King Arthur at the Court of the Yankee

New Zealand Tablet, 8 December 1921, Page 9

King Arthur at the Court of the Yankee

(By G. K. Chesterton, in the New Witness.)

I have a very warm admiration for the genius, the character, and the memory of Mark Twain; so I have never re-read The Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. I have never left off reading Tom Sawyer; just as I. have never left off reading Pickwick. Each at least is a great piece of humanity as well as humor; but I can follow the American writer with pleasure even when his wild wit was not sufficiently human to be humorous. Such extravaganzas as that about editing an agricultural paper, or about the mystery of Horace Greely’s handwriting, might be called literary sky-scrapers. But the American tall building can be fine architecture; and the American tall story can bo fine art. There was something more than mere chaos, something rather the reverse of mere chaos, in that way of piling Pelion upon Ossa, the 'Woolworth Building on the Belmont Hotel. Just as the tall tower has to bo strictly vertical, so the. tall story has to be strictly logical. In this as in many things, America is much more akin to Franco than to England, and a ludicrous fancy by Mark Twain has the same sort of scientific consistency as a more serious fantasy by Jules Verne. But while such an American could build to any heights on his own foundation, that foundation could not be shifted from the soil of modern America. Mark Twain travelling in distant ages is exactly what he is travelling in distant lands. He is an Innocent Abroad; very innocent aYid all abroad. Indeed there is a sort of double satire in Hie situation. The innocence is assumed in a spirit of irony; but the irony itself is full of the spirit of innocence. Nor is it strange that he carried his crude, hard hickory-patch flippancy into the neighborhood of Camelot, since he carried it into the neighborhood of Calvary. Anyhow it is long since I read his book about King Arthur, and I only remember it vaguely. Naturally it is a piece of progressive and therefore provincial swagger, about the superiority of the present to the past. Naturally the satirist satirising Arthur imitates the romancers glorifying Arthur and treats him as a medieval king, surrounded by medieval knights. Mark Twain had not the rudimentary qualifications for describing a court in the twelfth century; but he did not pretend to be describing a court in the fifth. It is true that I have never understood why a fifth-century court should necessarily be either more fabulous or more barbarous than a twelfth-century court. Those who assume that Arthur was either a myth or a Briton painted blue fall into a very simple fallacy. It is odd that, in talking about the Dark Ages, they use a metaphor from the night, and then cannot apply their own metaphor properly. They are like people who should say, at sunrise, that because it was darker five hours before it must have been darker still fifteen hours before. The truth is, of course, that if they could work backwards through the night, they would come to the day again; and what is true of the dark is true of the Dark Ages. If Arthur was only far enough back in history, hjjifcmav have been a highly civilised Roman citizen and Celtic gentleman, surrounded by a culture which could only be called decadent if it was rather too civilised. And it seems to me overwhelmingly propable, from a general knowledge of history and humanity, that there really was a great man and a good ruler in West Britain, whose high civilisation went down at last before the barbariank, but left a legend which turned the marvels of civilisation into magic. But this, though a very interesting question, is here an irrelevant one. Mark Twain had as much right as Malory or Map to turn King Arthur into a contemporary of King Richard or King John. . And that, of course, is what he does, so far as he does anything. He imagines a modern American, alert, humorous, and equipped with all our scientific information, visiting and criticising the court of a medieval king. And it occurs to me that it might be rather amusing to imagine the contrary; to imagine a medieval king visiting and criticising what corresponds to a court in Washington or New York. To the best of my rather hazy recollection, the Yankee finds' himself in a remote century through having been 1 ‘knocked out of time” in a trial of pugilism. The fancy is a good one; and it would be all the better if the fancy could only be a fact. What most of these modern people

do most emphatically want is to be knocked out of time; to be violently, dissevered from that irrelevant medium in which their minds attempt to work. Unfortunately what happens to so many Futurists when they are knocked into the future, happens to this happy Vandal when he is knocked into the past. He is not really knocked out of time; he remains not only in time, but in his own time, and even in his own country. He never really compares the two societies, for it never even occurs to him to criticise his own society. This could be illustrated even in the accident of his transition taking place as a result of pugilism. Much might be said about modern pugilism as compared with medieval tournaments. Satire of this type simply takes for granted the savagery and stupidity of medieval tournaments. But it seems just possible that the wandering Arthur, coming from a country where gentlemen fought each .other for fun, might not feel much respect for a country where gentlemen sat on cushions side by side with cads, while two of. their serfs were trained to give and take all the knocks for money. If the tournament was brutal, it was the first princes and rulers of society who submitted to be brutally treated. And King Arthur, looking round in expectation of seeing Mr. Rockefeller and the late Mr. Carnegie tilt at each other in full armor, might possibly have to wait long and be ultimately disappointed. Yet it would be a very good thing if two millionaires could collide with each other with shield and spear; or even that two millionaires should punch each other in the prize-ring. For example, one of them might be killed, or if we were lucky, both; and at any rate they would have behaved like men for the first time in their miserable lives. But the point is that it would gradually dawn on the mind of Arthur, somewhat to his disgust, that this was a society in which the wealthiest and wickedest barons were for the first time entirely safe; that there was no risk of sport or honor to which they could be provoked; no {Operation of war or government by which they could be even endangered. He would make a note of this fact, and add it to his calculation of the balance. What is the matter with satire like that of the Yankee at Camelot is that it does not recognise any balance; it does not even hesitate at a wavering balance. It is not that he fails to appreciate the ages of faith, so much as that he does not seem to appreciate even the advantages of doubt. He has no historical curiosity. There have been so many curious compromises and strange divisions of labor in all the centuries and societies of the past, that it is the blindest sort of bigotry even to class them all together, let alone despise them altogether, in comparison with a complacent view of the present. The real Arthur of the Dark Ages would probably be very different from the imaginary Arthur of the Middle Ages; but the man limited by the modern ages would refuse even to look for the difference, because he would look down on both. Here is a phrase from one of the Welsh romances, which are in their existing form, I believe, medieval. Nobody (says the story) was admitted to Arthur’s hall “except the son of a king of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing his craft.” I do not profess to know precisely what it means. I do not know exactly to what order of society, or what order of ideas, it refers. But it would be interesting to apply exactly the same conception to the republic from which the Yankee came. Suppose we said that a club had been opened in New York, so exclusive and select that no guest was admitted unless he were either a Royalty or else a cabinetmaker carrying his cabinet or a plumber bringing his tools. The distinction would be a little puzzling in that free and enlightened democracy. But to say the least of it, it would seem that the strange Arthurian court differed frqm democracy by being more democratic in one way, if it were less democratic in another. Suppose that King Arthur, during his visit to New York, tried to establish this curious club. Suppose he confined it, let us say, to cabinetmakers and Cabinet Ministers. I fear that the Upper Ten would be mildly surprised at the appearance of the craftsman bringing his craft. As to the poorer sort of craftsman, who might be unable at the moment to bring any craft, glimpses of their fate can be caught in the admirable stories of 0. Henry. They are generally admitted to be very accurate snapshots of the moving life of America. And they are full of cinema pictures of poor tramps hurled into the street or hustled by the police, apparently almost entirely for being poor. And if King Arthur attempted to treat

them as beggars are often treated by kings and knights in the Arthurian and similar traditions, he would probably find his reckless charity regarded as a sort of crime. Ido not know what else he would do, but I fancy he would make another note in his note-book.