Notable Arthurians

Notable Arthurians edited by Sigmund Eisner The Standards of Helaine Newstead For Helaine Newstead, there were two kinds ofstudents and scholars: those who met her standards and those who did not. She could be infinitely helpful to those in the first category, and merciless to the others. For example, anyone who did advanced work with her quickly learned that translations would not do: ifyou were going to quote Boccaccio or Le Roman de la Rose, it had to be in the original Italian or French. Fortunately for most ofus, she took a benign, even enthusiastic, view ofdual-language editions: she once told me that 'most medievalists' learned their Italian from such editions of Dante. I can't say, though, that such Italian as I learned in this manner did me much good when traveling in Italy. These standards were not exclusively academic, and certain students in a summer course at Hunter must have been puzzled at her evident scorn for them when the basic cause was that they came to class wearing shoes or sandals over barefeet, which she considered to be the height ofbad taste in the city. Those ofus who did, generally, meet her standards still learned to back down very quickly when we saw signs ofher disapproval. In my case, this was generally caused by a suggested topic for a paper (or thesis) which she considered to be unsuitable, and she was no doubt right. But I could not give way when she objected to my marriage, which caused a (temporary) coolness on her part. She didn't think Kena was good enough for me, she later explained; I wonder whom she would have thought was good enough for me. No wonder she never married herself. But she relented after a few months, and was always our good friend. Helaine was often more ambitious for those she considered to be her best students than we were for ourselves. When I finished my masters thesis under her direction, she immediately asked where I was going to take my Ph.D. Up to that moment, it had never even occurred to me to go on for a Ph.D. I said so. She said, 'Nonsense.' I said, 'Well, maybe N.Y.U. or Fordham?' She said, 'No, Yale'; I would benefit from studying with Talbot Donaldson. To my astonishment, Talbot agreed, and Yale it was. Considering her scornful condemnation of earlier work in adapting medieval recipes as 'frivolous,' I greatly feared I would again have to face her wrath when I published Pleyn Délit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks. I was, however, vastly arthuriana 9.2(1999) 55 56arthuriana relieved when she expressed great enthusiasm for the book: she said I had done the job right. I breathed a sigh of release. That was about the highest praise one could receive. Helaine was not always serious about everything; she also had a mischievous side. I recall passing a place where Billy Graham was preaching—perhaps it was Madison Square Garden?—with Helaine and a slightly tipsy friend who suggested we all go and proclaim ourselves to be Saved. Helaine was all for it; I was adamantly against it, but I had an awfully hard time persuading the other two to drop the idea. She was very proud ofhaving been the first woman president ofthe International Arthurian Society, but had little use for feminism. She felt, simply, that a woman who was any good could make it in a 'man's world' without being given any special privileges: after all, she said, she and I had both done so. I tended to agree with her, whereupon she remarked that the feministswould no doubt label us as 'AuntJemimas.' The last time I saw Helaine she was in Canada acting as an assessor for the Department of English at our university, the University of Western Ontario. Characteristically, she found some of our colleagues (and administrators) worthy of her enthusiastic approval—and the rest, of her unbounded contempt. And, also characteristically, she took advantage of the occasion to enjoy the company ofthose she approved of and to consume the best food and drink London, Ontario, could provide. Fortunately, the culinary establishments ofthe...