J.R.R. Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process: Language and Life

J.R.R. T’ D W  C P 9780230623149_01_prexii.indd i 1/24/2011 5:29:21 PM 97802306231...

Author: Arne Zettersten

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J.R.R. T’ D W  C P

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J.R.R. T’ D W  C P Language and Life

Arne Zettersten

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J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS AND CREATIVE PROCESS

Copyright © Arne Zettersten, 2011. All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–62314–9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zettersten, Arne. J.R.R. Tolkien’s double worlds and creative process : language and life / Arne Zettersten. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–62314–9 (hardback) 1. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892–1973—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892–1973— Knowledge—Language and languages. 3. Fantasy literature, English— History and criticism. 4. Language and languages in literature. I. Title. PR6039.O32Z98 2011 823⬘.912—dc22

2010038983

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: March 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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C   

List of Illustrations

vii

Preface

ix

1 Our First Meeting

1

2 Language behind Everything

11

3 Like Lightning from a Clear Sky

19

4 Tolkien’s Double Worlds

25

5 Middle-earth

33

6 From Bloemfontein to Birmingham

49

7 From Sarehole to Shire

61

8 An Orphan Drawn to Reading

75

9 Student Life at Oxford

87

10 Soldier at the Front

99

11 Experience of War in Tolkien’s Fiction

111

12 Research as Motor

123

13 Interlude at Leeds

135

14 Interplay between Research and Fiction

143

15 A Don on a Sidetrack

149

16 The AB Language: A Unique Discovery

167

17 Fantasy: For Children and Adults

173

18 The Final Years

191

19 Facts and Fiction

199

20 On the Truth of Myth

205

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CONTENTS

21 The Reception of The Lord of the Rings in the World

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22 New Media

215

Epilogue

223

Appendix

225

Bibliography

231

Name Index

239

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I  

1.1

Edith and J.R.R. Tolkien in their garden on their golden wedding day 1966 1.2 Tolkien in his study 1966 with a map of Middle-earth 5.1 “A Long Expected Party.” The earliest version of the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 1/1/2 12.1 The Book of Mazarbul. Page 1 of Book II, chapter 4. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 3/4/12 15.1 Time-scheme for The Lord of the Rings. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 4/2/18:6 17.1 Page 10 of Mr Bliss drawn by Tolkien at the end of the 1920s. The book was published in 1982. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 4/1

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125

150

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P 

“Ridiculous! Preposterous!” J.R.R. Tolkien was wont to exclaim, whenever he heard someone’s opinion of himself or of his work. I had the pleasure of getting to know Tolkien in Oxford and of working within his area of research, medieval language and literature, in the 1960s and 1970s, when his renown had reached its first high-point, and when he had begun to both relish and abhor all the attention. I had been invited by The Early English Text Society, Oxford University Press, to join the same group of researchers as Tolkien, with the task of editing the Ancrene Wisse, a series of medieval English manuscripts, of which Tolkien had just published the most important. After all those meetings and conversations with Tolkien, I have now, thirty years after his death, tried to weave together all the threads to understand and explain just how a studious Oxford professor could so shake the world of literature, as to become the preeminent author within the genre of fantasy and moreover be acclaimed as the writer of the twentieth century. My book is the result of a fresh reading of Tolkien’s scholarly papers, set in relation to the visual power of his fantasy writing. I will demonstrate how all the questions about Tolkien’s specialness can be logically answered. Tolkien was often enthusiastic about sonorous ancient languages, early heroic poetry, and adventure-packed international mythology. All of these enthusiasms informed his writing. Tolkien was unique and took more delight than any listener in his own ability to tell a story. All of this influenced his enthusiastic style of communicating. Tolkien mastered an array of Indo-European languages both living and dead. He also constructed a long series of private languages, like Nevbosh and Naffarin, and fictional languages such as Sindarin and Quenya. He discovered, identified (and named) the mediaeval “AB language,” about which I wrote my own doctoral thesis in 1965. My focus here is strictly on Tolkien’s creative process throughout the various phases of his life as a writer, a career full of alternations between the primary, real world and the secondary world of fiction,

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x

PREFACE

between academic research and fantasy, between historical literature and a nascent postmodernism, between evil in literature and humanity in life. Tolkien was complicated, certainly, but not unfathomable, and like his writings, he was deeply human. Of Tolkien’s contemporaries, I am especially grateful to Norman Davis, who succeeded him as professor at Merton College and was president of The Early English Text Society, Oxford. He introduced me to Tolkien when I was twenty-seven years old, and also to the society’s secretary, R.W. Burchfield, later editor in chief of the mighty Oxford English Dictionary. Others I talked to about Tolkien and his life in Oxford were Professor Eric Dobson, Jesus College, Oxford, Professor John Lawlor, Keele University, and Professor John Spencer, Hong Kong University. During the last few years, especially at the various conferences arranged to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings, I have rubbed shoulders with almost all the leading Tolkien researchers. I have learned a great deal, particularly from Tom Shippey, Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond, and Verlyn Flieger. It was a great privilege to me to get to know Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the official biography of Tolkien and who had hopes of writing a revised and enlarged edition in the near future. Sadly, he passed away in 2005. Many others have contributed to varying extents with valuable insights into Tolkien and his work, among them Peter Gilliver, Oxford English Dictionary, actor Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf in the films), author Lars Gustafsson, who as early as 1961, interviewed Tolkien in Oxford for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Anders Stenström (Beregond), Stockholm, Professor Jean Hudson, Malmö, and my brother Gunnar Zettersten, Stockholm. My wife, Dr. Gerd Bloxham Zettersten, my sharpest critic, has contributed many crucial improvements to the original text and also to the work of translation into English. With regard to the translation, I am particularly grateful to Bryan Errington, senior lecturer at Gothenburg University, for his specialist help in revising the English version of my book. I thank too the director of the Atlantis publishing house, Stockholm, Dr. Peter Luthersson, and the production manager, Lennart Rolf, for excellent help with technical matters. From the outset, Christopher Tolkien has been supportive of my plan to write a book about my friendship with his father and about the relationship between research and fantasy. I have also been received graciously by Priscilla Tolkien when I met her in Oxford and Birmingham. Cathleen Blackburn, Manches Solicitors, Oxford,

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representing The Tolkien Trust, has always been in every way helpful. So too have Dr. Judith Priestman and Colin Harris, Department of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford, David Brawn and Chris Smith at HarperCollins, London, and librarian Maggie Burns, Birmingham Central Library. I am especially grateful to head archivist Matt Blessing, Special Collections, University Archives, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for allowing me the privilege of giving the opening speech at the Tolkien exhibition at Marquette University in 2004, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings in the United States.

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CH A P T ER

1

Our First Meeting

“Mr. Zettersten! Do come in!”

Suddenly there he was, J.R.R. Tolkien, standing in front of his house at number 76 Sandfield Road, in Headington, just outside Oxford. He had kept an eye out for me from the sizeable detached house, which had a small front garden with a few bushes and trees near the wooden gate and fence. I could only assume there must be a proper garden further back. The house was in plastered gray, its three gables looming large over the peaceful street. Its large windows, both downstairs and upstairs, were divided into small panes. Tolkien was standing by the garage, later so famous, which he had converted into a study and library. He exuded friendliness and a palpable sense of expectation. It was an overwhelmingly beautiful day in June 1961, of a greenness one is often tempted to believe exists only in England. Tolkien turned out to have a surprisingly robust physique, straight of back and with a natural heartiness in his manner. That first meeting, to be followed by many more during the 1960s and 1970s, was the most hugely agreeable surprise to me. I had prepared thoroughly—I had read all that Tolkien had written about the English language and almost all his output in the genre of fantasy, The Lord of the Rings particularly carefully. Nonetheless I was nervous as I approached the gable to the left, where the entrance to the house was and where Tolkien waited, hand outstretched. I trembled before the meeting, primarily because I was aware of the huge weight of knowledge he commanded in the field of language, both practical and theoretical. I was twenty-seven and in good shape, yet the slight upward slope had affected my breathing somewhat. In the moment I met Tolkien, it occurred to me suddenly that I might lose my ability to talk and might forget all his writings, not to mention the contents of The Lord of the Rings. The few steps from

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J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

Figure 1.1 Edith and J.R.R. Tolkien in their garden on their golden wedding day 1966. Photo: Pamela Chandler. Copyright: Diana Willson

gate to garage were doubt-ridden and heavy. I had time to study Tolkien’s appearance. His hair, parted on the left, was combed so that it lay moderately thick on the back part of his head. His hairline was rather high and rose a little higher to meet his parting; the open, powerful face under the broad forehead was all the more dominating. The eyebrows were bushy, though not quite to the extent I had seen

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OUR FIRST MEETING

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in photographs in newspapers and books. Suddenly I was there, and his firm and warm handshake roused me to life and allowed me to reclaim my lost self-confidence. “How lovely to meet you! We’re going to have such a lot to talk about. Let’s start with a cup of tea.” I came to know J.R.R. Tolkien during the last thirteen or so years of his life. I began exchanging letters with him in 1959 when I was twenty-five and had just started in the field of research into medieval languages, a subject that had occupied Tolkien since the 1920s, that is, almost forty years. My first letter from him was dated May 19, 1959. Now he stood at the height of his career, with a limited but remarkable output of linguistic scholarship, plus a whole new venture into fantasy literature that would later see him acclaimed as “Writer of the Century.” I had walked slowly and expectantly on this clear summer morning, from the center of Oxford out to Sandfield Road in the suburb of Headington, a couple of miles to the east. Headington was once a small village on the gentle mound of what is still called Headington Hill, but in those days the village had been totally absorbed by Oxford. In the early 1960s, it was still a place where a good number of the houses were slightly remote, and it was entirely possible to retreat from the world as if one were living in the country. It was considered by many to be a rather impressive achievement to walk all the way from the city center to Headington. I had started my walk eastward along Oxford’s pulsing thoroughfare, High Street, or “The High” as it was always known. Even as early as the 1960s this was bedeviled with heavy traffic. I had passed Merton Street on my right, where Tolkien would come to live in the final year of his life, 1972–1973. Merton Street presented a contrast to “The High” with its leisurely tempo, students cycling by on their way to Merton College—dating from 1264 and one of the oldest colleges in Oxford, and to which Tolkien had been attached since 1945. Just a few paces further along “The High” soars the clock tower of Magdalen College. This tower and nearby Magdalen Bridge provide the setting for the students’ lively annual May Day celebrations, when a choir of students sings from atop the tower soon after daybreak. Magdalen Bridge carries “The High” over the river Cherwell, a tributary of the Thames. On the first of May, the bridge swarms with students, some of whom will always be persuaded to leap into the water. Others prefer punting, pushing themselves along the shallow river by means of a long pole in the traditional flat-bottomed boats that may be hired from the boathouse.

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On the other side of the street, directly opposite Magdalen College, I also passed one of Tolkien’s most favourite haunts, the botanical gardens, the oldest in all England, founded in 1621. Here stands one of Tolkien’s favorite trees, a black pine (Pinus niger), beneath which he enjoyed sitting. The last known photograph of him was taken near this tree by his grandson Michael on August 9, 1973, two weeks before Tolkien’s death. The black pine, which is now four or five meters in diameter, is still impressive. It has a bushy crown with outstretched branches and long, sturdy needles. It looks like a giant with many limbs, clambering skyward. Thoughts can easily turn to Tolkien’s tree people, the Ents in The Lord of the Rings. The name “black pine” comes from its bark, dark gray or black and heavily scored with deep furrows. Tolkien adored trees. Had there been treehuggers in the 1940s, when Tolkien was busy completing The Lord of the Rings, then he would certainly have been one. I was convinced that a meeting with Tolkien required rather careful preparation. I was therefore keen to get a feeling of the special atmosphere of Oxford in some of the environments where Tolkien had flourished. During my walk to Headington via the London Road and the slight slope up toward Headington Road, I had plenty of time to consider what I had embarked on. My earliest written contacts with Tolkien had been mediated by Professor Norman Davis, who had taken over the prestigious Chair of English Language and Literature after Tolkien’s retirement in 1959. I had begun writing my doctoral dissertation in English at the University of Lund, Sweden, at the beginning of the 1960s. In 1958, at the age of twenty-four, I had begun to lecture in English phonetics at the English Department with Professor Olof Arngart as my supervisor. My dissertation, which was to be finished in 1965, dealt with the AB language, meaning the thirteenth-century Middle English literary language, on which Tolkien was the leading expert. I had made my first contact with Tolkien by letter on May 15, 1959, which he immediately answered on May 19. It was probably quite easy for the experienced professor of English to realize from the beginning how closely my interests within language research coincided with his own. I felt like the young Frodo, when—at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings—he pays a visit to the aging Bilbo at Hobbiton. I could not help it, but after just a few minutes, I noticed that there was some kind of father-son spirit or community of interests, which made it natural for me to look up to Tolkien and for him to respect me as a prospective coworker or colleague in the editorial work for the

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Early English Text Society. Oxford. The aim of this project was to publish all the seventeen manuscripts of the medieval prose text, The Ancrene Wisse, “The Rule for Anchoresses.” This was Middle English literature of high linguistic, literary, and cultural value, which came into existence at the beginning of the thirteenth century. I realized that I would quickly become one of the group of philologists among whom Tolkien was the legendary forerunner. I was after all still in my tweens, “as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three” (The Lord of the Rings, p. 21). I turned out to be the youngest editor in this project, which was initiated as early as 1944. During this first meeting with Tolkien, I found time to ask my most burning questions on the language and literature of the medieval period. This pattern recurred every time we met. I was always keen to receive answers to a series of questions about the editorial work for the Early English Text Society. When I was most occupied with these text editions in the 1960s, Professor Norman Davis was the president of the society. I was to be the editor who finalized the project in 2000 with the last edition in the series of Ancrene Wisse manuscripts. The day after my first visit to Tolkien in Sandfield Road in 1961, Norman Davis asked me carefully about the outcome of our meeting. “We got on swimmingly,” I said. This was really true, and it was something that I could never have figured out in advance. Nor could I have predicted that Tolkien would immediately ask so many questions about my studies and my research. I had called on him in order to discuss my dissertation and above all to get ideas about solving some intricate etymologies. It was evident—even during our first discussions—that the role of a communicator of knowledge gave Tolkien great intellectual enjoyment. He expressed strong emotions in his story-telling, and it was impossible to avoid being struck by his irresistible joy in communicating. This joy had been well known during the whole of Tolkien’s career at Oxford. He had also been known to be difficult to understand during lectures. Not only did he speak unusually quickly, but he also had a remarkable narrative technique, which many had difficulties in grasping. He was always in a hurry and had too much to say, which made his speech rather incomprehensible. It took at any rate a certain time to get used to Tolkien’s way of speaking, and most people did not get the opportunity. Humphrey Carpenter mentions in his biography (p. 63) that Tolkien himself had revealed that he had bitten his tongue once playing rugby, which had made his speech

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somewhat slurred. Carpenter did not really believe this, since Tolkien was known to speak a little unclearly even before that. Tolkien’s style of speech may be studied with the help of the interesting CD collection of radio and TV interviews published by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2001. It is obvious how difficult it must have been to follow Tolkien as he spoke, even though a radio or TV interview would have created a more relaxed setting than a lecture at the university, a social gathering at a pub, or a lively meeting with colleagues after a dinner in his own college, Merton. Tolkien’s mode of expressing himself did not allow him to leave enough time for emphasizing important words or expressions, as is normal for lecturers with rhetorical aspirations. Tolkien was an entertainer rather than a conventional speaker. My impression was that the social environment meant everything for Tolkien, and that he enjoyed using colorful and amusing examples with a select vocabulary. Tolkien had a special way of being amused by his own, often drastic comments and roared with laughter when he came to particularly vivid scenes in his stories. One could never—really never—be downhearted or in low spirits in his company. He sometimes interspersed his speech with ironic, sophisticated remarks, both orally to journalists and inquisitive admirers and in written form in many of the letters that are published. Some of his remarks to journalists were occasionally misinterpreted, as is evident in several of his comments on interviews in newspapers. I myself had no problem in understanding Tolkien’s special pronunciation. I usually understood every word that flowed from his rich vocabulary. There were many reasons for this. First of all, we always met privately in his home, or at lunch or dinner at his college, where I mostly sat beside him or opposite him and could occupy myself with lip-reading as a complement to listening carefully. In addition, I was both a language historian and a phonetician and had taught phonetics and analyzed English pronunciation in detail. In my own scholarly writing, I used practically all the linguistic vocabulary that Tolkien used in his, which also gave me a strong motivation for wanting to understand every word that he uttered. Since we wrote and commented on similar texts in English, the formation of concepts and the structure of language were the same. I certainly lacked his advanced imagery (even if I grasped everything) and his ability to associate to the mythologies of world literature. It was mostly when I was confronted with new personal names and place-names from The Silmarillion (which was published by Christopher Tolkien in 1977) that I misunderstood some words, but this was rather seldom. I also had to keep up with Tolkien’s tempo

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and be aware that some name may have been introduced recently and had to be understood in its context. It was necessary to listen with total concentration, as he often inserted “don’t you think?” or “what do you think?” in the course of his rapid flow. Tolkien did not care much about traditional English intonation. He may have appeared conventional in many people’s eyes, but his conversation was most unconventional and strongly personal. At our first meeting, I had expected to confront a learned medievalist who could explain everything about thirteenth-century English, which I had decided should be the topic of my dissertation. Instead I met an enthusiastic lover of stories, adventures, and myths who could endlessly communicate the knowledge of his own Middle-earth. Although Tolkien was reputed to be difficult to understand during a lecture, I could never agree with all the inattentive listeners who complained. On visiting J.R.R. Tolkien in Oxford in the 1960s, I was always met by great hospitality. He was always full of tricks and practical jokes. Sometimes we met in his study upstairs, sometimes we had tea with his wife, Edith, in the drawing-room on the ground floor, but most of the time we met in his garage library. There was a wealth of papers and reference books, maps, and manuscript pages of different versions of legends connected with The Silmarillion. There were also translations into various languages of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien often wrinkled his forehead when he was thinking and laughing, which happened most of the time. His pipe seemed to have great significance in his behavior and was part of his body language. Sometimes he kept it in his hand, sometimes he sucked it without lighting it. He moved the upper part of his body while he swung his pipe. It is easy to imagine that listeners could not concentrate on understanding everything in such a situation. When we met, Tolkien treated my own discussion points with great care. His eyes would gleam, he often laughed with great delight, and he would scrutinize me carefully with friendly, roguish eyes when he wanted to trigger a reaction or meet with opposition. During the 1960s, I often wondered why Tolkien always showed such enthusiasm before and during our meetings. This was not just due to our mutual respect for each other’s results within medieval research. When I looked through all our points of contact and mutual interests, I realized that there were obvious similarities as regards linguistic training, the study of literature, and philological research. The points where we differed most were Tolkien’s remarkable creativity and achievements within fantasy literature as well as extensive reading

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Figure 1.2 Tolkien in his study 1966 with a map of Middle-earth. Photo: Pamela Chandler. Copyright: Diana Willson

in and knowledge of early European literature. He did not share my interest in modern linguistics and literature. I have to admit that Tolkien did not show any signs of wanting to commit himself to new philological research projects during the 1960s. The truth is that the Middle English text edition of The Ancrene Wisse from 1962, which is central among his philological studies, was his last major piece of academic research. It was a worthy finale to an interest that covered more than five decades. Another reason for Tolkien to be keen to meet me was that I represented the Nordic language area and was able to pronounce and read texts from all the Nordic countries and also compare all the differences historically. Tolkien was totally enchanted when, on one occasion in the 1960s, I read the same Bible text to him in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. I took a text from the Gospel according to St. Mark in Gothic translation kept in the Silver Bible at the library of Uppsala University, Sweden. I read that piece too, which proved to be most fascinating to the sound-minded Tolkien, from both a historical and a phonetic point of view. The East-Germanic language, Gothic, was one of Tolkien’s great favorites among languages. We managed to

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stage a kind of mini-symposium in comparative Germanic language research with only two participants. The fact that the Swedish language in a limited way can be called a tonal language, where different meanings of the same word may be due to tonal differences, somewhat similar to the situation in Chinese, Vietnamese, and so on, amused Tolkien greatly. He was, however, even more struck by the well-known fact that Norwegian has two national languages, one version based on Danish and spoken by the majority, and New Norwegian, which is more dialect-based. He was also tickled by my examples of glottal stops in Danish and, above all, by the way the vocal chords begin to vibrate when the expiration increases. These oral exercises were known to Tolkien only from a theoretical point of view, so he appreciated all my practical examples. Tolkien could read and understand Finnish rather well, which was not the case with me, but it was easy for me to read some Finnish texts aloud in order to emphasize even more the great differences between the languages of the Nordic countries both in structure and pronunciation. To me, as a young linguist, it was a great experience to be able to entertain this legendary fantasy author, who at the same time was a world authority in certain specific scholarly areas. Normally it was of course Tolkien who took command of the entertainment with his story-telling gifts. In the 1960s and before, it was normal, indeed necessary, for a graduate student working for a doctor’s degree in English at a Nordic university to study the ancient Germanic languages rather intensively. One might say that most doctoral candidates were trained to become competent linguists, well acquainted with word forms in the ancient Germanic languages. Of these Old Germanic languages, Old English (Anglo-Saxon) was studied most intensively, but the oldest Germanic language, Gothic, was also studied seriously. Tolkien was quite delighted that I, like himself, had read the extant part of Wulfila’s translation of the bible from Greek to Gothic, originally from the 360s A.D. and nowadays kept in only one copy, from c. 550, at Uppsala. I could therefore easily follow his discussions of Gothic words and expressions. Bishop Wulfila, who lived c. 311–383, translated a part of the New Testament into Gothic, and this is the only major text extant in the Gothic language. The Silver Bible is a magnificent manuscript, written with silver and gold ink on purple-colored parchment. It was probably produced at Ravenna. What distinguished Tolkien from all other scholars was the fact that he could speak Gothic and that he could construct—with great power of insight—words in Gothic that would have been regarded as real, if the corresponding texts and contexts could have been expected in

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written form. His memory and his ability to reach linguistic conclusions were so unusual that he could quickly figure out how ancient languages would have sounded in different periods. This ability made a strong impression on me, and I realized that it must have been the foundation for his invention of artificial languages in his fantasy fiction. The various mythologies from Nordic and other countries constituted another area where my reading experience and knowledge livened up our debate. Tolkien had found a conversation partner who knew the Icelandic sagas, the Finnish national epos Kalevala, and, in particular, the Old English heroic poem, Beowulf, set in sixth-century Denmark and the country of the geatas (Götaland) in Sweden. I had even been to Roskilde in Denmark and the little village of Lejre outside Roskilde, both associated with the likely background of Beowulf. When I began to study Tolkien’s scholarly articles as a twentyfive-year-old research student at Lund in 1959, my curiosity led me immediately back to The Lord of the Rings, the first part of which I had read as a student in 1954. As I read more articles by Tolkien, when I began writing my doctoral thesis in the 1960s, I was tempted to trace and read most of his fiction. I realized from the beginning that Tolkien’s research and fiction were intimately connected and should be understood in parallel. Consequently I became better prepared to discuss his literary work together with him. This perhaps provides an additional explanation why Tolkien enjoyed discussing both The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion with me. I was certainly an attentive and docile listener who could ask the right questions at the right moment. My strategic listening could be precisely adapted to the performance that Tolkien always gave, when the topic was his own fiction. He always remained a most enjoyable entertainer, even when the audience was as small as a young, inquisitive scholar from Lund.

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CH A P T ER

2

Language behind Everything

Språksnille (= linguistic genius) was a Swedish word that Tolkien became attracted to. He enjoyed the beauty of sounds, especially in Welsh and Finnish, but also in the Scandinavian languages. I once sent Tolkien a clipping from the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, in which he was called a språksnille. He wrote back to me immediately, as he used to do: “I am actually not a språksnille, as Dagens Nyheter says on 7 February 1973. . .” But this is exactly what he was and that can be shown in many ways. Tolkien was amused, when we discussed the word snille, that we could easily agree that it was related to the German word schnell “quick” (as in Schnellzug), corresponding to a less known English word snell, which has survived in Scotland and parts of northern England and means “smart,” but also “bitter, sharp,” He had all these qualities in his own spoken language. He was quick and smart in his diction, but he could also, when he reacted against an injustice or false interpretation of his own work, be bitter and sharp, agitated and critical, even bitingly satirical and sarcastic. Almost all our discussions about words and their etymology were, however, followed by expressions of joy and happy laughter. I quickly learned that all relations between languages and their families should be studied as a pleasure, and that all comparisons between languages or meanings of words could be presented as advanced entertainment. Language and linguistic matters were always at the center of Tolkien’s thinking. When discussing literature and myth, we mostly drifted on to language. When we discussed cultural differences and historical changes, Tolkien always argued on the basis of examples from language. He was always adamant on one point, namely, that his fantasy stories would fit the various languages that he had constructed. This standpoint was illustrated by an important letter to his American publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. (Letter 165), in which

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Tolkien claims that his work “is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration.” This is one of Tolkien’s key statements and he continues in the same letter. “The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.” These quotations form a starting point for the understanding of Tolkien’s whole literary work. They may help us to pick out the nuances of his attitude to languages and his views on different languages and dialects. At the same time, it is essential to relate this to the background of how the English language developed in the British Isles, where several of the languages that Tolkien mastered competed with each other, for example the Celtic languages, Latin, the Scandinavian languages, French, and the Norman dialect. The more I learnt to know Tolkien and was able to understand his deep knowledge of these languages, the easier I understood that he had a maximum basis for supporting all the conclusions he drew about early English. It is understandable that he was tempted early in his life to study Middle English, which had become such an exciting mixture of many components. One linguistic field I remember discussing with great interest with Tolkien was the rather new theory about how vocabulary could play a part in deciding where the likely origin of the Indo-European languages could be placed. Tolkien was a word-lover and etymologist of great renown and loved to discuss what words or types of words were common to Indo-European languages. Once I prepared myself before one of our meetings by writing down a long list of such names, particularly among the animal and plant families. Since words like birch, beech, oak and pine, bear, sheep, dog, horse, fox, and wolf exist in many Indo-European languages, we must look for countries or climate zones that show examples of these animal and plant species, for example an inland climate in central Europe, if we want to draw conclusions about the original home of the Indo-Europeans. The words for “honey” or “mead” are often cited in this context, since such words exist in most Indo-European languages. This is also true of the existence of “bees,” which must be around in order to produce honey, which in turn is the basis for mead and similar intoxicants. Honey bees probably did not exist in those parts of Asia that had previously been discussed as possible home of Indo-European languages. Tolkien loved this type of argument, where one conclusion is built on another and where the debate leads to a concrete result. He was hugely amused when I told him that it was still possible to

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drink mead based on an old Viking recipe among the ancient burielmounds of Old Uppsala. There are many dramatic events and changes connected with the early history of the British Isles. Celts, Romans, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen succeeded each other and invaded the isles during a period of about 1500 years. The Vikings were probably those who were best known for dramatic incidents and raids. The Viking raids began as early as the eighth century. These became gradually more and more frequent, and in the ninth century, the country was divided into two parts—the eastern and northern half of the country being dominated by the Scandinavians, to be called The Danelaw (=“The Danish law”). The Vikings were called Danaes “Danes” in the Old English sources, but there were also many Norwegians and a fair number of Swedes among the invading Vikings. The country of the West-Saxons, Wessex, became the most important region for the English toward the end of the ninth century and offered the greatest resistance against the Vikings, primarily through the West-Saxon King Alfred (849–901). England did not become a united country until the latter half of the tenth century. At the beginning of the eleventh century, when the Danes had become more and more integrated within the country, the Royal crown was inherited by the Danish King Canute or Cnut, who reigned from 1016 to 1035 over Denmark, England, and Norway, with the North Sea as a huge inland sea in a mighty kingdom. Oxford was therefore Danish during this period. The fact that King Canute was crowned there in 1018 proves that he held Oxford and its geographical position in great esteem. Tolkien enjoyed tremendously my interest in the rather obscure crowning of King Canute in Oxford. My impression was that this crowning was not one of the highlights in the history of Great Britain, either at school or university level. Tolkien was, however, quite exhilarated each time we discussed how Vikings or other Scandinavians behaved on English ground in the course of history. He even suggested jokingly that I was a modern Viking who had invaded the very core of the English research milieu, when I became involved in the editorial work for the Early English Text Society, Oxford. The next foreign invasion came in 1066 when the Normans sailed with their army from Normandy in northern France. Their leader, William the Conqueror, defeated the English in the battle of Hastings and was proclaimed king of England in the same year. The merging of the Anglo-Saxon or Old English language, which was Germanic, and the new Norman-French language, which was Romance, begins

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slowly from that time onward. These two languages would form a mixed language, Middle English, the predecessor of modern English, a future world language of unforeseen flexibility, variability, and expressiveness. Nobody could foresee at this early stage what contribution to world literature that this mixed language would give. It was this language with its rich history and extensive vocabulary that Tolkien was given as work area and study material on his first employment in Oxford immediately after the First World War. In 1919, at the age of twenty-seven, he began as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary, the gigantic dictionary in fourteen big volumes, which would be completed in 1933, after sixty years of lexicographic work. Several supplements have been subsequently added and the dictionary also exists in an online version, which is continually upgraded on the Internet. It has always been my view that the role of the Vikings in the formation of both the population and the language in England has been underestimated by the English. I have always considered that there was too much concentration on the French and too little on the Scandinavians in school books and historical works in England. This seems also to be true in descriptions of historical backgrounds at archeological excavations and similar contexts. I tried to draw some of this into my discussions with Tolkien at an early stage. I felt rather strongly about this question and suggested quite frankly that the Scandinavians had been treated unjustly by British historians. Tolkien approved of this kind of audacious criticism and I am convinced that it helped me to gain his approval in both historical and linguistic matters. I also pointed out that the role of the Jutes in the attacks against the British Isles in the fifth century is hardly ever mentioned in English historical writing. The three invading Germanic peoples, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, have often been called Anglo- Saxons as a collective name. This term is used somewhat wrongly about all these three Germanic peoples at a too early stage, meaning even before they came over from the Continent to the British Isles. Tolkien had nothing to object to my criticism. I must admit, however, that the role of the Jutes in history has been the subject of uncertainty among historians and archeologists lately. Some scholars have, for example, suggested that the Jutes could have come directly or indirectly to southeastern England from the Continent instead of straight from Jutland. Were there no points where Tolkien and I disagreed or where we had occasion to debate questions concerning the history of the

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Normans? Indeed, our discussions were most lively when I took up the important question of the actual background of the foundation of Normandy in the northern part of France. This question did not concern exactly the language area but had to do with the composition of the population. Normandy, which earlier belonged to Neustria, the western part of the kingdom of the Franks, was rather sparsely populated when the Vikings arrived during the latter half of the ninth century. Therefore the resistance was not great when the Vikings conquered part of the northern French territory and laid the foundation for Normandy. The northern part of Normandy was handed over to the Vikings (Danes) by agreement in 911. The year after, Normandy was granted to the Viking known as Rollo the Gangler or Hrolf the Walker, Gånge Rolf (c. 860–932), probably from Norway, who was so huge that a medium-sized horse was not able to carry him, so he had to walk beside his horse. Rollo became the first duke of the Normans. The existence of Scandinavian words in the Norman dialect is noticeable, above all in place-names, and points to the fact that a form of Danish was spoken in parts of Normandy in the tenth or perhaps eleventh century. The Danes were, however, adaptable and soon French culture and the Norman or Anglo-Norman dialect took precedence over the Danish words and phrases. The word Norman is the same as Norseman, meaning “Northman” or “Viking.” The population of Normandy was, at the beginning, a mixture of Danes and Franks. The Franks were a Germanic people, who had conquered the Romans during the sixth century. The Normans multiplied quickly and remained partly Danish-Frankish for several generations during the tenth century. When the Normans invaded England and William was proclaimed king of England in 1066, they spoke the Norman dialect that had been developed in northern France and was no longer a Scandinavian language. Given these facts, I asked Tolkien the reasonable question in several contexts, if he did not think that the Normans should genetically be regarded as a mixed Danish-Frankish people, even if their language in the eleventh century was definitely a French or a Norman-French dialect. This question may very well have been regarded as provocative by many in England, but in the case of the argumentative Tolkien, it was the ideal introduction to a hot debate between us with the usual interruptions for striking anecdotes on his part. Considering the conquest of England by the Jutes together with the Angles and the Saxons in the fifth century, and the influence of

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the Danish Vikings over England in the periods around 750–950 and 1016–1035, when England belonged to Denmark under King Canute, it is easy to see that the influence on England was considerable for about 600 years before 1066. If we argue further that the Norman Conquest of England resulted in a partly Danish increase in population, it may be justified to think of a new mixed community in England, which was Anglo-Saxon, French (earlier Frankish), and to a certain extent Scandinavian. The leading classes in England generally spoke Norman-French after the Conquest. Middle English, the mixed language, which came to be spoken in the whole of England, could be called French-Germanic or Romance-Germanic, since French is a Romance language, merged with Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian features. This is the argument I presented to the formidable English philologist who had read almost everything in North and West Germanic literature before 1600, who had a phenomenal memory for words and languages, who had a critical but benevolent attitude to most branches of philology, and also who had an unfailing urge to regard his surroundings with an infectious sense of humor. I learnt much later, during my archive studies of Tolkien’s life at the Bodleian Library, that he once, during his school days at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, had participated in the debating club discussion of the influence of the Norman Conquest on the English language. In other words, Tolkien was, as usual, well prepared for most of the linguistic questions that can pop up in such a debate. Later on, I also got a chance of reading, in Tolkien’s application for the chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1925, that he had been a cofounder of a Viking Club among the undergraduates during his time at Leeds in 1920–1925. It is probably unique that a candidate for a professorship emphasizes a Viking interest in a serious and formal application. Tolkien was totally capable of elevating an entertaining hobby to a serious occupation and making it an asset in the competition—and he was appointed. Tolkien was always able to entertain. During his time in Oxford, innumerable colleagues and students must have been constantly amused, when they encountered him. Even the appointments committee for the chair of Anglo-Saxon must have been tickled by Tolkien’s creative manner of writing. I tried more and more to express myself in similar ways when I knew that Tolkien himself would appreciate it. “There is more Viking blood in the British population than most people believe” was one sentence I tried to insert in some pauses where Tolkien did not have complete command. He was in full

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agreement, as he expressed it: “for friendship’s sake,” and because I was an obstinate Viking. For my part, the friendship had started as early as 1954, when I was an undergraduate student of English at the University of Lund and a “lightning from a clear sky” struck England.

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CH A P T ER

3

Like Lightning from a Clear Sky

When I came to know Oxford in the 1950s, I was struck primarily by the unique atmosphere. The streets were teeming with students, most of them wearing their academic gowns. The dons and fellows with their longer gowns often cycled with their bicycle clips at the bottom of their trousers. All the students seemed to do their things at the very last moment and have only one aim in view, either a lecture or a contest in rowing, fencing, rugby, soccer, or cricket. I had assumed that Oxford would remind me of the typical Swedish student towns of Uppsala and Lund, but I was wrong. The students dominated the street life much more in Oxford, mostly because of their clothing and seemingly fixed purpose. They gave the impression of being focused and keen on discussions, and I was aware of the quick pulse of the town. It was easy to fall in love with Oxford and I fell instantly. I remember that I wondered a great deal why the students were so keen on hurrying through Oxford. One explanation may have been that the college gates were locked as early as at 9.10 p.m. and that it was essential to make use of the time outside the walls. Another explanation was that there were considerably fewer female students at Oxford in the 1950s, and therefore time was a more precious factor. However, the great interest in sport among students could have been the major reason for the hectic tempo. Oxford was a medium-sized, rather lively, idyllic, academic town in the 1950s. There was a poetic glimmer about the central part of the town, where the leafy areas formed a splendid framework for the magnificent university buildings during the summer months. The beautiful sandstone gave an impression of assured learning and calm reserve toward the outside world. Many of the most stately buildings were libraries or administrative buildings. Church spires and pointed towers stood out elegantly. There were lots of large parks and gardens as a natural surrounding to the rivers Thames and Cherwell, and the romantic Oxford Canal.

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Oxford was in a state of tranquillity. It appeared to be undisturbed by the surrounding world, when most people in Europe and the United States were talking about the cold war. East and west were loaded concepts, which had been given specific contents after the Second World War. Oxford may also have been in a time of waiting from a different point of view. In 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien, professor of English, had published The Hobbit, originally considered to be a children’s book or a fantasy book for young people. It was accepted by Allen & Unwin, Publishers, and well received by critics and gradually by a very large readership. In the same year, 1937, Tolkien had begun what he first called The New Hobbit, which would be finished about twelve years later. During this period, when The New Hobbit became The Lord of the Rings, the Second World War raged. On July 29, 1954, the first part of The Lord of the Rings, which would later be called “The book of the century,” was published. Oxford would never be the same again. No one, at least not Tolkien, could at that point have realized what a success the book would be. No one in the academic Oxford could have known that a new literature genre, fantasy literature, was about to take shape. No one could as yet understand that magic, myths, and miracles would fascinate a whole world of fantasy-hungry readers. The poetic glimmer of Oxford in the 1950s hovered above approximately 6,500 students out of a population of about 110,000 inhabitants. There was a concentration of gifted students, scholars, and professors, which could possibly be matched only by Cambridge in the British university world. The first part of The Lord of the Rings had been published under the title The Fellowship of the Ring in 1954 by Allen & Unwin in this traditional and peaceful environment, in the same period as many significant events in Tolkien’s life. C.S. Lewis, who was a fellow at Magdalen College and widely known both as an author and literary critic, had been appointed professor in Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge and the earlier close friendship between them would be increasingly distant. This was partly due to the fact that Lewis had recently got to know the American writer, Joy Gresham, who took much of his time and whom he would soon marry. In addition to this, in 1953 Tolkien and his family had moved from an old house with numerous rooms in Holywell Street near the center of Oxford to the house in Sandfield Road at Headington, which was not so spacious but had very quiet surroundings. In this connection, something else occurred, which may seem extremely surprising. Tolkien sold his original manuscripts of The Hobbit, Mr Bliss,

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Farmer Giles of Ham, and The Lord of the Rings in 1957 to a Catholic university, Marquette University at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The royalties from The Lord of the Rings did not pour in immediately, and therefore the income from the sale of the manuscripts to Marquette University came in very handy considering the costs of the house at Headington. The Tolkien Collection at Milwaukee has nowadays grown to more than 11,000 original manuscript pages, in addition to an extensive collection of literature concerning Tolkien and his writings. Since I was myself a keen reader of medieval manuscripts, a large number of which are kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, it was natural for me at an early stage to ask Tolkien where his own original manuscripts were kept. I had expected answers like: “The Bodleian, of course” or “Merton, actually,” and was quite astonished to hear that most of the originals had been sold to an, as yet, rather unknown American university. At that time it would have been impossible for me to imagine— even in my wildest speculations—that I would myself in 2004 give the opening speech at Marquette University on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings and the inauguration of the exhibition of the most important Tolkien manuscripts. Nor could I imagine that I would play a video on this occasion showing Tolkien himself reading some sentences from The Lord of the Rings and that I would tell all the experts on Tolkien from Europe and the United States present what it was like to communicate with Tolkien and to discuss our respective Ancrene Wisse publications for the Early English Text Society, Oxford. The autumn of 1954 had been astonishingly productive for Tolkien’s publisher. The second part of The Lord of the Rings, i.e., The Two Towers, came on November 1 in England. In the United States, the publisher Houghton Mifflin published The Fellowship of the Ring on October 21, 1954, and The Two Towers on April 21, 1955. The reception of the first two parts was somewhat restrained in both England and the United States. The literary critics were exceedingly divided and expressed both glowing praise and definite repudiation. They were either full of enthusiasm or rather fierce in their devastatingly negative criticism. Tolkien’s colleagues were most often skeptical or uninterested. In this context—with emphasis on the special year of 1954—when the first part of Tolkien’s trilogy came, “like lightning from a clear sky,” it is appropriate to quote C.S. Lewis’s review in Time and Tide 35, which appeared as early as August 14, only two weeks after the

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publication of the book. This is the beginning of the fairly short review entitled “The Gods return to earth,” which seethed with enthusiasm and also admiration: [The Fellowship of the Ring] is like lightning from a clear sky; as sharply different, as unpredictable in our age as [William Blake’s] Songs of Innocence were in theirs. To say that in it heroic romance, gorgeous, eloquent, and unashamed, has suddenly returned at a period almost pathological in its anti-romanticism, is inadequate. To us, who live in that odd period, the return and the sheer relief of it is doubtless the important thing. But in the history of Romance itself—a history which stretches back to the Odyssey and beyond—it makes not a return but an advance or revolution: the conquest of new territory.

Many of the negative reviews by other writers were definitely due to a rejection of the literary mode, which would later be called fantasy. As time has gone by, this genre has gained the interest of readers all over the world and later critics have reconsidered their attitudes and accepted it as significant. It is taken for granted by most Oxford inhabitants that the city has been often described in literature, that many celebrities have belonged to Oxford colleges, and that many poets and novelists have studied there. Just a few of the most famous authors and their colleges need to be mentioned here: P. B. Shelley (University College), William Morris (Exeter), Oscar Wilde (Magdalen), Graham Greene (Balliol), Evelyn Waugh (Hertford), T. S. Eliot (Merton), Dorothy Sayers, and Iris Murdoch (Somerville), William Golding (Brasenose), etc. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the various TV series based on Colin Dexter´s detective stories with Chief Inspector Morse and Detective Sergeant Lewis, played by John Thaw and Kevin Wately, became immensely popular. They have contributed to making the historical buildings, such as the Sheldonian Theatre, Radcliffe Camera, and many colleges well known throughout the TV-watching world. When The Lord of the Rings came out in three parts (1954–1955), Tolkien was a fellow at Merton College, which was founded as early as 1264. The college library is known from 1337–1338, one of the oldest in the world, having been continuously used from the fourteenth century onward. Tolkien came to Oxford as an 18-year-old student in 1910. He had won a scholarship to Exeter College (founded in 1314), close to the magnificent Bodleian Library, the very core of academic Oxford. When he was appointed professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford after a five-year period at Leeds, he became linked to Pembroke College (1624) as fellow.

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When Tolkien was appointed professor of English language and literature in 1945, he also became fellow of Merton College, the most perfect association for a medievalist, since he now had immediate access to the distinguished medieval library at Merton. One of the great highlights of my visits to Oxford was when Tolkien took me around in this gem of a library, which provided such an immediate atmosphere of medieval learning. Most of the large volumes in the library had been acquired before the introduction of book printing in England toward the end of the fifteenth century and written by monks or scribes in beautiful, individual handwritings. Some of the most valuable volumes were chained to the shelves. Tolkien was well versed in the copying habits of the scribes and he did not deny that his own handwriting had certain similarities with the way the medieval scribes wrote. Merton College became the central official working place for Tolkien from 1945 onward. It was in Merton he met his students for tutorials, he partook in some of the week’s lunches and dinners, and he attended official meetings and also innumerable social gatherings. As a professor and fellow, Tolkien had his room at Merton for tutorials and research, but he also worked a great deal at home in Sandfield Road. It was here—after a long creative period with several interruptions during the Second World War—that Tolkien began to complete The Lord of the Rings and to start a long period of negotiation with the publisher, Allen & Unwin, at the end of the 1940s. From the end of the Second World War, Tolkien remained faithful to Merton College, he became an honorary fellow in 1972, and, as a special tribute, he was given an apartment of his own in Merton Street from his college after the death of his wife Edith in 1971. The reason why the word fellow is so essential in this context is the fact that it forms the root of the concept The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Fellowship may mean an association, but it also refers to the fellowship or brotherhood that thrives within the group that accepts the task of destroying the Ring under the leadership of Frodo, the hobbit who is the main protagonist in the trilogy. The word fellow is a Scandinavian word, derived from felagi, which was absorbed into Old English in the Viking Age before the year 1000. It meant “(business)-partner, comrade.” The first part of the Scandinavian word fe means “cattle, money” and the second part refers to “laying down, putting down.” The whole word originally referred to “a person who puts down money in an enterprise, a companion.”

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Oxford was thus struck by lightning in 1954, but the academic community was only moderately disturbed or affected. Neither J.R.R. Tolkien nor C.S. Lewis was met with admiration or even interest from the academic establishment for their fantasy fiction. Many years would elapse until the sale of Tolkien’s works would be counted in very high figures toward the end of the 1970s. Furthermore, the three parts of the film version of The Lord of the Rings would not appear until half a century later to conquer the world, attracting numerous new readers to the original texts. Tolkien was a man who was regarded as giving primacy to the written word. At the same time, he was extremely skeptical of radio, TV, and film versions of his works. Consequently, both Oxford and the world were forced to wait until the turn of the millennium, when the stunningly successful films were produced in a new media world, which was totally unimagined and unpredicted by Tolkien and his time.

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CH A P T ER

4

Tolkien’s Double Worlds

The origin and inspiration for my work on Tolkien were, in the first place, my own understanding of Tolkien’s ideas from my meetings with the author in the 1960s and 1970s. Tolkien’s oral descriptions of Middle-earth and his dual worlds turned out to be particularly valuable to reconsider when I went through his published letters (Carpenter, 1981) and all the archive material at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is not my intention to analyze all the writings produced by Tolkien, or to let the reader drown in comments on the extraordinary detail of his fantasy books. I do not plan to cover the same ground as all others who have written on specific aspects of Tolkien’s works. I have not completed a biography on Tolkien like those by Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977), Daniel Grotta, J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth (1992), Michael White, J.R.R. Tolkien (2002) or John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War (2003). Nor do I write a book simply to describe the contents of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which millions of people have come to know through the books and the films. Instead I want to dwell on Tolkien’s ideas that lie behind his most respected scholarly work and his most important fantasy literature. We may thereby be able to look into a remarkable creative process, embracing both research and fiction, which makes him totally unique as a writer. The older Tolkien became, the more our conversation turned into a discussion of his fiction. This was particularly true of the last years of his life, 1972–1973. I learnt more and more to follow his switches from research and facts into fictional literature and understood better and better how he could dwell in both worlds at the same time or enjoy an interplay between them. These tracks between the two worlds ran very closely together and Tolkien could rush along them simultaneously.

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I learnt to accept that a new idea could be expressed by Tolkien in relation to both worlds at the same time. In the case of our discussions on philology, I had, on the other hand, the opportunity of steering the formulation of the problems, particularly when I wanted to ask special questions concerning the linguistic background of the Middle English texts that we had as common ground. In the case of his fantasy world, I was only a fascinated listener who was able to pose some intricate questions in the course of my general wonderment. Since most readers regard The Lord of the Rings as Tolkien’s supreme achievement in fantasy, ahead of both The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, and naturally also The Book of Lost Tales (1983–1984), it is natural that this work is the main focus. For various reasons, The Lord of the Rings was also more relevant for my discussion with Tolkien during the 1960s. First of all, the sales of the trilogy went up and Tolkien was quite delighted and keen to discuss the success. Secondly, the translations had appeared, one after the other, and Tolkien had special views on nearly all these. The earliest translations were in the Dutch (1956) and the Swedish (1959). Tolkien was so interested in translation problems that he himself wrote a handbook for the translation of names in The Lord of the Rings into various languages. It is often said that Tolkien had a driving force in his writing, which was both personal and general and which could not be resisted, that is, the reader is carried forward by an irresistible force and a dramatic excitement that seems to increase all the time. The reader does not want to put the book down, but is made increasingly curious about the outcome of events up to the inevitable ending, whatever that may be. The questions and the riddles about Tolkien’s world and its background emerge slowly as the action moves ahead. The answers and the solutions also appear, although much more slowly, as the excitement builds up. Tolkien was never especially interested in strictly pedagogical questions, but it is notable that he had a natural feeling for pedagogical planning in The Lord of the Rings. By this, I mean that the excitement is upheld continuously by mysteries, problems, complications, and adventures, and all these are solved or resolved, as the action moves on, which was one part of Tolkien’s talent as a writer. I regard this as a very advanced strategic planning. It is one of the reasons why the trilogy has been read and the films seen by so many. My own book may serve to elucidate this problem-solving, where many answers can be found naturally among the multitude of biographical facts.

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TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

The information that Tolkien’s own fictional literature provides— besides notes to family members, publishers, authors, scholars, and close friends—also adds up to the insight on biographical facts. In other words, Tolkien’s fiction, if interpreted in the right way, contributes to our knowledge of his person and personality. I cannot state with certainty that I can change the general picture of Tolkien in any radical way by some groundbreaking discovery or new advanced interpretation of his fantasy fiction, essays, or poetry. When I discuss the concepts of reality and myth in chapters 19 and 20, I emphasize that we have to redefine some concepts in order to find an overall solution regarding the understanding of Tolkien’s worlds. Tolkien’s view of his own fiction and the relation between facts and fiction has been the object of great interest and has resulted in innumerable comments in books and articles. Tolkien himself has contributed various clues to an explanatory model by introducing the concepts “sub-creation” and “secondary worlds.” In one of the rare TV interviews with Christopher Tolkien in 1962, the latter confirms that his father could be said to have created “a secondary world, a second alternative world,” that is “a world which exists only in fantasy,” and that this is the one depicted in The Lord of the Rings. It is a world that Tolkien himself called “sub-creation,” meaning an underlying creation. Tolkien discusses his fictionalized world at many points in his writings, for example in the seminal essay “On Fairy- Stories.” Tolkien explains there that God has given him the gift of achieving “a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.” Tolkien’s essay was published in 1947 in a festschrift for Charles Williams, a close friend and member of the literary association, The Inklings. This association was dominated from the 1920s to the 1940s by Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The essay was based on a guest lecture given by Tolkien at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 1939. In the following quotation from the essay (pp. 229–30), Tolkien explains that children are capable of “literary belief,” a state of mind called “willing suspension of disbelief” by the poet C. T. Coleridge in his Biographia Literara (1817). Tolkien continues: What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “subcreator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art,

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has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.

This definition of the concept of “truth” becomes relevant only when one has entered the secondary world, and it is one of the mainstays for the understanding of Middle-earth. Every time that Tolkien made a reference to events from The Lord of the Rings, he presupposed that I was inside the secondary world. This means that he could never imagine that I mistrusted his fantasy fiction, or that I disbelieved his explanations as answers to my questions. It was always natural for Tolkien to believe that I understood his view of the concept of “truth” and always believed in Middle-earth. The whole of the fictive world, which Tolkien created, and is represented in printed form by The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, comprises a creation, production, and publication period stretching from ca. 1911 to 1977, when The Silmarillion was published by Christopher Tolkien four years after his father’s death. If we also count Christopher Tolkien’s editing of the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth and The Children of Huron (2007), the period comprises more than 90 years. How long before 1911 Tolkien began to imagine some kind of alternative world is impossible to know. The first concrete sign or evidence of a link with Tolkien’s secondary world is—according to Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien (pp. 66–67)—a German postcard, which he bought during a summer vacation to Switzerland together with some relatives and friends. The card was placed in an envelope, on which Tolkien scribbled a note: “The origin of Gandalf.” The envelope and the card, which I have studied in the Tolkien Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, displays a “Berggeist” (=mountain spirit) from a painting by the German artist, Josef Madlener. The card shows an old man with a long beard, a long coat, and a broad-brimmed pointed hat, allowing a young deer to touch his raised hands with its muzzle. This card was long regarded as the first concrete picture to illustrate Tolkien’s later fantasy production. As a preparation for an article about Madlener in 1983, Manfred Zimmermann interviewed the artist’s daughter regarding the date of the painting and found that it had been painted toward the end of the 1920s. Tolkien’s memory concerning the year 1911 has therefore been put in doubt. It was also surprising that Madlener’s original painting suddenly appeared for sale at Sotheby’s in London on July 12, 2005. The year 1911 is certainly wrong, as has also been pointed out by Wayne. G. Hammond

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and Christina Scull in The Lord of the Rings. A Reader’s Companion (2005). Tolkien’s imagination and creative talent had begun to be evident much earlier, in his youth, in the shape of drawings, paintings, sketches, and the use of artificial languages. At the end of 1951, when Tolkien had tried to persuade Allen & Unwin to publish both The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, he wrote simultaneously to Milton Waldman from the rival publisher, Collins, in order to explain more about the background and contents of the two works. The beginning of the long letter (Letter 131) runs as follows: My dear Milton, You asked for a brief sketch of my stuff that is connected with my imaginary world. It is difficult to say anything without saying too much: the attempt to say a few words opens a floodgate of excitement, the egoist and artist at once desires to say how the stuff has grown, what it is like, and what (he thinks) he means or is trying to represent by it all. I shall inflict some of this on you; but I will append a mere resume of its contents: which is (may be) all that you want or will have use or time for. In order of time, growth and composition, this stuff began with me—though I do not suppose that that is of much interest to anyone but myself. I mean, I do not remember a time when I was not building it. Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it as long as I could write. But I have never stopped, and of course, as a professional philologist (especially interested in linguistic aesthetics), I have changed in taste, improved in theory, and probably in craft. Behind my stories is now a nexus of languages (mostly only structurally sketched).

This is an important text from the peak of Tolkien’s creative period of fantasy literature. An awareness of Tolkien’s idea of the inherent truth of mythologies does not, however, help us to find a year and a point in time before 1911–1913, when Tolkien may have started to contemplate an alternative world. Individual words and expressions as well as names had, on the other hand, been stored in his memory of earlier childhood and gained relevance during the productive periods later in life. The memories of concrete landscapes in his childhood would have also definitely played a role for Tolkien. Since Gandalf, one of the central figures in Tolkien’s fiction, has been mentioned above, it is worth pointing out that the name Sam Gamgee, another main character, can be traced even further back. The name also has a particularly interesting prehistory and furthermore an exciting posthistory. I will discuss the origin and background

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at some length here. The reason is partly that Sam is a key figure in The Lord of the Rings, and also that I want to indicate by a detailed example how enthusiastically and at the same time seriously Tolkien could locate the origin and history of the personal names when he chose them. The name Gamgee is an example of how reality leaves traces in Tolkien’s fiction and also an example of how imaginatively Tolkien could switch between the real and the fictionalized worlds. Tolkien always took up etymological problems when we met, knowing that I could follow his suggestions for etymologies, but that I was also critical of new and overbold propositions. He was mostly amused by names that could be associated with some kind of anecdote or interesting prehistory. The sonority of the personal names and place-names and the associations they led to were quite vital to Tolkien. The twelve dwarf-names that Tolkien borrowed from the collection of twelfth-century Icelandic poems called the Elder Edda are often quoted in this context. Many of Tolkien’s names are very imaginative, both in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and contribute effectively to the atmosphere of the books. It is also quite possible to regard many of the name constructions as appetizers for readers to make them even more interested in early history. Tolkien became aware of the word gamgee in his childhood at Sarehole (1896–1900). John and Priscilla Tolkien have explained in The Tolkien Family Album that Ronald and Hilary learnt a number of archaic and dialect words, such as gamgee, meaning “cotton wool.” The word originates from Dr. Joseph S. Gamgee (1828–1886) in Birmingham, who had invented a kind of cotton-wool dressing that consisted of cotton-wool between two layers of gauze fabric to be used for medical operations. Tolkien explains in a letter of 1964 to Christopher Bretherton (Letter 257) that he had recalled the name of Gamgee from a holiday trip in 1932 to Lamorna Cove, near Penzance in Cornwall. He named one of the local eccentrics Gaffer Gamgee and the name Gaffer remained in his memory as a kind of family joke among his children. Gaffer here means “old man,” probably derived from godfather, just as gammer comes from grandmother. Tolkien comments on the name in a letter to Christopher in 1944 (Letter 76): As to Sam Gamgee, I quite agree with what you say, and I wouldn’t dream of altering his name without your approval; but the object of the alteration was precisely to bring out the comicness, peasantry, and if you will the Englishry of this jewel among the hobbits. Had

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I thought it out at the beginning, I should have given all the hobbits very English names to match the shire. The Gaffer came first; and Gamgee followed as an echo of old Lamorna jokes. I doubt if it’s English. I knew of it only through Gamgee (Tissue) as cottonwool was called being invented by a man of that name last century.

A few lines from a letter from Mr. Sam Gamgee, London, received by Tolkien on March 13, 1956 (cf. introduction to Letter 184), are relevant as an amusing postscript to the origin of the name Gamgee: I hope you do not mind my writing to you, but with reference to your story “Lord of the Rings” running as a serial on the radio.... I was rather interested at how you arrived at the name of one of the characters named Sam Gamgee because that happens to be my name.

Tolkien answered on March 18 (Letter 184): Dear Mr Gamgee, It was very kind of you to write. You can imagine my astonishment, when I saw your signature! I can only say, for your comfort I hope, that the “Sam Gamgee” of my story is a most heroic character, now widely beloved by many readers, even though his origins are rustic. So that perhaps you will not be displeased by the coincidence of the name of this imaginary character (of supposedly many centuries ago) being the same as yours. The reason of my use of the name is this. I lived near Birmingham as a child, and we used “gamgee” as a word for cottonwool, so in my story the families of Cotton and Gamgee are connected. I did not know as a child, though I know now, that “Gamgee” was shortened from “gamgee-tissue,” and that [it was] named after its inventor (a surgeon I think) who lived between 1828 and 1886.

With Tolkien’s predilection for the origin of words, and above all his interest in how languages are related and how words can be derived from earlier word forms, it is not surprising that a word and a name with such an entertaining background story should occur in Tolkien’s fiction. Tolkien was famous for spending a great deal of time in completing both research and fiction and making his material ready for publication. Colleagues, publishers, editors, and readers often called this procrastination. I do not regard this as an adequate word for any slowness in Tolkien’s case. He rather gave me the impression—in his own way—of being a perfectionist with a strong urge to get all the details to fit together logically. Furthermore, his curiosity and his power of association were so marked that if a change in content were

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to be introduced, such a change would have consequences for the whole development of the plot, and a new version of the text would have to be created and written up. In other words, Tolkien was far too creative as a perfectionist. His ability to keep all the versions of all his stories in his mind simultaneously made it difficult for him to select the best for his final text. Since his texts or tales were often set at different time levels, the complications for selecting this text would increase accordingly. In his research, Tolkien made final and decisive statements only in cases where he could present something new, or where his conclusions were different from those of earlier scholars. His reevaluation of the poetic value of Beowulf is a perfect example of this. The same is true of his identification of the Middle English literary language, the AB language, from the West Midlands (chapter 16). In both these cases, a great variety of new research was initiated, for which the starting point was Tolkien’s new and groundbreaking work.

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CH A P T ER

5

Middle- earth

I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible).

This extract from a letter to Deborah Webster, dated October 25, 1958 (Letter 213), is amusing, since it coincides so well with Tolkien’s own descriptions of himself on other occasions. He actually looked like a hobbit, insofar as one can imagine the looks of a hobbit, or partly as they are depicted at the beginning of the prologue to The Lord of the Rings (p. 2): Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them). They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and eagerly accepted.

Tolkien never denied that the hobbits were inspired by people in Worcestershire in the West Midlands, where his relatives on his mother’s side belonged. He was proud of his attachment to the West Midland area and it was not surprising that he was most actively engaged in research on West Midland dialects, which he began during his years of study at Oxford. Tolkien’s constant wish to present new versions of his fantasy world is an example of his planning, or lack of planning, in his compilation of The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien was undoubtedly most

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Figure 5.1 “A Long Expected Party.” The earliest version of the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 1/1/2. Copyright: The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust

qualified for the extremely intricate task of knitting the thousands of threads together into a coordinated system in The Silmarillion, which Tolkien had worked on for the best part of his life and was never granted time to finish. The Silmarillion means “the history of the Silmarils” (the three large precious stones). After a complicated editorial task based on a vast body of notes, sketches, intricate versions, and independent stories, Christopher published his father´s book, The Silmarillion, in 1977. Christopher Tolkien explains in the preface to The Silmarillion that this collection of tales had formed a “tradition, a background to what was written later.” Christopher also points out that it was quite impossible for him to present all the material on The Silmarillion in

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one single book without creating confusion. Instead his strategy was to try to coordinate a coherent running text, which was in actual fact a kind of compendium of texts and tales. Many readers would probably regard an editorial task carried out by someone, who is not the real author, as something done at second hand. This may be true of other examples of similar editorial tasks. In the case of Christopher Tolkien, one must dismiss such arguments out of hand, since the circumstances are so special. Christopher Tolkien lived his childhood and youth in the Tolkien home, except when he went to school in a different location. Through his father´s readings from The Hobbit in particular, he acquired a great deal of knowledge about Middle-earth and the different features of his father´s fantasy literature. Christopher himself became a member of the academic club, The Inklings, during his studies at Oxford, and in the 1940s and 1950s he participated in the drawing of maps for The Lord of the Rings. There are also passages in these letters where Tolkien carefully considers Christopher’s comments on new events and changes in the contents of the book. In addition, Christopher Tolkien compiled the twelve volumes of partly finished stories, partly unfinished material, with innumerable comments, which were given the collective title, The History of Middle-Earth (1984–1996). Christopher Tolkien edited The Children of Húrin (2007) based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s notes, which was begun as early as the First World War (1918). Christopher, who has been preparing this edition for thirty years, has declared that the tale of Húrin’s son and his sister Niemor became the dominant tale of all Tolkien’s works on Middleearth. It is clear from this summary of Christopher Tolkien’s research and compilation work that the intensity of his work has been remarkable. In such an editorial work, the editor’s statements on interpretations of the texts can be very numerous. This is where a text editor meets with unsurpassable stumbling blocks, especially if many decisions are built on previous either/or choices. My conclusion is that we are getting as close as possible to Tolkien’s real aims, when we read Christopher Tolkien’s publications based on his father’s many unpublished works. Tolkien used the typewriter to write rather slowly. His own handwriting was precise and clear, an elaborated, unusually beautiful calligraphy, which he had learnt from his gifted mother. When his success began in the 1960s, Tolkien was able to have secretarial help quite differently from before. Allen & Unwin sent a young, female helper from London, Joe Hill, who served more as an assistant to

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answer fan letters, receive visitors, and answer the telephone than as a secretary to type manuscripts. The greatest problem for Tolkien as a writer lay in the many versions and variants of his literary works that he finished or had nearly finished from the 1920s onward. If Tolkien had been able in those days to move sequences of his vast material around with the help of a word processor, to cut and paste in various end versions, and to change his data continuously, his fantasy literature would have emerged in a more natural way and The Silmarillion would have been published in his lifetime. At the same time, it is possible that an author as imaginative as Tolkien was would most probably have been caught by new ideas and new topics, which would have distorted the whole production plan into still greater complexity. His excellent memory of all the artificial languages would, if personal computers had been available, have helped him to construct a database of words and texts written in all those languages. The complex of problems connected with Tolkien’s world is also linked to the enigma of his personality. It is inevitable that the interpretation of his personality, which I touch upon at several points, is subjective. The personality of someone as remarkable as Tolkien may also vary considerably during his lifetime. Many statements about him by a variety of writers have often been based on little or no personal knowledge and insufficient information on background and situation. I have noted that many false conclusions have often been drawn and can be regarded as pure guesswork. My own judgments of Tolkien’s personality and character, based on my own meetings with him in his homes and at Merton College in the 1960s and 1970s, are mainly restricted to observations during conversations, which usually dealt with linguistic analyses of Old and Middle English texts and discussions of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. I also had, however, the opportunity of observing Tolkien in discussions with his colleagues, in social contexts at Merton College, where he excelled in conversational charm. Only one biography of Tolkien has been called the official biography, and it has often been used as a foundation for other biographical publications and statements by authors who never had any contact whatsoever with Tolkien. The official biography was written by Humphrey Carpenter, a skilful professional biographer, who had met Tolkien a few times in 1967. On the other hand, Humphrey Carpenter collaborated very closely with Christopher Tolkien and edited the

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excellent collection of Tolkien’s letters, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981) with the participation of Christopher Tolkien. I had the pleasure of meeting Humphrey Carpenter in the summer of 2003, the year before his death. We sat in the pub called “The King´s Arms” in Holywell Street opposite the Bodleian Library and went through many of the unsolved questions related to the authorship of Tolkien. We eagerly discussed the latest works about Tolkien, published during the last few years. Carpenter had just reviewed John Garth´s valuable new book on Tolkien and the war years, Tolkien and the Great War (2003). We agreed that outside the family he and I together seemed to know most of what is worth knowing about Tolkien’s personal history and the man himself, but that all new studies of the writer slowly advance research and increase our knowledge of his fantasy work and its background. Carpenter´s edition of Tolkien’s letters is a most important source for the understanding of Tolkien’s imagination throughout his whole life, from a few letters to his fiancé and later wife, Edith Bratt, at the beginning of the First World War in 1914, to a letter to their daughter Priscilla, sent from Bournemouth only four days before his death. This collection of 354 letters by his hand contains a great deal of personal information and many ideas, which exceed far beyond what can be communicated by a good biography. These letters therefore function as a sophisticated autobiography by Tolkien, since they cover so many decisive features of his life and contain so many personal statements. There are letters to friends and colleagues, to his wife and children, scholars, and publishers and a good number of letters to quite unknown people writing to ask questions, above all, about The Lord of the Rings. It is surprising how carefully and informatively Tolkien takes on all these questions from interested readers. He treats even readers whom he never met but who asked interesting and relevant questions with great respect. He often goes into rather advanced explanations of name problems. He generally keeps a consistent level of style in his letters, which means that he does not simplify difficult linguistic analyses but expresses himself in a clear, almost musical prose. Tolkien’s prose is often detailed but easygoing, penetrating, and profound but at the same time most entertaining. It is elegant and to the point, but also personal and warm. The description of Tolkien’s work on The Lord of the Rings in his letters is an exciting documentation of a unique creative process. In order to understand this, we have to absorb as much relevant information as possible through the letters. The correspondence with members

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of the intellectual tea-club T.C.B.S. (Tea Club and Barrovian Society) before and partly during the First World War and with his sons, John, Michael, and Christopher, was particularly important for Tolkien. The core of the understanding of The Lord of the Rings is most clearly expressed in the letters to Christopher, who was the one who was kept most closely informed on the contents of the work. Tolkien’s son John and daughter Priscilla published an important document in book form to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Tolkien’s birth in 1992, The Tolkien Family Album. It is a book filled with private photos and personal memories of the parents and the whole family. John and Priscilla Tolkien provide, together with many family pictures, tender and precise glimpses of the family life, giving an increased understanding of their father’s rich but also enigmatic personality. In spite of the reticent style, John and Priscilla Tolkien’s book, with its very personal picture collection, is a unique document, which expresses more about Tolkien, the human being, than we had guessed before. I had the special privilege of being shown the memorial exhibition of Tolkien at the Bodleian Library by Priscilla Tolkien in 1992. She described the most important documents for me and gave me useful information about her father’s work, as we passed the manuscripts, sketches, photographs, illustrations, letters, and objects in the exhibition. This discussion of central moments in Tolkien’s life gave me the most valuable insight into his personality besides my own personal meetings with him. Some of the scholars and disciples of Tolkien who knew him well, such as Simonne d’Ardenne and Mary Salu, who are both dead, have contributed with interesting but rather brief articles and statements, which emphasize prominent features in Tolkien’s personality. There are also a few articles of great value published in the proceedings of the Oxford conference 1992 in memory of Tolkien’s birth. I have tried to confirm my own picture of Tolkien by talking to some friends who used to know him or heard him lecturing. I have had long discussions with my colleague at Keele University, the late Professor John Lawlor (1918–1999). John Lawlor came in 1936 to Magdalen College, Oxford, and had C.S. Lewis as his tutor and later Tolkien as supervisor for his further studies. Lawlor got to know both Lewis and Tolkien and became a good friend of both scholars. Lawlor wrote a book about C.S. Lewis in 1966 and later the elegant reminiscences, C.S. Lewis: Memories and Reflections (1998), in which he makes a fascinating comparison between Tolkien and Lewis. I have also enjoyed discussing Tolkien’s lecturing habits in Oxford with

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Professor John Spencer of the University of Hong Kong. Spencer used to attend Tolkien’s lectures on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a student in the late 1940s and has provided me with a great deal of information. Since The Silmarillion may be called a gigantic framework for all the tales of Middle-earth, it is rather unfair to regard Tolkien as a procrastinator, as some of his colleagues did, when—as a full professor and with the Second World War as a complicating factor—he was able to find time to publish The Lord of the Rings, the work, which was to be called “The Book of the Century” in the polls, carried out in 1997 by the BBC, Channel 4, and Waterstone´s bookshop chain. In 1999 the world’s largest web bookshop, Amazon.com, announced that The Lord of the Rings, had been chosen as the “greatest book of the Millennium.” The American bookstore chain, Barnes and Nobles, also carried out an opinion poll, which showed that Tolkien was regarded as the most influential author of the century. It is not surprising that Tolkien has been placed so highly in these and similar polls. It is far more surprising that views in critical debates have been so different and filled with heated opinions and feelings. Either people seem to love or hate his books. This has often led to interesting discussions, even if Tolkien’s friends obviously outnumber his enemies. However much Tolkien’s imagination grew and his sources of inspiration, in nature, in the world of his youth, and in literature, began to be stored in his receptive brain for future purposes, it was not until around 1913 that he began thinking of and noting down anything about The Silmarillion. Tolkien mentions at several places in his letters (Letters 75, 163, and others) that his fascination with Finnish took up a great deal of his working time and negatively influenced his studies for his first university examination in classical languages, Honour Moderations, which he passed in the spring of 1913. He started to rewrite “The Story of Kullervo” from Kalevala, a collection of Finnish mythology (ed. E. Lönnrot, 1802–1884). The beginning of Tolkien’s own mythology is to be found in “The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star,” which Tolkien wrote in 1914 on a trip to Nottinghamshire. It had its starting point in the opening of an Old English poem, “Christ” by the poet Cynewulf from the end of the eighth century. The Old English poem begins as follows: Eala earendel, engla beorhtast, ofer middangeard monnum sended . . .

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which means “Hail Éarendel, brightest of angels/ above the Middleearth sent unto men . . .”. The opening of Tolkien’s poem in the oldest surviving version is cited here: Éarendel arose where the shadow flows At Ocean’s silent brim; Through the mouth of night as a ray of light He launched his bark like a silver spark From the last and lonely sand; Then on sunlit breath of day’s fiery death He sailed from Westerland.

The draft for a letter to a “Mr. Rang,” which Tolkien wrote in August 1967 (Letter 297), gives an explanation of the origin of Éarendel. It deals with explanations of various names, including Éarendel. This is a short extract: This name is in fact (as is obvious) derived from Anglo- Saxon éarendel. When first studying Anglo- Saxon professionally (1913– )—I had done so as a boyish hobby when supposed to be learning Greek and Latin—I was struck by the great beauty of this word (or name), entirely coherent with the normal style of Anglo- Saxon, but euphonic to a peculiar degree in that pleasing but not “delectable” language[ . . . ] To my mind the Anglo- Saxon uses seem plainly to indicate that it was a star presaging the dawn (at any rate in English tradition): that is what we now call Venus: the morning-star as it may be seen shining brilliantly in the dawn, before the actual rising of the Sun. This is at any rate how I took it.

The name Middle-earth occurs for the first time at the beginning of Cynewulf’s poem quoted above in the form middangeard. We are introduced to the story of the creation in Middle-earth at the very beginning of The Silmarillion. Joseph Pearce, the author of Tolkien: Man and Myth (1998), regards this Creation myth as “perhaps the most significant, and the most beautiful, of all Tolkien’s works.” Pearce says further: Somewhere within the early pages of The Silmarillion, p. 3, is to be found the man behind the myth and the myth behind the man. The “myth” behind Tolkien was, of course, Catholic Christianity, the “True Myth,” and it is scarcely surprising that Tolkien’s own version of the Creation in The Silmarillion bears a remarkable similarity to the Creation story in the book of Genesis.

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Tolkien describes the First age of the history of the world in The Silmarillion (p. 3). The book, which contains a great number of legends from the earliest time, begins with a short piece called The Ainulindale. First comes the music of the Ainur, from whence the world begins: There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony.

The vision seen before the Ainur then disappears and they suddenly observe the Darkness, which they had not experienced earlier. After that, the moment is described when the World, Eä, is created, p. 9: Then there was unrest among the Ainur; but Ilúvatar called to them, and said: “I know the desire of your minds that what ye have seen should verily be, not only in your thought, but even as ye yourselves are, and yet other. Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be; and those of you that will may go down into it.” And suddenly the Ainur saw afar off a light, as it were a cloud with a living heart of flame; and they knew that this was no vision only, but that Ilúvatar had made a new thing: Eä, the World that Is.

After we have seen how the world has been created in The Silmarillion, it is time to present a summary of where Middle-earth has appeared in Tolkien’s fantasy fiction and been formed into a unity by father and son.

M-   : 1937: The Hobbit 1954: The Fellowship of the Ring 1954: The Two Towers 1955: The Return of the King

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Appendices A–F 1977: The Silmarillion 1980: Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth 1983–1984: The Book of Lost Tales I–II (The History of Middle-earth I) 1984–1996: The History of Middle-earth II–XII 2007: The Children of Húrin

This summary shows a fantasy sequence centered around Middleearth and seen as a result of Tolkien’s experiences in his childhood and youth, his creative work during his life and Christopher’s editorial energy after his father’s death. This great enterprise covers a phase in history when two devastating World Wars raged. Tolkien himself participated in the first, and two of his sons in the second. It is most interesting and also instructive to observe that the time for the publishing of these tales about Middle-earth proved to be quite different from the one Tolkien had imagined from the beginning or had hoped for. Tolkien began his work on The Book of Lost Tales as early as 1916–1917 during the First World War. Christopher Tolkien calls these tales “experimental” and gives the following explanation for all the problems connected with their origin in the preface to the first part of the edition (1983): The Lost Tales never reached or even approached a form in which my father could have considered their publication before he abandoned them; they were experimental and provisional, and the tattered notebooks in which they were written were bundled away and left unlooked at as the years passed. To present them in a printed book has raised many thorny editorial problems. In the first place, the manuscripts are intrinsically very difficult: partly because much of the text was written rapidly in pencil and is now in places extremely hard to read, requiring a magnifying glass and much patience, not always rewarded. But also in some of the Tales my father erased the original penciled text and wrote a revised version over it in ink—and since at this period he used bound notebooks rather than loose sheets, he was liable to find himself short of space: so detached portions of tales were written in the middle of other tales, and in places a fearsome textual jigsaw puzzle was produced.

The Book of Lost Tales was, as is evident from the above quotation, not part of Tolkien’s publishing plan for the tales about Middleearth. The same is true of the large collection called Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien.

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A condensed timeline for the fantasy works about Middle-earth that Tolkien himself worked with during and between the two World Wars looks as follows: The Silmarillion: Primarily written: 1917–1937; revised 1949, 1967. The Hobbit: Primarily written: 1930–1937. The Lord of the Rings: Primarily written: 1937–(1949); revised 1953.

The difference between this planned working programme, which corresponded to Tolkien’s own hopeful attitude, and the situation, as it developed in reality, is quite acute. It is even more obvious in the light of this difference that Christopher Tolkien has been responsible for a great number of the texts about Middle-earth that have been published. The great dedication that Christopher Tolkien has shown concerning Middle-earth must have been engendered in his early childhood at home and explains his energetic publication urge. If we disregard all the short texts by Tolkien and also his revision periods, we can find a time pattern that clearly indicates that Tolkien had inspirations for his alternative world in 1913, but that Middle-earth became a concept in 1914 and developed through The Silmarillion from 1917 onward. After that Middle- earth continues to be described with The Silmarillion as a framework and remains relevant to Tolkien in all his life. Tolkien’s two main works of fiction, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, were published right in the middle of this framework after the two distinct writing periods, 1930–1937 and 1937–1949. The second period may have been interrupted quite often, above all through the Second World War, but the period as such cannot be regarded as exceptionally long for a work of fiction of such great complexity as The Lord of the Rings. By looking at Tolkien’s three major works on Middle-earth in this way, it will be easier to link Tolkien’s scholarly work with his fiction and find answers to many problems. However, even if we have specified when Middle-earth appears in Tolkien’s fiction, some of the most important questions about it still need to be answered. Where does the word Middle-earth come from? Where is it located? When did it exist? What was it used for? Why is the concept so central, when it concerns the understanding of Tolkien’s whole fantasy sequence. In order to answer the first question, we need to analyze the meaning of the word middangeard in the quotation from Cynewulf above.

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In Old English (700–1100), the word is recorded in two meanings (see Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary): MIDDAN-GEARD, ES; m. I. The middle dwelling (between heaven and hell), the earth, world, II. The world and they that dwell therein, mankind.

In Middle English (1100–1500), two meanings are also recorded (see The Middle English Dictionary): (I) The earth; (II) mankind; also worldly things, the world as opposed to God or the spirit.

It is most relevant for the whole understanding of Middle-earth to study some forms of the corresponding words in other ancient languages, for example, Gothic midjun-gards, Old High German mittan-, mittin-gart, and Icelandic mid-gardr. Bosworth and Toller state in their Anglo-Saxon Dictionary that the Icelandic Edda has preserved the true mythical sense of the word. The earth, i.e., Middleearth, is located in the middle of the universe, lined by mountains and surrounded by the great sea. It is defended by Asgard (the home of the gods). The earth and humanity are depicted as a fortification, besieged by evil powers from the outside, but defended by the gods from above and from the inside. Tolkien specified his own view of Middle-earth on a number of occasions in letters and articles. He wrote in his notes in connection with W.H. Auden’s review of The Return of the King in 1956 (Letter 183): I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd>middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumene, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen world (as Heaven or Hell). The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.

In his letter on October 14, 1958, to Rhona Beare (Letter 211), Tolkien moves a step further, writing: I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary

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mode of seeking remote globes in “space.” However curious, they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood-kin. Middle-earth is (by the way & if such a note is necessary) not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration (N[ew] E[nglish] D[ictionary] ‘a perversion’) of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumene: middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O.English middan-geard, mediæval E. middenerd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!

Finally, in 1968, when writing a long commentary to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer (Letter 294), who had just interviewed him for the Daily Telegraph, Tolkien adds important points regarding the location of Middle-earth: This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of “Middle-earth,” equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely “Nordic” area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.

Since Tolkien himself contributed to clarifying the origin and the location of Middle-earth, the important question remains when all the events in his fiction could have taken place. When, toward the end of 1916, during his convalescence after the trench war in France, Tolkien started on a new notebook, entitled The Book of Lost Tales, a new phase in his life began, often dominated by his fictive world, Middle-earth, and lasted to the end of his life. The title of this major work eventually became The Silmarillion. The history of Middle-earth, which began with the early legends in The Silmarillion, is told by Tolkien in the First and Second Appendices to The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien here indicates the stretch of time from the First Age to the beginning of the Fourth Age. We learnt earlier how the World was created at the beginning of the First Age in The Silmarillion, Just at the moment when Eru (Illúvatar) exclaimed “Eä!”. Morgoth (Melkor) reigns on the eastern continent and Men as well as Elves fight against Morgoth, who is defeated and turned away. After Morgoth, Sauron now appears more and more in the shape of

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Evil in bodily form. The Hobbit is placed in the Third Age and The Lord of the Kings later, toward the end of the Third Age. In Letter 211, quoted above, Tolkien made a suggestion for the time lapse between the fall of Barad-dur and our own time. He writes: “[ ... ] and I hope the, evidently long but undefined gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for ‘literary credibility’, even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of ‘pre-history’.” Then he adds a footnote concerning his imagined time span: “I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.” What Tolkien suggests regarding the time and place for Middleearth in the various letters quoted above and also in other letters is crystal clear. The localization of Middle-earth is our own real world placed in the fictive world in areas with Europe as background. Tolkien had a strong desire to create a landscape in his fiction world where the readers may constantly place themselves and relate to details in nature. Well-known scenarios and natural phenomena help provide a clear understanding among readers for events that may be supernatural or magical. For half a century, authors, critics, and scholars have attempted to find sources in mythology, which could be the basis for Tolkien’s fantasy writing about Middle-earth. I always got a clear impression from our discussions that his whole thinking and creative power were based on a holistic view of the contents, one which could never be pulled to pieces and give clues as to concrete sources. In the same way as artists never need to specify by whom they are influenced but create a universe of their own with inspiration as the driving force, resulting in independent works of art, Tolkien worked on the basis of this holistic view and his own reading. His reading was not a huge knowledge bank, which he continually quoted from, but was a basis for his unique creative power. His knowledge of European languages and early literature constituted an exceptional wholeness, and his excellent memory was a constant help as his fictional world was built up. Tom Shippey, the author of The Road to Middle-earth 1992, confirms, in his appendix on Tolkien’s sources, that Tolkien did not like the academic search for “sources.” It was Tolkien’s view, according to Shippey, that it led the focus away from the artistic work and underestimated the artist through the notion that he or she could have got it from someone else. Shippey therefore does not specify every

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source in relation to concrete passages in Tolkien but indicates them in more general terms. This view of source studies fits my own view of Tolkien’s method of building up an imagined universe, as a result of his own “sub-creation,” his alternative world of events existing only in fantasy. Tom Shippey has launched the term asterisk world or asterisk reality for an artificial world. The word is based on the method that a linguist uses in order to construct word forms at an earlier level, which are not recorded in a manuscript or in printed sources. In order to indicate that a word in a language is constructed with the support of related languages and applicable linguistic changes, a star-shaped symbol, an asterisk, is placed before the word. Transferred to artificial worlds or fantasy concepts such as Middle-earth, whose construction hangs together logically, the concept asterisk reality is very inventive in this linguistic-mythological context. Tolkien tended to regard himself as a kind of recorder or interpreter of the events enacted in Middle-earth. If Tolkien did not want for the moment to answer a question about events in the story of The Silmarillion, he would suggest that he could return to the question later. This happened in my discussions with him and it has been confirmed by others. It sounded as if he had access to a manuscript or document which only he could interpret. At the same time, it is surprising how many times Tolkien returned on later occasions to questions which he had promised to solve. Tolkien’s holistic or all-embracing view of fantasy stories forced him probably to check carefully that all the contexts fitted together when he was asked about details. What makes the concept of Middleearth so central for our understanding of his fantasy world is the fact that he constructed all his fictional languages first and later on looked for a suitable setting where the languages would fit in. A book by Brian Bates, The Real Middle-Earth. Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages (2002), presents a different interpretation of Middleearth. This author puts forward the idea that Middle-earth is a real world corresponding to northwest Europe about 2,000 years ago and that a thorough knowledge of peoples and traditions, popular belief, and magic could make us understand in a new way what the real Middle-earth is. Brian Bates describes in detail the peoples and cultures that we know from this period and provides exact information on references to the magic of trees and myths about elves, dragons, and monsters. In spite of the detail of the material and the exciting references to ethnology, I maintain firmly that this was not how Tolkien was thinking or wanted it to be. The book does not provide

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justice to Tolkien’s ambitious method of presenting a synthesis of his own eminent learning and of letting this holistic process inspire him to imaginative creation. Tolkien’s creative process has a long history. In order to get complete answers to every question concerning this process, we need a thorough knowledge of his changing life My contacts with Tolkien covered about one-fourth of his grown-up life in Oxford. They concerned the last fourth, when he was free from duties as university don and examiner, but could revive his memories and stories from both his real life and his fiction with joy and with plenty of time at his disposal. In order to understand how his fiction was created, we need to find a background mostly in the years of his childhood, his school and university periods, and his time of military service. This means that I have devoted most space to these periods. My book is a personal interpretation of the questions and issues that relate to these formative experiences.

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CH A P T ER

6

From Bloemfontein to Birmingham

“I certainly remember our holiday on the sea, when we lived in South Africa! Of course, I do!”

During the 1960s, I was constantly impressed by Tolkien’s detailed reminiscences of his early life. Even his memory of his holiday with his mother near Cape Town at the age of three seemed a natural result of his closeness to everything that had to do with his mother. There are of course limits to how much children can actually remember from their lives before the age of three or four, but Tolkien insisted that he had a particularly strong impression of his time at the seaside. I showed that I was a little skeptical, but Tolkien was very determined on the matter. For someone like Tolkien, who traveled so much in his fictional world, and who could adapt to natural sceneries of all kinds, it is striking how little he actually traveled outside England, one might even say outside Oxford. Tolkien’s birth and early childhood in the little town of Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State in the middle of present South Africa, therefore, mark a highly significant phase in his life. The first known European seafarer, who arrived at the southernmost point of Africa, later to be called The Cape of Good Hope, was the Portuguese Bartolomeu Diaz in 1488. The first European to carry out a real expedition all the way to India was Vasco da Gama, who passed the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. It was not until 1652 that the Europeans began to use southern Africa as a strategic station on their way to the coveted and costly spices of India. The Dutch, or the Boers as they were called, became the first colonizers, sent out by the Dutch East India Company. Cape Town was founded in the new Cape Colony in 1652 and gradually the Boers penetrated further into the country. In 1814, the English conquered Cape Town; afterward more and more Europeans

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were attracted to the southernmost parts of Africa and the tension between the Boers and the English increased. In 1836, the Great Trek of the Boers was initiated, extending up to the middle part of presentday South Africa, where the Boers founded both the Transvaal in 1852 and the Orange Free State in 1854. From the middle of the seventeenth century, over a period of more than 300 years, the various tribes and peoples of South Africa have suffered in numerous wars against the colonial powers. Bloemfontein was officially founded by the Boers in 1846, but one could say it came into existence as early as 1840, when Johannes Nicholas Brits, one of the so-called Voortrekkers, i.e., one of the original settlers from the Cape Colony, built his simple hut with a thatched roof and clay floor over a spring surrounded by clover. According to this interpretation, Bloemfontein would mean “the flower spring.” During the 1860s to 1880s, the first diamond finds and then gold finds attracted a great number of immigrants from Holland, England, Germany, and France. Bloemfontein became the capital of the Orange Free State with around 20,000 inhabitants, including over 2,000 Europeans during the 1890s, when the Tolkien family lived there. Even though Bloemfontein was then a small town (it has now more than 400,000 inhabitants), it became a major city in connection with the diamond and gold rush, when the banks became key institutions in the business of that time. From this time, only a few years were left in the history of South Africa before the violent Boer War between the English and the Boers would be fought (1899–1902). J.R.R. Tolkien’s father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), was born in Handsworth, Staffordshire. He grew up in Birmingham as the eldest in a big family of brothers and sisters and from an early age had to assist in their upbringing and education. His parents were John Benjamin Tolkien and Mary Jane Stow. Arthur left school early and started to work, while still living at home. When Arthur Tolkien got to know Mabel Suffield in 1889 and proposed to her, he was employed at Lloyds Bank in Birmingham. He was well aware of the difficulties of making a quick career in the bank at home, and considering the fact that he would now have to support a whole family, he took the daring decision to go to South Africa and try the banking system there. The name Tolkien means “foolhardy” or “daring,” derived from the German name form Tollkühn or Tollkiehn. The German adjective toll means “funny, jolly” and kühn “daring, brave.” Tolkien himself commented on this meaning of the family name in a text, which he wrote in 1955 to his American publishers, Houghton

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Mifflin Co., so that it could be used for various inquiries about the author Tolkien. One member of the German family Tollkühn or Tollkiehn had emigrated to England in the first half of the eighteenth century from Saxony in the middle of Germany. From a linguistic point of view, it is most interesting to observe that the Tolkien family came to England from a Saxon area, since they were Saxons who invaded parts of England south of the Thames in the fifth century and contributed to building up the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) language. The Saxons were a Germanic people, known in history during the second century AD as a migrant people originating from the northwestern part of Germany. Some other branches of the Saxons migrated more toward the center of the continent and in the eighteenth century, when the Tolkien family migrated to England, their central area was called Saxony with Dresden as the capital and Leipzig as a cultural center for literature, science, and music, with Johan Sebastian Bach as the greatest name. In present-day Germany, the Saxons are found in three states—Saxony in the south-east, Sachsen-Anhalt in the middle of Germany, and Lower Saxony—in the parts of northwest Germany where the Saxons lived who invaded England in the fifth century. In Kent’s Directory 1794, an alphabetical list of names and places of abode of the Directors, etc., in the cities of London, Westminster, and Borough of Southwark, I found the name of Tolkien in two places in London. First the name of Daniel Tolkien at an address in Covent garden, secondly a company, Gravell & Tolkien, mentioned as watchmakers. These are the earliest clear records of the name Tolkien; I have not found an absolutely clear link connecting the Tolkiens in London with those in Birmingham, but everything points to the fact that there was such a link. Humphrey Carpenter mentions in his biography of Tolkien that there had been some talk among the relatives that there had been a Tolkien who was a watchmaker in London towards the end of the eighteenth century and one who was a piano-maker. John Benjamin Tolkien, Ronald’s grandfather, came to Birmingham as a pianomaker and music dealer and had a business for musical instruments in 87 New Street. In the official census from 1901, I found no less than four persons named Tolkien, born in the nineteenth century in London, who were associated with piano or music affairs. One Alfred Tolkien, aged 65 in 1901, gave as his profession professor of music. Tolkien’s mother Mabel was the daughter of John Suffield and Emily Sparrow, both with roots in the English Midland area. John Suffield

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had first had a business for lace and gloves in Bull Street, Birmingham, which had been discontinued around the middle of the 1980s. He subsequently worked as a traveling salesman. In the letter to his American publishers, concerning the name, he emphasized more this background in the north of the Midland area via his mother, than to early connections with Saxony, via his father. Tolkien confirms this obvious link to his mother and her background. He writes (Letter 165): My name is TOLKIEN (not–kein). It is a German name (from Saxony), an Anglicization of Tollkiehn, i.e. tollkühn. But, except as a guide to spelling, this fact is as fallacious as all facts in the raw. For I am neither “foolhardy” nor German, whatever some remote ancestors may have been. They migrated to England more than 200 years ago, and became quickly intensely English (not British), though remaining musical—a talent that unfortunately did not descend to me. I am in fact far more of a Suffield (a family deriving from Evesham in Worcestershire), and it is to my mother who taught me (until I obtained a scholarship at the ancient Grammar School in Birmingham) that I owe my tastes for philology, especially of Germanic languages, and for romance. I am indeed in English terms a West-midlander at home only in the counties upon the Welsh Marches; and it is, I believe, as much due to descent as to opportunity that Anglo- Saxon and Western Middle English and alliterative verse have been both a childhood attraction and my main professional sphere.

In 1889, Tolkien succeeded in obtaining employment in the Bank of Africa in Cape Town. He had the opportunity of visiting the branches of the bank further into the country. He was offered the post of director of the branch in Bloemfontein only a year afterward. On March 1, 1891, the then twenty-one-year-old Mabel Suffield went to Cape Town by the Roslin Castle. She married Arthur Tolkien in the Cape Town Cathedral on April 16. After a short honeymoon on the coast, the newly wedded couple went on to their new home in Bloemfontein. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892, and on January 4, Arthur wrote home to his mother in Birmingham describing the future writer’s looks. The letter begins as follows: My dear Mother, I have good news for you this week. Mabel gave me a beautiful little son last night (3 January). It was rather before time, but the baby is strong and well and Mabel has come through wonderfully. The baby is (of course) lovely. It has beautiful hands and ears (very long fingers)

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very light hair, “Tolkien” eyes and very distinctly a “Suffield” mouth. In general effect immensely like a very fair edition of its Aunt Mabel Mitton. When we first fetched Dr Stollreither yesterday he said it was a false alarm and told the nurse to go home for a fortnight but he was mistaken and I fetched him again about eight and then he stayed till 12.40 when we had a whisky to drink luck to the boy. The boy’s first name will be “John” after its grandfather, probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel . . .

Tolkien’s initials have never ceased to fascinate the world. Some of his colleagues in Oxford even used the initials J.R.R. when referring to him. Tolkien himself explains his Christian names in a letter to Amy Ronald on January 2, 1969 (Letter 309): Now, my dear, as to my name. It is John: a name much used and loved by Christians, and since I was born on the Octave of St John the Evangelist, I take him as my patron—though neither my father, nor my mother at that time, would have thought of anything so Romish as giving me a name because it was a saint’s. I was called John because it was the custom for the eldest son of the eldest son to be called John in my family. My father was Arthur, eldest of my grandfather John Benjamin’s second family; but his elder half-brother John had died leaving only 3 daughters. So John I had to be, and was dandled on the knee of old J.B., as the heir, before he died. (I was only four when he died at 92 in 1896.) My father favoured John Benjamin Reuel (which I should now have liked); but my mother was confident that I should be a daughter, and being fond of more “romantic” (& less O[ld] T[estament] like) names decided on Rosalind. When I turned up, prematurely, and a boy though weak and ailing, Ronald was substituted. It was then a much rarer name in England as a Christian name—I never in fact knew any of my contemporaries at school or Oxford who had the name— though it seems now alas! To be prevalent among the criminal and other degraded classes. Anyway I have always treated it with respect, and from earliest days refused to allow it to be abbreviated or tagged with. But for myself I remained John. Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J. Rsquared) [. . .] Of course there is always Reuel. This was (I believe) the surname of a friend of my grandfather. The family believed it to be French (which is formally possible); but if so it is an odd chance that it appears twice in the O[ld] T[estament] as an unexplained other name for Jethro Moses’ father-in-law. All my children, and my children’s children, and their children, have the name.

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Ronald was baptized in the Anglican Church of Bloemfontein on January 31, 1892, and then spent only three years and three months in the town before he moved to England with his mother and his brother Hilary Arthur Reuel, who was born on February 17, 1894. Ronald was often rather poorly. In the year after following Hilary’s birth, 1895, they were ready to visit England, which Arthur Tolkien could not allow himself owing to his work. There are references to the hot climate in Tolkien’s letters. In a letter to W.A. Auden on June 7, 1955 (Letter 163), Tolkien comments: I was actually born in Bloemfontein, and so those deeply implanted impressions, underlying memories that are still pictorially available for inspection, of first childhood are for me those of a hot parched country. My first Christmas memory is of blazing sun, drawn curtain and a drooping eucalyptus.

During the early 1960s, when I began to know Tolkien, little was written about him, and his collection of Letters had not yet been published. It was therefore quite natural that that I asked him a great deal about his early years. Tolkien was clearly amused by telling me about his years at Bloemfontein. He had of course much more to say about his childhood in Sarehole and the whole area of Birmingham where they lived later. He enjoyed telling me everything about the countryside in the areas that he knew so well and which had meant so much for his fiction. Ronald’s mother was extremely important in his general education, teaching, conception of the world, intellectual stimulation, reading habits, and feeling for language. It must have been a disastrous blow to the twelve-year-old boy (who had become fatherless in 1896) also to lose his mother, who had taken care of and inspired her diligent and gifted son so well. Tolkien says himself in a letter to his son Michael on March 8, 1941 (Letter 44): Your grandmother, to whom you owe so much—for she was a gifted lady of great beauty and wit, greatly stricken by God with grief and suffering, who died in youth (at 34) of a disease hastened by persecution of her faith—died in the postman’s cottage at Rednal, and is buried at Bromsgrove.

Who was Mabel Suffield, who more than anyone else contributed to Ronald’s urge to use his creativity so early and make up fantasy stories, create sceneries, invent fictional characters, and furthermore invent new languages? Many conclusions about Mabel Tolkien’s qualities and

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importance for Ronald can be drawn by analyzing his mother’s decisions and actions. Before Ronald’s second Christmas in 1893, Mabel wrote a Christmas card to her husband on behalf of her two-year-old son. The card was exhibited on the memorial exhibition on Tolkien at the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1992. The text runs as follows: Daddy Toekins from Wanild Toekins. Kindly delivered by S. Claus Esq. at Bloemfontein O[range] F[ree] S[tate]—for Xmasse 1893.

This card, which was kept by the family, is most interesting on the background of all the letters from Father Christmas to the four children that Tolkien wrote later and illustrated with great imagination and creativity from 1920 to 1943. They were published by Baillie Tolkien in 1975. The interesting thing about the spellings of Mabel’s letters is that she wanted to illustrate two pronunciation habits in the two-year-old boy: first of all the loss of the l-sound in Tolkien, which was written Toekins, secondly the pronunciation of the r-sound, which was rendered by the spelling with w in Wanild. The Christmas card shows in simple forms how linguistically interested and gifted Mabel Tolkien was. The pronunciation of r as w is a well-known variant among children, but it is unusual to find the pronunciation commented on through spelling. It is particularly interesting in the light of the fact that later in life Tolkien became notorious for pronouncing many words unclearly. Mabel grew up together with two sisters and three brothers. She had obviously learnt how to be part of a group or an environment, but also to take her own initiatives and plan for the future. It is obvious that she had inherited her father’s interest in calligraphy and drawing, which, in her turn, she was able to transfer to Ronald. Mabel’s father, John Suffield, had these activities as hobbies. Furthermore, his forefathers had traditions within the engraving trade. Mabel’s drawing-book from the years 1882–1884, when she was between twelve and fourteen years old, is kept in the family and was exhibited at the Bodleian Library Exhibition in 1992. The clearest proof of Mabel’s influence on Ronald’s handwriting can be found in a letter from Mabel to Arthur’s parents, published in The Tolkien Family Album (1992), p. 17. The letter begins: I expect you all think very badly of me that I never write to any of you, or even answer your kind letters to me!—I was very very pleased with the two lovely little pinafores—so daintily made! And sent off (as we could see) by Mr Tolkien—The next-door pet monkeys had been over & “eaten” 3 of Ronald’s pinafores & several other things into rags a few

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days before—Baby does look such a fairy when he’s very much dressedup in white frills & white shoes—I wish you could all see him—or even when he’s very much undressed I think he looks more of an elf still.

It must naturally be seen in the original, if one wants to understand Mabel’s influence on Ronald’s handwriting at a later stage. The handwriting is very precise and the letter is filled with prolonged upstrokes, where the vertical lines often change into horizontal strokes, which can extend almost over whole words. The capitals at the beginning of sentences are often extra elaborately embellished. Having seen so many originals from Tolkien’s hand, handwritten articles, literary works in manuscript, sketches for fantasy stories, copies of medieval manuscripts, notes and drafts, letters to others and to myself, one thing is crystal clear to me. The influence from mother to son, which admittedly varied through the years and also changed according to text type, was very marked. When Mabel Tolkien had been properly installed with Arthur in the official residence in Maitland Street in Bloemfontein, their outer circumstances would have seemed rather agreeable. A lively social life was possible, and there were several clubs for the approximately 2,000 Dutch, Germans, and English. The residence was located on the first floor of the bank premises, which also had a big garden. There were plenty of servants, both black and white. Arthur Tolkien was most ambitious and worked hard to keep up and to improve the position of the bank during the expansion period, which had begun with the diamond and gold rushes. Maitland Street in Bloemfontein runs nowadays through a rather interesting centre of stone buildings together with some older buildings from the end of the nineteenth century. The old railway station from 1890 still exists, as does The Fourth Raadsaal from 1893, the last parliament building in the Orange Free State. The oldest building is The First Raadsaal (from 1849), which was first a school, then a church, and after that the first parliament building in the city. Bloemfontein is nowadays the judicial capital of modern South Africa and the seat of the High Court of Appeal. Life in Bloemfontein in the 1890s was not to be totally problemfree for the Tolkien family. The climate in the city was rather trying both for Mabel and Ronald. The summers in Bloemfontein were extremely hot and the winters cold and windy. Beyond the little group of houses, one could see the treeless windy veldt, which was hot and unbearable during the summer and frosty and insufferable during the winter. The city was known for being one of the coldest in

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South Africa owing to the great radiation of chill from the surrounding veldt. It is also obvious from Mabel’s letters that she detested the unfriendly climate. Even though Tolkien could not recall other than selected details from the early years in South Africa, the circumstances must have been most overwhelming. A lively and receptive child like Ronald Tolkien would always have been affected by his surroundings, not least by his capacity to observe and compare at many levels. Ronald would constantly be reminded of the fact that there were great variations in appearance, language, activity, and background among all those that surrounded him or passed by in the street. There were black and white people, English, Dutch, German, and Afrikaans and local African languages were spoken. Afrikaans is based on Dutch but soon came to have a simplified grammar and furthermore an influx of vocabulary from English, German, French, Portuguese, Malayan, and a number of African languages. Afrikaans became the official language besides English. Nowadays there are, besides these two, also nine official African languages in South Africa. Afrikaans is spoken by about six million South Africans today. In a letter to his son Christopher, who had been stationed in South Africa during the Second World War, Tolkien wrote on June 10, 1944 (Letter 73): I was very interested in all the descriptions: both of your abode and of the country. Your sharpened memory is I imagine due to 2 things (1) sharpened desire (2) new images which do not correspond to the old, and so do not overlay and blur them. Few inhabitants of a town who have never gone away can recall even the major changes in a street during the past year. My own rather sharp memory is probably due to the dislocation of all my childhood ‘pictures’ between 3 and 4 by leaving Africa: I was engaged in a constant attention and adjustment. Some of my actual visual memories I now recognize as beautiful blends of African and English details ...

This comment of Tolkien is of great importance for our understanding of his sharp memory and his concept of “double worlds” and the importance of South Africa in this context. In John and Priscilla Tolkien’s The Tolkien Family Album, p. 18, the authors have recorded some of their father’s “pictures,” from his travels from South Africa to England: Years later, Ronald described to us the powerful sense he had during the preparations for that voyage of the weight of emotion between his parents at their coming separation. He retained an image of

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extraordinary clarity of his father painting “A.R. Tolkien” on their cabin trunk, an item that Ronald kept and treasured in memory of his father. Of the long voyage home on the SS Guelph he remembered two brilliantly sharp images: the first of looking down from the deck of the ship into the clear waters of the Indian Ocean far below, which was full of lithe brown and black bodies diving for coins thrown by the passengers; the second was of pulling into a harbour at sunrise and seeing a great city set on the hillside above, which he realized much later in life must have been Lisbon.

The importance of Tolkien’s African memories should not be underestimated, even if all the “pictures” were not equally relevant. The idyllic country life in the village of Sarehole outside Birmingham, where Mabel and the two boys moved, would stand in marked contrast to the chilly winter landscapes around Bloemfontein. The voyage was a long trip via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean to Southampton in April 1895. No one in the family could have expected that the departure from husband and father would be the last time they saw him alive. It would also be the last time they saw South Africa. Tolkien returns in brief comments to Africa in his later correspondence with his son Christopher. He writes on May 25, 1944 (Letter 71) to Christopher regarding his posting to Africa during the Second World War. I was disposed, at last, to envy you a little; or rather to wish I could be with you “in the hills”. There is something in nativity, and though I have few pictorial memories, there is always a curious sense of reminiscence about any stories of Africa, which always move me deeply. Strange that you, my dearest, should have gone back there ...

Toward the end of 1895, news came that Arthur had contracted rheumatic fever. He never recovered and died early in the following year, before Mabel had the opportunity of seeing him. She had prepared to go to Bloemfontein and Ronald had dictated a letter to his father, which his nanny had written down. The letter was never sent, since his father’s condition had grown worse and he died on February 15, 1896, which was the day after this letter was written. One could say that this is the earliest text written by J.R.R. Tolkien (kept at the Bodleian Library), although it may have been altered a little. The letter runs as follows: 9 Ashfield Road, King’s Heath, February 14th 1896. My dear Daddy, I am so glad I am coming back to see you it is such a long time since we came away from you I hope the ship will bring us all back to you

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Mamie and Baby and me. I know you will be so glad to have a letter from your little Ronald it is such a long time since I wrote to you I am got such a big man now because I have got a man’s coat and a man’s bodice Mamie says you will not know Baby or me we have got such big men we have got such a lot of Christmas presents to show you Auntie Gracie has been to see us I walk every day and only ride in my mailcart a little bit. Hilary sends lots of love and kisses and so does your loving Ronald.

The death of his father must have been an inconceivable shock for Ronald. It is likely that the Tolkien family became even more closely united and that the coming four years at Sarehole turned out to be a period of concentrated mutual experience of a new world. This world would live on in Tolkien’s memory, in his interest in research related to the West Midland area, and in his future fiction.

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CH A P T ER

7

From Sarehole to Shire

Was Tolkien strongly aware, when he worked on The Lord of the Rings, that his construction of the Shire was inspired by specific sceneries of his childhood? Mabel and her sons had stayed at Mabel’s parents’ home in Ashfield Road at King’s Heath outside Birmingham since their arrival in England. Willie and her sister Jane also lived there. Arthur Tolkien’s 89-year-old father also lived close by, as did Arthur’s sister Grace. During the summer of 1896, Mabel found a place where she and her children could live more on their own, one which turned out to be a significant environment for Ronald and Hilary’s development. It was a newly built house at 5 Gracewell, which she rented in the little village of Sarehole, a few miles outside southeast of Birmingham. Later, the address was changed to 264 Wake Green Road. The road went on southward toward Stratfordon-Avon, the birth-place of William Shakespeare. After the somewhat more than three years’ stay in South Africa, the four-year period at Sarehole was one in Tolkien’s life that was to be markedly important for his later development. As with Bloemfontein, it is important to understand why this area and this type of nature was especially meaningful. Sarehole was a tiny village with only a few houses. It was the walks across the fields and hills in the company of Hilary that provided lasting memories for Ronald. The contrasts to life in Bloemfontein could hardly have been greater. The brothers went adventurous walks in a setting that was also a strong contrast to the Birmingham, which they had already had a certain contact with and which they would soon learn to know better. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Tolkien family lived there, Sarehole belonged to Worcestershire and not to Warwickshire. Maggie Burns, librarian at the Central Library of Birmingham, has pointed out to me that Sarehole belongs to the borderland between the two counties and that it was before 1911 that Sarehole belonged to the Worcestershire, which was so much loved by Tolkien.

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Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Birmingham started to expand, the population increased, villages and buildings outside the city grew together, and many industries developed where earlier there had been idyllic country side. Sarehole, too, gradually became a part of this expansive change, but it was not until after the idyllic period of 1896–1900 that the landscape began to be changed, and urbanization and industrialization set in. The home area of the Hobbits, the Shire, has often been compared with the country idylls in Worcestershire, which Tolkien met as a child in Sarehole. It has been suggested that Sarehole Mill gave Tolkien the ideas for the mill at Hobbiton where the hobbits lived. The two brothers were fascinated by the old mill. There had been a long tradition of water mills around Birmingham, and at Sarehole since 1540. In the eighteenth century, there were about fifty mills in the Birmingham area. They were used both for agriculture and for water power, which was of decisive importance for the Birmingham industry. The mill became an exciting playground with the thrilling feature of the millowner’s son, frightening the two boys considerably. He was given the typical Tolkien name, “The White Ogre.” Ronald and Hilary’s four years in Sarehole remained long in their minds. We cannot assume that this was the origin of Tolkien’s ideas of Middle-earth, but we may imagine that this specific playground could be used by Ronald both immediately and later as the foundation for a fiction world, which was in constant change. During the late summer of 2003, I got the opportunity of walking through about the same relatively restricted area around Sarehole, Moseley Bog, and Moseley, which now belongs to the urban area on the outskirts of Birmingham called Hall Green. I was surprised how easy it was to imagine what these places looked like in Tolkien’s time. It was easy, particularly at Sarehole, to follow paths, meadows, pools of water, and wooded areas with the help of old maps and photographs that I had received from the central library of Birmingham. In 1933, Tolkien made an excursion by car through Hall Green to Sarehole to inspect his own favorite regions from his childhood and became, according to his diary, quoted in Carpenter’s biography (p. 124), agitated by the vandalizing that takes place when an open country landscape becomes “meaningless suburbia.” Tolkien writes in his diary: I pass over the pangs to me of passing through Hall Green—become a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb, where I actually lost my way— and eventually down what is left of beloved lanes of childhood, and past the very gate of our cottage, now in the midst of a sea of new

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FROM SAREHOLE TO SHIRE

red-brick. The old mill still stands, and Mrs Hunt’s still sticks out into the road as it turns uphill; but the crossing beyond the now fenced-in pool, where the bluebell lane ran down into the mill lane, is now a dangerous crossing alive with motors and red lights.

A campaign was organized in the 1960s to rescue the run-down mill, and Tolkien too sent a donation. The mill was inaugurated in 1069 and is now open to the community as a museum. It gives a perfectly well-organized picture of a small industrial enterprise during a period when industrialism had taken a firm grip on the growing city of Birmingham. In addition, a lot of work has been carried out at Hall Green in order to make the surroundings inhabitable and attractive. The possibilities of fitting green areas into newly built housing areas were to a large extent due to the close cooperation between local authorities and the local housing association, one of the first in the country. The green areas are now utilized more and more and are well-kept. The recreation facilities are excellent, walking trails are laid out through woodland areas and small buildings, and areas for sports activities are especially set aside. One more initiative has helped the inhabitants of Hall Green to find out more about the historical development of the area during the past hundred years. The rich body of material, with photographs from the early part of the twentieth century, kept in the historical archives of the Central Library of Birmingham, has been used for an informative book by Michael Byrne. This contains over 200 illustrations, which document how Sarehole and Hall Green appeared around and immediately after the turn of the century, when the Tolkiens lived there. Tolkien’s reference to “the pangs to me of passing through Hall Green—become a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb,” as Tolkien felt according to his diary of 1933, would probably have been replaced by a much more positive reaction, if he had experienced the modern developments in the area. In the book Hall Green (2000), Michael Byrne, the editor, allowed himself to write the following in his introduction to the fascinating picture collection: Hall Green has evolved from a rural backwater into one of the most desirable places to live in the whole of Birmingham. It became the finest kind of suburb, one which offered affordable status in really pleasant surroundings.

The black-and-white photo technique of the time gives a special fairy tale glimmer to the many realistic pictures of people at work, both

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in small industries and in agriculture. By coincidence, I found a picture from exactly 1933, the year Tolkien and his family visited Hall Green. The picture shows Tolkien’s road, Wake Green Road, and the area of Old Sarehole Farm from Tolkien’s youth. This is the place where the millowner’s son, “The White Ogre,” had lived, and, in his diary, Tolkien mentions that his children were eager to see the house. The house has now been replaced by a petrol station and it is easy to understand Tolkien’s agitated view of the change. The home of his childhood was vanishing. In the book, Hall Green, there is also a picture of the mill from c. 1905, only five years after the Tolkien family moved from Sarehole. The mill gives a strong impression with its steam-engine building and the huge engine in order, which provided steam power besides water power. In front of the mill, there is a mill pond, which got its water from the river Cole. Originally this water came from a large reservoir on the opposite side of Wake Green Road. My walks around Sarehole in the summer of 2003 gave me an overwhelming feeling of being at the very entrance of Tolkien’s secondary world. It was easy to disregard the small simple rows of terraced houses that spread into undulating grounds between the Tolkien house and Moseley Bog half a mile away. I was exhilarated at seeing his house, 264 Wake Green Road. It was extremely well-kept, rather newly painted and decorated with flowers. Together with the two neighboring houses, it had been transformed into Gracewell Homes, a residential pensioners’ home. In order to reach Sarehole Mill, I had to cross the rather busy Wake Green Road and to continue on a path that went straight across a meadow. My aim was to find out how far the Tolkien brothers had walked when they explored the areas toward the mill. To my surprise, it was less than a mile. However, between their home and the mill, there were many attractive byways, for example, down toward the neighboring mill pond, which was large in Tolkien’s time, but now fenced-in, overgrown, reduced, and transformed into an enchanted woodland area of broad-leaf trees, dominated by winding willow trees. There were also exciting things in the opposite direction, toward the mill, i.e., Moseley Bog. This is a wooded area with moist ground, small watercourses and deciduous trees, which have grown quite considerably and are sometimes as tall as thirty metres. The trees are sometimes most impressive, forming an almost magical forests with winding, overgrown paths, sudden glimpses of glades, small rivulets, and rather uncontrolled but beautiful undergrowth. Finally, there

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was one more path for the two brothers. This was a walk to the village of Moseley, which lies about a mile-and-a-half away in the direction of Birmingham. It was probably too far away to be attractive, while Hall Green was closer in a different direction. The crossing that Tolkien called “a dangerous crossing alive with motors and red lights” in his diary, was located c. 200 metres south of the boys’ home at the end of the nineteenth century. Now it had become a roundabout instead, and my tolerance level regarding traffic was certainly considerably higher than Tolkien’s seventy years earlier. I was, on the other hand, hardly tolerant regarding the housing of the little village. The few shops around this traffic center conveyed a somber atmosphere. There was a kiosk-like food shop and a small post office, and no café or a pub was to be seen. The asset of the village was the old mill and Tolkien’s childhood home, now transformed into a different kind of home. But the gain was also the opportunity that nature gave to a history-minded nature lover to imagine the idyllic atmosphere, which had characterized Sarehole a hundred years ago. A feeling of being at Hobbiton came over me when I strolled across the meadow behind the mill and let myself be surrounded by the greenery of Moseley Bog. There was something quite magical about the scenery of Hall Green, which transmitted a vision of Middleearth, at any rate a landscape where one could easily imagine an enchanted world, as seen by children’s eyes. The fact that Tolkien had been so critical during his visit to Sarehole in 1933 contributed to my sense of magical overtones in the landscape. The facelift given to the landscape made it possible to translate its present appearance into one from the end of the nineteenth century. There is much documentation, especially in Tolkien’s own letters, showing how much his own knowledge of various places and environments in the West Midlands meant for the description of the homeland, appearance, character, and habits of the hobbits. The qualities of the hobbits are to be found, according to Tolkien, among ordinary English villagers from the parts of the west of England where Tolkien felt most at home. It is typical that “Bag End,” Bilbo’s house in The Hobbit, got its name from “Bag End” in Dormston in Worcestershire, where Tolkien’s aunt Jane lived. Her farm lay at the end of a road, which made the local villagers give it this unofficial name. It was actually the borderland toward Wales that Tolkien appreciated most, but the whole of west England was the source of his marked interest in medieval literature, both poetry and prose. This literary area comprised the old counties of Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, but it was probably in

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the northern parts of this area where the medieval texts that Tolkien worked on most, the Ancrene Wisse manuscripts, originated. Concerning Ronald and Hilary’s experience together in Worcestershire, it is interesting that Hilary chose a career that directly expressed his affection for the county. Hilary moved to Evesham in Worcestershire after the First World War, bought a farm outside the town, and devoted all his life to the growing of fruit in the central parts of the county, where his ancestors on his mother’s side had grown up. This area is famous for its fruit-growing and Evesham may be regarded as the center of the apple district. Hilary has turned out to be an anonymous public figure in all the biographical literature on Tolkien, but in the boys’ childhood and school period, he was Ronald’s constant playfellow and best friend. The whole landscape westward from a line between Birmingham and Oxford, the Cotswold country, is full of soft ridges with leafy woods and farm land, with friendly, well-kept villages, with sharply defined areas of pasture land, dotted with sheep, cows, and horses. Obviously the landscape is quite different from what it was when Tolkien was a child, but it is still remarkable that many small roads are lined by the typically English high hedges, which make the forward view almost nonexistent for modern car traffic at meetings and crossroads, particularly if the roads have kept their old winding character. This is a comfortable and quiet landscape, which conveys the same impression of security that one gets from Tolkien’s descriptions of nature. Mabel Tolkien seemed to be extremely well prepared to take on the education of Ronald in their home and to inspire him, especially when it came to linguistic training. She taught him to read and write, and also to draw and paint. Tolkien expressed himself on his mother’s importance particularly in the discipline of language in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer on February 8, 1967 (Letter 294): My interest in languages was derived solely from my mother, a Suffield (a family coming from Evesham in Worcestershire). She knew German, and gave me my first lessons in it. She was also interested in etymology, and aroused my interest in this; and also in alphabets and handwriting. My father died in South Africa in 1896. She died in 1904. Two years before her death I had with her sole tuition gained a scholarship to King Edward VI School in Birmingham.

In 1899, Ronald sat for the entrance examination at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, at the age of seven, but did not pass the exam.

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He did so, however, the year after and began school there in September 1900. The impressive Victorian school building in a historicist style, designed by the same architect, Sir Charles Barry, who had designed the Parliament Building in London in cooperation with Augustus Pugin, was situated near the railway station in New Street in the center of Birmingham. The distance to Sarehole was about four miles in each direction, which was certainly too far for Ronald to walk every day. Mabel therefore moved to 214 Alcester Road in the village of Moseley closer to the center, which was on a direct tram line. Next year, it was time for the family to move again, this time to a bigger house, 86 Westfield Road, at King’s Heath, only a mile away. This was not an ideal position either, since the house was placed close to a railway line. The family moved once more, to a house in Oliver Road, now torn down. Nothing, however, could be compared to the idyllic landscape around Sarehole. Mabel’s conversion to Catholicism was a major change in the life of the family. Her sister May, who had also lived with her family in South Africa, had returned home and the two sisters made their decision jointly. To the surprise of their parents and relatives, they converted simultaneously, in June 1900. Mabel also started to look for a more satisfactory home for herself and her children. Finally she got in touch with a Catholic church, Birmingham Oratory, 141 Hagley Road, in the suburb of Edgbaston, which was a mile or two southwest of Birmingham in the same direction as Sarehole. This contact was the beginning of a totally new era in Ronald’s life from the beginning of 1902, which brought many decisive changes, influencing him for the rest of his life. In this environment, Ronald was hit by the shock of his mother’s death in 1904 and here the Catholic priest, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, as the appointed guardian, took over the responsibility, education, and training of the two orphans. Father Francis Xavier Morgan (1859–1935), who became a key figure for Ronald, had arrived as pupil at the oratory school in the 1870s and been taken up by the community in 1877. The church or chapel, Birmingham Oratory, had been established at the beginning of the 1850s by the influential theologian, John Henry Newman (1801– 1890). Newman came to Edgbaston in 1852 and wanted immediately to build a church, inspired by the early Christian, Roman basilica. At the beginning, a provisional building was built, which was finished in November 1853. Not until 1903, thirteen years after Newman’s death, was the foundation stone for the new, classicist church laid. The church opened in 1909 and became a memorial to John Henry Newman.

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Newman was converted to the Catholic faith in 1845. He had got in touch with Filippo Neri’s oratory community in Rome. After two years in Rome, Newman returned to establish branches of the oratory community in England. In 1848 he founded the first oratory chapter in Birmingham, before moving to Edgbaston. In 1859 he also founded the oratory school, St. Philip’s School, which both Ronald and Hilary attended from 1902. Newman was appointed cardinal by the pope in Rome in 1879. During the nineteenth century, the city of Birmingham could be characterized as anti-Catholic, but the presence of Cardinal Newman and the oratory during the last forty years of his life gave the Catholic Church a firm foundation. Cardinal Newman was an important personality in nineteenth-century England and a leading representative of the Oxford movement, a High Church branch of the Anglican Church, before he converted to the Catholic faith. Birmingham also became a more and more significant industrial center, which increased the workforce, for example from Ireland and Germany, among whom many were Catholic. It may appear as a sheer coincidence that Mabel came to a community that was so helpful to the two boys in their education. However, in all the movements and changes of environment that Ronald and Hilary were subjected to, one may observe their mother’s clear view of how their circumstances could be improved and their schooling might be bettered. It is no exaggeration to say that Mabel Tolkien showed a most successful instinct for survival. This was shown in all her ways of mastering difficulties, fighting against unfavorable odds, planning the food situation on a low budget, and looking to the future for the sake of the children. Many problems in the family were solved in 1902, one after the other. First of all, the family came into the Catholic environment that Mabel had searched for. Furthermore, both boys were able to begin at once at St. Philip’s School, which belonged to the oratory. The family was also allowed to rent a house on 21 Oliver Road, which was quite close to the school. Finally, the most important thing was that Father Francis, who became a close friend of the family and a pillar of strength for the boys, kept in such close contact from the very beginning. Mabel Tolkien’s critical eyes soon made her realize that the school did not live up to all her demands on education. She took the boys out of school and decided once more to carry out the teaching of them both at home. It was not long, however, before Ronald received a scholarship to St. Edward’s School and returned to this excellent

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school in the autumn of 1903. St. Edward’s was a prestigious educational establishment, where many pupils could move on to academic studies at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Very early in the period when she taught Ronald at home, Mabel Tolkien noted that he had a very special flair for languages, sound combinations, and vocabulary, as well as artificial languages. Mabel was never enthusiastic about the constructed languages, since she thought they took too much time from teaching and learning. When Ronald was about seven, Mabel had started to teach him Latin and French. At King Edward’s, Latin and Greek were central disciplines. There is a brief comment by Tolkien about the first years at the oratory in a letter to his son Michael dated October 11, 1968 (Letter 306): Fr Francis obtained permission for me to retain my scholarship at K[ing] E[dward’s] S[chool] and continue there, and so I had the advantage of a (then) first rate school and that of a “good Catholic home”— “in excelsis”: virtually a junior inmate of the Oratory house, which contained many learned fathers (largely “converts”). Observance of religion was strict. Hilary and I were supposed to, and usually did, serve Mass before getting on our bikes to go to school in New Street.

One letter from Mabel to her mother-in-law, Mary Tolkien, sent before Christmas, 1903, indicates her great concern for the Ronald’s well-being and education. It begins as follows: My dear Mrs Tolkien, You said you like one of the boys’ drawings better than anything bought with their money so they’ve done these for you. Ronald has really done his splendidly this year—he has just been having quite an exhibition in Father Francis’ room—he has worked hard since he broke up on December 16th, and so have I, to find fresh subjects: I haven’t been out for almost a month—not even to the Oratory!—but the nasty wet muggy weather is making me better and since Ronald broke up I have been able to rest in the mornings. I keep having whole weeks of utter sleeplessness, which added to the internal cold and sickness have made it almost impossible to go on.

It is obvious from this letter that Mabel Tolkien’s health was very poor. During the following spring and in April, she was hospitalized, when it became clear that she had diabetes. Ronald was sent to Hove in Sussex for a short period to stay with his aunt Jane and her husband. When Mabel was discharged from hospital toward the

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summer, Father Francis suggested that she could stay in the little village of Rednal in Worcestershire, where the oratory priests had access to a resort, a retreat with grounds of their own, a chapel, and a small burial place, where Cardinal Newman was buried. Mabel was able to stay with the local postman and his wife in a small house on the grounds. Ronald and Hilary came to Rednal over the summer and could enjoy an idyllic summer environment, which they had not had since their time at Sarehole. Mabel’s sister Edith Mary (May) and her husband Walter Incledon lived near Rednal, in a village called Barn Green. Their two children, Mary and Marjory, cousins of the boys, became natural playmates. The two cousins had already begun to construct a simple private language, which they called Animalic. Mary and Ronald continued to work on new inventions of words and the result was a completely new language, which was more advanced, and which they called Nevbosh or New Nonsense. Unfortunately, there is not much left of Nevbosh except a limerick, which is recorded in Tolkien’s essay, “A Secret Vice,” from 1931: Dar fys ma vel gom co palt ‘Hoc Pys go iskilifar maino woc? Pro si go fys do roc de Do cat ym maino bocte De volt fact soc ma taimful gyróc!’

In English: (There was an old man who said “How/Can I possibly carry my cow?/For if I were to ask it/To get in my basket/ It would make such a terrible row!”) Tolkien points out in his essay that Nevbosh is mainly based on English, but that many words are changed or distorted. The creators of Nevbosh, Mary and Ronald, were children, without any conscious knowledge of the relations between sounds and concepts in language. However, one may observe a natural feeling for certain systematic relations between the two who constructed Nevbosh. Tolkien also states in his essay that the dominance of English in Nevbosh might give the impression of being a “code.” He does not find this type of language interesting, but languages that are unrelated to traditional languages or school languages stimulate a deeper interest in him. When Tolkien gets closer to a discussion of the pleasure and entertainment that are connected with the creation of new languages, we reach the central point in the understanding of the origin of the various fictional languages. Tolkien

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explains this in the following important passage of the essay, “A Secret Vice”: This idea of using the linguistic faculty for amusement is however deeply interesting to me. I may be like an opium-smoker seeking a moral or medical or artistic defence for his habit. I don’t think so. The instinct for “linguistic invention”—the fitting of notion to oral symbol, and pleasure in contemplating the new relation established, is rational, and not perverted. In these invented languages the pleasure is more keen than it can be even in learning a new language—keen though it is to some people in that case—because more personal and fresh, more open to experiment of trial and error. And it is capable of developing into an art, with refinement of the construction of the symbol, and with greater nicety in the choice of notional-range.

This comment is most relevant for the understanding of Tolkien’s creative mind. The pleasure and the enjoyment of the word-forms of a language are behind all his constructions of new languages. Pleasure and enjoyment are also behind Tolkien’s creations within language and literature, since the linguistic construction comes first in for him and the tales and the mythologies later in the process. It becomes more and more obvious that Tolkien’s own documentation of his linguistic and literary creativity is a central source for any analysis of his fictional world. Later in his essay, “A Secret Vice,” Tolkien talks about the next stage in the creation of new languages, exemplified by the language Naffarin. He points out that the communication factor is a driving force in the origin of language. Naffarin, on the other hand, was never used in communication. Tolkien called the use of Naffarin “private communication” and concludes that its origin partly overlapped the use of Nevbosh. Sadly enough, all Tolkien’s notes about Naffarin have disappeared. The only text that Tolkien quoted is the following passage from “A Secret Vice,” but he does not include any translation of the four lines: O Naffarinos cutá vu navru cangor Luttos ca vúna tiéranar, Dana maga tier ce vru encá vún’ farta Once ya merúta vúna maxt’amámen.

In his essay, Tolkien mentions only the word vrú “always,” which exists in the Elvish language, Quenya, and that influence from Latin and Spanish can be traced in the general formation of words. French, German, and Greek had very little to do with Naffarin. Some

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word-forms remind you of Quenya, such as navru, maxt’, and ya, but the point here is that Tolkien is now creating a language on the basis of sound combinations that he enjoys constructing and pronouncing, and not of changed or distorted English word-forms. The languages constructed by Tolkien at this early stage were totally unconnected with any ethnic group that spoke them or had a tradition or mythology that could be linked with them. Tolkien was also engaged in constructed alphabets during his school period. These had code symbols that corresponded to every letter in the English alphabet. A code letter from August 8, 1904, from Ronald to Father Francis survives in the Tolkien Collection at the Bodleian Library. This code letter, with codes and pictures, is extraordinarily interesting. The twelve-year-old Ronald starts the letter with the sentence:”M-eye deer owl-d France-hiss,” where the letter 1,000 stands for M (=Mille) and a picture of an eye becomes “eye,” meaning all in all “My.” A drawing of a “deer” is counted as “dear.” A map of France and a snake saying “hiss” give the result: “Francis.” The letter, which is full of pictures and bright colors, indicates the pleasure that Ronald derived from all kinds of communicative subtleties and secret languages, and also from pictures and drawings that could give pleasure to the receiver. The letter ends with the following limerick to Father Francis: There was an old priest named Francis Who was fond of “cheefongy” dances That he sat up too late And worried his pate Arranging these Frenchified Prances.

Mabel Tolkien’s condition grew worse in the autumn of 1904 and she died from diabetes in her home at Rednal on November 14. Ronald and Hilary were now orphans and it was only through their mother’s foresight and care that their future had been well provided for. Father Francis, who had earlier promised to be the guardian of the two boys, showed his presence in an even more substantial way in their lives as a kind of father-figure of great generosity, contributing to their upkeep and education. They were found a new home in a house belonging to their aunt, Beatrice Suffield, who lived in 25 Stirling Road in Edgbaston, not far from the oratory and Father Francis. This was an ideal home for the two orphans who could go to mass every morning with Father Francis and also have breakfast with him, before they went to King Edward’s School, where Hilary, too, had obtained a place.

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Much later, in a letter of 1965 to his son Michael (Letter 267), Tolkien returns to his mother’s death and the responsibility that Father Francis took upon himself. Tolkien writes: When I think of my mother’s death (younger than Prisca) worn out with persecution, poverty, and largely consequent, disease, in the effort to hand on to us small boys the Faith, and remember the tiny bedroom she shared with us in rented rooms in a postman’s cottage at Rednal, where she died alone, too ill for viaticum, I find it very hard and bitter, when my children stray away [from the Church]. Of course Canaan seems different to those who have come into it out of the desert; and the later inhabitants of Jerusalem may often seem fools or knaves, or worse. But in hac urbe lux solemnis has seemed to me steadily true. I have met snuffy, stupid, undutiful, conceited, ignorant, hypocritical, lazy, tipsy, hardhearted, cynical, mean, grasping, vulgar, snobbish, and even (at a guess) immoral priests “in the course of my peregrinations”; but for me one Fr. Francis outweighs them all, and he was an upper-class Welsh-Spaniard Tory, and seemed to some just a pottering old snob and gossip. He was—and he was not. I first learned charity and forgiveness from him.

The baton-change had thereby taken place from Tolkien’s mother to Father Francis, meaning that the responsibility for the two orphans was now wholly assumed by the Catholic priest in whom Mabel Tolkien had shown such great confidence.

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CH A P T ER

8

An Orphan Drawn to Reading

From having his own single mother to acquiring a guardian and single adoptive father seems to be a long step for a twelve-yearold boy. Father Francis became a father-figure who guided Ronald firmly in his education, both economically and pedagogically. A new period had entered Ronald’s life. It has been clear from my account how much his mother meant in the forming of Ronald’s character and for his linguistic interests and skills. Now follows a stage in his development where his contact with literature becomes more obvious and where the intellectual stimulus of the school becomes more marked. King Edward’s School was known at this time for its high academic standards. At the same time, it is obvious how important both his teachers and his classmates were for the education that Father Francis had in mind for his protégé. One of Ronald’s teachers, George Brewerton, opened his eyes to both Old and Middle English. Tolkien has recorded some memories of his language training at school in a letter to W.H. Auden from June 7, 1995 (Letter 163): As for the conditioning: I am chiefly aware of the linguistic conditioning. I went to King Edward’s School and spent most of my time learning Latin and Greek; but I also learned English. Not English Literature! Except Shakespeare (which I disliked cordially), the chief contacts with poetry were when one was made to try and translate it into Latin. Not a bad mode of introduction, if a bit casual. I mean something of the English language and its history. I learned AngloSaxon at school (also Gothic, but that was an accident quite unconnected with the curriculum though decisive—I discovered in it not only modern historical philology, which appealed to the historical and scientific side, but for the first time the study of a language out of mere love: I mean for the acute aesthetic pleasure derived from a language for its own sake, not only free from being useful but free even from being the “vehicle of a literature”).

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Later on in this letter to Auden, Tolkien also makes a most important observation about his own unusual linguistic interest in relation to his pleasure in writing stories. The linguistic ideas came first and the stories later. Tolkien continues after some further comments: All this only as background to the stories, though languages and names are for me inextricable from the stories. They are and were so to speak an attempt to give a background or a world in which my expressions of linguistic taste could have a function. The stories were comparatively late in coming. I first tried to write a story when I was about seven. It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say “a green great dragon,” but had to say “a great green dragon.” I wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many years, and was taken up with language.

Tolkien’s comments on word order may sound surprising. In spite of his impressive grammatical knowledge of so many living, dead and artificial languages, which he could often both write and speak, he does not show any marked interest in explaining why the word order in modern English should be a “great green dragon” and not “a green great dragon,” i.e., the adjective indicating size in English is placed before those marking color. At the same time, it is quite possible that Tolkien is just showing an example of his well-documented sense of humor. The headmaster of the school, Robert Cary Gilson, was also specially mentioned in a letter by Tolkien to Michael. He was a versatile man who taught both classical languages and science subjects and had inventions as a hobby. Tolkien also mentioned the headmaster’s son, Robert Quilter Gilson, among his classmates, as well as Christopher Luke Wiseman, whom he got to know in 1905 and whom his own son Christopher was named after. Christopher Wiseman shared Ronald’s interest in languages and was especially versed in Egyptology and hieroglyphs. Both kept in touch with each other throughout their lives. As mentioned previously, in connection with Tolkien’s letter to W.H. Auden, Mabel Tolkien had started to teach Ronald Latin and French before he went to school at the age of eight. Since Latin and Greek were the central languages at King Edward’s, the classical syllabus was very ambitious for those who were eager to study. Tolkien, on the other hand, preferred to devote a great deal of time throughout his school and student years to languages and subjects quite different from the obligatory ones. When he left school for university studies at

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AN ORPHAN DRAWN TO READING

Oxford, he had mastered Latin, Greek, French, German, and Spanish beside a number of self-constructed languages. Furthermore, he took up academic studies of Old and Middle English, Gothic, Old Icelandic, French, and Welsh, which he pursued mostly as a result of his own driving force. In one of his famous essays, “English and Welsh,” based on an O’Donell lecture at Oxford in 1955, Tolkien analyzed his own taste concerning the languages he studied most. After mentioning the languages that he learnt first, namely English, Afrikaans (to a certain extent), French, Latin, Greek, and Spanish, Tolkien indicates which languages he had a clear predilection for. Regarding Greek, Tolkien mentions how he was captivated by the “fluidity of Greek, punctuated by hardness, and with its surface glitter.” He makes the significant statement that he had tried to invent a language that would “embody the Greekness of Greek.” The following extract from his essay emphasizes Gothic, Finnish, and Welsh as languages which he had a special predilection for: Gothic was the first to take me by storm, to move my heart. It was the first of the old Germanic languages that I ever met. I have since mourned the loss of Gothic literature. I did not then. The contemplation of the vocabulary in A Primer of the Gothic Language was enough: a sensation at least as full of delight as first looking into Chapman’s Homer. Though I did not write a sonnet about it. I tried to invent Gothic words. I have, in this peculiar sense, studied (“tasted” would be better) other languages since. Of all save one among them the most overwhelming pleasure was provided by Finnish, and I have never quite got over it. But all the time there had been another call—bound to win in the end, though long baulked by sheer lack of opportunity. I heard it coming out of the west. It struck at me in the names on coal-trucks; and drawing nearer, it flickered past on station-signs, a flash of strange spelling and a hint of a language old and yet alive; even in adeiladwyd 1887, ill-cut on a stone-slab, it pierced my linguistic heart. “Late Modern Welsh” (bad Welsh to some). Nothing more than an “it was built,” though it marked the end of a long story from daub and wattle in some archaic village to a somber chapel under the dark hills. Not that I knew that then. It was easier to find books to instruct one in any far alien tongue of Africa or India than in the language that still clung to the western mountains and the shores that look out to Iwerddon. Easier at any rate for an English boy being drilled in the study of languages that (whatever Joseph Wright [professor of comparative linguistic studies] may have thought of Celtic) offered more hope of profit.

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The above lines are interesting on the background of the new languages Tolkien constructed as well as the type of research that he became engaged in. There were many factors guiding him in his authorship. It is clear from the quotation that both spelling combinations, meaning the appearance of the words and the combination of the sounds, could be decisive for his predilection for certain languages. These factors increased his love for languages as different as Finnish and Welsh. This is, however, not the whole truth. In the case of Finnish, the enticement for Tolkien was that he became acquainted with the Finnish national epic, Kalevala, and decided to study the language system and the grammar, so that he could read Kalevala in the original Finnish. During my last visit to the Tolkien Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I went through Tolkien’s books in his private library from his school time, which his family had donated to the Bodleian in July 1982. Some books testify to the high level of classical education generally at this school, and others are more specialized, and they showed the kind of advanced language studies Tolkien devoted himself to. In the former category, one might mention the following books as examples: G.G. Bradley, Latin Prose Composition. London 1902? /Dated: 27 November 1910. Ceasar’s Gallic War, ed. J.G. Greenhough et al. Boston [no year]. / Dated: February 1907. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Cambridge 1997. W.W. Capes, Roman History. /Prize as No. 1 in 6th form, summer term 1905, under G. Brewerton. A.L. Meissner, German Grammar. /Annotated by Tolkien 1908. E.A. Sonnenschein, A Greek Grammar for Schools. /Hilary Tolkien’s book. German-English English-German Dictionary [Cassels?]. /With a note: “Bought during the school years”. F. Schiller, Geschichte des Dreissigjährigen Krieges. London 1906. / Note: Summer term 1910. In the second category we find books like: Chambers’s Etymological Dictionary. Ed. William Chambers. H. Sweet, The Student’s Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon. Pedeir Kainc y Mabinogi. Oxford 1905. /This is an edition of medieval Welsh mythological tales.

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We can see from Tolkien’s notes in his books that several of them were taken along to his private collection during his student days at Exeter College and later. In the rather torn copy of Chambers’s Etymological Dictionary there is a note, which Tolkien made as late as February 1973, saying that this book was the beginning of his interest in Germanic philology (and philology in general) around 1904. There are a great many things to comment on in regard to Tolkien’s early use of books and his learning capacity apart from his expected reading of literature according to the curriculum for the school. In a well-known academic school like King Edward’s, the reading of Old and Middle English was a normal thing, but the literature was usually read in translation into modern English. The head teacher, George Brewerton, therefore lent Tolkien a copy of an Old English primer, which became the starting point for Tolkien’s fascination with ancient languages. The book included an extract from the Old English heroic poem, Beowulf, from the beginning of the eighth century. With the help of Beowulf, Tolkien entered the world of philology. He also explained in the letter to W.H. Auden, previously quoted, that it was not only a matter of historical philology but a study based on the love of language. If the study of Beowulf in the original language, Old English, had been the beginning of Tolkien’s lifelong interest in both philology and mythology, the immediate continuation of this supplementary reading during the school period would also be decisive for his continued research within Old and Middle English philology. Philology is seen here as the study of old texts in various languages, the interpretation of the original text within a tradition, the relations between various versions of a text, the meanings of the texts and the words, their links to other types of literature, and the understanding of the contents of the texts. A philologist naturally also analyzes the linguistic relations that form the basis of the whole structure of the text in his reading and research. This means that a philologist should actually work with everything that has to do with old text material and normally know everything concerning the texts under discussion. George Brewerton, his literature teacher, had introduced the Middle English period in English literature (1100–1500) to Tolkien’s class with the help of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1400). Tolkien, however, went much further in his reading of medieval literature and was especially fascinated by two poems, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, both written toward the end of the fourteenth century. One reason for Tolkien’s great interest in the two poems was

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their origin in the West Midland area, where Tolkien could identify himself with both the natural background and the people. Much of Tolkien’s philological training at school would give concrete research results during his later professorial period. Normally it is the university studies which provide the inspiration for a budding researcher’s activities within a specialty. One might say without exaggeration that Tolkien was intellectually precocious within several important areas, but that—due to circumstances—he was led and inspired in certain directions partly by his mother, despite her early death, partly by forward-looking teachers, both at school and university. Further we must add one more feature that I think Tolkien possessed in excess, namely, a unique intellectual curiosity, combined with an equally unique creative imagination. Tolkien found an outlet for this unique creative curiosity when he began studying Sir Gawain and the Green Knight closer. Sir Gawain is a poem that belongs to the great tradition within the medieval literature concerning the mythical King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The theme is originally Celtic with many branches to be found in later English literature. Tolkien’s early studies of Sir Gawain gave obvious inspiration to innumerable names of persons and places in The Lord of the Rings. Since Welsh was one of Tolkien’s favorite languages, particularly as regards sound combinations, it was natural for him to be interested in the Welsh offshoots of the Arthurian legends. The real philological discovery for Tolkien during his school period was the oldest documented Germanic language, Gothic, which he learnt about from a copy of A Primer of the Gothic Language, written by one of the professors at Oxford, Joseph Wright (1855–1930), whose student he would later become. Tolkien described how he had bought the book from a schoolmate and what importance it had for him, in a letter to Zillah Sherring on July 20, 1965 (Letter 272). Zilla Sherring on her part had bought a book at an antiquarian bookshop in Salisbury with an inscription in Gothic by Tolkien, who was the previous owner. Since she was curious about the text, she approached Tolkien. This is an extract from Tolkien’s answer to the letter: I had come across this admirable language a year or two before 1910 in Joseph Wright’s Primer of the Gothic Language (now replaced by A Grammar of the Gothic Language). It was sold to me by a schoolfriend interested in missionary work, who had thought it a Bible Society product and had no use for what it was. I was fascinated by Gothic in itself: a beautiful language, which reached the eminence

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of liturgical use, but failed owing to the tragic history of the Goths to become one of the liturgical languages of the West. At the time I had only the Primer with its small vocabulary, but I had learned from it some of the technique necessary for converting the words of other Germanic languages into Gothic script. I often put “Gothic” inscriptions in books, sometimes Gothicizing my Norse name and German surname as Ruginwaldus Dwalakoneis.

Tolkien much regretted that the once rather extensive body of Gothic literature had disappeared in the course of time. This was the case with most of Old Germanic literature, but since Gothic is the oldest of these ancient languages, it is understandable that so much has vanished over the years. It is necessary for an etymologist and language historian to postulate—with the help of related languages—the intermediate forms that are the foundation for the words recorded in texts. Sometimes a new situation may arise when new information about old texts becomes known. Then hypothetical intermediate word-forms must be adjusted. Tolkien was an expert on this as a natural part of the dialogue about a dead language, in which he could always explain the constructed words, especially when I asked questions or questioned a single hypothetical word. Gothic was an obligatory course for the students studying for the postgraduate degrees in English at Lund University in the 1960s, so my own knowledge of Gothic was quite adequate for the discussions about the language that I had with Tolkien. We discussed constructions or reconstructions of words, which must have existed at an early stage in ancient languages, for example in Old English, very intensively, all the time with the combination of seriousness and fun that always characterized Tolkien. This knowledge of language history is particularly necessary if a scholar publishes or merely discusses an Old English text like Beowulf or a Middle English text like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Through his intensive philological training, Tolkien managed to acquire a capacity to predict or postulate language forms retrospectively. Such a capacity may sound illogical or simply absurd and it is therefore important that I explain Tolkien’s special gift and solid knowledge in order to make this claim credible. This special ability, which he developed at an early age, was founded on the fact that Tolkien grew up used to the parallel study of living and artificial languages. Thereby an interplay between practical knowledge and constructed insight came into being, which we find later at other

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levels of his activities. This interplay was evident both in the language and literature areas. Tolkien kept contact with Sir Gawain all his life, which is best documented by his “W.P.Ker Memorial Lecture” on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at the University of Glasgow in 1953. Tolkien also worked occasionally on a translation of the poem into modern English, together with another important poem from the same time and area, Pearl. Much of this happened parallel with Tolkien’s work on The Lord of the Rings. This means that we may observe a great deal of interplay between research and fiction in this period. During the whole period after Mabel Tolkien’s death, from 1904 to 1908, Father Francis kept a close eye on Ronald and Hilary. During the summer months, he took them on brief visits to the town of Lyme Regis on the south coast in Dorset, where they could swim in the sea and take walks along the beaches and the surrounding areas. The friendship between Father Francis and the boys was strengthened during this period. In 1908 he moved the boys from their aunt, Beatrice Suffield, to a wine merchant called Faulkner and his wife, in 37 Duchess Road, not far from the oratory. They were able to offer a friendly environment for the boys and also arranged musical entertainments, which the oratory fathers used to attend. The boys were given a large room upstairs in the house. In the room below was a room occupied by a nineteen-year-old girl, Edith Bratt, who was also an orphan. Edith was pretty and lively, and she and the boys soon became good friends. Ronald was sixteen and he and Edith also began to see each other outside their home. They went on bicycle tours and soon fell in love. John and Priscilla Tolkien describe their mother’s background in the following way in The Tolkien Family Album (1992): Our mother, Edith, was born in Gloucester in 1889, though she spent most of her early life in the Handsworth area of Birmingham with her mother, Frances, and cousin, Jenny Grove. Frances Bratt died when Edith was 14, and she was sent away to Dresden House School, a boarding-school in Evesham run by two sisters, the Misses Watts, who had received their musical education in Dresden. These ladies placed a particular emphasis on music, and it was at the school that Edith first developed her great love, and talent, for playing the piano. Despite a strict regime—which included rising at 6 a.m. to practise for two hours before breakfast in an unheated room even on the coldest days—there were high-spirited games and midnight feasts. Our mother would recount with pleasure how the neighbours spied on

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them from behind lace curtains and eventually reported their activities to the authorities. The school bell was rung and then they knew they were in trouble! After school, Edith’s legal guardian, Stephen Gateley, the family solicitor, found her rooms with Mrs Faulkner in a genteel boardinghouse in Duchess Road, Edgbaston. Mrs Faulkner gave musical soirées, at which Edith would play, but would never allow Edith to practise! Edith’s life there seems to have been rather restricted. She once described going to a matinee at the Theatre Royal in Birmingham (she had a lifelong enjoyment of the theatre) and being told she must take a book to read in the interval to avoid the risk of being talked to by strangers! Edith was nineteen [in 1908] when Ronald and Hilary Tolkien came to live at the boarding-house. Within a short time, Edith and Ronald, drawn together by their similar age and circumstances, had become fast friends and allies against “The Old Lady” (as they termed Mrs Faulkner). Unfortunately, Father Francis found out about their love affair, following a clandestine bicycle trip: the boys were removed to other lodgings and Ronald was forbidden to see or speak to Edith again until he was twenty-one. Edith was taken off to Cheltenham to stay with two elderly family friends, known by her as Uncle and Auntie Jessop.

As can be understood from the above text, Father Francis was much upset by Edith and Ronald’s romance, so in January 1910, he forced all three to move from the Faulkners’ lodgings. Ronald and Hilary first stayed at 12 Frederick Road and later in January, they moved to 4 Highfield Road. Edith moved to her friends in Cheltenham on March 2, 1910. At the beginning of this year, Edith and Ronald managed to see each other a few times, in spite of the fact that Father Francis had forbidden them to meet. In the memorial exhibition at the Bodleian Library 1992, a bill dated January 20 from a jeweller (E.H. Lawley & Sons) in Birmingham shows that Edith and Ronald had bought birthday presents for each other. Ronald got a fountain pen for his eighteenth birthday on January 3 and Edith a watch for her twenty-first on January 11. After these events, a long time passed until they met again. Ronald did not write to suggest that the two should see each other again until three years later on his twenty-first birthday. After his last years at school, Tolkien laid the foundation for the activity that would— during his Oxford time—lead to the famous academic association called “The Inklings.” In 1911 he and some like-minded students at school formed “T.C.B.S.,” an intellectual tea club, which can be described as a prototype of the Inklings. At the beginning, the school

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library was the center of the club’s activities. Some of the older students, such as Tolkien, helped to manage the library and were given the title of librarian. Later on, they went on to meet and drink tea in Barrow’s Store, a shop in Corporation Street. Barrow was the basis for the name Barrovian Society and the whole acronym means therefore “Tea Club, Barrovian Society.” The leading students in this small but active club were, besides Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Quilter Gilson, and, somewhat later, Geoffrey Bache Smith. They almost all had in common that they knew Latin and Greek and that they were keen on all kinds of intellectual debates concerned with literature, languages, history, music, and so on. Since the tea club T.C.B.S. turned out to be a forerunner of the Inklings of Oxford at the beginning of the 1930s, i.e., about twenty years later, with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien as central figures, it is particularly interesting to read Christopher Wiseman’s description of the origin of T.C.B.S. written much later in the 1970s. He comments as follows on the school and library surroundings. Well, the Tea Club often went on after school, and the cleaners would come round with their mops and buckets and brooms, throwing sawdust down and sweeping it all up; so we used to put the tealeaves in their buckets. Those first teas were in the library cubbyhole. Then, as it was the summer term, we went out and had tea at Barrow’s Stores in Corporation Street. In the Tea Room there was a sort of compartment, a table for six between two large settles, quite secluded; and it was known as the Railway Carriage. This became a favourite place for us, and we changed our title to the Barrovian Society, after Barrow’s Stores. Later, I was editor of the School Chronicle, and I had to print a list of people who had gained various distinctions; so against the people in the list who were members I put an asterisk, and at the bottom of the page by the asterisk it said: “Also members of the T.C., B.S., etc.” It was a seven-day wonder what it stood for! (Carpenter, pp. 45–46)

Several reports in King Edward’s School Chronicle from 1910 and 1911 show that Tolkien was most active in the debating club of the school. He was secretary of the club in 1910 and editor of the journal at least for the June and July issues in 1911. One can read from the reports in the journal from the meetings of the debating club how and when Tolkien had participated in the debates. Issue no.184 from December 1910 notes that Tolkien took part in a debate in which he regretted the influence of the Norman Conquest on the English language. In

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November 1910, he took part in a debate that was directed against a system whereby negotiation was preferred to war, and in December of the same year he spoke for the matter in a debate whose subject was: “We are being degenerated.” The tradition in England was that one should participate in school debates with contributions from various sides and also be given roles in the debate that one should stick to and thereby represent differing views, even if one did not personally sympathize with the viewpoint put forward in the debate. From the June issue of 1911, we can read that Tolkien took part in such a debate, in which he argued for the motion that the dramas ascribed to Shakespeare had in fact been written by Francis Bacon (1561–1626). This motion was by no means a novelty within the branch of Shakespeare research that dealt with the fascinating question of who actually wrote Shakespeare’s dramas. These debates contributed most decisively to the development of the enthusiasm that Tolkien always showed in academic debates later on in life, the quick temperament, and zest for all discussions and analyses. The joy in debate and argument, both friendly and serious, was perhaps the most prominent feature of his social presence. Tolkien, who never thought much of poetry written after the end of the Middle Ages, started to write poetry about 1910. A brief descriptive nature poem, “Wood sunshine,” is still preserved. It deals with elves and fairies and is surprisingly early, in view of the importance of fairies in his later fiction. This nature poem is reproduced in Carpenter’s biography (p. 47): Come sing ye light fairy things tripping so gay, Like visions, like glinting reflections of joy All fashion’d of radiance, careless of grief, O’er this green and brown carpet; nor hasten away. O! come to me! dance for me! Sprites of the wood, O! come to me! Sing to me once ere ye fade!

The first poem by Tolkien published in the school journal was “The Battle of the Eastern Field” from March 1911. It was later reprinted in Mallorn (Journal of the Tolkien Society 1978). Later, in 1979, Jessica Yates pointed out in the same journal that the poem was a parody of Macaulay’s “The Battle of Lake Regillus.” At the end of 1909, Tolkien went to Oxford to sit for the entrance exam for a scholarship but failed. But he subsequently passed the exam in December 1910 and was awarded a scholarship (an Open

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Classical Exhibition) to Exeter College, where he began his university studies in October 1911. “A long-expected party!” Tolkien could have exclaimed when he entered the period of his life that might be regarded as tailor-made for a nineteen-year-old student with unusual linguistic talents and creative power, reading capacity, and social skills.

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CH A P T ER

9

Student Life at Oxford

J.R.R. Tolkien had come to Oxford in 1910 to sit for his scholarship exam in Latin and Greek, or “Greats.” Since he had realized the importance of Gothic for language research even during his school period, he was drawn to the subject called comparative philology. This subject was represented by the exceedingly eccentric professor, Joseph Wright, the author of the very book, A Primer of the Gothic Language, which had inspired Tolkien to explore Gothic when he was still a schoolboy. The change from King Edward’s School, Edgbaston, Birmingham, to Exeter College, Oxford, was not particularly dramatic for Tolkien from an academic point of view. This may have been due to the fact that King Edward’s School was a distinguished educational establishment and had excellent teachers. It may also have been that Tolkien devoted so much time to other things than traditional studies and preparations for exams. He showed in his choice of subjects and reading that he was following his usual criteria, namely doing things that gave him pleasure, at the same time as they provided increased knowledge of the subject in question. The lively club life that Tolkien had devoted himself to during his last school years was developed even more intensively during the first student years at Oxford. His interest in rugby continued and he became a member of “Exeter Rugby XV.” Tolkien was also a member of the dialect society and the Essay Club, of which he became the president in 1914. At Exeter there was also a debating society called “The Stapeldon,” in which Tolkien was involved. Stapeldon was the name of the founder of Exeter College. Tolkien’s poem “From Iffley” was published in Stapeldon Magazine, 4 (December 1913). Iffley was a small village on the Isis (The Thames) just south of Oxford. Only one stanza of this poem of two stanzas is preserved, since the editor of the journal had mislaid the second stanza. The poem was written

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in October 1911 and gives a hint of what could be expected from Tolkien’s imagined world in his future writing. The poem goes as follows: From the many-willow’d margin of the immemorial Thames, Standing in a vale outcarven in a world-forgotten day, There is dimly seen uprising through the greenly veiled stems, Many-mansion’d, tower-crowned in its dreamy robe of grey, All the city by the fording: aged in the lives of men, Proudly wrapt in mystic mem’ry overpassing human ken.

As part of this lively club life, Tolkien also founded a small private club of his own, “The Apolaustiks” and later also “The Chequers Club,” which specialized both in discussions and good dinners. It is clear from all this that Exeter College was a perfect setting for the social life that Tolkien loved from the very beginning of his academic studies. One may, of course, wonder why, after acquiring such a solid education above all within the history and literature of the ancient languages, he devoted such a great many of the hours of the day to club life and other activities outside the academic world. The answer is that this was typical of students at Oxford and Cambridge, not only at this time, but also before the First World War broke out. Most biographies and fictional works about Oxford confirm that studies took time, but that students were also expected to participate in sports, club, and social life. Exeter College, which is one of the oldest in Oxford, was founded in 1314 by the bishop of the city of Exeter, Walter de Stapeldon. At the beginning, the word “Hall” was used and the name of the college was Stapeldon Hall; later in the fourteenth century, and at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the college began to be called Exeter College. The entrance to Exeter is in Turl Street, which is a little side street to the central and very lively Broad Street. Tolkien’s two rooms were in a building called “Swiss Cottage,” which faced Broad Street. This building was pulled down later on to give place to a bank. The whole of Exeter College is spread over one of the best central sites in Oxford between Turl Street and the magnificent library, the Bodleian Library, with its fine buildings, several hundred years old, The Sheldonian Theatre, where the annual graduation ceremony takes place, and the Radcliffe Camera, which houses the great reading room of the library. From many places in the large garden, the Fellows’ Garden, these buildings pop up at various angles, conveying

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STUDENT LIFE AT OXFORD

a quite palpable feeling of being at the center of Oxford learning, an academic power center for students as well as scholars. The importance of Oxford, Tolkien’s university life, his circle of friends, and his research must be emphasized to explain what is behind or below the creativity in fiction that Tolkien was to show. The intellectual environment in Oxford is the source on many levels for understanding the concrete inspiration that Tolkien got through the reading of literature and through personal research. Many threads reach further back in time, but are difficult to follow for anyone who wants to find sources and inspiration for the emergence of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. But Tolkien’s mental life and his literary work were anchored in this unusually stimulating university environment for as many as sixty-two years. Tolkien had kept his promise to Father Francis not to get in touch with Edith before her twenty-first birthday. However, he wrote a letter to her on her birthday and suggested a renewed contact and a meeting. Edith’s answer must have been a severe shock. Edith had actually become engaged in the meantime to George Field, a farmer in Warwickshire, a brother of her schoolmate Molly. Tolkien acted quickly when he got the letter from Edith and hurried off to Cheltenham to meet her. He succeeded in persuading her to break off her engagement with George Field and to become engaged to him instead. This was after a period of three years without any real contact except for an occasional letter. Such a long waiting period for a couple in today’s England would seem utterly unlikely. Considering the fact that Cheltenham lies only sixty kilometres from Oxford, such self-sacrifice may also seem quite remarkable. This distance, which may now be regarded as negligible, could, however, seem rather long for the young people of the 1910s. The separation time of three years with hardly any contact sounds like an example from early literature or fairy-worlds, where there are plenty of examples of couples having to wait for a long time. One may find a certain explanation for the long separation in an extract from a letter to his son Michael from March 6–8, 1941 (Letter 43). Having the romantic upbringing I made a boy-and-girl affair serious, and made it into a source of effort. Naturally rather a physical coward, I passed from a despised rabbit on a house-team to school colours in two seasons. All that sort of thing. However, trouble arose: and I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most real fathers, but without any obligation, and “dropping” the love-affair until I

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was 21. I don’t regret my decision, though it was very hard on my lover. But that was not my fault. She was perfectly free and under no vow to me, and I should have had no just complaint (except according to the unreal romantic code) if she had got married to someone else. For very nearly three years I did not see or write to my lover. It was extremely hard, painful and bitter, especially at first. The effects were not wholly good: I fell back into folly and slackness and misspent a good deal of my first year at College. But I don’t think anything else would have justified marriage on the basis of a boy’s affair; and probably nothing else would have hardened the will enough to give such an affair (however genuine a case of true love) permanence. On the night of my 21st birthday I wrote again to your mother—Jan. 3, 1913. On Jan. 8th I went back to her, and became engaged, and informed an astonished family.

When the couple disclosed their engagement to others in the course of 1913, it was a great surprise to fellow students, relatives, and especially to Uncle Jessop, at whose house Edith was still living. Jessop wrote concerning the future of the couple in a letter to Edith’s guardian, Stephen Gateley, published in The Tolkien Family Album (p. 34): I have nothing to say against Tolkien, he is a cultured gentm., but his prospects are poor in the extreme, and when he will be in a position to marry I cannot imagine. Had he adopted a profession it would have been different.

John and Priscilla Tolkien commented on this letter: “The letter holds considerable humorous irony for those of us reading it today!” Later that year something else happened that made Uncle Jessop still more upset. Ronald persuaded Edith to convert to Catholicism. Tolkien had never got over the treatment his mother had met with from all their relatives in 1900, when she became a convert. He had developed a strongly critical view of the Anglican Church, which he indirectly blamed for her death. His attitude toward Edith’s religious beliefs may seem unnecessarily dogmatic, but we have to consider his firm attitude on this point as part of his concern for his mother’s memory. The mother had sacrificed everything for the two boys, given them private tuition at home in a dedicated and up-to-date way and—without any hesitation—converted to Catholicism in spite of compact resistance from all her relatives. Tolkien’s firm attitude and strong character were proven in real terms by his ability to wait for Edith for three years during his student years at Oxford. With such

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demands on himself, one might expect that his demands in religious matters would be formal and rigid. Tolkien’s more lenient attitude toward the notion of demand in the case of studies is worth considering. Well aware of the fact that he was devoting much of his time to club life and other social activities, he promised in connection with the engagement that he would work harder in the future. Interestingly enough, Tolkien started to write a working diary, a kind of study journal, which was on display at the exhibition at the Bodleian Library in 1992. In this study journal, he recorded the hours he used for study and also for carrying out religious duties, which were marked by red ink. In retrospect, this diary is naturally rather entertaining reading, since this conscientious record was written by an extraordinarily advanced student with vast knowledge of the English language as well as other languages, who furthermore became a professor of English at the age of thirty-two. As expected, Uncle Jessop reacted very strongly and spontaneously to Edith’s conversion and Edith was told to leave the home as soon as possible. She contacted her elder cousin Jenny Grove, who had lived with Edith’s mother and Edith at Handsworth. According to John and Priscilla, she became as close as can be imagined to a grandmother for Edith and Ronald’s four children. She was extremely diminutive but a doughty character. Edith and Jenny quite soon managed to rent a house in Victoria Road at Warwick, which was dominated by the impressive medieval fortress, Warwick Castle, high above the city with a view across the river Avon. Warwick lies between Oxford and Birmingham, quite near Shakespeare’s birthplace Stratford-on-Avon, the capital of Warwickshire, which, together with Worcestershire, was the county that Tolkien felt most at home. It was not a large house, but spacious enough for Edith to find room for a piano and to continue to cultivate her musical interests. It was not possible for her to continue to work as organist in the Anglican Church at Cheltenham, as she had been doing before. At this time, Tolkien’s career prospects were not particularly promising, even if his knowledge within general linguistics and comparative philology must have been very deep. He passed his first examination in classics, Honour Moderations, in February 1913, and he received a second class. In his special paper, comparative philology, on the other hand, he was given a “pure alpha” by Professor Joseph Wright, a result rarely given by Wright. The reason why there was such a difference in the results was partly that Tolkien had read far too little for the first part of the exam, partly that comparative

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philology was the area that gave him the greatest pleasure and satisfaction. Furthermore, Joseph Wright was so eccentric and colorful that he created an inspiration and appetite for studies and had just that passion for comparative analysis and derivations of words that Tolkien himself felt. Professor Wright’s fame is mostly based on his monumental dialect dictionary in six volumes, which was published 1898–1905. Wright collected a huge number of examples for the dictionary from all parts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales to illustrate the use of dialect words in the English language, even as far back as 200 years before. Tolkien felt great sympathy for the scholar with the enormous beard. As Tolkien was always keen on social gatherings, he found the Sunday afternoon tea parties at the Wrights’, where gifted students like himself were often invited, extremely stimulating. Luckily enough, Elisabeth Mary Wright, Joseph Wright’s wife, who was first a student, then an assistant of her husband’s, wrote a 700-page-long biography, which does justice to their life together. Elisabeth Mary Wright became herself a scholar and university lecturer. The anecdotes about England’s greatest dialect expert were numerous and contribute much to the picture of Oxford during the first half of the twentieth century. Joseph Wright was known for his remarkable Scottish terriers. One was named Grendel after the monster in Beowulf, another, Jack, accompanied him to his lectures in Gothic, was regarded as gifted in languages, particularly in phonetics. Elisabeth Mary Wright explains in her biography that Joseph used to tell the students that “when I speak Gothic to the dog, he shows his tongue.” There was one word in Gothic, smakka-bagms “fig-tree,” which the dog listened to with pleasure, while licking his lips. When I first read Elisabeth Mary Wright’s biography, I understood that Tolkien must have been fascinated by this colorful professor’s enthusiasm for derivations and interesting words. Joseph Wright was perhaps not a model whom Tolkien tried to imitate but a source of inspiration. Joseph Wright was a colorful entertainer and this was also true of his disciple, J.R.R. Tolkien. Considering the differences in result in the case of the two exams, Tolkien decided to transfer from classics to English at the beginning of the summer term 1913. The complete name of this department was The Honour’s School of English Language and Literature. The same was the case in 1959 when Tolkien reached his retiring age and gave his valedictory address in Merton College Hall. The following text is

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an extract from this lecture, which, among other things, comments on the division of the subject into language and literature: I first joined the School in 1912—by the generosity of Exeter College to one who had been up to then an unprofitable exhibitioner; if he learned anything at all, he learned it at the wrong time: I did most of my undergraduate work on the Germanic languages before Honour Moderations; when English and its kindred became my job, I turned to other tongues, even to Latin and Greek; and I took a liking to Lit as soon as I had joined the side of Lang. Certainly I joined the side of Lang, and I found the party-breach already wide; and unless my recollections are mistaken, it went on widening for some time.

From the summer term 1913, Tolkien got started seriously on studies of both Old English and other ancient languages, especially Old Icelandic. These formal language studies within the framework of the complicated examination system at Oxford gave him access to the great worlds that Old Germanic literature embodied. A young scholar from New Zealand, Kenneth Sisam, who would be known for an excellent edition of late Middle English texts, was appointed tutor for Old and Middle English. Besides the Old Germanic languages, including Gothic, Tolkien also began during this period to take up studies of Welsh and Finnish seriously. In the 1955 essay “English and Welsh,” quoted earlier, Tolkien continues: But it was different in Oxford. There one can find books, and not only those one’s tutor recommends. My college, I know, and the shade of Walter Skeat, I surmise, was shocked when the only prize I ever won (there was only one other competitor), the Skeat Prize for English at Exeter College, was spent on Welsh.

In a different essay, “A Secret Vice,” from 1931, Tolkien also discusses both Welsh and Finnish phonology, in connection with the relation between sound and concept, as a primary source for the pleasure and satisfaction of creating poetry and advanced prose. The most fascinating thing in this connection with the linking of musicality and speech sounds, fictional language and living language, and the relation between sound and concept is that it leads to a new type of artistic skill. Tolkien moves from musicality to creativity in fiction. This new artistic creativity is one of the keys to the understanding of Tolkien’s whole creative process.

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This concerned first and foremost Welsh, but also Finnish. At the beginning of his studies at Oxford, Tolkien had chanced upon the Finnish grammar by C.N.E. Eliot from 1890, which he borrowed from the library at Exeter College in November 1911. The motive for Tolkien to study Finish was, as mentioned before, to be able to read the Finnish national epic, Kalevala (compiled by the folklorist Elias Lönnrot) in the original language, Finnish. The existence of a Finnish grammar was the real impulse to a deeper study. In those days, when Tolkien began to work with Kalevala and the Finnish language, most people in Finland regarded the work as a long epic poem, an epos that represented a popular tradition in this old country with a great deal of tradition. Since the Viking Age, Finland had been dominated by Swedish interests and had long been a part of Sweden. From 1809 to1917, however, Finland was a grand duchy under Russia. Finland was declared independent on December 6, 1917. As from the new constitution of 1919, the country became a republic. When Tolkien encountered Kalevala, the work was internationally well known and translated into many languages. Tolkien used W.H. Kirby’s translation, which came out in the Everyman series in 1907. When Tolkien began studying Finnish seriously in 1911–1912, it was generally believed that Kalevala was part of an old tradition and culture, preserved in a coherent monumental work. Lönnrot was not yet known internationally, even less so his great role as interpreter, collector, and folklorist. Kalevala and Finnish mythology or tradition aroused so much interest in Tolkien that he placed Finnish mythology on the same high level as Icelandic, German, Greek, and Celtic. It was only England that—according to Tolkien—failed this standard. This is one reason why Tolkien took great care to form a mythology of his own for England. On this point there are some interesting statements by Tolkien in a letter from 1951, which happens to be addressed to Milton Waldman (Letter 131). He notes here that the Arthurian world is associated with the soil of Britain but not with English and that “it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.” Tolkien regards this as fatal. He claims that “myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world.” The abovementioned letter contains several points connected with stages in Tolkien’s development as a scholar and writer. Part of this

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is the statement that there is a gap and correspondingly a poverty in English mythology, which resulted in almost a vocation for Tolkien to fill this gap in his later writing. This also involves the importance of the Finnish language and Kalevala as a source and even a starting point for The Silmarillion. This fact is made more concrete in the following extract from a letter to Christopher Tolkien on July 7, 1944 (Letter 75): A propos of bullfinches, did you know that they had a connexion with the noble art of brewing ale? I was looking at the Kalevala the other day— one of the books which I don’t think you have yet read? Or have you?— and I came across Runo XX, which I used to like: it deals largely with the origin of beer. When the fermentation was first managed, the beer was only in birch tubs and it foamed all over the place, and of course the heroes came and lapped it up, and got mightily drunk. Drunk was Ahti, drunk was Kauko, drunken was the ruddy rascal, with the ale of Osmo’s daughter—Kirby’s translation is funnier than the original. It was the bullfinch who then suggested to Osmo’s daughter the notion of putting the stuff in oak casks with hoops of copper and storing it in a cellar. Thus was ale at first created...best of drinks for prudent people; Women soon it brings to laughter, Men it warms into good humour, but it brings the fools to raving. Sound sentiments. Poor old Finns, and their queer language, they look like being scuppered. I wish I could have visited the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes before this war. Finnish nearly ruined my Hon. Mods, and was the original germ of the Silmarillion . . .

The last sentence is decisive in the discussion on where Tolkien got the earliest inspiration for his fictive world, as mainly manifested in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. He expresses his relation to Kalevala somewhat differently in his letter to W.H. Auden of June 7, 1955 (Letter 163), where Kirby’s translation is given a harsher treatment: I mentioned Finnish, because that set the rocket off in story. I was immensely attracted by something in the air of the Kalevala, even in Kirby’s poor translation. I never learned Finnish well enough to do more than plod through a bit of the original, like a schoolboy with Ovid; being mostly taken up with its effect on “my language.” But the beginning of the legendarium, of which the Trilogy is part (the conclusion), was in an attempt to reorganize some of the Kalevala, especially the tale of Kullervo the hapless, into a form of my own. That began, as I say, in the Honour Mods period; nearly disastrously as I came very near having my exhibition taken off me if not being sent down. Say 1912 to 1913.

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Tolkien certainly did not lose his place at Exeter College and it seems as though it was only his typically modest way of talking about himself that caused such a statement. His low-key attitude to his own linguistic talents was quite in character. His account of his own possible shortcomings in a certain field would rather be the subject of a selfmocking joke, which the listener would have to interpret accordingly. The self-mockery would help to make the information interesting and suited Tolkien’s desire to be an entertainer in his teaching, tutoring, and daily conversation. Tolkien also showed great modesty concerning his academic career and scholarly results. He was taken aback by the fact that his fiction sold so well and so widely over the world as the years went by. The way he explained that to me in the1960s was by showing that he was totally amused, not exactly impressed by his own gifts as a fiction writer. For the curious investigator of all aspects of Tolkien’s creativity, it is clear that it was not only scholarly articles and fantasy fiction that were central fields for Tolkien. It is obvious from the Tolkien Collection at the Bodleian Library that Tolkien’s interest in drawing and painting flourished again at an early stage during his university years at Oxford. A great deal of this artistic material is kept in sketchbooks from his student years. In his collection of handbooks and study literature, we can see how Tolkien’s interest in calligraphy developed further in this period. It is clear that there is a link between this interest, which stemmed from his mother’s artistic talents, and the numerous medieval manuscripts, which Tolkien studied especially at the Bodleian Library and the various college libraries in Oxford. Tolkien showed a very active interest in drawing and painting from his early childhood. The motifs in sketches and finished drawings were related either directly to real backgrounds and landscapes or to scenes from the fantasy fiction. In both these cases one might say that these pictures represent a reality, meaning the true picture of the reality that he wanted to render. As Tolkien saw it, drawings of scenes from the books were one way of illustrating how these may have appeared in Middle-earth. Many of the most important pictures by Tolkien are published. Many appeared in Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illuminator (2000). Furthermore, there is the catalogue for an exhibition at The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 1976, and Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien in 1979. Some other exhibition catalogues are important: J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit, Drawings, Watercolours and Manuscripts (1987),

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compiled for an exhibition at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Life and Legend, a catalogue for an exhibition in 1992 at The Bodleian Library in Oxford for the hundredth anniversary of Tolkien’s birth. The fact that the eighteen-year-old Tolkien received a scholarship to Exeter College at the end of 1910, and arrived there in the autumn of 1911, marked the beginning of a long and remarkable academic career. Tolkien was faithful to Oxford all his life, meaning the whole period 1911–1973 except for three occasions. After having been signed up for the army in 1915 and serving as an officer at the front in France in 1916, he was sent home with trench fever in November for several periods of hospitalization and returned to Oxford in 1918. During the period 1920–1925, Tolkien was attached as reader and professor to the University of Leeds. He was appointed professor of English Language in 1924 at the age of thirty-two. The third absence from Oxford was a period in Bournemouth from 1968, where he lived with his wife Edith up to her death in November 1971. In March 1972, finally, Tolkien returned to Oxford and the rooms that Merton College offered him in Merton Street.

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CH A P T ER

10

Soldier at the Front

In June 1914, Oxford was as usual teeming with activities related to the university. There were examinees, visiting relatives, fellow students, and girlfriends. All of them began to return home, one after the other. Oxford was quickly emptied of students. Normally they would return around October 1 and replenish the city with life. All those who left Oxford with a degree in June planned for a future with brilliant possibilities—well-paid work in enterprises or organizations and other careers within and outside the country. Everything this year would be completely different. A whole generation of young people in Europe would be afflicted by the most terrible war that the world had experienced so far. The real war started at the end of July and the beginning of August. Tolkien, who had decided during the summer to complete his degree from Oxford before he signed up for military service, returned in September to an Oxford that was almost devoid of students. Exeter College especially seemed totally deserted. In the autumn of 1914, Tolkien opted to find rooms outside his college together with his friend Colin Cullis. He immediately joined the Officers’ Training Corps in Oxford in order to be better prepared in case conscription was brought in. Since Oxford was comparatively empty, the possibilities of social life, club activities, and similar things were substantially fewer than normal. Tolkien could therefore devote the more time to studies for his finals in June 1915. As he had hoped and foreseen himself, he was awarded the highest marks in his academic basic degree, namely “First Class Honours” in English language and literature. The assassination of the successor to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo echoed through England, too, and it was not long before the country realized that the younger generation would be more and more involved

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in action. A wave of patriotism quickly permeated the country during the summer and autumn of 1914. The government had counted on gathering about 100,000 volunteers during the first six months of the war and later perhaps, 500,000. However, about 500,000 men actually signed up during the first month of the war and thereafter about 100,000 every month. Fairly soon, Great Britain had as many as three million volunteers to choose from. The enthusiasm diminished, however, during 1915, due to several major failures, including the attacks against Turkey at Gallipoli. The events at Sarajevo changed the map of Europe completely in only four years. The assassination led to the deaths of perhaps 10 million young soldiers in their best years within this short period. The historic shots were fired by a Serbian student, Gavrilo Princips, who was perhaps acting on behalf of a secret Serbian organization. The result of the assassination was the worst imaginable. Within a few months, Germany and the double-monarchy of Austria-Hungary were involved in a war against France, Russia, Serbia, and Great Britain. The real causes of the First World War—the coincidence which determined that the war suddenly started, and the fact that massive rearmament had already taken place—have been the subject of endless discussions and analyses. The war started for Great Britain on August 4, 1914. When Germany marched into neutral Belgium in order to defeat France more easily, Britain declared war on Germany. For the belligerent powers, the First World War was dominated by terrible and merciless trench-fighting. This was above all true of the western front, where the winding trenches were dug all the way from the English Channel, through Belgium and France, right up to Switzerland. The two lines of trenches with the so-called noman’s-land in between, ran all the way from Nieuwport and Ypres in Belgium, near the river Somme, past Rheims, Verdun and Nancy in France, and into the hilly area of the Vosges in eastern France on the border of Germany and Switzerland. On the western front this trench war remained completely static. Very few changes in the front line could be achieved by either side, but on both sides, the human suffering was intolerable and the losses unbelievably great. After the preliminary training with the Officers’ Training Corps in Oxford at the beginning of 1914, Tolkien received, from Oxford, officer’s commission as early as July 1915, with the Lancashire Fusiliers at Bedford with a further transfer to Staffordshire. At the beginning of 1916, Tolkien took the natural decision to specialize in signaling. Everything that had to do with codes and coded letters had attracted him ever since he was twelve, as was documented

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particularly clearly by a coded letter to Father Francis, which was on display at the memorial exhibition for Tolkien at the Bodleian Library in 1992 and is printed in the exhibition catalogue (p. 17). Tolkien’s handbook in signaling, Signalling: Morse, Semaphore, Station Work, Dispatch Reading, Telephone Cables, Map Reading (1915), was also on display at this exhibition. No activity within the military sphere could be closer to his own interest in languages and communication. Since it was forbidden to disclose where he was stationed, he later used a privately coded signaling system, consisting of dots, in his letters home, so that Edith could read where he was in France when the letters were written. In March 1916, Tolkien received the first indication that his battalion would soon be shipped across the English Channel to the front line in France. Tolkien received a brief leave period and that was enough for Edith and Ronald to take the decision to get married on March 2 in the Catholic Church of St. Mary Immaculate in Warwick. The wedding ceremony was performed by Father Murphy, the parish parson at Warwick, Somerset, and after a week’s honeymoon, the couple settled down in their first joint abode at Great Heywood, Staffordshire, close to Tolkien’s garrison. It has been said innumerable times that the British military command during the First World War showed matchless cynicism in their attitude to the trench war on the western front. Many of the officers had earned their laurels in Queen Victoria’s days in the nineteenth century and the tactics used in the war were old-fashioned to say the least. Lord Kitchener, who was elected war minister, had experience from several earlier colonial wars in India, South Africa, and the Sudan, but actually no fresh relevant experience in this new context. The British soldiers were instructed to attack with fixed bayonets in one wave of soldiers after the other in the hope of penetrating the trenches of the enemies and gaining ground, taking prisoners or putting the enemy to flight. The great offensive of 1916 would, according to the plans, result in a victory on the Somme. Germany had already conquered Belgium and northern France. It seemed now absolutely necessary for Great Britain to drive out the Germans and, above all, that the pressure on Verdun, where the French had suffered very heavy losses, should be alleviated. Expectations were high in the whole of England, hopes were great in France, and the conviction of a quick victory was strong in the British high command and among officers and soldiers. All the soldiers in the British army were voluntary, although general conscription had been introduced earlier in the year. The first

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conscription law was introduced in January and comprised all unmarried men between 18 and 41 without children. In May, the law was changed, so that all men with or without children of the same age group were called up for military service. The new conscripts had, however, not been trained to participate at the front. The first attack by the British came on July 1, 1916. As many as 100,000 men were ready to leave the trenches in this first massive attack. Another 420,000 men lay waiting as support. This day would be the beginning of a series of battles that were fought in the neighborhood of the river Somme between July 1 and November 18, 1916, and which would from then on be called the battle of the Somme. Newly married, trained as a signalman, and recently appointed second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers assigned to the 13th battalion, Tolkien had arrived at Calais on June 6. On the day before the great attack, the 13th battalion had been stationed at a small village behind the front, where it was supposed to stand by for further orders as a reserve force. Not until a fortnight later would Tolkien, together with his company, attack the enemy in force. Under the command of General Douglas Haig, commander-inchief of the British Army in France, and General Henry Rawlinson, commander of the fourth army, the attack was launched early in the morning of July 1 with massive artillery, followed by the infantry advance against the well-organized German machine-gun fire. At the end of the day, 20,000 British soldiers had been killed and 40,000 wounded. No attack technique other than the frontal attack had been used. The summary of the battle of the Somme made by the British National Archive shows in very frank terms the great responsibility that was placed on Haig and Rawlinson. On my latest visit to the archive, I was astounded how critical some of the reports from some of the areas of war could be. The description of the battle of the Somme has the title “A bloody failure” and begins in the following way: Despite their experience of fighting on the Western Front, Haig and Robertson showed little wisdom in their planning and execution of the Somme attack. The strategy of limited attacks using rapidly moving and well-protected infantry was abandoned in favour of an attack over a 20-mile area, in which the infantry proceeded towards enemy lines in slow, rigid formations that provided easy targets for German machine-guns. As both private and operational sources illustrate, the first day of the battle, 1 July 1916, was a bloody failure: 20,000 of the 120,000 men who attacked were killed. The territorial gains bought by this sacrifice were minimal.

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The high command continued later during the autumn to order the soldiers to carry on this meaningless march to their death with heavy equipment of between 50 and 60 pounds. It was not until 1918 that the allied forces began using a more flexible strategy than the frontal attack. During the early Oxford period, Tolkien had been in close contact with the intellectual tea club, T.C.B.S., which he and some of his close friends had formed in 1911. As mentioned earlier, the inner circle consisted of Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilson, G.B. Smith, and Tolkien. All four had met for the last time together in London toward the end of 1914. It was obvious that Tolkien had been much inspired by this last meeting with the T.C.B.S., which meant that he was encouraged to write poetry. The earliest poem that Tolkien had published—outside his school magazine—was “Goblin Feet.” It was written on April 27–28, 1915, and appeared in Oxford Poetry, published by Blackwell in 1915.The poem was later reprinted in other anthologies, and it was on one such occasion that Tolkien expressed himself most critically regarding his own work. Christopher Tolkien quoted his statement in The Book of Lost Tales, Part I, p. 32: I wish the unhappy little thing, representing all that I came (so soon after) to fervently dislike, could be buried for ever.

This sharp comment by Tolkien about his own work in his young days was announced far too late afterward to be evaluated in a meaningful way, particularly since the poem was actually written to please Edith shortly before their marriage. All four members of the club T.C.B.S. were involved in the war. They continued to keep in touch by letter and to encourage each other. The following extract is from a letter from G.B. Smith to Tolkien written on February 3, 1916: For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the TCBS. Death is so close to us now that I feel—and I am sure you feel, and all the three other heroes feel, how impuissant it is. Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four!...Yes, publish...You I am sure are chosen, like Saul among the children of Israel. Make haste, before you come out to this orgy of death and cruelty... May God bless you, my dear John Ronald, and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot (J.R.R. Tolkien. Life and Legend, p. 31).

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Only two of the club members survived the war, Tolkien and Wiseman, who was enrolled in the navy. Robert Gilson fell during the very first day of the battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916. Gilson wrote the following letter to Tolkien from the front about a week before the battle. I have never felt more forcibly than in the last few weeks, the truth of your words about the oasis of TCBSianism. Life just now is a veritable desert: a fiery one. The TCBS never despised the ordeal & I don’t think they underrated it, mine has of late increased in intensity. None the less I am cheerful enough & more grateful than I can say for the breaths of cool fresh air which the various members of the TCBS have given me from time to time...Your [letter] which found me when I returned from a night working party, on which one of my best friends among our officers was seriously wounded, was amazingly refreshing (J.R.R. Tolkien. Life and Legend, p. 33).

Smith had participated in the fighting on the Somme during the first days of the battle and heard of Gilson’s death after a brief leave from the front line. He wrote to Tolkien on July 15, 1916 (Carpenter, p. 84): My dear John Ronald, I saw in the paper this morning that Rob has been killed.I am safe but what does that matter? Do please stick to me, you and Christopher. I am very tired and most frightfully depressed at this worst of news. Now one realises in despair what the T.C.B.S. really was. O my dear John Ronald what ever are we going to do? Yours ever, G.B.S.

Tolkien’s answer to Smith was: I do not feel a member of a complete body now. I honestly feel that the T.C.B.S. has ended (Carpenter, p. 84).

Smith answered: The T.C.B.S. is not finished and never will be (Carpenter, p. 84).

At the beginning of August, Smith redirected a letter to Tolkien from Christopher Wiseman. On August 12, Tolkien wrote from the Lancashire Fuseliers’ camp a long letter to Smith. The letter gives a sense of the downheartedness that had overcome Tolkien. Smith

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and Tolkien met a few times behind the lines at the end of August. G.B. Smith was hit by a grenade later during the autumn, developed gangrene after the operation, and died in December. Later, in June 1918, Tolkien published, together with Dickey Reynolds, a collection of G.B. Smith’s poems. The friendship that developed in the little school club T.C.B.S., already during Tolkien’s last year at King Edward’s, turned out to be of the greatest importance for his later development. Even if the club was reduced by half during the war, its spirit lived on and continued, it may be stressed, in the new academic association which C.S. Lewis and Tolkien formed in the 1930s in Oxford, the famous Inklings. The male friendship that characterized many cliques and coteries during Tolkien’s school and university periods can partly be found in the group in The Lord of the Rings that willingly accepted the task to accompany Frodo in order to destroy the Ring in Mordor. Tolkien consequently called the first part of his trilogy The Fellowship of the Ring. Besides “brotherhood,” fellowship also means “companionship, comradeship, etc.” Friendship or loyalty therefore is an important theme in The Lords of the Ring. Such friendship is obvious in AragornBoromir, in Gandalf-Bilbo, in Pippin-Merry, and of course in FrodoSam. Friendship is, however, put to the test in Aragorn-Boromir and even in Frodo-Sam. It is clear that Tolkien experienced a long series of traumatic events, above all in 1916. Besides the fact that two of his closest friends were killed more or less immediately in 1916, as well as many from his own regiment, he was deeply involved in the gruesome trench war for about three months during this autumn, before he was afflicted by the trench fever and was hospitalized. Trench fever is a most infectious bacteriological disease, which was very usual during the First World War. It was caused by the damp and dirty conditions that soldiers and officers lived under. The infection was spread by fleas and lice and afflicted men fighting on both sides of the front line. The disease was little known before the First World War and there was no cure other than rest and long convalescence. The fever raged with uneven interruptions and could cause death if complications occurred, or if the fever was combined with injuries and other diseases. It would be long before antibiotics were discovered. It is quite clear that Tolkien was witness to enormous suffering, both on the battlefield in no-man’s-land and in the trenches during his hospitalization in France. Very few, but unique items from Tolkien’s period at the front are preserved, among them a trench map, which was displayed at the

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memorial exhibition at the Bodleian Library in 1992. There are notes on the map, indicating that some information had been provided by German prisoners of war and that this was corrected by air photographs. There are also references to various important places and positions such as trenches, shelters, dugouts, etc. As the signaling officer of the battalion, Tolkien was naturally most aware of the importance of information to the various units and also the misinformation that could occur through the interrogation of prisoners of war. One cannot therefore be absolutely certain that a trench map of this kind is absolutely correct in all details. It turned out, particularly during the battle of the Somme, that a lot of misleading information circulated and that the high command gave quite false information regarding, for example, the strength and equipment of the enemy, the quality of the barbed wire, etc. Nonetheless, I regard this document as very important in connection with discussions about the influence of the war on Tolkien’s fiction. The map gives a clear background to his participation in the war as a signaler and what difficulties he experienced. In the National Archives in London, I had the opportunity of studying documents that refer to Second Lieutenant J.R.R. Tolkien. In Tolkien’s service records as officer, we are told when he signed up for military service, when he was shipped over to Calais on June 6, 1916, when he was in active service at the front in the autumn of 1916, and when he was struck down by trench fever. In his separate service records (WO 339/34423), there are many documents and notes that have to do with his illness and convalescence during the period 1917–1918. There are also two letters from January and February, respectively, in which he tells the Ministry of War that he is ready for service again. His application for a commission on June 28, 1915 is an interesting document. The following relevant material throws light over many aspects of the battle of the Somme. CAB 45/166. The official German war diary describing actions on the Somme in 1916. WO 153/153–209, WO 297/5903–5905. Various trench maps from the Battle of the Somme. WO 158/322–326, 327–331, WO 161/79. Fourth Army HQ: Reports on operations at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. WO 297/5903–5905: The official French account of the Battle of the Somme. A report to the headquarters of the Fourth Army regarding operations during the first day of the battle of the Somme is kept under the act number ORO WO 158/327. There we can find that the attacks

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and failures of the Lancashire Fusiliers are carefully registered with exact indication of time for every operation. In contrast to our own days, when TV viewers all over the world are able to follow war time events very closely from technically advanced TV cameras, it was very seldom that the big film cameras from the First World War came close to the fighting in the major battles. During the summer months of June and July 1916, one of the official British photographers, Geoffrey Malins, worked in the area just north of the town of Albert, where the battle started on July 1 with a series of enormous mine explosions starting at 07.28 along a front of about 40 kilometres. The biggest of these mines contained no less than 27,000 kilos of explosive material. The powerful detonations caused enormous craters in the surrounding landscape. The film was an obvious propaganda film, where many war scenes in no-man’s-land were authentic, others were shot in advance. For example, there was the area on the low-lying, so-called sunken road, where the first mine explosion occurred where groups of the Lancashire Fusiliers could be seen during the first wave of attacks quite unprotected from the later fire of the enemy. The gruesome thing for the film audience in England was that they saw the soldiers on this road perhaps minutes or hours before they fell to the enemy fire. The film, which was ready for showing in England as early as August–September 1916, was seen by nearly 20 million people. Scenes from the film have later been shown in many TV programmes and surveys from the First World War. Tolkien, who often denied that his participation in the First World War had much influence on his writing or that The Lord of the Rings should be regarded as an allegory of the Second World War, made the following statement in a letter to Professor I.W. Forster on December 31, 1960 (Letter 226): Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.

A short extract from “The passage of the marshes” in The Two Towers (pp. 226–27) may suggest a vision of the landscape that Tolkien experienced in France. It is self-evident that one cannot convincingly

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establish any clear influence from his experience of the war by studying passages in his fiction. In this case one must, however, point out that Tolkien himself has drawn our attention to this chapter. There are certainly other passages which—through close analysis—could be regarded as relevant. So passed the third day of their journey with Gollum. Before the shadows of evening were long in happier lands, they went on again, always on and on with only brief halts. These they made not so much for rest as to help Gollum; for now even he had to go forward with great care, and he was sometimes at a loss for a while. They had come to the very midst of the Dead Marshes, and it was dark. They walked slowly, stooping, keeping close in line, following attentively every move that Gollum made. The fens grew more wet, opening into wide stagnant meres, among which it grew more and more difficult to find the firmer places where feet could tread without sinking into gurgling mud. The travellers were light, or maybe none of them would ever have found a way through. [...] Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze, so that his face was brought close to the surface of the dark mere. There was a faint hiss, a noisome smell went up, the lights flickered and danced and swirled. For a moment the water below him looked like some window, glazed with grimy glass, through which he was peering. Wrenching his hand out of the bog, he sprang back with a cry. “There are dead things, dead faces in the water,” he said with horror. “Dead faces!”

In the next chapter, I emphasize my view that many authors who have written about Tolkien have underestimated the influence that his experience in the war had on him and his writing. The fact that he did not make many statements himself about the horrors of war does not mean that he was indifferent and was not affected by the war. On the contrary, this may well be a question of avoidance, a strategy not to be brutally confronted with comparisons between real experiences and events in the world of fantasy. Tolkien was always keen to disclose everything connected with the violent war situations in his fiction, but he did not discuss things connected with the traumatic years of the First World War, when many Oxford students were killed or wounded. During the last war years, he was told that practically everybody in his battalion had been killed or taken prisoner in France in the battle of Chemin des Dames. John and Priscilla Tolkien in The Tolkien Family Album (p. 40) have included a particularly important quotation, which clearly shows

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that Tolkien was strongly influenced by the war but that it was only “occasionally” that he talked about it: Ronald probably survived his time in the trenches only because he caught trench fever in the latter part of the year and was sent home. In later years he would occasionally talk of being at the Front: of the horrors of the first German gas attack, of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men’s equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going. Years later he would compare these experiences with those of his son Michael, a soldier in the Second World War, who endured his share of horrors but was at least part of an army with motorised transport.

The Lancashire Fusiliers proved to be the regiment in the British army that received the greatest number of Victoria Crosses for bravery during the war. This is of course exceptional and important in the context and puts Tolkien’s service in a special light. Tolkien himself declined all forms of recognition or reference to his service in the war. Knowing Tolkien’s general disposition, I think this indicates that he suppressed the realities of the First World War and avoided depicting the war in traditional biographic prose. Fiction became a more natural form in which he could give vent to his traumatic experiences and express his shock and sorrow. It is striking that there are so few references to the two world wars in Tolkien’s fiction. I do not think, either, that readers associate the battles of Middle-earth with his presence in the trenches in his youth. It seems more likely that many readers regard The Lord of the Rings as an account of the role of evil in the world, whatever world one depicts. The indirect references to the war in Tolkien’s prose works, such as The Fall of Gondolin (written in 1916 or 1917), are quite numerous. The foundation for Middle-earth was laid during this period and to the mythologies behind The Silmarillion in written form. Two of Tolkien’s poems, written during the First World War, are particularly important. They were both published in Leeds University Verse 1914–24 (1924), which contained poems by university lecturers from Leeds. The first, “The Lonely Isle,” was originally written during his earliest experiences with his battalion, when it was shipped across the English Channel to the French side and arrived at Calais on June 6, 1916. The poem was called “Etaples, Pas de Calais, June, 1916” with the subtitle “For England.” The second poem from the

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same collection is “An Evening in Tavrobel,” which was written during his convalescence at Great Haywood in Staffordshire in 1917. During the period in Great Haywood, Tolkien began writing various stories that apparently were related to Middle-earth. This was the reason why I visited the village and its surroundings both in 2006 and 2009 and formed strong impressions of the landscape where both Tolkien and Edith had been able to contemplate the situation during the First World War at a safe distance, but nevertheless with close participation in the sad destiny of the battalion.

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CH A P T ER

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Experience of War in Tolkien’s Fiction

On March 2, 1916, a few weeks before he was to marry, Tolkien wrote a diary-like letter to his fiancée, Edith. He found himself stationed in Staffordshire with his battalion, which was due to be sent to the Western Front some time during the spring. The letter (Letter 4) gives a glimpse of how Tolkien could overlay reality with fantasy within his daily routines as a soldier: This miserable drizzling afternoon I have been reading up old military lecture-notes again:—and getting bored with them after an hour and a half. I have done some touches to my nonsense fairy language—to its improvement. I often long to work at it and don’t let myself ‘cause though I love it so it does seem such a mad hobby!

It is my view that his experience of war was among the most important contributory factors for Tolkien’s choice to shape in words a second world, a fictional world which served as an alternative to the one that most people consider most important, the real world. It was significant for Tolkien that he wrote prose and not poetry in response to the impact of war, that he began the creation of a mythology, and that he wrote fantasy stories and not a realistic chronicle during the second half of the Great War. The period between Tolkien being struck down with trench fever and the end of the war was actually fairly long—which is to say, there was plenty of time to plan and write outlines for a major work of fantasy, plenty of time to think. On October 27, 1916, Tolkien developed a high fever and was admitted to the Officers’ Hospital at Gézaincourt, not far from Beauval. Soon after, he was transferred to a hospital at Le Touquet, on the Channel coast directly opposite Dover,

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and a week later, on November 8, shipped back to England and taken to Birmingham. From then until the autumn of 1918, there followed periods of spells in hospital, on sick leave, and sometimes in service, which meant that the thinking and writing could continue steadily. Yet “steadily” is perhaps scarcely the word to use about his way of doing things, as Tolkien was master at what is nowadays called multitasking, letting loose his imagination at every conceivable opportunity at the same time as taking inspiration from new events and surroundings. Tolkien’s active service abroad in the Great War lasted four months, whereas the period of his convalescence after the Battle of the Somme (and the loss there of two of his close friends from the T.C.B.S. club), together with the following period with its mix of recurring bouts of illness and military service in England, lasted as long as two years. Two years for the imaginatively overproductive Tolkien must be considered an appreciable period of time in the immediate aftermath of those traumatic four months in France. What is important is that Tolkien’s creative thinking was directly affected by those four months of first-hand experience of war, and by his private grief. Despite caution among many commentators when assessing the significance of the war for Tolkien, I consider that his experiences of war clearly affected his entire literary output, especially The Lord of the Rings. My view is that Tolkien wanted to transfer his overpowering reaction to war’s inherent evil into an alternative world of fantasy. I have many memories of discussions with Tolkien about maps and armies, battles and campaigns—all entirely fictitious but treated by him as though they constituted the real world, the world he prioritized. At many points in our discussions, Tolkien actually considered his secondary world to be the more real and more important. I realize that for many, this unusual notion is difficult to accept. Yet such a prioritization may have helped to solve the problems that arise when the horrendous experiences of trench warfare are too traumatic to be described concretely in a realistic account. During our meetings in Oxford, in the 1960s and 1970s, he could suddenly, without warning or explanation, switch from answering a question about the AB language or explaining something to do with editorial work for the OUP, into something concerning The Silmarillion. Although he certainly never claimed that the fantasy project, his creative work during the 1960s, was any more important or pressing than our work on medieval languages for the E.E.T.S., for there too he showed the same turn of phrase, the same vocabulary and the same eagerness to enliven with anecdote, but his intensity

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increased when he moved over into the other world and described his own fiction. Tolkien increased by a couple of degrees in terms of feeling and concentration when he switched from discussing the AB language, which he himself had named, to speaking an Elvish language like Quenya or Sindarin, which he had actually concocted. His body language became more animated, his eyes lit up, and there was more flow in his own language, which positively bubbled with life. In other words, the translator of the fictitious world required another type of personality and Tolkien excelled in this sort of communication. It often happened that there would be a frenzied search for maps and texts, or examples of word forms in order to make an explanation more comprehensible, but equally it often happened that examples or quotations came streaming out with no preliminaries whatsoever, unconnected with previous discussions. The major question in my mind was whether it was in such inspired moments that Tolkien moved over and lived fully in the fictional world, entirely enthralled in his “sub-creation.” I could not really answer such a question, largely because he was so engaged in and fascinated by the topic under discussion that one was similarly caught up in the inspiration of the conversation. There was, quite simply, no pause for me at such moments to weigh up these solemn issues, or to gauge whether his involvement with events in Middle-earth was of a different order to his engagement in matters of this world, such as various whiskies and their merits, Middle English manuscripts, children and grandchildren, or the fact that he had received a particularly handsome royalty from his publisher. Nor was I really quite ready for my own study of Tolkien’s personality at a time when I was fully involved in the text project and on working on my own dissertation. On the other hand, in retrospect, I have thought through the way in which Tolkien could suddenly flit between the primary and the secondary world without the slightest difficulty or doubt. He did this with the same rapidity as when he would switch from one living language to another, or from a living language to an imaginary one. Linguists refer to such an alternating between two languages, or between two dialects or between two registers, as code-switching. Children, too, often have this ability to switch between different registers according to circumstances. It is well documented that within his or her mother tongue a child will have one “code,” one variety of the language, to be used at school, another for use at home, and still another for when playing with friends. Anyone who is bilingual manages this switching between the two languages to a greater or lesser

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degree. Tolkien, who was master at looking back in time to see how various languages were related and to see how a particular word originated, of course had no problem switching between one “language world” and another, particularly when both worlds were his own. Yet from here it is quite a leap to the hypothesis that perhaps for long periods of his life, Tolkien could, more or less permanently, perceive of this secondary world as reality. I would not go so far as to say that he could place himself entirely in his secondary world, and that this was the world that was real for him. But I am sure that his capacity to code-switch was so engrained that it was natural and effortless. Capable of alternating between being jovial and being earnest, moving from austere religious contemplation to vivid metaphor, switching between highly literary English to an elf language, Tolkien was also fully capable of developing code-switches that occupied long periods of time. Moreover, it was obvious that he had a great talent for varying the tone of his spoken English depending on the situation and company. It was not that he varied his language massively according to circumstances, but slight changes and switches were there, even if they were not always noted by those involved. The common feature of all his conversation of an informal sort was the infectious cheeriness that made him so well liked. One of the few people to delve into this question is Michael White, author of J.R.R.Tolkien, A Biography (2001). White claims: “In some respects, [Tolkien’s] internal world, that of Middle-earth, became more real to him than his external life.” White particularly points out that “Tolkien’s imaginary world took root when he was very young and offered an extremely complex alternative reality based upon the almost fairy-story world of his early childhood” (p. 79). My own experience of Tolkien’s verbal traits stretches back no further than the 1960s. In his personal dealings with others, I was conscious of the slight variations in language he employed in conversation with various groups—with the professors, fellows, students, or porters at Merton College, the domestic staff at 21 Merton Street, various individuals in the street, and lastly with myself. But it became clear to me during our various strolls that Tolkien enjoyed meeting people from outside the academic world and that he found it very easy to get into conversation with anyone, mostly because of his facility with the nuances of language. From childhood, and throughout his schooldays and university, Tolkien had taught himself a ready versatility concerning language and etiquette, according to his surroundings. The brothers Ronald and Hillary shared the experience of an unsettled childhood in a

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succession of different homes. Though they always had each other as fixed points to revolve around in their youth, and, a meaningful guiding light in the form of their mother until her death, a ready ability to adapt was a natural and necessary part of their survival strategy in circumstances that altered repeatedly. Similarly, Tolkien developed an ability to switch between the different languages within his fiction, and it was also this that allowed him to reduce his experiences from the Great War, from an experienced reality to a fictive secondary world. In 1992 Tom Shippey contributed a notable article on Tolkien as postwar author to the volume published following the conference in Oxford held to mark the centenary of Tolkien’s birth. The article dealt with how five prominent twentieth-century authors—William Golding, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, T.H. White, and J.R.R. Tolkien—all employed evil as their dominant theme. All but White had served in one of the World Wars, and all, claimed Shippey, were war-scarred and wrote nonrealistic fiction as at least part of their most significant writing, in genres like science fiction, fantasy, and fable. Daniel Grotta too, in his biography of Tolkien (p. 59), argues: The First World War was probably the single most important experience in Tolkien’s life. It certainly fired his imagination to a degree not previously achieved and provided valuable experience and insights that were later incorporated into his mature works.

In his book Tolkien and the Great War (2003), John Garth has most meticulously described Tolkien’s participation in the First World War. He concentrates most fully on the Battle of the Somme and the fate of the four members of the T.C.B.S. All Tolkien’s movements as a communications officer are charted in detail. The reader can follow the development of the battle from the perspectives of the four friends and form a clear picture of Tolkien against a background of artillery shells and flying bullets. Garth indicates (p. 310) that Tolkien himself is thought to have considered that any historical or biographical traces in the The Lord of the Rings should be found in the war. However, Garth points out that Tolkien himself contributed very little to any discussion about the influence of the war, his comments on the subject being few and cagey. My view is that there are many clues, and that although these may very well be indirect they still have considerable value. On the link between Tolkien’s wartime experiences and fantasy writing, Garth’s discussion is somewhat less exhaustive, notwithstanding

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his early comment that the war played an important role in Tolkien’s creation of Middle-earth and that it influenced his writing. It is in this context that I am trying to develop an understanding of Tolkien’s motives for his dual authorships, the two parallel undertakings of his writing on philology and his fantasy literature. How these two distinct aspects of his work influenced each other and were constantly related to one another is one of the most interesting questions within the mighty welter of Tolkien research that exists these days. To understand how Tolkien used writing to purge himself of his experiences in the First World War, we must recognize his private attitude to the war. He could simply see no purpose in writing concrete recollections or a conventional autobiography but instead created an entirely new genre, fantasy literature. I quote one of the many letters written to Christopher during the Second World War (Letter 66), dated the May 6, 1944. What is remarkable in this letter is that Tolkien himself makes a comparison firstly between the First and Second World Wars, and secondly between the evil (Sauron) in The Lord of the Rings and the evil of the Second World War. In this fascinating document, Tolkien wrote to Christopher as follows: Life in camp seems not to have changed at all, and what makes it so exasperating is the fact that all its worse features are unnecessary, and due to human stupidity which (as “planners” refuse to see) is always magnified indefinitely by “organization”. But England in 1917, 1918 was in a poor way, and it is a bit thicker that in a land of relative plenty, you shd have such conditions. [...] An ultimately evil job. For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side ... . Well, there you are: a hobbit amongst the Urukhai. Keep up your hobbitry in heart, and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them. You are inside a very great story! I think that also you are suffering from suppressed “writing”. That may be my fault. You have had rather too much of me and my peculiar mode of thought and reaction. And as we are so akin it has proved rather powerful. Possibly inhibited you. I think if you could begin to write, and find your own mode, or even (for a start), imitate mine, you would find it a great relief. I sense amongst all your pains (some merely physical) the desire to express your feeling about good, evil, fair, foul in some way: to rationalize it, and prevent it just festering. In my case it generated Morgoth and the History of the Gnomes. Lots of the early parts of which (and the languages)—discarded or absorbed—were done in grimy canteens, at lectures in cold fogs, in huts full of blasphemy

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and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell-fire. It did not make for efficiency and present-mindedness, of course, and I was not good officer ...

It is remarkable that Tolkien should have written that he began so early to purge his experience of war, that he expressed himself in fragments of accounts later incorporated in The Silmarillion, and that they were written down in their simplest, most primitive form during the First World War. He does not perhaps express himself particularly straightforwardly on his reasons for writing, but he certainly gives Christopher the sound advice to start writing and suggests that writing would provide great relief in those hard times. It is notable too that Tolkien equates events in the Second World War with the evil described in The Lord of the Rings, specifically in the form of Sauron. In this letter, Tolkien expresses himself in very concrete terms, and the various comments in the letter provide key references for discussions of Middle-earth, Sauron, and the purpose of The Lord of the Rings. It is important to make a clear distinction between, on the one hand, the effect of the First World War on Tolkien’s thinking and creativity, and, on the other, his attitude to interpretation of his own fiction. In his preface to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings (1966), he discusses the message in his work very clearly: As for any inner meaning or “message”, it has is in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, “The Shadow of the Past”, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels. [ ... ] Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse “applicability” with “allegory”; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

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Here again we have one of Tolkien’s key quotations, which may in part be taken at face value, yet also requires some interpretation. Even if Tolkien claimed to abhor allegory, that is not to say he eschewed it in all his writing. He favored the term “applicability,” which left plenty of scope for various interpretations of a text if one wanted to avoid labeling it strictly allegorical. Somewhat later in this important foreword, Tolkien turns his attention to the First World War in a way that can scarcely be misunderstood: One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.

Reading this, one is left with the strong sense that Tolkien was greatly affected by his own experiences during the First World War. This of course means that the term “applicability” can be used of the many descriptions of warfare in The Lord of the Rings. Taking a very broad view of the term, one can argue that all readers are entitled to apply their own views of the trilogy, both of its plot and of its deeper meaning. In this way, one gets a more open view of Tolkien’s intention in The Lord of the Rings and an understanding that he himself wished to allow a great deal of freedom when it came to interpretation. He was loath to label his work allegory, if that meant he himself was dictating the meaning of the various components of the work. Allegory is a word with a fairly fixed meaning. It is normally an account (or poem, or painting, amongst other genres), in which various characters and events are symbolic of something else. Allegories are often moral, religious, or political. One might say that there is a hidden meaning that may nonetheless be identified relatively unequivocally. This certainly means that allegory can scarcely be used of The Lord of the Rings. Many readers of the work seem to prefer to believe that Tolkien’s purpose was allegorical, just as some people prefer to see something symbolic in every work of art. In all areas of art and literature, overinterpretations that do not correspond at all with the intentions of the artist or author are inevitably hatched. “Applicability” is hence a convenient term that allows a generous amount of scope for varying interpretations of a work. It is interesting to note that C.S. Lewis was quite unambiguous about his own understanding of Tolkien’s use of the term “allegory.”

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In a published letter to Father Peter Milward, dated the September 22, 1956, when all three parts of The Lord of the Rings had been published, Lewis wrote: Tolkien’s book [The Fellowship of the Ring] is not an allegory—a form he dislikes. You’ll get nearest to his mind on such subjects by studying his essay on Fairy Tales in the Essays presented to Charles Williams. His root idea of narrative art is “sub-creation”—the making of a secondary world. What you wd. call “a pleasant story for the children” wd. be to him more serious than an allegory. But for his views read the essay, wh. is indispensible. My view wd. be that a good myth (i.e. a story out of which ever varying meanings will grow for different readers and in different ages) is a higher thing than an allegory (into which one meaning has been put). Into an allegory a man can put only what he already knows; in a myth he puts what he does not yet know and cd. not come by in any other way.

This explanation of the difference between myth and allegory in terms of degree of freedom of interpretation has clear links with the term applicability discussed above. There can be no doubt that Tolkien really intended to be accessible to all readers and to allow every possibility for different interpretations. Tolkien’s relationship to the Second World War was of an entirely different order to his experience in the First, in which he was directly and brutally involved, suffering the appalling horror of losing his closest friends, cut off in their early twenties, among many others he had known at Oxford who never made it home alive. Casualties in his own battalion were particularly heavy. During the later war, when Tolkien made great strides in his writing, and after it, with Tolkien completing the trilogy around 1949, his involvement was of course of a very different kind, although two of his sons were in active service. When war broke out in 1939, he was forty-seven, and as he himself wrote to Michael, “permanently in reserve.” He was in regular contact by letter with both sons throughout the war, though it is in his correspondence with Christopher that we find reports from the war exchanged for the father’s news of progress in his writing. This carefully maintained dialogue in letters between father and son represents not just the correspondence between the two of them but also a link between Tolkien’s work and the Second World War. Much has been said about Tolkien concerning the role of evil in The Lord of the Rings and many have maintained that he surely considered that evil, like that expressed in the form of Morgoth and Sauron,

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could be equated with Hitler and Stalin during the Second World War. Yet it must be pointed out that he denied any allegorical intention in this area, and that Hitler and Stalin are seldom mentioned in his letters before, during or after the war. Admittedly, he did write in sharp, critical terms, about Hitler, for example in the following letter to Michael (June 9, 1941): Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will).

But with so few references to Hitler and Stalin in his letters overall, and most notably in his letters to Christopher, it is hard to believe that Tolkien intended that The Lord of the Rings should be read solely as an allegory with direct allusion to the phases of the war. Tolkien would have expressed himself in a very different fashion if his purpose had been to offer examples of evil with direct reference to the dictators of the time. In the type of writing process documented, above all in Tolkien’s correspondence, it comes across very strongly that he was very particular in his observations about the use of the term “allegory.” In his article “Tolkien on Tolkien” in The Diplomat (1966), he summarized this in a straightforward and authoritative way in the following comment about The Lord of the Rings: It is not “about” anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions general, particular or topical; moral, religious or political.

Just how Tolkien used his own experiences in his fiction without prescribing how these should be interpreted is also evident in a letter written to Christopher on the June 10, 1944, shortly after the allied invasion of Normandy. Amidst discussing childhood memories, Tolkien states: As for what to try and write: I don’t know. I tried a diary with portraits (some scathing some comic some commendatory) of persons and events seen; but I found it was not my line. So I took to “escapism”: or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in great stead in many hard years since and I still draw on the conceptions then hammered out. But, of course, there was no time except on leave or in hospital....

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The passage is exceptionally interesting on the subject of his own view of the impulse to write. Filling a diary with portraits of people and accounts of events did not work for him—and the alternative that did was a method of “transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie.” My conclusion concerning the First World War’s effect on Tolkien’s writing is thus clear. Through the method of “sub-creation,” which he had already practised during childhood, he was able to transform his first-hand experience of the horrors of the First World War, horrors which still affected him during his period of ill health in 1916–1917. The difference between real-life experience and fictional description is impossible to ignore when we discuss Tolkien and the two World Wars.

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CH A P T ER

1 2

Research as Motor

How early in life can a research talent be identified? When does a child’s curiosity lead to collections of facts, so that a scientific problem can be solved, or when is problem-solving on analytical grounds noticeable? There are always stories about precocious geniuses and wonder children in music or mathematics. But when can we talk about children’s talents for research, the collection or use of data for specific problem solving? The question is impossible for the reason that most disciplines work differently, and, in principle, the sciences are different from language and literature. In addition, there are different views on how science should be tackled and when one can establish where a scientific investigation actually starts. One reason why I regard these questions as important for the understanding of Tolkien’s work is that I could observe, both in conversation with him and in reading his work, that his own research on language and literature influenced him very much in his production of fantasy literature. Tolkien could make deep investigations before making changes in the fantasy texts and return later with revisions or additions that probably sprang from his research work. Tolkien certainly helped to make fantasy literature more credible by introducing research views on matters of contents. The market was certainly inundated with fantasy literature toward the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new millennium. The new media have helped fantasy literature to become an extensive genre, which has become more and more popular. Most critics seem to agree that Tolkien created this genre or was an important precursor. He has been called the “father or master of fantasy” in many respects, even though the foundation of today’s fantasy is actually to be found around the middle of the nineteenth century and is often inspired by considerably older literature. Many new writers belonging to this genre have had to be compared with Tolkien. But for the

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multitalented Tolkien, research was a decisive motor or driving force for creative fantasy. It was certainly that even in his younger days. The precision of this research is most striking for a reader of Tolkien’s busy correspondence with his son Christopher regarding the emergence of The Lord of the Rings during the Second World War. I am convinced that most readers, both young and old, feel this precision, which makes both the setting and the action more authentic and natural. In most handbooks dealing with the writing process, the formula “write-rewrite” is often insisted on. Many handbooks assume that most writers find it necessary to edit or rewrite extensively when writing a text or an article. The rapid writer, who knows exactly how the text should be composed in every detail, certainly exists. Such writers are probably a minority. Others, who always rewrite and improve on the text, have benefited enormously since the time when no personal computers or word processors existed. Tolkien remained the old-fashioned elegant writer, who made his changes in a graceful style of handwriting, which could remind you of the artistic hand of a medieval scribe. Sometimes he made small changes or additions above a word and marked where these should be inserted. In other cases, he would quite ruthlessly delete seemingly finished pages with long strokes and sometimes reuse the back-pages of his sheets of paper. Elsewhere one finds pieces of paper with careful notes, showing that Tolkien was quite eager to find the best phrase, whatever the original looked like. Even among my own private letters from Tolkien, there are examples of inserted passages, marginal notes, and changes of style. In addition, I have an example in a letter of how Tolkien changed his handwriting in order to draw my attention to a particular passage. In spite of the collected documentation of drafts of texts that Tolkien left behind, he made certain comments on his use of a typewriter. In Letter 257 from 1964 he writes to Christopher Bretherton: I do not regard typing as a discourtesy. Anyway, I usually type, since my “hand” tends to start fair and rapidly fall away into picturesque inscrutability. Also I like typewriters; and my dream is of suddenly finding myself rich enough to have an electric typewriter built to my specifications, to type the Fëanorian script ... I typed out The Hobbit— and the whole of The Lord of the Rings twice (and several sections many times) on my bed in an attic of Manor Road.

The fact that medieval scribes worked a great deal on changes and insertions of material is not surprising, since they wrote on parchment, which was expensive and sometimes difficult to acquire.

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Figure 12.1 The Book of Mazarbul. Page 1 of Book II, chapter 4. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 3/4/12. Copyright: The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust. The first “facsimile” of the three damaged pages of the Book of Mazarbul that Gandalf is able to read.

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It is certainly true that paper was not inexpensive during Tolkien’s time, but in his case, he was also careful about the raw material, meaning the trees, which he had such a special liking for. All his versions of texts and various drafts caused difficulties for him when the final version was to be produced. It was also characteristic that many of the versions, which would look quite unsystematic to an outsider, were noted down on examination papers and other documents. Nobody would know more about this than Christopher Tolkien. He has also mentioned frequently how difficult it was to publish his father’s texts, for example, The Book of the Lost Tales or The Silmarillion. As regards Tolkien’s earliest understanding of how a data collection may be useful, it is possible that one might pick out a certain period in his childhood. The term data collection may sound somewhat ambitious for a twelve-year-old boy. Fact-gathering or possibly knowledge base would be a better term for the preparatory collection of words that Ronald needed in order to create the fiction language Newbosh (new nonsense). The inspiration came in 1904, when Ronald was twelve, from a different private language, Animalic, which his cousins and playmates, Mary and Marjory Incledon, had constructed. The next step was Ronald’s construction of his new private language, Naffarin. The development was thus from Animalic, via Newbosh, to Naffarin. Tolkien himself noted as a child that a great collection of facts was necessary for building up conclusions when he composed artificial languages on the basis of natural languages. It seems as if Tolkien’s keenness or awareness in the question of new constructions could at least partly be a result of his meetings with his cousins Mary and Marjory. As I pointed out in chapter 7, Ronald also worked on constructed alphabets and coded letters during his school period. The coded letter to Father Francis from August 8, 1904, which I quoted there in part, is preserved in the Tolkien Collection at the Bodleian Library. Ronald’s little collection of constructed words and codes was a starting point for a code system to build one sentence after the other in a connected text. We cannot detect an exact point in time where we could talk about a clear research talent, but we can see that Tolkien could easily systematize and continue to analyze how one language can be transferred into another, where the new components build on the previous ones. Tolkien also had one particular talent, which may be an explanation why everything seemed so easy when he needed to learn facts and to use them in various contexts. The alertness characteristic of the young Tolkien at school was combined with an unusual curiosity, an urge to find out the real background facts, if they were unknown

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to him. This curiosity and the pleasure of continuously searching for the truth were qualities in him, which certainly were there at a very early age. Tolkien emphasizes the role of his mother in a discussion of his early research in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer in 1967 (Letter 294). It was she who aroused Ronald’s interest in etymology, the origin and history of words. At the same time, it is interesting that much later in life (1973) he made a note in his old, torn copy of Chambers’s Etymological Dictionary, confirming that this book was the beginning of his interest in Germanic philology and also commenting that the introduction, tattered from frequent use, had given him his first glimpse of “sound change etc.” This note helps to date Tolkien’s early interest in etymology to the time when he was about twelve. Tolkien’s interest in linguistics and all kinds of curiosities in languages are attested in many different ways, including an unusual notebook, which is kept in manuscript at the Bodleian Library and which was shown at the memorial exhibition in 1992. It is entitled “Book of the Foxrook,” compiled in 1909. It has a coded alphabet and all the comments are written in a constructed language, based on Esperanto and Spanish. Tolkien’s interest in Spanish came from Father Francis’ Spanish books. The international language Esperanto appealed to Tolkien, because it is both constructed and well-organized, both in written and spoken forms. Esperanto had been constructed and introduced as early as 1887 by the Polish doctor, L.L. Zamenhof, but it began to arouse a wider interest in the twentieth century. Would it be possible to introduce the curious idea that Tolkien could be regarded as a pioneer for new ideas about a united Europe or the beginning of a European Union. In connection with his ideas of Esperanto, Tolkien clearly hints that he believes in an artificial language for a united Europe. He wrote the following at the beginning of the essay, “A Secret Vice” from 1931: Some of you may have heard that there was, a year or more ago, a Congress in Oxford, an Esperanto Congress; or you may not have heard. Personally I am a believer in an “artificial” language, at any rate for Europe—a believer, that is, in its desirability, as the one thing antecedently necessary for uniting Europe, before it is swallowed by non-Europe; as well as for many other good reasons—a believer in its possibility because the history of the world seems to exhibit, as far as I know it, both an increase in human control of (or influence upon) the uncontrollable, and a progressive widening of the range of more or less uniform languages. Also I particularly like Esperanto, not least because it is the creation ultimately of one man, not a philologist, and

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is therefore something like a “human language bereft of the inconveniences due to too many successive cooks”—which is a good description of the ideal artificial language (in a particular sense) as I can give.

It is clear from Tolkien’s love of words and his early fascination with investigating the origin of words that he was well prepared—even as a teenager—to work on a big dictionary as its editor. He was also well prepared for reading many of the literary texts in the original language that were suggested to him at King Edward’s School. We can assume that the knowledge that Tolkien acquired from his early contact with classical and medieval literature had a concrete influence on his own literary work. We need to study the books from Tolkien’s own library from his school and university period, which are now kept at the Bodleian Library (see chapter 8). It was through them that he laid the foundation for his solid knowledge of classical and medieval times, it is here that we can find sources, starting points, and inspirations for his later writing and also gain increased understanding of how certain features of his fiction have come into being. Tolkien believed that a real scholar should know the original language and not read translations into English when approaching an ancient literary text. His willingness to learn Gothic, Finnish, and Welsh in order to read original texts is well documented. The same type of enthusiasm in the reading of literary and mythological texts in the ancient languages also came out when he wanted to create freely in fantasy fiction. There was a joyousness I observed that shone through his stories, when he told me about The Silmarillion. I observed this each time he went over from a discussion of philology to a monologue on adventures in Middle-earth. From dialogue to monologue sounds like a simple formula for the structure of our meetings, but it actually became a routine and neither of us regretted this fairly strict order. I profited from the more experienced scholar’s advice and viewpoints, and Tolkien had an enthusiastic listener who also knew the ancient languages and could discuss the mythologies that he had studied so minutely. Tolkien never pointed out that certain sequences or events in his fiction could be derived from specific literary and mythological sources. We discussed the literature written in ancient languages rather as the foundation for the understanding of all the older western culture. We analyzed various literary works, such as Beowulf, Waldere, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, Ancrene Wisse, Kalevala, The Elder Edda, and regarded all these as central, influential works without specific reference to exact lines or phrases in Tolkien’s fiction.

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In lexicography, too, Tolkien’s wide reading and great joy in deriving words from their origin were a great asset. A historical dictionary like The Oxford English Dictionary is a massive work, which took a great deal of time to finish. It is easy to believe that a hard-working knowledgeable linguist can be a good lexicographer. This is not necessarily the case. On the other hand, a knowledgeable lexicographer must always be hard-working in order to be successful in his profession. Tolkien was always creative and diligent, even though his colleagues in Oxford later maintained that he ought to have devoted much more time to research than to fiction. Although Tolkien had all the qualities for a post within English lexicography, it was rather a question of hoping that a suitable one could be offered in Oxford. He did not want anything than to return to Oxford as a university lecturer or tutor after the war and could be rather certain of this possibility, since he had done so well in his finals and had probably made an overwhelming impression on his tutors and examiners. When he therefore visited his previous tutor in Icelandic, William Craigie, who was now one of the chief editors of the big New English Dictionary, subsequently renamed The Oxford English Dictionary (=OED), he was, to his surprise, immediately promised a position as assistant lexicographer. When Tolkien was planning for his family and his career, he seemed quite unconcerned and moved to Oxford without any permanent post, but obviously with a certain self-confidence. The family came with him, they found one home after the other and the family was extended. The vacant higher posts turned up and seemed tailor-made for him. Everything turned out well, or it was Tolkien who settled everything. One cannot see anything in his writing or in reports from other people that he had an exaggerated self-confidence. He rather seemed to have a clear conviction of his own inherent abilities. The work on the great dictionary had begun as far back as 1857 and it would take until 1928, before all twelve volumes had gone into print. The OED was the biggest dictionary project that had ever been planned for any language. The number of headwords in the dictionary was as large as 414,825, the number of quotations no less than 1,827,306. Each volume was 3–4 inches thick and in a format much larger than ordinary one-volume dictionaries. The weight of every volume could break the back of any hard-working researcher. In 1933 the first supplement appeared and later, in 1972–1986, further four supplements. In 1989, all previously published volumes were combined together into a second edition consisting of 20 volumes. They

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contained 615, 200 defined words. The number of quotations was 2,436,600. The first CD-ROM version came in 1992. The online-version was introduced in March 2000 and is continuously updated every three months (www.oed.com). It was originally based on the second edition of 1989 and three additional volumes, two from 1993 and one from 1997. Since then, revised additions have been issued continuously, and new words and their recorded forms have been presented in new supplements four times a year. In this version, too, the search functions are advanced and most useful for all types of collection of lexicographical material for further research. The third edition of OED is not likely to be finished before 2018. Tolkien only lived to see the first edition of the dictionary of 1928 with the supplement from 1933 and of course reprints. It is certain that he, with his unusual faculty of combination, would have had special pleasure from all the present possibilities of cross-reference, if he had had access to modern online technique. Much later in life, in 1969, Tolkien was asked by the editor of the dictionary at the time, Robert Burchfield, who had once been his student at Oxford, to write the definition of the word hobbit. The result was the following, a definition that Burchfield certainly would see no reason to shorten or revise: In the tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–): one of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning “hole-dweller”) but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal men. (OED, Supplement II)

Fortunately there are no problems in finding material on what Tolkien worked with and what he achieved in his work during the years 1919–1920. The OED has carefully kept the background material for dictionary articles completed by all its editors and assistants. The material consists of dictionary slips, on which examples of words and meanings of words as well as extracts from texts and notes about the etymology of words are recorded. The completion of an article in the OED, meaning the textual contents under one word, became a fixed routine for the various editors and assistants. For Tolkien, who was one of the assistant lexicographers, the process was as follows then, as well as later: • The various dictionary slips from the thousands of readers and helpers across the whole country are submitted and sorted under their respective headwords in alphabetical order.

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• The various words on the slips are sorted according to the meaning of words. • The first drafts of definitions of the various meanings of the words are written. • Revision of this material is done by the chief editors. • Draft of a dictionary article is written with spellings, pronunciation, etymology, definitions, examples, etc. • Revision of the whole article is completed by one of the chief editors. When Tolkien was employed at the OED, he was given tasks concerning words starting with the letter w, for example, waggle, wain, waist, wake, wallop, walnut, walrus, wampum, wan, wander, wane, and warm. Several of the slips kept are most interesting for the understanding of how Tolkien functioned as assistant lexicographer. One may also gather a great deal about his disposition, temperament, and planning of his future writing. Peter Gilliver, one of the editors at the OED, has studied the collected material of slips and dictionary articles that Tolkien wrote during his period of employment at the dictionary in 1919–1920. Gilliver presented his analysis of the material in a lecture at the conference of the hundredth anniversary of Tolkien’s birth in 1992. In his conference article, “At the Wordface. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Work on the Oxford English Dictionary,” Gilliver analyses how Tolkien handled some of the words and word groups, which he was asked to write for the OED. Still more about Tolkien’s work as a lexicographer can be found in The Ring of Words. Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006) by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner. One of the first words, if not the very first, that Tolkien worked on, was the verb waggle and its derivatives. A dictionary slip showing Tolkien’s draft for an article about waggle was published in GilliverMarshall-Weiner’s book (p. 13), as was the first part of the printed article in the OED (p. 14). Since Tolkien had not yet been fully introduced to the routines of lexicography work, it is not surprising that Henry Bradley, one of the chief editors, made several changes and emendations in his text. As a young scholar, Tolkien had found an environment where the job satisfaction was high and where there was fruitful cooperation concerning the origin and meaning of words. At the same time, concentration on individual tasks was high, meaning that everyone was responsible for certain words and could plan the structure of a dictionary article, as if it were an individual paper or text by one single author. Finally it seemed as if every article could be one

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single author’s personal scholarly contribution. In actual fact, every dictionary article was the result of a fairly long process, whereby the work was first distributed by the chief editors, who drew up all the strategic guidelines. Summarizing all this, one could suggest that the following qualities may be regarded as characteristic of a good lexicographer employed by the OED: • Wide reading within English literature to evaluate the examples of various meanings of words submitted by readers outside the dictionary • A flair for finding new examples from one’s own reading of literature • Faculty for combination to assess how the origin of words may be discussed in the article • Ability to understand the various meanings of words and to place examples under each of these meanings • Knowledge of parallel languages in order to find the correct construction of non recorded word forms • Ability to analyze logically a word’s development through several centuries • Ability to analyze stylistic features and evaluate whether words should be regarded as dialect, jargon or colloquialism, etc. Tolkien had all these to an unusual extent. They are all central components in a philologist’s training and were therefore important in Tolkien’s career. While these analyses were being carried out at the OED, thousands of readers and collectors of quotations all over the country worked to gather words or expressions together with the surrounding context, which were sent in to the dictionary-center in Oxford. These readers had sometimes been asked to read texts that were of specific value for the dictionary and its mapping out of the vocabulary of the English language. Besides these specific external readers, there were and always have been attentive scholars or readers of literature who have contributed quotations to the OED that are earlier than those printed in the first edition of the dictionary. Such quotations have often been inserted in a supplement, or in the second edition. Other scholars have written extensive scholarly articles on suggestions for new etymologies or proofs of early quotations of a word, which the dictionary may have overlooked or not known about. Tolkien was apparently a much appreciated assistant at the dictionary, and one who certainly also participated in the debates about the origins

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and meanings of words. The editors at the dictionary were experienced and in certain cases legendary lexicographers. The Scotsman, James Murray, had long been the chief editor, from 1879 to his death in 1915. James Bradley, who took over the leadership of the great dictionary after Murray, once made the following statement about Tolkien: His work gives evidence of an unusually thorough mastery of AngloSaxon and of the facts and principles of the comparative grammar of the Germanic languages. Indeed, I have no hesitation in saying that I have never known a man of his age who was in these respects his equal (Carpenter, p. 101).

Most of the leading lexicographers at the dictionary during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century give the impression of being very strong personalities, judging from photographs published. Some of the external readers throughout the country were of course often quite anonymous to the editors in Oxford and kept in touch only by letter. Perhaps the most special of these was an American reader, with whom James Murray only communicated by letter and who delivered nearly 10,000 dictionary slips with examples from his very extensive reading. This reader, about whom Simon Winchester wrote the book The Surgeon of Crowthorne in 1998 (the American edition: The Professor and the Madman), was in actual fact a murderer, W.C. Minor, who, during an attack of mental illness, had killed a person unknown to him in London during a dark night. For over twenty years, W.C. Minor, who had originally been trained as a surgeon in the United States, was one of the patients at the closed institution of Broadmoor in the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire. When the dictionary was on its way to being half-finished, Murray went to the village of Crowthorne in 1891 and got to know Minor, which was the beginning of a long friendship and continued cooperation. Later Murray succeeded in persuading the authorities to release Minor and he was able to return to the United States after a decision in 1910 by the home secretary, who at that time happened to be Winston Churchill. It was clear that Tolkien never intended to make lexicography his main occupation or to be a subeditor all his life. His work at the OED was apparently meant to be a springboard for other tasks as a don at Oxford. He had moved there in November 1918 after the end of the war, together with Edith and their first child, John Francis Reuel, who was born at Cheltenham on November 16, 1917, while Tolkien was in quarters in Yorkshire. At the beginning, the family rented a flat in St. John’s Street quite near the editorial offices of the dictionary together with Edith’s cousin Jenny Grove. The dictionary was at that

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time located in Old Ashmolian House, beside the elegant Sheldonian Theatre at the Bodleian Library in the middle of Oxford. In the middle of the summer of 1919, the family moved on to a house in Alfred Street, where Tolkien could receive students better for private tuition. It was not only for economic reasons that Tolkien devoted time to private tuition. It was also a strategic way of becoming known as a good teacher and supervisor in university circles. Another thing was that the study of Anglo-Saxon was becoming more and more important at Oxford. Immediately after the war there were not so many experts in this field. The two women’s colleges, Lady Margaret Hall and St Hugh’s College, were particularly, in need of good teachers. Tolkien, with his unusual learning covering the whole Anglo-Saxon field and his jovial disposition would have been an ideal private teacher for undergraduates. In John and Priscilla Tolkien’s Family Album about their father (p. 43), there is an amusing anecdote that describes a scene where Tolkien is applying for a position at one of Oxford’s women colleges, which was probably important for his future career. They write: He was interviewed by the head of St Hugh’s: years later he described her as a formidable woman, dressed in the style of his grandmother, buttoned top-to-toe in an ankle-length dress. He remembered the severity of her expression as she enquired, “Are you married, Mr Tolkien?”, and her relief at his reply. Thus Ronald gained some employment tutoring her students.

We may conclude from Tolkien’s behavior at this time that he felt rather certain that the field was open for a university career. The sad background was that a whole generation of promising young university students had ended up in the war, just as they were about to start their education at a stage when there were not so many universities and when their prospects were great both in Great Britain and in her colonies. The fact that a great number of the prospective successors to the old generation of lecturers at Oxford never came back after the war left gaps in certain subjects and there were fewer qualified applicants than under normal circumstances. This was perhaps not so marked in subjects like English language and literature, but it was still possible to advance more quickly in one’s career than before. However, it was hardly within the range of possibility to advance quicker than Tolkien. The only thing he could not have guessed, when the family moved to Oxford in November 1918, was that his career would temporarily lead him to the northern English industrial city of Leeds.

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Interlude at Leeds

The professor of English at the University of Leeds, founded in 1904, died suddenly in a drowning accident in 1919, and in the following year, the university announced a new post as reader in English. Tolkien was told about the vacancy by his previous tutor at Oxford, Kenneth Sisam, whom he would oust from the competition for a professorship at Oxford five years later. Hence, ironically enough, it was Sisam who gave Tolkien a real impetus in his career at this point. A reader in Tolkien’s time was a university lecturer, who could be compared to an associate professor. There would be ample time free for research and the burden of administration and other duties was not too large. As a matter of fact, such a post was considered a preparation for a professorship at a later stage. Tolkien was only twentyeight years of age, when he became reader, which must be considered early in his career. His age seems even more remarkable, if we take into account the fact that he got this post after only two working years at the dictionary and without any experience as tutor or don at any college. His pedagogical training consisted in his successful extra hours as private teacher or tutor beside his work at the dictionary. It is significant that Tolkien could not at this time submit any major publications to document his suitability for a university post. His strength consisted in the learning that he had acquired and that could be attested by many, especially by the chief editors of the dictionary. Using interviews for assessing candidates for a job has always been taken very seriously in England. Tolkien, with his extensive knowledge of languages and broad and deep literary reading in Old and Middle English, must have sounded quite persuasive in an interview. There was something quite extraordinary about Tolkien’s early career. It seems quite natural that he was available, in spite of his comparative youth, for several professorships, which had suddenly become

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vacant at the beginning of the 1920s. I cannot imagine anyone more suited, deeply learned, and well-endowed to function as a full professor at a British university than Tolkien. Apparently he needed just to show up, and he was proposed for a professorship. This was true not only of the chairs in Leeds and Oxford, which he was offered in 1924 and 1925, but also before that. As early as 1920–1921, before he had reached the age of thirty, it was suggested to him that he should seek two professorships, one in Liverpool, the other in Cape Town, South Africa. He did not get the former, but he was certainly offered the latter in Cape Town, which, however, he did not accept. This was therefore a watershed moment in Tolkien’s life. If he had accepted the professorship in Cape Town, moving there, the road to Oxford may not have been laid out as it turned out to be. All the planning of The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings would have taken a completely different form, not to mention any publishing ventures involving these works. It must surely have been a strange feeling for Tolkien to be offered the chance of returning as a full professor to South Africa, the country where he was born. He had longed to return and he waited in vain all his life for the opportunity of visiting his home town and his father’s grave. During the last year of the Second World War, Christopher Tolkien was stationed in South Africa, carrying on a lively correspondence with his father. On April 24, 1944 (Letter 63), Tolkien wrote a letter to his son, which ended as follows: I was much amused by your account of your journey to Jo’burg on Maundy Thursday . . . If you fetch up at Bloemfontein I shall wonder if the little old stone bank-house (Bank of South Africa) where I was born is still standing. And I wonder if my father’s grave is there still, I have never done anything about it, but I believe my mother had a stone-cross put up or sent out. (A.R. Tolkien died 1896). If not it will be lost now, prob., unless there are any records . . .

It may seem remarkable that Tolkien was appointed professor of English at Leeds as early as 1924, and that he was awarded the prestigious professorship in Anglo-Saxon at Oxford the following year, at only thirty-three years of age. What had he done to give the university of Leeds grounds for selecting someone as young as him? When he was appointed reader at Leeds in 1920, he had not yet begun work on any actual research project apart from the series of extremely well-researched articles on different words starting with the letter w-, written in 1919–1920 for the OED.

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Tolkien’s qualifications for the professorship at Leeds were, however, of a completely different kind. In 1922, Tolkien had completed A Middle English Vocabulary. Originally, this was a Middle English glossary that was to have been published together with Kenneth Sisam’s anthology of fourteenth-century verse and prose. But this glossary soon swelled to a different magnitude. It became, so to speak, better and better, more and more detailed, and filled with interesting observations. It would be no exaggeration to call it a model specialist dictionary that would facilitate reading of Sisam’s anthology of Middle English literature. At the same time, it gives vital information on Middle English linguistic usage beyond the individual texts in Sisam’s work. In expert circles, this glossary has been considered an ideal companion to an edition of Middle English literary texts, as it was filled with well-chosen details, giving an essential basis for a reader to gain full understanding of all the nuances of the vocabulary. Sisam decided to publish the anthology without the glossary in 1921, and Tolkien waited until the following year before publishing his very comprehensive glossary, which might just as well have been called a dictionary. His articles for the OED were of course a suitable preparation for a glossary accompanying a Middle English anthology. However, what was proof of Tolkien’s obvious breadth within English linguistics were the exhaustive bibliographic analyses that he wrote in the years 1923–1925 for The Year’s Work in English Studies, a year-book containing presentations and critique of scholarly work within English language and literature. These critical outlines or yearly evaluations that Tolkien wrote are evidence of exceptional knowledge within almost all fields of English linguistics. In these annual critical commentaries, it was not just a question of writing about everything that had been published during one and the same year. Tolkien would also compare works within adjacent areas, making a critical assessment of the year’s most important work in English philology. The number of branches within linguistics was already quite considerable in the 1920s. What has been by far the most interesting for me in the close reading of Tolkien’s long critical surveys of 1923–1925 (about 93 pages) has been finding out and clarifying his attitudes to research and its results. We can see what his preferences were, which areas he had little interest in, what he regarded as pioneering work, which authors were of interest and the reverse, what countries and languages favored, etc. We can also observe whether he himself reveals any weak points in his attitudes to linguistics.

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Within specialized place-name research, although Tolkien never made any scholarly contributions to the many publications of the English Place-Name Society, he nevertheless demonstrated great expertise in assessing the work of others. There are clearly two explanations for this. On the one hand, place-name research builds on principles connected with the history of language and knowledge of words, and on the other, Tolkien had a glowing interest in the names of both people and places inside his own fictional writing. This is an important observation, since the names of people and places always helped to create a special atmosphere in many ways in his stories. The names always contribute to the characterization of figures and landscapes, rendering color and solidity to the course of events. This is true of practically all of Tolkien’s fantasy literature. This is clear from his involvement in questions of naming in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien had shown great dissatisfaction with the changes in name forms that had been made by the Swedish and Dutch translators in particular. He therefore wrote a guideline regarding the naming of both people and places, which was photocopied and sent out as a help to translators. It was later revised by Christopher Tolkien and is included in A Tolkien Compass, which was published in 1975 by Jared Lobdell. A new edition of this text is also included in The Lord of the Rings. A Reader’s Companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2005). Tolkien also showed his interest in questions of naming in a more scholarly connection, through the glossary of names that forms part of his text edition of the Old English Finn and Hengest, which he did not finish in his lifetime but which was published in 1982 by Alan Bliss. Tolkien enjoyed creating fictional names. These could be derived from authentic name forms and also from mythological ones. He could also construct names that imitated sounds, or alluded to geographical or historical matters. This was true both for English names and for names created in one of the many fictional languages that he constructed. For example, all the names of elves in The Silmarillion are derived, to a great extent, from forms appearing in the fictional languages Quenya and Sindarin. All this explains why Tolkien could take a critical specialist view of works on place-names. Tolkien remarks in his first annual evaluation, which he was to write in 1923, that lexicography is the linguistic field in which progress has been the most obvious. Place-name research, too, has made progress in precision and methods, but not as much in Britain as in Scandinavia. It is clear, however, from his commentaries that he is enthusiastic about new work in lexicography, after his first period of

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work at the OED. He declares the publication of new volumes of the OED to be the event of the year and evidently favors this discipline in his account. It is very interesting to note the respect with which he approaches works by the great Swedish place-name scholar Eilert Ekwall from Lund, who was later to be the author of The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names and The Oxford Dictionary of English RiverNames. But in spite of his respect for Ekwall’s work, Tolkien proposes a number of discreet corrections to his book from 1923, English Place-Names in -ing. Another Swedish scholar to whom Tolkien gives the very greatest praise is J.K. Wallenberg from Uppsala, whose doctoral dissertation of 1923 dealt with the vocabulary in an important Middle English text, Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt. Tolkien goes as far as to say that if there had been more dissertations of this kind on the vocabulary of Middle English texts, lexicography concerned with The English language as a whole and not just Middle English would have been benefited enormously. He writes that authors with the same competence as Wallenberg are easily counted, that the author understands well the difficulties of the phonetic game, and has the enthusiasm that characterizes a trained “player.” In the first year’s evaluation, Tolkien is most critical of two large French works on English slang and language history. It also becomes more and more apparent from the reports of the following two years that it is the German philologists who dominate the field. It is striking, too, that Tolkien allows a great deal of space to various Festschriften, in particular from Germany. These collections of writings were in most cases written in honor of the most famous of the industrious German professors. His survey of the fascinating mixture of lightweight and penetrating discussions and long analyses of central linguistic problems in massive tomes turns into a history of ideas and learning in small format. These are critical essays written by a humble expert who sees through deficiencies while pointing out errors in cautious terms and with a generous attitude that cannot be wounding. The 1920s was a decade when the field was open for all sorts of linguistic research and there was a sea of rewarding subjects for dissertations and other studies. What must have been a matter for constant surprise to British linguists in the 1920s was the fact that there was a great number of prominent scholars on the continent and in Scandinavia working within the field of English language. The socalled structuralism had made its entry into linguistics via the Swiss

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linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, whose principal work, A Course in General Linguistics, appeared in 1916 and was considered a milestone in linguistics. A number of Middle English manuscripts and texts were as yet unpublished and lacked commentaries. There were many scholarly works from outside England, and added to that, dissertations appeared in printed form, which was not the case in England. Scholars in English language such as the place-name expert Eilert Ekwall in Lund, or the grammarian Otto Jespersen in Copenhagen, were therefore highly respected in England and in particular by Tolkien. Jespersen was a scholar with an amazing output within most areas of English linguistics. It is the great English grammar in seven volumes that gave rise to Jespersen’s fame, but Tolkien in his presentation from 1924 shows great interest in Jespersen’s new The Philosophy of Grammar. He regards this work as an attempt to study the general principles behind all language, even though these principles are mainly illustrated from English. The great value of this work, says Tolkien, lies in the study of the real nature of the expression of linguistic thought. An important conclusion, then, for a reader of Tolkien’s critical works is that at this early point in his career he had already mastered practically everything within English linguistics, in particular philology, that he could see through others’ weaknesses, that he was generous in his evaluation of the achievements of others, and that he was fair in his judgments. He was aware of the principal goals of linguistic research and was interested in them, but he could also scrutinize detail, contributing considered alternative suggestions. What therefore characterizes his criticism is his ability to be constructive and without pedantry. The sharp comments and the critical expositions that he was capable of making later in life—something that I noticed when I got to know him—are not present in this scholarly criticism in written form. The question of whether one can deduce Tolkien’s particular attitudes to research, reading his linguistic criticism as part of a connected whole, now begins to find an answer. A prerequisite for serious research—according to Tolkien—seems to be that authors should have a solid background, that they should be widely read, and in other words have a basis for the conclusions that they reach on individual topics. One should master one’s discipline, also mastering the methodology within a specialist area. This is the reason why he, with some modesty, called himself “an outsider,” when sometimes criticizing an expert. His attitude to research was very definitely that authors should have full knowledge of the subject at hand, not tackling a field outside their competence.

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When Tolkien really began to find his feet as a critic, during the second year of the three that he wrote the annual evaluations, he was ready for an extremely elegant introduction to The Year’s Work in English Studies for 1924. Here his attitude to the position held by English philology within the whole area of the history of language shines through. His view is that English philology only forms one part of it, constituting a particular application of the principal study of language, and that works on Germanic and Indo-European philology must belong to the study of the history of the English language. This attitude, of course, makes heavy demands on all reviewers of English linguistics, limiting the number of scholars who might dare attempt a critical analysis of one year’s work within the field. The difficult question whether Tolkien in his critical commentaries demonstrates any weak points must be answered with “hardly any.” The only weakness as regards this annual critical reporting in The Year’s Work in English Studies is in fact no fault of Tolkien’s but concerns the principle of selection that was the norm for the authors of these critical articles. They were, of course, completely dependent on the particular books that had been sent in by publishers and authors to the general editors, and also on what books eventually landed in the critics’ hands. There was a final selection process that may often have been conditioned by the personal interests of the critics. Therefore no shadow falls over Tolkien’s work here as a critical reviewer. His way of introducing general viewpoints on linguistics is worth noting, as is his easy elegance in argumentation and conclusions. Research, then, was a kind of engine in both of the phases when he was employed at the OED (1919–20) and worked on the three annual reports on linguistics (1923–1925), respectively. First of all, it drove Tolkien forward in his creative work in that the reports were tied to one year at a time, but also time-consuming. Secondly, much reading was required as well as collecting material that would form the basis of summaries and conclusions. These drove him into practicing functions to be used in the service of fiction. Through reading and a search for knowledge this research became, in the third place, something that provided content, strength, and nourishment to the entire process of creation that went into the construction of Middle-earth and all that took place there.

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Interplay between Research and Fiction

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a brilliant example of English heroic-romantic literature from the Middle Ages. Tolkien’s translation into modern English of this romance, which is filled with humor and wit, perfectly suited his view on stimulating reading that would entice him to further research. First of all I want to present some specimens of the interchange between his scholarly work and his fantasy fiction, which may illustrate his joy in literature as a stimulus to the senses. Such interaction appears very clearly in Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham (1949), where “The Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford” are consulted regarding the word blunderbuss and answer the question by providing the definition from the OED. Peter Gilliver pointed out in the article mentioned from the Memorial Conference (1992, p. 173) that the “Four Wise Clerks” represent the four original editors James Murray, Henry Bradley, William Craigie, and Charles Onions. The word blunderbuss was also discussed in Gilliver-Marschall-Weiner’s book The Ring of the Words (2006, pp. 97–98). We can see a link between research activity and fantasy even in the early stage of Tolkien’s academic life, 1919–1920, when he was employed at the OED. Peter Gilliver shows that parts of Tolkien’s rewriting of The Fall of Gondolin, a story which is included in The Book of the Lost Tales, Part II, are preserved on the slips that he used for the word wariangle “shrike” during his work at the OED. This is a concrete example of how his mental processes within both research and fiction writing could run parallel with each other and continually interchange. There are other ways too of discussing Tolkien’s creative process in relation to the material, which is preserved from his period at the OED.

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Gilliver refers to the link between the word wold, weald “forest,” and the word wild “wild,” suggested by Tolkien, which was struck out by the chief editor, Henry Bradley. When Tolkien was asked to write critical reports for The Year’s Work in English Studies about the latest edition of the volume of the OED, which contains the words from whiskey to willfulness, he points out that his conclusions regarding this link were not included in the final version of the dictionary. What we meet here, by Tolkien’s comment, is actually his own scholarly criticism of himself or rather a dictionary article, which he himself would have had the ultimate responsibility for. One of the chief editors naturally has the final say in a case like this, but nevertheless it is an example of Tolkien’s special way of looking at his own writing as a continuing process, which can be criticized and commented on at different stages. This attitude is parallel to the eager rewriting of poems and tales, which took place on numerous slips and previously used sheets of paper. Tolkien was unusually well prepared for a more substantial work within Middle English philology through his work on the word-list to the literary texts, which were included in Sisam’s Middle English anthology. The choice of literary texts to specialize in was rather natural. In 1922 Tolkien began to cooperate at Leeds with a young Canadian university lecturer, E.V. Gordon, to prepare a new edition of the central poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the end of the fourteenth century. Thereby we reach a philological and literary area where we can clearly identify the interplay between research and fiction. Sir Gawain is a link in the tradition of poems, originally from the Celtic cultural sphere, which deals with events associated with the mythical King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. We do not know the name of the author but know that he or she probably also wrote the important poems, Pearl, Patience and Purity. All these poems are kept in one big manuscript called Cotton Nero A.X at the British Library, London. The division of labor between Tolkien and Gordon for the edition gave the following result: Tolkien wrote the basic presentation of the text and the glossary, whereas Gordon was responsible for the majority of the important comments and the footnotes. Tolkien’s great interest in this group of poems is testified by his translations of the three central poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo, where he preserved the original versification of the original poems. As in so many other cases, the publication of the translations took a long time, and it was not until 1975, two

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years after Tolkien’s death that they were published by Christopher Tolkien. Tolkien had come across Sir Gawain at school. The cultural closeness to the West Midlands was important for his choice of research topic. However, it was not quite decisive for his start on a linguistic investigation and a new edition of the important poem. His interest in writing poetry of his own was also clearly noticeable during the 1920s. The linguistic clues indicate that Sir Gawain had originated in the northwest Midland area. If we want to make this even more precise, the areas covered by southeast Cheshire or northeast Staffordshire are what the latest research now suggests as provenance. For Tolkien, there were therefore many reasons for wanting to do research connected with the West Midlands. We can mention the importance of Sir Gawain as a literary masterpiece, his linguistic interest in the numerous Scandinavian loanwords in the poem, the importance of the Arthurian tradition, and the fact that there was a need to produce a new edition at the university level. Tolkien does not comment often on Sir Gawain in his letters, but besides the work on his edition of the text together with E.V. Gordon, and the glossary, he was also engaged on his verse translation into modern English of the poem in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1950 he started on a radio version of Sir Gawain, which was transmitted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in December 1953. The text was read by actors but Tolkien introduced and analyzed the poem in a summary after the reading. In 1954 he also gave a radio talk about Sir Gawain, in which he placed the poem in its rightful context in the history of English literature. In addition to this, Tolkien continually gave lectures about Sir Gawain. The best-known of these was the lecture in memory of the famous professor and medievalist W.P. Ker, given in Glasgow on April 15, 1953. It was later printed in the important collection of essays, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien in 1983. Tolkien emphasizes here the great importance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and writes as follows about the poem at the beginning of his essay, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” It is indeed a poem that deserves close and detailed attention, and after that (not before, according to a too common critical procedure) careful consideration, and re-consideration. It is one of the masterpieces of fourteenth-century art in England, and of English literature as a whole. It is one of those greater works which not only bear the

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trampling of the Schools, endure becoming a text, indeed (severest test) a set text, but yield more and more under this pressure. For it belongs to that literary kind which has deep roots in the past, deeper even than its author was aware. It is made of tales often told before and elsewhere, and of elements that derive from remote times, beyond the vision or awareness of the poet: like Beowulf, or some of Shakespeare’s major plays, such as King Lear or Hamlet.

The most important and common feature of an English medieval romance is that it deals with actions and adventures experienced by knights. Love motifs dominate many romances and we meet innumerable love couples like Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, and others. There is an abundance of the magical and supernatural. The English romances are written as poetry or prose, the former, however, being considerably earlier. Romances are usually divided into four main groups—the English, the classical, the French, and the British (Celtic)—depending on the origin of the motifs. The English can be exemplified by King Horn and Havelok the Dane. The classical romances deal with topics concerning Alexander the Great or the Trojan War. The French romances often deal with motifs connected with Charlemagne and his court. The best example is The Song of Roland. The Celtic romances, finally, often concern King Arthur and his knights and often have French romances as sources. They also appeared later than those from Germany and France. They are romances such as Sir Gawain, Ywain and Gawain, Lancelot the Laik, and Morte d’Arthur. There are many clear qualities in the anonymous author of Sir Gawain that have established his reputation as one of the leading poets in Middle English literature. The poet’s ability to create a natural dialogue between Sir Gawain and the Lady of the Castle in the poem, considering the intensive love affair they have been involved in, has often been commented on. Tolkien ends his essay on Sir Gawain in the following way: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight remains the best conceived and shaped narrative poem of the Fourteenth Century, indeed of the Middle Age, in English, with one exception only. It has a rival, a claimant to equality not superiority, in Chaucer’s masterpiece Troilus and Criseyde. That is larger, longer, more intricate, and perhaps more subtle, though no wiser or more perceptive, and certainly less noble. And both these poems deal, from different angles, with the problems that so much occupied the English mind: the relations of Courtesy and Love with morality and Christian morals and the Eternal Law.

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Tolkien not only appreciated the poetic form and the humorous contents of the poem, but also took great care to communicate his views on the greatness of the poem. He writes at the beginning of his translation of Sir Gawain: The story is good enough in itself. It is a romance, a fairy-tale for adults, full of life and colour; and it has virtues that would be lost in a summary, though they can be perceived when it is read at length: good scenery, urbane and humorous dialogue, and a skilfully ordered narrative. Of this the most notable example is the long Third Part with its interlacing of the hunting-scenes and the temptations. By this device all three main characters are kept vividly in view during the three crucial days, while the scenes at home and in the field are linked by the Exchange of Winnings, and we watch the gains of the chase diminish as the gains of Sir Gawain increase and the peril of his testing mounts to a crisis.

Tolkien’s relation to Sir Gawain shows how his interest in mythology in connection with high-level literature influenced his interest in research. It also shows how his research laid the foundation for the understanding and deepening of the mythology that he developed in his own fiction. We can see in the following summary how Sir Gawain and the Green Knight lived with him in both research and fiction over many years: • Contact with the poem at school. Motifs going back to tales about King Arthur are well-known in England. • Interplay between practical knowledge and constructed insight, for example from Tolkien’s interest in the sounds of Welsh to Celtic motifs in literature, which ultimately led to Celtic influence on his own fiction. • Work during the Leeds period on a Middle English glossary with words from Sir Gawain. • Research on Sir Gawain and work on a text edition, published in 1925. • Work on a translation of the poem, which was revised several times and was published two years after Tolkien’s death. • The preface to the translation was broadcast as a radio talk in 1953. • Lectures on Sir Gawain during Tolkien’s time as professor. Memorial lecture for W.P. Ker about the poem in Glasgow 1953. First published in a collection of essays in 1983. • The use of various motifs and ideas from Sir Gawain and other motifs from the Arthurian tradition in The Lord of the Rings.

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The theme of resisting temptation at the end of The Lord of the Rings is one which may have been inspired from Sir Gawain. The above survey shows how research and fiction are entangled with each other, in a natural interchange. In a similar way, we can study other works of literature that had a marked influence on Tolkien’s fiction and observe how his research created ideas that logically fitted into his fantasy literature. As examples we may think of Beowulf, the Finnish Kalevala, the Icelandic sagas, heroic poetry, heroic legends, and also the Ancrene Wisse. Tolkien also began writing a poem that had a meter with alliteration as in Beowulf, but the poem, “The Fall of Arthur,” which would have been a long poem, was never published. Only six lines of the poem are to be found in Carpenter’s biography. Carpenter points out that “it is one of the few pieces of writing in which Tolkien deals explicitly with sexual passion” (p. 168). It is interesting to consider that Tolkien may be said to represent a special type of postmodernism, by taking up medieval motifs and inserting them into his own fantasy fiction of the twentieth century. Such important aspects have been discussed by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers in their Tolkien’s Middle Ages (2006). The edition of Sir Gawain was not quite completed before Tolkien’s application for the professorship at Leeds, but his scholarly achievements were so solid that they sufficed to convince the university that he was the obvious candidate. For Tolkien, there was no real need to show an extensive list of scholarly writings in order to gain a chair, since his competence was more than adequate. He virtually marched straight into the world of higher appointments without facing any obstacles.

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CH A P T ER

1 5

A Don on a Sidetrack

Soon after the publication of The Hobbit, Tolkien wrote in a letter to his publisher Stanley Unwin on October 15, 1937 (Letter 17), with some slight irony: I think “Oxford” interest is mildly aroused. I am constantly asked how my hobbit is. The attitude is (as I foresaw) not unmixed with surprise and a little pity. My own college is I think good for about six copies, if only in order to find material for teasing me. Appearance in The Times convinced one or two of my more sedate colleagues that they could admit knowledge of my “fantasy” (i.e. indiscretion) without loss of academic dignity. The professor of Byzantine Greek bought a copy, “because first editions of ‘Alice’ are now very valuable.” I did hear that the Regius Professor of Modern History was recently seen reading “The Hobbit.” It is displayed by Parkers but not elsewhere (I think).

Earlier on—in both chapters 4 and 11—I have discussed Tolkien’s ability to switch rapidly between the primary world (the one we live in) and the secondary, fictive world (the one that he called “subcreation”). He was clearly stimulated by the many tasks of his primary world. As a new professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 and after he was met with great expectations on the part of the university, from colleagues, and students. Research, teaching, and tuition were of course expected, but also an active engagement in the current problems and controversial questions of the university and the institution. Tolkien handled these duties with enthusiasm and insight, but he did so in his own personal way. It is an amusing thought that Tolkien may be said to be a representative practitioner of a concept that had not been yet invented in his time, but which was to become very popular around the turn of the millennium. I am alluding to the concept of multitasking, or being engaged in several different activities at one and the same time; this

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Figure 15.1 Time-scheme for The Lord of the Rings. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 4/2/18:6. Courtesy of the J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited. Copyright: The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust

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does not refer to the common practice of attending simultaneously to many different occupations or tasks (such as political assignments). The English word is derived from the field of computer programming and is used when the computer can work with several programs or tasks at the same time. Tolkien was the perfect example of someone living out this expression more than half a century before it was coined. Tolkien’s ideas regarding Middle-earth and his plans for a larger work of fantasy such as The Silmarillion had advanced quite far in the course of the 1920s. The Book of the Lost Tales had already been discarded as a project at that time and neither of these two works of fantasy appeared in print during Tolkien’s lifetime. Instead, toward the end of the 1920s and at the beginning of the 1930s, he was to be strongly engaged in the discussions and debates around the new plan for English studies at Oxford and he became known as a successful and original lecturer. Far later, during the 1950s, when The Lord of the Rings had been published and had received many reviews, many of Tolkien’s colleagues showed great skepticism about the fantasy literature that was later to become so popular around the whole world. In the quotation above, after the publication of The Hobbit in the 1930s, we can discern a similar attitude. The significant question is whether the University of Oxford and his colleagues considered that Tolkien had got himself on to a sidetrack when he continually used such time and energy on fantasy literature. As regards Tolkien himself, it may be that throughout his life he considered fantasy as his main track. That was the impression that I myself received during both the 1960s and the 1970s. He certainly did not say so in plain language, but the unconstrained ease with which he passed from scholarly discussions to his own writing seemed to indicate it. During most of the period from the mid-1920s to the early 1960s, Tolkien’s creative writing ran parallel with projects within Middle English linguistics and the authoring of the important essays in different subjects that would contribute to giving him quite a special research profile in Oxford. Tolkien’s double roles as a university teacher, a linguist, and a scholar on the one hand, and as a writer of fantasy literature on the other, gave rise to great expectations being placed on him. Scholars and colleagues wanted more essays, textual editions, and word studies. The readers of fantasy wanted even more fantasy as soon as possible after the appearance of The Lord of the Rings in 1954–1955. In each camp the opposite field of interest was regarded as a sidetrack.

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In 1925, then, Tolkien moved to Oxford for the third time. The family with three sons came to an Oxford that had by now gone through a marked change. Industrialization and modernization had reached the city to a modest extent, and new areas outside of old Oxford were beginning to be built up. The number of cars in the town center was increasing and buses were replacing the old horsedrawn trams. What could be seen now was a proper facelift that was most in evidence outside the town center. How do you become a don in Oxford? How do you attain a chair at Oxford? As we have seen earlier, nothing was more natural for Tolkien himself, with the learning that he had acquired, than that he should be the obvious candidate for a position as university teacher on his return to Oxford just before the armistice at the end of the First World War in 1918. If anyone looked like a don, it was Tolkien. If anyone deported himself or dressed like one, it was he. One explanation of his rapid career was, quite simply, that he was the right man in the right place after the end of the devastating First World War. He had returned to Oxford at the right moment, exploring the possibilities for a position at the university. He had the right contacts and the right know-how, which earned him well-deserved employment at the OED. After his period as lexicographer at the OED in 1919–1920 and as reader at Leeds University in 1920–1924, Tolkien had just been made a full professor at Leeds when it became known in 1925 that the chair of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) studies at Oxford was to become vacant. William Craigie, the present professor and former chief editor at the OED, had been given the chair at Chicago. Craigie had, of course, been Tolkien’s teacher in Old Icelandic at Oxford, and also the person who had helped him to get the job at the OED. The world was small in academic circles where the experts were few in number but erudition was excessive. But when it comes to a professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, looking like a professor is hardly sufficient. If this were so the candidates from Oxford would have been numerous. The strange situation came about that Tolkien’s former tutor from his studies at Oxford, Kenneth Sisam, and Tolkien both became chief candidates for the post. As already mentioned, Sisam had been the one who gave Tolkien the tip about the vacant position as reader at Leeds, and Tolkien had completed the glossary for Sisam’s anthology of Middle English literature. In other words, the two of them knew each other exceedingly well. However, the chair now concerned Anglo-Saxon and it was the thirty-three-year-old Tolkien who was given the position in preference to Kenneth Sisam, who was five years older.

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Tolkien’s formal letter of application for the chair at Oxford is an extremely interesting document, giving an insight into his view of himself, his contributions within research and teaching, and his anticipation of gains from the new post. His application (Letter 7) summarizes his life up to 1925: Gentlemen, I desire to offer myself as a candidate for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon. A Chair which affords such opportunity of expressing and communicating an instructed enthusiasm for Anglo- Saxon studies and for the study of the other Old Germanic languages is naturally attractive to me, nor could I desire anything better than to be reassociated in this way with the Oxford English School. I was a member of that School both as undergraduate and as tutor, and during my five years’ absence in Leeds am happy to have remained in touch with it, more especially, in the last two years, as an Examiner in the Final Schools. I entered Exeter College as Stapledon Exhibitioner in 1911. After taking Classical Moderations in 1913 (in which I specialized in Greek philology), I graduated with first class honours in English in 1915, my special subject being Old Icelandic. Until the end of 1918 I held a commission in the Lancashire Fusiliers, and at that date entered the service of the Oxford English Dictionary. I was one of Dr. Bradley’s assistants until the spring of 1920, when my own work and the increasing labours of a tutor made it impossible to continue. In October 1920 I went to Leeds as Reader in English Language with a free commission to develop the linguistic side of a large and growing School of English Studies, in which no regular provision had as yet been made for the linguistic specialist. I began with five hesitant pioneers out of a School (exclusive of the first year) of about sixty members. The proportion to-day is 43 literary to 20 linguistic students. [...] Philology, indeed, appears to have lost for these students its connotations of terror if not of mystery. An active discussion-class has been conducted, on lines more familiar in schools of literature than of language, which has borne fruit in friendly rivalry and open debate with the corresponding literary assembly. A Viking Club has even been formed, by past and present students of Old Icelandic, which promises to carry on the same kind of activity independently of the staff. Old Icelandic has been a point of special development, and usually reaches a higher standard than the other special subjects, being studied for two years and in much the same detail as Anglo- Saxon. [...] I remain, Gentlemen, Your obedient servant, J.R.R. Tolkien

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What is surprising in this application is the fact that Tolkien dedicates roughly half the letter to a discussion of the significance of the linguistic content of the syllabus at the Leeds institution. Evidently he was quite clear that this would be a subject that was to be much discussed in English Studies circles at Oxford within the near future. Against that background, it was also wise to imply that he was hoping to make use of the increased opportunity for research, if he was to gain the professorship at Oxford. At the same time, he is implying in this way that many other duties at Leeds had prevented him from conducting research and presenting a more substantial number of publications in print in his application. One point is that Tolkien in this relatively short application finds the space to mention that a Viking club had been started at the Department of English at Leeds. It gives one a hint that he attached great importance to social activities, and also that these could influence the affinity of teachers and students. It probably did, too. The participants, including E.V. Gordon and Tolkien, read Old Nordic tales, wrote and sang drinking songs and other poems, and drank beer together. Usually applications for professorships do not contain details regarding club activity of this kind, but it is interesting that Tolkien found it quite natural to make a point of this Viking club, even though the mention is brief and does not reveal anything of the actual activities, nor that he and Gordon were the initiators of the club. The wise and tactical wording in Tolkien’s application must certainly have helped to some extent in the final decision about the appointment. The apportionment of language versus literature was another question that Tolkien brought up, using shrewd persuasion and genuine interest. One of the crucial questions concerned the possibility of the students to specialize more during their final year of study. The linguistics students ought to be allowed more time for Old and Middle English texts and the literature students more time for later periods. He also wanted to leave more room for Old Icelandic texts. All these questions were to take years to resolve, and it was not until 1931 that one could say that the new syllabus was complete, and Tolkien might be called a victor in this internal language and literature controversy. Not only the town of Oxford, but the university, too, had slowly begun to change during the 1920s. Democratization of rules for admission to university studies had been instituted, to some extent. Women students had been given the opportunity to enter the university and more students from the working class had been made eligible

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for grants. However, for Tolkien, these changes were not completely new, as he had been keeping a close eye on events at Oxford, and had also been active, as we have seen, as an examiner at his old institution while at Leeds. The family moved into a relatively newly built house in 22 Northmoor Road in north Oxford, which they exchanged for a larger one, namely the neighboring house, no. 20 in the same street, in 1929. They were to live there for seventeen years. All the Tolkien children, meaning to say the sons John, Michael, and Christopher as well as the new-born daughter Priscilla, shared the family life at this address. The garden was a sizable one, with room for a vegetable patch, a birds’ house with exotic birds and big trees. During the war, the birds’ house was rebuilt as a poultry-house, which together with the vegetable patch, was of great use in those harsher times. John and Priscilla Tolkien describe the house and garden in The Tolkien Album (pp. 55–56); here they also give an amusing picture of their father’s study. The interesting thing about their account is that it concerns precisely the place where The Hobbit was written, as was also a large part of The Lord of the Rings. The most exciting room was J.R.R.T.’s study, which was never out of bounds except when he had students with him. The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling, and it contained a great black lead stove, the source of considerable drama every day: first thing in the morning Ronald would light and draw it, then become distracted by other business, from which he would be aroused by shouts from the neighbours or the postman that the chimney was on fire, black smoke pouring out of it. During the 1930s there was a fire at the house, which originated in the loft. J.R.R.T. was sitting in Convocation (the University parliament) at the time, waiting to give a speech in front of the Vice Chancellor. He was full of nervous anticipation, when a uniformed porter came up and whispered loudly to him, “Your ‘ouse is on fire. You ‘ad better go ‘ome!” Luckily, Edith had caught it just in time to prevent serious damage.

At a distance and in retrospect, this may seem an entertaining anecdote, but when one realizes that all of this probably took place at the stage when the manuscript for The Hobbit was lying about somewhere in the room, the event may be seen as crucial for Tolkien’s career as a fantasy writer. Without a successful The Hobbit, perhaps no The Lord of the Rings either. Without the various early sketches and introductory fragments of The Lord of the Rings, which had their origin in this legendary study, perhaps the time plan for Tolkien’s fantasy writing

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would have been even more drawn out. John and Priscilla Tolkien continue their description of their father’s study (pp. 56–58), giving us an authentic insight into that creative process, which is an important part of the understanding of Tolkien’s fantasy writing. The fire is of course retold in an anecdotal manner, but the following account of Tolkien’s creative temperament and working environment, as well as the description of his color experiments, help us to get a feel for his way of working. The study was very much the centre of Ronald’s home life, and the centre of his study was his desk. Over the years the top of his desk continued to show familiar landscapes: his dark brown wooden tobacco jar, a Toby jug containing pipes and a large bowl into which the ash from his pipe was regularly knocked out. We also vividly remember a row of coloured Quink and Stevenson inks, and sets of sealing-wax in different shades to match his large supply of stationery. There were also wonderful boxes of Koh-i-Noor coloured pencils, and tubes of paint with magical names like Burnt Sienna, Gamboge and Crimson Lake. Priscilla clearly recalls her father showing her how beautifully Chinese White could be used when he was painting ‘Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves’ (his favourite painting and the one chosen by the Bodleian for the poster advertising their exhibition of his work in 1987 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of The Hobbit). He demonstrated how white could be an addition to a painting, rather than an absence of colour. He was also experimenting with Indian inks at this time, for the many black and white pictures he drew to accompany the book, such as “Beorn’s Hall.” Later, in the 1940s, when he was hoping to illustrate The Lord of the Rings, he became more interested in using coloured chalks and experimenting with coloured papers. During their years at Northmoor Road, Ronald would invite John, Michael and Christopher to sit on the study floor and there he would read chapters of The Hobbit to them. Each chapter was an evening’s entertainment: this period took the story up to “Riddles in the Dark.”

I can’t help thinking that this lively account of the environment from which The Hobbit rose is one central description of Tolkien’s writer’s workshop, which should be studied in more detail. Tolkien had had a long period of preparation with an energetic output of poems and tales, where the whole of his rich life and wide reading inside the literature and mythology of many cultures had provided a rare background to the story. Added to this is the fact it is precisely during the 1930s that he had reached the height of his scholarly career, something

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which could certainly afford maximum support to an authorship that aimed to encompass so large an area as The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. In this writer’s workshop in Northmoor Road, a great deal was created by a solitary professor who was forced to struggle inordinately hard to get everything ready for publication. It is worth quoting a passage from John and Priscilla Tolkien’s Album (p. 72), in which Priscilla remembers with some warmth the formidable typewriter, which ought to become famous on the grounds alone of the part it played in “the Book of the Century”: For much of the time during the war years J.R.R.T. was writing his new work—the one his publishers had been pressing him to produce to follow up his great success with The Hobbit. Priscilla remembers when she was about fourteen and only able to type with two fingers, typing out early chapters of The Lord of the Rings, her intense excitement at the outset of the story and her terror of the Black Riders’ pursuit of the hobbits as they left the Shire. At that stage she had no idea how the story would develop, or end. She can also recall the thud of J.R.R.T.’s old Hammond typewriter as he typed out the complete manuscript, being unable to afford the luxury of a professional typist. The Hammond was a splendid-looking machine with twin castle-like turrets that operated the upper-case keys, and a wooden frame and lid which made it enormously heavy.

An interesting point about Tolkien’s early period as a professor at Oxford is the fact that it coincides rather well with C.S. Lewis becoming a tutor in English and at the same time a fellow of Magdalen College. The two of them were to mean an enormous amount for each other not only as colleagues and friends but also as critics and rivals. Each became a springboard to the other on questions that extended from a dry syllabus to Nordic mythology, from marriage to the existence of a God, from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Lewis’ Narnia. To start with, Tolkien and Lewis had found themselves rather far apart on the question of the apportionment of language versus literature within the much discussed syllabus for the Department of English. The department was their common administrative center, but it was in a large building on “The High,” called “The Examination Schools,” that the regular lectures were held. The important individual tuition of the students always took place, however, within college; this was where the various home assignments in the form of “papers” or essays were read out and discussed with each particular tutor.

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Lewis’s note in his diary of May 13, 1926 concerning Tolkien (pp. 392–93), before they had become good friends, is a good example of Lewis’s combination of mental agility and wit: Tolkien managed to get the discussion round to the proposed English Prelim. I had a talk with him afterwards. He is a smooth, pale, fluent little chap—can’t read Spenser because of the forms—thinks the language is the real thing in the school—thinks all literature is written for the amusement of men between thirty and forty—we ought to vote ourselves out of existence if we were honest—still the sound-changes and the gobbets are great fun for the dons. No harm in him: only needs a smack or so. His pet abomination is the idea of “liberal” studies. Technical hobbies are more in his line.

Gradually, Tolkien’s ideas about a more even division between language and literature in the English Department began to get the upper hand. Lewis even joined forces with Tolkien toward the end of the 1920s, when they both had become particularly good friends. One area, which cemented Tolkien and Lewis’s friendship in the best possible way, was Tolkien’s initiative to form a club for reading and translating Old Icelandic sagas. The new club received the Icelandic name the Kolbitar, meaning “Coalbiters.” The word Kolbitar is derived from the custom that the members gathered around the fire and wished to stay as close as possible to it, so that they could almost put their teeth into the lumps of coal. Several of the members, in the first place Tolkien, Lewis, Nevill Coghill, the great Chaucer expert and later Tolkien’s successor as professor at Merton College, and Hugo Dyson, a don from the University of Reading and later a fellow at Merton, were also members of the Inklings in the 1930s. It is not, however, correct to say that the Inklings were a direct continuation of the Coalbiters. The name Inklings rather came about in a context at the very beginning of the 1930s and not as an invention of Tolkien or Lewis. A student, Edward Tangye-Lean (who presumably had Lewis as supervisor) had the idea to gather some dons and students for readings from their own unpublished texts and discussions about their contents. The name was Tangye-Lean’s idea and meant to be a joke. Inkling means “hunch” or “premonition,” but there is of course a pun on “ink” at the same time. Tolkien himself described the forming of the small reading group in a letter to William Luther White in 1967 (Letter 298). In the last part of this letter, Tolkien noted that the club soon died and that the Record Book had very few entries.

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The name of the club was transferred by C.S. Lewis to the group of friends who met with Lewis in Magdalen College. The friendship between Tolkien and Lewis and the social life of the Inklings have been the object of numerous studies in biographies, so I want to concentrate my comments on the most important types of cooperation and on events that are connected with Tolkien’s success in his fictional writing. It is obvious, too, that Lewis’s importance for Tolkien’s writing was notable. It is also clear that the encouragement that Lewis gave Tolkien at an early stage made him get on better with his major fantasy projects than would have been the case if Lewis had not read or heard them. I have mentioned earlier how the debates about the new syllabus revolved within the English Department at Oxford during the latter half of the 1920s. When gradually, toward the end of the 1920s, Tolkien and Lewis became more in agreement, the friendship between them deepened. They started to read each other’s publications and to comment on them. The real beginning of Lewis’s understanding of Tolkien’s greatness as a writer came in 1929, when Lewis read an early version of Tolkien’s poem, “The song of Beren and Lúthien.” The poem describes how Beren on his way home from the war meets the Elvish maiden Lúthien who dances for him in the wood. This meeting and this dance originate in the dance that Edith Tolkien performed in the wood outside Roos in Yorkshire in November 1917. Tolkien’s camp was not far away, which was the reason why Edith and their new-born son John had moved there. The story of Beren and Lúthien becomes a cardinal point in the whole of The Silmarillion. What makes this central story even more important is the inscription on their tombstone at the cemetery of Wolvercote on the outskirts of Oxford: Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889–1971. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892–1973. Tolkien commented himself on the origin of his fascination for the couple, Beren-Lúthien, in a letter to Christopher toward the end of his life. It is from July 11, 1972 (Letter 340): I never called Edith Lúthien—but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing—and dance.

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Since this long poem was one of the mythological tales that made Lewis realize the greatness of Tolkien, the whole poem and its background are extremely significant and loaded. It was much changed in several versions and was never completed as a poem or published. The Inklings started to meet in C.S. Lewis’s office to read aloud from a member’s work on each occasion. We may assume that it was around 1933 or 1934 that the meetings got started. There was never any formal order to the proceedings. The important thing was rather to be together convivially and to comment on the poems, extracts from articles, or manuscripts that were read. At the beginning, meetings were held on Thursdays, but later in the 1930s there were also meetings at the nowadays so famous pub “The Eagle and Child,” most often called “The Bird and the Baby.” The informal structure of the club made it difficult to count the members properly. They became members gradually by being present again and again. The most faithful members besides Tolkien and Lewis in the 1930s were Lewis’s brother, Warren Lewis, called Warnie, Nevill Coghill, and the professor of literature from Reading, Hugo Dyson. Later on, the versatile novelist, Charles Williams, of Oxford University Press, London, became a member. Other members of the group were Owen Barfield, Robert Havard, George Sayer, Charles Wrenn, Alistair Campbell, R.B. McCallum, and the author John Wain. At a later stage, Christopeher Tolkien was also present and participated in the readings. When Tolkien had been established as professor and scholar at Oxford after 1925, he started on a new phase of his career, devoting a great deal of time to a form of expression called the critical essay. He incorporated this type of essay as a genre in English philology. Several of his essays, from the end of the 1920s to the end of the 1950s, through all his active life as professor, point back to important lectures that he was invited to give both in and outside Oxford. This genre in Tolkien’s writing is the very core of his scholarly achievement. His philological activity, with his editions of Sir Gawain and the Ancrene Wisse, his word studies and his translations of Middle English poetry into Modern English are examples of his solid learning, but it is within the art of essay-writing that he was able to introduce innovative ideas and new results. Tolkien managed to develop this part of his activities into a kind of mastery. An example is the essay from 1929, which describes how he identifies a new literary language from thirteenth-century England, the AB language as it was called. There are also, besides “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” important essays such as “A Secret

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Vice” (1931), “On Fairy-Stories”(1939), “On Translating Beowulf” (1940), “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (1953), and “English and Wales” (1955). There are two versions of “Beowulf and the Critics,” a long essay, in which “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” was originally included. Both these versions were edited with comments by Michael D.C. Drout in 2002. I realized I had found the origin of this art of essay-writing when I set eyes on the series of essays and summarizing notes kept in the notebooks in the Tolkien Collection from 1913 at the Bodleian Library. Naturally, these mature essays are the result of the tradition of essay-writing, which characterizes the whole of the English school system. On top of that, the tradition at the universities was that the students should write essays for a tutor every week, which were read, analyzed, and criticized in every detail. The Tolkien material preserved at the Bodleian Library is considerably larger than one can imagine here in a brief summary. If we add the collection at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we end up with a great number of texts that may be used for analyzing the whole background to Tolkien’s interests in medieval literature and his capacity to write analytical essays within Old and Middle English philology. Tolkien always felt an irresistible eagerness to throw himself into new research projects, new languages, and new problems. One way of learning about his intellectual curiosity is to read through his own preserved letters and notes. In the Tolkien Collection at the Bodleian Library, under item A 21/1–12, there is a series of essays or philological annotations from the period May–June 1913, and later. Nr A 21/1 contains essays within the following varied areas: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Gradation [vowel-changes, for example from ‘i’ or ‘e’ to ‘a’] The origin of the English people Some sound changes Chaucer’s language Deor’s Lament (an Old English poem) Anglo-Norman Scandinavian influence on English Waldere (an Old English poem) Dialect problems Lengthening of short vowels in Middle English (1100–1500) Classifying consonants in Old English (700–1100).

The first impression one gets from this fascinating material is that Tolkien is capable as a student after only a year’s study of drawing

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advanced conclusions about etymology and philology, conclusions that would normally typify the work of an accomplished scholar. At the same time, he is ambitious enough to make careful notes about sound-changes and etymologies described in the best known handbooks on Old English. It is also fascinating to study the clear handwriting and unusually elegant calligraphy. In the part of the manuscript collection from1913, No A 21/2, there are notes about lectures that Tolkien attended on historical grammar, with references to well-known philologists, such as Sisam, Emerson, Napier, and Morsbach. Nr 21/5 is particularly interesting with all its comments on Beowulf, both its contents and language. Tolkien refers to interesting passages in Beowulf, dealing with legendary persons as well as geographical names related to Denmark. The Danish king Rolf Krake (=Hrothulf in Beowulf ) and place-names such as the old village of Lejre (=Hleidr; Lat. Lethra) outside Roskilde might be mentioned here. In the historical small village of Lejre, archeologists have recently excavated the remains of an impressive hall similar to the great hall Heorot, where Beowulf fought against the monster Grendel in the poem. This excavated hall at Lejre corresponds closely to the one depicted in the poem. The poem Beowulf appeared in a new translation into Modern English in 1999 by the Irish poet and Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney. In the same year, Seamus Heaney was invited to Lejre in order to read from his translation in this historical setting. He read with special focus on the passage in the heroic poem where the huge monster Grendel enters Heorot and walks toward the sleeping Danes. Since I myself had taken the initiative for this reading and the reconstruction of the special Beowulf atmosphere of the sixth century, it was natural for me to link all this to Tolkien, who in the 1930s had meant so much for Beowulf research and had in fact changed its direction. Beowulf is a heroic poem written at the beginning of the eighth century and by far the most important literary work of the Old English period. At the same time it is the earliest heroic poem in the whole of ancient Germanic literature. A few details in the poem have a real historical connection. The poem is preserved in a single manuscript at the British Library in London. It is easy to understand that the original story appealed to Tolkien. It was written by an unknown poet in England, but deals with events in Denmark and Sweden in the sixth century. The hero Beowulf in the first part of the poem fights the monster Grendel and Grendel’s mother. Beowulf defeats Grendel’s mother in a decisive struggle toward the end of the first part.

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In the second part, 50 years later, Beowulf is the king in the kingdom of the geatas in Sweden and meets a firedragon in a devastating fight. Tolkien’s first self-written story as a child of about seven years of age dealt with a “great green dragon,” and here in Beowulf Tolkien’s imagination received even more nourishment from a poem where certain historical material is inserted in the fictive narration. Linguistic phenomena continued to fascinate Tolkien, although not in English literature in general, at least not literature after 1500. Tolkien presented his essay, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” first as a lecture for the British Academy on November 25, 1936. The essay created an echo in the whole Anglo-Saxon research world, since it reevaluated the earlier view of this central English work. Beowulf was written in unrhymed verse. Earlier the poem had been regarded by philologists as an important historical and philological work with some uncertain literary qualities. Tolkien was able to prove that Beowulf is poetically more advanced and more beautiful than the rest of Old English poetry and that the poem, contrary to what previous critics had considered, consists of two coherent parts that complement each other in a logical way. Tolkien was also able to demonstrate that the monsters in the poem, Beowulf’s opponent Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon, were the central figures in the poem, rather than Beowulf himself. Even in the new millennium, this essay on Beowulf is relevant and therefore referred to. It is a perfect example of Tolkien’s penetrating, analytical ability to enlighten any major problem within each research area that he tackled. Middle English is also thoroughly treated in Tolkien’s notes in A 21/7, which deal with central texts such as Troilus and Criseyde, Genesis & Exodus, Cursor Mundi, and Proverbs of Alfred. There are also notes concerning Old Icelandic texts. One essay caught my interest especially, when I worked through the whole of the material during the summer of 2003. It was essay no. 8 in the folder A 21/1. It contained a translation, with comments, of the Old English fragmentary poem Waldere, the Walter story, which is preserved in a single manuscript at the Royal Library of Copenhagen. Other versions of this heroic poem exist in several European countries such as Germany, Poland, and Italy. In the Nordic context, the Walter story corresponds to the Old Norse Thidrikssaga. I published this Old English poem, Waldere, in Old and Middle English Texts (Manchester University Press) in 1979 and had discussed the text and the most difficult fragmentary parts in some detail at one of our meetings in 1972 in Oxford. What struck me then was that he remembered so clearly passages that were most difficult to interpret in

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a poem he had not worked on for publication and was able to discuss these passages most enthusiastically. It was one thing was that he knew Beowulf extremely well. He was one of the leading scholars in that field. But at that time, around 1972–1973, it was actually the period when I myself should have been the one who was closest to Waldere owing to my forthcoming edition of the text. Still, it turned out that Tolkien was able to debate every passage where it was necessary to make a comment or suggest a different reading to make the context understandable. I was struck by his knowledge and memory, and I was also astounded in 2003, when I read all the notes and comments that he had produced in the detailed notebook from 1913, when he was twenty-one years old. Tolkien had analyzed the fragmentary poem Waldere, which might have been just as significant as Beowulf in length and scope, if the copy had not been mutilated and for some reason removed to a foreign country. The fragments had turned up in Copenhagen, where they were found in 1860 by the chief librarian of the Royal Library of Copenhagen, Professor E.C. Werlauff. There is no explanation as to why this unique manuscript had come to Copenhagen. It is possible that G.J. Thorkelin, the Icelandic scholar who was sent to England in 1786 by the Danish king to collect rare books and manuscripts, acquired the manuscript. Thorkelin returned home to Denmark five years later with a large collection. While he was in London, Thorkelin made a copy of the valuable Beowulf-manuscript at the British Museum, at a time when some of the parts that had been damaged during a fire at the museum in 1731 could still be read. Thorkelin’s copy kept at the Royal Library of Copenhagen is therefore an importance source for Beowulf research. What puzzled me in 1972 was how Tolkien could be so versed in every detail of the interpretations of the text and suggestions for the original readings. I remembered all this clearly, when I read his wellthumbed notebooks in 2003. During our conversation in 1972, his memory had apparently recalled his own analysis from his notebook of 1913. This phenomenal memory could, of course, have been reinforced later, if Tolkien had worked through an edition of Waldere on other occasions during his research. Another explanation of Tolkien’s knowledge of this field was that it had to do with heroic poetry and heroic legends within the Germanic area. He once maintained that England did not possess any mythology compared to other countries. Therefore, in accordance with a statement in Carpenter’s biography, he wanted to create a mythology for England through his own fiction.

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A greater part of the Germanic treasure of heroic legends has disappeared in the course of time and in the relevant countries only a small amount is still extant. The only fully preserved long heroic poem in England is Beowulf, and beyond this there are only two short poems, Widsith and Deor, and the two fragments, Waldere and Finnsburg. Tolkien rewrote and commented on all these texts in various ways. His Beowulf studies are among the most valuable that he wrote, and his essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” is a ground-breaking piece of work. Both Deor and Waldere belong to the areas he wrote essays about in his notebooks. The medieval Finnsburg Fragment, which consists of only one page, was the subject of Tolkien’s attention for several reasons. It was found in the library at Lambeth Palace in London and was published by George Hickes in 1705. Then it disappeared completely again, and the only source we have now is a transcript from 1705 of a copy of the only page of a lost original. Tolkien devoted a great deal of interest to the Finnsburg Fragment and lectured in Oxford on various aspects of this text and its contents between the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1960s, meaning a time period of about thirty-five years. The heroic poetry of Anglo- Saxon times seems, according to this brief presentation, to be rather modest in extent, but important considering that a great deal of what once existed is not there any longer. The fact that Beowulf in the first place, but also the other, shorter poems caught Tolkien’s interest was due not only to their literary qualities but also to their fates as manuscripts and their connections with other literary traditions within the Germanic mythological field. All the names of heroes in the Germanic traditions and legends circulating through references to Gothic, Burgundian, Icelandic, and other myths indicate that these myths were current in oral traditions in Anglo- Saxon England. The absence of written tales of these legends may indicate that the literary traditions survived in oral form. The fates that the manuscripts of Beowulf, Waldere, and Finnburg had suffered could be seen as an extra spice to Tolkien’s purely philological and literary work. I noted this particularly clearly when I told him about the appearance and quality of two of the manuscripts he had not himself seen, the Waldere fragment and Thorkelin’s early transcript of Beowulf, both preserved at the Royal Library, Copenhagen. Tolkien was deeply engaged in all aspects of the extensive lost literature of the whole Indo-European language area. We discussed this most vividly on the background of the Old English poetic fragments. We also discussed the fascinating book, The Lost Literature of

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Medieval England, originally published in 1952 by R.M. Wilson, but which had appeared in a new and revised edition in 1970. The whole of the great lost treasure of ancient literature is a key area for the understanding of Tolkien’s thinking in building up a whole fictional world in an age different from his own. Ronald began even at school to read Beowulf in Old English, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Middle English, and several Icelandic tales in Old Icelandic. Through his deep knowledge of many languages, he became a precocious philologist, who could combine language and literature research at an advanced level even at the age of fifteen or sixteen. A working philologist not only has to read, analyze, and compare a large number of literary texts. A medieval philologist must also study paleography, meaning the knowledge of manuscripts, characters, and styles, the relations between the manuscripts, and much else regarding the cultures to which the manuscripts belong, and also be well acquainted with the medieval manuscript collections in England. It is of course a great advantage for a scholar to have easy access to the great manuscript collections in Oxford, Cambridge, and London. For Tolkien, it was important to have his favorite texts Beowulf and Sir Gawain in London and Ancrene Wisse (MS. Corpus Christi College) in Cambridge. The various college libraries in Oxford and Cambridge are often well equipped as regards medieval manuscripts. The unique medieval library at Tolkien’s own college, Merton, owns, for example, a copy of the Latin version of Ancrene Wisse, published by the Early English Text Society in 1944.

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CH A P T ER

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The AB Language: A Unique Discovery

“What a coincidence!” These were the spontaneous words that Tolkien almost cried out when I first described to him my interest in the medieval dialects of the English West Midlands. My plans for my doctoral thesis concerned just those literary texts that he himself regarded as his favorites in medieval literature. The special philological research area, where Tolkien’s artistic essaywriting could be combined with his interest in Middle English, was the Ancrene Wisse. Tolkien’s interest in this advanced religious prose literature was not only due to the fact that it had been written in his beloved West Midland area. The title means “Instruction for female anchorites,” i.e., a religious tract with rules for women who wish to live in seclusion and devotion. This instruction in female spirituality was written in an elegant thirteenth-century Middle English with traditions leading back to both Old English and Latin using a rich and varied vocabulary. The language is filled with new words and idioms using rich imagery. Among all the works before 1500 referred to in the OED, the Ancrene Wisse is the most frequently quoted, except for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Tolkien had a very high opinion of this much-praised gem of prose writing. Professor Derek Pearsall, the great Chaucer expert, from Harvard and York, confided to me that he regards the Ancrene Wisse as the greatest prose work in English literature. The inventiveness of this master of form, an author from the West Midland area, is outstanding. There is a stylistic elegance that is quite unique for Middle English and a sophisticated sharpness, with an undertone of humor, which appealed to Tolkien. He worked on this literary masterpiece, on and off for about thirty years and published the best and oldest of its versions from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in Early English Text Society, Oxford, 1962. The year

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after, when I was twenty-nine, I edited a fragment of a different version of the same text in the same series, encouraged by Tolkien. I had thereby been admitted at an unusually early age to the editorial project at Oxford, which comprised the long period from 1944 to 2000, with the participation of a large group of experienced English philologists. My work on my doctoral thesis at the University of Lund, Sweden, was alleviated on one important respect. When I was preparing all my references to the manuscript that Tolkien had edited in 1962, I learnt that he had persuaded the Early English Text Society to let him publish the text with the same page and line division as the original manuscript in Cambridge, in contrast to all other editors in the series. Thereby I was able to insert all my references to both the original manuscript and to Tolkien’s edited text, before my thesis was sent to the printers in 1965. Toward the end of the 1920s, Tolkien had made a remarkable philological discovery. He noted that the scribe who had made the earliest copy of the Ancrene Wisse (=A) used exactly the same peculiarities in language as the one who had copied the texts in the Bodley manuscript of the Katherine group (=B). Hali Meidhad is one of these Bodley manuscripts, and The Life of Seint Katherine is another. Tolkien was fascinated by the consistency in the use of language between the two and made a discovery that would turn out to be quite a sensation in Middle English philology. He published his discovery in an essay called “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad” in 1929. Thanks to the orthographical and grammatical similarities between A and B, Tolkien was able to call this special literary language “the AB language.” It is unique and can be regarded as a literary standardizing language from the twelfth century. Tolkien emphasized that the two different scribes (A and B), each one responsible for a literary work in transcript, used a language whose details were so identical that one could see that the two texts were impossible to distinguish as two printed modern books. Tolkien drew the conclusion that there must have been a literary center, a scribal tradition that was more active and organized than anywhere else. The idea of such a literary and cultural center that would most likely have been linked to a monastery or convent, has caused much speculation and a great deal of research. Most scholars are inclined to place such a scriptorium in Herefordshire. It is clear that Tolkien’s longtime interest in language typology, origin, and interdependence must have been most useful for him. The fact that the AB language from the West Midlands has

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developed from the kingdom of Mercia in the Old English period (700–1100) is fascinating. Mercia should be compared with Mark or Riddermark, the country where “the Riders of Rohan” live in The Return of the King. Tom Shippey has pointed out in his book, J.R.R. Tolkien. The Author of the Century (2000), that the West Saxon name for the Mercian country would have been *Mearc, if the spelling had been recorded. This corresponds to a Mercian *marc, i.e., modern English “Mark,” just as Tolkien spelt the word in The Return of the King. Tolkien never lost his grip on the Ancrene Wisse, which he regarded as a linguistic wonder. He further adds in his essay of 1929 that his interest in this manuscript is purely linguistic. Since my own doctoral thesis of 1965 dealt with the phonology and vocabulary of the Ancrene Wisse, i.e., the AB language, I realized from my discussions with him in the 1960s that his wish to work actively with the text and write something new about it was over. His interest in the AB language had lasted for half a century. Although I was at the last stage of my work on the edition of the Magdalene College, Cambridge, version of the Ancrene Wisse, when we met in 1972, I could not get him seriously engaged in long discussions of Middle English text editions. My own review of Tolkien’s text edition of the Ancrene Wisse (1962) appeared in the periodical English Studies 1966 and was both appreciative and critical. Tolkien was delightfully surprised that I had found fifteen mistakes that I called “misprints” or “misreadings” in his fundamental text edition, which many scholars had been waiting for decades to see in print. At the same time, I described him as “the eminent pioneer within this branch of Middle English philology.” I later heard from Norman Davis, whom I had become more and more friendly with, that Tolkien had expressed his appreciation of my research on the phonology and vocabulary of the AB language. When Tolkien mentioned something similar to me at one of our meetings, I never knew if I could rely on every word he said. He tended to make jokes most of the time, always enjoying social encounters. When discussing unusual words and new interpretations of the origin of Middle English words, Tolkien always brightened up and we got involved in rather intensive discussions. He was quite pleased about a small publication of mine from 1964, which dealt with a series of particularly complicated words in the Ancrene Wisse, and it turned out that he had views on several of those. One word was the Middle English verb meapen, which means “to wander about aimlessly” and which is recorded only in the Ancrene Wisse. In my publication I had

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derived the word from an Old English *meapian, the asterisk here indicating that the word does not exist in any written source, but that one may draw conclusions, which make it likely that such a word form has existed. We never discussed this unique word in 1972, but much later, in 2003, when I carefully read through all the Tolkien linguistic notes, preserved at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I found, to my delight, a rather thorough analysis of the origin of the word from Old English. In order to support the derivation of the word from Old English *meapian, both of us had in fact independently made a reference to a place-name in Kent, Meapham, which was recorded in a doctoral thesis from Uppsala by J.K. Wallenberg (1923). Tolkien had discussed this thesis in his review of Old and Middle English philology for the year 1923 in The Review of English Studies. During the years 1968–1972, when Tolkien was away from Oxford, I had been in an intensive research and publication period. It was therefore quite easy for me to supply him with a series of fresh examples of my results to cover the period since we had last met, in answer to his friendly questions. My publications regarding variants of English in the world, such as the English of Tristan da Cunha or the mixed languages of Pitcairn Island or Norfolk Island, did not catch his interest so much. However, it amused him to hear me reading dialogues of these island variants of English and how I imitated the intonation of the islanders. My work on computer linguistics and American text corpora I hardly dared to mention. However, my new interest in the dialect of Bedfordshire, based on the results of the English phonetician Thomas Batchelor (published in 1809), caught on. Batchelor was the first scholar to observe the two latest diphthongizations in English in words like make and stone. These new diphthongs arose about 1800 or shortly before. Before that, all the words that now contain these diphthongs, had been pronounced with pure vowels, as is still the case in many English, especially northern English dialects. I understood much later the reason for Tolkien’s interest in my book on the dialect of Bedfordshire (published 1974),when I realized that he had himself compiled a glossary of the dialect of Huddersfield, which had been included in a book on this dialect by Walter E. Haigh 1923. Tolkien also wrote the preface to this book, in which he emphasized the importance of dialect studies. I should like to emphasize that Tolkien’s view of philology found its most distinctive expression in the years 1923–1925 at Leeds, when he wrote his yearly surveys and, in principle, read everything worth reading in

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Germanic philology in order to produce well-researched surveys and critical statements. The edition of the Ancrene Wisse, which Tolkien published in the Early English Text Society (E.E.T.S.) in 1962, was a work which he had kept in manuscript since the 1940s. He told his publisher, Stanley Unwin of George Allen & Unwin, in 1945 (Letter 98) that his book was ready in typewritten form. Tolkien’s correspondence with various secretaries of the E.E.T.S. is preserved at the Bodleian Library and extends from 1936 to 1960. In January 1936, Tolkien wrote to the director of the E.E.T.S, Dr. A.W. Pollard, that he intended to begin his preparations for the A-text as soon as he could. Tolkien also started to work on various AB studies that had to do with the Bodley manuscripts of the Katherine Group, i.e., the B-texts within theAB language. Ever since Tolkien’s publication of the Ancrene Wisse in 1962 and Professor Eric Dobson’s meticulous edition of the Cleopatra Manuscript of 1972, research on the Ancrene Wisse has gathered speed within linguistic, literary, and cultural areas. It is notable that many feministic readings of the texts in the AB language were published toward the end of the twentieth century. Interest in female religiousness and the lives of saints that may be associated with the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine group has grown a great deal. Some readers of Tolkien have pointed out that there are few female characters in his fantasy world. It is therefore quite interesting that this central medieval text that he studied so minutely, the Ancrene Wisse, was written for women who lived in isolation and contemplation, in other words, is utterly women-oriented. The feministic studies by researchers within this area in recent years deal with central aspects of the text, such as spirituality, chastity, female readership, and many other things. Tolkien was well versed and in many ways engaged in several aspects of the contents of the work from his school and university periods, through the time of his professorship to the beginning of the 1960s, when his edition came out. In addition to his scholarly writing on the texts, he was deeply engaged in the supervision of papers and theses dealing with texts in the AB language. He was especially a great support for the female scholars Simonne d’Ardenne from Belgium and M.B. Salu from Oxford. The technique of localizing various versions of literary texts from the Middle English period has become more and more sophisticated. The localization of various manuscripts of the Ancrene Wisse in the West Midlands is therefore now more precise. Further, the Early English Text Society has started a project led by Bella Millet at the

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University of Southampton, whose aim included a corrected version of the A-text, based on the relations between the various manuscripts, as well as an electronic edition of the most important manuscripts. The first part of this edition, with such a “dynamic” text tradition, was published in 2005 and the second volume in 2007. New language studies of the AB-texts have been published by scholars such as Margaret Laing and Richard Dance. All this means that Tolkien’s major research area, the Ancrene Wisse and the AB language, has expanded considerably with a promising continuation into the new millennium.

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CH A P T ER

17

Fantasy: For Children and Adults

Tolkien enjoyed numerous activities and pastimes outside his research and fiction. For example, John and Priscilla Tolkien have described in The Tolkien Family Album how their father wrote and illustrated letters from Father Christmas to his own children several weeks before Christmas. On Christmas morning, during the ceremony with the typically English Christmas stockings, there was always a letter from Father Christmas himself, with a North Pole stamp, designed by Tolkien. The children had always the opportunity of writing back to Father Christmas by placing a letter in the open fireplace, where the letters suddenly disappeared in an unguarded moment. Sooty footprints around the fireplace also helped to make the situation credible. Sometimes Tolkien also persuaded the postman to deliver the letter from Father Christmas. The first letter from Father Christmas came as early as 1920 and then every year up to 1939, when the last letter, addressed only to Priscilla, came. John and Priscilla mention one more letter from 1943, in which Tolkien makes a reference to “this horrible war.” The letters from Father Christmas were written in colored ink and the illustrations were funny drawings and watercolors. The most interesting contained prehistoric cave drawings from 1932, showing a series of exciting animals like mammoths, cave bears, rhinoceroses, wild boars, and many others, even dragons, Tolkien’s favorite animal since his early childhood. The “drasils,” a kind of small dachshund-horse, which the goblins ride, are the funniest of these animals, all of them painted by cave dwellers or goblins. The picture was shown at the memorial exhibition at the Bodleian Library in 1992. Tolkien used to write a special report on the latest news from the North Pole. Most of the letters from Father Christmas have been collected in a book, edited by Baille Tolkien in 1976. There one can see Tolkien’s clear, slightly ornamented hand, often with tremulous

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letters and funny illustrations. The Polar Bear acts as a kind of assistant to Father Christmas and meets with a variety of jolly adventures. We also find snow elves and cave bears and the nephews of the Polar Bear, Paksu, and Valkutukka, with Finnish-sounding names. Baille Tolkien says in her book that the real name of the Polar Bear was Karhu and that he explained his imperfect English by the interference of the language Arctic at the North Pole. He thereby hinted that English was a foreign language or at any rate a second language for him. He gave an example of how Arctic sounds with the following quotation: “Mára mesta an ni véla tye ento, ya rato nea.” This would mean in English: “Goodbye till I see you next, and I hope it will be very soon.” All the children had the opportunity of writing back to Father Christmas or the Polar Bear, which in the latter case caused him to write a little letter in Arctic. It is interesting that, after reminders from the attentive children, he sent the whole alphabet. This Arctic alphabet is fascinating and typical of Tolkien’s interest in languages, codes, and sounds. The basic alphabet consists of stylized figures with clean straight lines, often with uplifted arms, but also downward pointing arms. We are reminded of rock carvings and inscriptions seen in prehistoric caves. Every letter in this alphabet consists of a sign, and also some consonant combinations such as ch, gh, sh, and th and vowel combinations, such as ch, ei, och oa, have special signs. The language is a kind of Quenya, one of Tolkien’s constructed Elvish languages, based partly on Finnish. Words like maara “god” och an “till” are found in Quenya and most of the other words appear to be forms from Quenya. All the letters from Father Christmas and the Polar Bear are filled with glee and imagination and Tolkien adhered to this with great dedication. He followed this joyful tradition for twenty-three years, long after the children had grown up. I regard his extended work on Letters from Father Christmas as a very significant example of his working method in contexts where his imagination could blossom without restraint and where he could combine his gift as a writer with his talent for drawing. The long period when Tolkien writes the yearly letters coincide with the writing of the early version of The Silmarillion, the finished version of The Hobbit, and the first part of The Lord of the Rings. These letters from Father Christmas are therefore extremely important and representative of Tolkien’s youthful spirit and inventiveness. If we study them carefully, our understanding of his mind and his great care for his children increase considerably.

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The first indication from Tolkien that he intended to write a story about a hobbit, has become an anecdote that has been cited again and again. He writes, in the letter to W.H. Auden, on June 7, 1955 (Letter 163): All I remember about the start of The Hobbit is sitting correcting School Certificate papers in the everlasting weariness of that annual task forced on impecunious academics with children. On a blank leaf I scrawled: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” I did not and do not know why. I did nothing about it, for a long time, and for some years I got no further than the production of Thror’s Map. But it became The Hobbit in the early 1930s, and was eventually published not because of my own children’s amusement (though they liked it well enough), but because I lent it to the then Rev. Mother of Cherwell Edge when she had flu, and it was seen by a former student who was at that time in the office of Allen and Unwin. It was I believe tried out on Rayner Unwin; but for whom when grown up I think I should never have got the Trilogy published.

Rayner Unwin, mentioned here, was the ten-year-old son of the head of the publishing company, Stanley Unwin, a key figure in Tolkien’s development as a fantasy writer. Stanley Unwin considered that children were the best judges of children’s literature and he used to consult his own children about new children’s books. The fee for a written report was usually one shilling. Without the ten-year-old Rayner’s positive reaction, it is quite possible that the publication speed would have been completely different. In any case, the report is fascinating: Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit who lived in his hobbit-hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his dwarves persuaded him to go. He had a very exiting time fighting goblins and wargs. at last they got to the lonely mountain; Smaug, the dragon who gawreds it is killed and after a terrific battle with the goblins he returned home—rich! This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9. (Rayner Unwin: A Remembrancer, p. 74)

Since Tolkien sold his manuscripts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1957, the Tolkien Archive at the university library is the best place for studying the various early stages of the publication process. The time plan for the composition of The Hobbit can be reconstructed fairly accurately.

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The best description of the various stages can be found in Douglas A. Anderson’s critical edition of The Hobbit of 2002. I learnt much from my visits to Marquette in 2003, 2004, and 2007, where one’s proximity to the original manuscripts gave a remarkable touch of participation in Tolkien’s creative process. I could at any rate feel how the ultimate text emerged through changes and clarifications. The pleasure of realizing how The Hobbit came about becomes even more intense if one studies some of Tolkien’s drawings and watercolors that are linked with this book. The famous sentence, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” was written about 1930, when the family had moved from 22 to 20 Northmoor Road. It is possible that it could have been earlier, as has been proposed by Michael Tolkien. My view is—with my notion of Tolkien’s character and imagination—that holes in the ground inhabited by friendly beings had been present in Tolkien’s subconscious world ever since the First World War in subterranean caves (“dugouts”). Logically, the name of this being, “hobbit,” may be derived, as Tolkien himself suggested, from a constructed Old English *holbytla “hole-builder” (see Addition F in The Lord of the Rings). Tolkien had written many poems and stories for children during the latter half of the 1920s, such as the tale Roverandum (1998), The Letters from Father Christmas (1976, 1999), and Farmer Giles of Ham (1949; 1999). All the children have described in various contexts, how their father used to read stories to them in the evenings, including, the earliest chapters of The Hobbit. The Hobbit was published in 1937 by the publishers, George Allen & Unwin. The writing was completed by Tolkien in two-and-a-half years during the period 1930 to 1937. The first two reviews were anonymous and were written by one and the same author, namely C.S. Lewis. The first came in the Times Literary Supplement and the second in the Times. In the latter, from October 8, Lewis said: The truth is that in this book a number of good things, never before united, a fund of humour, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholar’s with the poet’s grasp of mythology.

Lewis’s friendship was important to Tolkien, particularly as regards his ideas about fantasy writing. Not only did Lewis read and comment on his poems and tales, but Tolkien also received great help and encouragement when he read aloud from his various books and

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Figure 17.1 Page 10 of Mr Bliss drawn by Tolkien at the end of the 1920s. The book was published in 1982. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 4/1. Copyright: The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust

stories. This was true of readings from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. Besides Lewis’s two reviews there were many positive reviews of The Hobbit, at first in the United States, where the first edition came out in 1938, published by Houghton Mifflin. The publisher Stanley Unwin was highly pleased. Unwin continued to be a vital figure in Tolkien’s further development as an author. During a short period, 1937–1938, he was the central figure who in a discreet but decisive way was able to direct Tolkien’s creative talent into a certain definite direction, toward a continuation of The Lord of the Rings, which would eventually lead to the point when Tolkien was nominated as the author of the century. If Tolkien had had the chance to decide the timeline or order of publication himself, The Silmarillion would certainly have had priority at a fairly unfinished stage and the possible consequences could only have been guessed at. It is therefore reasonable to dwell somewhat on the discussions between Tolkien and Allen & Unwin in the transitional period between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. We should study how Stanley Unwin is a kind of catalyst in the publication process, actually triggering The Lord of the Rings without knowing exactly what will come of it. It may not have been totally clear how important his role was. He certainly did not act as a completely anonymous or invisible person in this process but close enough. With

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the help of the correspondence between Tolkien and Stanley Unwin and the book A Remembrancer, which the son Rayner Unwin wrote, we can see clearly how The Lord of the Rings got a flying start even in the first chapter. Since the publication date for The Hobbit was September 21, 1937, it was very encouraging for Tolkien that Stanley Unwin wrote as early as October 11 that a large number of readers would demand still more tales about the hobbits for the next year. Unwin also submitted a letter he had received from the well-known novelist Richard Hughes, who was full of admiration and regarded The Hobbit as one of the best stories for children that he had read for a long time. Tolkien was also very quick in answering in a letter dated October 15 (Letter 17): Dear Mr Unwin, Thank you very much for your kind letter of October 11th, and now for the copy of Richard Hughes’ letter. I was particularly interested in this, since we are quite unknown to one another. The reviews in The Times and its Literary Supplement were good—that is (unduly) flattering; though I guess, from internal evidence, that they were both written by the same man, and one whose approval was assured: we started with common tastes and reading, and have been closely associated for years. Still that in no way detracts from their public effect. Also I must respect his opinion, as I believed him to be the best living critic until he turned his attention to me, and no degree of friendship would make him say what he does not mean: he is the most uncompromisingly honest man I have met! ...

Unwin wrote back to Tolkien on October 19: I think there is cause for your faint hope ... It is seldom that a children’s writer gets firmly established with one book, but that you will do so very rapidly I have not the slightest doubt ... You are one of those rare people with genius, and, unlike some publishers, it is a word I have not used half a dozen times in thirty years of publishing.

Tolkien answered on October 23 (Letter 18): Thank you in return for your encouraging letter. I will start something soon, & submit it to your boy at the earliest opportunity.

The next step in the publication process was the lunch to which Unwin invited Tolkien in London on November 15. This lunch was

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a milestone in the process of beginning the work on a continuation of The Hobbit. Tolkien had at that time a wealth of ideas for publication and a great many unfinished manuscripts within quite different genres. What he was waiting for from his publisher was a kind of starting permission, so that his great fictive universe could reach a larger audience. He needed to know if The Silmarillion ought to be expanded and brushed up immediately, or if a new work within the framework of Middle-earth with a focus on the lives of the hobbits should be planned. Tolkien was now at the top of his scholarly career at the age of forty-five with his edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925), the elegant study of the AB language (1929) and “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale” (1934) behind him. All these three studies were groundbreaking studies of literary masterpieces in English literature. In addition to these, he had published the year before the epoch-making essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” in Proceedings of the British Academy (1936). With these four studies, Tolkien had succeeded in showing that a scholar may very well treat subjects within the most high-ranking literature and still offer new interpretations and innovative ideas. A feature that made Tolkien different from many of his colleagues was that he preferred to publish his results in essay-form without writing big books and long studies. In spite of his particular position as scholar, Tolkien was now ready to continue his great imaginative work on Middle-earth, as soon as confirmation or at least a signal from the publisher came that might lead to publication. It was obvious that Stanley Unwin had imagined a continuation of The Hobbit, directed toward children readers. In Rayner Unwin’s A Remembrancer, the author describes how disturbed his father had been by the large number of mostly half-finished projects that Tolkien presented at this crucial lunch and which he offered for publication. The notes by the father regarding this “bombardment” of projects (p. 81) contained for example: 1. A volume of tales more or less ready for publication. 2. A tale about gnomes. 3. Mr Bliss. 4. A novel partly finished. 5. Some poetry. 6. Beowulf in an unfinished state. 7. A children’s book called The Marvellous Land of Snergs, illustrated by George Morrow.

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After this followed, according to Rayner Unwin, a period when Stanley Unwin, after having distributed the reading to various employees, was forced to return one manuscript after the other, including The Silmarillion, and explain in polite and considerate terms that they were not quite fit for publication. On December 15, Stanley Unwin returned all the manuscripts connected with The Silmarillion and wrote among other things that The Silmarillion contained quite a lot of wonderful material, but that it was books like The Hobbit that he had hoped for. Tolkien answered as early as December 16 (Letter 19): My chief joy comes from learning that the Silmarillion is not rejected with scorn. I have suffered a sense of fear and bereavement, quite ridiculous, since I let this private and beloved nonsense out; and I think if it had seemed to you to be nonsense I should have felt really crushed. I do not mind about the verse-form, which in spite of certain virtuous passages has grave defects, for it is only for me the rough material. But I shall certainly now hope one day to be able, or to be able to afford, to publish the Silmarillion!

Tolkien had The Silmarillion in mind for more than twenty years and Middle-earth was the geographical and historical environment natural for him to see as a background to a new fantasy story. It was also natural for him to leave the writing of children’s books behind when he was about to create something new within the framework of Middle-earth. A continuation of The Hobbit was one thing, but the target group for the new project would be widened considerably. The hobbits were, however, in focus from the very beginning. It is hard to say when in the autumn of 1937 that Tolkien began writing on the new book. If it was as late as December, one must admit that Tolkien seems to have been most dedicated. He wrote as early as December 19 to C.A. Furth, an employee at Allen & Unwin, that he had written the first chapter of a new story about hobbits called “A Long-Expected Party.” Rayner Unwin writes about the further destiny of the book in his A Remembrancer that seven chapters were finished in August and by the end of the year twelve chapters, which meant about 300 manuscript pages, a fairly large number considering that Tolkien was often accused of working slowly. Tolkien also reveals that the book was not meant to be used for children but that it had become darker and more frightening. In the course of 1939, the main features of the work had been decided by Tolkien, according to Unwin, and he had also begun

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using the title The Lord of the Rings. All this indicates that he had finished the main plan for The Lord of the Rings by the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. Tolkien’s writing was at a peak of intensity between 1937 and 1939. He explains in the foreword of the second edition of The Lord of the Rings (1966) that the main theme was decided by the author from the beginning and that the book should not be regarded as an allegory of the Second World War. Tolkien points out especially that the central chapter, “The Shadow of the Past” was written before the war and even “long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster” (p. xxiv). Just those years when Tolkien was most absorbed by The Lord of the Rings were a kind of transition period for the whole family Tolkien, well described by John and Priscilla Tolkien in The Tolkien Family Album (1992).The three sons had grown up and had either begun or were about to begin to study and were at any rate ready to move from home for good. John, the eldest son (born 1917), who had just finished studying at Exeter College, in November 1939, when the war had started and Italy was allied with Germany, went to Rome for further studies to become a Catholic priest. He was, however, soon forced to return home and managed to get on to the very last boat from Le Havre to England. John spent the war years at a college at Stonyhurst in Lancashire. He was ordained after the war in 1946. Michael, the second eldest son (born 1920), was enrolled in antiaircraft defence, defending English airfields during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and serving also in France. He was declared unfit and returned to Oxford in 1944. Christopher (born 1924) was called up for the Air Force as an eighteen-year-old in 1943 and was sent during the winter to South Africa to be trained as a pilot. Christopher then spent the whole time to the end of the war in South Africa. The extensive and very important correspondence between father and son, which is preserved, and, as we have seen earlier, contains above all Tolkien’s often detailed comments on how the work on the book was progressing and what difficulties had occurred. Tolkien sent chapter after chapter to Christopher for reading. If the correspondence between Tolkien and Rayner Unwin was important for the publishing process in the years 1937–1938, the correspondence between 1944 and 1945 is similarly very important for our understanding of the writing process. It looked as if Tolkien might finish The Lord of the Rings toward the end of the war, judging from the letters to Christopher, but it turned out that this was not the case. The editing could not be completed

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until 1949. The many published letters to Christopher (Letters 50–73 and 75–97) during his time in South Africa appear like a private biography covering a central part of Tolkien’s writing during a concentrated period of his life, while the war raged on outside. There are several levels of interest, and one may suggest that Tolkien created a distinct literary genre, the letter-dialogue-biography, which is difficult to imitate. First of all, Tolkien gives a series of impressionistic glimpses of daily life in Oxford during these years, when, as in many other English cities, there was always a fear of air raids and bombing. The norm for him is of course the Oxford that surrounds him. As early as in the first of these biographic letters (Letter 50) written on October 25, 1943, when Christopher had not yet been transferred to South Africa, Tolkien gives an example of his love for the trees in the local environment and around the city. The poplars are now leafless except for one top spray; but it is still a green and leafy October-end down here. At no time do birches look so beautiful: their skin snow-white in the pale yellow sun, and their remaining leaves shining fallow-gold. I have to sleep at Area H.Q. on Friday. Tomorrow night I am going to hobnob, chez Lewis, with— Joad of Joad Hall!

Tolkien opens up two new levels in the correspondence with his son even in this first letter, beyond the geographical level in Oxford. The second level is the required preparedness for war, in which Tolkien, who now belonged to the reserve, worked as an air-raid warden certain nights and had to sleep in the hut that was used as local headquarters in the case of an air-raid warning during the night. Tolkien was also a member of the Fire-watching Service and often had to stay up late at night. John and Priscilla Tolkien say in their Album that their father reported a continually increasing glow that had appeared in the sky one night. The next day they learnt that the City of Coventry, only seventy kilometres away, had been bombed to pieces in a massive German raid. Besides comments about the purely local presence of foreign aircraft and constant fire alarms, Tolkien often writes reports about the war situation in general and people’s sufferings on both sides of the front. The reports could be religious comments but also sharp attacks against the enemy’s leaders, as for example in Letter 81 from September 23–25, 1944: We knew that Hitler was a vulgar and ignorant little cad, in addition to any defects (or source of them).

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The third level, which Letter 50 above refers to, is the meetings with the Inklings, especially with C.S. Lewis, who like Christopher Tolkien, continually read the chapters that Tolkien wrote during the war. Tolkien also read aloud for the other Inklings at the meetings in the pub or with Lewis at Magdalen College. The Joad, mentioned in Letter 50, was a well-known radio voice from the BBC, namely C.E.M. Joad whom Lewis had invited for dinner with Tolkien at Magdalen College. The fourth level in Tolkien’s letters to Christopher concerns short reports about Edith and Priscilla and the family’s house. During the war, the garden and the chickens were very important for reducing the food costs in harsh times. We get some rather moving, daily glimpses of the importance of the garden in Letter 89 from November 7–8, 1944: On Monday (I think) a hen died—one of the bantam twins; cert. it was buried that day. Also I saw C.S.L. and C.W. from about 10.40 to 12.50, but can recollect little of the feast of reason and the flow of soul, partly because we all agree so. It was a bright morning, and the mulberry tree in the grove just outside C.S.L.’s window shone like fallow gold against colbalt [sic] blue sky. But the weather worsened again, and in the afternoon I did one of the foulest jobs. I grease-banded all the trees (apple) tying 16 filthy little pantelettes on. It took 2 hours, and nearly as long to get the damned stuff off hands and implements. I neglected it last year, and so lost ½ a glorious crop to the “moth.” It will be like this “cacocatastrophic” fallen world, if next year there ain’t no blossom.

The level related to university life is not greatly dealt with in this letter collection. Tolkien mentions only in passing that he corrects examination scripts, gives lectures, and participates in certain meetings. It is quite clear that everything that has to do with The Lord of the Rings is at the center of his creative world. It is the lively description of the various steps in the development of the trilogy that is the essential part of this biography, which only comprises about two years. It is the exchange of ideas between father and son, the dialogue between the two of them that is of decisive importance. That is why he could write in a letter on June 10, 1944 (Letter 73): I certainly live on your letters, although my circumstances are so very much more easy.

This confirms the impression one gets from the whole of the published collection of letters, that Tolkien got a great stimulation from

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this intense correspondence with Christopher. He wanted to submit new chapters, because he always received qualified feedback, in the same way that he always got qualified criticism from C.S. Lewis and to a certain extent from the other members of Inklings. Since Tolkien wrote often, he wanted to maintain a dialogue that showed how the work on The Lord of the Rings was proceeding. Christopher functioned as a sounding board without any problems whatsoever. Lewis’s criticism could sometimes cause irritation, at any rate later in the 1940s. On August 12, 1944, Tolkien seems to have been caught up in a small crisis, to judge from the selection of words in the letter (Letter 78): I am absolutely dry of any inspiration for the Ring and am back where I was in the Spring, with all the inertia to overcome again. What a relief it would be to get it done. How I miss you on that count alone!

On November 29 (Letter 91), Tolkien sent a few more chapters and a statement regarding the continuation of the story up to the very end. Tolkien writes: Here is a small consignment of “The Ring”: the last two chapters that have been written, and the end of the Fourth Book of that great Romance, in which you will see that, as is all too easy, I have got the hero into such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty. Lewis was moved almost to tears by the last chapter. All the same, I chiefly want to hear what you think, as for a long time now I have written with you most in mind.

At the end of the letter, Tolkien makes a summary of the final scene of the story in a letter dated Christmas Day 1944 (Letter 93): Sam is the most closely drawn character, the successor to Bilbo of the first book, the genuine hobbit. Frodo is not so interesting, because he has to be high-minded, and has (as it were) a vocation. The book will prob. End up with Sam. Frodo will naturally become too ennobled and rarefied by the achievement of the great Quest, and will pass West with all the great figures; but S. will settle down to the Shire and gardens and inns.

The pace of Tolkien’s writing becomes relatively uneven. It was not until 1947 that Tolkien provided an almost finished draft in typewritten form for presentation to the publisher. The whole story about the

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emergence of the Lord of the Rings has been described by Christopher Tolkien in four volumes within the framework of his series of twelve volumes, The History of Middle-earth, which were published between 1983 and 1992. In the parts that deal with The Lord of the Rings, and are called The Return of the Shadow, The Treason of Isengard, The War of the Ring, and Sauron Defeated, we are given a survey of all Tolkien’s sketches and versions, illustrations and maps. The four books give an overwhelming picture of the amount of material that Christopher Tolkien had compiled from his father’s collection of manuscripts regarding The Lord of the Rings. T.A. Shippey has analyzed the progress of Tolkien’s work on The Lord of the Rings in a long chapter in his book, J.R.R. Tolkien. Author of the Century (2000). Shippey shows that Tolkien did not have any plan ready for a consecutive story at the beginning of the book in 1937–1938. Still Shippey maintains that if we look at the completed story there is an obvious symmetry in the planning. The fact that it had a rather hesitating start may be realized from a note in the preface of the second edition (1965), in which Tolkien says that the book “grew in the making,” a statement that has become famous. In the course of 1947, Tolkien finished his story and handed over the typewritten text to Stanley Unwin at another important lunch in the history of the publishing house. Stanley passed the manuscript on to his son Rayner for reading and evaluation. It is interesting to reflect that it was Rayner who at the age of ten was given the task of reading through the manuscript of The Hobbit with a positive and decisive outcome. Now Rayner Unwin was a student at Oxford and belonged to Trinity College. The final statement from Rayner this time clearly emphasizes the great difference between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Rayner Unwin was quite conscious of the fact that The Silmarillion formed the historical background to The Lord of the Rings. He also realized that Tolkien was not aware of the long road to publication for both these books. The various parts did not properly hang together. Tolkien was, however, of the firm opinion that these two large books should be published together. When Tolkien had finished The Lord of the Rings, he first showed the manuscript to C.S. Lewis, who for many years had listened to Tolkien reading extracts aloud at the meetings of the Inklings and offered views, suggestions, and corrections. Lewis commented: Once it really gets under way the steady upward slope of grandeur and terror (not unrelieved by green dells, without which it would indeed be intolerable) is almost unequalled in the whole range of narrative art

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known to me. In two virtues I think it excels: sheer sub-creation— Bombadil, Barrow Wights, Elves, Ents—as if from inexhaustible resources, and construction. Also in gravitas. No romance can repel the charge of ‘escapism’ with such confidence. If it errs, it errs in precisely the opposite direction: all victories of hope deferred and the merciless piling up of odds against the heroes are near to being too painful. (Carpenter, p. 204)

Tolkien also showed the two manuscripts to an editor at the London publisher Collins, Milton Waldman. He was enthusiastic about The Lord of the Rings, but also about publishing The Silmarillion, when it was finished, provided that there were no special links to Allen & Unwin. Waldman took a very long time to get started. Tolkien, on his part, tried to present a kind of ultimatum to Allen & Unwin regarding publishing the two books simultaneously, which the publisher refused to do. The negotiations between Tolkien and the two publishers began to cause a rather embarrassing situation and Collins soon withdrew. Time passed and Tolkien had to agree to a later publication of The Silmarillion. In September 1952, he submitted the finished manuscript of The Lord of the Rings to Allen & Unwin. The Silmarillion had to be placed for the moment on the waiting list. Owing to the fact that that it had taken such a long time for Tolkien to finish the two great fantasy works in manuscript form, it is remarkable that the publisher managed to produce the first part of The Lord of the Rings in cooperation with the author in less than two years, followed by part two, The Two Towers in 1954 and part three, The Return of the King, on October 20, 1955. Rayner Unwin wrote in his memoir, A Remembrancer (1999), that he never doubted the strength of the story in The Lord of the Rings. However, the publishing house must have shown certain caution in its belief that it could become a bestseller. The publisher suggested to Tolkien that he should accept a sharing system, based on equal distribution of the profits between Tolkien and the publisher, after the publisher had stood for the production costs and the marketing and these costs had been covered. In such a deal, there was no talk about advances or royalty. Unwin writes that this system was more common earlier during the twentieth century, but that Tolkien had probably gained more from it than any other writer. On the background of the risk factor in all publishing, one may observe that Tolkien’s cooperation with English and American publishers was a long series of detours and unforeseen events. Such an

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event occurred during the Second World War when a bomb fell on the bookbinding company Key & Winding’s storehouse and destroyed 1,400,000 books for Allen & Unwin. The whole remainder edition of the second printing of The Hobbit from 1937 was destroyed. During the war there was a severe paper shortage and there was no way of contemplating another printing until 1942. There were many elements in the publishing process of The Hobbit that seem quite different from the technique used in the new millennium. All communication between the author and the publisher was done by letter. Rayner Unwin says in his book that Tolkien wrote twenty-six letters to Allen & Unwin in 1937 and that the publisher wrote thirty-one letters back. Judging from the number of letters preserved in connection with the final phase of Tolkien’s contacts with the publisher, the procedure was about the same after the Second World War, when The Lord of the Rings was being prepared for publication. About half a century before emails and attachments, i.e., before, during, and after the Second World War, even the telephone was little used, and long distance calls almost a luxury. On the other hand, Tolkien went to the publisher now and then in London to negotiate, and meetings and lunches were arranged in Oxford to speed up the process. A little later Tolkien experienced something very special on the American side. In the middle of the 1960s, it was suddenly clear to Allen & Unwin and Tolkien’s American publisher, Houghton Mifflin, that a pirated copy in paperback was on its way in the United States. The United States had signed the international agreement of copyright rather late, after both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings had been published. Houghton Mifflin had imported too many copies of The Lord of the Rings and this could be used by Ace Books. This publisher claimed that this excess import made The Lord of the Rings public property. This would mean that the copyright agreement was not applicable and Ace Books could therefore begin to produce a paperback edition at a modest price with the agreement of the author and without paying out any royalty. The problems about the copyright would, however, be solved fairly soon, and toward the end of 1965 there was a new, approved paperback edition published by Ballantine Books. Ace books also agreed to pay out royalties. This was the time when the sales of The Lord of the Rings increased and the books spread at American high schools, colleges, and universities. The students agreed with Tolkien’s criticism of industrialism and the machine age, his feeling for the environment, and his clear standpoint against evil in the world. Tolkien’s views and his fantasy

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literature fitted in perfectly with the American students attitudes during the 1960s, when war protests were loud and ideas concerning the environment were new. Tolkien had very quickly become a cult figure of great stature. My own impression was that he was most amused by the situation and said that he devoted a lot of time to answering letters, thanking people and explaining various matters connected with his books. It was quite a different matter that it became difficult for the family to manage the gatherings of fans around the house in Sandfield Road, particularly since Edith’s health was deteriorating. The couple moved to Poole near Bournemouth and a more peaceful existence. Looking at Tolkien’s activities during the 1930s and 1940s and the first half of the 1950s, judging from his correspondence and preserved notations, one understands easily that his engagement with fantasy literature becomes longer and longer and his commitments for philology less and less. Tolkien’s last research task was his edition of the Ancrene Wisse, which was published in 1962. The long correspondence between Tolkien and various presidents and secretaries of the Early English Text Society, particularly after 1959–1960, when I had myself begun to cooperate with the Oxford scholars, is in effect a summary of Tolkien’s legacy as a philologist. All the material is preserved in the Bodleian Library, including a transcript of the Ancrene Wisse, in which Tolkien reproduced many of the beautiful initials of the manuscript with great elegance. Since this edition is the most important in the long series of versions of the Ancrene Wisse and since he coined the term “AB language” and also analyzed it, this work by Tolkien as a philologist is regarded as most central. I wish to emphasize here that Tolkien chose fantasy as a sideline at an early stage of his time as a don at Oxford. But as early as the 1930s, it was clear that fantasy would be the main track for his continued creative writing. Tolkien had many ways of sticking out his neck, being critical and ironic. He shows this in his valedictory address at the University on June 5, 1959. First he had been professor of Anglo-Saxon between 1925 and 1945 at Pembroke College, and after that, professor of English language and literature at Merton College between 1945 and 1959. These are the professorships and chairs that he comments on at the beginning of his speech: It might be held characteristic that, though I have occupied two chairs (or sat uneasily on the edge of two chairs) in this university, I have not

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yet delivered an inaugural lecture: I am now about 34 years behind. At the time of my first election I was too astonished (a feeling that has never quite left me) to gather my wits, until I had already given many ordinary lectures as required by statute, and it seemed to me that an inaugural that would not inaugurate was a ceremony better omitted. On the second occasion, my ineffectiveness as a lecturer was already well known, and well-wishers had made sure (by letter or otherwise) that I should know it too; so I thought it unnecessary to give a special exhibition of this unfortunate defect. And, though twenty years had then gone by, during which this matter of the overdue inaugural had been much on my mind, I had not yet discovered anything special to say.

This may seem a somewhat eccentric introduction to a valedictory, but it was typical of Tolkien to make jokes about himself and to assume a light ironic tone and enjoy his jokes himself. A large part of the lecture dealt with the relation between language and literature in the syllabus for English studies, which had been among his interests, above all during the first years of his time as professor. Nevertheless we get a few memorable lines in his lecture about Tolkien’s choice of interests, his choice of friends from his school period instead of his Oxford days, his choice of themes for his fantasy, and his choice of hobbits as central figures with links to the West Midland area, where his family had old roots. The following lines from his valedictory address give an excellent glimpse of Tolkien’s personality and his views on his long period at Oxford: But I am, as I say, an amateur. And if that means that I have neglected parts of my large field, devoting myself mainly to those things that I personally like, it does also mean that I have tried to awake liking, to communicate delight in those things that I find enjoyable. And that without suggesting that they were the only proper source of profit, or pleasure, for students of English.

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CH A P T ER

18

The Final Years

One beautiful summer’s day in 1972, I stood in front of 21 Merton Street in Oxford, waiting for J.R.R.Tolkien, the cult figure, recluse, and world-renowned celebrity, professor, and fantasy writer, a figure regarded with both fierce admiration and unadulterated skepticism. The well-known figure appeared suddenly in the doorway, unlit pipe in his hand as usual, waistcoat buttoned beneath his tweed jacket. “Dr Zettersten! Please do come in!” I had conversed with, dined with, communicated with (by letter and by telephone) J.R.R.Tolkien fairly often for a large part of the 1960s. Now it was 1972, and it was over four years since we had last met in Oxford. During this time Tolkien had lived almost four years in Poole near Bournemouth, and it was here that his wife Edith had died in November 1971. I was very conscious of the parallel with my first meeting with Tolkien in 1961. Then Tolkien had stood waiting for me outside another house on the outskirts of Oxford. Now I was slightly tense but, more than that, expectant, standing there with a good bottle of Bordeaux discreetly wedged under one arm, my most recent English publication under the other. Our meeting was delightful. Tolkien accepted the bottle of wine with enthusiasm and then set before me on the table two bottles of single malt, with the suggestion that we should spend the next few hours comparing their qualities. Yet very little of these desirable brands was actually sampled during this intense meeting, as time simply ran away while Tolkien updated me on the latest developments in The Silmarillion. He said that much had happened over the last four years in his work on what for him was his central enterprise, and that I was in need of an update. The Silmarillion had been in production in Tolkien’s internal workshop since 1916–1917. It became evident that this complex major work had been in his thoughts throughout the period 1968–1972 when we had not met, even if nothing new had emerged in written form. But it

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was traditional at our meetings that I should be updated, and he was always delighted to have the opportunity to describe and appraise his progress. While I could always follow his conversation on philological matters, it was absolutely impossible to follow and understand all the developments in The Silmarrilion due to the fact that the account, replete with its hoard of names of people and places, was presented at high speed and was full of twists and complications. When I had first met Tolkien in the sixties I had made it my business to make sure I was properly au fait with The Lord of the Rings and could hence take part in a discussion of Middle-earth in a quite different way, asking questions about the background and the language. But now there was nothing concrete to work with, and I was never entirely happy with my questions about The Silmarillion. On the corner of The High and Merton Street lies the Eastgate Hotel. It was here at this respected hotel that Joy Gresham, later wife of C.S. Lewis, stayed on her first trip to Oxford and for the first time met Lewis, who was waiting in the foyer with his brother Warnie. The film version of Lewis’s life with Gresham, Shadowlands (1993), featured Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger as the couple. In the film, the first encounter was, as a matter of fact, set in the Randolph Hotel, not in the Eastgate Hotel. The house in which Tolkien lived was just beyond the Eastgate Hotel on the left-hand side of Merton Street. The street swings right immediately afterward and runs parallel with Merton College on its left, until it reaches the college’s entrance and its beautiful Chapel. For Tolkien, the location could not have been better: A few yards in one direction was the college to which he had been attached since 1945, a short distance in the other direction was “The High,” and just a pleasant stroll from there the Bodleian Library and other central amenities. Tolkien was very pleased with the arrangements that Merton College had made for him. The first-floor flat consisted of a large living room with space for books and other research material, plus a bedroom and bathroom. But not just that. As tradition at Oxford and Cambridge decrees, there were servants (called “scouts” at Oxford, “gyps” at Cambridge) who served breakfast and did all sorts of other odd jobs. Tolkien had the benefit of a comprehensive home help in the form of married couple Charles and Mavis Carr, he being the scout and she a housekeeper. They lived in a basement apartment in the same building and provided all Tolkien’s meals, unless he was eating in college. Mavis Carr was from Wales, and Tolkien was able to make use of her knowledge of Welsh when required.

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The preambles to my discussion with Tolkien on this occasion were somewhat longer than they had tended to be in the 1960s. He explained his new domestic arrangements, praised the great generosity he had received from his college, and described his wife’s illness and the sorrow he had felt since her death. He was thrilled with his hugely increased readership, and certainly it had been during those four years since I’d last seen him in 1968 that his status as a cult figure among young people had been confirmed. I watched Tolkien carefully, as I sat at a small table with the two undisturbed bottles of whisky, two glasses, and my own notebook, which I had hoped to fill with thought-provoking ideas from the master’s fund of knowledge. What a wonderful still life: two bottles of malt whisky and an exercise book from Blackwells. I fancied that inspiration might be transferred of its own accord into my notebook as a result of Tolkien’s insights into the linguistic problems that I intended to present him with. Tolkien behaved as usual, although his surroundings were new and very different from those in the house I had come to know at Sandfield Road in Headington. His new sitting room, which also served as study and library, gave the impression of being better organized than the converted garage in Headington. I supposed that it was because he had been more active in those days and surrounded by more papers. In Headington it had been easy to observe the activity that books, documents, ideas, and projects provided for a writer productive within both research and fiction. Now, with Tolkien only recently moved in, I could imagine that not all the books had arrived yet. The atmosphere was English academic, but I had no sense of it being a writer’s workshop with books and articles in production. As for Tolkien himself, was he now very different? He went around with his pipe unlit, as usual, but did he move slightly differently? Perhaps—perhaps not. Possibly he looked somewhat older, seemed slightly less alert, but that could have been fanciful on my part as I focused on his movements as he gave me a general review of his health. When later I looked really carefully, I thought that he had somewhat more wrinkles, an impression certainly confirmed when we met again in 1972. I was aware that he had had a fall on the stairs and injured a leg shortly before he and Edith moved to Poole in 1968, and later that year I saw him with a cane when we met at Merton College. Nonetheless, his output was certainly not reduced, as the enthusiasm with which he described his work on The Silmarillion was as zestful as ever.

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After Tolkien’s return to Oxford in 1972, I made valiant efforts to get him to come over to Sweden to give lectures in Lund and Uppsala. He was adamant in his objections, despite my efforts to tempt him with a visit to the countryside around Lejre in Denmark, a region that was perhaps the setting for some of the events described in Beowulf. I tried too to entice him with a visit to the University Library in Uppsala, where the Gothic Silver Bible would have been the most perfect object for Tolkien’s boundless curiosity in the field. “No, no! Out of the question! It would be far too tiring! I don’t travel much these days and it is far too far away.” I tried to promise that I would find comfortable seats on the plane and that I would be at his disposal to chauffeur him to wherever he would like to visit in Sweden or Denmark. My determined attempt petered out into an animated conversation about the pros and cons of always staying at home, and I never broached the subject again. When I returned to Oxford in 1972 for discussions with Tolkien, whom I considered my philological mentor in England, I had recently been appointed Leverhulme Fellow at University College, Cambridge, a position that carried with it a research stipend from the Leverhulme Foundation. This stipend is open to both British and foreign scholars, enabling them to get more time to spend on research and to set up more research projects. In Cambridge I had been commissioned by the Early English Text Society to prepare another text within their series. Tolkien had himself been, many years earlier (1934–1936), Leverhulme Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford. He relished the coincidence and as expected mocked me mercilessly for being a Cambridge, rather than an Oxford, man. Tolkien was most interested in what I could tell him of the manuscript I was now working on, kept in the famous Pepys Library in Cambridge, where the beautiful shelves are tailor-made exactly to the size of the many venerable manuscripts. Pepys Library is part of Magdalene College, where Tolkien’s late friend C.S. Lewis had been professor. Just across the street from Magdalene is The Pickerel, where, in those days (alas no longer), the sofa on which Lewis had once sat and held forth to students or colleagues, was still revered. Tolkien enjoyed keeping in touch with what was going on in the field, but did not have the energy to throw himself into a research problem or into developments within the study of intricate links between the various versions of Ancrene Wisse, the specialist subject of a younger colleague at Oxford, Professor Eric Dobson. On the other hand, he was openly enthusiastic about my proposed work on a fragment of the Old English poem Waldere. He was particularly

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captivated by my aim to be the first person to use ultraviolet light on the manuscript to decipher the illegible parts of this fragmented text. And yet—why did I have the sense that something was different? Tolkien was just a little older, a little more tired, a little less mobile, but at the same time, in conversation, just as sharp, as good-humored, and as ebullient as ever. Had he changed? It was a question that I had trouble answering at that happy reunion. Was it rather I who had changed over the last few years and now observed and treated Tolkien rather differently? Since I had seen him last I had made my first visit to the United States, in 1968. My first stop was New York, where I had the good fortune to witness from within the American Broadcasting Company’s coverage of the first primary in Wisconsin for the presidential election, with Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy among the candidates. It was my contact in New York, Irving E. Fang, head of the political unit at ABC News and later professor at the University of Minnesota, who introduced me to the world of American public life. From New York I moved on to Los Angeles and lectured at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) on the various versions of Ancrene Wisse and, among other things, on Tolkien’s work in Middle English philology. That I knew him and had worked in the same area of Middle English dialects made me, to my great surprise, an accepted authority on medieval philology. On April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated, and thousands of students sat on the lawns of the campus and wept. It was in the same year that Robert Kennedy was murdered. The war in Vietnam dragged on. When I got back to England at the end of 1968, I had the impression that Tolkien had left Oxford for good. Back to the question—had I changed? By the time I met Tolkien again in 1972, I had traveled to other countries, to study more modern varieties of English in Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. My linguistic curiosity was no longer centered solely on western England in the Middle Ages. Nor were Oxford and Cambridge the only places to do research. Yet surprisingly enough, this realization was coupled with an even stronger appreciation of the cultural inheritance that Tolkien had explored with such insight and such rigor. I slowly began to realize that he was one of the few who truly understood the literature of that age and the mythology at its core. Was it actually this profound understanding that led the young Tolkien to search to provide a new mythology for England?

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Was he changed? Was I? Did I begin to believe that I could find answers to the many mysteries I had formulated concerning Tolkien over the years? Could relating Tolkien’s research to his fiction lead anywhere? Watching him pace back and forth, offering a lively explanation of The Silmarillion, I perceived a subtle but increasingly clear difference in him from that meeting in the 1960s. It struck me suddenly that Tolkien in no sense believed that he could type, edit, and publish another definitive masterwork to go even further than his previous fiction, embracing the entire workings of the world he had single-handedly created. He was aware of the lack of time and strength left to him, but he retained an optimism and an enthusiasm that he knew exactly how to express. Much of Tolkien’s behavior was a sort of show, but only in the best possible sense. I realize now that he had understood that he would produce no more and was enduring a distinct, if tolerable, depression, exacerbated by the death of his wife and his reduced social life. Though my first impression had been that he looked robust, this hid the whole truth when it came to his thoughts and inner well-being. I was to observe again during 1972 and 1973 that Tolkien’s reasonably hale outward appearance did not necessarily mean that he felt robust. There were increasingly long moments of pensiveness between the laughs, and this surely had a lot to do with his inability to get the manuscript of The Silmarillion into print. So now and then I thought I understood why Tolkien had changed over the last few years. He had lost faith in his own powers. But he had shared so much knowledge and understanding of his fiction with his son Christopher that he might have felt reassured about the future publication of The Silmarillion. Yet he felt no reassurance when it came to his own role in this formidable project. This is clear from some of the published letters from the last two years of his life. In his foreword to Unfinished Tales (1983), Christopher Tolkien also confirmed that his father had never completed a framework into which all the important material for The Silmarrillion was to be collected and arranged. These impressions were reinforced during the following year. But it was also at this time that Tolkien asked me to call him “Ronald” rather than “Professor Tolkien.” I was greatly touched by this mark of his friendship, and even more so in retrospect, in the knowledge that he had explained to Amy Ronald (Letter 309) that his Christian name “Ronald” was “for my near kin only.” Previously, he had always greeted me in letters with “Dear Dr Zettersten.” On March 13, 1973, for the first time, he wrote a letter to me beginning “Dear Arne.” In

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August 1973, I was in Oxford for a week and met him a few times. The day before I left he invited me to lunch at Merton College. I told him that I had just been appointed cultural attaché at the Swedish embassy in London and that we should certainly be able to meet regularly in future. He explained that nowadays he kept to a strict diet and no longer drank wine. I noticed that day that he had left his food untouched. A short while later, back in Sweden, I received the sudden news that Tolkien had died following a bleeding gastric ulcer in Bournemouth on December 2.

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CH A P T ER

19

Facts and Fiction

What is reality? What is nonreality? What is unreality? In this chapter I intend to discuss Tolkien’s real-life world, the reality of his life. This is what I mean when I use the word “reality” in the following pages. One of the fundamental motives behind my writing on Tolkien is to describe and explain what “the reality of Tolkien” was. I do not refer only to the daily routine in Oxford where he lived, the family that he loved, and the colleagues and students that he socialized with or taught. Nor do I mean the image of Tolkien that I understood from my own meetings with him in Oxford and my own reading of his personal letters, essays, and other publications. Reality is not always what one thinks can be documented by verifiable quotations, with exact references in writing or all that one thinks may be verified according to the principles of evaluation of sources in historical research. I have always adhered carefully to the truthful and reliable facts of all my statements. I intend to indicate further in this chapter how reality is expressed in many aspects of Tolkien’s writing. Nonreality in this analysis will be in clear contrast to the account of reality, which I give in this chapter. Nonreality is represented by statements that cannot be documented properly, such as suggestions or ideas that Tolkien used certain sources, the use of which he had firmly denied. I remember one particular occasion when I wrote to Tolkien and reported about a newspaper article, in which someone put forward the idea that Tolkien had been influenced by the American author James Branch Cabell (1979–1958). Tolkien wrote back to me and denied forcefully that this was true. The next time we met he took up the matter again and maintained that he knew Cabell well, but that he had read only one of his books and that it was “quite boring.” In other words, I want to say that I have a critical attitude to all the theories and guesses regarding Tolkien’s writings, which are not documented, and also to people’s haphazard ideas about his views on his own work.

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Unreality, on the other hand, holds a place a step even further away from reality. Unreality is “the quality or state of being unreal, fanciful, or impractical” according to Collins English Dictionary. The various headings below regarding reality may be seen as guidelines to illustrate the realities that may be understood from Tolkien’s activity as an intelligent scholar and creative writer. A leading theme is how there may be an interchange between the real Tolkien and Tolkien’s reality, that is, how he himself sees or understands reality. This is true of all the headings. His own interpretation of reality will also be related to his ability to make a quick code switch between reality and fiction. This list of headings has two aims. First of all, the various points summarize the core of the reality that may be identified and defined in Tolkien’s life and activity. Second, the points are meant to emphasize particularly important events and contexts that are decisive for a maximum understanding of both the emergence and the development of his prime work, The Lord of the Rings. This means that we must attempt to analyze and place Tolkien’s factual reality against his imaginary world. This is important, since it is a springboard for the understanding of how Tolkien’s fiction arose, how Middle-earth was logically explained in his eyes, and how this “second world” or “underlying creation” was interpreted as the “truth” of fiction by himself.

R: T’ O S  H  H P Fortunately, there are numerous statements in Tolkien’s own hand, preserved in letters to his wife, children, friends, colleagues, publishers, readers, and admirers. Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the most comprehensive and detailed biography, has, together with Christopher Tolkien, traced a great number of letters in Tolkien’s hand. A selection of these was published in Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, published by Carpenter in 1981. Many published and unpublished letters and statements are also kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Wheaton College, Illinois. Drafts of essays and commentaries by Tolkien on important literary texts are also kept at the Bodleian Library. Tolkien’s statements about himself in some diary notes also belong to this type of reality and also important essays with direct connection to his writing, such as “A Secret Vice” (1931), “On Fairy-Stories” (1947) and “England and Wales” (1955). Tolkien also published an important statement about his life and his motives as an author, directed to his publisher, entitled “Tolkien on Tolkien” in the periodical The Diplomat, 1966. He points out that The Lord of the Rings

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is “fundamentally linguistic in inspiration.” It is, says Tolkien, largely an essay in “linguistic aesthetic.”

R: A  V P  E W T G U   P   C S Owing to special circumstances, for example, that Tolkien’s father died in 1896, when Ronald was only four years old and his mother in 1904, when he was twelve, the moves and the changes of environment were frequent for Ronald and his two years younger brother Hilary. The following places in the west of England with Birmingham as the central one belonged to reality: King’s Heath, Birmingham (1895–1896), Sarehole, south of Birmingham (1896–1900), Moseley, suburb (1900–01), King’s Heath (1901–1902), Edgbaston, suburb (1902–1905), Birmingham, with his aunt Beatrice Suffield (1905– 1908), with Mrs. Faulkner (1908–1909). The following individuals in Tolkien’s environment during his youth represent a concrete reality: his mother Mabel (1870–1894), his brother Hilary (1894–1976), the Catholic priest Father Francis Morgan, who became Ronald and Hilary’s guardian after their mother’s death in 1904, and later Edith Bratt, his wife to be. The importance of these four key figures during his youth cannot be emphasized enough.

R: O   U L – My previous chapters about Tolkien’s student life and his life as a don have described the environment of Oxford and its importance for the intellectual stimulus and the inspiration from ancient Germanic literature and mythology that he received there. It was the contact with this literature and all the linguistic ventures into creative poetry that made him the most important writer of fantasy literature. He brought it to a level that nobody could have foreseen, nor anyone imitate later. From the end of the twentieth century, fantasy literature has developed and broadened greatly on the basis of Tolkien’s success.

R: T’ E     F W W I have pointed out how much the events of the First World War influenced Tolkien. The horrifying experiences of the trench war made

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deep impressions on his mind. The same was true of the shocks of distressing news during his first war year, 1916, when two of the four members of the tea club T.C.B.S. were killed. From October 27, 1916, when Tolkien became sick with trench fever, and about one to two years onward, there followed a period of hospitalization and only partial service. It was a period when reality in the form of memories of the trench warfare, which he had just left, became very oppressive. It was in this period that he began imagining his great mythology and began the planning of the fictive world of Middle- earth. This is an excellent example of how facts and reality become parts of the fiction in Tolkien’s created world.

R:  L  T R   L  H L The contents of all the literature that Tolkien read from his school days onward, during his student days and his years as professor, cannot of course be called reality. However, the concrete wealth of learning within language and literature that he acquired was a genuine resource for his creative power. The learning and multitude of facts, even that involving knowledge of foreign mythologies, can be regarded as concrete starting points for him into created worlds. The sources of a created world can accordingly be regarded as real for the author. In the same way, the constructed languages, just like the living languages that Tolkien learnt in early life can be regarded as concrete starting points for the same created worlds. Tolkien’s mother was the driving force in Ronald’s early language learning. She taught him to read and write around the age of four and taught him privately until he was eight. When Ronald began constructing artificial languages at the age of six or seven, his mother stepped in and led him systematically into an early study of French and the foundations of Latin around the age of seven. Even during his school days Tolkien began the study of Middle English, first through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and later also Old English, first of all through Beowulf. His language studies were increased by Spanish outside school, in addition to Old Icelandic and Gothic. All this shows the breadth of Tolkien’s early interest in both living and dead languages, not least the various languages that he himself invented, like Naffarin, Nevbosh, or New Nonsense.

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R:  R A  W T’ A G C R  S P Again, it is important to emphasize that the literature studied by Tolkien and others cannot be said to represent a reality. On the other hand, the concrete research results and linguistic or literary identifications, such as the existence of the AB language, should be regarded as realities. One of the reasons why this type of reality is so central is that it formed a solid core of learning, which was in many ways the foundation for Tolkien’s creativity.

R: O E O P’ S  T  H A Here, under this rather controversial heading, one could make the observation that few scholars can be regarded as totally objective and thereby capable of rendering or representing a reality. However, the works of critics who are able to evaluate academic books, articles, and reviews objectively, as Tolkien was, may be considered reality. The letters of Tolkien’s family, which are still preserved, are naturally some of the most important documents representing reality in this context. The person who was closest to Tolkien was, for natural reasons, his son Christopher. Not only did he grow up in a research environment, but he also studied English at Oxford and became a tutor in English at the University and was, during a certain period in the 1940s, a member of the Inklings and contributed to their meetings with readings from the forthcoming The Lord of the Rings. He drew maps of Middle-earth and was a sounding board for his father’s work during the emergence of The Lord of the Rings. This is particularly clear from the correspondence between father and son during the Second World War. It is seldom that a scholar can get as close to a major author’s creative process as Christopher did in case of his father’s writing. The comments and statements that Christopher made about the creative process in connection with the publication of the twelve volumes on the history of Middle-earth (1984–96), that is, several years after his father’s death, are marked by great authenticity. We may here talk about the very creative process as a reality, a gigantic but authentic process, which is as truly detailed as possible, thanks to all letters from Christopher Tolkien and his comments after his father’s death. Some letters from representatives

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of publishing houses are also important documents for understanding reality, in particular the ones from Stanley and Rayner Unwin.

R: T’ C  I M  M D Practically all the material, which belongs to Tolkien’s paintings, drafts, and drawings, is preserved either at the Bodleian Library or Marquette University. These collections of pictures are a most valuable body of material, which, together with Tolkien’s scholarly work and his fantasy literature form a background to his unique creativity. Some of the numerous maps that Tolkien drew to illustrate his books are also kept in catalogues or collections. The most complete introduction to Tolkien’s work as an artist is the richly illustrated J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist and Illustrator (2000) by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. Hammond and Scull have described him especially as a visionary in the best sense of the word. This is a most important aspect, particularly when we compare Tolkien’s text, The Lord of the Rings, with the recent film version from 2001–03. If we study Tolkien as a human being, an author, and a scholar, it is possible to fit all the pieces together into an explanatory whole, like in a jigsaw puzzle. These pieces gradually contribute to the answers of some of the riddles or problems that I have enumerated. To look at all the pieces as a long series of riddles or problems comes naturally to Tolkien’s own way of giving precedence to the concept of riddle, as he does in the subtle chapter called “Riddles in the Dark” in The Hobbit. Tolkien returns to riddles in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings and relates how Bilbo won the competition and was able to retain the Ring for the time being. Riddles have a long tradition in English literature. Tolkien was, of course, well versed in riddles as a pregnant and humorous poetic form originally recorded in Old English manuscripts of the tenth century. I feel that every single reader of Tolkien’s fiction has been offered a world that can be interpreted individually. The information on Tolkien’s manners and disposition, which I contribute, may to a certain extent strengthen or deepen people’s knowledge and experience of his fictive worlds. Those who have their own strong notions of Middle-earth, may feel they do not need new clues or explanations. My approach to Tolkien’s fictional world has been to start from the realities of Tolkien and from there form my own view of the man and the writer based on my cooperation with him.

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CH A P T ER

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On the Truth of Myth

Because Tolkien’s early childhood and school days were so turbulent, with so many changes of address and environment, that he was able to develop his imagination and curiosity from an early age. With qualities such as an ear for language, a good memory for detail, a flair for drawing, a hunger to read, a love of natural history, and an interest in the language and events of early history, all well developed at an early age, it is easily understandable that the talents required for writing his own fantasy fiction were exceptionally great. Moreover, his great amiability with colleagues at school and university provided further stimulus to his creative process. In this fantasy world, called by Tolkien an “underlying creation” and best represented by the books about Middle-earth, one finds the whole of the “mythology for England,” which he had set his mind on shaping in a unified form, as explained in his letter to Milton Waldman in 1951 (Letter 131). Anders Stenström pointed out during a lecture at the 1992 centenary conference in Oxford that a better term than “for England” would be “for Englishmen.” We come unavoidably to one of the key problems in Tolkien’s thinking here. Could this mythology constitute a reality? This of course, begs the question: “How can a myth be true?” We can do no more than go back to Tolkien’s own pronouncements in letters or essays. Only he can provide a satisfactory explanation. A much-quoted account is the conversation Tolkien had with C.S. Lewis and Hugo Dyson, a colleague at the University of Reading, which took place during the evening (and long into the night) of September 19, 1931. Humphrey Carpenter has re-created this conversation in his biography of Tolkien on the basis of the poem, which Tolkien wrote soon afterwards. Carpenter writes that Lewis regarded myths as untrue, even when they are truths “breathed in silver.” Tolkien is then thought to have responded with the explanation below about the truth of myth based on “Mythopoeia” (“Creation of Myth,” Tree and Leaf, p. 85).

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The first stanza of “Mythopoeia,” dedicated to Lewis, is written as a poetic message from philomythos (one who loves myth) to misomythos (one who hates myth). “To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver”.(. . .) Philomythos to Misomythos You look at trees and label them just so, (for trees are “trees,” and growing is “to grow”); you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace one of the many minor globes of Space: a star’s a star, some matter in a ball compelled to courses mathematical amid the regimented, cold, Inane, where destined atoms are each moment slain.

In the opening lines of this stanza Tolkien points out that a tree is not a “tree” until someone calls it one. Carpenter interprets the author’s intention by suggesting that he wants to say: Myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver. [. . .] By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

Another seminal text in this context is Tolkien’s 1947 essay “On FairyStories”, in which he explained that a sub-creator “makes a Secondary World, which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world.” This view of whether Tolkien’s mythology can constitute a truth corresponds very well with the underlying thinking in “Mythopoeia.” I consider the whole problem of the truth of mythology to be one of the most crucial to any discussion of Tolkien’s work. It should be pointed out that the word true should not mean here “in accordance with fact” or “at one with reality”; instead, the word true, as used by Tolkien, should be given the meaning “characteristic, with characteristic qualities, and in this way representative of the phenomenon in question, typical, genuine, credible, real.” Tolkien enlarged on the view he gave in his essay in a letter to Milton Waldman in 1951 (Letter 131), in which he wrote: After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of “truth,” and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode;

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and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

In his book Tolkien: Man and Myth (1998), Joseph Pearce emphasizes the crucial difference between Tolkien’s understanding of the term myth and the meaning most other users attach to it. The latter is “merely another word for a lie or a falsehood, something which is intrinsically not true,” whereas Tolkien’s definition is virtually the exact opposite. According to Pearce, Tolkien’s view of myth was “the only way that certain transcendent truths could be expressed in intelligible form.” This definition is very close to the one a modern frequency-based dictionary like Collins Cobuild Dictionary lists first, that is to say finds prevalent, with myth being “a well-known story which was made up in the past to explain natural events or to justify religions, beliefs or social customs.” It was Tolkien’s reconstructions of legends and myths from a historical world that interlocked to form Middle-earth’s whole, and it was this completeness that could represent the “truth” of tradition and myth, in his view. Joseph Pearce points out that the most important part of The Silmarillion is Tolkien’s account of how Middle-earth was shaped by the ONE. Pearce writes (p. 84): This Creation myth is perhaps the most significant, and the most beautiful of Tolkien’s work. It goes to the very roots of his creative vision and says much about Tolkien himself. Somewhere within the early pages of The Silmarillion is to be found both the man behind the myth and the myth behind the man. The “myth” behind Tolkien was, of course, the Catholic Christianity, the “True Myth,” and it is scarcely surprising that Tolkien’s own version of the Creation in The Silmarillion bears a remarkable similarity to the Creation story in the book of Genesis.

Pearce has also discussed Tolkien’s philosophy regarding myth in an interview in Zenith News Service (2001). There he makes the important point that Tolkien made a distinction between fact, which is wholly physical, and truth, which is metaphysical, that is to say supersensual—undetectable by the five senses but based on abstract thought. Moreover, Pearce states that a myth or saga can express love and hate, selfishness and selflessness, loyalty and deceit, and good and evil—all of them metaphysical realities that may be termed truths even if they are mediated in the form of a myth or legend. If one has this view of Tolkien’s fictional world, it is not difficult to accept his view of “truth” in respect to myth.

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This view prompts another discussion, that of the concept of truth. In an article entitled “Literature and its relationship with reality. To succumb or not to succumb to referential temptation” (Årsberättelse från Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet, 2003) the Swedish author Björn Larsson suggests that it is fully possible within fiction to “fantasise the truth.” This he explains in the following way: On the one hand fiction is the product of fantasy, on the other it is thought to contain truths about external reality.

Careful consideration of what fantasy comprised in Tolkien’s case reveals countless instances of “fantasising the truth.” Fantasizing the truth involves total submission to the fictional world, which fully coincides with Joseph Pearce’s observation that Tolkien considered truth as something metaphysical, undetectable. In principle this view of the term the truth is the same as Tolkien’s explanation that a tale or myth must be considered truthful when it abides by the laws that apply within the frame of the world in which it is set, to which the fiction he created belonged. On the other hand, it is a long way from this to the various hybrids within, for example, the historical novel, science fiction, or fantasy literature where actual figures from history appear alongside fictional characters. It is in hybrid forms like these that a sort of quasi-reality emerges, an almost-reality, which fogs its trustworthiness. One can create a kind of truth around the actions of figures from history, but the moment their relationships with the fictional characters become central to the tale, the result may soon seem doubtful. Indeed, as more and more of such semi-histories appear on the market, as they have in recent years, the absolute consistency with which Tolkien created his alternative world of Middle-earth is even more exceptional. Furthermore, the picture that emerges of Tolkien as both academic researcher and fantasy author is also entirely consistent. It is therefore possible to propose an explanation of Tolkien’s creative process by highlighting some of its most significant elements, that is to say the rapid code switching between his primary and secondary worlds, between his research work and his fiction and also his belief in the truth of myth.

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CH A P T ER

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The Reception of The Lord of the Rings in the World

All who love that kind of children’s book which can be read by adults should take note that a new star has appeared in this constellation. C.S. Lewis

Tolkien’s debut on the world market, The Hobbit (1937), was met with a benevolent reception both in reviews and among readers, and not least in two unsigned reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and in The Times, respectively. What was not known by everyone was that both reviews were written by C.S. Lewis, his friend and colleague, a member of the Inklings. The enthusiastic lines cited above are from The Times of October 8, 1937, nineteen days after the appearance of The Hobbit. Tolkien had expected a somewhat sour and indifferent response from his colleagues in Oxford, and he therefore had good reason to be most grateful toward Lewis, who was able to strike a note of straightforward admiration. Perhaps such admiration had little chance of immediately affecting his academic colleagues, but it came at an opportune moment, contributing toward some recognition of the fact that a professor of English could be capable of writing children’s books besides his research. The first part of The Lord of the Rings was published on July 29, 1954, and it was as early as August 14 that C.S. Lewis’s review appeared in Time and Tide. As mentioned in chapter 3, Lewis opens his review with the words: “This book is like lightning from a clear sky.” On September 9, 1954 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin (Letter 149), commenting on the reviews that had appeared so far. The letter is of

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great interest, as Tolkien—apart from his comments on the response of the surrounding world—mentions the role that C.S. Lewis played in connection with the publication of this first part. Quite a few critics like Peter Green, Edwin Muir, and J.W. Lambert, used a surprisingly sharp tone of voice directly after the publication of The Lord of the Rings. This was true also later on when the American author Edmund Wilson launched the most violent attack on Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. The attack was made in his article, “Oo, those Awful Orcs!” in The Nation on April 14, 1956, where among several sneering remarks Wilson accused Tolkien of being an unskilled narrator, lacking in instinct for literary form. He repudiates the praise that Lewis, Auden, and others had given Tolkien, formulating himself in a way that probably few if any of Tolkien’s readers would endorse: Frodo has come to the end of his Quest, but the reader has remained untouched by the wounds and fatigues of his journey. An impotence of imagination seems to me to sap the whole story. The wars are never dynamic; the ordeals give no sense of strain; the fair ladies would not stir a heartbeat; the horrors would not hurt a fly. Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this reviewer like balderdash have elicited such tributes as those above? The answer is, I believe, that certain people—especially, perhaps, in Britain—have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash.

On the other hand, the poet W.H. Auden, who was once Tolkien’s student and who had been fascinated by his lectures on Beowulf, was a great admirer of Tolkien’s writing. In his review of part I, The Fellowship of the Ring, in The New York Times of October 31, 1954, Auden wrote that The Hobbit was one of the best children’s stories of the century. He also emphasized that there was no fiction from the past five years that had given him more joy than The Fellowship of the Ring. The varying criticism that Tolkien was subjected to by literary critics and journalists was commented on and summarized by W.H. Auden in his review of the third part, The Return of the King, in The New York Times of January 22, 1956: I rarely remember a book about which I have had such violent arguments. Nobody seems to have a moderate opinion; either, like myself, people find it a masterpiece of its genre or they cannot abide it.

In spite of all the attempts at explaining why literary critics and academics have generally found such difficulty engaging themselves in Tolkien’s fiction and granting it a prominent place in English

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literature, it still remains a mystery why the “Author of the Century” has been ignored by many within the literary history establishment. My own suggestion as to how one may relate to Tolkien’s fictive world might help to explain the attitude of many of the critics. It is based on the careful and scrupulous observations of Tolkien’s behavior that I was able to make on many occasions, during and after meals at Merton College and during slow walks together in the Merton College grounds. Each time that we separated, after what I always considered as intense intellectual stimulation, I believed that I had learnt still more about Tolkien’s relation to the two worlds that were continually competing for his attention. My own explanation, which is in evidence throughout this book, is that Tolkien had the ability to switch rapidly and without hindrance between the two worlds, reality and fiction, or to put it in a different way, the primary world and the subcreation. The fictive, secondary world is constructed on myth, and as long as one remains within this world the myths may be termed “true” or “genuine.” Truth operates, according to Joseph Pearce, wholly on a metaphysical, or a suprasensual level. Concrete things, on the other hand, do not necessarily need to be true or realistic in the subcreation. But if those concrete phenomena have a counterpart in a reality that the reader recognizes, or with which the reader can identify, credibility in the fictional text becomes greater and the reader does not so easily doubt that this is realistic literature. At the same time what Tolkien creates is myth fiction. The secret is that the reader himself must enter into the closeness of the relation between the two worlds. The reader must himself, like Tolkien, move along this double track at his own rate, thinking as creatively as the author himself did when he was writing. This is my own bid for an answer to the justified question of the discrepancy between the artless popularity of the fiction with millions of people and the reserve of thousands with a specific literary interest who have not moved over into the double track of the two parallel worlds. It is important to add here that we as readers may apprehend the entire course of events in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Silmarillion, placed in Middle-earth, as one gigantic poem. In such a overall perspective Tolkien’s myth fiction may easily be understood in a more natural way than if one refers only to the concept fantasy. In many other literary connections and discussions, it is rarely difficult to assess fiction or poetry from a literary point of view. Each genre within literature ought to have its own authorized place in the critical debate, also when one has arguments in favor of the superiority in quality of other genres.

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This of course does not mean that the genre that we usually call fantasy must be represented in the canon or list of acknowledged works that many university teachers claim ought to be a guideline or norm for university students. The professor of literature at Yale University, Harold Bloom, who is a leading proposer of English canon literature that everyone ought to read, has not had the slightest intention of placing Tolkien on his list. He is the editor of volumes in the series Modern Critical Interpretations (2000 and 2008) with a number of articles of criticism on Tolkien’s work by various well-known authors. Bloom’s position diverges from that of Roger Sale, one of the leading critics, who has been an advocate of Tolkien’s fantasy writing. Bloom writes in his introduction (2008): I will attempt, rather briefly, to define my aesthetic doubts about Tolkien’s trilogy by contrasting them to the shrewd defence by Roger Sale, Tolkien’s best critic, of what he regards as Tolkien’s and the protagonist Frodo Baggins’ heroism. Tolkien, at twenty-three, went off to the Western Front, was wounded, and lost to the war nearly all his friends in his own generation. For Sale, the trilogy is Tolkien’s delayed, ultimate reaction to the Great War, which decimated Great Britain’s young men. Tolkien dated his lifelong love of fairy stories to his turning away from the war, and The Lord of the Rings is a vast fairy story.

There is an alternative for the reader who does not wish to accept fantasy as an important literary genre. One might place The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings within the framework of a genre consisting of novels or poems, the main theme of which is a quest. In a quest, it is the hero’s aim to find a coveted object or to capture it from the enemy. The main theme in such a literary work will be an adventurous expedition or a heroic search. Patrick Curry has dealt with the question in his book, Defending Middle-Earth. Tolkien: Myth and Modernity (1998). Curry also discusses a statement by the novelist John Fowles who points out that every novel since the birth of literature is a quest of sorts or an adventure. If it is the case that Tolkien has in some way transgressed the boundaries for how a traditional genre like the novel should be treated, then such an alternative interpretation—that Tolkien’s two books could be placed within a quest genre—should be taken seriously. This is important since this quest, the vital main theme of The Lord of the Rings, is viewed by many as the driving force of the entire book, making the readers unwilling to put it aside until the culmination has been reached and the Ring has been destroyed in Mordor. I can only see that some of the skepticism that many critics,

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too, have shown on Tolkien’s literary work and position in literature, might disappear if the concept of quest were applied, taking an overall view of the Middle-earth story, regarding it as one great work of poetry. Harold Bloom notes in his abovementioned introduction that Roger Sale, too, has discussed the notion of quest: Sale accurately observes that the trilogy purports to be a quest but actually is a descent into hell. Whether a visionary descent into hell can be rendered persuasively in language that is acutely self-conscious, even arch, seems to me the hard question. I am fond of The Hobbit, which is rarely pretentious, but The Lord of the Rings seems to be inflated, overwritten, tendentious, and moralistic in the extreme. Is it not a giant Period Piece?

Right at the outset of his career Tolkien had given proof of a very steady understanding of linguistic criticism. He showed it in particular on those occasions when he wrote long chapters summarizing the year’s research in Old and Middle English in the series The Year’s Work in English Studies, during the years 1922–1924. He criticized other scholars’ work at a high scholarly level, demonstrating a well-balanced view of his critical tasks which made his judgment respected. There is often a marked difference between assertions made by literary critics and other writers on Tolkien’s fiction on the one hand, and by those scholars and colleagues who have given views on Tolkien’s contributions within linguistics, on the other. As I have pointed out above, reviews particularly of Tolkien’s fantasy literature have been marked by outbursts of feeling, sometimes as far from objectivity and truth as one can get. Comments on Tolkien’s research by appreciative scholarly colleagues and collaborators in certain research projects in Oxford come far closer to objective reality. Only a few of the more important ones may be mentioned here. In 1959 a Festschrift was published in honor of Tolkien on the occasion of his retirement from his chair at Oxford, containing a number of important articles by his colleagues. At that point The Lord of the Rings had been published, but it had not yet reached a larger global readership. These articles therefore were not related to The Lord of the Rings. This was, however, the case when a memorial publication appeared in 1979 edited by Mary Salu and Robert Farell, both former students of Tolkien, under the title, J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam. In 1992, for the centenary of Tolkien’s birth, yet another memorial publication was put together. At that time a

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conference was arranged in Turku, Finland, and a number of articles were published in an anthology titled Scholarship and Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon, Anglicana Turkuensia, No 12 (1993). Another conference was held at Keble College, Oxford, and as a result of this a collection of essays was issued in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, the Tolkien Society (1995). Further, it was in connection with the centenary of Tolkien’s birth that the memorial exhibition at the Bodleian Library was arranged and that the catalogue J.R.R. Tolkien. Life and Legend appeared. The greatest jubilee frenzy occurred in the years 2004–2005 when the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings was celebrated, both at Marquette University on October 21–23, 2004, and at Aston University, Birmingham, on August 11–14, 2005. Marquette celebrated the anniversary of the day of publication in 1954 of the first part of The Lord of the Rings, also arranging an exhibition of original MSS of Tolkien’s work together with other material, while Aston celebrated the publication of the whole trilogy, completed in 1954–1955. I myself was given the opportunity of opening the jubilee exhibition at Marquette University with a lecture that centered round my personal memories of Tolkien and the AB language.

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New Media

The screen version of The Lord of the Rings supports my view that it is quite possible for all of us to interpret Tolkien to our own taste. Through the films, it became clear that Tolkien presented a world that can be reached by both readers and film lovers. It is clear, on the other hand, that interpretations of the film can never be used to explain or modify Tolkien’s own statements in books, letters, or oral contexts. Each time we see the celebrated films we are more and more reminded that the presentation of a fictive story in a book is different from its adaptation for the screen, and all that goes into the making of a film. When we see the film, we may of course get a better understanding of certain issues that have previously been inexplicable, but it must always be kept in mind that the screening is built on an interpretation of the text of The Lord of the Rings, which is not Tolkien’s own, and which sometimes means a simplification, a clarification, or a change to something different. The original written text and the three films represent two different media, each of which must be respected on its own terms and not be confused. The question whether a clarification through the film version may help anyone better to understand Tolkien’s thinking is problematic. There are, however, many who have maintained that the long DVD version of the film helps to deepen the content and has made it easier to understand Tolkien’s mind. Considering how many readers The Lord of the Rings has had and also realizing that the number of people, both young and old, who have seen the films is overwhelmingly large and worldwide, it is understandable that feelings and views of Tolkien’s fiction world vary strongly. The interest and enthusiasm about this fantasy literature is quite remarkable. When the screening of The Lord of the Rings was planned in the 1990s, many factors had helped to maximize the success of the films.

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First of all there were millions of presumptive film fans all over the world who had already read the book or heard of it. Secondly, these were all used to the techniques of action films in recent decades. Thirdly, the planning of the films happened at a point in time when virtual reality had become available. The use of computer techniques in film making had reached a perfection that made the production of The Lord of the Rings possible. Fighting scenes could be constructed with a vast number of combatants and animations could be driven far beyond the limits of probability. Earlier attempts to film The Lord of the Rings were too early to be attractive enough. Radio transmissions of the whole trilogy came as early as in 1955 on the BBC, and in 1956 on BBC school radio, too. Tolkien himself was not particularly pleased and regarded the The Lord of the Rings as rather unsuitable for dramatization. In 1957 came the earliest proposal for screening by an American film company, which submitted a synopsis by Morton Grady Zimmerman. Tolkien wrote a long comment on this proposal and criticized it severely, so that the company had to withdraw. Later on, in 1978, the film director Ralph Bakshi produced a film that was a mixture of ordinary film sequences and animations. The film was devastatingly reviewed, partly because it ended in the middle of the story and was never completed. In 1980 came an additional animated film, this time for television by Rankin/Bass. Both these films appeared as laser disk and video, but they had no success. There have also been theater versions. The earliest was probably an adaptation of the book for the theater by Joyce Biddell at Maidstone, Kent, in 1960. Nowadays, when media such as film, TV, CD-ROM, and DVD have reached top quality in the reproduction of reality, demands increase for a situation to be presented with maximum authenticity or credibility. The rendering of a character or an event must build on an account that is realistic or close to reality. One example of an adaptation for the screen of The Lord of the Rings is interesting in this respect. Gollum, being mainly computer-generated, has been consistently well received for his credibility. Among all the technical refinements in the creation of a being like Gollum there is an invention by the Danish engineer Henrik Wann Jensen. Jensen invented a mathematical model that is considered to have revolutionized computer graphics in the film industry. In 2004 he received an Oscar, i.e., an Academy Technical Achievement Award, “for research simulating sub-surface scattering of light in translucent materials.” With his mathematical formula he showed how light may be made to reflect off the surface of an organic material and thereby how the skin of

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a computer-generated being like Gollum may look quite genuine and credible. Using that method Jensen was able to develop threedimensional simulation programs that allow both light and color to be reflected in a natural way. Present-day film and TV audiences have acquired a sophisticated ability through Henrik Wann Jensen’s invention to read a character’s feelings and qualities of personality through appearance, movements, behavior, reactions, and actions to the smallest detail. In consequence, there is an expectation that the figures or phenomena that one sees in a film are credible, whether they represent reality or fiction. The film team succeeded in this respect, by engaging the actor Andy Serkis to initiate Gollum’s movement pattern, voice, and physical appearance. The demands of the public have also increased enormously as the technique has evolved. Through clever marketing, expectations had been screwed up to the uttermost awaiting the film’s première. The gift for visualization that the director Peter Jackson demonstrated was another factor. And here we arrive at yet another key question connected with the riddle of Tolkien’s character and essence. What I am referring to concerns Tolkien’s creative process and the way this is intimately related to his whole world of ideas. The creative process in its entirety is dependent not only on the creation of the concept of Middle-earth by Tolkien during breaks in trench warfare. Integral to this process are also the many ways in which Tolkien’s original ideas in his book have been brought out to readers and listeners, film audiences, and DVD users, and the skill shown by the New Zealand enterprise WETA Digital through their advanced expertise within computer-generated art and animation. Added to this is the pioneering work that was carried out using the new digital picture archive from the film production for all kinds of digital manipulation. If we take into account the whole reception of Tolkien’s ideas, we may adopt a different, and maybe unexpected, comprehensive view of his project, particularly if we take into account the effects of his ideas. The question is of extreme interest to me, as it may explain the overwhelming reception of the film version in the world and also Tolkien’s singular, creative gift. Is the visualization of the printed text that everyone perceives, although in different ways, built on ways of expression that are already present in Tolkien’s original text? Is Tolkien’s text, a result of his own, personal visualization of the subcreation in his own mind, intuitively prepared by the author in such a way that a film maker is able to continue the construction, presenting it in a cascade of suggestive images?

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Tolkien himself was not prepared to answer yes to this question. It is true that I did not put it in precisely this way, but it was easy to understand his position on this point. To me, he showed a marked skepticism at the idea of an adaptation for the screen, just as he expressed it in his letter to Rayner Unwin in 1958 (Letter 207), where he makes clear in rather strong terms that the book is not suitable for the proposed film by Morton Grady Zimmerman. A few lines from Tolkien’s letter illustrate his attitude: I feel very unhappy about the extreme silliness and incompetence of Z and his complete lack of respect for the original (it seems wilfully wrong without discernible technical reasons at nearly every point).

In the 1950s and 1960s no one, of course, had the slightest notion of the coming developments within the art of computer-generated animation. My own opinion is that Tolkien was not completely right when he writes that The Lord of the Rings is not suitable for adaptation for the screen. Obviously what we have seen at the beginning of the new millennium proves the opposite, namely that gifted filmmakers have been able to effect a film version in which a great deal of Tolkien’s imaginative world as rendered in the books has been successfully transferred to another medium. The explanation lies in Tolkien’s own interest in pictures, his own three-dimensional thinking, his own fascination with sketches, drawings, paintings, and the art of writing, for which the foundation was laid far back in his childhood, all of it inspired, to a great extent, by his gifted mother. If one studies all the pictures in Hammond and Scull’s book, J.R.R. Tolkien. Artist and Illustrator, one finds an abundance of evocative images showing how his own words may be visualized. Is it maybe a distinctive character trait in Tolkien that he uses pictures in his language which particularly fire the imagination? Pictures that call forth features, feelings, and atmosphere in the secondary world that captivate, thereby stimulating both one’s thoughts and imagination? That being so, the answer is again yes. Tolkien’s visual language and purposeful rhythm lead thoughts on, contributing to the reader’s capability of envisioning the secondary landscape. Nor must one forget the important part played by Tolkien in the emergence of the whole of recent fantasy literature and its advance within film and TV. Products like Star Wars and Star Trek are perhaps the best-known because of their visual effects. Tolkien’s influence on innumerable successful books within fantasy have, in their

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turn, led on to further adaptations for the screen, of which the most spectacular example is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. The stimulating visual content of The Lord of the Rings produces a striking effect in the filmed version for a large audience. One might say that the forceful pictures create a completely new media reality for viewers. Today’s audiences, used as they are to a wealth of experience in the form of film, video and DVD, apprehend the suggestive images on film very intensely. The public loves experiencing events together in the dense environment of a cinema, where one only has one another to turn to and lean on and where the experience is shared with others. In a fearful contemporary world, the mutuality of the powerful shared experience is perhaps increasingly sought after, and the need may partly explain the advance of visualizing filmmaking. One only needs a few examples from The Lord of the Rings to understand the intense effects it has been possible to create in Jackson’s film. Among these are the powerful scenes with the Nazgul, the black riders, who first make their appearance on black horses and later on large, terrifying flying beasts. There are also the humorous sections with Treebeard and the wandering tree creatures, the Ents, who cause the whole of Fangorn, the forest of the Ents, to rise to march across the hills toward the war. Most spectacular of all are, of course, the filmed war scenes using computer animation and special effects. For those who can see before them the film rendering of Gandalf’s fall into the depths at the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm in part I, Tolkien’s description may seem brief but it is more than adequate for its visualization in the film: At that moment Gandalf lifted his staff, and crying aloud he smote the bridge before him. The staff broke asunder and fell from his hand. A blinding sheet of white flame sprang up. The bridge cracked. Right at the Balrog’s feet it broke, and the stone upon which it stood crashed into the gulf, while the rest remained, poised, quivering like a tongue of rock thrust out into emptiness. With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and vanished. But even as it fell it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and curled about the wizard’s knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. “Fly, you fools!” he cried, and was gone.

The question whether Tolkien’s language is more suggestive than that of other contemporary authors is impossible to answer, but he thought and worked in pictures in a cinematic way. Tolkien also emphasizes his own ability to visualize when it comes to scenery and landscapes in a

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very interesting statement in the letter to Rhona Beare on October 14, 1958 (Letter 211) in which he says: “I visualize with great clarity and detail scenery and ‘natural’ objects, but not artefacts.” Further, it is my view that Tolkien’s great interest in readings of his own various versions of poems and stories is consistent with this mode of evident visual thinking. It began even in his school years, and continued during the period when his children were small when Tolkien read extracts from The Hobbit and other tales. Later it grew into a full activity when Tolkien and the other Inklings met to read aloud from their work. I noted this talent for dramatization and visualization in him at several of our lively meetings, when he read out extracts from The Silmarillion. The intensity of the experience was so great in Tolkien that it seemed as if he was able to stand aside from his own reading, enjoying his own performance heartily and the visualization of the course of events that he called forth before his mind’s eye. He often combined the delivery with a running around looking for maps and sketches in order to further illustrate the dramatic narrative. This visualization of the reading was almost like a new form of one-man theatre, to which the Inklings contributed by making his narration technique famous. I myself derived great joy from this entertainment, especially in the last years of Tolkien’s life. An interesting example of Tolkien’s delight in visualization, developed early, is the coded letter to Father Francis written around the age of twelve and kept in The Tolkien Collection at the Bodleian Library. As an example of the twelve-year-old’s imagination and his linking of words and pictures may be mentioned the introductory phrase (as described in chapter 7): “M-eye deer owl-d France-hiss,” which is constructed in drawings showing: the number 1000 = M, an eye, a deer, an owl, a map of France, and a snake hissing = “hiss.” It is clear from this that Tolkien loved playing with words in coded form. In spite of all these aspects of Tolkien’s visual thinking it is the word that is the point of departure in his linguistic and literary work. He writes in the essay “A Secret Vice” (1931): The very word-form itself, of course, even unassociated with notions, is capable of giving pleasure—a perception of beauty, which if of a minor sort is not more foolish and irrational than being sensitive to the line of a hill, light and shade, or colour. Greek, Finnish, Welsh (to name at random languages which have a very characteristic and in their different ways beautiful word-form, readily seizable by the sensitive at first sight) are capable of producing this pleasure.

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This pictorial mode of thinking had the effect, one might say, of making Tolkien’s text ready made for the time fifty years later when the new film audiences in their turn had become used to a cinematic, markedly visual mode of presentation, conceived as composite, yet sequential assemblies of images. Tolkien, the picture worker, was ahead of his time on this point. His compound method of work as both linguist and picture worker, equipped as he was with both a brilliant imagination and creativity, made him see through the subcreation, to create a new fictional world. My conclusions, meaning to say my affirmative answers to the riddles and problems of Tolkien’s text, asking whether it may be considered to have been intuitively made ready for a subsequent screening, are based on reality—my reallife experience of Tolkien’s readings of The Silmarillion and of his explanations. On the other hand, probably no one would claim that Peter Jackson has tried to provide a visualization of Tolkien’s Middle-earth that is true to the original. He has built his construction based very ambitiously on the original book, but there are great differences between the book and the film. The role of the hobbits at the outset of the book is toned down in the film and the war scenes are extended and developed extensively. Also, the Ents have been given a part that is enlarged, which would in fact have been a source of great joy to Tolkien, if he had lived to see the screen version. Why then does suggestive narrative material become so selfsustaining? One explanation may be that today’s individual, and in particular children and young people, have lost a lot of historical knowledge and is therefore more open to all kinds of imaginary realities—as for example, an action placed in the Middle Ages or some other distant period in time. If it is true that knowledge of history and cultural history has decreased, there may come instead a yearning for myth, evocative tales, legends, or magic events. A lack of factual knowledge of history may create a great vacuum of expectation, or anticipation of experience. Tolkien has created a wholly dissimilar—“other”—world in his books that the great public of the new millennium was ready to receive in a different form, the form of the suggestive filmic pictorial world, which makes the fictional world even more disparate. The new audience, oriented toward experiencing, is ready for shifts between all the minitales that Tolkien gives us examples of in The Silmarillion, but which are now evident also through the adaptation for the screen of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s own power of visualization and his ability to see the fictive world before him which is already embedded in the text is the

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foundation for Jackson’s pictorial creations in the film. This has coincided with the public’s will to experience which, in its turn, has been made possible through techniques of film and computing. The yearning for experiencing sensations and for news among audiences and readers will also inspire new forms of expression and renderings of Tolkien’s fiction in the new millennium, such as enhanced e-books. One should also mention the new musical interpretations of the poems and songs from The Lord of the Rings. There are the projected film version of The Hobbit (two new films planned for 2012 and 2013), the musical version of The Lord of the Rings from 2005, and a long series of role-playing and strategy games, in the form of computer games. A documentary containing computer animations of Middle-earth in virtual 3-D space was also finished in 2003. With the success of the films, a new kind of artifact culture, too, arose in the film industry, which became the object of a special exhibition in 2003 at the Science Museum in London. The large-scale manufacture of everything, including every kind of attribute, costumes, and weapons that would be used in the films as props gave birth to a fictive-yetauthentic artifact industry—one might say a new industry of applied art, which will surely become an object of interest for historians and in historical writing. History never ends. New generations will find themselves asking new questions. Reality—such as Tolkien’s real-life world—will be there to form the basis for the answers.

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E  

“One must stop somewhere.” This may seem like a slightly self-ironic remark by Tolkien (in Letter 144 to Naomi Mitchison, April 25, 1954), which becomes double-edged against the background of his constant habit of jotting down a long series of various drafts, changes, and revisions before he regarded a chapter as finished. Tolkien wrote a rather sentimental epilogue to The Lord of the Rings, which came fairly late in the writing process. He was dissuaded from including it, but it forms the basis of the final additional piece about the idyllic Shire in the film version and about the future of all concerned. There is a great deal of Tolkien’s literary and scholarly writing, which will live on into the future. Of his fantasy literature, The Lord of the Rings, will continue to be one of the most popular books in world literature, irrespective of how many new publication formats and media we develop in the future. As before, new production techniques will improve rather than minimize its position. J.R.R. Tolkien will always be regarded as a central figure within two areas of medieval philology. Firstly, within Beowulf research he was able to show with great authority that the poem Beowulf forms a coherent structural unity and therefore should be considered a literary masterpiece within Germanic heroic poetry. Secondly, within Middle English textual research, especially concerning the West Midland area, he was able to show that the most important manuscript of the prose work, Ancrene Wisse, was written in a literary language, which Tolkien termed the AB language. The art of philological essay-writing was perfected by Tolkien in a series of penetrating articles in the 1920s and 1930s. Tolkien will also constantly remind us of the message that The Lord of the Rings conveys. This is not due only to the irresistible excitement created by the unifying quest or the heroic mission that urges the reader on, or the horror-filled temptations embedded in the Fellowship’s task to support Frodo in his struggle to destroy the Ring in Mordor. There is also a clearly superordinate message that all generations can understand. Most people regard The Lord of the Rings as a strong statement on the struggle between evil and good in our existence, where good finally prevails. Most people realize that evil and the power of evil have to be defeated and that this is always worth a sacrifice. There is always hope for humanity and this is worth fighting for.

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Or as Frodo says in the final scene immediately before his departure for The Grey Havens: I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. Frodo and Sam, Aragorn and Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli, Merry and Pippin, and several of the other key figures make constant contributions to the expression of this central message, each in his own way. They also help to communicate Tolkien’s view of the value of friendship and loyalty and the integration of different cultures, exemplified in their struggle against evil. This human universal message will always be understood and appreciated by future readers, film lovers, DVD-diggers, computer-game lovers, artifact collectors, netsurfers, sms-freaks, cellphone chatters, and other users of new media. Tolkien will remain as the visionary who perfected the writing of fantasy and invented a language to provide a message of hope for new generations—on and on again, in a variety of media. His most useful and constructive critic and friend, C.S. Lewis, explained this in his obituary on Tolkien in The Times, written ten years before Tolkien’s death, in the following way: Strange as it may seem, it was undoubtedly the source of that unparalleled richness and concreteness which later distinguished him from all other philologists. He had been inside language.

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A  

S  T’ P B The following survey is a brief summary of the events and circumstances that form the personal background to and inspiration for The Lord of the Rings.

C E The most distressing upheaval in Tolkien’s early childhood was the death of his father in 1896. His mother died in 1906, when he was only twelve. The move from Africa to England and the various homes in and around Birmingham, which Mabel created for the two brothers, Ronald and Hilary, must have given them an early feeling that life meant constant changes and surprises. Their time in Sarehole, 1896–1900, gave them a quiet experience of nature at an early stage of life.

L  A L Tolkien always found a remarkable pleasure in reading, using, manipulating, analyzing, interpreting, and inventing languages. He cherished the sounds of Welsh and Finnish. He enjoyed the early study of both classical and modern languages. He found a pleasure in analyzing the origins of words and, for example, drawing conclusions about Gothic by comparisons with wordforms in other ancient Germanic languages. Tolkien says in his essay “A Secret Vice” (1931) that the use of the language faculty for amusement is quite compulsive for him. This joy and pleasure in word-forms is also the foundation of all the new languages that Tolkien constructed, like Animalic, Newbosh, Quenya, Sindarin, and so on.

T I  T’ M Mabel Tolkien may be regarded as the ideal mother for a receptive and gifted young reader like Ronald Tolkien. She obviously taught him everything needed for a future author of fantasy literature. She taught him to read, write, draw, and paint. She instructed him in both classical and

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modern languages. She placed the right books in his hands at a very early stage and practised the precise and ornamented handwriting that was characteristic of him. Mabel Tolkien converted to Catholicism in 1900 and Ronald was educated in the Catholic faith from this year onward. After Mabel’s premature death in 1904, the Catholic priest, Father Francis Morgan, became guardian to Ronald and Hilary and a real key figure during the whole of Tolkien’s youth. Both Mabel and Father Francis were responsible for the deep religious faith that Tolkien bore throughout his whole life. This is the reason why the lines from Tolkien’s letter (Letter 142) to his friend Robert Murray on December 2, 1953 are crucial: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.”

S  S It was also thanks to his mother that Ronald, with the help of private tuition at home, could apply to and be accepted at the prestigious King Edward’s School in Birmingham, where he began at the age of eight in September 1900. King Edward’s School provided great intellectual stimulus for Ronald, from both teachers and pupils. Mabel had taught him Latin and French before he started school, and at school Latin and Greek were the most important languages, but later on he also learnt Spanish and German.

P  S It was clear that Mabel’s efforts to stimulate the study of languages led to preparation for the research in language and literature, which Tolkien was to devote himself to later in life. At King Edward’s, there were forwardlooking teachers, such as the head teacher, George Brewerton, who saw to it that Ronald read the useful books. The early acquaintance with Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight were especially important. The real foundation of his preparation for future research was, however, to be found in his unusual intellectual curiosity and his urge to tackle research-oriented questions.

S  C During his school period, Tolkien was active in sports, especially rugby, where he was the captain of the school team for a couple of years. He was also active in the school’s debating club and founded, together with some of his friends the intellectual tea club, T.C.B.S. (Tea Club and Barrovian Society), which may be regarded as the prototype of the famous literary group, The Inklings, during the 1930s and 1940s. But right from the beginning of his student time, Tolkien devoted himself to a lively club activity. He was a member of the Dialectical Society, The Essay Club, and the Stapeldon, the college

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debating society. All this points to great sociability and great joy in performing and debating.

L  E Tolkien met Edith Bratt, while they happened to be staying at the same boarding house at Edgbaston, Birmingham, when Edith was nineteen and Ronald sixteen. When they fell in love, Father Francis got to know about it and they were forbidden to meet each other again until Tolkien had turned twenty-one. Three years later, their relation was renewed in January 1913, and they became engaged. They married during the war on March 22, 1916, before Tolkien was sent to the front in France. They had four children together, moved many times, both before and during the war and partly also during the first part of the Oxford period in the 1920s.

E W It is, of course, prose writing that have made Tolkien acclaimed as the Author of the Century. Poetry was, however, something that had interested him at school. His first preserved attempt at poetry is a forest scene in sunshine from 1910, which is of interest primarily because it deals with ethereal fairy spirits and thereby gives a hint that Tolkien may have had ideas of such a world at this early stage. A more direct link to Tolkien’s own mythology can be seen in his poem “The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star,” which is founded on the Old English poem Crist by the poet Cynewulf and points forward to one of the early drafts of The Silmarillion.

O Tolkien began his studies at Exeter College, Oxford, in October 1911. His subjects were classical languages, Latin and Greek. He passed his “Honour Moderations” in February 1913, and continued with Comparative Philology under the eccentric professor Joseph Wright. After this he turned from classical languages to the study of English language and literature. As from the summer term of 1913, he took up Old English and other ancient languages, especially Old Icelandic and Gothic. There he could delve further into the literary and mythological worlds represented in the ancient Germanic languages. Tolkien decided to finish his degree at Oxford before signing up for military service. He took his finals in June 1915.

T F W W Tolkien received his officer’s commission in July 1915 with the Lancashire Fusiliers at Bedford with the aim of specializing in signalling, which suited his interests perfectly. He was shipped with the 13th battalion to France

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in June 1916, and in the middle of July his battalion met the enemy in the horrendous trench war near the river Somme. The four members of the club T.C.B.S. became involved in the war in different ways and two of them were killed. The trench war of 1916 and the death of his two close friends affected Tolkien and his later fiction in a decisive way.

E F Tolkien’s ideas of a fantasy work concerning Middle-earth may have begun very early in his youth. He mentioned in several places that his construction of fantasy languages in his childhood was important for his creation of fiction. In 1913 Tolkien began to rewrite the Finnish story “Kullervo” in Kalevala into a new tale, which may be seen as an origin for the tale of Turambar in The Silmarillion. During the First World War, about 1916– 1917, he began the work on The Book of Lost Tales, which remained a draft and never completed, but was continued later in The Silmarillion.

D W All research became a motor for Tolkien and gave him inspiration and precision in his fantasy writing. The detailed work on etymologies and variations in meanings connected with the Oxford English Dictionary belonged to this research. Tolkien’s dictionary work was combined with his interest in the construction of fictive languages, combinations of language groups, etymologies, variations in style, and many other things.

A L Academic life in Oxford meant that Tolkien engaged himself a great deal within all kinds of areas. He took a great interest in lectures, tutorials, and examinations. He was especially keen on solving the major questions concerning the apportionment between language and literature in the syllabus. The social life, first of all the cooperation and friendship among the Inklings, had a great influence on Tolkien’s writing. C.S. Lewis was always a great help with his constructive criticism.

S  F Tolkien’s remarkable ability to switch between the real world and his fictive world is one of the explanations why his scholarly work provided such inspiration to his fictive world. The two poems—Beowulf from the eighth century and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the fourteenth century—are the poems that Tolkien worked most on from Old and Middle English, and which meant most to him and his fiction.

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C’ B  B The Hobbit (written 1930–1937), primarily meant to be a children’s book, became the gateway to the authorship and to Middle-earth, which Tolkien needed in order to get maximum inspiration for a great work more dedicated to an adult public. The Hobbit was published on September 21, 1937 and in the year after the publisher wanted more tales about the hobbits.

T S   S W W The Lord of the Rings was written mainly in the period 1937–1949 and a great part of the writing took place during the war years. The link with the First World War is, however, greater than is the case with the Second. Tolkien firmly denied that The Lord of the Rings is an allegory of the Second World War. He wished instead to use the term “applicability,” which leaves the possibility for varying interpretations of the contents of the book open.

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B     

W  J.R.R. T “Goblin Feet,” Oxford Poetry, 27–28 April. Oxford: Blackwell, 1915. A Middle English Vocabulary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922. “Philology: General Works,” The Year’s Work in English Studies, Vol. 4, 1923, pp. 20–37; Vol. 5, 1924, pp. 26–65; Vol. 6, 1925, pp. 32–66. London: Oxford University Press, 1924–1926. Leeds University Verse 1914–24. Leeds: Leeds University, 1924. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo. Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975. Preface to Haigh, Walter E., A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District. London: Oxford University Press, 1928. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad,” in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association. Vol. 14, 1929, pp. 104–26. “A Secret Vice,” essay and lecture 1931, in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, 1983. “Mythopoeia,” printed in Tree and Leaf, London: Allen & Unwin, 1964. “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale,” essay in Transactions of the Philological Society. London: David Nutt, 1934. The Hobbit: or There and Back Again. London: Allen & Unwin, 1937. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” in Proceedings of the British Academy, 22 (1936), pp. 245–95. Published separately by Oxford University Press, 1958. Leaf by Niggle. First published in The Dublin Review, January 1945. Published in Tree and Leaf, 1964. “On Fairy-Stories,” in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, pp. 38–89, edited by C.S. Lewis. London: Oxford University Press, 1947. Revised edition in Tree and Leaf, 1964. Farmer Giles of Ham. London: Allen & Unwin, 1949. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” essay in The Monsters and the Critics, 1983. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. London: Allen & Unwin, 1954.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Two Towers: being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings. London: Allen & Unwin, 1954. The Return of the King: being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings. London: Allen & Unwin, 1955. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book. London: Allen & Unwin, 1962. Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle. Edited from MS. Corpus Christi College Cambridge 402 by J.R.R. Tolkien. Early English Text Society O.S. 249. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. “About the English and the Welsh,” essay published in Angles and Britons: O’Donnel Lectures, pp. 1–41. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1963. Tree and Leaf. With the poem “Mythopoeia.” London: Allen & Unwin, 1964; HarperCollins, 2001. “Tolkien on Tolkien,” in The Diplomat, Vol. 18, no. 197, October, 1966, p. 39. Smith of Wootton Major. London: Allen & Unwin, 1967. Reprint edited by V. Flieger. London: HarperCollins, 2005. Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings, edited by Christopher Tolkien, in A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1975. Reprinted in Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion. London: HarperCollins, 2005. The Father Christmas Letters, edited by Baillie Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1976. The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1977; HarperCollins, 2008. Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien, preface and notes by Christopher Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1979. “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford, 5 June 1959,” in J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, edited by Mary Salu and Robert Farrell. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1979. Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1980. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter (in cooperation with Christopher Tolkien). London: Allen & Unwin, 1981; HarperCollins, 1995. Mr Bliss. London: Allen & Unwin, 1982. Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode, edited by Alan Bliss. London: Allen & Unwin, 1982. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983. The History of Middle-earth. Twelve volumes edited by Christopher Tolkien: I. The Book of Lost Tales, Part One. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983. II. The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. London: Allen & Unwin, 1984. III. The Lays of Beleriand. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985. IV. The Shaping of Middle-earth: The Quenta, Ambarkanta, and the Annals. London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

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V. VI. VII. VIII. IX.

The Lost Road and other Writings. London: Unwin Hyman, 1987. The Return of the Shadow. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. The Treason of Isengard. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. The War of the Ring. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age, the Notion Club Papers and the Drowning of Anadune. London: HarperCollins, 1992. X. Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One. London: HarperCollins, 1993. XI. The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion, Part Two. London: HarperCollins, 1994. XII. The Peoples of Middle-earth. London: HarperCollins, 1996. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters to Rhona Beare. St Louis, MN: New England Tolkien Society, 1983. Roverandom, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. London: HarperCollins, 1998. “Quenya Lexicon,” in Parma Eldalamberon, no. 12, 1998. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. 50th Anniversary One-Volume Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. The Children of Húrin, edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2007. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. By J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2009.

W  O A Anderson, Douglas A. (ed.), The Annotated Hobbit. London: Unwin & Hyman, 1988. Anderson, Douglas A. & Marjorie Burns (eds.), J.R.R. Tolkien: Interviews, Reminiscences, and Other Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, forthcoming. Bates, Brian, The Real Middle-Earth. Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002. Battarbee, K.J. (ed.), Scholarship & Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon, May 1982. Turku: University of Turku, 1993. Bloom, Harold (ed.), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000, 2008. Byrne, Michael (ed.), Hall Green. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 1996. Carpenter, Humphrey, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: Allen & Unwin, 1977. Carpenter, Humphrey, The Inklings. London: HarperCollins, 1997. Clark, George & Dan Timmons (eds.), J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary Resonances: Views of Middle- earth. London: Greenwood Press, 2000. Coleridge, C.T., Biographia Literara, Vol. I. London: Rest Fenner, 1817. Curry, Patrick, Defending Middle-earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity. London: HarperCollins, 1997.

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Davis, Norman & C. L.Wrenn (eds.), English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. London: Allen & Unwin, 1962. Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.), Beowulf and the Critics. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002. Drout, Michael D. C. J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2006. Flieger, Verlyn, Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World. Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: William B. Eerdmans, 1983. Flieger, Verlyn & Carl Hostetter, Tolkien’s Legendarium. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Foster, Robert, The Complete Guide to Middle-earth. From the Hobbit to the Silmarillion. London: Allen & Unwin, 1978. Garth, John, Tolkien and the Great War. London: HarperCollins, 2003. Gilliver, Peter, Jeremy Marshall, & Edmund Weiner, The Ring of Words. Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Grotta, Daniel, J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth . Philadelphia: Courage Books, 1992. Hammond, Wayne G. & Douglas A. Anderson. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography. Winchester, UK: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1993. Hammond, Wayne G. & Christina Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illustrator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Hammond, Wayne G. & Christina Scull. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion. London: HarperCollins, 2005. Hammond, Wayne G. & Christina Scull (eds.), The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004. Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2006. Helms, Randel, Tolkien’s World. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974. Isaacs, Neil D. & Rose A. Zimbardo (ed.), Tolkien and the Critics. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1968. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit, Drawings, Watercolors and Manuscripts. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University, 1987. J.R.R. Tolkien: Life and Legend. An Exhibition to Commemorate the Centenary of the Birth of J.R.R. Tolkien. Compiled by Judith Priestman. Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 1992. Johnson, Judith A. (ed.), J.R.R. Tolkien: Six Decades of Criticism. London: Greenwood, 1986. Kocher, Paul H., Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. Lee, Stuart & Elizabeth Solopova, Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien. London: PalgraveMacmillan, 2006. Lewis, C.S., “The Gods Return to Earth”, Time and Tide, August 14, 1954, pp. 1082–83. Lewis, W.H. (ed.), Letters of C.S. Lewis. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1966. Murray, K.M. Elisabeth, Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

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Oxford English Dictionary. Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Pearce, Joseph, Tolkien: Man and Myth. London: HarperCollins, 1998. Rateliff, John, The History of the Hobbit: Mr Baggins. London: HarperCollins, 2007. Rateliff, John, The History of the Hobbit: Return to Bag-End. London: HarperCollins, 2007. Rosebury, Brian, Tolkien: A Critical Assessment. London: Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 1992. Salu, Mary & Robert T, Farrell (eds.), J.R.R. Tolkien. Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam. Ithica & London: Cornell University Press, 1979. Scull, Christina & Wayne G. Hammond (eds.), The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. London: HarperCollins, 2007. Shippey, Tom A., The Road to Middle-Earth. London: Allen & Unwin, 1982. Shippey, Tom A., J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. London: HarperCollins, 2000. The Invented Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien. Drawings and Original Manuscripts from the Marquette University Collection. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University, 2004. Tolkien, John & Priscilla Tolkien, The Tolkien Family Album. London: HarperCollins, 1992. Unwin, Rayner, George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrancer. London: Merlin Unwin Books, 1999. West, Richard C., Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist. Revised edition. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981. White, Michael, J.R.R. Tolkien. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002. Winchester, Simon, The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words. London: Viking, 1998. Also published as The Professor and the Madman. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. Winchester, Simon, The Meaning of Everything. The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Wright, Joseph, A Primer of the Gothic Language. London: Oxford University Press, 1892. Wright, Joseph, A Grammar of the Gothic Language. London: Oxford University Press, 1910. Wright, Joseph, The English Dialect Dictionary. Vols. 1–6. London: Oxford University Press, 1898–1905. Zettersten, Arne, Middle English Word Studies. Lunds Universitets Årsskrift, N.F. Avd.1, Bd 56, Nr 1. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1964. Zettersten, Arne, Studies in the Dialect and Vocabulary of the Ancrene Riwle. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1965. Zettersten, Arne, Waldere. Edited from the Royal Library, Copenhagen. Ny Kgl.S. MS. 167b. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979.

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Zettersten, Arne, “Editing the Ancrene Riwle for the Early English Text Society: Past Experience and Future Prospects,” Studies in Medieval Language and Literature (1997), pp. 1–28. Zettersten, Arne, “The AB Language Lives”, The Invented Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, pp. 24–33. Reprinted with additions in Hammond, Wayne G. & Christina Scull (eds.), The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004. Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (2007), pp. 13–24.

T R, C, V, F, DVD, G, O M,  O At the Tobacconist’s. Earliest recording of Tolkien, with Professor A. Lloyd James (University of London). Linguaphone Conversational Course: English. London: The Linguaphone Institute, 1930. Poems and Songs of Middle Earth. New York: Caedmon Records, 1967. LP nr TC 1231. Published by Caedmon on cassette tapes, no. CDL 51231, 1972. Reedited 1977 by Caedmon in The J.R.R. Tolkien Soundbook. Reedited by Caedmon in The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection. New York: Caedmon, 2001. CD-ROM. London: HarperCollins, 2002. The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. Poems by J.R.R. Tolkien, music by Donald Swann. London: Allen & Unwin, 1968. Tolkien and Basil Bunting. Together with a radio interview of Tolkien on the BBC by Denis Gueroult. London: BBC Cassettes, 1980. Radio Hobbit. Radio version from the BBC, 1966. Published on CD with The Lord of the Rings in The BBC Radio Collection, London: BBC, 1987. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien. Published by The Tolkien Partnership through Landseer Film & Television Productions. London, 1992. PAL/VHS video-cassette. Interviews with Christopher, John och Priscilla Tolkien, Rayner Unwin, Tom Shippey, Father Robert Murray, Verlyn Flieger, and Queen Margrethe of Danmark, and extracts from an interview with Tolkien, from Tolkien in Oxford , BBC 1968. Speaker: Judy Dench; Director: Derek Bailey. The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 ff. DVD: The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy by Peter Jackson: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001, The Two Towers, 2002, The Return of the King, 2003. Extended versions. New Line Cinema, 2002–04. DVD: J.R.R. Tolkien—Master of the Rings. Documentary in 3D with computer animations of Middle-earth. Interview with Tolkien. London: Universal, 2003. Lord of the Rings online—Shadows of Angmar. Online-roleplay. Turbine/ Codemaster, 2007.

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C Quotations from Tolkien, J.R.R.: “From Iffley,” Stapledon Magazine. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: The Hobbit: or There and Back again, 1937. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford, 5 June 1959,” in J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, edited by Mary Salu och Robert Farrell. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 1983. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: The Lord of the Rings, 1954–1955. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: “About the English and the Welsh”, essay published in Angles and Britons: O’Donnel Lectures, 1963, pp. 1–41; Tree and Leaf, 1964. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: “Tolkien on Tolkien”, in Diplomat, Vol. 18, no. 197, Oktober, 1966, p. 39. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 1977; © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, 1980, edited by Christopher Tolkien. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: The History of Middle-earth. Twelve volumes edited by Christopher Tolkien. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter in cooperation with Christopher Tolkien, 1981. © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust: John and Priscilla Tolkien, The Tolkien Family Album, 1992.

L    Department of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford. HarperCollins Publishers, London. Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University Libraries, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Private Collections.

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N  I 

Ainur 41 Alexander, the Great 146 Alfred, King 13, 163 Anderson, Douglas A. 176 Aragorn 105, 224 d’Ardenne, Simonne 38, 171 Arngart, Olof 4 Auden, W.H. 44, 54, 75, 76, 79, 95, 175, 210 Bach, Johann Sebastian 51 Bacon, Francis 85 Bakshi, Ralph 216 Barfield, Owen 160 Barry, Sir Charles 67 Batchelor, Thomas 170 Bates, Brian 47 Beare, Rhona 44, 220 Beowulf 10, 32, 79, 81, 92, 118, 128, 146, 148, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 179, 194, 202, 210, 223, 226, 228 Biddell, Joyce 216 Bilbo 4, 65, 105, 156, 175, 184, 204 Blake, William 22 Bliss, Alan 138 Mr Bliss 20, 177, 179 Bloom, Harold 212, 213 Boromir 105 Bosworth, J. 44 Bradley, G.G 78 Bradley, Henry 131, 143, 144 Bradley, James 133, 153 Bratt, Edith, see Tolkien (Bratt), Edith (Wife of J.R.R. T.)

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Bratt, Frances 82 Bretherton, Christopher 30, 124 Brewerton, George 75, 78, 79, 226 Brits, Johannes Nicolaas 50 Burchfield, Robert W. 130 Burns, Maggie 61 Byrne, Michael 63 Cabell, James Branch 199 Caesar, Gaius Julius 78 Campbell, Alistair 160 Canute 13, 16 Capes, W.W. 78 Carpenter, Humphrey 5, 6, 25, 28, 36, 37, 51, 62, 84, 85, 104, 133, 148, 164, 186, 200, 205, 206 Carr, Charles 192 Carr, Mavis 192 Chambers, William 78 Chance, Jane 148 Charlemagne 146 Chaucer, Geoffrey 79, 146, 158, 161, 167, 179, 202, 226 Churchill, SirWinston 133 Coghill, Nevil 158, 160 Coleridge, C.T. 27 Cotton 31 Craigie, William 129, 143, 152 Cullis, Colin 99 Curry, Patrick 212 Cynewulf 39, 40, 43, 227 Dana, Richard 172 Davis, Norman 4, 5, 169 Dexter, Colin 22 Diaz, Bartolomeu 49

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240

NAME INDEX

Dobson, Eric 194 Drout, Michael D.C. 161 Dyson, Hugo 158, 160, 205 Earendel 40 Ekwall, Eilert 139, 140 Eliot, C.N.E. 94 Eliot, T.S. 22 Emerson, O.F. 162 Eru 41, 45 Fang, Irving E. 195 Farrell, Robert 213 Faulkner, Mr. 82 Faulkner, Mrs. 83, 201 Ferdinand, Francis 99 Field, George 89 Forster, L.W. 107 Fowles, John 212 Frodo 4, 105, 184, 212, 223, 224 Furth, C.A. 180 Gaffer 30, 31 da Gama, Vasco 49 Gamgee, Joseph S. 30 Gandalf 25, 28, 29, 105, 175, 219, 224 Garth, John 25, 37, 115 Gateley, Stephen 83, 90 Gawain, Sir 39, 79, 80, 81, 82, 128, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 160, 161, 166, 179, 226, 228 Gilliver, Peter 131, 143, 144 Gilson, Robert Cary 76 Gilson, Robert Quilter 76, 84, 103, 104 Gimli 224 Golding, William 22, 115 Gollum 108, 216, 217 Gordon, E.V. 144, 145, 154 Green, Peter 210 Greene, Graham 22 Gresham, Joy 20, 192 Grotta, Daniel 25, 115 Grove, Jenny (Cousin of Edith Tolkien) 82, 91, 133 Guinevere 146

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Haig, Douglas 101 Haigh, Walter E. 170 Hammond, Wayne G. 28, 96, 138, 157, 204, 218 Havard, Robert 160 Heaney, Seamus 162 Hill, Joe 35 Hitler, Adolf 120, 182 Hopkins, Anthony 192 Hrothulf 162 Hughes, Richard 178 Húrin 35, 42 Ilùvatar 45 Incledon, Marjory 70, 126 Incledon, Mary 70, 126 Incledon, Walter 70 Isolde 146 Jackson, Peter 217, 221, 222 Jensen, Henrik Wann 216, 217 Jespersen, Otto 140 Jessop (Edith Tolkien’s uncle) 83, 90, 91 Joad, C.E.M. 182, 183 Kennedy, Robert 195 Ker, W.P. 82, 145 King Arthur 80, 144, 146, 147 King, Martin Luther 195 Kirby, W.H. 94, 95 Kitchener, Horatio Herbert 101 Krake, Rolf 162 Laing, Margaret 172 Lambert, J.W. 210 Lancelot 146 Larsson, Björn 208 Lawlor, John 38 Legolas 224 Lewis, C.S. 20, 21, 24, 27, 38, 84, 105, 115, 118, 119, 157, 158, 159, 160, 176, 177, 182, 183, 184, 185, 192, 194, 205, 206, 209, 210, 224, 228 Lewis, Serjeant 22

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NAME INDEX

Lewis, Warren (Warnie) 160 Lobdell, Jared 138 Lönnrot, Elias 39 Macaulay, Thomas Babbington 85 Madlener, Josef 28 Malins, Geoffrey 107 Marshall, Jeremy 131, 143 McCallum, R.B. 160 McCarthy, Eugene 195 Meissner, A.L. 78 Melkor 45 Merry 105, 224 Millet, Bella 171 Milward, Peter, Father 119 Minor, W.C. 133 Mitchison, Naomi 223 Mitton, Mabel (Aunt of J.R.R. T.) 53 Molly, schoolmate 89 Morgan, Francis Xavier, Father 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 82, 83, 89, 101, 126, 127, 201, 220, 226, 227 Morgoth 45, 116, 119, 120, 121 Morris, William 22, 107 Morrow, George 179 Morsbach, Lorenz 162 Morse, Chief Inspector 22 Muir, Edwin 210 Murdoch, Iris 22 Murphy, Father 101 Murray, James 133, 143 Murray, Robert 226 Napier, A.S. 162 Neris, Filippo 68 Newman, John Henry 67, 68, 70 Onions, Charles 143 Orwell, George 115 Paksu 174 Pearce, Joseph 40, 207, 208, 211 Pearsall, Derek 167 Pippin 105, 224

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241

Plimmer, Charlotte 45, 66, 127 Plimmer, Denis 45, 66, 127 Pollard, A.W. 171 Princips, Gavrilo 100 Pugin, Augustus 67 Rang, Mr 40 Rawlinson, Henry 101 Reynolds, Dickey 105 Rollo (the Gangler) 15 Ronald, Amy 53, 196 Rowling, J.K. 219 Sale, Roger 212, 213 Salu, Mary B 38, 171, 213 Sam 29, 30, 31, 32, 105, 108, 184, 187, 224 Sauron 45, 116, 117, 119, 185 de Saussure, Ferdinand 140 Sayer, George 160 Sayers, Dorothy 22 Schiller, Friedrich 78 Scull, Christina 28, 96, 138, 204, 218 Serkis, Andy 217 Shakespeare, William 61, 75, 85, 91, 146 Shelley, P.B. 22 Sherring, Zillah 80 Shippey, Tom A. 46, 47, 115, 169, 185 Siewers, Alfred K. 148 Sisam, Kenneth 93, 135, 137, 144, 152, 162 Skeats, Walter 93 Smith, Geoffrey Bache 84, 103, 104, 105 Sonnenschein, E.A. 78 Sparrow, Emily, see Suffield, Emily Spencer, John 39 Stalin, Josef 120 de Stapledon (or Stapeldon), Walter 88 Stenström, Anders (Beregond) 205 Stollreither, Dr 53 Stow, Mary Jane, see Tolkien, Mary Jane (Grandmother of J.R.R. T.)

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242

NAME INDEX

Suffield, Beatrice 72, 82, 201 Suffield, Edith Mary (May) 67, 70 Suffield, Emily 51 Suffield, Jane 61, 65, 69 Suffield, John (Grandfather of J.R.R. T.) 51, 55 Suffield, Mabel, see Tolkien, Mabel (Mother of J.R.R. T.) Suffield, Willie 61 Sweet, Henry 78 Tangye-Lean, Edward 158 Thaw, John 22 Thorkelin, G.J. 164, 165 Tolkien, Alfred 51 Tolkien, Arthur Reuel (Father of J.R.R. T.) 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 61 Tolkien, Baillie (Daughter-in-law of J.R.R. T.) 55, 173, 174 Tolkien, Christopher (Son of J.R.R. T.) 6, 27, 28, 34, 35, 37, 38, 42, 57, 58, 95, 96, 103, 104, 116, 117, 120, 124, 126, 136, 138, 145, 155, 156, 159, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 195, 196, 200, 203 Tolkien, Daniel 51 Tolkien, Grace (Sister of Arthur Tolkien) 59, 61 Tolkien, Hilary Arthur Reuel (Brother of J.R.R. T.) 30, 54, 59, 61, 62, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 82, 83, 114, 201, 225, 226 Tolkien, John Benjamin (Grandfather of J.R.R. T.) 50, 51, 53 Tolkien, John Francis Reuel (Son of J.R.R. T.) 30, 38, 57, 82, 90, 91, 108, 133, 134, 155, 157, 173, 180, 182 Tolkien, Mabel (Mother of J.R.R. T.) 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 76, 82, 101, 201, 225, 226

9780230623149_27_ind.indd 242

Tolkien, Mary Jane (Grandmother of J.R.R. T.) 50, 69 Tolkien, Michael Hilary Reuel (Son of J.R.R. T.) 38, 69, 73, 76, 89, 119, 155, 156 Tolkien, Priscilla (Daughter of J.R.R. T.) 30, 37, 38, 57, 82, 90, 91, 108, 134, 155, 156, 157, 173, 180, 182, 183 Tolkien (Bratt), Edith (Wife of J.R.R. T.) 2, 7, 23, 37, 82, 83, 89, 90, 91, 97, 101, 103, 110, 111, 133, 155, 159, 183, 188, 191, 193, 201, 227 Toller, T.N. 44 Tristan 146 Unwin, Rayner 175, 178, 179, 180, 185, 187, 204, 209, 218 Unwin, Stanley 149, 171, 175, 178, 179, 180, 185, 204 Victoria, Queen 91, 101 Wain, John 160 Waldere 128, 161, 163, 164, 165, 194 Waldman, Milton 186, 205, 206 Wallenberg, J.K. 139, 170 Wateley 22, 28, 94 Watts, Misses 82 Waugh, Evelyn 22 Webster, Debora 33 Weiner, Edmund 131, 143 Werlauff, E.C. 164 White, Michael 25, 114, 115 White, T.H. 115 White, William Luther 158 Wilde, Oscar 22 William the Conqueror 13, 15 Williams, Charles 27, 119, 160 Wilson, Edmund 210 Wilson, R.M. 166 Winchester, Simon 133 Winger, Debra 192

1/24/2011 5:31:19 PM

NAME INDEX

Wiseman, Christopher Luke 76, 84, 103, 104 Wrenn, Charles 160 Wright, Elizabeth Mary 92 Wright, Joseph 77, 80, 87, 91, 92, 227 Wulfila (or Ulfilas) 9

9780230623149_27_ind.indd 243

243

Yates, Jessica 85 Zamenhof, L.L. 127 Zimmerman, Manfred 28 Zimmerman, Morton Grady 216, 218

1/24/2011 5:31:20 PM

9780230623149_27_ind.indd 244

1/24/2011 5:31:21 PM

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