Sword in the Stone

[T. H. White to Leonard James Potts]

January 14, 1938

Crown Hotel, Wells, Norfolk

Dear Pottes,

No, I am not married, divorced, in gaol or dead. I have 41 pounds in the bank. No books have been published since the last you heard of--England H. M. B.--but there is one in the press. I think it is one of my better books, so probably nobody else will. It is a preface to Malory. Do you remember I once wrote a thesis on the Morte d'Arthur? Naturally I did not read Malory when writing the thesis on him, but one time last autumn I got desperate among my books and picked him up in lack of anything else. Then I was thrilled and astonished to find that (a) The thing was a perfect tragedy, with a beginning, a middle and an end implicit in the beginning and (b) the characters were real people with recognisable reactions which could be forecast. Mordred was hateful, Kay a decent chap with an inferiority complex, Gawaine that rarest of literary productions, a swine with a streak of solid decency. He was a sterling fellow to his own clan. Arthur, Lancelot and even Galahad were really glorious people--not pre-raphaelite prigs. Anyway, I somehow started writing a book. It is not a satire. Indeed, I am afraid it is rather warm-hearted--mainly about birds and beasts. . . So far as I can make out, Macmillans are going to refuse to take it up in America, so perhaps it is a bad book after all. Their refusal will incidentally land me in queer street financially, as I have gambled on them taking it. What I fear is that it has feeble traces of A. A. Milne. I should have liked it to be like Masefield's Midnight Folk, a book which I love this side of idolatry. It is called The Sword in the Stone.

I did a lot of research into the 14th-15th centuries, in a mild way.

I have also written a book called Burke's Steerage or the Amateur Gentleman's Introduction to Noble Sports and Pastimes. It is a short, cheap thing, doing for sport what Cornford's Microcosmographia Academica' did for your damned university. But it is not good.

Also I wrote a book called "A Sort of Mania" [this became The Goshawk]. It is about my hawks and living as a hermit. Unfortunately I believe I shall have to re-write it entirely, as it has faint traces of value.

Writing books is a heart breaking job. When I write a good one it is too good for the public and I starve, when a bad one you and Mary are rude about it. This Sword in the Stone (forgive my reverting to it and probably boring you sick--I have nobody to tell things to) may fail financially through being too good for the swine. It has (I fear) its swinish Milneish parts (but, my God, I'd gladly be a Milne for the Milne money) but it is packed with accurate historical knowledge and good allusive criticism of chivalry ( I make the fox-huntin' comparison with some glee) which nobody but you will notice.

. . .I am staying in Norfolk to shoot wild geese--the latest craze. God knows what I shall think of next.

Love and forgiveness to you.

Tim

-from Letters to a Friend: The Correspondence Between T. H. White and L. J. Potts. Edited and Introduced with Notes by Francois Gallix (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1982) p. 93-95.

T. H. White on Potted Diction

[October 12, 1930]

The Dingle, Reigate, Surrey

Dear L. J. P.*

Forgive my tardiness in writing about your POEMS. I despised them heartily at first and put them by me in despair, not knowing what I could say to you. Just now I thought I really must face them again and make a dreadful effort at diplomacy. So I started reading them again, and I've only got as far as 3 b (not a very good one, by the way) and I'm writing at once, because its past ten o'clock and I have a full day's work before me tomorrow. I just haven't time to read them right through tonight, so I'm going to write about the first five or six and perhaps continue this letter when I've had time to finish them off with a considered judgement.

Well, first of all, it has just dawned upon me that I disliked them for a very good and superficial reason, i.e., the diction. And secondly and finally and lastly and in conclusion I've just had the excitement of seeing the poems through the diction. In spite of it, I mean. They say something superlatively worth saying and once you have got through the language they even justify that. I should by all means urge you to publish them--so long as you are going to go on writing, and preferably in a modern tongue. Unless you will do this it will be useless to publish them, for your personality will require a weight of evidence before it can break through the present medium enough to impinge upon the consciousness of the reader. The reason why it has impinged on mine is that I already know you personally to some extent. You see, they are reflection poems (that is why I like them so much) and it takes a lot of familiarity to find out the way a man reflects. If one hadn't discovered the mental angle of Blake what bosh all that stuff about caterpillars in a cage would be. So with your mental angle. It will need a lot of publication before you can establish it to any but those who know you. It is not facile like mine.

But to return to this diction. Have you ever heard of the English language? And will you give me your no doubt all-sufficient reasons for saying: "life is but a task" instead of "only", "nought" instead of "nothing" and so forth ad nauseum. . .

You are writing in the idiom of the 1820s. It is so pronounced that I can date it to within a decade, except where it is tainted with Rupert Brooke. And then I could say "by 1823 out of 1914" just as if it were a horse. The things positively reek of retrogression.

I am so emphatic for a rather dreadful reason: they almost convert me to the retrograde. But not quite, but not quite.

On second thoughts I shall send this off but keep the poems for a further onslaught and instalment.

So tremble. I daresay I shall burn them.

Yours,

Timothy

*Leonard James Potts, M.A. Lecturer and Director of Studies in English, Junior Bursar, Praelector, Tutor, Senior Tutor, Librarian. University Lecturer in English Queens' College, Cambridge. d.1960.

-from Letters to a Friend: The Correspondence Between T. H. White and L. J. Potts. Edited and Introduced with Notes by Francois Gallix (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1982) p. 19-21.