The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)

by T.H. White

It was not really Eton that he mentioned, for the College of Blessed Mary was not founded until 1440, but it was a place of the same sort. Also they were drinking Metheglyn, not port, but by mentioning the modern wine it is easier to give you the feel.

Just as in modern shooting, you must never offer criticism to the man in command,

“Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.

It had not yet been turned over to Indians and small boys.

Wht the flip

I should have called myself The Black Knight.

“Oh, I am not going to have a wife. I think they are stupid.

Sigma Wart

“Damned niggers,”

Even in the miasma of her Gaelic mind,

They were imbeciles,

It was curious that when he was in one of these black passions he seemed to pass out of human life. In later days he even killed women, when he had been worked into such a state—though he regretted it bitterly afterwards.

Under the grotesque, magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo’s, there was shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he was tiny, by something which it is now too late to trace. It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

“The whole thing seems fanciful to me,” said the Queen. “I don’t understand it. It seems unpractical and selfish.”

“I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. I was afraid you would be hurt.”

but their doubt had been planted. Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.

He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or for torturing his wife. He had been given too much love and trust to be good at these things.

Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected. He was only a simple and affectionate man, because Merlyn had believed that love and simplicity were worth having.

It is simply that he was hoping to weather the trouble by refusing to become conscious of it.

But the whole thing was a mistake. No, don’t interrupt me. It was a mistake because the Table itself was founded on force. Right must be established by right: it can’t be established by Force Majeur.

Don’t you see what has happened? We have run out of things to fight for,

ought to have rooted Might out altogether, instead of trying to adapt it.

If I can’t keep my fighters from wickedness by matching them against the world—because they have used up the world—then I must match them against the spirit.”

I suppose that all endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end, as my famous Civilization was, contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.”

the ideal of my Round Table was a temporal ideal. If we are to save it, it must be made into a spiritual one. I forgot about God.”

They were baffling me with a sort of moral weapon, and I used my own weapon against it.

“Passive resistance,” said Arthur with intense interest. “It is a new weapon. But it seems difficult to use. Go on, please.”

“But this is heresy,” exclaimed the Queen, who was a good theologian, like most women.

“Funny,” said Lancelot, “how the people who can’t pray say that prayers are not answered, however much the people who can pray say they are.

Lancelot looked into the East, where he thought God lived,

Because a man can push you off a horse with a stick, it doesn’t mean that he is a better man than you are.”

Do you think that they, with their Battles, Famine, Black Death and Serfdom, were less enlightened than we are, with our Wars, Blockade, Influenza and Conscription? Even if they were foolish enough to believe that the earth was the centre of the universe, do we not ourselves believe that man is the fine flower of creation? If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?

“If Arthur were to catch us,” she said wisely, “he would have to kill us.”

the result would be that everything would be broken.

And Merlyn came, too late, to say what had happened. Everybody told me what a dreadful sin it was, and how nothing but sorrow would come of it, and also a lot of other things about what Mordred would be like if he was born.

“Cut the sniveller’s head off, and have done with him.”

I was used to backslide into passions—aye, and kill a body after he had yielded. And foreby I have killed a lassie.

They stood for a few heartbeats silent, and Gareth, in a pain of recognition, saw him as he was. He did not see a hero of romance, but a plain man who had done his best—not a leader of chivalry, but the pupil who had tried to be faithful to his curious master, the magician, by thinking all the time—not Arthur of England, but a lonely old gentleman who had worn his crown for half a lifetime in the teeth of fate.

“It is a trouble,” he said, drawing the old language of knighthood round him like a cloak, “that will aye destroy the flower of chivalry in all the world: a mischief to our noble fellowship: and all by cause of two unhappy knights!”

“In that case, my dear boys, if you would prefer it, don’t let us talk about the matter any further. These spring nights are too beautiful for us to worry with unpleasant things, so why don’t the two of you go off and make it up with Gawaine? You could ask him to lend you that clever goshawk of his for tomorrow. The Queen was mentioning just now, how she would enjoy a nice young leveret for dinner.”

He was fighting for her, perhaps for all of them.

“We know all this,” exclaimed the youngest brother, impatiently. “Personal combat has no meaning. It is an unfair justice anyway. It is the thugs who win.”

“You are still very young, Mordred. You have yet to learn that nearly all the ways of giving justice are unfair. If you can suggest another way of settling moot points, except by personal combat, I will be glad to try it.”

She looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul.

“Arthur would never do a thing like that.” “That’s what I said.” “Unless he was made to,” she reflected. “I don’t see how they could make him.”

Everybody is always saying what a parfit, gentle knight I am, but it has nothing to do with me. It is Arthur’s idea.

Inside, he was not a bit gentle. He was foul to his wife, he was always bullying poor old Palomides for being a nigger, and he treated King Mark most shamefully.

“Lance, do you realize that the two other people he hated are dead?” “Everybody dies, sooner or later.”

“Good heavens, man,” cried Gareth. “Do you want to see the woman burn?”

“Well, I suppose it is the best we can do. I hope I have tried to do what I ought.”

“I sentenced her because it was the law to sentence her.

“Uncle Arthur,” he said, “ye’re a grand man. I telled ye it would come to right.” “And you are a grand man, too, Gawaine, a good man and a kind one.”