helen Macdonald’s memoir ‘H is for Hawk’ in which he features pretty prominently as a person who both practiced and wrote extensively about falconry – an art which features in this book too.

I found ‘The Sword in the Stone’ extraordinarily irritating to start with because of its jaunty, public-school-jape kind of tone. Characters say things like ‘you beastly cad’ and quote schoolboy Latin at one another in a snooty manner. But as it proceeded I got drawn in and started to enjoy it – preposterous though the story is – thanks to some great characters and writing that is both beautiful and very funny. There is also a not-so-subtle political message being propagated throughout which I guess reflects the international situation in the late 1930s when the book was written. Towards the end, when our central protagonist ‘The Wart’ pulls the sword from the stone and hence becomes King Arthur we get this splendid little passage which combines gentle wit and satire with some serious advocacy:

The barons naturally kicked up a fuss, but, as the Wart was prepared to go on putting the sword into the stone and pulling it out again till Doomsday, and as there was nobody else who could do the thing at all, in the end they had to give in. A few of the Gaelic ones revolted, who were quelled later, but in the main the people of England and the partisans like Robin were glad to settle down. They were sick of the anarchy which had been their portion under Uther Pendragon: sick of overlords and feudal giants, of knights who did what they pleased, of racial discrimination, and of the rule of Might as Right.

The ‘Robin’ mentioned here is Robin Hood, whose legend is affixed to that of King Arthur and Merlin in this book. He appears alongside Maid Marion, Little John and Friar Tuck.

The narrative never flags once it gets going, T.H. White having endless creative fun as Merlin repeatedly turns the Wart into a variety of animals, enabling him to have conversations with a snake, a hedgehog, an ant, a goose, a badger and a wide variety of birds. And like the human characters they are all drawn very amusingly. He does silly conversations particularly well, as in this lovely passage concerning the ending of a duel between two elderly geezers that made me smile and chuckle:

King Pellinore hurriedly sat on his victim's chest, thus increasing the weight upon him to a quarter of a ton and making it quite impossible for him to move, and began to undo Sir Grummore's helm.

"You said Pax!"

"I said Pax Non under my breath."

"It's a swindle."

"It's not."

"You're a cad."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"I said Pax Non."

"You said Pax."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

By this time Sir Grummore's helm was unlaced and they could see his bare head glaring at King Pellinore, quite purple in the face.

"Yield thee, recreant," said the King.

"Shan't," said Sir Grummore.

"You have got to yield, or I shall cut off your head."

"Cut it off then."

"Oh, come on," said the King. "You know you have to yield when your helm is off."

"Feign I," said Sir Grummore.

"Well, I shall just cut your head off."

"I don't care."

The King waved his sword menacingly in the air.

"Go on," said Sir Grummore. "I dare you to."

The King lowered his sword and said, "Oh, I say, do yield, please."

"You yield," said Sir Grummore.

"But I can't yield. I am on top of you after all, am I not, what?"

"Well, I have feigned yieldin'."

"Oh, come on, Grummore. I do think you are a cad not to yield. You know very well I can't cut your head off."

"I would not yield to a cheat who started fightin' after he said Pax."

"I am not a cheat."

"You are a cheat."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Very well," said King Pellinore. "You can jolly well get up and put on your helm and we will have a fight. I won't be called a cheat for anybody."

"Cheat!" said Sir Grummore.

They stood up and fumbled together with the helm, hissing, "No, I'm not"—"Yes, you are," until it was safely on. Then they retreated to opposite ends of the clearing, got their weight upon their toes, and came rumbling and thundering together like two runaway trams.

The ‘Sword in the Stone’ is full of unhinged interactions like that – really every bit as good at their best as P G Wodehouse - but his writing is anything but cosy. Violence lurks everywhere and there are plenty of close escapes from seemingly impossible peril. Humour is deployed throughout, but the world portrayed is vile – again echoing I guess the 1930s milieu in which it was written. The tone is pleasantly nostalgic at times and White also slips in a great deal of useful educational instruction here and there, particularly in respect of the natural world.

For me though, as someone who really does not enjoy fantasy one bit, what made this so enjoyable was simply the sheer quality and exuberance of T.H. White’s writing. Just so good and such fun:

You must remember that this was in the old Merry England of Gramarye, when the rosy barons ate with their fingers, and had peacocks served before them with all their tail feathers streaming, or boars' heads with the tusks stuck in again - when there was no unemployment because there were too few people to be unemployed - when the forests rang with knights walloping each other on the helm, and the unicorns in the wintry moonlight stamped with their silver feet and snorted their noble breaths of blue upon the frozen air. Such marvels were great and comfortable ones.

But in the Old England there was a greater marvel still. The weather behaved itself. In the spring, the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang. In the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed. In the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory. And in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all around the castle the snow lay as it ought to lie. It hung heavily on the battlements, like thick icing on a very good cake, and in a few convenient places it modestly turned itself into the clearest icicles of the greatest possible length. It hung on the boughs of the forest trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and occasionally slid off the roofs of the village when it saw the chance of falling on some amusing character and giving pleasure to all. The boys made snowballs with it, but never put stones in them to hurt each other, and the dogs, when they were taken out to scombre, bit it and rolled in it, and looked surprised but delighted when they vanished into the bigger drifts.

There was skating on the moat, which roared with the gliding bones which they used for skates, while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds. The villagers brought out their red mufflers. Sir Ector's face shone redder even than these. And reddest of all shone the cottage fires down the main street of an evening, while the winds howled outside and the old English wolves wandered about slavering in an appropriate manner, or sometimes peeping in at the key-holes with their blood-red eyes.

‘The Sword in the Stone’ is the first of five King Arthur stories that T.H White eventually published in a single volume he called ‘The Once and Future King’. I am unlikely to pick up another, simply because there are so very many other books I would like to read first, but one day if the mood talks me, I just might.