But then I put that thought aside. I put it down, and the relief was immense, as if I had dragged a half-tonne weight from myself and cast it by the grassy road. White is gone. The hawk has flown. Respect the living, honour the dead. Leave them be. I saluted the man, though he could not see me. It was a silly, wobbly salute, and even as I did it I felt foolish. And then I turned and walked away. I left the man who was not a ghost, and I walked south. Over the bright horizon the sky swam like water.
Notes
Place of publication London unless otherwise stated.
1: Patience
1 Travelling Sands – John Evelyn, Memoirs of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray, Henry Colburn, 1827, vol. 2, p. 433.
2 There are divers Sorts – Richard Blome, Hawking or Faulconry, The Cresset Press, 1929 (originally published as part of The Gentlemen’s Recreation, 1686), pp. 28–9.
3: Small worlds
1 No matter how tame and loveable – Frank Illingworth, Falcons and Falconry, Blandford Press Ltd, p. 76.
2 She is noble in her nature – Gilbert Blaine, Falconry, Philip Allan, 1936, pp. 229–30.
3 Among the cultured peoples – ibid, p. 11.
4 Do not house your graceless austringers – Gace de la Bigne, quoted in John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, p. 221.
5 One cannot feel for a goshawk – Gilbert Blaine, Falconry, Philip Allan, 1936, p. 182.
6 Bloodthirsty . . . Vile – Major Charles Hawkins Fisher, Reminiscences of a Falconer, John Nimmo, 1901, p. 17.
7 When I first saw him – T. H. White, The Goshawk, Jonathan Cape, 1951, p. 11 (hereafter The Goshawk).
8 The Goshawk is the story – Back cover text, T. H. White, The Goshawk, Penguin Classics, 1979.
9 For those with an interest – Anonymous, review of The Goshawk, The Falconer, Vol. II, No. 5, 1952, p. 30.
10 would be about the efforts – The Goshawk, p. 27.
4: Mr White
1 1) Necessity of excelling – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript notebook ‘ETC’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
2 Bennet is the name . . . like a wagtail in the streets – Letter from T. H. White to L. Potts, 18 January 1936, in T. H. White, Letters to a Friend: The Correspondence between T. H. White and L. J. Potts, ed. François Gallix, Alan Sutton, 1984, pp. 62–3.
3 Because I am afraid of things – T. H. White, England Have My Bones, Collins, 1936, p. 80 (hereafter England Have My Bones).
4 I am told that my father – T. H. White, quoted in Sylvia Townsend Warner, T. H. White: A Biography, Jonathan Cape 1967, p. 27.
5 I pounce upon a bird – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript notebook ‘ETC’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
6 You will be sympathetic – Sylvia Townsend Warner, unpublished manuscript of interview by François Gallix, 28 March 1974, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, p. 1.
7 His sewing basket – Sylvia Townsend Warner to William Maxwell, 22 July 1967, in The Elements of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell 1938–1978, ed. Michael Steinmann, Counterpoint, New York, 2001, p. 179.
8 A magpie flies like a frying pan – T. H. White, entry for 7 April 1939 in unpublished manuscript ‘Journal 1938–1939’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
9 There is a sense of creation – T. H. White, England Have My Bones, p. 59.
10 Falling in love – ibid, p. 31.
11 He was an extremely tender-hearted – David Garnett, The White/Garnett Letters, ed. David Garnett, The Viking Press, New York, 1968, p. 8.
12 The safest way to avoid trouble – Henry Green, Pack My Bag: A Self-Portrait, Vintage, 2000 (first published 1940), p. 58.
13 is one of the best parlour games – T. H. White, letter to Leonard Potts, 2 February 1931, in T. H. White: Letters to a Friend, p. 15.
14 Can one wear topper – T. H. White, unpublished letter to Ronald McNair Scott, 2 November 1931, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
15 I believe I did not misbehave – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘Hunting Journal 1931–1933’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
16 concealed its individuality – England Have My Bones, p. 15.
17 almost always fatal . . . choke them like ivy – England Have My Bones, p. 120.
18 Independence – a state – England Have My Bones, p. 105.
19 train them to place no reliance . . . more food – ibid, p. 121.
20 it was impossible to impose – ibid, p. 107.
21 All through his life – T. H. White, The Once and Future King, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1958, p. 327.
22 tense, self-conscious . . . that of the human – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘Hunting Journal 1931–1933’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
23 boiling with a strange unrest – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘A Sort of Mania’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
24 This party has no racial – Harriet Hall, Bill and Patience: An Eccentric Marriage at Stowe and Beyond, Book Guild Ltd., 2000, p. 53.
25 I was like that unfortunate man – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘A Sort of Mania’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
26 It needed courage . . . a complete write-off – T. H. White, letter to Leonard Potts, 16 May 1936, in Letters to a Friend, p. 70.
27 We all stand in the shadow – Denis Brogan, ‘Omens of 1936’, Fortnightly Review, 139 (Jan–June 1936), pp. 1–2.
28 masters of men, everywhere – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘A Sort of Mania’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
29 From being on the day – Gilbert Blaine, Falconry, Philip Allan, 1936, p. 181.
30 The sentence was: ‘She reverted – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘A Sort of Mania’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
6: The box of stars
1 Of all Hawks, she is doubtless – Richard Blome, Hawking or Faulconry, The Cresset Press, 1929, p. 28.
2 You’re a good watcher – John Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Hodder and Stoughton, 2001, (first published 1974) p. 16.
3 It must have been like death – The Goshawk, pp. 11–12.
4 All that time was too beautiful . . . sent us to schools – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript fragment ‘A Valentine’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
5 Please God, don’t let me be beaten tonight . . . that charge – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘Journals, Volume 6’, entry dated 28 November 1957, T. H. White collection, Queens’ College Library, Queens’ College, Cambridge.
7: Invisibility
1 A headlong dive of rage – The Goshawk, p. 15.
2 Your eye must see a composition – Henri Cartier Bresson, 1957, in Adam Bernstein, ‘The Acknowledged Master of the Moment’, The Washington Post, Thursday 5 August, 2004, p. A01.
8: The Rembrandt interior
1 Days of attack – The Goshawk, p. 36.
2 I had only just escaped – T. H. White, in Sylvia Townsend Warner, T. H. White: A Biography, p. 90.
3 I had been a schoolmaster – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘A Sort of Mania’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
4 patient excursion into the fields – The Goshawk, p. 27.
5 dropped out of the curious . . . monastic boy – T. H. White, entry for 20 January 1938 in unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Horse’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
6 a velvet stoole – Edmund Bert, An Approved Treatise of Hawkes and Hawking. 1619, repr. Thames Valley Press, Maidenhead, 1972, p. 22.
7 I had a s
ort of schoolgirlish ‘pash’ – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘A Sort of Mania’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
8 The old hawk masters had invented a means – The Goshawk, p. 16.
9 Man against bird – ibid, p. 28.
10 but the tragedy had to be kept out – ibid, p. 64.
9: The rite of passage
1 tolerate a loss of self – A. D. Hutter, ‘Poetry in psychoanalysis: Hopkins, Rossetti, Winnicott’, International Review of Psycho-Analysis, vol. 9, 1982, pp. 303–16, p. 305. See: John Keats, letter to Richard Woodhouse, 27 October 1818, in John Keats, Selected Letters, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, pp. 147–9.
10: Darkness
1 6.15–6.45 walked round + round Gos – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Flying Supplement’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
2 It was not that one drank enough – The Goshawk, p. 68.
3 The key to her management – Gilbert Blaine, Falconry, Philip Allan, 1936, p. 181.
4 the grand secret of discipline – Edward Michell, The Art and Practice of Hawking, Methuen, 1900, p. 83.
5 her eye doth still behold . . . acquainted with any thing – Edmund Bert, An Approved Treatise of Hawkes and Hawking, p. 16.
11: Leaving home
1 For the goshawk, the necessity – The Goshawk, p. 52.
2 all the family . . . He bates repeatedly on these trips – T. H. White, entry for Thursday 30 July, unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Flying Supplement’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
3 He had to learn to stand that bustle – The Goshawk, p. 101.
4 the red moon . . . had seen to sink as a yellow one at dawn – ibid, p. 53.
5On the pastoral craze as cultural salvage, see Jed Esty, A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England, Princeton University Press, 2003.
6 I thought of the small race – The Goshawk, p. 81.
12: Outlaws
1 She purrs and chirps – Humphrey ap Evans, Falconry For You, John Gifford, 1960, p. 36.
2 peculiar and somewhat sulky – Gilbert Blaine, Falconry, Philip Allan, 1936, p. 179.
3 Never was there a more contrary – Frank Illingworth, Falcons and Falconry, Blandford Press Ltd., 1948, p. 74.
4 not like her or her kin – Charles Hawkins Fisher, Reminiscences of a Falconer, John Nimmo, 1901, p. 17.
5 a thousand pities – Gage Earl Freeman and Francis Henry Salvin, Falconry: Its Claims, History and Practice, Longman, Green, Longman and Robert, 1859, p. 216.
6 sociable and familiar . . . altogether shye and fearfull . . . stately and brave – Simon Latham, Lathams New and Second Booke of Falconry, Roger Jackson, 1618, p. 3.
7 joye in her selfe . . . my playfellow – Edmund Bert, An Approved Treatise of Hawkes and Hawking, pp. 41–2.
8 crazy and suspicious – The Goshawk, pp. 146–7.
9 man who for two months – ibid, p. 37.
10 The thing he most hates – T. H. White, entry for 14 August 1936 in unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Flying Supplement’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
11 monkish elite . . . small, tenacious sect – Lord Tweedsmuir, ‘Gos and Others’, Spectator Harvest, ed. Henry Wilson Harris, Ayer Publishing, 1970, pp. 7–9, p. 8.
12 deeply rooted in the nature . . . born, not made – Gilbert Blaine, Falconry, Philip Allan, 1936, p. 13.
13 It was not until I had kept some hawks – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘A Sort of Mania’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
14 that ancestor’s bony hand – The Goshawk, p. 18.
15 the wind in your face – J. Wentworth Day, Sporting Adventure, Harrap, 1937, p. 205.
16 Falconry is certainly of high descent . . . I believe he was mistaken – Gage Earl Freeman and Francis Henry Salvin, Falconry: Its Claims, History and Practice, pp. 3–4.
13: Alice, falling
1 Skipping and leaping – The Goshawk, p. 100.
2 was evidently a matter of exquisite assessment – ibid, p. 95.
3 Now, now – ibid, p. 105.
4 a hump-backed aviating Richard III – ibid, p. 106.
5 I braced the breast muscles – ibid, p. 107.
6 grow up a big, brave . . . any of these noble things – England Have My Bones, pp. 349–50.
7 I cry prosit loudly – T. H. White, entry for Thursday 27 August, unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Horse’, Harry Ransom Humanities Reasearch Center, University of Texas at Austin.
8 the wisdom of certainty – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript ‘You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down’, pp. 261–2, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
9 To anybody who has spent two months – ibid, p. 271.
10 ‘You went back to school voluntarily – ibid, p. 263.
15: For whom the bell
1 avoid the kicks which frighten me . . . actually a horrible surprise . . . only a man – T. H. White, entry for 25 August 1936 in unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Horse’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
16: Rain
1 insensate El Dorado – The Goshawk, p. 124.
2 It had hardly any breaking strain. It had already been broken twice – ibid, p. 123.
3 You bloody little sod . . . my fault – ibid, p. 124.
17: Heat
1 To him I am still the rarely tolerated enemy, and to me he is always the presence of death – T. H. White, entry for 2 September 1936 in unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Horse’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
2 I have lived for this hawk . . . never seen before – ibid.
3 growing sensual – Sylvia Townsend Warner, T. H. White: A Life, p. 29.
4 He has been frightened into insanity . . . and persecution – T. H. White, entry for 2 September 1936 in unpublished manuscript notebook ‘Horse’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
18: Flying free
1 Rooks observed to be mobbing – Gilbert Blaine, Falconry, Philip Allan, 1936, p. 199.
2 I cannot remember that my heart stopped beating – The Goshawk, p. 136.
3 Love asketh but himself – William Blake, ‘The Clod and the Pebble’, misquoted in The Goshawk, p. 147.
19: Extinction
1 The exhibition was the excellent Three Days of the Condor by Henrik Håkansson, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.
20: Hiding
1 Consider this, and in our time . . . look there – W. H. Auden ‘Consider this’ (first published 1930) in The English Auden, ed. Edward Mendelson, Faber & Faber, 1978, p. 46.
2 Silver-gold through the blue haze – T. H. White, unpublished manuscript notebook ‘ETC’, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
3 He was a Hittite – The Goshawk, p. 214.
4 I now flinch from anything frightful – Siegfried Sassoon, unpublished letter to T. H. White, 15 October 1952, p. 1, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
5 tonic for the less forthright savagery – The Goshawk, p. 212.
6 At a particular point in the journey – T. H. White, ‘The Hastings Caves’, Time and Tide Magazine, 8 December 1956, p. 152.
7 It will be charming to have a rest – T. H. White, The Once and Future King, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1958, p. 228.
21: Fear
1 get for you a other passager Gos – The Goshawk, p. 187.
2 Plan for a Passage Gos . . . turns at this – T. H. White, annotations to inside cover of Edmund Bert’s Treatise of Hawkes and Hawking, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
3 It made me feel cleaner – T. H. White, letter to John Moore, in Sylvia Townsend Warner, T. H. White: A Biography, p. 92.
4 Think o
f Lust . . . like that – The Goshawk, p. 204.
22: Apple Day
1 humans and animals can turn into each other – Rane Willerslev, ‘Not Animal, Not Not-Animal: Hunting, Imitation and Empathetic Knowledge among the Siberian Yukaghirs’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sept. 2004), pp. 629–52, p. 659.
23: Memorial
1 Nature in her green, tranquil woods – John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, 1938, repr. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1979, p. 208.
2 Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal – ibid, p. 99.
3 On mourning in children and adults, see Melanie Klein, ‘Mourning and its relation to manic depressive states’, in The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume 1, Love, Guilt and Reparation, The Hogarth Press, 1940, pp. 344–69.
24: Drugs
1 ‘Parfay!’ quath he – Sir Orfeo and Sir Launfal, ed. Lesley Johnson and Elizabeth Williams, The University of Leeds School of English, Leeds, 1984, p. 11.
2 He departed secretly – Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. John J. Parry, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 10, 1925, pp. 243–380.
3 With the passion of an Edgar Wallace – T. H. White, ‘King Arthur in the Cottage’, Readers’ News, Volume 2, Number 3, August 1939, pp. 26–7, p. 26.
H Is for Hawk Page 28
