Part 1 (1/2)

JRR Tolkien_ A Biography

Humphrey Carpenter

Author's note

This book is based upon the letters, diaries, and other papers of the late Professor J R R Tolkien, and upon the reminiscences of his family and friends

Tolkien hiraphy Or rather, he disliked its use as a form of literary criticism

One of ation of an author's biography is an entirely vain and false approach to his works' Yet he was undoubtedly aware that the rehly likely that a biography would be written after his death; and indeed he appears to have made some preparation for this himself, for in the last years of his life he annotated a number of old letters and papers with explanatory notes or other coes of recollections of his childhood It n to his wishes

In writing it I have tried to tell the story of Tolkien's life without atteements of his works of fiction This is partly in deference to his own views, but in any case it seeraphy of a writer is not necessarily the best place to ements, which will after all reflect the character of the critic just as much as that of his subject I have however tried to delineate some of the literary and other influences that caination, in the hope that this ht on his books, HC

Oxford, 1976

Part one

A Visit

It isday in 1967 I have driven fro the London road, and up a hill into the respectable but dull suburb of Heading ton Near a large private school for girls I turn left into Sandfield Road, a residential street of two-storey brick houses, each with its tidy front garden

Nu way down the road The house is painted white and is partially screened by a tall fence, a hedge, and overhanging trees I park the car, open the arched gate, go up the short path between rose bushes, and ring the front door bell

For a long time, there is silence, except for the ru to think of ringing again or of turning ahen the door is opened by Professor Tolkien

He is slightly smaller than I expected Tallness is a quality of which heto see that he hiht - not h to be noticeable

I introduce myself, and (since (I made this appointment in advance and am expected) the quizzical and somewhat defensive look that first met me is replaced by a srasped

Behind him I can see the entrance-hall, which is s that one would not expect in the house of a middle-class elderly couple WH Auden, in an injudicious remark quoted in the newspapers, has called the house hideous',but that is nonsense It is simply ordinary and suburban

Mrs Tolkien appears for a reet me She is smaller than her husband, a neat old lady hite hair bound close to her head, and dark eyebrows Pleasantries are exchanged, and then the Professor comes out of the front door and takes me into his office' at the side of the house

This proves to be the garage, long abandoned by any car - he explains that he has not had a car since the beginning of the Second World War - and, since his retire of books and papers fore room The shelves are cray, and editions of texts in lish and Old Norse; but there is also a section devoted to translations of The Lord of the Rings into Polish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and japanese; and the e

On the floor is a very old portmanteau full of letters, and on the desk are ink-bottles, nibs and pen-holders, and two typewriters The room smells of books and tobacco smoke

It is not very co me here, but he explains that there is no space in the study-bedroo He says that in any case this is all tee to finish at least the major part of the work promised to his publishers, and then he and Mrs Tolkien will be able to s, away frohtly embarrassed after the last re, seat myself in a wheel-back chair, as he takes his pipe from the pocket of his tweed jacket and launches into an explanation of his inability to spare me more than a few minutes A shi+ny blue alarm clock ticks noisily across the room as if to emphasise the point He says that he has to clear up an apparent contradiction in a passage of The Lord of the Rings that has been pointed out in a letter froent consideration as a revised edition of the book is about to go to press He explains it all in great detail, talking about his book not as a work of fiction but as a chronicle of actual events; he seeht error that must now be corrected or explained away, but as a historian who ht on an obscurity in a historical doculy, he seems to think that I know the book as well as he does I have read itabout details that in to fear that he will throw sonorance and indeed now he does ask me a question, but fortunately it is rhetorical and clearly requires no more than the answer yes'

I am still nervous that there will be other and harder questions, doubly nervous because I cannot hear everything that he is saying He has a strange voice, deep but without resonance, entirely English but with some quality in it that I cannot define, as if he had coe or civilisation Yet for much of the tune he does not speak clearly Words coer rushes Whole phrases are elided or compressed in the haste of erasps his mouth, which makes it even harder to hear hi - but then there co pause in which I am surely expected to reply Reply to what? If there was a question, I did not understand it Suddenly he resu finished his sentence) and now he reaches an emphatic conclusion As he does so, he jah clenched jaws, and strikes a le to think of an intelligent re soins to talk about a rery Now I feel that I can contribute a little, and I say soent He listens with courteous interest, and answersmy remark (which was really very trivial) to excellent use, and soThen he is off on soential topic, and I am once more out of reeh it does occur to me that I am perhaps valued just as much as a listener as a participant in the conversation

As he talks heabout the dark little rooy that hints at restlessness He waves his pipe in the air, knocks it out in an ashtray, fills it, strikes a match, but scarcely ever smokes for more than a few puffs He has s on the third finger of the left hand His clothes are a little ruh he is in his seventy-sixth year there is only a suggestion of tubbiness behind the buttons of his coloured waistcoat I cannot for long keep my attention from his eyes, which may wander about the room or stare out of the , yet now and then will return to dart a glance at aze as some vital point is e with and emphasise each mood

The flood of words has dried up for a ain I perceive my opportunity, and state my business, which now seems unimportant Yet he turns to it immediately with enthusiasm, and listens to me attentively Then, when this part of the conversation is done, I get up to go; but for the moment my departure is evidently neither expected nor desired, for he has started to talk again Once y

His eyes fix on sootten that I ah its stem It occurs to me that in all externals he resee caricature of a don But that is exactly what he is not It is rather as if souise of an elderly professor The bodythis shabby little suburban roo the plains and mountains of Middle-earth

Then it is all over, and I aate - the smaller one opposite the front door: he explains that he has to keep the garage gates padlocked to stop football spectators parking their cars in his drive when they attend matches at the local stadiuain Not for the moment, as neither he nor Mrs Tolkien has been well, and they are going on holiday to Bournemouth, and his work isup unanswered But soone, a little forlornly, back into the house

Part Two

1892-1916: Early years

1 Bloemfontein

On a March day in 1891 the stealand to the Cape Standing on the stern deck, waving to the faood-looking girl of twenty-one

Mabel Suffield was going to South Africa topoint in her life Behind her lay Biry days, and family teas Ahead was an unknown country, eternal sunshi+ne, and h Mabel was so young, there had been a long engagement, for Arthur Tolkien had proposed to her and she had accepted three years earlier, soon after her eighteenth birthday However, her father would not permit a formal betrothal for two years because of her youth, and so she and Arthur could only exchange letters in secret andparties where the family eye was upon theer sister Jane, ould pass theha a train home fro parties were generally s at which Arthur and Mabel could only exchange covert glances or at most the touch of a sleeve, while his sisters played the piano

It was a Tolkien piano, of course, one of the upright models manufactured by the family firm that had made what money the Tolkiens once possessed On the lid was inscribed: Irresistible Piano-Forte: Manufactured Expressly for Extreme Climates'; but the piano firm was in other hands now, and Arthur's father was bankrupt, without a family business to provide employment for his-sons Arthur had tried to ham office was slow, and he knew that if he was to support a wife and family he would have to look elsewhere

He turned his eye to South Africa, where the gold and dia business with good prospects for e to Mabel he had obtained a post with the Bank of Africa, and had sailed for the Cape

Arthur's initiative had soon been justified For the first year he had been obliged to travel extensively, for he was sent on tes to many of the principal towns between the Cape and Johannesburg He acquitted hier of the ie Free State A house was provided for hie was possible Mabel celebrated her twenty-first birthday at the end of January 1891, and only a feeeks later she was on board Roslin Castle and sailing towards South Africa and Arthur, their betrothal now blessed with her father's approval

Or perhaps tolerance' would be a better word, for John Suffield was a proud man, especially in the matter of ancestry which in many as all he had left to be proud of Once he had owned a prosperous drapery business in Birham, but now like Arthur Tolkien's father he was bankrupt He had to earn his living as a commercial traveller for Jeyes disinfectant; yet the failure of his fortunes had only strengthened his pride in the old and respectable Midland family from which he was descended What were the Tolkiens in coenerations - scarcely a fit pedigree for his daughter's husband

If such reflections occupied Mabel during her three-week voyage, they were far from her mind on the day early in April when the shi+p sailed into harbour at Cape Town, and she caught sight at last of a white-suited, handsoure on the quay, scarcely looking his thirty-four years as he peered anxiously through the crowd for a gli Mab'

Arthur Reuel Tolkien and Mabel Suffield were married in Cape Town Cathedral on 16 April 1891, and spent their honey railway journey of nearly seven hundred e Free State, and the house which was to be Mabel's first and only houn life forty-five years earlier as a reat size

Certainly it did not present an iot off the train at the newly built railway station In the centre of the toas thefarons to unload and sell the bales of wool that were the backbone of the State's economy Around the square were clustered solid indications of civilisation: the colonnaded Parlialican cathedral, the hospital, the public library, and the Presidency

There was a club for European residents (Gerlish), a tennis club, a law court, and a sufficiency of shops But the trees that had been planted by the first settlers were still sparse, and the town's park was, as Mabel observed, no more than about ten s and a patch of water Only a few hundred yards beyond the houses was the open veldt where wolves, wild dogs, and jackals roamed and ht be attacked by alion From these treeless plains the wind blew into Bloe the dust of the broad dirt-covered streets Mabel, writing to her family, summed up the town as Owlin' Wilderness! Horrid Waste!'