The White Company

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s household-word fame today, of course, is as the creator of iconic fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. His science fiction novels and stories were also popular in his day, and remain influential in that genre. But he was personally proudest of his achievements as a historical novelist, and this is his best known work of that type. I actually first ran across it in my school library in junior high school, and read into Chapter 12 at that time. But then I graduated; and while my intention at the time was to obtain another copy elsewhere and continue the read, that plan got sidetracked and eventually relegated to the back burner, though never abandoned. Recently, I came back to the book after a lapse of over 50 years, and read it cover-to-cover. Having now done so, I can say that I have to agree with Doyle’s own assessment, at least to the degree that this is my favorite among his novels that I’ve read so far (and those include all four of the Holmes novels!).

The setting here is the Middle Ages (one of my favorite periods for historical fiction!), specifically 1366-67, during the Hundred Year’s War. At that particular moment, however, the English vs. French conflict was in a truce state, although feudal wars between barons and the depredations of outlaws and unemployed mercenary bands kept France in a parlous condition. For the characters here, the immediate call to arms and occasion for military adventure is the campaign of the Black Prince to restore the ousted Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castile, in the western part of what is today Spain, which in the 1300s was not yet a unified country. (Pedro had been deposed in favor of his out-of-wedlock half-brother, Henry; the Black Prince viewed this as an intolerable breach of the rights of the lawful heir.) Our protagonist is Alleyne Edricson, second son of a Socman, or substantial free landowner, of an old Saxon line in Hampshire (an English county on the southern coast, opposite the Isle of Wight). His father died when he was very young, and he’s been raised in a Cistercian abbey as a novice; but he’s now turned 20, and Edric’s will calls for him to spend a year outside the monastery, to determine whether or not he’s called to holy orders. On the road, he soon connects with his monastery acquaintance Hordle John, a powerfully-built young peasant who ill-advisedly joined the order after being jilted by his girlfriend, but was expelled (to put it mildly, he didn’t, in Catholic parlance, “have a vocation” 🙂 ) the same day that Alleyne left; and the two in turn quickly meet up with another fellow traveler, soldier Samkin Aylward, who’s in route to the castle home of renowned warrior Sir Nigel Loring, bearing a letter inviting the latter to come to France and assume leadership of the White Company, a war-band of English archers. The reader won’t be surprised to learn that Sir Nigel and our trio of friends will soon be headed for France.

Like almost all historical fiction writers of his time, Doyle’s stylistic affinities were Romantic. But he also was very scrupulous about historical accuracy, to a degree that no Realist critic could fairly fault; he put in four years of serious research for this novel, and it shows in an extremely detailed and realistic picture of 14th-century society, thought and daily life. Where the fiction intertwines with real-life history, there’s no departure from known fact; real-life historical figures portrayed here (and there are many, including the Black Prince, Pedro, Bertrand du Guesclin, Sir John Chandos, and others) are depicted the way their contemporaries saw them, so far as records exist. He does not, however, deliver any of this material in info-dumps, but works it seamlessly into the texture of the tale (though it’s true that some episodes do seem to be included solely to illustrate some peculiarity of the time). That’s no mean feat in itself. His characterizations are also vivid, round and lifelike (I don’t often identify with romantic action-hero types, but I did with Alleyne!); he provides an exciting, suspenseful plot (with plenty of action, though it’s mostly in the latter half of the book) and a strand of clean romance between a couple worth rooting for and wishing well.

Great fiction, though, goes deeper than the above characteristics of good fiction; it makes you think about deeper issues than “will our heroes survive?” or “will the loving pair wind up together?” That quality, too, I found here; Doyle doesn’t sermonize, but messages and thoughts arise naturally out of the story. As with much action-oriented fiction of this school, there’s a strong encouragement of virtues like courage, loyalty, fair and honest dealing, personal integrity, kindness and willingness to defend the weak. But while we sometimes think of medieval “chivalry” solely in those terms, to a much greater extent than either Scott (at least in Ivanhoe) or Stevenson, Doyle brings out the fact that this code, as embodied in Sir Nigel, had its dubious aspects as well: a confusion of personal “honor” with vainglory over successful lethal fighting for its own sake; the idea that physically fighting over competing claims for your special lady’s superiority to all other women actually redounds to any credit to her (or you); and an over-concern with “noble” status measured by birth or an official knightly accolade. And we might add, too, an assumption that supporting your king in any quarrel he undertakes automatically qualifies as your legitimate duty. (That does not accord with classical Christian “just war” theory, even if the medieval Church did tacitly endorse the idea!) We can respect Sir Nigel, and even like him; but that’s not the same thing as endorsing all of his attitudes, and we can see that the chivalric code was in serious need of some revision.

The 14th century was also a time, as Doyle points out explicitly, when the feudal, ultra class-conscious and often exploitative social order of the High Middle Ages was beginning to be questioned from below. The legitimate grievances of the lower classes are portrayed forcefully here, along with the often savagely violent social unrest in both France and England; we can see both the need for a more just society and the reality that violence against the innocent won’t further that goal. (By 1891, when Doyle wrote, much social change had taken place; but the antagonism between the wealthy and powerful who think they’re entitled to anything they want, vs. an underclass that’s willing to throw over every ethical restraint in order to annihilate anyone they see as the enemy Other, was still alive and well –and still is in 2020.) It was also a time of increasing religious ferment, which is also deliberately brought out here. Though not a Christian himself, Doyle was respectful towards Christianity; and through Alleyne’s eyes he makes a case for the legitimacy of a Christian life lived by serving others and forming a healthy family in the normal world, rather than fleeing from the world and trying to live in navel-gazing personal purity. He also implicitly critiques aspects of medieval religiosity that need critiquing –the hawking of bogus relics, the quest of the irreligious for a salvation that can be had for money without spiritual conversion, and the willingness of religious charlatans to profit off of them; and the perverted piety of the Flagellants, beating each other to ribbons in the warped belief that God took pleasure in their pain. (Nonetheless, this isn’t an anti-Catholic novel, but an appeal for practical and rational piety that both Catholics and Protestants can get behind. When Alleyne says, at one point, that an offer to, in effect, sell a ticket to heaven is not part of the teachings of Mother Church, he’s speaking for many Roman Catholics, then and now.)

Some readers won’t get into this novel; not all will appreciate the detailed introduction to the world of the 14th century, and to the principle characters, that occupies much of the first half of the novel. Many will perceive this as too slow moving, though for my part I understood it as necessary to the author’s purpose and to our bonding with the characters, and wasn’t bored by any of it. Doyle’s diction here is Victorian, more formal than in his less “serious” mystery and science fiction writing, often with involved sentence structure; he’s quite willing to use big words if they serve best to convey his meaning, and he deliberately employs a lot of older, medieval terminology that fits into this setting. While he doesn’t write dialogue in Chaucer-style Middle English (and he usually translates the speech of the Norman-descended royalty and aristocracy, many of whom still spoke French at this time), he does consciously write it with an archaic flavor, preserving a lot of medieval idiom and vocabulary. This also won’t be to every taste; but I personally was able to understand it (sometimes from context), and I think most serious readers could as well. (So, if ye will hearken to my rede, and ye be a historical fiction fan, give this book a try, forsooth! 🙂 )

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