Word: galahading
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Gladstone now has entered the Limbo of broken idols, with Florence Nightingale, Queen Victoria, George Washington, and Galahad. A certain Captain Wright in his "Portraits and Criticisms" asserts that "Mr. Gladstone...founded the great tradition, since observed by so many of his followers and successors with such pious fidelity, in public to speak the language of the highest and the strictest principles, and in private to pursue and possess any sort of woman." Gladstone's sons have retorted by telling Captain Wright that he is a liar; Captain Wright has delivered the last counter-check in suing the Gladstone...
Toward the end Sir Lancelot says, ". . . though Galahad is unusual, I doubt if he will ever become typical," which might be as aptly said of many a strapping young idealist now studying sociology at Columbia or Stanford instead of chivalry at Camelot...
Lancelot is speaking of his only begotten son, a natural one who was more or less forced upon him by the first Elaine. There was never a fonder father nor prouder, nor ever one more vexed by his offspring's priggishness. For when Galahad left Camelot to seek (as legend soon had it) "the holiest thing in the world," and hence the Grail, it was not so much the quest that lured him as the necessity for a quest that drove him. He had just learned of his irregular birth and, to cap that, of his father...
...Author is that college professor who last year, with The Private Life of Helen of Troy, amazed people by demonstrating that a scholar, musician, poet and dramatist can also be a novelist-of-manners in the richest veins of language, wit, philosophy. Galahad, as superbly and warmly humanistic as its predecessor, proves that the latter was no mere tour de force nor a long-polished secret gem, but an inspired creation the like of which may be expected yet again. The subtitle of Galahad is a very fair sample of Erskine wit: "Enough of his life to explain his reputation...
...GALAHAD-John Erskine-Bobbs Merrill...