by John Garth
Tulkas (champion of the Valar) 241, 256, 257 and fn.
Tuor (man of Aryador) 214, 215-17, 238, 245, 276, 305
Turambar 127; see also Túrin Turambar
Turgon (Gnome, king of Gondolin) 214, 216
Túrin Turambar (man of Aryador) 266, 267, 268-70, 279, 299
Twilit Isles (in the western ocean) 90, 91, 127
Two Trees (of Valinor) 81, 83, 84, 126, 241, 258, 259, 264, 273
U-boats 233
Ui (mermaid queen) 125
Uin (primeval whale) 259
Ulmo (Vala of the deeps) 215, 216, 217, 222, 237, 238, 241, 254, 256, 259
Ungwë-Tuita 127; see also Spider of Night, Gloomweaver
Uolë-mi-Kúmë (the Moon King) 127; see also ‘Why the Man in the Moon came down too soon’ under Tolkien, J.R.R., poetry
Ur (the Sun) 126
Úrin (father of Túrin) 266, 268, 269
Utumna (lower regions of darkness) 127
Vadencourt, France
Väinamöinen 51, 60
Vairë (Elf of the Cottage of Lost Play) 225, 226, 227
Valar (‘gods’ or angels on Earth, sg. Vala) 86, 99, 112-13, 125, 126, 128, 216, 236, 241, 256, 257-8, 259, 260, 270, 275
Valhalla 257
Valinor (land of the Valar) 65, 83, 84, 86, 96, 99, 112, 113, 126, 217, 226, 227, 228, 241, 257, 258, 259, 260
Valkyries 257
Vana (a Vala) 241
Varda (queen of the Valar) 241; see also Súlimi
Verdun, battle and siege of (1916) 129, 141, 142, 147, 191
Victorians 21, 42, 76, 77, 80, 105, 208, 217, 275, 288, 298
Vimy Ridge, France 144, 150
Vingelot see Wingelot
Volsunga Saga 16, 35, 63, 267
Völund 86, 87
Vonnegut, Kurt 300
Voronwë
(1) wife of Eärendel 127, 128
(2) Gnome, friend of Tuor 216
Wade 86-7
‘lost Tale of Wade’ 229
Wade-Gery, Henry Theodore (Oxford don and 19th LF officer) 64-5, 67, 68, 103, 185, 290
Waite, Wilfrid Fabian (11th LF subaltern) 171
Waldman, Milton: JRRT to 229-30, 261
The Wanderer (Old English poem) 47, 244, 305
Warlincourt, France 211
Warloy-Baillon, France 150, 152, 157
Warwick 33, 64, 83, 93, 104, 107-8, 110, 126, 128, 130-3, 134, 216, 225, 243
Warwickshires see Royal Warwickshire Regiment
Waters of Awakening 241, 259
Wayland 86
Wells, H. G. 93, 221
Welsh language 14, 32, 35, 82, 213, 236
West Midlands 51-2, 260
West Bromwich, Staffordshire 111, 186
Westbury, Wiltshire 102
Whatley, Captain (Oxford University OTC) 83
Whitby, Yorkshire 12
Whittington Heath Camp, Staffordshire 93-6, 107, 294
Wilhelm II, Kaiser 22, 56, 129, 300
Williamson, Henry: Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight 301
Willows, Land or Vale of 241, 259, 238, 241
Wingelot/Wingilot/Vingelot 84, 86, 97, 127
Winter, Jay: Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning 289
Wirilómë 258; see also Gloomweaver, Spider of Night
Wiseman, Christine Irene (née Savage; CLW’s first wife) 283
Wiseman, Christopher Luke (TCBS member) xii, 4, 5, 302
at Cambridge 4, 31, 32
and Gilson 47-8, 54, 104-6, 146, 174, 176, 183, 184-5
at King Edward’s School 4-6, 18, 19, 27
naval war service 87, 115-16, 141-3
post-war career 254
sobriquets 18, 19 and fn. and Smith 31-2, 54, 104-6, 208, 209, 212, 232-3, 253, 279
and the TCBS 6, 14, 55, 56, 58, 63, 101-2, 104-6, 175, 176-7, 183-5, 208, 251, 253, 304, 305
and Tolkien 4-5, 16-17, 19, 33, 55, 123, 124, 206, 207, 231, 232-3, 240, 250-1, 281, 283-4
and Tolkien’s writing 69-70, 119-20, 121-2, 123-4, 132-3, 208, 224, 240, 243, 280-1, 288, 296
and Tulkas 257fn.
Wiseman, Elsie (née Daniel; CLW’s mother) 4, 251
Wiseman, Reverend Frederick Luke (CLW’s father) 4, 47
Wiseman, Patricia Joan (née Wragge; CLW’s second wife) 283
Withernsea, Holderness 234, 235, 236
Wood, Susan (Patricia Wiseman’s daughter) 283
Wright, Andrew (Cambridgeshires) 156, 170
Wright, Joseph 30, 37, 42
English Dialect Dictionary 30
Primer of the Gothic Language 16
Yavanna (a Vala) 241
Yeats, W. B. 7, 93
Yelin (Winter) 222
Yelur (Melko) 222
Ylmir (Ulmo) 237, 238
Ypres 199, 247, 287
battles of 50, 239, 250 and fn.
Yser, River, Belgium 50
Zollern Redoubt, France 195
Tolkien and The Great War
‘To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939…by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.’
So J. R. R. Tolkien responded to critics who saw The Lord of the Rings as a reaction to the Second World War. Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe.
Drawing on Tolkien’s personal wartime papers, this major biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of close friends who spurred his mythology into life. John Garth argues that the experience of the First World War is key to Middle-earth’s enduring power, and that Tolkien used his mythic imagination to reflect the cataclysm of his generation, reshaping a literary tradition that resonates to this day.
John Garth studied English at Oxford University and has since worked as a newspaper journalist in London. A long-standing taste for the works of Tolkien, combined with an interest in the First World War, fuelled the five years of research which have gone into Tolkien and the Great War.
‘A highly intelligent book exploring Tolkien’s personal experience of the First World War…Garth displays impressive skills both as a researcher and writer’
MAX HASTINGS
‘Even if you are not a Lord of the Rings fan, I commend this book to you. It is all so interesting in itself, and I have rarely read a book which so intelligently graphed the relation between a writer’s inner life and his outward circumstances’
A. N. WILSON
‘Garth’s brilliantly argued study convincingly portrays Tolkien in an entirely different league from other, more familiar writers on war’
Daily Mail
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.tolkien.co.uk
This paperback edition 2004
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003
Copyright © John Garth 2003
Previously unpublished material © The Tolkien Trust/The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 2003
Cover: Tolkien and fellow students at Exeter College, Oxford, in June 1914
John Garth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-37387-1
This book is sold subject to the condit
ion that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
* Gautisk might have been an extrapolation from Gothic, but it was probably meant to be the tongue of the Geats of ancient Scandinavia, the language that the monster-slaying hero Beowulf would have spoken before his story was written down in Anglo-Saxon. Although Rob Gilson’s grasp of philology was confessedly poor, some of the sobriquets he used in his letters to his friends invite speculation that he was in on his friend’s language-invention game. Unfortunately deciphering them is also a matter of guesswork. Tolkien appears to be ‘Mr Undarhruiménitupp’ and G. B. Smith is ‘Haughadel’ or ‘Hawaughdall’.
* Every participant in the school’s annual Latin debates sported a classical tag. By straightforward translation, Wiseman was Sapientissimo Ingenti and Barrowclough Tumulus Vallis. Cary Gilson was Carus Helveticus, in honour of his Alpine enthusiasms, and Rob had been his diminutive, Carellus Helveticulus. Wilfrid Payton was Corcius Pato and his younger brother Ralph Corcius Pato Minor. Vincent Trought was a very fishy Salmonius Tructa Rufus; but ‘Tea-Cake’ Barnsley was Placenta Horreo, from the Latin words for ‘cake’ and ‘barn’. Tolkien’s tags were all puns on his surname rendered jokily as ‘toll keen’: Vectigalius Acer, Portorius Acer Germanicus and, with a nod to his mastery of languages, Eisphorides Acribus Polyglotteus.
* He had perhaps only encountered the name in Rider Haggard’s She, which lists ‘Sekhet, the lion-headed’ among the Egyptian powers, but does not specify her gender.
* Adfuit omen acquires a special force from its contrast with the normal phrase, Absit omen, ‘Let there not be an omen’. It might be paraphrased, ‘It bloody well was an omen’.
* Vincent Trought was born in Birmingham on 8 April 1893 and died on 20 January 1912 in Gorran Haven, where he is buried.
* Later the 14th, 15th, and 16th Battalions of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
* The classicist F. L. Lucas survived the war to become a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and a critic, poet, and dramatist.
* A single illustration may serve. Tolkien decided that a primitive ‘root’ LIŘI had survived almost unchanged in Qenya as liri-, the stem of a verb meaning ‘to sing’. By adding various noun-forming suffixes, it also produced liritta, ‘poem, lay, written poem’, and lirilla, ‘lay, song’. However, the past tense was lindë, apparently formed by inserting an ‘infix’, -n- (a morphological change), which combined with the original -ř- shifted to -nd- (a phonological change). But lindë acted as a stem in its own right, adding a suffix to produce lindelë, ‘song, music’, or losing its unaccented final syllable for lin, ‘musical voice, air, melody, tune’. It also appears in compounds with other Qenya words as lindorëa, ‘singing at dawn’ (applied especially to birds), and lindeloktë, ‘singing cluster’, the name for the laburnum (where we see the semantic process of metaphor at work). All these transformation-types have their equivalents in real-world languages.
* Wade-Gery took over as commanding officer of the 3rd Salford Pals from April 1917 to May 1918 and was awarded the Military Cross. He was later Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at Oxford and a fellow of Merton College near the end of Tolkien’s professorship there. He published several books on ancient Greek history and literature.
* The title ‘Glastonbury’ was prescribed in the rebus for the Newdigate competition, worth about £300 to the winner. (Among the other aspiring Oxford poets who wrote a ‘Glastonbury’ entry was Aldous Huxley.)
* The 19th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers is usually referred to here as the ‘3rd Salford Pals’ to distinguish it from the three other battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers that come into this story.
* In his biography of Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter overplays Tolkien’s dislike of Shakespeare on the evidence of a bombastic piece of school debate polemic. Tolkien disliked reading Shakespeare but could enjoy watching Hamlet and, as Tom Shippey has argued, his own work was influenced by Macbeth. He came to blame Shakespeare for bastardizing the ‘fairy’ tradition with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but ‘Goblin Feet’ shows that, in 1915, Tolkien had not yet rebelled fully against the Shakespearean approach.
* It appears that Tolkien had a running order for the poems he planned to include. Intriguingly, Reynolds told Tolkien, ‘On the whole I think I should advise you to accept your friend’s offer. Though it is hardly necessary to warn you that you must be prepared for the book to fall very flat.’ There is no indication of what this publication offer was.
* Tolkien gave further information about the Shadow-folk in ‘The Book of Lost Tales’ a few years later; see p. 259 below.
* The unit to which Smith was attached temporarily in Thiepval Wood on the Somme was the 2nd Manchesters, in which the war poet Wilfred Owen later served and died.
* February, the month of Hilary Tolkien’s birth, is named Amillion after Amillo; but Tolkien had to split January in two so he could name the second half, Erintion, in honour of Edith’s birthday (21 January) and the first half, Lirillion, in honour of his own (3 January).
* In real terms today, up to £1,480 a year and about £14 a day.
* Gilson was referring, perhaps, to Bécourt château near La Boisselle, where his battalion spent much time in the run-up to the Somme. The garden there is described in similar terms in C. C. R Murphy’s History of the Suffolk Regiment.
* The Gilsons sent the batman £50 that Rob had left him (the equivalent of nearly £2,000 today); but Bradnam had not mentioned the severity of his condition, and he was dead by the end of the first week in August following two amputations of parts of his leg. Major Philip Morton died in Rouen a few days later, an old soldier of fifty-two.
* The brigade signal officer was Tolkien’s predecessor at battalion level, Lieutenant W. H. Reynolds. The quartermaster (killed in 1917) was Lieutenant Joseph Bowyer, a professional soldier twice Tolkien’s age and the grandson of a Lancashire Fusilier from the Peninsular War.
* Officially renamed the 14th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, it had been part of Smith’s division, the 32nd, during training but their paths diverged on arrival in France when the unit (with Hilary Tolkien’s 16th Royal Warwickshires) transferred to another division.
* ‘Artois’ is an odd error for Picardy, perhaps prompted by Tolkien’s acquaintance with Bus-lès-Artois.
* The Fusiliers were in the same trenches they had held from 28 to 31 August: new ‘parallels’ at the head of Elgin and Inniskilling Avenues.
* It remained essential, and a bafflement to its users, in the Second World War: ‘What is my greatest joy in life, / More precious even than my wife, / So comforting ‘midst all this strife? / My Fullerphone. / How well I love your merry tricks; / Even when your buzzer sticks; / Delighting me with
faint key clicks; / Oh Fullerphone…/ Potentiometer, it’s true / I’m not sure what to do with you. / Yet even you add beauty to / My Fullerphone.’ – from R. Mellor, ‘Ode to a Fullerphone’.
* The Gilsons remained in some uncertainty over the exact location of Rob’s grave for three months until inquiries by his father and sister confirmed that he had been buried in Bécourt Cemetery.
* Among the earliest instances of Gnomish are three heraldic devices of the towns of Tol Erethrin (Tol Erëssea): Taurobel (a variant of Tavrobel), Cortirion (Kortirion, or Warwick), and Celbaros, which depicts a fountain and intertwined rings appropriate to Cheltenham, the spa town where Tolkien asked Edith Bratt to marry him. Ranon and Ecthelin (suggesting the Gnomish for ‘fountain’) stand for ‘Ronald’ and ‘Edith’.
* Indeed, under certain conditions, where a Qenya word had a voiceless sound, the related Goldogrin word would have its voiced equivalent instead; so Taniqetil, the mountain of Valinor, was called by the Gnomes Danigwethl, and ‘lamentation’ or the weeping willow not siqilissë but sigwithiel. There were, of course, many more phonological differences between the two languages. Sigwithiel also shows a morphological difference, being built from the same root as siqilissë, SIQI, using a quite distinct affix.