She had been sensitive enough not to overwhelm him with welcomes when he came home from his long absence: not to reproach him–she had never felt that she had reason to reproach him: and, above all, not to suffocate him with pity for herself. She had held her heart with a firm hand while they waited at Corbin for the tournament, carefully hiding the long years during which she had hoped for her lord, and her absolute loneliness now that their son was gone.
Lancelot had known quite well what she was hiding. Uncertain and sensitive himself, he had forgotten about the way in which their peculiar relationship had started. He had begun to blame himself exclusively for Elaine’s sorrows.
So, when she did make her small request, after having spared him so many tears and welcomes, what could he do but seek her pleasure? He had still to tell her that her unflinching hope was baseless. He was putting it off. Feeling like an executioner who knows that he must kill tomorrow, he had tried to give a little joy today.
“Lance,” she had said before the tournament, asking her strange favour humbly and childishly, “now that we are together, you will wear my token at the fight?”
– T.H. White, The Once And Future King
The Elaine in T.H. White’s book is a conflation of two characters from Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur: Elaine of Corbenic, mother of Lancelot’s son Galahad, and Elaine of Astolat, who falls into unrequited love with him at a tournament. Elaine of Astolat became a popular subject for Pre-Raphaelite artists after the publication of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. She becomes more complicated with combined with Elaine of Corbenic, who tricks Lancelot into sleeping with her by getting him drunk and pretending to be Guinevere, eventually driving him to insanity. This Elaine is problematic at best, her clash with the Elaine depicted in the above art best exemplified by this medieval illustration of her “seduction” of Lancelot:
By merging these disparate images of womanhood, T.H. White’s portrayal of her, as well as of Lancelot, is a fascinating study of humanity.
The main theme of the above art is the story of Lancelot agreeing to wear Elaine of Astolat’s token in a tournament, but leaving his shield with her so Guinevere wouldn’t know it was him. She treasures the shield and embroiders an elaborate cover for it. When he is wounded in the joust, she nurses him back to health; when he recovers he offers money to Elaine, and she is insulted and returns the shield. She dies ten days later, heartbroken; according to her wish, she is laid in a boat to float down the Thames to Camelot (an even more popular theme in Pre-Raphaelite art).
[Artists: top row, L-R: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1911); Arthur Hughes (1867); Edward Frampton (1921); center: Edmund Blair Leighton (1899); bottom row, L-R: Henry Robinson (1859); Henry Justice Ford (1901); William Ladd Taylor (1911)]
