Is it true that children no longer read The Sword in the Stone?  A friend of mine with kids says so.  Between dystopias, vampires, diseases and monsters, kids are skipping the fantasy that stood the  Arthurian legend on its head and that makes me sad.  Almost two generations of readers have come of age with no idea of White beyond a Disney movie or a Broadway show their grandparents talked about.  Forgive them, Merlin, they don’t know what they’ve missed.

For one thing, they skip on a wonderful story with a  delicious sense of humor.  Malory  wrote about Arthur’s birth in Le Morte D’Arthur but we never get to see the young prince grow up; he goes from infant to sword-puller in less than a thousand words and there’s no guessing what happened in between.  T. H. White invented all that by mixing modern sensibilities with chivalric legends and he did it with a sense of humor.

One good example (a disgusting one but good) is the subject of fewmets, something the roaming King Pellinore knows a good deal about.  His sole object in life is to chase after the Questing Beast and a required part of the hunt is to collect fewmets, droppings of the beast pursued, so the hunter can track it.  This is an honest-to-God Medieval English term, but as Pellinore says, it’s an unsanitary habit.  Between his hunting dog’s tendency to wander and the mess he has to make scooping fewmets, the poor king becomes quite discouraged and would rather the Questing Beast chased itself.   Well, you can see the poor man’s point.  Only T. H. White could find an ancient hunting practice, turn it into a bathroom joke and use that to develop a character.  Another joke at the end of the book is that once the new King has proven his heritage by pulling the Sword from the Stone, he’s covered up with requests to help unstick doors, open bottles and fix other domestic emergencies. I love imagining the letters (Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but you must be fair strong, having pulled that pig-sticker from the Rock.  Could you open a jam jar for me?)  There’s a lot of laughter in this book.

There’s also a lot of natural history.  T. H. White had a keen interest in the natural world  and he  shows it off in The Sword in the Stone by having the young Arthur (known to everyone as Wart) temporarily transformed into various animals by his tutor, Merlyn.  It’s a marvelous education.  The Wart learns about the corruption of power from the strongest fish in the moat, the effect of regimentation from ants, democracy from geese and the significance of mankind from a badger.  They’re wonderful lessons and a good reminder that mankind, for all of our smarts and power, is just one of many species on this earth.  That’s a lesson we often forget.

Well, T. H. White’s books may be gathering dust right now but his influence is certainly felt.  A lot of the Wart’s open, honest character and his unseen destiny can be traced to Neil Gaiman’s Timothy Hunter and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter.  And some books return, like the seasons.  Watch and be patient and someone will rediscover the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, Archimedes, Robin Wood and the Wart.  Someone else will mention The Questing Beast and we’ll all be off again, laughing about fewmets, talking about T. H. White and rereading The Once and Future King.  And I’ll be sitting in a corner with Archimedes the Owl, nodding and saying, “I thought so.”