Part 5 (2/2)

What were the wo meanwhile? How should I know? I am a man and never spied on the mysteries of the Bona Dea' So writes C S Lewis in The Four Loves while speculating on the history of male friendshi+p This is the inevitable corollary of a life that centres on the coet left out of it

Edith Tolkien had only been given a liood in music, was indifferent in other subjects She had spent a few years in a Bir-house, then a period at Cheltenham in a markedly non-intellectualwith her poorly educated ed cousin Jennie There had been no chance either to continue her education or to iood deal of her independence She had been set for a career as a piano teacher and just possibly as a soloist, but this prospect had simply faded away, first of all because there had been no i, and then because she had married Ronald Tolkien In those days there was in normal circu to earn her living after e, for to do so would have been an indication that the husband could not earn enough by hih she continued to play regularly until old age, and her e her to pursue any intellectual activity, partly because he did not consider it to be a necessary part of her role as wife and mother, and partly because his attitude to her in courtshi+p (exemplified by his favourite term for her, little one') was not associated with his own intellectual life; to her he showed a side of his personality quite different from that perceived by hishis cronies, so at home he expected to live in as priht have been able to make a positive contribution to his life in the University A nued to do this A few lucky ones such as Joseph Wright's wife Lizzie were themselves expert in their husband's subjects, and could assist in their work But a number of other wives who, like Edith, did not have university degrees could by their expertof a social centre for their husbands' friends, and so participate inworked out rather differently for Edith She was inclined to be shy, for she had led a very limited social life in childhood and adolescence, and when she came to live in Oxford in 1918 she was unnerved by what she found She and Ronald and the baby (and her cousin Jennie, as still with the until they moved to Leeds) lived in modest rooms in a side-street in the town; and, from her viewpoint as someone who did not know Oxford, the University see buildings where iowns, and where Ronald disappeared to work each day When the University deigned to cross her threshold it was in the person of polite but aard young men, friends of Ronald's who did not kno to talk to wo to say, for their worlds siht be dons' wives, such as the terrifying Mrs Farnell, wife of the Rector of Exeter, whose presence even frightened Ronald These women only confirmed Edith in her belief that the University was unapproachable in its es or their turreted ly at baby John in his cot, and when they departed they would leave their calling-cards on the hall tray (one card bearing their own na their husband's) to indicate that Mrs Tolkien was of course expected to return the call after a short interval But Edith's nerve failed her

What could she say to these people if she went to their i houses? What possible conversation could she have with these stately women, whose talk was of people of whohters and tided cousins and other Oxford hostesses? Ronald orried, for he knehat a solecism would be committed if his wife did not follow the strict Oxford etiquette He persuaded her to return one call, to Lizzie Wright, who although very learned was not at all like reat deal of her husband's openness and cohts' front door hi away round the corner All the other calling-cards gathered dust, the calls were left unreturned, and it became known that Mr Tolkien's wife did not call and must therefore be quietly excluded from the round of dinner parties and At Homes

Then the Tolkiens s were different there People occupied ordinary -cards Another university wife lived a few doors down in St Mark's Terrace and often called for a chat Edith also began to see a good deal of Ronald's pupils who came in for tutorials or tea, and she liked many of them very much Many of these pupils became family friends who kept in touch with her in later years and often came to visit There were informal university dances which she enjoyed

Even the children (there were now John, Michael, and, at the end of their tiotten, for the university organised splendid Christmas parties at which the Vice-Chancellor used to dress up as Father Christer house in Darnley Road, away from the smoke and dirt of the city They employed a maid and a nurse for the children On the whole Edith was happy

But then suddenly they were back in Oxford The first house in Northht by Ronald while Edith was still in Leeds, without her ever having seen it, and she thought it was too sworrapher's studio in Leeds, and they had to be given lengthy and expensive treaton School they were at first unhappy there ah-and-tuain Not until after the birth of Priscilla in 1929 and the er house next door in 1930 could she feel settled

Even then, faained the equilibriuan to feel that she was being ignored by Ronald In terreat deal:was done there, and he was not often out for s a week But it was really aand considerate to her, greatly concerned about her health (as she was about his) and solicitous about domestic matters But she could see that one side of him only came alive when he was in the company of men of his own kind More specifically she noticed and resented his devotion to Jack Lewis

On the occasions when Lewis came to Northmoor Road, the children liked hiave them books by E Nesbit, which they enjoyed But with Edith he was shy and ungainly Consequently she could not understand the delight that Ronald took in his company, and she became a little jealous There were other difficulties She had only known a home life of the most limited sort in her own childhood, and she therefore had no exa of her household Not surprisingly she cloaked this uncertainty in authoritarian-is that meals be precisely on time, that the children eat up every scrap, and that servants should perform their work impeccably Underneath all this she was often very lonely, frequently being without co that part of the day when Ronald was out or in his study During these years Oxford society was gradually becoid; but she did not trust it, and sheother dons' fanes She also suffered from severe headaches which could prostrate her for a day or more

It quickly became clear to Ronald that Edith was unhappy with Oxford, and especially that she was resentful of his men friends Indeed he perceived that his need of male friendshi+p was not entirely compatible with married life But he believed that this was one of the sad facts of a fallen world; and on the whole he thought that a ht to male pleasures, and should if necessary insist on thee he wrote: There are h they cause a fuss Let him not lie about theht: just insist Such lass of beer, the pipe, the non writing of letters, the other friend, etc, etc If the other side's claims really are unreasonable (as they are at ti married folk) they are e'

There was also the problem of Edith's attitude to Catholicism Before they were land and to become a Catholic, and she had resented this a little at the tune During the subsequent years she had ale her anti-Catholic feelings hardened, and by the ti resent the children to church In part these feelings were due to Ronald's rigid, almost medieval, insistence upon frequent confession; and Edith had always hated confessing her sins to a priest Nor could he discuss her feelings with her in a rational manner, certainly not with the lucidity he deuments with Lewis: to Edith he presented only his eion, of which she had little understanding

Occasionally her s burst into fury; but at last after one such outburst in 1940 there was a true reconciliation between her and Ronald, in which she explained her feelings and even declared that she wished to resuion In the event she did riot return to regular church-going, but for the rest of her life she showed no resenthted to take an interest in church affairs, so that it appeared even to friends ere Catholics that she was an active church-goer

To some extent Ronald and Edith lived separate lives at North- different hours He worked late, partly because he was short of tione to bed that he could stay at his desk without interruption During the day he could not work for long before she summoned him to some domestic duty, or called him to come and have tea with a friend These frequent interruptions, themselves no more than an understandable demand from Edith for affection and attention, were often an irritant to hi to picture her as excluded totally fro with her anything like as fully as he had done long before at Great Haywood; not since then had she been encouraged to participate in his work, and of his es of The Book of Lost Tales' are in her handwriting Yet she inevitably shared in the fa The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and although she was not well acquainted with the details of his books and did not have a deep understanding of them, he did not shut her out from this side of his life Indeed she was the first person to whole and Sed by her approval

He and Edith sharedthese, sohter of the original Oxford Dictionary editor Sir James Murray) and her nephew Robert Murray, and forues such as Simonne d'Ardenne, Elaine Griffiths, Stella Mills, and Mary Salu All these were family friends, as much a part of Edith's life as of Ronald's, and this itself was a binding force between thes to the sarew older each went his and her oay in this respect, Ronald discoursing on an English place-name apparently oblivious that the sa addressed by Edith on the subject of a grandchild's uests learnt to cope with

Those friends and others who knew Ronald and Edith Tolkien over the years never doubted that there was deep affection between thes, the alree to which each worried about the other's health, and the care hich they chose and wrapped each other's birthday presents; and in the large ly abandoned such a large part of his life in retireive Edith the last years at Bourneree to which she showed pride in his fame as an author

A principal source of happiness to theether until the end of their lives, and it was perhaps the strongest force in the hted to discuss and mull over every detail of the lives of their children, and later of their grandchildren They were very proud when Michael won the George Medal in the Second World War for his action as an anti-aircraft gunner defending aerodromes in the Battle of Britain; and they felt similar pride when John was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church shortly after the war Tolkien was i as a father, never shy of kissing his sons in public even when they were grown men, and never reserved in his display of war about it so many years later, life at Northmoor Road seems dull and uneventful, we should realise that this was not how the family felt it to be at the tiettable occasion in 1932 when Tolkien bought his first car, a Morris Cowley that was nicknaistration After learning to drive he took the entire family by car to visit his brother Hilary at his Evesha the journey Jo' sustained two punctures and knocked down part of a dry-stone wall near Chipping Norton, with the result that Edith refused to travel in the car again until some months later - not entirely without justification, for Tolkien's driving was daring rather than skilful When accelerating headlong across a busy et into a side-street, he would ignore all other vehicles and cry Charge em and they scatter!' - and scatter they did Jo' was later replaced by a second Morris which did duty until the beginning of the Second World War, when petrol rationing made it impractical to keep it By this tie that the internal co to the landscape, and after the war he did not buy another car or drive again

What else re up the asphalt of the old tennis-court at 20 Northetable-plot, under the supervision of their father, who (like their h he left etables and pruning trees to John, preferring to concentrate his own attention on the roses and on the lawn, from which he would remove every possible weed The early years at 22 Northirls, who told folk-tales about trolls Visits to the theatre, which their father always seeh he declared he did not approve of Draory's up the Woodstock Road, or at the Carmelite convent nearby The barrel of beer in the coal-hole behind the kitchen which dripped regularly and (said their ust afternoons boating on the river Cherwell (which was only just down the road), floating in the fadalen Bridge, or better still poling up-river towards Water Eaton and Islip, where a picnic tea could be spread on the bank Walks across the fields to Wood Eaton to look for butterflies, and then back along by the river where Michael would hide in the crack of an old alks when their father seee about trees and plants Seaside suan ca the children with his loud and boisterous ways just as he had embarrassed Ronald and Hilary at Lyme twenty-five years before The family holiday at Lamorna Cove in Cornwall in 1932 with Charles Wrenn and his wife and daughter, when Wrenn and Tolkien held a swi pipes while they swam This was the holiday about which Tolkien later wrote: There was a curious local character, an old ossip and weather-wisdoee, and the name became part of faee was primarily directed by alliteration; but I did not invent it It was in fact the naham) for cotton-wool' Then there were the later holidays at Sidmouth, where there were hill walks and marvellous rock-pools by the sea, and where their father was already beginning to write The Lord of the Rings; the drives on autuhall or Brill or Charlton-on-Otmoor, or west into Berkshi+re and up White Horse Hill to see the ancient long-barron as Wayland's Smithy; the memories of Oxford, of the countryside, and of the stories that their father told the the Leeds years John, the eldest son, often found difficulty in getting to sleep

When he was lying awake his father would come and sit on his bed and tell him a tale of Carrots', a boy with red hair who clie adventures

In this fashi+on Tolkien discovered that he could use the i the complexities of The Silmarillion to invent simpler stories He had an arew older this ames he played with theer boy was troubled with nightmares These tales, invented in the early days at Northmoor Road, were about the irrepressible villain Bill Stickers', a huge hulk of aHis naate that said BILL STICKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED, and a sihteous person as always in pursuit of Stickers, Major Road Ahead'

The Bill Stickers' stories were never written down, but others were When he was on holiday with the family at Filey in the suth tale for John and Michael The younger boy lost a toy dog on the beach, and to console hian to invent and narrate the adventures of Rover, a s who annoys a wizard, is turned into a toy, and is then lost on the beach by a s, for Rover is found by the sand-sorcerer Psaain, and sends hie adventures, on Tolkien wrote down this story under the title Roverandom' Many years later he offered it to his publishers, very tentatively, as one of a number of possible successors to The Hobbit, but it was not thought suitable on that occasion, and Tolkien never offered it again

The children's enthusiased hiot off to a good start but were never finished Indeed soressed beyond the first few sentences, like the tale of Timothy titus, a very s other stories begun but soon abandoned was the tale of To' and describes a character who is clearly to be the hero of the tale: Tom Bombadil was the nadoh in his boots he was, and three feet broad He wore a tall hat with a blue feather, his jacket was blue, and his boots were yellow'

That was as far as the story ever reached on paper, but Toure in the Tolkien faed to Michael The doll looked very splendid with the feather in its hat, but John did not like it and one day stuffed it down the lavatory Tom was rescued, and survived to become the hero of a poem by the children's father, The Adventures of Toazine in 1934 It tells of Tohter', with the Old Man Willohich shuts him up in a crack of its bole (an idea, Tolkien once said, that probably cas), with a fahost frorave of the type found on the Berkshi+re Downs not far from Oxford By itself, the poeer, and when possible successors to The Hobbit were being discussed in 1937 Tolkien suggested to his publishers that hethat Tom Bombadil was intended to represent the spirit of the (vanishi+ng) Oxford and Berkshi+re countryside' This idea was not taken up by the publishers, but Tom and his adventures subsequently found their way into The Lord of the Rings

The purchase of a car in 1932 and Tolkien's subsequentit led him to write another children's story, Mr Bliss' This is the tale of a tall thin ht yellow autos, with remarkable consequences (and a number of collisions) The story was lavishly illustrated by Tolkien in ink and coloured pencils, and the text ritten out by hi bound in a small volume Mr Bliss' owes a little to Beatrix Potter in its ironical huh Tolkien's approach is less grotesque and more delicate than Lear's Like Roverandom'

and the Bombadil poem it was shown to Tolkien's publishers in 1937, and it was received with ements were made to publish it, not sostop-gap until the true sequel was ready However itswould be very expensive, and the publishers asked Tolkien if he would re-draw thereed, but he could not find the time to undertake the work, and the ned to a drahere it remained until many years later it was sold to Marquette University in A with the manuscripts of Tolkien's published stories1 The fact that Mr Bliss' was so lavishly illustrated - was constructed indeed around the pictures - is an indication of how seriously Tolkien was taking the business of drawing and painting He had never entirely abandoned this childhood hobby, and during his undergraduate days he illustrated several of his own poeinning to develop a style that was suggestive of his affection for japanese prints and yet had an individual approach to line and colour The war and his work interrupted hiularly, one of the first results being a series of illustrations for Roverandois in 1927 and 1928, he drew pictures of scenes from The Silmarillion These sho clearly he visualised the landscapes in which his legends were set, for in several of the drawings the scenery of Lyme itself is absorbed into the stories and invested with h he had not the saures as he had with landscapes He was at his best when picturing his beloved trees, and like Arthur Rackha its inspiration to ments' (perhaps composed early in the nineteen-sixties) is a parable of the destruction of Oxford (Bovadium) by the motores manufactured by the Daemon of Vaccipratum (a reference to Lord Nuffield and his motor-works at Cowley) which block the streets, asphyxiate the inhabitants, and finally explode (whose work he adive to twisted root and branch a sinister mobility that was at the same time entirely true to nature

Tolkien's talents as a storyteller and an illustrator were combined each December, when a letter would arrive for the children from Father Christmas In 1920 when John was three years old and the family was about to move to Leeds, Tolkien had written a note to his son in shaky handwriting signed Yr loving Fr Chr' From then onwards he produced a sis the Father Christmas Letters' expanded to include many additional characters such as the Polar Bear who shares Father Christardener, an elf nanomes, and in the caves beneath Father Christoblins Every Christmas, often at the last minute, Tolkien would write out an account of recent events at the North Pole in the shaky handwriting of Father Christmas, the rune-like capitals used by the Polar Bear, or the flowing script of Ilbereth Then he would add drawings, write the address on the envelope (labelling it with such superscriptions as By gnohly realistic North Polar postage stamp Finally he would deliver the letter This was done in a variety of ways The simplest was to leave it in the fireplace as if it had been brought down the chie noises to be heard in the early ether with a snowy footprint on the carpet indicated that Father Christmas himself had called Later the local postman became an accomplice and used to deliver the letters himself, so how could the children not believe in the until each in turn reached adolescence and discovered by accident or deduction that their father was the true author of the letters Even then, nothing was said to destroy the illusion for the younger children

Besides being entertained by their father's own stories, the Tolkien children were always provided with full nursery bookshelves Much of their reading-matter consisted of Tolkien's own childhood favourites, such as George Macdonald's Curdie' stories and Andrew Lang's fairy-tale collections; but the nursery also housedthes, which was published in 1927 Tolkien noted that his sons were highly ahtly taller than the average table but broad in the shoulders and of great strength'

Tolkien himself only found the time or the inclination to read a lihter contemporary novels He liked the stories of John Buchan, and he also read some of Sinclair Lewis's work; certainly he knew Babbitt, the novel published in 1922 about a radually coo into literary s and Babbitt played a small part in The Hobbit Tolkien wrote to W H Auden that the former was probably an unconscious source-book: for the Hobbits, not of anything else', and he told an interviewer that the word hobbit ht have been associated with Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt Certainly not rabbit, as soness that hobbits do His world is the sains of another story that Tolkien wrote at so the nineteen-thirties, perhaps in part to amuse his children, but chiefly to please himself This is Fardoharew fro reptile-hall' or dragon-hall'), a village a few miles to the east of Oxford The first version of the story, considerably shorter than that eventually published, is a plain tale that draws its humour from the events rather than from the narrative style It too was offered to Tolkien's publishers as a possible successor to The Hobbit, and like its companions was considered excellent but not exactly anted at that moment

Some months later, early in 1938, Tolkien was due to read a paper to an undergraduate society at Worcester College on the subject of fairy-stories But the paper had not been written, and as the day approached Tolkien decided to read Farmer Giles instead When he reconsidered it, he decided that he couldthat followed he turned it into a longer story with sophisticated hue I was very much surprised at the result,' he recorded afterwards The audience was apparently not bored - indeed they were generally convulsed with mirth' When it became apparent that the sequel to The Hobbit would not be ready for some considerable time, he offered the revised Farmer Giles to his publishers, and it was accepted with enthusiasm; but wartiinal choice of illustrator meant that the book did not appear until 1949, with pictures by a young artist nahted Tolkien, and he wrote of them: They are more than illustrations, they are a collateral the chosen as illustrator for C S Lewis's Narnia stories, and she later drew the pictures for Tolkien's anthology of poems and for Smith of Wootton Major, she and her husband became friends with the Tolkiens in later years

Farmer Giles did not attract much notice at the time of its publication, and it was not until the success of The Lord of the Rings had reflected upon the sales of Tolkien's other books that it reached a wide public At one ti a sequel to it, and he sketched the plot in so and a page-boy naon, and it was to be set in the same countryside as its predecessor But by 1945 the war had scarred the Oxfordshi+re landscape that Tolkien loved so much, and he wrote to his publishers: The sequel (to Farmer Giles) is plotted but unwritten, and likely to redom, and the woods and plains are aerodroh sos, the short stories that Tolkien wrote for his children in the nineteen-twenties and thirties were really jeux d' esprit His real corander themes, both in verse and prose

He continued to work on his long poem The Gest of Beren and Luthien' and on the alliterative verses telling the story of Turin and the dragon In 1926 he sent these and other poelish literature at King Edward's School, and asked for his criticism Reynolds approved of the various shorter pieces that Tolkien sent, but only gave lukewarical poeed by C S Lewis's approval of the Beren and Luthien poeh the Turin verses reached more than two thousand lines and the Gest' more than four thousand, neither poem was completed; and by the time Tolkien came to revise The Sils) he had perhaps abandoned any intention of incorporating them into the published text of the cycle

Nevertheless both poeends, particularly the Gest', which contains the fullest version of the Beren and Luthien story

The poems were also important for Tolkien's technical develop couplets of the early stanzas of the Gest' are occasionally monotonous in rhythm or banal in rhyme, but as Tolkien becarew es The Turin verses are in an alliterative lo-Saxon verse fore describes Turin's childhood and adolescence in the elven kingdom of Doriath: Much lore he learned, and loved wisdo and ahat he wrought turned; what he loved he lost, what he longed for he won not; and full friendshi+p he found not easily, nor was lightly loved for his looks were sad

He was gloo sorrow that seared his youth

Onof weapons; and in weaving song ?

he had aandthis ancient poetic style for his own purposes Tolkien was achieving so quite unusual and remarkably powerful It is a pity that he wrote - or at least published -so little alliterative verse, for it suited his iination far more than did th during the nineteen-thirties by no y One, inspired by the Celtic legends of Brittany, was Aotrou and Itroun' (Breton for Lord and Lady'), of which the earliest manuscript is dated September 1930 The poem tells the story of a childless lord who obtains a potion froeneric Breton term for a person of fairy race) As a result of the philtre, twins are born to the lord's wife, but the Corrigan demands in payic consequences Aotrou and Itroun' was published soist Gwyn Jones, in the Welsh Review It is in alliterative verse, and also incorporates a rhyme-scheme

Another major poem from this period has alliteration but no rhyinative incursion into the Arthurian cycle, whose legends had pleased him since childhood, but which he found too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive' Arthurian stories were also unsatisfactory to him as ion In his own Arthurian poean an individual rendering of the Morte d'Arthur, in which the king and Gawain go to war in Saxon lands' but are summoned home by news of Mordred's treachery The poem was never finished, but it was read and approved by E V Gordon, and by R W Chalish at London University, who considered it to be great stuff - really heroic, quite apart fro how the Beowulfin that it is one of the few pieces of writing in which Tolkien deals explicitly with sexual passion, describing Mordred's unsated lust for Guinever (which is how Tolkien chooses to spell her name): His bed was barren; there black phantoe fury in his brain had brooded till bleak ic heroine beloved by most Arthurian writers; instead she is described as lady ruthless, fair as fay-wo for the woe of h The Fall of Arthur' was abandoned in the mid nineteen-thirties, Tolkien wrote as late as 1955 that he still hoped to complete it; but in the event it remained unfinished

Once or twice he decided to endary, and fantastic, and wrote a conventional short story for adults, in