From whence all knightly deeds and brave achievements sprong.”
It was at Camelot that, when Arthur “let make a crie” the lords, knights, and gentlemen of arms gathered, and “there the King would let make a counsoile generall, and a great justes.” It was to Camelot that Sir Pellinore came “passing sore” and told his saddest of stories; and it was to Camelot that King Arthur turned after wearying combat and hot adventure, certain there to enjoy rest and to find his queen and the barons “right glad of his comming.” “What tidings at Camelot?” asked one knight of another whom he encountered. “By my head,” said the other, “there have I beene, and espied the court of King Arthur, and there is such a fellowship that they may never be brok, and wel nigh al the world holdeth with King Arthur, for there is the flower of chivalry.” Such was the renown of Camelot.
To Camelot the knights sent their prisoners to do homage to King Arthur and confess his greatness. The church of St. Stephen’s, often called the Minster, was the place where the king and his followers assembled to hear the Archbishop’s blessing upon their enterprises, and in the adjoining grounds the principal men slain in battle were buried with all honour. The twelve kings who fell in war with King Lot “were buried in the church of Saint Stephen’s, in Camelot, and the remnant of knights and of other were buried in a great rock,” so one of the records runs. By the side of Lanceor’s tomb, made by Merlin, Tristram and Lancelot encountered each other and “fought together unknown,” and “either wounded other wonderly sore, that the blood ran out upon the grass”; then, discovering that they were friends, they yielded up their swords, “either kissed other an hundred times,” and rode back to Camelot. Elaine, the mother of Galahad, came to Camelot richly attired, and put Lancelot to shame, and it was at Camelot that the last sad scenes in their tragic drama were enacted. The quest for the Sancgreal began there, and King Arthur, full of forebodings, took a last review of his knights and caused them to assemble for a last tournament in Camelot’s meadows, “that after your death men may speak of it, that such good knights were wholly together such a day.” The queen and her ladies beheld the noble gathering from her tower, and saw Sir Galahad, the perfect knight, break the spears of all who came against him save that of his father, Sir Lancelot, and that of his compeer Sir Percivale. When next we read of Camelot, Arthur is regretting the loss of half his noble company; and when the worst had come to pass, and the king discovered the wrong done to him by Lancelot and Guinevere, it was of lonely Camelot he thought with tenderest regret. Tennyson has seized upon this idea, and put into the mouth of the king the mournful soliloquy as he muses on his faithless wife—
“How sad it were to live
And sit once more within the lonely hall,
And miss the wonted number of my knights,
*****
And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk
Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,