Chapter II: The Matters of France, Rome, and Britain (2)

But Lancelot escapes this worst of fates in the _Idylls_ themselves, and much more does he escape it in the originals. In the first place, though he invariably (or always till the Graal Quest) "wins through," he constantly does not do so without intermediate hairbreadth escapes, and even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from anything approaching mawkishness,[35] his innumerable and yet inoffensive virtues; his chastity, save in this instance, which chastity itself, by a further stroke of art, is saved from _niaiserie_ by the plotted adventures with Elaine; his courtesy, his mercifulness, his wonderfully early notion of a gentleman (_v. inf._), his invariable disregard of self, and yet his equally invariable naturalness. Pious Aeneas had not the least objection to bringing about the death of Dido, as he might have known he was doing (unless he was as great a fool as he is a prig); and he is probably never more disgusting or Pecksniffian than when he looks back on the flames of Dido's pyre and is really afraid that something unpleasant must have happened, though he can't think what the matter can be. But _he_, one feels sure, would never have lifted up his hand against a woman, unless she had richly deserved it on the strictest patriotic scores, as in the case of Helen, when his mamma fortunately interfered. On the other hand, Lancelot was "of the Asra who die when they love" and love till they die--nay, who would die if they did not love. But it is certain (for there is a very nice miniature of it reproduced from the MS. in M. Paulin Paris's abstract) that, for a moment, he drew his sword on Elaine to punish the deceit which made him unwittingly false to Guinevere. It is very shocking, no doubt, but exceedingly natural; and of course he did not kill or even (like Philaster) wound her, though nobody interfered to prevent him. Many of the incidents which bring out his character are well known to moderns by poem and picture, though others, as well worth knowing, are not. But the human contrasts of success and failure, of merit and sin, have never, I think, been quite brought out, and to bring them out completely here would take too much room. We may perhaps leave this other--quite other--"_First_ Gentleman in Europe" with the remark that Chrestien de Troyes gives only one side of him, and therefore does not give him at all. The Lancelot of board and bower, of travel and tournament, he does very fairly. But of the Lancelot of the woods and the hermitage, of the dream at the foot of the cross, of the mystic voyage and the just failing (if failing) effort of Carbonek, he gives, because he knows, nothing.

[Sidenote: Guinevere.]

Completed as he was, no matter for the moment by whom, he is thus the first hero of romance and nearly the greatest; but his lady is worthy of him, and she is almost more original as an individual. It is true that she is not the first heroine, as he is, if not altogether, almost the first hero. Helen was that, though very imperfectly revealed and gingerly handled. Calypso (hardly Circe) _might_ have been. Medea is perhaps nearer still, especially in Apollonius. But the Greek romancers were the first who had really busied themselves with the heroine: they took her up seriously and gave her a considerable position. But they did not succeed in giving her much character. The naughty _not_-heroine of Achilles Tatius, though she has less than none in Mr. Pope's supposed innuendo sense, alone has an approach to some in the other. As for the accomplished Guinevere's probable contemporary, the Ismene or Hysmine of Eustathius Macrembolites (_v. sup._ p. 18), she is a sort of Greek-mediaeval Henrietta Temple, with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Disraeli by turns holding the pen, though with neither of them supplying the brains. But Guinevere is a very different person; or rather, she _is_ a person, and the first. To appreciate her she must be compared with herself in earlier presentations, and then considered fully as she appears in the Vulgate--for Malory, though he has given much, has not given the whole of her, and Tennyson has painted only the last panel of the polyptych wholly, and has rather over-coloured that.[36]

In what we may call the earliest representations of her, she has hardly any colour at all. She is a noble Roman lady, and very beautiful. For a time she is apparently very happy with her husband, and he with her; and if she seems to make not the slightest scruple about "taking up with" her nephew, co-regent and fellow rebel, why, noble Roman ladies thought nothing of divorce and not much of adultery. The only old Welsh story (the famous Melvas one so often referred to) that we have about her in much detail merely establishes the fact, pleasantly formulated by M. Paulin Paris, that she was "tres sujette a etre enlevee," but in itself (unless we admit the Peacockian triad of the "Three Fatal Slaps of the Isle of Britain" as evidence) again says nothing about her character. If, as seems probable if not certain, the _Launfal_ legend, with its libel on her, is of Breton origin, it makes her an ordinary Celtic princess, a spiritual sister of Iseult when she tried to kill Brengwain, and a cross between Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen, transforms the promiscuous and rather _louche_ Melvas incident into an important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie, even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the _Launfal_ libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her presentation had in some cases best be either translated in full or omitted, but I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of attempting, with however clumsy a hand, a portrait of our, as I believe, English Helen, who gave in French language to French, and not only French literature, the pattern of a heroine.

There is not, I think, any ancient authority for the rather commonplace suggestion, unwisely adopted by Tennyson, that Guinevere fell in love with Lancelot when he was sent as an ambassador to fetch her; thus merely repeating Iseult and Tristram, and anticipating Suffolk and Margaret. In fact, according to the best evidence, Lancelot could not have been old enough, if he was even born. On the contrary, nothing could be better than the presentation of her introduction to Arthur and the course of the wooing in the Vulgate--the other "blessed original." She first sees Arthur as a foe from the walls of besieged Carmelide, and admires his valour; she has further occasion to admire it when, as a friend, he rescues her father, showing himself, as what he really was in his youth, his own best knight. The pair are genuinely in love with each other, and the betrothal and parting for fresh fight are the most gracious passages of the _Merlin_ book, except the better version (_v. sup._) of the love of Merlin himself and the afterwards libelled Viviane. Anyhow, she was married because she fell in love with him, and there is no evidence to show that she and Arthur lived otherwise than happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister, the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a most disagreeable[37] sister-in-law in Morgane-la-Fee. These are not in the least offered as excuses, but merely as "lights." Indeed Guinevere never seems to have hated or disliked her husband, though he often gave her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of women.[38] In fact, she is a very perfect (not of course in the moral sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at the beginning that she is the fairest and most gracious, and will be the wisest and best of queens. She shows something very like humour in the famous and fateful remark (uttered, it would seem, without the slightest ill or double meaning at the time) as to Gawain's estimate of Lancelot.[39] She seems to have had an agreeable petulance (notice, for instance, the rebuke of Kay at the opening of the _Ywain_ story and elsewhere), which sometimes, as it naturally would, rises to passionate injustice, as Lancelot frequently discovered. She is, in fact, always passionate in one or other sense of that great and terrible and infinite[40] word, but never tragedy-queenish or vixenish. She falls in love with Lancelot because he falls in love with her, and because she cannot help it. False as she is to husband and to lover, to her court and her country,[41] it can hardly be said that any act of hers, except the love itself and its irresistible consequences, is faulty. She is not capricious, extravagant, or tyrannical; in her very jealousy she is not cruel or revengeful (the original Iseult would certainly have had Elaine poisoned or poniarded, for which there was ample opportunity). If she torments her lover, that is because she loves him. If she is unjust to him, that is because she is a woman. Her last speech to Lancelot after the catastrophe--Tennyson should have, as has been said, paraphrased this as he paraphrased the passing of her husband, and from the same texts, and we should then have had another of the greatest things of English poetry--shows a noble nature with the [Greek: hamartia] present, but repented in a strange and great mixture of classical and Christian tragedy. There is little told in a trustworthy fashion about her personal appearance. But if Glastonbury traditions about her bones be true, she was certainly (again like Helen) "divinely tall." And if the suggestions of Hawker's "Queen Gwennyvar's Round"[42] in the sea round Tintagel be worked out a little, it will follow that her eyes were divinely blue.

[Sidenote: Some minor points.]

When such very high praise is given to the position of the (further) accomplished Arthur-story, it is of course not intended to bestow that praise on any particular MS. or printed version that exists. It is in the highest degree improbable that, whether the original magician was Map, or Chrestien, or anybody else (to repeat a useful formula), we possess an exact and exclusive copy of the form into which he himself threw the story. Independently of the fact that no MS., verse or prose, of anything like the complete story seems old enough, independently of the enormous and almost innumerable separable accretions, the so-called Vulgate cycle of "_Graal-Merlin-Arthur-Lancelot-Graal-Quest-Arthur's-Death_" has considerable variants--the most important and remarkable of which by far is the large alteration or sequel of the "Vulgate" _Merlin_ which Malory preferred. In the "Vulgate" itself, too, there are things which were certainly written either by the great contriver in nodding moods, or by somebody else,--in fact no one can hope to understand mediaeval literature who forgets that no mediaeval writer could ever "let a thing alone": he simply _must_ add or shorten, paraphrase or alter. I rather doubt whether the Great Unknown himself meant _both_ the amours of Arthur with Camilla and the complete episode of the false Guinevere to stand side by side. The first is (as such justifications go) a sufficient justification of Guinevere by itself; and the conduct of Arthur in the second is such a combination of folly, cruelty, and all sorts of despicable behaviour that it overdoes the thing. So, too, Lancelot's "abscondences," with or without madness, are too many and too prolonged.[43] The long and totally uninteresting campaign against Claudas, during the greater part of which Lancelot (who is most of all concerned) is absent, and in which he takes no part or interest when present, is another great blot. Some of these things, but not all, Malory remedied by omission.

To sum up, and even repeat a little, in speaking so highly of this development--French beyond all doubt as a part of literature, whatever the nationality, domicile, and temper of the person or persons who brought it about--I do not desire more to emphasise what I believe to be a great and not too well appreciated truth than to guard against that exaggeration which dogs and discredits literary criticism. Of course no single redaction of the legend in the late twelfth or earliest thirteenth century contains the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story as I have just outlined it. Of course the words used do not apply fully to Malory's English redaction of three centuries later--work of genius as this appears to me to be. Yet further, I should be fully disposed to allow that it is only by reading the _posse_ into the _esse_, under the guidance of later developments of the novel itself, that the estimate which I have given can be entirely justified. But this process seems to me to be perfectly legitimate, and to be, in fact, the only process capable of giving us literary-historical criticism that is worth having. The writer or writers, known or unknown, whose work we have been discussing, have got the plot, have got the characters, have got the narrative faculty required for a complete novel-romance. If they do not quite know what to do with these things it is only because the time is not yet. But how much they did, and of how much more they foreshadowed the doing, the extracts following should show better than any "talk about it."

[_Lancelot, still under the tutelage of the Lady of the Lake
and ignorant of his own parentage, has met his cousins,
Lionel and Bors, and has been greatly drawn to them._]

[Sidenote: Illustrative extracts translated from the
"Vulgate." The youth of Lancelot.]

Now turns herself the Lady back to the Lake, and takes the
children with her. And when she had gone[44] a good way, she
called Lancelot a little way off the road and said to him
very kindly, "King's son,[45] how wast thou so bold as to
call Lionel thy cousin? for he _is_ a king's son, and of not
a little more worth and gentry than men think." "Lady," said
he, who was right ashamed, "so came the word into my mouth
by adventure that I never took any heed of it." "Now tell
me," said she, "by the faith thou owest me, which thinkest
thou to be the greater gentleman, thyself or him?" "Lady,"
said he, "you have adjured me strongly, for I owe no one
such faith as I owe you, my lady and my mother: nor know I
how much of a gentleman I am by lineage. But, by the faith I
owe you, I would not myself deign to be abashed at that for
which I saw him weep.[46] And they have told me that all men
have sprung from one man and one woman: nor know I for what
reason one has more gentry than another, unless he win it by
prowess, even as lands and other honours. But know you for
very truth that if greatness of heart made a gentleman I
would think yet to be one of the greatest." "Verily, fair
son," said the Lady, "it shall appear. And I say to you that
you lose nothing of being one of the best gentlemen in the
world, if your heart fail you not." "How, Lady!" said he,
"say you this truly, _as_ my lady?" And she said, "Yes,
without fail." "Lady," said he, "blessed be you of God, that
you said it to me so soon [_or_ as soon as you have said
it]. For to that will you make me come which I never thought
to attain. Nor had I so much desire of anything as of
possessing gentry."

[_The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere. The Lady of
the Lake has prevailed upon the King to dub Lancelot on St.
John's Day (Midsummer, not Christmas). His protectress
departing, he is committed to the care of Ywain, and a
conversation arises about him. The Queen asks to see him._]

[Sidenote: The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere.]

Then bid he [the King] Monseigneur[47] Ywain that he should
go and look for Lancelot. "And let him be equipped as
handsomely as you know is proper: for well know I that he
has plenty." Then the King himself told the Queen how the
Lady of the Lake had requested that he would not make
Lancelot knight save in his own arms and dress. And the
Queen marvelled much at this, and thought long till she saw
him. So Messire Ywain went to the Childe [_vallet_] and had
him clothed and equipped in the best way he could: and when
he saw that nothing could be bettered, he led him to Court
on his own horse, which was right fair. But he brought him
not quietly. For there was so much people about that the
whole street was full: and the news was spread through all
the town that the fair Childe who came yester eve should be
a knight to-morrow, and was now coming to Court in knightly
garb. Then sprang to the windows they of the town, both men
and women. And when they saw him pass they said that never
had they seen so fair a Childe-knight. So he came to the
Court and alighted from his horse: and the news of him
spread through hall and chamber; and knights and dames and
damsels hurried forth. And even the King and the Queen went
to the windows. So when the Childe had dismounted, Messire
Ywain took him by the hand, and led him by it up to the
Hall.

The King and the Queen came to meet him: and both took him
by his two hands and went to seat themselves on a couch:
while the Childe seated himself before them on the fresh
green grass with which the Hall was spread. And the King
gazed on him right willingly: for if he had seemed fair at
his first coming, it was nothing to the beauty that he now
had. And the King thought he had mightily grown in stature
and thews.[48] So the Queen prayed that God might make him a
man of worth, "for right plenty of beauty has He given him,"
and she looked at the Childe very sweetly: and so did he at
her as often as he could covertly direct his eyes towards
her. Also marvelled he much how such great beauty as he saw
appear in her could come: for neither that of his lady, the
Lady of the Lake, nor of any woman that he had ever seen,
did he prize aught as compared with hers. And no wrong had
he if he valued no other lady against the Queen: for she was
the Lady of Ladies and the Fountain of Beauty. But if he had
known the great worthiness that was in her he would have
been still more fain to gaze on her. For none, neither poor
nor rich, was her equal.

So she asked Monseigneur Ywain what was the Childe's name,
and he answered that he knew not. "And know you," said she,
"whose son he is and of what birth?" "Lady," said he, "nay,
except I know so much as that he is of the land of Gaul. For
his speech bewrayeth him."[49] Then the Queen took him by
the hand and asked him of whom he came. And when he felt it
[the touch] he shuddered as though roused from sleep, and
thought of her so hard that he knew not what she said to
him. And she perceived that he was much abashed, and so
asked him a second time, "Tell me whence you come." So he
looked at her very sheepishly and said, with a sigh, that he
knew not. And she asked him what was his name; and he
answered that he knew not that. So now the Queen saw well
that he was abashed and _overthought_.[50] But she dared not
think that it was for her: and nevertheless she had some
suspicion of it, and so dropped the talk. But that she might
not make the disorder of his mind worse, she rose from her
seat and, in order that no one might think any evil or
perceive what she suspected, said that the Childe seemed to
her not very wise, and whether wise or not had been ill
brought up. "Lady," said Messire Ywain, "between you and me,
we know nothing about him: and perchance he is forbidden[51]
to tell his name or who he is." And she said, "It may well
be so," but she said it so low that the Childe heard her
not.

[_Here follows (with a very little surplusage removed
perhaps) the scene which Dante has made world-famous, but
which Malory (I think for reasons) has "cut." I trust it is
neither Philistinism nor perversity which makes me think of
it a little, though only a little, less highly than some
have done. There is (and after all this makes it all the
more interesting for us historians) the least little bit of
anticipation of_ Marivaudage _about it, and less of the
adorable simplicity such as that (a little subsequent to the
last extract given) where Lancelot, having forgotten to take
leave of the Queen on going to his first adventure, and
having returned to do so, kneels to her, receives her hand
to raise him from the ground, "and much was his joy to feel
it bare in his." But the beauty of what follows is
incontestable, and that Guinevere was "exceeding wise in
love" is certain._]

[Sidenote: The scene of the kiss.]

"Ha!" said she then, "I know who you are--Lancelot of the
Lake is your name." And he was silent. "They know it at
court," said she, "this sometime. Messire Gawain was the
first to bring your name there...." Then she asked him why
he had allowed the worst man in the world to lead him by
the bridle. "Lady," said he, "as one who had command neither
of his heart nor of his body." "Now tell me," said she,
"were you at last year's assembly?" "Yes, Lady," said he.
"And what arms did you bear?" "Lady, they were all of
vermilion." "By my head," said she, "you say true. And why
did you do such deeds at the meeting the day before
yesterday?" Then he began to sigh very very deeply. And the
Queen cut him short as well, knowing how it was with him.

"Tell me," she said, "plainly, how it is. I will never
betray you. But I know that you did it for some lady. Now,
tell me, by the faith you owe me, who she is." "Ah, Lady,"
said he, "I see well that it behoves me to speak. Lady, it
is you." "I!" said she. "It was not for me you took the
spears that my maiden brought you. For I took care to put
myself out of the commission." "Lady," said he, "I did for
others what I ought, and for you what I could." "Tell me,
then, for whom have you done all the things that you _have_
done?" "Lady," said he, "for you." "How," said she, "do you
love me so much?" "So much, Lady, as I love neither myself
nor any other." "And since when have you loved me thus?"
"Since the hour when I was called knight and yet was not
one."[52] "Then, by the faith you owe me, whence came this
love that you have set upon me?" Now as the Queen said these
words it happened that the Lady of the Puy of Malahault[53]
coughed on purpose, and lifted her head, which she had held
down. And he understood her now, having oft heard her
before: and looked at her and knew her, and felt in his
heart such fear and anguish that he could not answer the
Queen. Then began he to sigh right deeply, and the tears
fell from his eyes so thick, that the garment he wore was
wet to the knees. And the more he looked at the Lady of
Malahault the more ill at ease was his heart. Now the Queen
noticed this and saw that he looked sadly towards the place
where her ladies were, and she reasoned with him. "Tell me,"
she said, "whence comes this love that I am asking you
about?" and he tried as hard as he could to speak, and said,
"Lady, from the time I have said." "How?" "Lady, you did it,
when you made me your friend, if your mouth lied not." "My
friend?" she said; "and how?" "I came before you when I had
taken leave of my Lord the King all armed except my head and
my hands. And then I commended you to God, and said that,
wherever I was, I was your knight: and you said that you
would have me to be your knight and your friend. And then I
said, 'Adieu, Lady,' and you said, 'Adieu, fair sweet
friend.' And never has that word left my heart, and it is
that word that has made me a good knight and valiant--if I
be so: nor ever have I been so ill-bested as not to remember
that word. That word comforts me in all my annoys. That word
has kept me from all harm, and freed me from all peril, and
fills me whenever I hunger. Never have I been so poor but
that word has made me rich." "By my faith," said the Queen,
"that word was spoken in a good hour, and God be praised
when He made me speak it. Still, I did not set it as high as
you did: and to many a knight have I said it, when I gave no
more thought to the saying. But _your_ thought was no base
one, but gentle and debonair; wherefore joy has come to you
of it, and it has made you a good knight. Yet, nevertheless,
this way is not that of knights who make great matter to
many a lady of many a thing which they have little at heart.
And your seeming shows me that you love one or other of
these ladies better than you love me. For you wept for fear
and dared not look straight at them: so that I well see that
your thought is not so much of me as you pretend. So, by the
faith you owe the thing you love best in the world, tell me
which one of the three you love so much?" "Ah! Lady," said
he, "for the mercy of God, as God shall keep me, never had
one of them my heart in her keeping." "This will not do,"
said the Queen, "you cannot dissemble. For many another such
thing have I seen, and I know that your heart is there as
surely as your body is here." And this she said that she
might well see how she might put him ill at ease. For she
thought surely enough that he meant no love save to her, or
ill would it have gone on the day of the Black Arms.[54] And
she took a keen delight in seeing and considering his
discomfort. But he was in such anguish that he wanted little
of swooning, save that fear of the ladies before him kept
him back. And the Queen herself perceived it at the sight of
his changes of colour, and caught him by the shoulder that
he might not fall, and called to Galahault. Then the prince
sprang forward and ran to his friend, and saw that he was
disturbed thus, and had great pain in his own heart for it,
and said, "Ah, Lady! tell me, for God's sake, what has
happened." And the Queen told him the conversation. "Ah,
Lady!" said Galahault, "mercy, for God's sake, or you may
lose me him by such wrath, and it would be too great pity."
"Certes," said she, "that is true. But know you why he has
done such feats of arms?" "Nay, surely, Lady," said he.
"Sir," said she, "if what he tells me is true, it was for
me." "Lady," said he, "as God shall keep me, I can believe
it. For just as he is more valiant than other men, so is
his heart truer than all theirs." "Verily," said she, "you
would say well that he is valiant if you knew what deeds he
has done since he was made knight," and then she told him
all the chivalry of Lancelot ... and how he had done it all
for a single word of hers [_Galahault tells her more, and
begs mercy for L._]. "He could ask me nothing," sighed she,
"that I could fairly refuse him, but he will ask me nothing
at all."... "Lady," said Galahault, "certainly he has no
power to do so. For one loves nothing that one does not
fear." [_And then comes the immortal kiss, asked by the
Prince, delayed a moment by the Queen's demur as to time and
place, brought on by the "Galeotto"-speech._ "Let us three
corner close together as if we were talking secrets,"
_vouchsafed by Guinevere in the words_, "Why should I make
me longer prayer for what I wish more than you or he?"
_Lancelot still hangs back, but the Queen_ "takes him by the
chin and kisses him before Galahault with a kiss long
enough" so that the Lady of Malahault knows it.] And then
said the Queen, who was a right wise and gracious lady,
"Fair sweet friend, so much have you done that I am yours,
and right great joy have I thereof. Now see to it that the
thing be kept secret, as it should be. For I am one of the
ladies of the world who have the fairest fame, and if my
praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and
shameful thing."

[Sidenote: Some further remarks on the novel character of the story.]

A little more comment on this cento, and especially on the central passage of it, can hardly be, and ought certainly not to be, avoided in such a work as this, even if, like most summaries, it be something of a repetition. It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is something much more than--unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere as it is careful here--he expected from Romance in the commoner and half-contemptuous acceptation of that word. Lancelot he may, though he should not, still class as a mere _amoureux transi_--a nobler and pluckier Silvius in an earlier _As Yon Like It_, and with a greater than Phoebe for idol. Malory ought to be enough to set him right there: he need even not go much beyond Tennyson, who has comprehended Lancelot pretty correctly, if not indeed pretty adequately. But Malory has left out a great deal of the information which would have enabled his readers to comprehend Guinevere; and Tennyson, only presenting her in parts, has allowed those parts, especially the final and only full presentation, great as it is, to be too much influenced by his certainly unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.

I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class. It would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the reader's imagination to achieve. But the Unknown has given the hints of all this; and curiously enough it is only of _English_ novel-heroines that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante, if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.

[Sidenote: And the personages.]

But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly "crescent"--it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully rationalised. Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which is so important. _He_ thinks nothing of it; _she_ never forgets it. And in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into wrath--whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business--study of particulars will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. _This_ Guinevere would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar phrase for what would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,[55] either for himself or for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again that much as I have read of purely French romance--that is to say, French not merely in language but in certain origin--I know nothing and nobody like her in it.

That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was "a married lady," that, unlike Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so "moral" as that very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to dwell upon. We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its consequences. They are not the question.

The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and career of no small complexity. It has been already said that to represent her as after a fashion intercepted by love for Lancelot on her way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic. We cannot, indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say, "C'est le pont aux anes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy. Lancelot himself has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of might." She _has_ loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably she does not yet know it, ceased to love,[56] and not without some reason. To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has, by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the _Chansons_ too often represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise ruler or even baron. He makes rash promises and vows, accepts charges on very slight evidence, and seems to have his knights by no means "in hand." So, too, though never a coward or weakling, he seems pretty nearly to have lost the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable and legitimate to the critic, as a foundation for novel-character.

Her lover may look less promising, at least at the moment of presentation; and indeed it is true that while "la donna e _im_mobile," in essentials and possibilities alike, forms of man, though never losing reality and possibility, pass at times out of possible or at least easy recognition. Anybody who sees in the Lancelot of the foregoing scene only a hobbledehoy and milksop who happens to have a big chest, strong arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly better off will be he who takes him--as the story _does_ give some handles for taking him--to be merely one of the too common examples of humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot than he has to Guinevere, and Tennyson has here improved on Malory. He has, indeed, very nearly "got" Lancelot, but not quite. To get him wholly would have required Tennyson for form and Browning for analysis of character; while even this _mistura mirabilis_ would have been improved for the purpose by touches not merely of Morris and Swinburne, but of lesser men like Kingsley and even George Macdonald. To understand Lancelot you must previously understand, or by some kind of intuition divine, the mystical element which his descent from the Graal-Wardens confers; the essential or quintessential chivalric quality which his successive creators agreed in imparting to him; the all-conquering gift so strangely tempered by an entire freedom from the boasting and the rudeness of the _chanson_ hero; the actual checks and disasters which his cross stars bring on him; his utter loyalty in all things save one to the king; and last and mightiest of all, his unquenchable and unchangeable passion for the Queen.

Hence what they said to him in one of his early adventures, with no great ill following, "Fair Knight, thou art unhappy," was always true in a higher sense. He may have been Lord of Joyous Gard, in title and fact; but his own heart was always a Garde Douloureuse--a _cor luctificabile_--pillowed on idle triumphs and fearful hopes and poisoned satisfactions, and bafflements where he would most fain have succeeded. He has almost had to have the first kiss forced on him; he is refused the last on grounds of which he himself cannot deny the validity. Guinevere is a tragic figure in the truest and deepest sense of the term, and, as we have tried to show, she is amply complex in character and temperament. But it is questionable whether Lancelot is not more tragic and more complex still.

[Sidenote: Books.]

It may perhaps without impropriety be repeated that these are not mere fancies of the writer, but things reasonably suggested by and solidly based upon "the French books," when these later are collated and, so to speak, "checked" by Malory and the romances of adventure branching off from them. But Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot by no means exhaust the material for advanced and complicated novel-work--in character as well as incident--provided by the older forms of the Legend. There is Gawain, who has to be put together from the sort of first draft of Lancelot which he shows in the earlier versions, and the light-o'-love opposite which he becomes in the later, a contrast continued in the Amadis and Galaor figures of the Spanish romances and their descendants. There is the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors, of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later _Idylls_; and others. But it is probably unnecessary to carry the discussion of this matter further. It has been discussed and illustrated at some length, because it shows how early the elements, not merely of romance but of the novel in the fullest sense, existed in French literature.

[_Here follows the noble passage above referred to between
Lancelot and King Bagdemagus after the death of
Meleagraunce, whose cousin Lancelot has just slain in
single combat for charging him with treason. He has kept his
helm on, but doffs it at the King's request._]

And when the King saw him he ran to kiss him, and began to make such joy of him as none could overgo. But Lancelot said, "Ah, Sir! for God's sake, make no joy or feast for me. Certainly you should make none, for if you knew the evil I have done you, you would hate me above all men in the world." "Oh! Lancelot," said he, "tell it me not, for I understand[57] too well what you would say; but I will know[57] nothing of it, because it might be such a thing" as would part them for ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The subdivision of the _gestes_ does not matter: they were all connected closely or loosely--except the Crusading section, and even that falls under the Christian _v._ Saracen grouping if not under the Carlovingian. The real "outside" members are few, late, and in almost every case unimportant.

[15] There are comic _episodes_ elsewhere; but almost the whole of this poem turns on the _gabz_ or burlesque boasts of the paladins.--It may be wise here to anticipate an objection which may be taken to these remarks on the _chansons_. I have been asked whether I know M. Bedier's handling of them; and, by an odd coincidence, within a few hours of the question I saw an American statement that this excellent scholar's researches "have revised our conceptions" of the matter. No one can exceed me in respect for perhaps the foremost of recent scholars in Old French. But my "conception" of the _chansons_ was formed long before he wrote, not from that of any of his predecessors, but from the _chansons_ themselves. It is therefore not subject to "revisal" except from my own re-reading, and such re-reading has only confirmed it.

[16] It is not of course intended to be preferred to the far more widely known tale in which the heroine bears the same name, and which will be mentioned below. But if it is less beautiful such beauty as it has is free from the slightest _morbidezza_.

[17] And to this introduction our dealings with it here may be confined. The accounts of the siege itself are of much less interest, especially in connection with our special subject.

[18] A sort of companion handbook to the first part of this volume will be found in the present writer's sketch of twelfth and thirteenth century European literature, under the title of _The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory_, in Messrs. Blackwood's _Periods of European Literature_ (Edinburgh and London, 1897), and another in his _Short History of French Literature_ (Oxford, 7th ed. at press).

[19] It is scarcely rash to say that Cressid is the first representative of this dread and delightful entity, and the ancestress of all its embodiments since in fiction, as Cleopatra seems to have been in history. No doubt "it" was of the beginning, but it lacked its _vates_. Helen was different.

[20] _Faerie Queene_, v. iv. 1-20.

[21] I hope I may be allowed to emphasise the disclaimer, which I have already made more than once elsewhere, of the very slightest disrespect to this admirable scholar. The presumption and folly of such disrespect would be only inferior to its ingratitude, for the indulgence with which M. Paris consistently treated my own somewhat rash adventures in Old French was extraordinary. But as one's word is one's word so one's opinion is one's opinion.

[22] Sometimes _de_, but _a_ seems more analogical.

[23] Chrestien was rather like Chaucer in being apt not to finish. Even the _Charette_ owes its completion (in an extent not exactly determinable) to a certain Godfrey de Lagny (Laigny, etc.).

[24] Of course it is easy enough to assign explanations of it, from the vehicle of criminals to the scaffold downwards; but it remains a convention--very much of the same kind as that which ordains (or used to ordain) that a gentleman may not carry a parcel done up in newspaper, though no other form of wrapping really stains his honour.

[25] Neither he nor Malory gives one of the most gracious parts of it--the interview between Lancelot and King Bagdemagus, _v. inf._ p. 54.

[26] Material (chamois skin)? or garment? Not common in O.F., I think, for _camisia_; but Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, II. iii. xxvi.) has (as Prof. Gregory Smith reminds me) "a silken _camus_ lilly whight."

[27] As does Pyramus's--or Bottom's--objection to the wall.

[28] This part of the matter has received too little attention in modern studies of the subject: partly because it was clumsily handled by some of the probably innumerable and certainly undiscoverable meddlers with the Vulgate. The unpopularity of Lancelot and his kin is not due merely to his invincibility and their not always discreet partisanship. The older "Queen's knights" must have naturally felt her devotion to him; his "undependableness"--in consequence not merely of his fits of madness but of his chivalrously permissible but very inconvenient habit of disguising himself and taking the other side--must have annoyed the whole Table. Yet these very things, properly managed, help to create and complicate the "novel" character. For one of the most commonly and not the least justly charged faults of the average romance is its deficiency in combined plot and character-interest--the presence in it, at most, of a not too well-jointed series of episodes, possibly leading to a death or a marriage, but of little more than chronicle type. This fault has been exaggerated, but it exists. Now it will be one main purpose of the pages which follow to show that there is, in the completed Arthuriad, something quite different from and far beyond this--something perhaps imperfectly realised by any one writer, and overlaid and disarranged by the interpolations or misinterpretations of others, but still a "mind" at work that keeps the "mass" alive, and may, or rather surely will, quicken it yet further and into higher forms hereafter. (Those who know will not, I hope, be insulted if I mention for the benefit of those who do not, that the term "Vulgate" is applied to those forms of the parts of the story which, with slighter or more important variations, are common to many MSS. The term itself is most specially applied to the _Lancelot_ which, in consequence of this popularity throughout the later Middle Ages, actually got itself printed early in the French Renaissance. The whole has been (or is being) at last most fortunately reprinted by Dr. Sommer. See Bibliography.)

[29] This is another point which, not, I suppose, having been clearly and completely evolved by the first handler, got messed and muddled by successive copyists and continuators. In what seems to be the oldest, and is certainly the most consistent and satisfactory, story there is practically nothing evil about Viviane--Nimiane--Nimue, who is also indisputably identical with the foster-mother of Lancelot, the occasional Egeria (always for good) of Arthur himself, and the benefactress (this is probably a later addition though in the right key) of Sir Pelleas. For anybody who possesses the Power of the Sieve she remains as Milton saw her, and not as Tennyson mis-saw part of her. The bewitching of Merlin (who, let it be remembered, was an ambiguous person in several ways, and whose magic, if never exactly black, was sometimes a rather greyish or magpied white) was not an unmixed loss to the world; she seems to have really loved him, and to have faithfully kept her word by being with him often. He "could not get out" certainly, but are there many more desirable things in the outside world than lying with your head in the lap of the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of some one in less delectable case. The author of the _Suite de Merlin_ seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast, followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most "irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a chateau in Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot--the wars with Claudas.

[30] I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with Arthuriana are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully studied) took this function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of his Arthur. But Lancelot has no--at least no continuous--fairy aid; he is not invariably victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the "blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and character-monger either in tale-telling or in drama.)

[31] Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of MS. interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out and that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.

[32] I do not say that this is their _only_ character.

[33] Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of chivalry than Wales.

[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was that he was something "pigeon"--or "guardsman"--chested. But Guinevere showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this occasion we may translate _vaillant_) by retorting that such a chest was only big enough--and hardly big enough--for such a heart.

[35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts" that, as in the great Theocritean place, "go timidly because they fear Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was not to be lightly embarked upon.

[36] The early _Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere_, though only external, is perfect. Many touches in the _Idylls_ other than the title-one are suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one is (as they say now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the rejection of Lancelot in the verse _Morte_ and in Malory is infinitely better. As for Morris's two pieces, they could hardly be better in themselves as poems--but they are scarcely great on the novel side.

[37] Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and sister-in-law. There must have been something attractive about her in other relations.

[38] Compare one of the not so very many real examples of Ibsen's vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of Gina in the _Wild Duck_.

[39] He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot anything he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had left nothing for a woman to say.

[40] _Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini_, says Bossuet.

[41] [Greek: helandros, heleptolis]. She had no opportunity of being [Greek: helenaus].