Above (fig. 3), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir
Galahad at the Ruined Chapel 1857. Left
(fig. 4), Elizabeth Siddall, The Quest o f the
Holy Grail (1855-57). Below (fig. 5),
Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Galahad { 1858).
Fig. 6, George Frederick Watts, Sir Galahad (1862).
Above (fig. 7), Arthur Hughes, Sir
Galahad (1870). Below left
(fig. 8), Joseph Noel Paton, Sir
Galahad (1879). Below right (fig. 9),
Joseph Noel Paton, Sir Galahad and
the Angel (1885).
■ ■ ■ ■
Fig. 10: Tennyson Memorial Window, St
Bartholomew’s Church, Haslemere, designed
by Edward Burne-Jones (1899). The text on
the scroll is from Tennyson’s ‘The Holy
Grail’, 11. 464-5, 476-7.
Below is the plaque which is mounted
beneath the window.
IN' MEMORY OF
A LFRED LORD T E N N Y S O N POET LAUREATE
hi {hanL fulness for Hie music of bis words
And for that vet '■-ore ex cellen t gift w h ereb y
Being him self schooled hv love “and sorrow
He bad dower to confirm in the hearts of many
Then fe th tn the m in e s w h ich are not seen
! hen hope br nurnorlahtv
m PRAISE OF
GOD
THr. IMSPIRER OF PROPHET AND
Of POP T THIS vv«N; >0 W j£t? FJHCATE D
BYSOME FSiENDL- AND N MMIEOORS IN HASUEMEWL
T O T H E G L O R Y O F G O D
{A L F R E D L O R D T E N N Y S O N
anti in tljr strnirrfl} of tips
i roDr«sljattf ring all rnif
nisfoins rumjroiirrr
MO-JWtr-
nDcwsomcirim&otf soa &
DIK£GGS€/an€tf S G i r i ^
Above (fig. 11), an example o f German
Iron Warrior propaganda (1915).
Clockwise from right: three illustrations
from Alfred W. Pollard’s The Romance o f
King Arthur (1917), by Arthur Rackham:
‘How Mordred was Slain by Arthur, and
How by Him Arthur was Hurt to the Death’
(fig. 12); ‘Sir Beaumains Espied upon
Great Trees how there Hung Full Goodly
Armed Knights by the N eck’ (fig. 13); ‘Sir
Mordred Went and Laid a Mighty Siege
About the Tower o f London, and Shot
Great Guns’ (fig 14).
Slfc.
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I I T
I H } , n > \ v l H P 1 t
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Chapter Three
‘Here in the heart of waste and wilderness’: Jessie L.
Weston, T.S. Eliot and the Holy Grail
The Idylls never recovered their pre-war dominance. Had there been a latter-day Wace
or Layamon who would have reconciled the Idylls to a new age, as the older poets had
adapted Geoffrey’s Historia for later generations - had some poet who was
sympathetic to King Arthur and Tennyson, such as Wilfred Owen or Rupert Brooke,
survived the war - subsequent Arthurian literature may have been different. As it was
there were no Bruts to Tennyson’s epic and this paradigm faded into Victorian
nostalgia or, worse, ridicule.
Instead, Arthurian literature in the years following the Great War was more
imaginative and more original than it had been since the Arthurian Revival of the
Romantic period. And like the Arthurian literature of the Romantic period it was
scholars who led the way. The literary work of T.S. Eliot, Arthur Machon, Virginia
Woolf, Mary Butts and John Cowper Powys was all built upon the academic
endeavours of such scholars as Alfred Nutt, A.E. Waite, J.D. Bruce and, above all,
Jessie Weston. Their theories on the origins of the Arthurian story - and the Grail
1 1 2
legend, in particular - were new and contentious; in their arguments with each other
they were invariably dismissive and combative. The bitterness to which some of these
critics occasionally descended demonstrated that the medieval stories could still
matter to a contemporary world, and that the Grail was not merely a ‘peg’ from which
public-school headmasters might hang a homily about purity and duty.
In hindsight, the fact that it was the story of the Grail which would re-ignite
interest in the Arthurian story is perfectly understandable. Galahad had been one of
the most evident propaganda figures during the war - that post-war writers would take
up his story and transform it is to be expected. Added to this is the fact that the most
exciting scholarship to emerge from the pre-war scholars was primarily concerned
with the Grail. The diminishing appeal of Christianity in Britain was another factor -
much of the literary interest in the Grail was concerned with fashioning new, or
refashioning existing, belief systems. But the biggest factor in explaining why writers
chose the Grail story, rather than the larger Arthurian legend, was that the Grail story
was, simply, much shorter. Post-war poets and novelists did not attempt to reconfigure
the whole Arthurian story - such a task took Tennyson decades (as it probably did
Geoffrey and Malory). Those who did come to rewrite the whole Arthurian story in
later years- Charles Williams, David Jones and John Masefield - spent many years
reading and cogitating on the legend before they unveiled their epics. The Grail, by
comparison, offered a more concise narrative, more malleable to writers’ immediate
concerns and anxieties.
Before examining the Grail scholarship which led to much of this literature, it
is worth noting one major difference in Grail literature before and after the war. Since
the inception of England’s interest in the Arthurian story, with Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s Historia, the Matter of Britain has always been intimately and anxiously
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