The Weekly Machen
As a journalist, Arthur Machen once attended a staged jousting tournament. He was not impressed. His nuanced parsing of realism versus fancy and the need for both in a right balance is fine reading. As for myself, I once attended a similar production when I was younger. (Well, I say younger, but I was a married man in my twenties.) I had a rollicking good time and recommend the experience.
When Knights Were Bold
by
Arthur Machen
July 12, 1912
Foxhunters used to say that the fox likes being hunted. I have my doubts—grave doubts—as to that; but foxhunting is a brave and gallant sport.
I speak of it as I remember it, when the chase went up hills and down valleys in South Wales, over all sorts of rough, precipitous places, over brooks, halfway up the mountain one day, right down to Severn Sea the next. It was not the foxhunting of the Quorn or the Pytchley; but it was fine work for all that.
Now, I suppose that it would be quite possible to give a sort of foxhunting show at the Agricultural Hall, or at Olympia, or at the Empress Hall, Earl’s Court. I expect something of this kind has been done by the old-fashioned circuses; something, perhaps, in the style of Dick Turpin’s Ride to York, which I remember viewing with heartfelt interest forty odd years ago.
The Lack of Atmosphere
Well; imagine a stage fox-hunt in which the fox was impersonated by a dog sewn up in a fox’s skin, in which all the hounds had their teeth drawn, in which the hedges consisted of indiarubber boughs and paper leaves, and the water was painted by the scenic artist; then, I am afraid, you will have a pretty clear analogy to the Justes Royal and Tourney held last night by divers noble persons at the Empress Hall, Shakespeare’s England.
I don’t know when I have been so disappointed. Somehow or other I took my seat with a very high notion of what I was going to witness; I expected some thing that would form a not unworthy second to “The Miracle.”
Well, after a long wait, the bell tolled and the trumpets sounded, and a gorgeous procession entered; Poursuivants, the Herald, the grave Judges in black and gold, the Earl of Lonsdale, Knight Martiall of the Lists, preceded by Mr. Guy Laking on foot, bearing the banner.
The Queen of Beauty and her ladies took their places, her Highness the Princess of Pless and her attendants rode in and went round and round to music; the knights who were to just paraded in due order.
There were gorgeous costumes, splendid horses, flaming trappings; the Princess Errant especially in her fine array, on her horse led by pink garlands, was a delightful sight; and yet, even at this point, when we were still in pure pageantry, and there was as yet no question of action, I could find no thrill, no sudden realisation that here the life of the past had been restored. It was pageantry without the soul of pageantry; it was just “dressing up” on a very gorgeous and expensive scale; there was no illusion; that mysterious something which it is convenient to call “atmosphere” was completely lacking.
A Vision of the Super-Circus
Why? Chiefly, I think, it because the tournament, though it was a sport and sometimes a deadly sport, was yet the child of chivalry; it was clothed with all the humour of state, and even in its late days it referred itself back to august and mystic origins. As the author of the pleasant essay contained in the programme of last night’s entertainment declares, “singlehanded combats or justs of peace were often termed ‘combats of the Round Table.’”
We all feel the thrill of that phrase, we all think when we read it of the great legend of the Morte d’Arthur; and somehow we cannot feel that the solemn and heart-searching splendours of that legend are suggested by seeing the Princess Errant caracoling round the arena of the Empress Hall to the cheerful music of the band.
It was a fine show, no doubt, this; but it belonged rather to the super-circus than to the dreams and ardours of chivalry. And the “Ballet des Chevaux” that followed was good Military Tournament stuff; it was simply a musical ride in which ladies took part.
Then came the real business of the evening: the justs. A wooden barrier was erected in the middle of the arena, and two knights, starting from opposite ends, rode towards one another and endeavoured to break lances over the barrier against one another’s armour.
Now the horses who danced the ballet did their parts with skill: they had evidently been trained in the necessary business. But the justing horses were as evidently amateurs of the lists; many of them performed their task with obvious reluctance and disgust and the effect was unfortunate.
And the “splintering of lances”! That, alas! was all too easy a task. I don’t know of what materials these lances were made. But I saw several of them wilt and wobble like the stalks of fading flowers, and the gentlest touch seemed enough to melt them into their component parts. They dropped into flabby fragments on the tan, and the stump in the knight’s hand appeared often to waggle as he rode away.
And here, I think, we are brought up to the gist of the whole matter, back to the comparison of the sham fox-hunt.
Not Real Enough
The real tournament even in its milder, later days had always the spice of risk in it, just as a good fox-hunt has a spice of risk in it. I don’t pretend to know for a moment the comparative danger of the two sports; perhaps they were about equal. You may get a broken leg or a broken neck following the hounds, and you might get a broken leg or a broken neck tilting at the barriers; to be sure at the latter game there was the additional chance of a spear-splinter running into your eye.
I don’t believe that (in the later ages of the tournament at all events) the spectators wanted to see a good man killed in sport—I hope that few of us want to hear the crack of the acrobat’s bones on the music-hall stage. But they did like to listen to the ring and clang of hard wood on hard metal, they liked to witness the shock of two stout fellows coming together—there is something of this form of excitement in Rugby football, I believe, and I expect they shivered in excitement when a big man in steel from head to foot came thundering and clattering to the ground. And when the lances bowed and were shattered into flying fragments with a fierce echoing crack; then, to be sure, the shouts rang above the lists.
But who can get up any shadow of excitement over the encounter of two limp cabbage-stalks with steel? Really, there was nothing in it. Three times only, as far as I can remember, applause sounded; and, in each case the horses ran their course with some spirit and directness, and a shock was at least simulated; one saw the knights swaying in their saddles.
I suppose I shall be asked whether I really expected a number of worthy and noble gentlemen to risk their legs and their necks to make me a Roman holiday. I don’t want anything of the sort, “which I meantersay” that the show at Earl’s Court last night was quite ineffective, though gorgeous. It failed for the reason which I have indicated, and also because it tried to do two incompatible things at once; it attempted to be a real tournament and the theatrical pretence of a tournament; as if the Horse Show should call in Messers. Maskelyne and Devant to help out its jumping trials with some of their cunning illusions.
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I see that Francis Henry Cripps-Day wrote The Triumph Holden at Shakespeare’s England on the Eleventh Day of July in the Third Year of the Reign of King George the Fifth published by W.H. Smith in 1912, but have not (yet?) found a scan online. A copy of his book The History of the Tournament in England and in France (Quaritch, 1918) is scanned in the Internet Archive.
We enjoyed watching a joust with the children at a Dutch sort of fantasy amusement park, the “Land van Ooit” (‘ooit’ = ‘ever’, ‘once’, here with a ‘once upon a time’ flavor), sometime in the late 1990s – and happily were not there when the Yellow Knight got so badly injured that he died two days later.
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