He then rides home to die; but Nimue (Vivien), the Lady of the Lake, restores him to health and sanity. His fever gone, he scorns Ettarre, who, by Nimue's enchantment, now loves him as much as she had hated him. Pelleas weds Nimue, and Ettarre dies of a broken heart. Tennyson, of course, could not make Nimue (his Vivien) do anything benevolent. He therefore closes his poem by a repetition of the effect in the case of Balin. Pelleas is driven desperate by the treachery of Gawain, the reported infidelity of Guinevere, and the general corruption of the ideal. A shadow falls on Lancelot and Guinevere, and Modred sees that his hour is drawing nigh. In spite of beautiful passages this is not one of the finest of the Idylls, save for the study of the fierce, hateful, and beautiful grande dame, Ettarre. The narrative does little to advance the general plot. In the original of Malory it has no connection with the Lancelot cycle, except as far as it reveals the treachery of Gawain, the gay and fair-spoken "light of love," brother of the traitor Modred. Asimpler treatment of the theme may be read in Mr Swinburne's beautiful poem, The Tale of Balen.
It is in The Last Tournament that Modred finds the beginning of his opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as the year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow fruitfulness, but of the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands"and the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held the Tourney of the Dead Innocence, with the blood-red prize of rubies.
With a wise touch Tennyson has represented the Court as fallen not into vice only and crime, but into positive vulgarity and bad taste.
The Tournament is a carnival of the "smart" and the third-rate.
Courtesy is dead, even Tristram is brutal, and in Iseult hatred of her husband is as powerful as love of her lover. The satire strikes at England, where the world has never been corrupt with a good grace.
It is a passage of arms neither gentle nor joyous that Lancelot presides over:-"The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began:
And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, When all the goodlier guests are past away, Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists.
He saw the laws that ruled the tournament Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down Before his throne of arbitration cursed The dead babe and the follies of the King;And once the laces of a helmet crack'd, And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole, Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight, But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest, And armour'd all in forest green, whereon There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, With ever-scattering berries, and on shield A spear, a harp, a bugle--Tristram--late From overseas in Brittany return'd, And marriage with a princess of that realm, Isolt the White--Sir Tristram of the Woods -Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain His own against him, and now yearn'd to shake The burthen off his heart in one full shock With Tristram ev'n to death: his strong hands gript And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, Until he groan'd for wrath--so many of those, That ware their ladies' colours on the casque, Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, And there with gibes and flickering mockeries Stood, while he mutter'd, 'Craven crests! O shame!
What faith have these in whom they sware to love?
The glory of our Round Table is no more.'
So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems, Not speaking other word than 'Hast thou won?
Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand Wherewith thou takest this, is red!' to whom Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot's languorous mood, Made answer, 'Ay, but wherefore toss me this Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound?
Let be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength of heart And might of limb, but mainly use and skill, Are winners in this pastime of our King.