Books: Going Strong

THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT—T. H. White—Pufnam ($2.50).

King Arthur of Britain lived about 525 —if at all. Legend encrusted his name almost at once. Nine hundred years later the Arthurian Cycle was already decadent when “Syr Thomas Maleore Knyght” wrote his Morte d’Arthur. Another 500 years later, with Tennyson’s pious allegories, Mark Twain’s farce, John Erskine’s sophistications, etc., King Arthur was still going strong.

Newest minstrel of Arthurian romance is bearded, falconry-loving T. H. White, onetime English schoolmaster. The Sword in the Stone (1938), a tale of young Arthur’s education in the hands of the wizard Merlyn, was so brightly fanciful that Walt Disney purchased it to succeed Snow White, Pinocchio, etc. The Witch in the Wood (1939) was a more slapdash account of Arthur’s early kingship. This week appears the best of the series: The Ill-Made Knight, a whimsical chronicle of Arthur’s further attempts to found civilization by channeling Might, via the Round Table, into the cause of Right. The Round Table cleaned up black-hearted barons, witches, giants and made England a peaceful land with “merry bands of pilgrims telling each other dirty stories on the way to Canterbury.” Chief characters of The Ill-Made Knight are ugly, expert Lancelot (le Chevalier Mai Fet), patient, cuckolded Arthur, all-female Guinever, priggish Galahad, whom the less perfect knights loathe.

Through a delightful realm of fantasy, burlesque, satire, medieval curiosa and gentle moralizing wander countless strange folk, such as the Cockney knight, Sir Meliagrance (“Yes, Ma’am, in ‘arf a minute”). Typical episode: Lancelot stuck his sword in the ground, and went over to examine the wound. . . . “You’ve cut open my liver” said the man accusingly.