Tolkien and the Great War

by John Garth

  ‘I should as soon…’: MacDonald, ‘The Fantastic Imagination’, The Complete Fairy Tales, 5.

  Recovery, escape and consolation: ‘On Fairy-stories’, Monsters, 145-54.

  p.78

  Philanthropist: Frank Pick, commercial manager of London Underground (Hutchinson, London Transport Posters, 21, and plate 16).

  ‘Unhappily a great many…’: Jellicoe, foreword to Pearce, The Navy Book of Fairy Tales.

  pp.78-9

  ‘Kôr: In a City Lost and Dead’: LT1, 136.

  ‘Henty, Haggard…’: KESC, October 1911, 73; The Lost Explorers: ibid., July 1912, 17.

  p.79

  ‘I know not how…’: Haggard, She, 262-3.

  p.80

  ‘Kôr’ and Tanaqui: Artist, 47.

  Qenya lexicon: Parma Eldalamberon 12, 35, 42, 48.

  pp.80-1

  Eärendel’s Atlantic voyagings: LT2, 261. The added phrases accord with the early lexicon entries mentioned already, and must date from the same time.

  p.81

  Qenya lexicon date: Christopher Gilson, ‘Chronology’, Parma Eldalamberon 12, x-xvii, argues that composition began no earlier than spring 1915. A few points may be added that suggest it began no later than April. First, the long loan of Eliot’s Finnish Grammar coincides with the creative breakthrough that followed the December 1914 ‘Council of London’. Second, the poem ‘Kôr’ accords perfectly with the lexicon at the very points where it differs from Haggard. Third, the lexicon was undoubtedly in existence by early July, yet JRRT is less likely to have found time to work on it in May and June than between December 1915 and April. The Shores of Faëry (painting): Artist, 47-8. The poem of the same title that accompanies the painting was probably added in July (Douglas A. Anderson to the author).

  Shakespeare: Biography, 27-8; Letters, 88; Shippey, Author of the Century, 192-5.

  p.82

  Book loans: Exeter College library register.

  ‘Don’t worry about Schools…’: GBS to JRRT [5 June].

  Welsh grammar: ibid. [14 May].

  English finalists: The Times, 3 July 1915, 6.

  Stainforth certain to take JRRT: GBS to JRRT [10 June 1915].

  ‘matters Martian’, etc.: GBS to JRRT [19 June 1915].

  GBS promoted (on 16 June): The Times, 16 July 1915, 15.

  ‘Do not be afraid…’: GBS to JRRT [28 June 1915]. To Brough Hall Camp: ibid. [19 June 1915].

  pp.82-3

  RQG to Lindrick Camp: RQG to MCG, 19 and 22 June 1915.

  p.83

  ‘bolted’: Letters, 53.

  Enlistment: JRRT service record.

  Schools results: The Times, 3 July 1915, 6. ‘one of the highest distinctions’, etc.: GBS to JRRT [4 July].

  With EMB in Warwick: GBS to JRRT [4 July] 1915.

  pp.83-4

  ‘The Shores of Faëry’ (poem): version from the ‘Book of Ishness’, Artist, 48-9. Variants appear in Biography, 76-7, and (alongside evidence for composition date) LT2, 271-2.

  ‘First poem…’: LT2, 271; start of a ‘Lay of Eärendel’: Biography, 76. Perhaps ‘The Shores of Faëry’ was meant to introduce the already existing ‘Eärendel fragments’.

  p.85

  Fusion of language and mythology: by contrast, September 1914’s ‘The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star’ featured aspects of a Tolkienian cosmology but none of the nomenclature that would accompany them later; the name Éarendel was Old English, not Qenya.

  ‘It was just as…’, etc.: Letters, 231.

  ‘thought and experience…’: ibid., 144; see also 345.

  Wartime rumours: Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 116-24.

  pp.85-6

  ‘Angels of Mons’: ibid., 115-16; Gilbert, First World War, 58. Machen’s ‘The Bowmen’ appeared in the London Evening News on 29 September 1914.

  p.86

  Wartime language: Strachan, The First World War, i. 142.

  Neverland and Valinor: on a copy of ‘The Shores of Faëry’ JRRT wrote much later ‘Valinor [?thought of about] 1910’ (LT2, 271). This was the year he saw Peter Pan; but it seems perhaps too early for the conception of Valinor.

  pp.86-7

  Guingelot: JRRT stated the influence of this name in a note from 1968 or later (The Peoples of Middle-earth, 371). Cf. The Lays of Beleriand, 143-4. ‘Concerning Wade…’: Thomas Speght, in Skeat’s Complete Works of Chaucer, v. 356-7 (borrowed by JRRT from Exeter College library over Christmas 1914).

  ‘timbered a boat…’, etc.: Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 376-8; cf. Chambers, Widsith, 95-100, on Wade. For JRRT’s use of Germanic sources, see especially Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth.

  p.87

  ‘and the meaning…’, etc.: CLW to JRRT, 11 July 1915. Naval recruitment advertisement: CLW to Dr Peter Liddle.

  p.88

  ‘You have been posted…’: Col. W. Elliot to JRRT, 9 July 1915 (Bodleian Tolkien).

  ‘I am simply bowled over…’: GBS to JRRT [13 July 1915]. Safer in 13th LF: ibid. [18 July 1915].

  To Bedford; allowance: Col. W. Elliot to JRRT (Bodleian Tolkien). ‘All else seems to me…’, etc.: GBS to JRRT [19 June 1915].

  FIVE Benighted wanderers

  p.89

  Report to Col. Tobin: Col. W. Elliot to JRRT (Bodleian Tolkien). At Bedford: Biography, 77. Comfortable: RWR to JRRT, 2 August 1915.

  ‘philosophick’: GBS to JRRT [22 July 1915]. Chances of transfer; ‘tact, tact, tact’, etc.: ibid. [23 July 1915].

  pp.89-91

  ‘The Happy Mariners’: The Stapeldon Magazine, June 1920 (with ‘Earendel’ where I provide ‘Eärendel’). The 1915 form is unpublished. A 1940 revision appears in LT2, 273-6.

  p.91

  Waking of the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl: LT1, 15.

  pp.91-2

  ‘Lost Tales’ cosmology and ‘the song of the Sleeper’: ‘The Hiding of Valinor’, in LT1, 215-16.

  p.92

  ‘“The Happy Mariners” was apparently…’: LT2, 274.

  pp.92-3

  Submissions to Oxford Poetry: GBS to JRRT [23 July 1915]. GBS first proposed to submit verse in May (ibid. [14 May 1915]). In the event it included one poem apiece by JRRT and GBS, and three by Wade-Gery.

  p.93

  RWR: KESC, December 1921, 24; December 1922, 79-80; obituary, OEG, 1948.

  Response to JRRT’s verse: RWR to JRRT, 19 July. Advice on publishing a collection: ibid., 2 August 1915.

  p.94

  Lichfield units (9th Lincolnshires, 13th and 14th Sherwood Foresters, 14th Manchesters); 50 officers: monthly Army returns.

  View of high-ranking officers; ‘Gentlemen are non-existent…’: Biography, 77-8. Contrary to Carpenter’s assertion, this does not mean JRRT disliked the majority of other officers, the subalterns with whom he spent most of his time.

  ‘All the hot days…’: Letters, 8.

  ‘What makes it so…’, ‘toad under the harrow’, Fr Reade: Letters, 78. ‘war multiplies…’, ‘men and things’: ibid. 73. ‘a deep sympathy…’: ibid. 54.

  p.95

  ‘It isn’t the tough stuff…’: Letters, 46.

  Icelandic: Biography, 78. RQG’s designs: RQG to MCG. ‘early work’, etc.: Letters, 231.

  pp.95-6

  ‘A Song of Aryador’: LT1, 138-9.

  Impact of Mercian language and culture on JRRT: see Shippey, Author of the Century, 90-7, and The Road to Middle-earth, 111-16. For Tamworth as the capital of the Middle Kingdom in Farmer Giles of Ham, see ibid. 89.

  p.96

  Aryador: Parma Eldalamberon 12, 32 (with thanks to Patrick Wynne).

  Aryan: Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, 126.

  p.97

  Gothic source of miruvōrë: JRRT note in Parma Eldalamberon 12, xi.

  pp.97-8

  ‘Iumbo, or ye Kinde of ye Oliphaunt’: one of two poems comprising ‘Adventures in Unnatural History and Medieval Metres, being The Freaks of Fisiologus’, The Stapeldon Magazine, vii. 40 (June 1927), 125.


  p.98

  The Irminsûl: Teutonic Mythology, i. 115-19; ‘works of the giants’: ‘Philology: General Works’, in Lee and Boas (eds.), The Year’s Work in English Studies 1923, 21. pelekus, parasu: Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, 122 (with thanks to Bill Welden).

  ond: Letters, 410. See Carl F. Hostetter and Patrick Wynne, Vinyar Tengwar 30, 8-25.

  pp.98-9

  ‘A Song of Aryador’: LTI, 138-9.

  p.100

  ‘I am really angry with myself…’: RQG to JRRT, 13 September 1915. RQG received poems: ibid., 31 March 1915. Sent them on: CLW to JRRT, 15 April 1915.

  RQG declares love for EK: RQG to MCG, 18 April, 10 June, and 17 October 1915. Her father’s warning: Wilson King to RCG, 30 November 1915.

  ‘a compartmented life’: JRRT to CLW, 16 November 1914.

  p.101

  ‘of course includes your missis’: CLW to JRRT, 4 February 1916.

  Silence from RQG: GBS to JRRT [14 May, 28 June and 18 July 1915]. His summer and influenza: RQG to MCG. News of Oxford Poetry: MCG to RQG, 12 September. ‘I confess that I have often…’, etc.: RQG to JRRT, 13 September 1915.

  Second sheaf of poems; ‘At times like this…’: RQG to JRRT, 17 September 1915.

  pp.101-2

  Council of Lichfield: ibid., 21, 23, and 24 September 1915. ‘that delightful…’: GBS to JRRT, 6 October 1915.

  p.102

  GBS and RQG on Salisbury Plain, ‘The rain stopped…’: RQG to MCG, 5 October 1915. ‘Songs on the Downs’: GBS, A Spring Harvest, 48. ‘The steps I have taken…’: GBS to JRRT, 6 October.

  p.103

  They visit Bath; ‘Gibbonian periods’: RQG to MCG, 17 October 1915. ‘I feel that we shall…’: GBS to JRRT, 6 October.

  They urge JRRT to publish: RQG to JRRT, 5 October 1915; GBS to JRRT, 9 October 1915.

  Cannock Chase camps: Whitehouse and Whitehouse, A Town for Four Winters. 3rd Reserve Infantry Brigade Officers’ Company: RQG to JRRT, 19 October and 21 November 1915.

  p.104

  ‘These grey days…’: Biography, 78. ‘The usual kind of morning…’: JRRT to EMB, 26 November 1915, in Letters, 8. JRRT unhappy and EMB unwell: CLW to JRRT, 27 October 1915; RQG to JRRT, 21 November 1915.

  pp.104-6

  TCBS in London without JRRT: GBS to JRRT, 24 October 1915 (‘to drive from life…’, ‘It struck me last night…’); RQG to JRRT, 31 October 1915 (‘I never before felt…’, ‘I suddenly saw…’); CLW to JRRT, 27 October 1915 (‘I laughed a little…’, ‘bit of fun’, ‘war babies’, ‘woman was just…’, ‘You and GBS…’, ‘The TCBS stays…’). At school, CLW and JRRT had played rugby for Measures’ house against Richards’ house.

  p.106

  ‘sons of culture’, etc.: GBS, ‘To the Cultured’, A Spring Harvest, 60. ‘I have never read anything…’: GBS to JRRT, 24 October 1915.

  p.107

  ‘the fairies came…’: Parma Eldalamberon 12, 35.

  pp.107-10

  ‘Kortirion among the Trees’: quotations are from the earliest published version, only slightly changed from the original MSS; LT1, 32-6.

  p.108

  ‘Ah! like gold…’: The Lord of the Rings, 368.

  p.109

  ‘England in June attire…’ etc.: Graves, ‘To Robert Nichols’, Fairies and Fusiliers.

  p.110

  Week of frost: RQG to MCG, 17 and 21 November 1915. ‘Kortirion’ textual history: Letters, 8; RQG to JRRT, 21 and 26 November 1915; RQG to Estelle King, 2 December. Stray workings: RQG to JRRT, 19 October. Tolkien recalled writing ‘Kortirion’ between 21 and 28 November in Warwick; yet he was back in camp by 25 November; LT1, 32.

  pp.110-11

  ‘I am now 21…’: GBS to JRRT, 19 October 1915. Units departing Salisbury Plain: RQG to MCG, 17 November 1915; Carter, Birmingham Pals, 90-1. GBS’s movements, ‘It is impossible…’: RQG to JRRT, 21 November 1915.

  p.111

  Barrowclough: MCG to RQG, 12 September 1915; RW Reynolds to JRRT, 19 September 1915. T. K. Barnsley: Ross, The Coldstream Guards, i. 434; RQG to MCG, 27 August, 31 October 1915.

  ‘We are now so pledged…’: GBS to JRRT, 24 October 1915. 19th LF embark for France: Barlow, Salford Brigade, 73; Latter, Lancashire Fusiliers, 99. Stedman, Salford Pals, 64. ‘to the peril…’: GBS to JRRT, 2 December 1915.

  pp.112-13

  ‘Habbanan beneath the Stars’: LT1, 91-2.

  p.112

  ‘perilmë metto…’: Parma Eldalamberon 12, 73.

  p.113

  ‘I had always…’: ‘The Ethics of Elfland’, in Auden (ed.), G. K. Chesterton: a selection, 187.

  SIX Too long in slumber

  p.114

  Codes and alphabets: Biography, 40; Priestman, Life and Legend, 13, 17, 18.

  Milne: Thwaite, A. A. Milne, 167.

  To Brocton Camp: monthly Army returns. Envelope codework: RQG to JRRT, 26 December 1915; CLW to JRRT, 30 December 1915.

  pp.114-15

  Equipment training: Biography, 78; JRRT provisional instructor’s certificate (Bodleian Tolkien).

  p.115

  Egypt rumour, ‘Imagine the general rejoicing…’, etc.: RQG to JRRT, 26 December 1915.

  ‘Donna’: the name RQG and his sister Molly gave to Marianne Dunstall when she married their father in 1909; RQG to MCG, 10 August 1909.

  RQG and EK: RQG to MCG, 17 October and 8 November 1915; MCG to EK, 26 December 1915.

  ‘Kortirion’: RQG to EK, 2 December 1915.

  ‘What a wonderful year!…’: ibid., New Year 1915-16.

  pp.115-16

  CLW to the Superb: CLW to Dr Peter Liddle. ‘Then I plunge…’: CLW to JRRT, 30 December 1915. Cruiser Natal sinks: Gilbert, First World War, 222. Torpedo nets: Phil Russell to the author.

  p.116

  RQG embarks; ‘I wish I could describe…’: RQG to EK, 8 January 1916. Italy: ibid., 19 February 1916. New Testament and Odyssey: RQG to MCG, 7 January 1916.

  Oxford Poetry 1915: Hammond with Anderson, Bibliography, 279-80. ‘The idols have fallen…’: The Oxford Magazine, 10 December 1915, 127-8.

  p.117

  ‘The truth is…’: GBS to JRRT, 22 December 1915. ‘terrible fellow’, etc.: ibid., 12 January 1916. 2nd Manchesters: Platt papers.

  pp.117-18

  ‘It is a strange and dreary…’: RQG to EK, 4 February 1916. ‘the real business of life’: RQG to MCG, 7 April 1912. RQG’s absurd vision: Lt. P. V. Emrys-Evans to RCG, 13 July 1916. (Emrys-Evans, 11th Suffolks, was later a member of parliament and under-secretary in the British Dominions Office.)

  pp.118-19

  ‘a good friend of mine…’, etc.: GBS to JRRT, 3 February 1916. (The ‘three other heroes’ include Tolkien again, in addition to Gilson and Wiseman.)

  19th

  LF in Thiepval Wood trenches, 2-6 February 1916: war diary; Platt papers. Patrols: Winter, Death’s Men, 87-8.

  2nd Lt. A. C. Dixon: CWGC.

  p.119

  The Trumpets of Faërie: Priestman, Life and Legend, 30; GBS to JRRT, 9 February 1916 (‘I remember how…’). JRRT must despatch ‘Kortirion’: ibid., 22 February 1916.

  ‘too many precious stones’: RQG to JRRT, 26 December 1915.

  ‘I am immensely braced…’: CLW to JRRT, 4 February 1916.

  p.120

  ‘there was more form…’: RWR to JRRT, 10 March 1916.

  pp.121-2

  Quarrel over JRRT’s ‘freakish’ earlier poetry: CLW to JRRT, 1 March (‘Old days, Harborne Road…’, etc.) and 14 March 1916 (‘I say they are not…’, etc.).

  ‘the Eldar…’: JRRT, quoted in ibid.

  p.122

  ‘lacking in the strings…’, etc.: RQG to EK, 14 January 1916.

  p.123

  ‘Legend’: GBS, A Spring Harvest, 22.

  p.124

  blimp: JRRT, ‘Philology: General Works’, in Lee and Boas (eds.), The Year’s Work in English Studies 1923, 52. ‘Bosch’: GBS to JRRT, 12 January 1916. ‘I fully intended…’: RQG to MCG, 12 April 1916
.

  p.125

  ‘in a dirty wet marquee…’: ‘A Secret Vice’, Monsters, 199. ‘I have been reading up…’: JRRT to EMT, 2 March 1916 (Letters, 8).

  November quatrain (‘Narqelion’): Douglas A. Anderson to the author. The second version appears in Mythlore 56, 48, with an analysis by Paul Nolan Hyde, and in Vinyar Tengwar 40, 8, with an analysis by Christopher Gilson.

  pp.125-7

  State of the mythology: this reconstruction is based primarily on the Qenya lexicon, along with the available poetry of 1915, and notes on Eärendel’s Atlantic wanderings and ‘The Shores of Faëry’ (LT2, 261-2; internal evidence suggests other outlines in LT2, 253ff., were written later). JRRT is unlikely to have risked taking the lexicon on active service, and its state circa March 1916 may be broadly surmised by excluding all entries lacking in ‘The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa’, a list copied from it probably soon after he returned to England (Parma Eldalamberon 12, xvii-xxi). Some details appearing only in that list are assumed to postdate the initial lexicon phase, and omitted here. The reconstruction takes no account of unpublished poems, notes or outlines, and covers a period (beginning in early 1915) in which conceptions were probably very fluid.

  p.128

  Personal significance of Erinti, etc.: Gilson, ‘Narqelion and the Early Lexicons’, Vinyar Tengwar 40, 9.

  Vocabulary for wartime: this selection takes no account of chronology of composition (in contrast to the reconstructed ‘state of the mythology’ above). Only enya, kasiën, makil and Kalimban, etc., seem likely to have predated the Somme. ‘the “Germanic” ideal’: Letters, 55.

  p.129

  ‘bleed to death’: Gilbert, First World War, 221. ‘intolerable’, etc.: Letters, 53.

  pp.129-30

  Marriage: Biography, 78. ‘My goodness…’: GBS to JRRT, 9 February 1916. ‘on the contrary…’: CLW to JRRT, 1 March 1916. ‘The imminence…’: RQG to MCG, 9 March 1916. ‘I rejoice…’: RQG to JRRT, 9 March 1916.

  p.130

  ‘always had something…’: RQG to EK, 10 March 1916. Degree ceremony: How, Register of Exeter College.

  pp.130-3

  ‘The Wanderer’s Allegiance’: quotations are from the November 1916 revision, ‘The Town of Dreams and the City of Present Sorrow’, LT2, 295-6.

  p.130

  Paternal ancestors in Germania: CLW saw only the revised poem, more than a year later; it is apparent that JRRT did not explain it all to him and, as CLW suspected (‘Perhaps I know too much or too little…’), some of his suppositions may be wrong. CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.