Post-War Arthuriana

Henry Treece, The Great Captains

Chronologically, this is the final volume of what has been called Henry Treece’s ‘celtic quartet’. Although the novels can certainly be made to fit into an overarching narrative and chronology, I’m not aware of any evidence that they were composed as such. It feels more like the creation of Jim Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock when they were first discovering them in the 1950s as they were originally published. Moorcock went on to produce introductions for all four novels in the handsome editions Savoy Books produced when they republished them in the late 70s/early 80s. Still, if that was what it took to get the novels back in print and successfully marketed, then who am I to argue.

And seriously, if you’re going to acquire these novels, then these are the editions to get. Not only do you get the pleasure of Moorcock’s introductions, but also evocative covers from one Michael Heslop, and interior illustrations from the great Jim Cawthorn. Both illustrators feel like they belong to the tail end of that great tradition which stretches back to the nineteenth century. The sort of illustration work that makes you look at most of their modern equivalents and just despair.

And the only way you will acquire any Treece novel nowadays (unless there’s any still lurking in a dusty library corner; assuming there are any dusty library corners left for them to lurk in that is) is second hand, since sadly all his work appears to languishes out of print. A committed romantic in a time when that doesn't appear to have been particularly fashionable (only, is it ever especially fashionable? - the immediate post War period actually saw a flowering of (neo-)romanticism; it was only by the 50s following the end of rationing that it fell out of favour). If any of his work is known at all now it’s the historical fiction, especially his Viking stories, which he produced for children. But he was also a poet and critic, and produced a handful of historical novels aimed at an adult audience. In his introduction to The Great Captains, Moorcock contrasts him with contemporaries such as Alfred Duggan and Robert Graves. Where Graves’ historical fiction is still in print (if only thanks to the successful BBC adaptation of I, Claudius), both Duggan and Treece seem to have been left behind by fashion.

We don’t have to agree with all of Moorcock’s polemical assertions to feel that this is a real shame, since Henry Treece was clearly an excellent writer of historical romance. He gets the mindset of men who lived in a world whose reality still contained mysticism and magic as part of its fabric in a way that few others appear to, at least to my knowledge. These aren’t fantasies exactly. Where magical occurrences do occur, they can easily be rationalised as fantasies of perception. But for the characters who experience them, lacking the capacity to perceive such rationalisations, and living in societies that are governed by myth and ritual, magic is the only plausible explanation.

In his own introduction to his work, Treece is concerned to present this particular fiction as a form of historical truth, arguing that it is as accurate as he could make it. From the bibliography he supplies at the end of the book, Treece was clearly as well read in the period as it was possible to be in the mid-50s when he produced his Arthurian tale. He dismisses Malory as a ‘biased knight’ and positions his work as a corrective to writers such as Tennyson, ‘throw[ing] off all the later accretions of legend and later poetry,’ and appealing to the ‘Court of History.’

Which to me, all rather misses the point. No doubt the stories of King Arthur could have their origin in a real tribal chieftain who lived in post-Roman Britain. My admittedly somewhat limited understanding is that we have to rely more on archaeology than on textual sources for our knowledge about the period, and that as a consequence there is much that we still don’t know about what actually happened in that period of British history. But surely, when it comes to a story like Arthur - one which, like the story of Robin Hood, has been retold so many times - whatever truth which may have first given rise to it, surely the point of the story, for us as modern subjects, is the myth? It’s hard to see what value there is in the comic deflation of the notion of the round table which occurs at one point: nothing more profound than a bleak joke on authority as Arthur and his leaders argue about who should precede who. The narrative voice even pulls back to let us know that this is the event which future generations will eventually misinterpret. Both the myth and the comic deflation are fiction, so why should it matter which we give primacy to?

Seen in this light, The Great Captains seems like a text which has been produced by a sensibility which was at least partly formed by post-War experiences. Greece himself served as an intelligence officer with R.A.F. Bomber Command, so whilst he certainly wasn’t fighting in the front line so to speak, he still clearly experienced the War. If the post-War period was not a period amenable to romanticism, then that was likely due to the experience of the War and it’s aftermath, and the realisation of just what morally corrupted romanticism could lead to. The gritty immediacy which he brings to his depiction of violence in this world seems as much redolent of post-War exhaustion with conflict as it does with his obvious desire for fidelity to a realism of the period of post Roman Britain. One of my favourite moments in the novel depicts Arthur's first successful battle. After considerable attention is paid to the build up before battle, a marvellous depiction of the tension felt by men who are about to go into battle, we then cut straight to the aftermath of battle, starting with a meditation on the point of few of one of the dead men whose body is lying on the battlefield.

The claim to historical accuracy is buttressed by the 'realism' of Treece's telling of the story. And as I said above, that is one of the attractions of his work, just as it is with the work of Rosemary Sutcliff, who also wrote her own version of Arthur. As have many others - a common desire for writers in the twentieth century seems to be the same as Treece's: to provide a more historical, more ‘realistic’ depiction of the Arthurian world.

And yet, for all his criticism of Malory and Tennyson, Treece’s version of Arthur feels equally romantic in some ways. From his first appearance in the text, in which he is successfully ploughing a field with two bulls, Artus the Bear as Treece calls him, seems positively super heroic. He's an epic slightly unbelievable, epic figure, who throughout the narrative he is constantly proving himself through acts of strength and leadership. Eventually, because this is the story, he's brought down through his own self deception over a woman. Our final sight of him, long after his successes in battle and loss of his queen, is as a figure finally brought low by old age. Ultimately, he's a properly tragic figure.

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I find myself wondering if the 'realism' of it's telling isn't actually supporting the novel's romantic elements. When I began writing this piece, I hadn't realised I was writing something which would so easily jibe with my earlier piece. Of course, The Great Captains is not a secondary world fantasy, but the appeal to history, which I am taking to include a more 'realistic' telling of a story which contains strong elements of romance (not only the magic, but also it's tragic end), seems to serve  similar function to the appeal to realism that many of George R.R. Martin's fans seem to make about his work. It's a way of taking a story which contains elements we might now find embarrassing or problematic, or which has been idealised in some way, and making it work in a way that supposedly allows us to take those same elements more seriously. Many of the ideals which motivate Treeece's characters are ones which I, as a twentieth / twenty-first century vaguely left leaning liberal would likely find abhorrent if I encountered them in the real world. Yet they still feel authentic in the world which is depicted in The Great Captains.

(And on reflection, perhaps the realism also undercuts the ideals for which they are supposedly fighting. Treece's Arthur never really appears to achieve a stable success until after his tragedy has occurred. Before that point he's merely leading what is clearly an unstable coalition of competing tribal forces. Almost as soon as he achieves his first military successes he begins to unravel through his pride and self-deception. The values of the characters are viewed with dispassion, and the tragic nature of the story means that it can hardly be said to celebrate those values.)

Since I've not read Martin's work I can't take this insight to what feels like it's proper conclusion and say why Treece's approach works for me whilst A Song of Ice and Fire fails for me, if I even would say something as categorical as that where I to read or watch it. One crucial difference for me which I can say is that Henry Treece was not writing fantasy, but historical fiction, and that does seem to make a difference for me when I'm trying to think about these issues. As violent as his story is at times, there's never any feeling that the narrative is revelling in the violence it depicts. In dwelling far more on both the fear and consequences of violence, yet frequently avoiding its actual depiction, Treece's novel never avoids the issue of just how violent the culture and warfare of post-Roman Britain would be, but it does avoid a self-conscious celebration of that violence.

It's probably unfair of me to single out Martin's work for this kind of criticism, and not simply because I haven't read his books or watched the TV show which is being adapted from them. But also because so much of our popular culture of the last few decades seems to make this error of revelling in gratuitous depictions of violence. I don't think it's confined to works of genre fantasy. It almost certainly includes things which I've enjoyed in the past. We all have our particular lines to draw when it comes to the issue of the depiction of violence, and I doubt that many of us are especially consistent.

"The wind blows from the east...

"The wind blows from the east bringing an acid hail that falls from the leaden sky. The air stutters tic tic tic tic, rattle of death-watch beetle on sad slate roofs. The swan of Avon dies a syncopated death. Ashes big as snowflakes fall, black frost grips July by the throat. We pull the velvet curtains tight over the dawn, and shiver by empty grates. The household gods have vanished, no one remembers quite when. Poppies and corncockle have long been forgotten here, like the boys who died in Flanders, their names erased by a late frost which clipped the village cross. Spring lapped the fields in arsenic green, the oaks died this year. On every green hill mourners stand, and weep for The Last Of England." 

Derek Jarman, Kicking Against the Pricks