Tolkien: Man and Myth

by Joseph Pearce

  In the meantime, however, they had been seen together yet again. This time Father Francis’s ultimatum was given in no uncertain terms. Tolkien must neither meet nor write to Edith except to say goodbye on the day she left for Cheltenham. Thereafter they were not to communicate again until Tolkien was twenty-one, the age at which the priest would no longer be responsible for him. Even then the lovelorn eighteen-year-old found it hard to obey his guardian’s wishes. His diary entry for 16 February illustrated the depth of his desire to see her again before she departed for her new home: ‘Last night prayed would see E. by accident. Prayer answered. Saw her at 12.5 5 at Prince of Wales. Told her I could not write and arranged to see her off on Thursday fortnight. Happier but so much long to see her just once to cheer her up. Cannot think of anything else.’4 On 21 February he recorded seeing ‘a dejected little figure sloshing along in a mac and tweed hat and could not resist crossing and saying a word of love and cheerfulness. This cheered me up a little for a while. Prayed and thought hard.’5 Edith was also praying and thinking hard because two days later Tolkien wrote in his diary that he had ‘met her coming from the Cathedral to pray for me’.

  On 26 February Tolkien received ‘a dreadful letter from Fr F saying I had been seen with a girl again, calling it evil and foolish. Threatening to cut short my university career if I did not stop. Means I cannot see E. Nor write at all. God help me. Saw E. at midday but would not be with her. I owe all to Fr F and so must obey.’6

  Edith wrote to him, lamenting that ‘our hardest time of all has come’, and on 2 March she set out from Duchess Road for her new home in Cheltenham. For one last time Tolkien defied Father Francis’s ban and prayed that he might catch a last glimpse of her. He scoured the streets as the hour for her departure approached and eventually his prayer was answered: ‘At Francis Road corner she passed me on bike on way to station. I shall not see her again perhaps for three years.’7

  Commenting on this distressing episode in Tolkien’s life, Humphrey Carpenter suggests that it ‘may seem strange’ that

  Tolkien ‘did not simply disobey Father Francis and openly continue the romance’ and that ‘a more rebellious young man might have refused to obey’.8 Yet, in spite of his inability to do his guardian’s will initially, Tolkien was utterly obedient to the priest’s strict conditions after Edith had left for Gloucestershire. Tolkien genuinely believed that he owed everything to Father Francis ‘and so must obey’, but the conflict had put a strain on their previously close relationship, and it is difficult to see the priest’s apparent lack of compassion as anything but reprehensible. It was not until many years later that Tolkien was able to put the whole affair into some sort of context:

  I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most real fathers. . . and ‘dropping’ the love-affair until I was twenty-one. 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. . . 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.9

  ‘When Father Morgan extracted that promise not to contact Edith,’ suggests Charles Moseley in his study of Tolkien, ‘there was no question, in his or her mind, but that it should be kept. The period of waiting, in which he passed through the years of greatest change in any man’s life and might easily have transferred his affection elsewhere, seems, for Tolkien, to have been seen as almost a Romance test: he was obedient to the prohibition, the geas, laid on him, and proved his honour by his obedience, and by his faithfulness to Edith.’10

  Tolkien’s concern for honour, obedience and faithfulness was rooted in his fundamental Christianity, in the belief that such characteristics were virtues towards which one aspired, as opposed to their opposites, dishonour, disobedience and unfaithfulness, which were vices to be spurned. The Christianity he had learned both from his mother and from Father Francis shaped his whole view of life to such an extent that sacrifices were borne willingly, if grudgingly, when they were deemed necessary to the pursuit of virtue. Such a view had been further bolstered by his love of mediaeval literature. ‘Trouthe is the hyeste thing that man may kepe,’ says Chaucer’s Arveragus. Tolkien digested Chaucer’s words avidly from the moment his form master at King Edward’s School, George Brewerton, had introduced the mediaeval master to him in the correct pronunciation and had lent him an Anglo-Saxon grammar. Thereafter Tolkien added a love of Chaucer and a love of early Anglo-Saxon literature to his love of faerie.

  Moseley believes that Tolkien’s taste in literature had an important effect on his attitude to the love affair with Edith:

  Of course, nobody is unaffected by what he reads. If you spend your days reading books and poems from a world where women are honoured, put on a pedestal—worshipped, even—where the chief male virtues are courage, and honesty, and honour, and generosity, you will in the end come to think in those terms (and may suffer no harm). Tolkien’s intellectual diet from an early age had been just that: from George Macdonald’s fantasies The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and Curdie (1882), through stories collected in Andrew Laing’s twelve Fairy Books to his version of the Volsungasaga and then, in maturity, to the riches of medieval and ancient literature, to the courts of Arthur and the halls of Asgard, to the tragedy of Deirdre and the sons of Usna and the love of Pwyll and Rhiannon.11

  These were the roots, the archetypes, of Tolkien’s view of romantic love, a view which found expression in his own self-denial during the three years of separation from Edith. They were also roots which would bear fruit eventually in the heroic love of Aragorn and Arwen, and of Beren and Luthien, in Tolkien’s mythology. ‘These are the values, unfashionable, perhaps inconceivable, now, held by many in Tolkien’s generation, and by not a few in later ones,’ writes Moseley. ‘They are the values that lie at the heart of the fictions of Middle-earth.’12 During the three years of exile from Edith, Tolkien returned to his studies. In 1910 he won an exhibition at Exeter College, Oxford, but by the high standards of King Edward’s School the award ‘was tolerable rather than praiseworthy’.13 Certainly there was little sign of the exceptional abilities which would later mark him out as one of Oxford’s illustrissimi. Looking back on this period of his life, Tolkien ascribed his underachievement to ‘folly and slackness’, describing himself as ‘one of the idlest boys Gilson (the Headmaster) ever had’.14 In fact, his lack of success had as much to do with his extracurricular interest in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Welsh, and with his early fascination with inventing his own languages, than with mere idleness. The same ‘weakness’ for private intellectual passions also affected his studies at Oxford. He was reading Classics but took only a second in Honour Moderations, the first of the two examinations that would earn him his degree, having neglected his studies in favour of ‘Old Norse, festivity, and classical philology’. ‘My love for the classics,’ he recalled later, ‘took ten years to recover from lectures on Cicero and Demosthenes.’15

  Neglecting Latin and Greek lectures, Tolkien turned his attention to his own private language. It was during this period that he became busily engaged on the invention of Elvish. ‘This was no arbitrary gibberish,’ wrote his obituarist in The Times, ‘but a really possible tongue with consistent roots, sound laws, and inflexions, into which he poured all his imaginative and philological powers; and strange as the exercise 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. He had not gone f
ar with his invention before he discovered that every language presupposes a mythology; and at once began to fill in the mythology presupposed by Elvish.’16

  Tolkien’s passion for sub-creating myth had been awakened and Middle Earth had been conceived, albeit only in embryonic form.

  As his twenty-first birthday approached, thoughts of Edith returned, jostling Elvish, the Classics and Old Norse into the background. On the stroke of midnight, at the very beginning of 3 January 1913, Tolkien celebrated his coming of age by sitting up in bed and writing his first letter to her for almost three years. It was a renewal of his declaration of love which culminated in the question which was uppermost in his mind: ‘How long will it be before we can be joined together before God and the world?’17

  Edith’s reply was devastating. She was engaged to marry the brother of an old schoolfriend.

  Overcoming the initial shock, Tolkien detected hints in her letter that gave him the hope of winning her back. She had only become engaged to her fiance because he had been kind to her. She felt ‘on the shelf and had given up believing that Tolkien would still want to see her when the three years had elapsed. ‘I began to doubt you, Ronald,’ she had written, ‘and to think you would cease to care for me.’18

  On 8 January Tolkien travelled by train to Cheltenham. Edith met him on the platform and they walked out into the surrounding countryside. By the end of the day she had decided to break off her engagement so that she could marry Tolkien. He returned to the new term at Oxford in ‘a bursting happiness’.19

  Dutifully he wrote to Father Francis informing him that he and Edith were intending to be married. He awaited the priest’s reply with trepidation, partly because he still relied on his continuing financial support, but also because he genuinely desired his blessing. Father Francis replied in a spirit of calm, if unenthusiastic, resignation, indicating his acceptance of the inevitable. This was hardly a wholehearted blessing and Tolkien realized that he was not likely to receive the priest’s blessing, or indeed the blessing of the Church, until or unless his future wife became a Catholic. This then became one of the most pressing concerns in the months following their reunion.

  In theory Edith was quite happy to become a Catholic, but in practice there were several difficulties attached to her doing so. In the three years of her separation from Tolkien she had become a very active member of the Church of England. Consequently, she had made many friends at the local Anglican church, she enjoyed a certain status in the parish and the routines of local parish life had become interwoven with the very fabric of her existence. To renounce all this would not be easy. Furthermore, the house in which she lived was owned by a friend who was strongly anti-Catholic. Would she still have a roof over her head if she ‘poped’? She was in a difficult situation and suggested to Tolkien that it would be easier if her conversion could be delayed, at least until they were officially engaged or until their marriage was near. Tolkien would hear nothing of this and insisted that she act quickly and decisively.

  His insistence, and her hesitation, amounted to their first major disagreement, but Tolkien was not prepared to compromise what he perceived to be the truth. He held the Church of England in contempt, declaring it ‘a pathetic and shadowy medley of half-remembered traditions and mutilated beliefs’.20 Neither did he have much sympathy for Edith’s fear of being persecuted or ostracized. Memories of his mother’s sacrifices were still too fresh in his mind for such ‘cowardice’ to be countenanced. 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.’21 For Tolkien, Edith’s conversion would be an act of heroism, a worthy sacrifice on the altar of truth. Perhaps, as Humphrey Carpenter suggests, ‘it was also in part, though he would not have admitted it, a test of her love after her unfaithfulness’ in becoming engaged to another man. Whatever the reason, Tolkien’s impatience bore bitter fruit. Edith entered the Church with more mixed feelings than may have been the case if he had been prepared to wait. The residue of resentment, the result of her being rushed into a decision before she was ready, remained with Edith for many years, possibly for the remainder of her days. It is, of course, speculative to draw conclusions, but it is at least possible that had Tolkien been a better Catholic in 1913, Edith may have been a better Catholic in the years that followed.

  Edith did what Tolkien wanted, but in proving her love and ‘passing the test’ she also paid the price she had feared. Her friend reacted angrily when Edith announced her intention to become a Catholic and ordered her to leave the house as soon as she could find alternative accommodation. In desperation she found temporary rooms in Warwick.

  Tolkien paid his first visit in June 1913 and his initial impressions of the town were unreservedly favourable. He admired its trees, its hill and its castle. He and Edith went punting on the river Avon, making the most of the hot weather, and they attended Benediction in the Roman Catholic church. Tolkien wrote that he and Edith ‘came away serenely happy, for it was the first time that we had ever been able to go calmly side by side to church’.22 Possibly this experience helped allay Edith’s fears because she returned to the same church a few weeks afterwards to ask Father Murphy, the parish priest, to instruct her in the Catholic faith.

  On 8 January 1914 Edith was received into the Church. It was exactly a year since she had been reunited with Tolkien. Shortly after her reception the couple were formally betrothed in church by Father Murphy. Edith made her first confession and first communion, which she found to be ‘a great and wonderful happiness’.23 Unfortunately the initial happiness would not be sustained. She slipped into a lukewarm acceptance of her adopted creed which contrasted starkly with the passion and depth of Tolkien’s faith.

  While Edith languished unhappily in Warwick, Tolkien returned to Oxford. He had long since abandoned Classics in favour of the ‘English’ school where the strongly historical and philological emphasis was more to his liking and more in keeping with his enthusiasm for the study of the northern tongues of Europe as opposed to Latin or Greek. Having found his intellectual niche he was now beginning to excel in his studies. When war was declared he still had a year to go and, unlike many of his contemporaries, decided to stay on at Oxford rather than enlist. ‘In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly,’ he recalled in a letter to one of his sons many years later. ‘It was a nasty cleft to be in, especially for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage. No degree: no money: fiancee. I endured the obloquy, and hints becoming outspoken from relatives, stayed up and produced a First in Finals in 1915. Bolted into the army: July 1915. I found the situation intolerable and married on March 22, 1916. May found me crossing the Channel (I still have the verse I wrote on the occasion!) for the carnage of the Somme.’24

  A First in Finals. . . marriage. . . the carnage of the Somme. With the comfort and complacency of hindsight, Tolkien was able to pass over possibly the most crucial year of his life in a few glib, shorthand sentences. In fact, of course, all three events would affect him irrevocably. Tolkien’s triumph during the second week of June 1915, achieving First Class Honours in his final examination in English Language and Literature, virtually ensured him an academic career when the war was over. He ‘bolted into the army’ in the following month fearing that his triumph in Oxford could soon turn into tragedy in France. He took up his commission as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and endured the calm before the inevitable storm. His training took place in Bedford and Staffordshire where he learned to drill a platoon and attended military lectures.

  By the beginning of 1916 embarkation for the killing fields of France seemed imminent. Fearing that he may never return, he and Edith decided to get married before he left. It was eight years since their teenage love affair had begun. In the grim reality of 1916 there was every prospect that their marriage would not last the number of months that their courtship had lasted in years. It seemed that it was now or never if, as To
lkien had put it three years earlier, they were to ‘be joined together before God and the world’.

  He was now twenty-four and she twenty-seven. They had little money apart from his army pay and Tolkien decided to ask Father Francis to transfer the remainder of his modest share capital to his own name. With this in mind he travelled to Birmingham to see Father Francis, intending at the same time to tell him of his wedding plans. He arranged the financial matters satisfactorily but could not bring himself to mention the marriage. It was not until a fortnight before the wedding that he finally found the courage to write. Father Francis’s reply was full of kindness and he wished them both ‘every blessing and happiness’. As a final gesture of reconciliation he offered to conduct the ceremony himself in the Oratory Church. If Tolkien had been able to broach the subject during his visit, all may have worked out as the priest intended and their marriage could have served also as a symbolic reconciliation between the previously warring parties. As it was, arrangements had been finalized already for the wedding to take place at the Catholic church in Warwick and the couple were married by Father Murphy after early Mass on 22 March 1916. After the wedding they enjoyed a week’s honeymoon in Somerset but, as expected, their bliss was blistered within weeks by news that Tolkien’s battalion was bound ‘for the carnage of the Somme’.