J.R.R. Tolkien_ A Biography Part 2

Joe Wright was a Yorks.h.i.+reman, a truly self-made man who had worked his way up from the humblest origins to become Professor of Comparative Philology. He had been employed in a woollen-mill from the age of six, and at first this gave him no chance to learn to read and write. But by the time he was fifteen he was jealous of his workmates who could understand the newspapers, so he taught himself his letters. This did not take very long and only increased his desire to learn, so he went to night-school and studied French and German. He also taught himself Latin and mathematics, sitting over his books until two in the morning and rising again at five to set out for work. By the time he was eighteen he felt that it was his duty to pa.s.s on his knowledge to others, so he began a night-school in the bedroom of his widowed mother's cottage, charging his workmates twopence a week for tuition.

When he was twenty-one he decided to use his savings to finance a term's study at a German university, so he took a boat to Antwerp and walked stage by stage to Heidelberg, where he became interested in philology. So this former mill-hand studied Sanskrit, Gothic, Old Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old and Middle High German, and Old English, eventually taking a doctorate. Returning to England he established himself in Oxford, where he was soon appointed Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology. He could afford the lease of a small house in Norham Road, where he engaged a housekeeper. He lived with the native economy of a true Yorks.h.i.+reman: he used to drink beer which he bought in a small barrel, but he thought that it went too quickly, so he arranged with Sarah the housekeeper that she should buy it and he should pay for each gla.s.s as he consumed it.

He continued to work without ceasing, beginning to write a series of language primers, among which was the Gothic book that proved such a revelation to Tolkien. Most important of all, he began his English Dialect Dictionary that was eventually published in six huge volumes. He himself had never lost his Yorks.h.i.+re accent, and he remained fluent in the dialect of his native village. Nightly he sat up into the small hours working. His house was semi-detached, and in the other half of the building lived Dr Neubauer, Reader in Rabbinical Literature. Neubauer's eyes were bad and he could not work by artificial light When Joe Wright went to bed at dawn he would knock on the wall to wake his neighbour, calling out Good morning!', and Neubauer would reply Good night!'

Wright married a former pupil. Two children were born to them, but both died in childhood. Nevertheless the Wrights carried on a stoic and lively existence in a huge house built to Joe's design in the Banbury Road. In 1912 Ronald Tolkien came to Wright as a pupil, and ever afterwards remembered the vastness of Joe Wright's dining-room table, when I sat alone at one end learning the elements of Greek philology from glinting gla.s.ses in the further gloom'. Nor was he ever likely to forget the huge Yorks.h.i.+re teas given by the Wrights on Sunday afternoons, when Joe would cut gargantuan slices from a heavyweight plum cake, and Jack the ] Aberdeen terrier would perform his party trick of licking his lips noisily when his master p.r.o.nounced the Gothic word for fig-tree, smakka-bagms.

As a teacher, Wright communicated to Tolkien his huge enthusiasm for philology, the subject that had raised him from penniless obscurity. Wright was always a demanding teacher, which was just what Tolkien needed. He had begun to feel a little superior to his fellow-cla.s.sicists, with his wide-ranging knowledge of linguistics. But here was somebody who could tell him that he had a long way to go. At the same time Joe Wright encouraged him to show initiative. Hearing that Tolkien had an embryonic interest in Welsh, he advised him to follow it up - though he gave that advice in a characteristically Yorks.h.i.+re manner: Go in for Celtic, lad; there's money in it'

Tolkien followed this advice, though not exactly in the way that Joe Wright had intended. He managed to find books of medieval Welsh, and he began to read the language that had fascinated him since he saw a few words of it on coal-trucks. He was not disappointed; indeed he was confirmed in all his expectations of beauty. Beauty: that was what pleased him in Welsh; the appearance and sound of the words almost irrespective of their meaning. He once said: Most English-speaking people, for instance, will! admit that cellar door is beautiful, especially if dissociated from < its="" sense="" (and="" its="" spelling).="" more="" beautiful="" than,="" say,="" sky,="" and="" fat="" more="" beautiful="" than="" beautiful.="" well="" then,="" in="" welsh="" for="" me="" cellar="">< doors="" are="" extraordinarily="" frequent'="" tolkien="" was="" so="" enthusiastic*="" about="" welsh="" that="" it="" is="" surprising="" that="" he="" did="" not="" visit="" wales="" during="" his="" undergraduate="" days.="" but="" in="" a="" way="" this="" characterised="" his="" life.="" though="" he="" studied="" the="" ancient="" literature="" of="" many="" countries="" he="" visited="" few="" of="" them,="" often="" through="" force="" of="" circ.u.mstance="" but="" perhaps="" partly="" through="" lack="" of="" inclination.="" and="" indeed="" the="" page="" of="" a="" medieval="" text="" may="" be="" more="" potent="" than="" the="" modern="" reality="" of="" the="" land="" that="" gave="" it="">

During his undergraduate days Tolkien developed his childhood interest in painting and drawing and began to show some skill at it, chiefly in the sketching of landscapes. He also paid a great deal of attention to handwriting and calligraphy, and became accomplished in many styles of ma.n.u.script. This interest was a combination of his enthusiasm for words and his artist's eye, but it also reflected his many-sided personality, for as someone who knew him during these years remarked (with only slight exaggeration): He had a different style of handwriting for each of his friends.'

His first vacation from the University, at Christmas 1911, was spent in revisiting old haunts. The T.C.B.S. had survived his departure from King Edward's, and the club was now preparing for the biggest event in its short history, a performance of Sheridan's The Rivals. R. Q. Gilson, an enthusiast for the eighteenth century, had started it all, and as his father was headmaster there was no difficulty in obtaining permission, although a play by an English dramatist had never before been performed at the school. He and Christopher Wiseman, who were both still pupils at King Edward's, allocated parts to their friends. A clear choice for inclusion was G. B. Smith, not yet really regarded as a member of the T.C.B.S. but already much liked by them. And who was to take the crucial comic role of Mrs Malaprop? Who but their very own John Ronald. So Tolkien, at the end of his first term at Oxford, travelled to Birmingham and joined in the final rehearsals.

There was to be only one performance. As it happened the dress rehearsal finished long before curtain-up time, and, rather than hang about, the T.C.B.S. decided to go and have tea at Barrow's (the department store that had added the B' to T.C.B.S.') with coats over their costumes. The Railway Carriage' was empty when they arrived, so they removed the coats. The astonishment of the waitress and the shop-a.s.sistants remained in their memories for the rest of their lives.

Then came the performance. The school magazine reported: J. R. R. Tolkien's Mrs Malaprop was a real creation, excellent in every way and not least so in make-up. R. Q. Gilson as Captain Absolute was a most attractive hero, bearing the burden of what is a very heavy part with admirable spirit and skill; and as the choleric old Sir Anthony, C. L. Wiseman was extremely effective. Among the minor characters, G. B. Smith's rendering of the difficult and thankless part of Faulkland was worthy of high praise.' The occasion cemented Tolkien's friends.h.i.+p with G. B.

Smith. The friends.h.i.+p was to be lasting and productive, and Smith was henceforth regarded as a full member of the T.C.B.S.

In the summer vacation of 1912 Tolkien went into camp for a fortnight with King Edward's Horse, a territorial cavalry regiment in which he had recently enrolled. He enjoyed the experience of galloping across the Kentish plains - the camp was near Folkestone - but it was a wet and windy fortnight and the tents were often blown down in the night.

This taste of life on horseback and under canvas was enough for him, and he resigned from the regiment after a few months. When the camp had concluded he went on a walking holiday in Berks.h.i.+re, sketching the villages and climbing the downs. And then, all too soon, his first year as an undergraduate was over.

He had done very little work and he was getting into lazy habits. At Birmingham he had attended ma.s.s several times a week, but without Father Francis to watch over him he found it all too easy to stay in bed in the mornings, particularly after sitting up late talking to friends and smoking in front of the fire. He recorded sadly that his first terms at Oxford had pa.s.sed with practically none or very little practice of religion'. He tried to mend his ways, and he kept a diary for Edith in which he recorded all his misdemeanours and failings. But though she was a s.h.i.+ning ideal to him - had they not vowed their love to each other, and did this not commit them to each other? - he was still forbidden to write to her or see her until he was twenty-one, and this would not happen for many months. In the meantime it was easy to while away the terms in expensive dinners, late-night conversations, and hours spent poring over medieval Welsh and invented languages.

At about this time he discovered Finnish. He had hoped to acquire some knowledge of the language ever since he had read the Kalevala in an English translation, and now in Exeter College library he found a Finnish grammar.

With its aid he began an a.s.sault on the original language of the poems. He said afterwards: It was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.'

He never learned Finnish well enough to do more than work through part of the original Kalevala, but the effect on his language-inventing was fundamental and remarkable. He abandoned neo-Gothic and began to create a private language that was heavily influenced by Finnish. This was the language that would eventually emerge in his stories as Quenya' or High-elven. That would not happen for many years; yet already a seed of what was to come was germinating in his mind. He read a paper on the Kalevala to a college society, and in it began to talk about the importance of the type of mythology found in the Finnish poems. These mythological ballads,' he said, are full of that very primitive undergrowth that the literature of Europe has on the whole been steadily cutting und reducing for many centuries with different and earlier completeness among different people.' And he added: I would that we had more of it left - something of the same sort that belonged to the English.' An exciting notion; and perhaps he was already thinking of creating that mythology for England himself.

He spent Christmas 1912 with his Incledon relatives at Barnt Green near Birmingham. As usual in that family, the season was enlivened with theatricals, and this time Ronald himself wrote the play that they performed. It was called The Bloodhound, the Chef, and the Suffragette'. Later in life he professed to despise drama, but on this occasion he was not only the author but the leading actor, playing Professor Joseph Quilter, M.A., B.A., A-B.C., alias world-wide detective s.e.xton Q. Blake-Holmes, the Bloodhound', who is searching for a lost heiress named Gwendoline Goodchild. She meanwhile has fallen in love with a penniless student whom she meets while they are living in the same lodging-house, and she has to remain undiscovered by her father until her twenty-first birthday in two days' time, after which she will be free to marry.

This piece of family nonsense was even more topical than the Incledons realised. Not only was Ronald due to celebrate his own twenty-first a few days after the performance, but he also intended lo reunite himself with Edith Bratt, for whom he had waited for nearly three years, and who he was quite certain had waited for him. As the clock struck midnight and marked the beginning of 3 January 1913, his coming of age, he sat up in bed and wrote a letter to her, renewing his declaration of love and asking her: How long will it be before we can be joined together before G.o.d and the world?'

But when Edith wrote in reply, it was to say that she was engaged to be married to George Field, brother of her school-friend Molly. He could have decided to forget all about her. His friends did not know of her existence and his aunts and uncles and cousins had never been told about her. Only Father Francis knew, and even though he was no longer Ronald's legal guardian he had no wish that the affair with Edith should begin again. So Ronald could have torn up Edith's letter and left her to marry George Field.

Yet there had been declarations and promises in the d.u.c.h.ess Road days that Ronald felt could not be lightly broken. Moreover Edith had been his ideal in the last three years, his inspiration and his hope for the future. He had nurtured and cultivated his love for her so that it grew in secret, even though it had to be fed solely on his memories of their adolescent romance and a few photographs of her as a child. He now perceived only one course of action: he must go to Cheltenham, beseech her to give up George Field, and ask her to marry him. In truth he knew that she would say yes. She had hinted as much in her letter, explaining that she had only become engaged to George because he had been kind to her, and she felt on the shelf, and there was no other young man that she knew, and she had given up believing that Ronald would want to see her again after the three years had pa.s.sed. I began to doubt you, Ronald,' she told him in her letter, and to think you would cease to care for me.' But now that he had I written to renew his vow of love, she indicated that everything had changed.

So on Wednesday 8 January 1913 he travelled by train to Cheltenham and was met on the platform by Edith. They walked out into the country and sat under a railway viaduct where they talked. By the end of the day Edith had declared that she would give up George Field and marry Ronald Tolkien.

She wrote to George and sent him back his ring; and he, poor young man, was dreadfully upset at first and his family was insulted and angry. But eventually the matter ceased to be alluded to, and they all became friends once more. Edith and Ronald did not announce their engagement, being a little nervous of family reaction and wanting to wait until Ronald's prospects were more certain. But Ronald returned to his new term at Oxford in a bursting happiness'. One of his first actions on arriving was to write to Father Francis explaining that he and Edith intended to be married. He was very nervous about this, but when Father Francis's reply came it was calm and resigned if far from enthusiastic. This was as well, for although the priest was no longer Ronald's legal guardian, he still gave him much-needed financial support; so it was essential that he tolerate the engagement.

Now that Ronald had been reunited with Edith he had to turn his full attention to Honour Moderations,1 the first of the two examinations that would earn him his degree in Cla.s.sics. He tried to cram into six weeks the work that he should have done during the previous four terms, but it was not easy to break the habit of sitting up late talking to friends, and he found it difficult to get up in the morning - though like many others before him he blamed this on the damp Oxford climate rather than on his own late hours. When Honour Moderations began at the end of February he was still poorly prepared for many papers. On the whole he was relieved when he learnt that he had at least managed to achieve a Second Cla.s.s.

But he knew that he ought to have done better. A first in Mods' is not easy to achieve, but it is within the range of an able undergraduate who devotes himself to his work. Certainly it is expected of someone who intends to follow an academic career, and Tolkien already had such a career in mind. However he had achieved a pure alpha', a practically faultless paper, in his special subject, Comparative Philology. This was partly a tribute to the excellence of Joe Wright's teaching, but it was also an indication that Tolkien's greatest talents lay in this field; and Exeter College took note. The college was disappointed that as one of its award-holders he had missed a First, but suggested that if he had earned an alpha in philology he ought to become a philologist. Dr Farnell who was Rector of Exeter (the head of the college) knew that he was interested in Old and Middle English and other Germanic languages, so would it not be sensible if he changed to the English School? Tolkien agreed, and at the beginning of the summer term of 1913 he abandoned Cla.s.sics and began to read English.

The Honour School of English Language and Literature was still young by Oxford standards, and it was split down the middle. On one side were the philologists and medievalists who considered that any literature later than Chaucer was not sufficiently challenging to form the basis of a degree-course syllabus. On the other were the enthusiasts for modern' literature (by which they meant literature from Chaucer to the nineteenth century) who thought that the study of philology and Old and Middle English was word-mongering and pedantry'. In some ways it was mistaken to try and squeeze both factions of opinion into the same Honours School. The result was that undergraduates who chose to specialise in Language' (that is, Old and Middle English and philology) were nevertheless compelled to read a good deal of modem literature, while those who wanted to read Literature' (the modern course) were also obliged to study texts in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader and acquaint themselves with a certain amount of philology. Both courses were compromises, and neither side was entirely satisfied.

There was no question as to which side of the school would claim Tolkien. He would specialise in linguistic studies, and it was arranged that his tutor would be Kenneth Sisam, a young New Zealander who was acting as an a.s.sistant to A. S. Napier, the Professor of English Language and Literature. After meeting Sisam and surveying the syllabus Tolkien was seized with panic, because I cannot see how it is going to provide me with honest labour for two years and a term'. It all seemed too easy and familiar: he was already well acquainted with many of the texts he would have to read, and he even knew a certain amount of Old Norse, which he was going to do as a special subject (under the Icelandic expert W. A. Craigie). Moreover Sisam did not at first appear to be an inspiring tutor.

He was a quiet-spoken man only four years older than Tolkien, certainly lacking the commanding presence of Joe Wright. But he was an accurate and painstaking scholar, and Tolkien soon came to respect and like him. As to the work, Tolkien spent more time at his desk than he had while studying Cla.s.sics. It was not as easy as he had expected, for the standard of the Oxford English School was very high; but he was soon firmly in command of the syllabus and was writing lengthy and intricate essays on Problems of the dissemination of phonetic change', The lengthening of vowels in Old and Middle English times', and The Anglo-Norman element in English'. He was particularly interested in extending his knowledge of the West Midland dialect in Middle English because of its a.s.sociations with his childhood and ancestry; and he was reading a number of Old English works that he had not previously encountered.

Among these was the Crist of Cynewulf, a group of Anglo-Saxon religious poems. Two lines from it struck him forcibly: Eala Earendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended.

Hail Earendel, brightest of angels/above the middle-earth sent unto men.' Earendel is glossed by the Anglo-Saxon dictionary as a s.h.i.+ning light, ray', but here it clearly has some special meaning. Tolkien himself interpreted it as referring to John the Baptist, but he believed that Earendel' had originally been the name for the star presaging the dawn, that is, Venus. He was strangely moved by its appearance in the Cynewulf lines. I felt a curious thrill,' he wrote long afterwards, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.'

He found even more to excite his imagination when he studied his special subject. Old Norse (or Old Icelandic: the names are interchangeable) is the language that was brought to Iceland by the Norwegians who fled from their native land in the ninth century. Tolkien was already moderately acquainted with Norse, and he now made a thorough study of its literature. He read the sagas and the Prose or Younger Edda. He also studied the Poetic or Elder Edda; and so it was that he came upon the ancient storehouse of Icelandic myth and legend.

The Elder Edda' is the name given to a collection of poems, some of them incomplete or textually corrupt, whose princ.i.p.al ma.n.u.script dates from the thirteenth century. But many of the poems themselves are more ancient, perhaps originating at a period earlier than the settlement of Iceland. Some are heroic, describing the world of men, while others are mythological, treating of the deeds of G.o.ds. Among the mythological lays in the Elder Edda none is more remarkable than the Voluspa or Prophecy of the Seeress, which tells the story of the cosmos from its creation, and foretells its doom. The most remarkable of all Germanic mythological poems, it dates from the very end of Norse heathendom, when Christianity was taking the place of the old G.o.ds; yet it imparts a sense of living myth, a feeling of awe and mystery, in its representation of a pagan cosmos. It had a profound appeal to Tolkien's imagination.

In the months following their reunion, the question of Edith's religion caused some concern to her and Ronald. If their marriage was to be blessed by his church she would have to become a Catholic. She was in theory quite happy to do this - indeed she believed that her family had long ago been Catholic. But it was not a simple matter.

She was a member of the Church of England, and a very active member. During her separation from Ronald a large proportion of her life had centred on the parish church at her Cheltenham home, and she had made herself useful in church affairs. She had in consequence acquired some status in the parish; and it was a smart parish, typical of the elegant town. Now Ronald wanted her to renounce all this and to go to a church where n.o.body knew her; and looking at it from that point of view she did not relish the prospect She was also afraid that her Uncle'

Jessop in whose house she lived might be very angry, for like many others of his age and cla.s.s he was strongly anti-Catholic. Would he allow her to go living under his roof until her marriage if she poped'? It was an awkward situation, and she suggested to Ronald that the matter might be delayed until they were officially engaged or the time of their marriage was near. But he would not hear of this. He wanted her to act quickly. He despised the Church of England, calling it a pathetic and shadowy medley of half-remembered traditions and mutilated beliefs'.

And if Edith were persecuted for her decision to become a Catholic, why then, that was precisely what had happened to his own dear mother, and she had endured it. I do so dearly believe,' he wrote to Edith, that no half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.' (He himself was once more attending ma.s.s regularly and had perhaps chosen to forget his lapses of the previous year.) Clearly the question of Edith becoming a Catholic was an emotional matter to him; perhaps it was also in part, though he would not have admitted it, a test of her love after her unfaithfulness in becoming engaged to George Field. So she did what he wanted. She told the Jessops that she intended to become a Catholic, and Uncle' reacted just as she had feared, for he ordered her to leave his house as soon as she could find some other accommodation. Faced with this crisis, Edith decided to set up home with her middle-aged cousin Jennie Grove, a tiny determined woman with a deformed back. Together they began to look for rooms. There seems to have been some suggestion that they might come to Oxford so that Edith could be near Ronald, but she does not appear to have wanted this. Perhaps she was resentful of the pressure he had brought to bear on her over the matter of Catholicism, and certainly she wanted to maintain an independent life until they were married. She and Jennie chose Warwick, which was not far from their native Birmingham but was far more attractive than that city. After a search they managed to find temporary rooms, and Ronald joined them there in June 1913.

He found Warwick, its trees, its hill, and its castle, to be a place of remarkable beauty. The weather was hot and he went punting with Edith down the Avon. Together they attended Benediction in the Roman Catholic church, from which' (he wrote) we came away serenely happy, for it was the first time that we had ever been able to go calmly side by side to church'. But they also had to spend some time searching for a house for Edith and Jennie, and when a suitable one was found there were innumerable arrangements to be made. Ronald found the hours that pa.s.sed in domestic concerns to be rather irritating. Indeed he and Edith were not always happy when they were together. They no longer knew each other very well, for they had spent the three years of their separation in two totally different societies: the one all-male, boisterous, and academic; the other mixed, genteel, and domestic. They had grown up, but they had grown apart. From now on each would have to make concessions to the other if they were to come to a real understanding. Ronald would have to tolerate Edith's absorption in the daily details of life, trivial as they might seem to him. She would have to make an effort to understand his preoccupation with his books and his languages, selfish as it might appear to her. Neither of them entirely succeeded. Their letters were full of affection but also sometimes of mutual irritation. Ronald might address Edith as little one' (his favourite name for her), and talk lovingly of her little house', but she was far from little in personality, and when they were together their tempers would often flare. Part of the trouble lay in Ronald's self-chosen role of sentimental lover, which was quite unlike the face he showed to his male friends. There was real love and understanding between him and Edith, but he often wrapped it up in amatory cliche; while if he had shown her more of his bookish' face and had taken her into the company of his male friends, she might not have minded so much when these elements loomed large in their marriage. But he kept the two sides of his life firmly apart.

After his visit to Warwick Ronald set out for Paris with two Mexican boys to whom he was to act as tutor and escort.

In Paris they met a third boy and two aunts, who spoke virtually no English. Ronald was ashamed that his own Spanish was only rudimentary, and he found that even his French deserted him when he was faced with the necessity of speaking it. He loved much of Paris and enjoyed exploring the city on his own, but he disliked the Frenchmen he saw in the streets, and wrote to Edith about the vulgarity and the jabber and spitting and the indecency'. Long before this expedition he had conceived a dislike of France and the French, and what he now saw did not cure him of his Gallophobia. Certainly he had some justification for hating France after what happened next.

The aunts and the boys decided to visit Brittany, and the prospect appealed to him, for the true Breton people are of Celtic stock and speak a language that is in many respects similar to Welsh. But in the event their destination proved to be Dinard, a seaside resort like any other place. Brittany!' Ronald wrote to Edith. And to see nothing but trippers and dirty papers and bathing machines.' There was worse to come. A few days after their arrival he was walking in the street with one of the boys and the older aunt. A car mounted the pavement and struck the aunt, running her over and causing acute internal injury. Ronald helped to take her back to the hotel but she died a few hours later. The holiday ended in distraught arrangements for the body to be s.h.i.+pped back to Mexico. Ronald brought the boys back to England, telling Edith: Never again except I am in the direst poverty will I take any such job.'

In the autumn of 1913 his friend G. B. Smith came up to Oxford from King Edward's School to be an Exhibitioner of Corpus Christi College where he was to read English. The T.C.B.S. was now equally represented at Oxford and Cambridge, for R. Q. Gilson and Christopher Wiseman were already at the latter university. The four friends occasionally met, but Tolkien had never mentioned to them the existence of Edith Bratt. Now that the time was approaching for her reception into the Catholic Church they had decided to be formally betrothed, and he would have to tell his friends. He wrote to Gilson and Wiseman, very uncertain as to what to say, and not even telling them his fiancee's name; clearly he felt that it all seemed to have little to do with the male comrades.h.i.+p of the T.C.B.S. The others congratulated him, though Gilson remarked with some insight: I have no fear at all that such a staunch T.C.B.S.-ite as yourself will ever be anything else.'

Edith was instructed in the Catholic faith by Father Murphy, the parish priest at Warwick, who did the job no more than adequately. Ronald was later to blame much on the poor teaching given her at this time. But he himself did not help her. He found it difficult to communicate to her the deep and pa.s.sionate nature of his own faith, entwined as it was with the memory of his dead mother.

On 8 January 1914, Edith was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The date had been deliberately chosen by her and Ronald as it was the first anniversary of their reunion. Soon after her reception she and Ronald were officially betrothed in church by Father Murphy. Edith made her first confession and first communion, which she found to be a great and wonderful happiness'; and at first she continued in this state of mind, attending ma.s.s regularly and often making her communion. But the Catholic church at Warwick was a poor affair compared to the splendours of Cheltenham (even Ronald called it sordid') and although Edith helped with a church club for working girls she made few friends in the congregation. She also began to dislike making her confession. It was therefore all too easy when she was worried about her health (which was often) to postpone going to ma.s.s. She reported to Ronald that getting up to go to church early in the morning and fasting until she had made her communion did not agree with her. I want to go,' she told him, and wish I could go often, but it is quite impossible: my health won't stand it.'

She was leading a very dreary life. It was good to have her own house and the company of her cousin Jennie, but they often got on each other's nerves, and unless Ronald came for a visit there was no one else to talk to and nothing to do except keep house. She had her own piano and she could practise for hours, but she knew now that she would never make a career as a musician - marriage and raising a family would prevent it - so there was little incentive to do much playing. She was not needed as an organist at the Catholic church. She missed the social life of Cheltenham, and she did not have enough money for more than occasional visits to concerts or the theatre. So she was irritated to receive letters from Ronald describing a life at Oxford that was full of dinner-parties, rags', and visits to the cinematograph.

Ronald was becoming distinctly stylish. He bought furniture and j.a.panese prints for his rooms. He ordered two tailor-made suits, which he found looked very well on him. He started another club with his friend Colin Cullis; it was called the Chequers, and ft met on Sat.u.r.day nights to have dinner in his or Cullis's rooms. He was elected president of the college debating society (an influential body at Exeter) after a faction-fight which gave him his first taste of college politics, a taste that he liked very much. He punted, he played tennis, and now and then he did some work, enough to win the Skeat Prize for English awarded by his college in the spring of 1914. He used the five pounds of prize money to buy books of medieval Welsh and several of the works of William Morris: The Life and Death of Jason, Morris's translation of the Volsungasaga, and his prose-and-verse romance The House of the Wolfings.

Morris had himself been an undergraduate at Exeter College, and this connection had probably stimulated Tolkien's interest in him. But until now he had apparently not become acquainted with Morris's imaginative writings. Indeed his knowledge of modern literature in general was limited, for the Oxford English School syllabus did not require that he, as a linguist, should make more than a comparatively superficial study of post-Chaucerian writers. During this time he did make a few sketchy notes on Johnson, Dryden, and Restoration drama, but there is no indication that he had more than a pa.s.sing interest in them. As to contemporary fiction, he wrote to Edith: I so rarely read a novel, as you know.' For him English literature ended with Chaucer; or to put it another way, he received all the enjoyment and stimulus that he could possibly require from the great poems of the Old and Middle English periods, and from the early literature of Iceland.

But that was the very reason that he now found The House of the Wolfings so absorbing. Morris's view of literature coincided with his own. In this book Morris had tried to recreate the excitement he himself had found in the pages of early English and Icelandic narratives. The House of the Wolfings is set in a land which is threatened by an invading force of Romans. Written partly in prose and partly in verse, it centres on a House or family-tribe that dwells by a great river in a clearing of the forest named Mirkwood, a name taken from ancient Germanic geography and legend. Many elements in the story seem to have impressed Tolkien. Its style is highly idiosyncratic, heavily laden with archaisms and poetic inversions in an attempt to recreate the aura of ancient legend. Clearly Tolkien took note of this, and it would seem that he also appreciated another facet of the writing: Morris's apt.i.tude, despite the vagueness of time and place in which the story is set, for describing with great precision the details of his imagined landscape. Tolkien himself was to follow Morris's example in later years.

His own eye for landscape received a powerful stimulus during the summer of 1914 when, after visiting Edith, he spent a holiday in Cornwall, staying on the Lizard peninsula with Father Vincent Reade of the Birmingham Oratory.

He found Cornwall exhilarating. He and Father Vincent went for long walks every day, and he wrote to Edith describing them: We walked over the moor-land on top of the cliffs to Kynance Cove. Nothing I could say in a dull old letter would describe it to you. The sun beats down on you and a huge Atlantic swell smashes and spouts over the snags and reefs. The sea has carved weird wind-holes and spouts into the cliffs which blow with trumpety noises or spout foam like a whale, and everywhere you see black and red rock and white foam against violet and transparent seagreen.' He never forgot this sight of the sea and the Cornish coastline, and it became an ideal landscape in his mind.

One day he and Father Vincent explored the villages that lie a short way inland from the Lizard promontory. He recorded of this expedition: Our walk home after tea started through rustic Warwicks.h.i.+re scenery, dropped down to the banks of the Helford river (almost like a fjord), and then climbed through Devons.h.i.+re lanes up to the opposite bank, and then got into more open country, where it twisted and wiggled and wobbled and upped and downed until dusk was already coming on and the red sun just dropping. Then after adventures and redirections we came out on the bleak bare Goonhilly downs and had a four mile straight piece with turf for our sore feet. Then we got benighted in the neighbourhood of Ruan Minor, and got into the dips and waggles again. The light got very eerie. Sometimes we plunged into a belt of trees, and owls and bats made you creep: sometimes a horse with asthma behind a hedge or an old pig with insomnia made your heart jump: or perhaps it was nothing worse than walking into an unexpected stream. The fourteen miles eventually drew to an end - and the last two miles were enlivened by the sweeping flash of the Lizard Lights and the sounds of the sea drawing nearer.'

At the end of the long vacation he travelled to Nottinghams.h.i.+re to stay for a few days on the farm that his Aunt Jane was running with the Brookes-Smiths and his brother Hilary. While at the farm he wrote a poem. It was headed with the line from Cynewulf s Crist that had so fascinated him: Eala Earendel engla beorhtast! Its t.i.tle was The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star', and it began as follows: Earendel sprang up from the Ocean's cup In the gloom of the mid-world's rim; From the door of Night as a ray of light Leapt over the twilight brim, And launching his bark like a silver spark From the golden-fading sand Down the sunlit breath of Day's fiery death He sped from Westerland.

The succeeding verses describe the star-s.h.i.+p's voyage across the firmament, a progress that continues until the morning light blots out all sight of it.

This notion of the star-mariner whose s.h.i.+p leaps into the sky had grown from the reference to Earendel' in the Cynewulf lines. But the poem that it produced was entirely original. It was in fact the beginning of Tolkien's own mythology.

By the time that Tolkien wrote The Voyage of Earendel', in the late summer of 1914, England had declared war on Germany. Already young men were enlisting in their thousands, answering Kitchener's appeal for soldiers. But Tolkien's feelings were rather different: he was concerned to stay at Oxford until he could finish his degree, being hopeful of a First Cla.s.s. So, though his aunts and uncles expected him to join up (his brother Hilary had already enlisted as a bugler) he went back to the University for the Michaelmas term.

At first he reported: It is awful. I really don't think I shall be able to go on: work seems impossible. Not a single man I know is up except Cullis.' But he became more cheerful when he learnt of the existence of a scheme whereby he could train for the army while at the University but defer his call-up until after he had taken his degree. He signed on for it.

Once he had decided what to do, life became more pleasant. He had now moved from his college rooms to digs' in St John's Street which he shared with Colin Cullis, who had not joined the army because of poor health. Tolkien found digs a delicious joy compared with the primitive life of college'. He was also delighted to discover that his T.C.B.S. friend G. B. Smith was still up at Oxford awaiting a commission. Smith was to join the Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers, and Tolkien resolved to try for a commission in the same regiment, if possible the same battalion.

A few days after the start of term he began to drill in the University Parks with the Officers' Training Corps. This had to be combined with his normal academic work, but he found that the double life suited him. Drill is a G.o.dsend,' he wrote to Edith. I have been up a fortnight nearly, and have not yet got a touch even of the real Oxford sleepies.'

He was also trying his hand at writing. His enthusiasm for William Morris had given him the idea of adapting one of the stories from the Finnish Kalevala into a Morris-style prose-and-verse romance. He chose the story of Kullervo, a hapless young man who unknowingly commits incest and, when he discovers, throws himself on to his sword.

Tolkien began work on The Story of Kullervo' as he called it, and though it was little more than a pastiche of Morris it was his first essay in the writing of a legend in verse and prose. He left it unfinished.

At the beginning of the Christmas vacation of 1914 he travelled to London to attend a gathering of the T.C.B.S.

Christopher Wiseman's family had moved south, and at their Wandsworth house there a.s.sembled all four members of the club': Tolkien, Wiseman, R. Q. Gilson, and G. B. Smith. They spent the weekend chiefly in sitting around the gas fire in the little upstairs room, smoking their pipes and talking. As Wiseman said, they felt four times the intellectual size' when they were together.

It was curious how they had gone on meeting and writing to each other, this little group of school-friends. But they had begun to hope that together they might achieve something of value. Tolkien once compared them to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but the others scoffed at the idea. Yet they did feel that in some way they were destined to kindle a new light. Perhaps it was no more than the last spark of childhood ambition before it was snuffed out by experience of the world, but for Tolkien at least it had an important and practical result. He decided that he was a poet.

Afterwards he explained that this T.C.B.S. meeting late in 1914 had helped him to find a voice for all kind of pent up things', adding: I have always laid that to the credit of the inspiration that even a few hours with the four brought to us.'

Immediately following the weekend in London he began to write poems. They were in general not very remarkable, and certainly they were not always economical in their use of words. Here are some lines from Sea Chant of an Elder Day', written on 4 December 1914 and based on Tolkien's memories of his Cornish holiday a few months previously: In a dim and perilous region, down whose great tempestuous ways I heard no sound of men's voices; in those eldest of the days, I sat on the ruined margin of the deep voiced echoing sea Whose roaring foaming music crashed in endless cadency On the land besieged for ever in an aeon of a.s.saults And torn in towers and pinnacles and caverned in great vaults.

When Tolkien showed this and other poems to Wiseman, his friend remarked that they reminded him of Symons's criticism of Meredith, *when he compared M. to a lady who liked to put on all her jewelry after breakfast'. And Wiseman advised: Don't overdo it'

Tolkien was more restrained in a poem describing his and Edith's love for each other, choosing a favourite image to express this: Lo! young we are and yet have stood like planted hearts in the great Sun of Love so long (as two fair trees in woodland or in open dale stand utterly entwined, and breathe the airs, and suck the very light together) that we have become as one, deep-rooted in the soil of Life, and tangled in sweet growth.

Among other poems written by Tolkien at this time was The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon' (which was eventually published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil). He selected a similarly fairy' subject in Goblin Feet', a poem that he wrote to please Edith who said that she liked spring and flowers and trees, and little elfin people'.

Goblin Feet' represents everything of this sort that Tolkien soon came to detest heartily, so it is scarcely fair to quote from it; yet it has an undeniable sureness of rhythm, and as it reached print in several anthologies at the time it can be said to be his first published work of any significance: I am off down the road Where the fairy lanterns glowed And the little pretty flittermice are flying: A slender band of grey It runs creepily away And the hedges and the gra.s.ses are a-sighing.

The air is full of wings Of the blundering beetle-things That warm you with their whirring.

O! I hear the tiny horns Of enchanted leprechauns And the padding feet of many gnomes a-coming.

O! the lights! O! the gleams: O! the little tinkly sounds: O! the rustle of their noiseless little robes: O! the echo of their feet, of their little happy feet: O! their swinging lamps in little star-lit globes.

G. B. Smith read all Tolkien's verses and sent him criticisms. He was encouraging, but he remarked that Tolkien might improve his verse-writing by reading more widely in English literature. Smith suggested that he should try Browne, Sidney, and Bacon; later he recommended Tolkien to look at the new poems by Rupert Brooke. But Tolkien paid little heed. He had already set his own poetic course, and he did not need anyone else to steer him.

He soon came to feel that the composition of occasional poems without a connecting theme was not what he wanted. Early in 1915 he turned back to his original Earendel verses and began to work their theme into a larger story. He had shown the original Earendel lines to G. B. Smith, who had said that he liked them but asked what they were really about. Tolkien had replied: I don't know. I'll try to find out.' Not try to invent: try to find out. He did not see himself as an inventor of story but as a discoverer of legend. And this was really due to his private languages.

He had been working for some time at the language that was influenced by Finnish, and by 1915 he had developed it to a degree of some complexity. He felt that it was a mad hobby', and he scarcely expected to find an audience for it. But he sometimes wrote poems in it, and the more he worked at it the more he felt that it needed a history' to support it. In other words, you cannot have a language without a race of people to speak it. He was perfecting the language; now he had to decide to whom it belonged.

When talking about it to Edith he referred to it as my nonsense fairy language'. Here is part of a poem written in it, and dated November 1915, March 1916'. No translation survives, although the words La.s.selanta (leaf-fall', hence Autumn') and Eldamar (the elvenhome' in the West) were to be used by Tolkien in many other contexts: Ai lintulinda La.s.selanta Pilingeve suyer nalla ganta Kuluvi ya karnevalinar V'ematte singi Eldamar.

During 1915 the picture became clear in Tolkien's mind. This, he decided, was the language spoken by the fairies or elves whom Earen-del saw during his strange voyage. He began work on a Lay of Earendel' that described the mariner's journeyings across the world before his s.h.i.+p became a star. The Lay was to be divided into several poems, and the first of these, The Sh.o.r.es of Faery', tells of the mysterious land of Valinor, where Two Trees grow, one bearing golden sun-apples and the other silver moon-apples. To this land comes Earendel.

The poem bears comparatively little relation to Tolkien's later mythological concepts, but it includes elements that were to appear in The Silmarillion, and it deserves to be quoted as an indication of what was happening in his imagination at this time. It is here printed in its earliest form: West of the Moon, East of the Sun There stands a lonely Hill Its feet are in the pale green Sea; Its towers are white and still: Beyond Taniquetil In Valinor.

No stars come there but one alone That hunted with the Moon, For there the Two Trees naked grow That bear Night's silver bloom; That bear the globed fruit of Noon In Valinor.

There are the sh.o.r.es of Faery With their moonlit pebbled strand Whose foam is silver music On the opalescent floor Beyond the great sea-shadows On the margent of the sand That stretches on for ever From the golden feet of Kor - Beyond Taniquetil In Valinor.

O! West of the Moon, East of the Sun Lies the Haven of the Star; The white town of the Wanderer And the rocks of Eglamar: There Wingelot is harboured While Earendel looks afar On the magic and the wonder Tween here and Eglamar Out, out beyond Taniquetil In Valinor - afar.

While Tolkien's mind was occupied with the seeds of his mythology he was preparing himself for Schools, his final examination in English Language and Literature. The examination began in the second week of June 1915, and Tolkien was triumphant, achieving First Cla.s.s Honours.

He could in consequence be reasonably certain of getting an academic job when the war was over; but in the meantime he had to take up his commission as a second lieutenant in the Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers. He was posted not as he had hoped to the 19th Battalion in which G. B. Smith was serving, but to the 13th. His training began in July at Bedford, where he was billeted in a house in the town with half a dozen other officers. He learnt to drill a platoon, and attended military lectures. He bought a motor bicycle which he shared with a fellow officer, and when he could get weekend leave he rode over to Warwick to visit Edith. He grew a moustache. For most of the time he looked and behaved like any other young officer.

In August he moved to Staffords.h.i.+re, and during the succeeding weeks he and his battalion were s.h.i.+fted about from one camp to another with the apparent lack of plan which characterises troop-movements in wartime. Conditions were uniformly uncomfortable, and in the intervals between inedible meals, trench drill, and lectures on machine-guns, there was little to do except play bridge (which he enjoyed) and listen to ragtime on the gramophone (which he did not). Nor did he care for the majority of his fellow officers. Gentlemen are non-existent among the superiors,'

he told Edith, and even human beings rare indeed.' He spent some of his time reading Icelandic - he was determined to keep up with his academic work during the war - but the time pa.s.sed slowly. These grey days,' he wrote, wasted in wearily going over, over and over again, the dreary topics, the dull backwaters of the art of killing, are not enjoyable.'

By the beginning of 1916 he had decided to specialise in signalling, for the prospect of dealing with words, messages, and codes was more appealing than the drudgery and responsibility of commanding a platoon. So he learnt Morse code, flag and disc signalling, the transmission of messages by heliograph and lamp, the use of signal-rockets and field-telephones, and even how to handle carrier-pigeons (which were sometimes used on the battlefield). Eventually he was appointed battalion signalling officer.

Embarkation for France was now near, and he and Edith decided to get married before he left, for the appalling death-roll among the British troops made it clear that he might never return. They had in any case waited more than long enough, for he was twenty-four and she twenty-seven. They did not have much money, but at least he was earning regular pay in the Army, and he decided to ask Father Francis Morgan to transfer all of his modest share capital to his own name. He also hoped to get some income from his poetry. His poem Goblin Feet' had been accepted by Blackwells for the annual volume of Oxford Poetry, and encouraged by this he sent a selection of his verses to the publishers Sidgwick & Jackson. To add to his capital he also sold his share in the motorbike.

He went to Birmingham to see Father Francis about the money, and to tell him that he was going to marry Edith. He managed to arrange the money matters, but when it came to the point he could not bring himself to tell his old guardian about the marriage, and he left the Oratory without mentioning it; he could not forget Father Francis's opposition to the romance six years before. It was not until a fortnight before the wedding that he finally wrote and explained. The letter that came back was kindly; indeed Father Francis wished them both every blessing and happiness', and declared that he would conduct the ceremony himself in the Oratory Church. Alas, it was too late.

Arrangements had already been made for the marriage to take place in the Catholic church at Warwick.

Ronald Tolkien and Edith Bratt were married by Father Murphy after early ma.s.s on Wednesday 22 March 1916.

They had chosen a Wednesday because that was the day of the week on which they had been reunited in 1913.

There was one unfortunate incident: Edith did not realise that when she signed the register she would have to give her father's name, and she had never told Ronald about her illegitimacy. Confronted by the register she panicked and wrote the name of an uncle, Frederick Bratt; but she could think of nothing to put under the heading Rank or profession of father', so she left it blank. Afterwards she told Ronald the truth. I think I love you even more tenderly because of all that, my wife,' he wrote to her, but we must as far as possible forget it and entrust it to G.o.d.' After the wedding they left by train for Clevedon in Somerset where they were to stay for a week, and in the compartment they both doodled (on the back of a greetings telegram) versions of Edith's new signature-Edith Mary Tolkien ...

Edith Tolkien ... Mrs Tolkien Mrs J. R. R. Tolkien. It looked splendid.

When he got back from his honeymoon, Tolkien found a letter from Sidgwick & Jackson rejecting his poems. He had half expected this, but it was a disappointment. Edith returned to Warwick, but only to wind up her affairs in that town. They had decided that for the duration of the war she would not have a permanent home, but would live in furnished rooms as near as possible to Ronald's camp. She and her cousin Jennie (who was still living with her) came to Great Haywood, a Staffords.h.i.+re village near the camp where Ronald was posted. There was a Catholic church in the village with a kindly priest, and Ronald had found good lodgings. But scarcely had he seen Edith settled than he received embarkation orders, and late on ; Sunday 4 June 1916 he set off for London and thence to France.

Everyone in England had known for some time that The Big Push' was imminent. A virtual stalemate had continued throughout 1915 on the Western Front, and neither poison-gas at Ypres nor ma.s.s slaughter at Verdun had altered the line by more than a few miles. But now that the hundreds of thousands of new recruits had filtered through the training camps and had emerged as a New Army, it was clear that something spectacular was about to happen.

Tolkien arrived at Calais on Tuesday 6 June and was taken to base camp at Staples. Somehow on the journey his entire kit had been lost: camp-bed, sleeping-bag, mattress, spare boots, wash-stand, everything that he had chosen with care and bought at great expense had vanished without trace into the interstices of the army transport system, leaving him to beg, borrow, and buy replacements.

The days pa.s.sed at Staples, and nothing happened. The nervous excitement of embarkation relapsed into a weary boredom made worse by a total ignorance of what was going on. Tolkien wrote a poem about England, took part in training exercises, and listened to the seagulls wheeling overhead. Along with many of his fellow officers he was transferred to the llth Battalion, where he found little congenial company. The junior officers were all recruits like himself, some less than twenty-one years old; while the older company commanders and adjutants were in many cases professional soldiers dug out of retirement, men with narrow minds and endless stories of India or the Boer War. These old campaigners were ready to take advantage of any slip made by a recruit, and Tolkien reported that they treated him like an inferior schoolboy. He had more respect for the men', the N.C.O.s and privates who made up the other eight hundred or so members of the battalion. A few of them were from South Wales but most were Lancas.h.i.+re men. Officers could not make friends among them, for the system did not permit it; but each officer had a batman, a servant who was detailed to look after his kit and care for him much in the manner of an Oxford scout.

Through this, Tolkien got to know several of the men very well. Discussing one of the princ.i.p.al characters in The Lord of the Rings he wrote many years later: My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.'

After three weeks at Etaples the battalion set off for the Front. The train journey was almost unbelievably slow, interrupted by innumerable halts, and it was more than twenty-four hours before the flat featureless landscape of the Pas de Calais gave way to more hilly country where a ca.n.a.lised river with poplar-lined banks flowed alongside the railway. This was the Somme. And already they could hear gunfire.

Tolkien's battalion disembarked in Amiens, were given food from cookers in the main square, and then marched out of the town, heavily laden with their kit, stepping aside or halting when horses came by, pulling ammunition wagons or huge guns. Soon they were in the open Picardy countryside. By the sides of the straight road the houses gave way to fields of scarlet poppies or yellow mustard. It began to rain in torrents, and within moments the dusty surface of the road changed to a white chalky mud. The battalion marched on, dripping and cursing, to a hamlet called Rubempre, ten miles from Amiens. Here they were billeted for the night in conditions that they would soon be accustomed to: straw bunks in barns and sheds for the men, floor-s.p.a.ce for camp beds in the farmhouses for the officers. The buildings were ancient and solid with warped beams and mud walls. Outside beyond the crossroads and the low houses, fields of rain-swept cornflowers stretched away to the horizon me war was inescapable: there were broken roofs and ruined biddings, while from the near distance came the sound that they had been approaching all day, the whine, crash, and boom of the Allied bombardment of German lines.