Alfred Tennyson

That the Idylls represent no real world is certain. That Tennyson modernises and moralises too much, I willingly admit; what I deny is that he introduces gentleness, courtesy, and conscience where his sources have none. Indeed this is not a matter of critical opinion, but of verifiable fact. Any one can read Malory and judge for himself. But the world in which the Idylls move could not be real. For more than a thousand years different races, different ages, had taken hold of the ancient Celtic legends and spiritualised them after their own manner, and moulded them to their own ideals. There may have been a historical Arthur, Comes Britanniæ, after the Roman withdrawal. Ye Amherawdyr Arthur, “the Emperor Arthur,” may have lived and fought, and led the Brythons to battle. But there may also have been a Brythonic deity, or culture hero, of the same, or of a similar name, and myths about him may have been assigned to a real Arthur. Again, the Arthur of the old Welsh legends was by no means the blameless king – even in comparatively late French romances he is not blameless. But the process of idealising him went on: still incomplete in Malory’s compilation, where he is often rather otiose and far from royal. Tennyson, for his purpose, completed the idealisation.

As to Guinevere, she was not idealised in the old Welsh rhyme —

“Guinevere, Giant Ogurvan’s daughter,Naughty young, more naughty later.”

Of Lancelot, and her passion for him, the old Welsh has nothing to say. Probably Chrétien de Troyes, by a happy blunder or misconception, gave Lancelot his love and his pre-eminent part. Lancelot was confused with Peredur, and Guinevere with the lady of whom Peredur was in quest. The Elaine who becomes by Lancelot the mother of Galahad “was Lancelot’s rightful consort, as one recognises in her name that of Elen, the Empress, whom the story of Peredur” (Lancelot, by the confusion) “gives that hero to wife.” The second Elaine, the maid of Astolat, is another refraction from the original Elen. As to the Grail, it may be a Christianised rendering of one or another of the magical and mystic caldrons of Welsh or Irish legend. There is even an apparent Celtic source of the mysterious fisher king of the Grail romance. 12

A sketch of the evolution of the Arthurian legends might run thus: —

Sixth to eighth century, growth of myth about an Arthur, real, or supposed to be real.

Tenth century, the Duchies of Normandy and Brittany are in close relations; by the eleventh century Normans know Celtic Arthurian stories.

After, 1066, Normans in contact with the Celtic peoples of this island are in touch with the Arthur tales.

1130–1145, works on Arthurian matter by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

1155, Wace’s French translation of Geoffrey.

1150–1182, Chrétien de Troyes writes poems on Arthurian topics.

French prose romances on Arthur, from, say, 1180 to 1250. Those romances reach Wales, and modify, in translations, the original Welsh legends, or, in part, supplant them.

Amplifications and recastings are numerous. In 1485 Caxton publishes Malory’s selections from French and English sources, the whole being Tennyson’s main source, Le Mort d’Arthur. 13

Thus the Arthur stories, originally Celtic, originally a mass of semi-pagan legend, myth, and märchen, have been retold and rehandled by Norman, Englishman, and Frenchman, taking on new hues, expressing new ideals – religious, chivalrous, and moral. Any poet may work his will on them, and Tennyson’s will was to retain the chivalrous courtesy, generosity, love, and asceticism, while dimly or brightly veiling or illuminating them with his own ideals. After so many processes, from folk-tale to modern idyll, the Arthurian world could not be real, and real it is not. Camelot lies “out of space, out of time,” though the colouring is mainly that of the later chivalry, and “the gleam” on the hues is partly derived from Celtic fancy of various dates, and is partly Tennysonian.

As the Idylls were finally arranged, the first, The Coming of Arthur, is a remarkable proof of Tennyson’s ingenuity in construction. Tales about the birth of Arthur varied. In Malory, Uther Pendragon, the Bretwalda (in later phrase) of Britain, besieges the Duke of Tintagil, who has a fair wife, Ygerne, in another castle. Merlin magically puts on Uther the shape of Ygerne’s husband, and as her husband she receives him. On that night Arthur is begotten by Uther, and the Duke of Tintagil, his mother’s husband, is slain in a sortie. Uther weds Ygerne; both recognise Arthur as their child. However, by the Celtic custom of fosterage the infant is intrusted to Sir Ector as his dalt, or foster-child, and Uther falls in battle. Arthur is later approven king by the adventure of drawing from the stone the magic sword that no other king could move. This adventure answers to Sigmund’s drawing the sword from the Branstock, in the Volsunga Saga, “Now men stand up, and none would fain be the last to lay hand to the sword,” apparently stricken into the pillar by Woden. “But none who came thereto might avail to pull it out, for in nowise would it come away howsoever they tugged at it, but now up comes Sigmund, King Volsung’s son, and sets hand to the sword, and pulls it from the stock, even as if it lay loose before him.” The incident in the Arthurian as in the Volsunga legend is on a par with the Golden Bough, in the sixth book of the Æneid. Only the predestined champion, such as Æneas, can pluck, or break, or cut the bough —

“Ipse volens facilisque sequetu

Si te fata vocant.”

All this ancient popular element in the Arthur story is disregarded by Tennyson. He does not make Uther approach Ygerne in the semblance of her lord, as Zeus approached Alcmena in the semblance of her husband, Amphitryon. He neglects the other ancient test of the proving of Arthur by his success in drawing the sword. The poet’s object is to enfold the origin and birth of Arthur in a spiritual mystery. This is deftly accomplished by aid of the various versions of the tale that reach King Leodogran when Arthur seeks the hand of his daughter Guinevere, for Arthur’s title to the crown is still disputed, so Leodogran makes inquiries. The answers first leave it dubious whether Arthur is son of Gorloïs, husband of Ygerne, or of Uther, who slew Gorloïs and married her: —

“Enforced she was to wed him in her tears.”

The Celtic custom of fosterage is overlooked, and Merlin gives the child to Anton, not as the customary dalt, but to preserve the babe from danger. Queen Bellicent then tells Leodogran, from the evidence of Bleys, Merlin’s master in necromancy, the story of Arthur’s miraculous advent.

“And down the wave and in the flame was borneA naked babe, and rode to Merlin’s feet,Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried ‘The King!Here is an heir for Uther!’”

But Merlin, when asked by Bellicent to corroborate the statement of Bleys, merely

“Answer’d in riddling triplets of old time.”

Finally, Leodogran’s faith is confirmed by a vision. Thus doubtfully, amidst rumour and portent, cloud and spiritual light, comes Arthur: “from the great deep” he comes, and in as strange fashion, at the end, “to the great deep he goes” – a king to be accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. Arthur and his ideal are objects of belief. All goes well while the knights hold that

“The King will follow Christ, and we the King,In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.”

In history we find the same situation in the France of 1429 —

“The King will follow Jeanne, and we the King.”

While this faith held, all went well; when the king ceased to follow, the spell was broken, – the Maid was martyred. In this sense the poet conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to be spoken against, a test of high purposes, a belief redeeming and ennobling till faith fails, and the little rift within the lute, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, makes discord of the music. As matter of legend, it is to be understood that Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he rode below her window —

“Since he neither wore on helm or shieldThe golden symbol of his kinglihood.”

But Lancelot was sent to bring the bride —

“And return’dAmong the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.”

Then their long love may have begun, as in the story of Tristram sent to bring Yseult to be the bride of King Mark. In Malory, however, Lancelot does not come on the scene till after Arthur’s wedding and return from his conquering expedition to Rome. Then Lancelot wins renown, “wherefore Queen Guinevere had him in favour above all other knights; and in certain he loved the Queen again above all other ladies damosels of his life.” Lancelot, as we have seen, is practically a French creation, adopted to illustrate the chivalrous theory of love, with its bitter fruit. Though not of the original Celtic stock of legend, Sir Lancelot makes the romance what it is, and draws down the tragedy that originally turned on the sin of Arthur himself, the sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. But the mediæval romancers disguised that form of the story, and the process of idealising Arthur reached such heights in the middle ages that Tennyson thought himself at liberty to paint the Flos Regum, “the blameless King.” He followed the Brut ab Arthur. “In short, God has not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur.” This is remote from the Arthur of the oldest Celtic legends, but justifies the poet in adapting Arthur to the ideal hero of the Idylls: —

“Ideal manhood closed in real man,Rather than that grey king, whose name, a ghost,Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak,And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or himOf Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s, oneTouched by the adulterous finger of a timeThat hovered between war and wantonness,And crownings and dethronements.”

The poetical beauties of The Coming of Arthur excel those of Gareth and Lynette. The sons of Lot and Bellicent seem to have been originally regarded as the incestuous offspring of Arthur and his sister, the wife of King Lot. Next it was represented that Arthur was ignorant of the relationship. Mr Rhys supposes that the mythical scandal (still present in Malory as a sin of ignorance) arose from blending the Celtic Arthur (as Culture Hero) with an older divine personage, such as Zeus, who marries his sister Hera. Marriages of brother and sister are familiar in the Egyptian royal house, and that of the Incas. But the poet has a perfect right to disregard a scandalous myth which, obviously crystallised later about the figure of the mythical Celtic Arthur, was an incongruous accretion to his legend. Gareth, therefore, is merely Arthur’s nephew, not son, in the poem, as are Gawain and the traitor Modred. The story seems to be rather mediæval French than Celtic – a mingling of the spirit of fabliau and popular fairy tale. The poet has added to its lightness, almost frivolity, the description of the unreal city of Camelot, built to music, as when

“Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers.”

He has also brought in the allegory of Death, which, when faced, proves to be “a blooming boy” behind the mask. The courtesy and prowess of Lancelot lead up to the later development of his character.

In The Marriage of Geraint, a rumour has already risen about Lancelot and the Queen, darkening the Court, and presaging

“The world’s loud whisper breaking into storm.”

For this reason Geraint removes Enid from Camelot to his own land – the poet thus early leading up to the sin and the doom of Lancelot. But this motive does not occur in the Welsh story of Enid and Geraint, which Tennyson has otherwise followed with unwonted closeness. The tale occurs in French romances in various forms, but it appears to have returned, by way of France and coloured with French influences, to Wales, where it is one of the later Mabinogion. The characters are Celtic, and Nud, father of Edyrn, Geraint’s defeated antagonist, appears to be recognised by Mr Rhys as “the Celtic Zeus.” The manners and the tournaments are French. In the Welsh tale Geraint and Enid are bedded in Arthur’s own chamber, which seems to be a symbolic commutation of the jus primæ noctis a custom of which the very existence is disputed. This unseemly antiquarian detail, of course, is omitted in the Idyll.

An abstract of the Welsh tale will show how closely Tennyson here follows his original. News is brought into Arthur’s Court of the appearance of a white stag. The king arranges a hunt, and Guinevere asks leave to go and watch the sport. Next morning she cannot be wakened, though the tale does not aver, like the Idyll, that she was

“Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her loveFor Lancelot.”

Guinevere wakes late, and rides through a ford of Usk to the hunt. Geraint follows, “a golden-hilted sword was at his side, and a robe and a surcoat of satin were upon him, and two shoes of leather upon his feet, and around him was a scarf of blue purple, at each corner of which was a golden apple”: —

“But Guinevere lay late into the morn,Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her loveFor Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt;But rose at last, a single maiden with her,Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain’d the wood;There, on a little knoll beside it, stay’dWaiting to hear the hounds; but heard insteadA sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint,Late also, wearing neither hunting-dressNor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand,Came quickly flashing thro’ the shallow fordBehind them, and so gallop’d up the knoll.A purple scarf, at either end whereofThere swung an apple of the purest gold,Sway’d round about him, as he gallop’d upTo join them, glancing like a dragon-flyIn summer suit and silks of holiday.”

The encounter with the dwarf, the lady, and the knight follows. The prose of the Mabinogi may be compared with the verse of Tennyson: —

“Geraint,” said Gwenhwyvar, “knowest thou the name of that tall knight yonder?” “I know him not,” said he, “and the strange armour that he wears prevents my either seeing his face or his features.” “Go, maiden,” said Gwenhwyvar, “and ask the dwarf who that knight is.” Then the maiden went up to the dwarf; and the dwarf waited for the maiden, when he saw her coming towards him. And the maiden inquired of the dwarf who the knight was. “I will not tell thee,” he answered. “Since thou art so churlish as not to tell me,” said she, “I will ask him himself.” “Thou shalt not ask him, by my faith,” said he. “Wherefore?” said she. “Because thou art not of honour sufficient to befit thee to speak to my Lord.” Then the maiden turned her horse’s head towards the knight, upon which the dwarf struck her with the whip that was in his hand across the face and the eyes, until the blood flowed forth. And the maiden, through the hurt she received from the blow, returned to Gwenhwyvar, complaining of the pain. “Very rudely has the dwarf treated thee,” said Geraint. “I will go myself to know who the knight is.” “Go,” said Gwenhwyvar. And Geraint went up to the dwarf. “Who is yonder knight?” said Geraint. “I will not tell thee,” said the dwarf. “Then will I ask him himself,” said he. “That wilt thou not, by my faith,” said the dwarf; “thou art not honourable enough to speak with my Lord.” Said Geraint, “I have spoken with men of equal rank with him.” And he turned his horse’s head towards the knight; but the dwarf overtook him, and struck him as he had done the maiden, so that the blood coloured the scarf that Geraint wore. Then Geraint put his hand upon the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf, and to be attacked unarmed by the armed knight, so he returned to where Gwenhwyvar was.

“And while they listen’d for the distant hunt,And chiefly for the baying of Cavall,King Arthur’s hound of deepest mouth, there rodeFull slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf;Whereof the dwarf lagg’d latest, and the knightHad vizor up, and show’d a youthful face,Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments.And Guinevere, not mindful of his faceIn the King’s hall, desired his name, and sentHer maiden to demand it of the dwarf;Who being vicious, old and irritable,And doubling all his master’s vice of pride,Made answer sharply that she should not know.‘Then will I ask it of himself,’ she said.‘Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,’ cried the dwarf;‘Thou art not worthy ev’n to speak of him’;And when she put her horse toward the knight,Struck at her with his whip, and she return’dIndignant to the Queen; whereat GeraintExclaiming, ‘Surely I will learn the name,’Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask’d it of him,Who answer’d as before; and when the PrinceHad put his horse in motion toward the knight,Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek.The Prince’s blood spirted upon the scarf,Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive handCaught at the hilt, as to abolish him:But he, from his exceeding manfulnessAnd pure nobility of temperament,Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrain’dFrom ev’n a word.”

The self-restraint of Geraint, who does not slay the dwarf,

“From his exceeding manfulnessAnd pure nobility of temperament,”

may appear “too polite,” and too much in accord with the still undiscovered idea of “leading sweet lives.” However, the uninvented idea does occur in the Welsh original: “Then Geraint put his hand upon the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf,” while he also reflects that he would be “attacked unarmed by the armed knight.” Perhaps Tennyson may be blamed for omitting this obvious motive for self-restraint. Geraint therefore follows the knight in hope of finding arms, and arrives at the town all busy with preparations for the tournament of the sparrow-hawk. This was a challenge sparrow-hawk: the knight had won it twice, and if he won it thrice it would be his to keep. The rest, in the tale, is exactly followed in the Idyll. Geraint is entertained by the ruined Yniol. The youth bears the “costrel” full of “good purchased mead” (the ruined Earl not brewing for himself), and Enid carries the manchet bread in her veil, “old, and beginning to be worn out.” All Tennyson’s own is the beautiful passage —

“And while he waited in the castle court,The voice of Enid, Yniol’s daughter, rangClear thro’ the open casement of the hall,Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,Moves him to think what kind of bird it isThat sings so delicately clear, and makeConjecture of the plumage and the form;So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;And made him like a man abroad at mornWhen first the liquid note beloved of menComes flying over many a windy waveTo Britain, and in April suddenlyBreaks from a coppice gemm’d with green and red,And he suspends his converse with a friend,Or it may be the labour of his hands,To think or say, ‘There is the nightingale’;So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,‘Here, by God’s grace, is the one voice for me.’”

Yniol frankly admits in the tale that he was in the wrong in the quarrel with his nephew. The poet, however, gives him the right, as is natural. The combat is exactly followed in the Idyll, as is Geraint’s insistence in carrying his bride to Court in her faded silks. Geraint, however, leaves Court with Enid, not because of the scandal about Lancelot, but to do his duty in his own country. He becomes indolent and uxorious, and Enid deplores his weakness, and awakes his suspicions, thus: —

And one morning in the summer time they were upon their couch, and Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid was without sleep in the apartment which had windows of glass. And the sun shone upon the couch. And the clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, and he was asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his appearance, and she said, “Alas, and am I the cause that these arms and this breast have lost their glory and the warlike fame which they once so richly enjoyed!” And as she said this, the tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell upon his breast. And the tears she shed, and the words she had spoken, awoke him; and another thing contributed to awaken him, and that was the idea that it was not in thinking of him that she spoke thus, but that it was because she loved some other man more than him, and that she wished for other society, and thereupon Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he called his squire; and when he came to him, “Go quickly,” said he, “and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them ready. And do thou arise,” said he to Enid, “and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to be accoutred, and clothe thee in the worst riding-dress that thou hast in thy possession. And evil betide me,” said he, “if thou returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my strength so completely as thou didst say. And if it be so, it will then be easy for thee to seek the society thou didst wish for of him of whom thou wast thinking.” So she arose, and clothed herself in her meanest garments. “I know nothing, Lord,” said she, “of thy meaning.” “Neither wilt thou know at this time,” said he.

“At last, it chanced that on a summer morn(They sleeping each by either) the new sunBeat thro’ the blindless casement of the room,And heated the strong warrior in his dreams;Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside,And bared the knotted column of his throat,The massive square of his heroic breast,And arms on which the standing muscle sloped,As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone,Running too vehemently to break upon it.And Enid woke and sat beside the couch,Admiring him, and thought within herself,Was ever man so grandly made as he?Then, like a shadow, past the people’s talkAnd accusation of uxoriousnessAcross her mind, and bowing over him,Low to her own heart piteously she said:‘O noble breast and all-puissant arms,Am I the cause, I the poor cause that menReproach you, saying all your force is gone?I am the cause, because I dare not speakAnd tell him what I think and what they say.And yet I hate that he should linger here;I cannot love my lord and not his name.Far liefer had I gird his harness on him,And ride with him to battle and stand by,And watch his mightful hand striking great blowsAt caitiffs and at wrongers of the world.Far better were I laid in the dark earth,Not hearing any more his noble voice,Not to be folded more in these dear arms,And darken’d from the high light in his eyes,Than that my lord thro’ me should suffer shame.Am I so bold, and could I so stand by,And see my dear lord wounded in the strife,Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes,And yet not dare to tell him what I think,And how men slur him, saying all his forceIs melted into mere effeminacy?O me, I fear that I am no true wife.’Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke,And the strong passion in her made her weepTrue tears upon his broad and naked breast,And these awoke him, and by great mischanceHe heard but fragments of her later words,And that she fear’d she was not a true wife.And then he thought, ‘In spite of all my care,For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,She is not faithful to me, and I see herWeeping for some gay knight in Arthur’s hall.’Then tho’ he loved and reverenced her too muchTo dream she could be guilty of foul act,Right thro’ his manful breast darted the pangThat makes a man, in the sweet face of herWhom he loves most, lonely and miserable.At this he hurl’d his huge limbs out of bed,And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried,‘My charger and her palfrey’; then to her,‘I will ride forth into the wilderness;For tho’ it seems my spurs are yet to win,I have not fall’n so low as some would wish.And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dressAnd ride with me.’ And Enid ask’d, amazed,‘If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.’But he, ‘I charge thee, ask not, but obey.’Then she bethought her of a faded silk,A faded mantle and a faded veil,And moving toward a cedarn cabinet,Wherein she kept them folded reverentlyWith sprigs of summer laid between the folds,She took them, and array’d herself therein,Remembering when first he came on herDrest in that dress, and how he loved her in it,And all her foolish fears about the dress,And all his journey to her, as himselfHad told her, and their coming to the court.”

Tennyson’s

“Arms on which the standing muscle sloped,As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone,Running too vehemently to break upon it,”

is suggested perhaps by Theocritus – “The muscles on his brawny arms stood out like rounded rocks that the winter torrent has rolled and worn smooth, in the great swirling stream” (Idyll xxii.)

The second part of the poem follows the original less closely. Thus Limours, in the tale, is not an old suitor of Enid; Edyrn does not appear to the rescue; certain cruel games, veiled in a magic mist, occur in the tale, and are omitted by the poet; “Gwyffert petit, so called by the Franks, whom the Cymry call the Little King,” in the tale, is not a character in the Idyll, and, generally, the gross Celtic exaggerations of Geraint’s feats are toned down by Tennyson. In other respects, as when Geraint eats the mowers’ dinner, the tale supplies the materials. But it does not dwell tenderly on the reconciliation. The tale is more or less in the vein of “patient Grizel,” and he who told it is more concerned with the fighting than with amoris redintegratio, and the sufferings of Enid. The Idyll is enriched with many beautiful pictures from nature, such as this: —