Malory

“ The old discoloured wall of Malory, that runs along the shore overshadowed by grand old timber, that looks to me darker than any other grove, is seven feet high, and as he could see neither through nor over it, and could not think of climbing it, after a few seconds spent in staring at the gray door, Tom Sedley turned about and walked down to the little hillock that stands by the roadside, next the strand, and from the top of this he gazed, during an entire cigar, upon the mullioned windows of Malory, and was gratified by one faint gleam of a passing candle from a gallery window. ”

“ All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped into old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. ”

“ Tom Sedley was upon the road that skirts the wall of Malory, in the shadow of the great trees. It would not have done to walk straight across the shingle to the spot where the lady stood, neither could he place himself so as to intercept her return to the doorway, directly so, as a less obvious stratagem, he made a detour, and sauntering along the water's edge like a man intent solely on the picturesque, with a beating heart he approached the female, who maintained her pose quite movelessly until he approached within a few steps. ”

“ The moon shone so broad and bright, the landscape looked so strange, and the air was so frosty and pleasant, that Tom Sedley could not resist the temptation to take a little walk which led him over the Green, and up the steep path overhanging the sea, from which you command so fine a view of the hills and headlands of the opposite side, and among other features of the landscape, of Malory, lying softly in its dark and misty woodlands. ”

“ She lived at Malory—that dark old place you went to see with the Verneys, the day you were at Cardyllian—don't you remember?"
"Oh, yes,—what a romantic place!"
"What an awfully cross old fellow, old enough to be her father, but with the air of her husband, guarding her like a dragon, and eyeing every fellow that came near as if he'd knock him down; a lean, white-whiskered, bald old fellow, with bushy eyebrows, and a fierce face, and eyes jumping out of his head, and lame of one foot, too. Not a beauty, by any means." [Pg 271]
"Where did you see him?" said Cleve. ”

“ Thou hast said thy message, which is the most insolent and villainous that ever man heard sent to any king: now hear my reply. My beard is yet too young to trim that mantle of thy master's with; yet, young although I be, I owe no homage either to him or any man—nor will ever owe. But, young although I be, I will have thy master's homage upon both his knees before this year be past, or else he shall lose his head, by the faith of my body, for this message is the shamefullest I ever heard speak of. I see well thy king hath never yet met with a worshipful man ”

“ The thoughts and images spontaneously utter themselves in words without any attempt at rhetorical balance and arrangement. Thus in the lament of Sir Ector over Sir Launcelot, Malory does not ask himself whether there is a logical connection between courtesy and bearing a shield, or between true friendship and bestriding a horse, as a modern writer would have done, and so brought those sentences into a more finished though more monotonous correspondence with the rest. The flow of feeling is true, direct, and simple, and that is enough. ”

“ Aren't those the Malory ladies?"
"Where?" said Cleve. "Oh! I see. Very like, I think—the old lady, I mean."
"Yes, oh certainly," replied Agnes, "it is the old lady, and I'm nearly certain the young lady also; who else can it be? It must be she."
"They are going over the hill to Malory," said Miss Charity. "I don't know what it is about that old lady that I think so wonderfully nice, and so perfectly charming; and the young lady is the most perfectly—beautiful—person, all to nothing, I ever saw in my life. ”

“ Yet for one week in those two years Malory and I were linked by the thread of a story he told me, sitting out under a clump of stone-pines overlooking the village. It linked us, indeed, not for that week alone, but, though interruptedly and at long intervals, for many years out of our lives. Neither of us foresaw at the time the far-reaching sequel of his confidences. He, when he told me the story, thought that he was telling me a completed thing, an incident revived in its entirety out of the past; I, when I later went to investigate for myself, went with no thought of continuance ”

“ Once in the whole length of this immense work he does impart to us his personal opinion on a question of importance: in the twenty-fifth chapter of his eighteenth book, Malory confesses what he thinks of love, and lays aside his usual reserve: and thus furnishes the first attempt at analysis of feeling to be found in the English prose romance. Malory declares that every man should love God first and his mistress afterwards; and so long as a man does love his God [59] first, the other love seems to him to be not only permissible but even commendable; it is a virtue. ”

“ When Sir Tristram was so hurt, he was passing heavy, and wit ye well he bled sore. And then he took another horse, and rode unto Joyous Gard with great heaviness, more for the promise he had made with Sir Palamides, as to do battle with him within three days after, than for any hurt of his thigh. Wherefore there was neither man nor woman that could cheer him with anything that they could make to him, neither queen La Beale Isoud, for ever he deemed that Sir Palamides had smitten him so that he should not be able to do battle with him at the day set. ”

“ Ah, Knight Sir Belliance, said Sir Lamorak, thou art a fool, for an I had had thee at such advantage as thou hast done me, I should slay thee; but thy gentleness is so good and so large, that I must needs forgive thee mine evil will. And then Sir Lamorak kneeled down, and unlaced first his umberere, and then his own, and then either kissed other with weeping tears. Then Sir Lamorak led Sir Belliance to an abbey fast by, and there Sir Lamorak would not depart from Belliance till he was whole. And then they sware together that none of them should never fight against other. ”

“ Pendillion. And these two ladies were the same from whom he had parted so few hours since. It was still very early everywhere except at Cardyllian, and these precincts of Malory, so entirely deserted at these hours that there seemed as little chance of interruption at the gate, as if they had stood in the drawing-room windows.
Cleve was under too intense and impetuous an excitement to hesitate. He approached the iron gate where, as at a convent grille, the old and the young recluse stood. The moonlight was of that intense and brilliant kind which defines objects clearly as daylight. ”

“ I haven't seen any of the Malory family, excepting in church to-day; not one, indeed, sir; they are very strange; they never come into the town—not once since ever they came to Malory! but dear me! you know, sir, that might be, and yet everything as we could wish, mightn't it; yes, sure; still, you know, [Pg 16] people will be talking; it's a pity we don't mind our own business more, and let others be, isn't it, sir?"
"Great pity; but—but what's the matter?" urged Cleve Verney.
"Well, Master Cleve, you know, Cardyllian, and how we do talk here ”

“ Before that, Spain and all Europe had been as remote as the stars.”
Malory told her all this, and then, when they were fairly flying through the air—I imagined them as the North Wind and the little girl in the fairy-story: hair streaming, garments streaming, hand pulling hand—he judged the moment opportune to return to Leslie Dymock. I fancy that the crash to earth again must have knocked all consciousness from the girl for a considerable interval. During this interval Malory dilated on the admirableness of the young man, his estimable qualities, and his worldly prospects. ”

“ Thus the tints and shadows of a great history rest faintly even upon this out-of-the-way and serene little town.
The permanent residents of Cardyllian for half the year are idle, and for mere occupation are led to inquire into and report one another's sins, vanities, and mishaps. Necessity thus educates them in that mutual interest in one another's affairs, and that taste for narrative, which pusillanimous people call prying and tattle. That the people now residing in Malory, scarcely a mile away, should have so totally defeated them was painful and even irritating. ”

“ Early next morning, in pursuance of a clever idea, Tom Sedley made, I admit, his most picturesque and becoming toilet. It consisted of his black velvet knickerbocker suit, with those refined jack-boots of shining leather, and the most charming jerry that had ever appeared in Cardyllian, and away he marched over the hill, while the good people of the town were champing their muffins and sipping their tea, to the back gate of Malory. ”

“ When Cleve reached the old road that descends by the churchyard, and through its double hedgerows looked down upon the enchanted grounds of Malory, he slackened his pace, and fell into a sort of reverie and rapture.
There are few of the impostures we commit more amusing, than that which we habitually practise upon ourselves in assigning the highest moral motives for doing what pleases us best.
"If my uncle Arthur had married some one whom he really loved, how differently all might have gone with him! Here am I, with more money ultimately awaiting me than I shall really care to spend. ”

“ It may be readily allowed that his world, his sense of character, and his ideals of conduct, were not precisely, or even approximately, those of Malory, but I am not aware that he ever claimed that they were, or that in using the figures of Arthurian legend he was not as entirely justified in making his own interpretation as Malory had been in his own time in making his. Nothing is sillier in criticism than to come to an artist’s presentation of a legendary, a romantic, or even an historical figure with an already fixed idea of what that presentation should be. ”

“ For every man thinketh his own lady fairest; and though I praise the lady that I love most, ye should not be wroth. For though my lady queen Guenever be fairest in your eye, wit ye well queen Morgause of Orkney is fairest in mine eye, and so every knight thinketh his own lady fairest; and, wit ye well, Sir, ye are the man in the world, except Sir Tristram, that I am most lothest to have ado withal. But and ye will needs fight with me, I shall endure you as long as I may. Then spake Sir Bleoberis, and said, My lord Sir Launcelot, I wist you never so misadvised as ye are now. ”

“ But now he was descending toward Malory, and the banks at the right hand and the left shut out the view. So he began to descend the slope at his leisure, looking up and about him and down at the worn road for material for thought, for his mind was bustling and barren.
The road is not four steps across. It winds steeply between high banks. Over these stoop and mingle in the perspective, the gray stems of tall ash trees mantled in ivy, which here and there climbs thickly among the boughs, and makes a darker umbrage among the foliage of the trees. ”

“ We know nothing of the townspeople or of neighbours. We have lived to ourselves; and if he had known that Malory belonged to the Verneys, I hope you believe he would neither have been mad or mean enough to come here, to live in the house of his enemies."
"Oh, Margaret! Margaret! you have ruined your father," said poor Miss Sheckleton, pale as a ghost, and with her trembling fingers in the air.
"I assure you, Miss Fanshawe," said Cleve, "you do me a cruel injustice, when you class me with Sir Booth Fanshawe's enemies. ”

“ Lo, said the damsel of the lake, ye ought to be ashamed for to murder such a knight. And therewith she threw such an enchantment upon her that she loved him sore, that well nigh she was out of her mind. Alas! said the lady Ettard, how is it befallen unto me that I love now him that I have most hated of any men alive. That is the righteous judgment of God, said the damsel. And then anon Sir Pelleas awaked, and looked upon Ettard. And when he saw her he knew her, and then he hated her more than any woman alive, and said: Away traitress, come never in my sight. ”

“ When the king saw him all ready armed to go unto horseback, the king said: Nay, Tramtrist, it will not avail to compare thee against me; but thus much I shall do for my worship and for thy love; in so much as thou art within my court it were no worship for me to slay thee: therefore upon this condition I will give thee leave for to depart from this court in safety, so thou wilt tell me who was thy father, and what is thy name, and if thou slew Sir Marhaus, my brother. ”

“ There are fancy, the regrets, the yearnings—something recluse in the human soul, which will have its day, a day, though brief it may be, of entire domination.
Now it came to pass, among the trees of lonely Malory, at eventide, when the golden air was flooded with the vesper songs of small birds, and the long gray shadows were stretching into distance, that a little brown Welsh boy, with dark lively eyes, and a wire cage in his hand, suddenly stood before Miss Margaret Fanshawe, who awaking from a reverie, with a startled look—for intruders were there unknown—fixed her great eyes upon him. ”