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by
T.H. White
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July 13, 2021 - February 10, 2022
Now he did not quite know what he wanted to do, but it was not what anybody else wanted. He thought perhaps it would be nice to kill something, from spite.
If you know what is going to happen to people, and not what has happened to them, it makes it difficult to prevent it happening, if you don’t want it to have happened, if you see what I mean?
“There is nothing,” said the monarch, “except the power which you pretend to seek: power to grind and power to digest, power to seek and power to find, power to await and power to claim, all power and pitilessness springing from the nape of the neck.”
“Now I think it is time that you should go away, young master, for I find this conversation uninteresting and exhausting. I think you ought to go away really almost at once, in case my disillusioned mouth should suddenly determine to introduce you to my great gills, which have teeth in them also. Yes, I really think you might be wise to go away this moment. Indeed, I think you ought to put your back into it. And so, a long farewell to all my greatness.”
He took great pains to keep his stomach in, and often tripped over his feet because he could not see them over his chest. He was generally making his muscles ripple, which annoyed Merlyn.
“Oh, I am not going to have a wife. I think they are stupid.
“Well, well. It’s a fine day, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is rather fine.” “Suppose we’d better have a joust, eh, what?” “Yes, I suppose we had better,” said King Pellinore, “really.” “What shall we have it for?” “Oh, the usual thing, I suppose. Would one of you kindly help me on with my helm?”
“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.”
“You think that education is something which ought to be done when all else fails?” inquired Merlyn nastily, for he was in a bad mood too.
The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk—for one thing Hob is still in the mews feeding them—so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.”
The prisoners were tied to pillars of marvellous pork.
“I like fighting,” said the Wart. “It is knightly.” “Because you’re a baby.”
“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.” “That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.”
“Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?” “Oh dear,” said Merlyn. “You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are grown up and know the reason?” “I don’t think that is an answer at all,” replied the Wart, justly.
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never
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If you are feeling desperate, a badger is a good thing to be.
“Well, there has appeared a sort of sword in a stone, what, in a sort of a church. Not in the church, if you see what I mean, and not in the stone, but that sort of thing, what, like you might say.” “I don’t know what the Church is coming to,” said Sir Grummore.
Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically—to those who hardly think about us in return.
It was an open face, with kind eyes and a reliable or faithful expression, as though he were a good learner who enjoyed being alive and did not believe in original sin.
“It is nothing. I am due to fall in love with a girl called Nimue in a short time, and then she learns my spells and locks me up in a cave for several centuries. It is one of those things which are going to happen.”
“Wars are never fought for one reason,” he said. “They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle. It is the same with revolts.”
There is one fairly good reason for fighting—and that is, if the other man starts it.
Of course, battles are not fun when you come to think about them. I mean, people ought not to be killed, ought they? It is better to be alive.
It is as if people were half horrible and half nice. Perhaps they are even more than half horrible, and when they are left to themselves they run wild.
It smelt of oatmeal, ham, smoked salmon, dried cod, onions, shark oil, pickled herrings in tubs, hemp, maize, hen’s fluff, sailcloth, milk—the butter was churned there on Thursdays—seasoning pine wood, apples, herbs drying, fish glue and varnish used by the fletcher, spices from overseas, dead rat in trap, venison, seaweed, wood shavings, litter of kittens, fleeces from the mountain sheep not yet sold, and the pungent smell of tar.
“Never mind about it,” said Arthur. “I don’t like knowing the future anyway. I had much rather you didn’t worry about it, because it only worries me.”
“What sort of people will they be, Merlyn?” cried the young man’s voice, unhappily.
An ordinary fellow, who did not spend half his life torturing himself by trying to discover what was right so as to conquer his inclination towards what was wrong, might have cut the knot which brought their ruin.
“The Orkney faction is bad,” he said. “So is civilization,
Merlyn always said that sportsmanship was the curse of the world, and so it is.
People will do the basest things on account of their so-called honour. I wish I had never invented honour, or sportsmanship, or civilization.”
Lancelot said: “I cannot go.” Arthur said: “Please stay.” Guenever said: “Go.”
The danger about being the best knight in the world was that if you were always being tested about it, the day was bound to come when you would fail to retain the title.
There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules.
Seeing so much further into the future than he did, she pressed towards it with passionate tread, wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck.
The World had been expected to end in the year one thousand, and, in the reaction which followed its reprieve, there had been a burst of lawlessness and brutality which had sickened Europe for centuries.
He knew he would have to leave in the end, so he forced me to think for myself. Don’t ever let anybody teach you to think, Lance: it is the curse of the world.”
Morals are difficult things to talk about, but what has happened is that we have invented a moral sense, which is rotting now that we can’t give it employment. And when a moral sense begins to rot it is worse than when you had none.
“But, my poor Lance, to have given up your glory and not to get anything back! When you were a sinful man you were always victorious, so why should you always be beaten when you were heavenly? And why are you always hurt by the things you love? What did you do?” “I knelt down in the water of Mortoise, Jenny, where he had knocked me—and I thanked God for the adventure.”
WHEN a man had practically seen God, however human he might be, you could not immediately expect him as a lover.
Generosity is the eighth deadly sin.
Mordred wore his ridiculous shoes contemptuously: they were a satire on himself. The court was modern.
Nowadays, when a point of justice is obscure and difficult, each side hires lawyers to argue it out. In those days the upper classes hired champions to fight it out—which came to the same thing.
The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. “And ever,” says Malory, “Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.”
“You said you were happy just now.” “Well, I am not happy. I am very unhappy and miserable about the whole world.”
“I wish I had never been born.” “So do I, my poor boy. But you are born, so now we must do the best we can.”
“Civilization seems to have become insane,” she said.
A leader was surely forced to offer something which appealed to those he led? He might give the impetus to the falling building, but surely it had to be toppling on its own account before it fell?
Unfortunately men did say this, in each successive war. They were always saying that the present one was to be the last, and afterwards there was to be a heaven. They were always to rebuild such a new world as never was seen. When the time came, however, they were too stupid.
Ideal advice, which nobody was built to follow, was no advice at all. Advising heaven to earth was useless.
