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THE DAY camelot CAME

The last stop on T.H. White's American Tour was at the college. The British author was quite impressed.

T,he Students of La Salle College White rented an English laborer's cot- Whitman Bridge aroused White's ad- (Christian Brothers) gave me for the tage in the middle of a wood, and, miration and the North Philadelphia last time I shall get it the stunning together with two hedgehogs, six grass Station stirred his indignation. Of the applause and affection which makes snakes, a stuffed pheonix, a beehive, bridge, White wrote: six pismires (a kind of ant), and the my heart turn over, and I am miser- There is a huge and graceful bridge able that the tour is finished, and I fourteenth edition of the Encyclopae- named after Walt Whitman. Where don't ever dia Brittanica, he set forth to retell for want to stop ever ever. is there a bridge in London named But for Terrence Hanway White his century the stories of Arthur, Mer- after Shakespeare himself? These author of some two dozen books, half lin, Lancelot, and Guinevere. people are more cultured than we. a dozen of them really good, and one T. H. White moved to his last home As regards the North Philadelphia a classic of twentieth-century Eng- on the small Channel Island of Alder- Station. White confirmed what per- lish literature the end was to come ney in 1948, announcing to the local — haps many Philadelphians have sus- only one month after his last public inhabitants that he was a seventeen- pected for some time: appearance at La Salle. It was six time bigamist on the lam from Lon- So we stumbled bleary-eyed into years last December 16 since White's don. Alderney is known chiefly for bed and crawled out again reeling visit to the college, and last January its low taxes and cheap liquor, both at 6 A.M., to catch the most mis- 1 7 marked the sixth anniversary of of which White seems to have enjoyed. erable train in the world at the his death at age 57, aboard ship near In the last years of his life, he received most miserable station (North Broad Piraeus, Greece. The literary reputa- some three thousand dollars a month Street, Philadelphia, may it shortly tion of T. H. White (not to be con- in Camelot royalties and his Alder-

fall to bits) . . . It was dirtier and fused with the other T. H. White who ney house included studios for filming more wretched than any London wrote The Making of the President and painting, a swimming pool, and suburban station on a lost branch volumes) seems secure, however, in his a Temple to the Emperor Hadrian (for on strike. There was a strange, grimy classic retelling of the Arthurian leg- architectural rather than religious pur- iron fence down the middle the end in The Once and Future King, poses). Shortly before his death, White of tracks, presumably to prevent us source of Walt Disney's The Sword in remarked that he "could count only

from committing suicide . . . Oh the Stone and Alan Lerner's Camelot. seven happy years in all his life," yet God! Oh, Philadelphia! The writer of the New York Times he believed Mankind to be "on the obituary for T. H. White observed that whole more decent than beastly." T. H. White was scheduled to speak the author was a "modern exile in time In the fall of 1963, White began a at La Salle on November 22, 1963, as longing for the past," but such was his lecture tour of the United States, in part of the Centennial Weekend fes- life and personality "that his beloved order to, as he said, "distract the pri- tivities. But during the hour on that past might well have hanged him for vate unhappiness of old age, rather day on which White was to speak, a warlock." As strange as his char- like knocking your head against a wall John Kennedy was assassinated, and acter is the improbably range of his when you have the toothache." His the author himself lay very ill of men- writing from the first translation of a last book, the posthumously published tal and physical exhaustion in a New Latin Bestiary (where one could find, America At Last: The American Orleans hospital. White and Kennedy if indeed one ever wanted to, that the Journal of T. H. White records this had never met, but they were strangely panther sleeps for three days after a delightful eccentric's impressions of linked. John Kennedy's favorite song good meal, awakening with a burp) his travels, including his observations was "Camelot." and the two men to an account of the author's training on Philadelphia and La Salle College. shared the same birthday. It was the of a hawk by strict seventeenth-cen- Characteristically, the two things second time that White's writings had tury methods. that most impressed T. H. White about connected him with a dead leader

Perhaps most improbably of all, but Philadelphia were not those things when King George VI of England nevertheless true, is the genesis of the usually considered to be the city's died. White's book, The Goshawk. first part of The Once and Future King. "tourist attractions." Instead, the Walt was found on his bed.

16 SALLE

By James A. Butler, '68

Despite his illness, T. H. White re- nie Get Your Gun, Finian's Rain- Latin, write fair second-class novels, scheduled his appearance at La Salle bow, Fiorello, Bye. Bye, Birdie, and produce hopeless poetry. He and spoke on December 16. The Fantastic's and, for I was speaking echoed a theme that often appears in writer had no particular admiration for in front of the scenery, Gideon. It his writings: The only thing 1 can find anything Catholic (He once told two has had twelve lecturers since Sep- in life which seems to survive most of priests. ""I had been prepared for bap- tember 20th fand we are costly) the disasters of living is learning about tism into the Catholic Church but had while there have been ten concerts things. desisted at the last moment on dis- since October the 16th, including Despite his physical sickness, T. H. covering that I don't believe a word the Rittenhouse Opera Company in White managed to brilliantly com- of it"), but he was nevertheless evi- La Boheme. This doesn't seem to municate what he considered to be the dently impressed by what he found at me to be bad going. pleasures of learning: "The best thing the college: One of the tests which we have for being said is to learn something. learned apply virile is the only thing which the mind La Salle College is in its centennial to to a college That is to whether the stu- can never exhaust, never alienate, year—it was founded on March 20, ask any of dents the trouble to that never tortured by, never fear dis- 1863. In 1940 its enrollment was took make or march Washington last summer, trust, and never dream of regretting." about 400—it is now nearly 5,000. on It has no Medicean Grand Dukes protesting against segregation. Many As White's comments upon learning (no millionaire benefactors) to sup- from La Salle did .... suggest, his character had a serious admired the starched bands or aspect to balance his occasional de- port it, no benevolent cardinals to We jabots which the Brothers wear. lightful irreverence. Indeed, the cen- beg for it, and it is not state aided. are called, told the tral of The Once Future By its own efforts alone and on a They we were by problem and quiet Brother is very low basic fee per resident stu- voice of Fidelian King—and of Camelot— a moral {Brother Burke), rabat. He also told issue of Might versus Right. Like his dent, approximately $1,600, it has us that had been hero Arthur, White argues that mo- built itself a $2 million Union Build- one of my books to lector in the rality is worth striving after and that ing in 1959 and a S2.5 million read them by the refectory of their house of studies, the dominant force in human life Science Center in 1960 and now it which made me feel pleased. should be justice rather than force. is after a new library for its cen- While his contemporaries were writ- tennial. 1 have been telling these Whatever enthusiasm T. H. White ing of the anti-hero and of moral boys all over the U.S. that they are felt for La Salle was more than re- anarchy, White chronicled the oldest living in the middle of a second turned by the audience's feeling for English heroes and advocated the cultural renaissance, and here it is him. After his lecture, White received traditional virtues. with a vengeance. a tremendous standing ovation—ap- In his last public appearance at La Although my talk was during their plause that was perhaps louder and Salle College, as in all his writings, dinner hour and they had to cut longer because the speaker seemed so T. H. White showed himself to be a down on eating to attend it, enough visibly ill. White spoke on "The Pleas- disciple of that virtue which beloved students turned up to fill the college ures of Learning" and listed some of medieval past called "humanyte." theatre with many standing at the the things he had learned how to do- back. And in this theatre—although in his fifty-seven years: shoot a bow there is no course in drama—they and arrow, ride a horse, fly an air- have themselves lately produced plane, sail a boat, deep-sea dive, paint Death of a Salesman. Carousel, An- pictures, build houses, read medieval Jim Butler, a winner of both Wood- row Wilson and Danforth grants upon his graduation from La Salle, is cur- rently a doctoral candidate at Cornell Copyrighted passages from America at Last: The American Journal of T.H. White are reprinted with the permission of the publisher, University, concentrating on 19th cen- G. P. Putnam's Sons. tury English.

La Salle, Spring 1970 17