Introduction

In the summer of 1849, the Royal Commission supervising the decoration of the inew Palace of Westminster rejected a preliminary design for the central compartment of the Queen's Robing Room. The work in question was entitled Piety: The Departure of the Knights of the Round Table on the Quest for the Holy Grail. It has been argued by Joanna Banham and Jennifer Harris that this subject was not considered suitable for the adornment of a legislative building. ‘The incident’, they suggest, ‘appeared too pessimistic and demoralising’ (p. 156); indeed ‘its attention to Queen Guinevere, whose infidelity opened the way to corruption in the court’ made it ‘doubly inappropriate’. William Dyce, the author of the rejected design, responded to this rebuff by completing a new painting. This time, he offered a subject calculated both to satisfy the original remit – to produce a general depiction of Arthur and his knights – and the need to supply a more convincing symbol of good government. The accepted replacement was entitled Hospitality: The Admission of Sir Tristram to the Fellowship of the Round Table (begun c. 1848; incomplete in 1864). Ostensibly, this represented a less troubling subject. Standing on a raised platform, at the end of a crowded hall, King Arthur confers the privileges of his order on an honoured guest. A display of social unity and benevolent rule is thus combined with a solemn recognition of individual merit. Yet as a eulogy to the social benefits of hospitality, it could itself be regarded as an unfortunate choice. Tristram, after all, was an adulterer, a knight whose pursuit of love had once before brought him into conflict with royal authority.

The performance of hospitality was seen by many Victorians as suggestive of order, a notion convenient in its concise evocation of prudent and benevolent government, whether of a household or a realm. On a wider historical level, hospitality frequently commands a different resonance. This is especially so where pre-Romantic literature is concerned. The tension between Arthur's act of integration, and the reputation of Malory's Tristram – a knight who has ‘ado in many countries’ – indicates that the admission of a guest is as likely to announce the unleashing of internal disorder as the domestication or taming of external forces. Portrayals of guests as anarchic figures abound in Western literature.