The Once and Future King: The Sword in the Stone

[osprey_archer]

After I confessed to skygiants that I have never read T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, she kindly took it on herself to send me a copy and read it along with me, which turned out to be VERY useful as this is one of those books where the publication history turns out to be as much of a story as the story itself.

So The Once and Future King was originally published as four separate books. (I will be reviewing it book by book as we go. This first book is The Sword in the Stone.) White actually wrote five books, but for Reasons the fifth book was not published as part of The Once and Future King, so White decided to take the parts that he considered most important and bung them into The Sword and the Stone, with the sly comment that “it’s really too early in your education” for Merlin to send the Wart to visit the totalitarian ants, but that’s the only way for White to get it in the book and so in it goes.

(This scene is EXTREMELY 1984, except that instead of “good” and “ungood” the ants say “done” and “not-done” [as in, “It’s just not done to wear white after Labor Day!”] But it was written in 1941 before 1984 was published, and not published till after 1984 so it couldn’t possibly have influenced Orwell’s book. A fascinating example of synchronicity!)

White also (perhaps to create room for the ants etc?) shortened several episodes from the original publication. skygiants informs me that the scene where the Wart and his foster brother Kay team up with Robin Hood rescue prisoners from Morgan le Fay’s extremely unappealing castle made of food (a castle should not be made of cheese and butter!) was originally much longer. Also, there was originally a whole entire scene where the Wart is an owl, which has been cut in favor of a book five scene where the Wart hangs out with a bunch of geese and nearly bags a goose girlfriend, only she is deeply put off when he explains to her about war and she’s like WHY would geese kill other geese, it doesn’t make SENSE.

There is also a scene where the Wart spends the night in the mews as a hawk, and this is apparently drawn from the time that T. H. White decided to train a goshawk using a three hundred year old manual that explained the only way to tame a goshawk is to keep both it and yourself awake for three days running at which point you let the goshawk fall asleep on your fist. (Spoilers: by the 1930s, they had realized there were other ways to train a goshawk.)

This particular book, The Sword and the Stone, is the source for the Disney movie of the same name. For a Disney adaptation it hews surprisingly close to the plot beats of the original, but it flattens the characterization. In the book, Kay is a tense, high-strung boy who sometimes lashes out from his own frustration and fear of inadequacy. (White does an amazing job on the sibling relationship between Kay and the Wart: they sometimes get furious at each other, but even during their worst quarrels there’s a rock solid love for each other underneath.) Sir Ector is a bluff, hearty knight who is nonetheless a loving father (for both his son and foster son) beneath the bluster. In the movie, they’re just buffoons.

I enjoyed all the scenes where Merlin turns the Wart into animals, but the subtlety of the characterization is what really made the book for me. I’m super curious to see White’s interpretations of other Arthurian characters as they come into the narrative.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

(Spoilers: by the 1930s, they had realized there were other ways to train a goshawk.)
REJECT MODERNITY, EMBRACE TRADITION!

The movie is so Disney, and the book is so interesting and shaded. I also read all of these books in one volume, but all in one gulp so they all kind of merge in my memory, but there are scenes from the later books which are like - indelibly seared in my memory. I will await your (once and) future posts!

[oracne]

I never saw the movie of this, I should look on Disney plus. I loved this book, especially the turning into animals parts, and read it more than once. The whole Once and Future King version, I only read once.

[osprey_archer]

I suspect the movie is a slightly odd experience in conjunction with the book because plot-wise it's pretty close, but in feeling it's a very different story. There's an undercurrent of melancholy in Once and Future King that the Disney movie doesn't share.

[osprey_archer]

There's also an entire chapter where White is just like FEUDALISM WAS ACTUALLY GREAT AND DEFINITELY PREFERABLE TO MODERNITY, GUYS.

To be fair, he was writing RIGHT before the beginning of World War II, which seems honestly like a strong argument against modernity. But modernity can be bad and feudalism can... also be bad?

Apparently there are not only differences between the individual books and the omnibus edition that is The Once and Future King, but also differences between certain omnibus editions? The publication history of this tome deserves its own book or at least an in-depth article.

[sovay]

In the movie, they’re just buffoons.

I had read the book multiple times before seeing the movie and I was extremely disappointed in the movie, even knowing that Bill Peet had modeled Merlin's character design after Disney's.

[rachelmanija]

Ohh, I'm so excited that you're reading this. I love this book. The language is so rich and playful, and the characterization is so good.

The ants are unforgettable, but I love the haunting moments the best: the hawks in the mews, the hunt with the hound, the wild geese. Some (maybe all?) of Cully's dialogue is quotes. I remember being so astonished and delighted when, years later, I read The Duchess of Malfi and recognized a line.

[troisoiseaux]

The chapter with the totalitarian ants is the part of The Sword and the Stone that left the deepest impression on me, goodness knows why.

I look forward to your thoughts on the rest of the book! I especially can't wait to hear your thoughts on the Orkney clan; it's so heart-breaking to go from the Wart's childhood to theirs.

[osprey_archer]

It's like the movie took the basic structure of the plot and just sucked out all the character development that made it interesting and individual.

[osprey_archer]

EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY.

That is to say, the totalitarian ants are very memorable!

[osprey_archer]

It's really astonishing that I haven't read it till now. The book is such a classic!

The hawks in the mews are so amazing. An officer's mess, but make it hawks, and the absolute menace of Cully the goshawk who doesn't really want to bite off the Wart's head but just might not be able to stop himself.

[sovay]

But modernity can be bad and feudalism can... also be bad?

I point toward rushthatspeaks' review of Alice Herdan-Zuckmeyer's The Farm In The Green Mountains (1949), which I accidentally inflicted on him when the introduction failed to mention the feudalism problem.

[sovay]

Some (maybe all?) of Cully's dialogue is quotes.

It's not all, but he keeps spinning off into them, like a darker mad-scene key of the butterfly in The Last Unicorn (1968), who for all I know is an actual literary descendant: as I'm thinking about it, the mix of anachronism and metafiction is actually not incongruous between the two books. I just read the Beagle first. [edit] The butterfly was my introduction to a lot of quotations, whether I could recognize them at the time or not.

[rachelmanija]

Ohh, I never made that comparison before, but you're so right.

[rachelmanija]

The DONE/NOT DONE ants are extremely memorable.

[vcmw]

One thing I think I remember (though I very much could have this mixed up!) is that a lot of the animal parts were originally in the fifth book in the context of Merlin deciding he hadn't done a good enough job educating Arthur as a young man, and so coming back to him at a point in adulthood where Arthur was making what Merlin considered bad decisions about war, and sending him on these animal journeys to reconsider what war and power and so forth should look like.
So it's a fascinating change of context to have them in the beginning instead of the end, from that point of view.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, that's so interesting! I'm really curious now WHY they couldn't include the fifth book in the edition with the other four. I'm just imagining T. H. White grumbling as he excised his favorite chapters to put them in book one, which was not where they BELONGED, but at least this way people would READ them.

[osprey_archer]

This reminds me (although it sounds like Herdan-Zuckmeyer believes this on a far larger scale) of Eva Ibbotson's absolute conviction that it's just fine for upper-class men to fondle the maids. The absolute conviction that people in the lower classes are just Different in some fundamental way.

What's odd in Ibbotson is that this doesn't seem to affect her lower class characters in other ways - Nini the anarchist apprentice seamstress in Madensky Square is a highlight of the book. It's just this one blind spot so absolute she can't see around it.

[skygiants]

That is such a compelling compare/contrast and I bet you're right about the influence there -- they're also very similar in the way that everything in the world (people, wizards, animals, trees) slips in and out of conversation and communication with each other, always naturally if not always easily.

[sovay]

they're also very similar in the way that everything in the world (people, wizards, animals, trees) slips in and out of conversation and communication with each other, always naturally if not always easily.

Yes! Now that you mention it, it seems almost an oversight that the Wart was never crushed on by an amorous red oak.

[asakiyume]

I believe I read The Sword in the Stone at some point, and I think I liked it, but I remember just two things about it: that there were transformation sequences, and that--as you say--the sibling relationship was complicated but not Awful.

I suspect I should have waited and read it when I was older. It sounds from everything I read about it like it has a lot to it that I really would have appreciated at an older age. (Like now! I could read it now! But probably I won't because there are so many other things I also want to read. But you [I] never know...)

[asakiyume]

But modernity can be bad and feudalism can... also be bad?

These days, I kind of appreciate stories that show good sides of other forms of governance (like fuedalism!) I feel like I had it pretty well drilled into my head what was wrong with All The Forms of Government That Came Before Our Discovery of the One True Form of Government, Representative Democracy, and it can be--for me now! not for everyone, I realize!--relaxing to see a story in which other forms of government don't automatically equate to horrors. I guess the thing is that people's "playfulness" (good old Homo ludens) means that they find way of subverting what's good in any system and weaponizing to advantage what's bad. ... That said, systems that straight up favor concentrating power in very few hands make it very easy for the system to be abused, so ... yeah.

[asakiyume]

Does Disney understand the meaning of the word "melancholy"? I mean, maybe live-action Disney does. But animated Disney?

[osprey_archer]

"there are so many other things I want to read" is such a problem tbh. There are simply Too Many Books and not enough time.

[osprey_archer]

I feel there are moments in some of the animated movies (the one that jumps into mind is the song "Reflection" in Mulan), but (1) a melancholy moment is not the same as a melancholy mood pervading a work, and (2) possibly this didn't happen till after the era of The Sword in the Stone, anyway.

[ethelmay]

I feel so old. I remember when The Book of Merlyn came out (1977 - I think my mother bought it as a Christmas present, whether for me or a sibling I am not sure) and that was the first I heard of the ants and the geese. I think I had not read the full Once and Future King at that point. I loved The Sword and the Stone (and also Mistress Masham's Repose, for what that's worth), and had just assumed a lot of it would make more sense to me when I was older, and then realized no, it really didn't, in fact it rather fell apart in some ways. I was something of a Platonist at that age (too much C.S. Lewis) and felt there should be one ideal form of a book, and the patchy messed-about different versions rather appalled me, though as the daughter of a writer I knew something about different drafts. I would have been a freshman in high school that year and it was that year or the next that I would first have read Sylvia Townsend Warner's biography of White, which I was obsessed with for a few years.

[osprey_archer]

I'm glad to hear the Sylvia Townsend Warner biography is good! I've been thinking about reading it after I finish Once and Future King.

[ethelmay]

It's a wonderful book in its way, but very much due for an update - there was a lot she had to leave out because certain materials couldn't be quoted until well after his death. I am surprised there hasn't been another bio (at least I have not heard of any in the works - I could be out of date there and indeed hope I am).

[osprey_archer]

I googled round a bit and found this article, which says the Warner biography is the only one, although there are a few book-length studies of White's works.

[ethelmay]

That's an interesting article. I had no idea anyone was so invested in the idea that White wasn't queer. (White damn well said he was in multiple places, unless we assume Sylvia Townsend Warner was just making up quotations from his letters and journals.)