Tolkien and the Great War

by John Garth

  ‘At least none…’: ibid., 71.

  p.270

  ‘might be said…’: Letters, 150. Elsewhere (Letters, 214, 345) JRRT said Kullervo had been the germ of his legendarium, even if in the story of Túrin ‘it is entirely changed except in the tragic ending’. The Qenya lexicon (Parma Eldalamberon 12, 95-6) compares Turambar, ‘master of doom’, to Old Norse Sigurðr (sigr, ‘victory’, urðr, ‘fate, destiny’). JRRT studied Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex during his final year of Classics (Exeter College Library register).

  ‘In these days…’: LT2, 70.

  p.271

  Necklace of the Brísings: a genealogy of c.1930 calls Feänor in Old English Finbrós and his sons Brósingas, a reference to the fabled necklace of the Brósings (Beowulf, line 1199), which has been equated with the Norse Brísingamen. The Shaping of Middle-earth, 212.

  ‘Behold now Tinwelint…’: LT2, 231.

  ‘crowned and helmed…’: ibid., 232.

  p.272

  ‘an unrecognised…’: Shippey, Author of the Century, 155.

  ‘the whole Tale…’: LT2, 253.

  ‘the very primitive undergrowth’: Biography, 59.

  ‘gnawing his fingers…’: LT2, 282.

  p.273

  Cannock Chase: G. L. Elkin, cited in The Lost Road, 413, suggests on the contrary that the High Heath is based on Hopton Heath, a few miles north-west of Great Haywood, where a Civil War battle was fought in 1643.

  pp.273-4

  ‘And now is the end…’, etc.: LT2, 287-9.

  p.274

  ‘So we lay down the pen…’: GBS, A Spring Harvest, 78.

  p.275

  ‘blind, and a fool…’: LT2, 288. ‘a free virtue’, ‘everything should…’: LT1, 59.

  p.276

  ‘ennoblement’: Letters, 220. ‘On a journey…’: ibid., 240. ‘the secret life…’: ibid., 149.

  ‘there liveth still…’: LT1, 56.

  ‘and who knows…’: ibid., 220. Nothing similar replaced this rejected draft text, but decades later JRRT returned to the idea that his legendarium might adumbrate the Christian story more or less explicitly; see Morgoth’s Ring, 351-2, 356.

  pp.277-8

  Chronology of composition: In 1964 JRRT remembered writing ‘The Music of the Ainur’ in Oxford, i.e., no earlier than November 1918. The Lost Tales of Valinor seem likely to have been composed after the creation myth, along with the tales of the Great Lands, including ink revisions of ‘The Tale of Turambar’ and ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’. A copy of lines from ‘The Tale of Turambar’ written in Rúmilian script refers to Tinwelint as Thingol, the name the elven-king was to keep. It must postdate almost all of the Lost Tales, which still have Tinwelint, except the third, typescript version of ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’, which has Thingol. According to Humphrey Carpenter, JRRT was using this version of the ever-changing Rúmilian script in his diary around June 1919. However, six or seven months seems a very short time for such a volume of complex writing. (LT1, 203; LT2, 312; Biography, 100-3; Parma Eldalamberon 13, 20; JRRT service record.)

  p.278

  orn, etc. (footnote): ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’, Parma Eldalamberon 13, 116.

  Leeds: Biography, 102ff.

  p.279

  ‘much interested…’, etc.: RWR to JRRT, 19 November 1917.

  Poems sent to RWR: The Lays of Beleriand, 3, 150.

  p.280

  ‘vast backcloths’: Letters, 144.

  ‘lacking in experience…’ (RWR); ‘the only form…’, etc.: CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.

  p.281

  ‘gave him opportunities…’: Wayne G. Hammond, Canadian C. S. Lewis Journal, Spring 2000, 62, quoted in Douglas A. Anderson (ed.), The Annotated Hobbit, 5.

  ‘I want you to get…’: CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.

  Christopher Tolkien named after CLW: Letters, 395.

  p.282

  Lewis’s ambitions: Rateliff, ‘The Lost Road, The Dark Tower, and the Notion Club Papers’, in Flieger and Hostetter (eds.), Tolkien’s Legendarium, 200-1.

  ‘Only from him…’: Letters, 362.

  EMT’s copies: LT1, 13; LT2, 146.

  Elrond: Letters, 346-7; Douglas A. Anderson (ed.), The Annotated Hobbit, 94-6.

  p.283

  ‘a new story…’: Letters, 27.

  ‘grew in the telling…’: ‘Foreword to the Second Edition’, The Lord of the Rings, xv.

  ‘which says for me…’: Letters, 420.

  ‘incurable bachelorhood’: CLW to JRRT, 20 December 1917.

  TCBS reunion: Mrs Patricia Wiseman and Mrs Susan Wood, interview with the author.

  p.284

  ‘lair’, etc.: Letters, 429.

  ‘I wish v. much…’: Letters, 431-2.

  POSTSCRIPT ‘One who dreams alone’

  p.287

  ‘dead spot’: Hynes, A War Imagined, 101. ‘Why I can write nothing…’: ibid. 105-6.

  ‘sheer vacancy’: GBS to JRRT, 16 September 1916. GBS’s poetry: CLW to JRRT, 16 November 1916.

  pp.287-8

  ‘Companions of the Rose’; Tolkien productive in 1917: CLW to JRRT, 1 September 1917; Douglas A. Anderson to the author.

  p.288

  ‘an age when…’: Letters, 225.

  p.289

  ‘A horse is a…’: Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 22. A form of censorship: ibid. 174-5.

  ‘Those too old…’: Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 204.

  ‘how it was that Tolkien…’, etc.: Brogan, ‘Tolkien’s Great War’, in Avery and Briggs (eds.), Children and their Books, 356.

  pp.289-90

  Anti-Germanism and the breach with the past: Hynes, A War Imagined, 78.

  ‘philology itself…’: Tolkien, ‘Philology: General Works’, in Lee and Boas (eds.), The Year’s Work in English Studies, 1923, 37.

  Romanticism tainted: Hynes, A War Imagined, 78.

  p.290

  ‘No one ever influenced…’: W. H. Lewis (ed.), Letters of C. S. Lewis, 287.

  ‘animal horror’: Letters, 72. ‘The utter stupid waste…’: ibid. 75.

  ‘tutors’ in high diction: Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 21.

  p.291

  ‘not being especially…’: Letters, 225. ‘the extraordinary…’: ibid., 225-6.

  ‘This sort of thing…’: ‘On Translating Beowulf’, Monsters, 55.

  p.292

  ‘Wisdom made…’: Graves, ‘Babylon’, Fairies and Fusiliers. ‘The Western Front made…’: Purkiss, Troublesome Things, 291.

  p.293

  ‘A real taste…’: ‘On Fairy-stories’, Monsters, 135. ‘therapy for a mind…’, etc.: Brogan, ‘Tolkien’s Great War’, in Avery and Briggs (eds.), Children and their Books, 358.

  Tolkien on ‘escapism’: ‘On Fairy-stories’, Monsters, 148-50.

  p.294

  ‘Beowulf lying…’: Graves, Good-bye to All That, 304. Flammenwerfer: Letters, 133. ‘Very numerous…’: LT2, 174.

  p.295

  ‘C’ Company disaster: The Lancashire Fusiliers Annual 1917, 215-20; Latter, Lancashire Fusiliers, 148; 11th LF war diary. ‘The problem was…’: C. H. David of the 25th Division’s Royal Field Artillery brigade, whose guns were covering this network of trenches at around this time (Imperial War Museum).

  Beowulf, Beorhtnoth: ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son’, Poems and Stories, 103.

  ‘Aequam serva…’: Letters, 73.

  ‘whose instinct is…’: ibid., 211.

  p.296

  The Mabinogion: GBS to JRRT, 10 September 1916. The Earthly Paradise: Douglas A. Anderson to the author. Morris, Bunyan, etc.: Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 138-9, 135.

  ‘make no pretence…’: CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.

  p.297

  ‘Beneath the surface…’: Flieger, A Question of Time, 224.

  The phrase ‘pinned in a kind of ghostly deathlessness’ comes from Tolkien’s discussion of J. M. Barrie’s Mary Rose in unpublished drafts of ‘On
Fairy-stories’, quoted more fully on p. 53 of Flieger’s book.

  p.297

  Eriol’s experience of Faërie: LT1, 47; LT2, 284, 287-9.

  p.298

  ‘Did no feeling…’: Douie, The Weary Road, 222.

  ‘There is no difficulty…’: Shippey, Author of the Century, 248.

  p.299

  ‘There was an arguing…’, etc.: Carrington, A Subaltern’s War, 35.

  ‘sick and weary’: LT2, 90. ‘moral impetus…’, etc.: Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune, 39.

  p.300

  ‘something irrevocably evil’, etc.: Shippey, Author of the Century, xxx.

  ‘If in some smothering…’: ‘Dulce et decorum est’, Owen, The Collected Poems, p. 55.

  p.301

  ‘the Myth of the War…’: Hynes, A War Imagined, 424.

  p.302

  ‘a few acres of mud’: CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.

  Frye’s modes and the war: Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 311-12.

  ‘Book after book…’: Carrington, Soldier from the Wars Returning, 293.

  p.303

  ‘the authors of this poetry…’: Douie, The Weary Road, 7, 9.

  ‘It is thus anterior…’: Carrington, Soldier from the Wars Returning, 14. A Subaltern’s War was not published until 1929.

  ‘deeds, or lands…’: C. Day Lewis (ed.), The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, 31.

  p.304

  ‘who sneer…’: CLW to JRRT, 10 November 1914.

  p.305

  ‘Even to-day…’, etc.: ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, Monsters, 16, 17.

  ‘Now we stand…’: CLW to GBS, 30 August 1916.

  ‘With our backs…’: ‘To all ranks of the British Army in France and Flanders’, Douglas Haig, 11 April 1918. I have echoed Vera Brittain – a voluntary nurse tending the wounded at Étaples at the time of the Spring Offensive – who noted the later tarnishing of Haig’s reputation but said, ‘I can think of him only as the author of that Special Order, for after I read it I knew that I should go on, whether I could or not.’ (Testament of Youth, 420.)

  p.306

  ‘even shall those…’: LT1, 54-5.

  ‘Perhaps some day…’: Douie, The Weary Road, 226.

  ‘to portray life…’: Lucas, Tragedy: Serious drama in relation to Aristotle’s Poetics, 79.

  p.307

  ‘more or less a Warwickshire village…’: Letters, 230. ‘I take my models…’: ibid. 235.

  pp.307-8

  ‘as low as blacksmith-work…’: The Hobbit, 56. ‘It is not unlikely…’: ibid. 109. ‘neither bush…’: ibid. 257. ‘piled in heaps…’: ibid. 344.

  p.308

  Laketown: Shippey, Author of the Century, 40.

  ‘May God bless you…’: GBS to JRRT, 3 February 1916. ‘had been granted…’: JRRT to GBS, 12-13 August 1916.

  ‘I was pitched…’: Letters, 46.

  p.310

  ‘One has indeed personally…’: Foreword to the second edition, The Lord of the Rings, xvii.

  ‘As far as any character…’: Letters, 232 (footnote).

  ‘My “Sam Gamgee”…’: Biography, 81.

  ‘Personally I do not…’: Letters, 303.

  p.311

  Survey of fiction writers: Cecil, The Flower of Battle, 1.

  ‘This war has the very…’: Lewis, ‘The Dethronement of Power’, Time & Tide 36 (22 October 1955); reprinted in Isaacs and Zimbardo, Tolkien and the Critics, 14.

  ‘the disillusionment…’: Shippey, Author of the Century, 156.

  p.312

  ‘a recall from facile…’: Lewis, ‘Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings’, Essay Collection: Literature, philosophy and short stories, 116.

  p.313

  ‘I had seen something…’: Sassoon, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, 362.

  Bibliography

  A: Private papers

  Letters from JRRT to Geoffrey Bache Smith and Christopher Luke Wiseman; letters to JRRT from Robert Cary Gilson, Robert Quilter Gilson, R. W. Reynolds, G. B. Smith, Ruth Smith, and C. L. Wiseman (Bodleian Tolkien family papers 2/1 and 2/2).

  JRRT’s personal military papers, including his cursory ‘Diary of Brief Time in France and of Last Seven Times I Saw GBS’ [JRRT diary] (Bodleian Tolkien family papers 2/6).

  Other papers belonging to JRRT, including college notebooks and books from his library (Bodleian Tolkien; shelfmarks given in source notes).

  All of the above are courtesy of the Tolkien Estate and the Bodleian Library.

  Letters from R. Q. Gilson to R. C. Gilson, Marianne Cary Gilson (‘Donna’) and Estelle King; other Gilson correspondence (all courtesy of Julia Margretts and Frances Harper).

  Letter from C. L. Wiseman to Dr Peter Liddle, 22 July 1977, recalling his naval service; memoir of W. J. Senescall, 11th Suffolks [Senescall memoir] (courtesy of the Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds).

  Letters and notebooks of Lt. C. L. Platt, 19th Lancashire Fusiliers [Platt papers]; diary of Capt. Lionel Ferguson, 13th Cheshires [Ferguson diary]; the Revd M. S. Evers, ‘The Memoirs of Mervyn’ [Evers memoir]; papers of Capt. P. F. J. Fawcett-Barry [Fawcett-Barry papers]; narrative and notebook by 2nd Lt. G. A. Potts [Potts papers]; memoir ‘1914 to 1919’ by F. Mills [Mills memoir]; narrative from the notes of Col. C. H. David, 111th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery [David narrative] (all courtesy of the Imperial War Museum).

  B: Works by JRR Tolkien

  References in square brackets are to the abbreviations and short titles used in the source notes. Place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated.

  The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1983) [LT1].

  The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1984) [LT2].

  ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’: see Parma Eldalamberon 13, under Periodicals.

  ‘Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings’, in Jared Lobdell (ed.), A Tolkien Compass (Open Court, 1975).

  The Hobbit references are to The Annotated Hobbit, annotated by Douglas A. Anderson (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

  ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’, in Essays and Studies vi (John Murray, 1953). References are to the Tolkien anthology Poems and Stories (HarperCollins, 1992).

  ‘I·Lam na·Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of the Gnomish Tongue’: see Parma Eldalamberon 11, under Periodicals.

  The Lays of Beleriand, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1985).

  Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Selection, ed. Humphrey Carpenter with Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1981) [Letters].

  The Lord of the Rings (HarperCollins, 1995): a standard one-volume edition.

  The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1983) [Monsters].

  Morgoth’s Ring, ed. Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollins, 1993).

  The Peoples of Middle-earth, ed. Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollins, 1996).

  ‘Philology: General Works’, annual survey in Lee and Boas (eds.), The Year’s Work in English Studies, 1923; Boas and Herford (eds.), The Year’s Work in English Studies, 1924.

  ‘The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa’: see Parma Eldalamberon 12, under Periodicals.

  ‘Qenyaqetsa: The Qenya Phonology and Lexicon’: see Parma Eldalamberon 12, under Periodicals.

  Sauron Defeated, ed. Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollins, 1992).

  The Shaping of Middle-earth: The Quenta, the Ambarkanta, and the Annals together with the earliest ‘Silmarillion’ and the first Map, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1986).

  Unfinished Tales, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1980).

  C: Books and articles by others

  Allison, K. J. (ed.), A History of the County of York, East Riding, vol. v. Holderness: southern part (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).

  Auden, W. H. (ed.), G. K. Chesterton: A sel
ection from his non-fictional prose (Faber & Faber, 1970).

  Barlow, Sir C. A. Montague, The Lancashire Fusiliers, The Roll of Honour of the Salford Brigade (Sherratt and Hughes, 1919) [Barlow, Salford Brigade].

  The Battle of Jutland: Official Despatches (HMSO, 1920).

  Blunden, Edmund, Undertones of War (Cobden-Sanderson, 1928). References are to the Penguin edition, 1982.

  Boas, F. S., and Herford, C. H. (eds.), The Year’s Work in English Studies, vol. v: 1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925).

  —The Year’s Work in English Studies, vol. vi: 1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1927).

  Brazier, Reginald H., and Sandford, Ernest, Birmingham and the Great War (Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 1921).

  Brenan, Gerald, A Life of One’s Own: Childhood and youth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962).

  Brittain, Vera, Testament of Youth (Victor Gollancz, 1933). References are to the Virago edition, 1978.

  Brockington, W. A., Elements of Military Education (Longmans, Green, 1916).

  Brogan, Hugh, ‘Tolkien’s Great War’, in Gillian Avery and Julia Briggs (eds.), Children and their Books: A celebration of the works of Iona and Peter Opie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

  Brown, Malcolm, The Imperial War Museum Book of the Somme (Pan, 1997).

  Carpenter, Humphrey, J. R. R. Tolkien: A biography (George Allen & Unwin, 1977) [Biography].

  Carrington, Charles (pseudonymously as ‘Charles Edmonds’), A Subaltern’s War (Peter Davies, 1929).

  —Soldier from the Wars Returning (Hutchinson, 1965).

  Carter, Terry, Birmingham Pals: 14th, 15th & 16th (Service) Battalions of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, 1997).

  Cater, Bill, ‘We talked of love, death and fairy tales’, The Daily Telegraph (29 November 2001), 23.

  Cecil, Hugh, The Flower of Battle (Secker & Warburg, 1995).

  Chambers, R. W., Widsith: A study in Old English heroic legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912).

  Cole, G. D. H., and Earp, T. W. (eds.), Oxford Poetry 1915 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1915).

  Cork, Richard, A Bitter Truth: Avant-garde art and the Great War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994).

  Courtauld, Simon, ‘In Remembrance: and the memories of a living hero’, The Daily Telegraph (10 November 1998), 9.

  Cuttell, Barry, 148 Days on the Somme (Peterborough: GMS Enterprises, 2000).