Part 2 (2/2)

At the end of the long vacation he travelled to Nottinghams.h.i.+re to stay for a few days on the farm that his Aunt Jane was running with the Brookes-Smiths and his brother Hilary. While at the farm he wrote a poem. It was headed with the line from Cynewulf s Crist that had so fascinated him: Eala Earendel engla beorhtast! Its t.i.tle was The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star', and it began as follows: Earendel sprang up from the Ocean's cup In the gloom of the mid-world's rim; From the door of Night as a ray of light Leapt over the twilight brim, And launching his bark like a silver spark From the golden-fading sand Down the sunlit breath of Day's fiery death He sped from Westerland.

The succeeding verses describe the star-s.h.i.+p's voyage across the firmament, a progress that continues until the morning light blots out all sight of it.

This notion of the star-mariner whose s.h.i.+p leaps into the sky had grown from the reference to Earendel' in the Cynewulf lines. But the poem that it produced was entirely original. It was in fact the beginning of Tolkien's own mythology.

By the time that Tolkien wrote The Voyage of Earendel', in the late summer of 1914, England had declared war on Germany. Already young men were enlisting in their thousands, answering Kitchener's appeal for soldiers. But Tolkien's feelings were rather different: he was concerned to stay at Oxford until he could finish his degree, being hopeful of a First Cla.s.s. So, though his aunts and uncles expected him to join up (his brother Hilary had already enlisted as a bugler) he went back to the University for the Michaelmas term.

At first he reported: It is awful. I really don't think I shall be able to go on: work seems impossible. Not a single man I know is up except Cullis.' But he became more cheerful when he learnt of the existence of a scheme whereby he could train for the army while at the University but defer his call-up until after he had taken his degree. He signed on for it.

Once he had decided what to do, life became more pleasant. He had now moved from his college rooms to digs' in St John's Street which he shared with Colin Cullis, who had not joined the army because of poor health. Tolkien found digs a delicious joy compared with the primitive life of college'. He was also delighted to discover that his T.C.B.S. friend G. B. Smith was still up at Oxford awaiting a commission. Smith was to join the Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers, and Tolkien resolved to try for a commission in the same regiment, if possible the same battalion.

A few days after the start of term he began to drill in the University Parks with the Officers' Training Corps. This had to be combined with his normal academic work, but he found that the double life suited him. Drill is a G.o.dsend,' he wrote to Edith. I have been up a fortnight nearly, and have not yet got a touch even of the real Oxford sleepies.'

He was also trying his hand at writing. His enthusiasm for William Morris had given him the idea of adapting one of the stories from the Finnish Kalevala into a Morris-style prose-and-verse romance. He chose the story of Kullervo, a hapless young man who unknowingly commits incest and, when he discovers, throws himself on to his sword.

Tolkien began work on The Story of Kullervo' as he called it, and though it was little more than a pastiche of Morris it was his first essay in the writing of a legend in verse and prose. He left it unfinished.

At the beginning of the Christmas vacation of 1914 he travelled to London to attend a gathering of the T.C.B.S.

Christopher Wiseman's family had moved south, and at their Wandsworth house there a.s.sembled all four members of the club': Tolkien, Wiseman, R. Q. Gilson, and G. B. Smith. They spent the weekend chiefly in sitting around the gas fire in the little upstairs room, smoking their pipes and talking. As Wiseman said, they felt four times the intellectual size' when they were together.

It was curious how they had gone on meeting and writing to each other, this little group of school-friends. But they had begun to hope that together they might achieve something of value. Tolkien once compared them to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but the others scoffed at the idea. Yet they did feel that in some way they were destined to kindle a new light. Perhaps it was no more than the last spark of childhood ambition before it was snuffed out by experience of the world, but for Tolkien at least it had an important and practical result. He decided that he was a poet.

Afterwards he explained that this T.C.B.S. meeting late in 1914 had helped him to find a voice for all kind of pent up things', adding: I have always laid that to the credit of the inspiration that even a few hours with the four brought to us.'

Immediately following the weekend in London he began to write poems. They were in general not very remarkable, and certainly they were not always economical in their use of words. Here are some lines from Sea Chant of an Elder Day', written on 4 December 1914 and based on Tolkien's memories of his Cornish holiday a few months previously: In a dim and perilous region, down whose great tempestuous ways I heard no sound of men's voices; in those eldest of the days, I sat on the ruined margin of the deep voiced echoing sea Whose roaring foaming music crashed in endless cadency On the land besieged for ever in an aeon of a.s.saults And torn in towers and pinnacles and caverned in great vaults.

When Tolkien showed this and other poems to Wiseman, his friend remarked that they reminded him of Symons's criticism of Meredith, *when he compared M. to a lady who liked to put on all her jewelry after breakfast'. And Wiseman advised: Don't overdo it'

Tolkien was more restrained in a poem describing his and Edith's love for each other, choosing a favourite image to express this: Lo! young we are and yet have stood like planted hearts in the great Sun of Love so long (as two fair trees in woodland or in open dale stand utterly entwined, and breathe the airs, and suck the very light together) that we have become as one, deep-rooted in the soil of Life, and tangled in sweet growth.

Among other poems written by Tolkien at this time was The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon' (which was eventually published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil). He selected a similarly fairy' subject in Goblin Feet', a poem that he wrote to please Edith who said that she liked spring and flowers and trees, and little elfin people'.

Goblin Feet' represents everything of this sort that Tolkien soon came to detest heartily, so it is scarcely fair to quote from it; yet it has an undeniable sureness of rhythm, and as it reached print in several anthologies at the time it can be said to be his first published work of any significance: I am off down the road Where the fairy lanterns glowed And the little pretty flittermice are flying: A slender band of grey It runs creepily away And the hedges and the gra.s.ses are a-sighing.

The air is full of wings Of the blundering beetle-things That warm you with their whirring.

O! I hear the tiny horns Of enchanted leprechauns And the padding feet of many gnomes a-coming.

O! the lights! O! the gleams: O! the little tinkly sounds: O! the rustle of their noiseless little robes: O! the echo of their feet, of their little happy feet: O! their swinging lamps in little star-lit globes.

G. B. Smith read all Tolkien's verses and sent him criticisms. He was encouraging, but he remarked that Tolkien might improve his verse-writing by reading more widely in English literature. Smith suggested that he should try Browne, Sidney, and Bacon; later he recommended Tolkien to look at the new poems by Rupert Brooke. But Tolkien paid little heed. He had already set his own poetic course, and he did not need anyone else to steer him.

He soon came to feel that the composition of occasional poems without a connecting theme was not what he wanted. Early in 1915 he turned back to his original Earendel verses and began to work their theme into a larger story. He had shown the original Earendel lines to G. B. Smith, who had said that he liked them but asked what they were really about. Tolkien had replied: I don't know. I'll try to find out.' Not try to invent: try to find out. He did not see himself as an inventor of story but as a discoverer of legend. And this was really due to his private languages.

He had been working for some time at the language that was influenced by Finnish, and by 1915 he had developed it to a degree of some complexity. He felt that it was a mad hobby', and he scarcely expected to find an audience for it. But he sometimes wrote poems in it, and the more he worked at it the more he felt that it needed a history' to support it. In other words, you cannot have a language without a race of people to speak it. He was perfecting the language; now he had to decide to whom it belonged.

When talking about it to Edith he referred to it as my nonsense fairy language'. Here is part of a poem written in it, and dated November 1915, March 1916'. No translation survives, although the words La.s.selanta (leaf-fall', hence Autumn') and Eldamar (the elvenhome' in the West) were to be used by Tolkien in many other contexts: Ai lintulinda La.s.selanta Pilingeve suyer nalla ganta Kuluvi ya karnevalinar V'ematte singi Eldamar.

During 1915 the picture became clear in Tolkien's mind. This, he decided, was the language spoken by the fairies or elves whom Earen-del saw during his strange voyage. He began work on a Lay of Earendel' that described the mariner's journeyings across the world before his s.h.i.+p became a star. The Lay was to be divided into several poems, and the first of these, The Sh.o.r.es of Faery', tells of the mysterious land of Valinor, where Two Trees grow, one bearing golden sun-apples and the other silver moon-apples. To this land comes Earendel.

The poem bears comparatively little relation to Tolkien's later mythological concepts, but it includes elements that were to appear in The Silmarillion, and it deserves to be quoted as an indication of what was happening in his imagination at this time. It is here printed in its earliest form: West of the Moon, East of the Sun There stands a lonely Hill Its feet are in the pale green Sea; Its towers are white and still: Beyond Taniquetil In Valinor.

No stars come there but one alone That hunted with the Moon, For there the Two Trees naked grow That bear Night's silver bloom; That bear the globed fruit of Noon In Valinor.

There are the sh.o.r.es of Faery With their moonlit pebbled strand Whose foam is silver music On the opalescent floor Beyond the great sea-shadows On the margent of the sand That stretches on for ever From the golden feet of Kor - Beyond Taniquetil In Valinor.

O! West of the Moon, East of the Sun Lies the Haven of the Star; The white town of the Wanderer And the rocks of Eglamar: There Wingelot is harboured While Earendel looks afar On the magic and the wonder Tween here and Eglamar Out, out beyond Taniquetil In Valinor - afar.

While Tolkien's mind was occupied with the seeds of his mythology he was preparing himself for Schools, his final examination in English Language and Literature. The examination began in the second week of June 1915, and Tolkien was triumphant, achieving First Cla.s.s Honours.

He could in consequence be reasonably certain of getting an academic job when the war was over; but in the meantime he had to take up his commission as a second lieutenant in the Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers. He was posted not as he had hoped to the 19th Battalion in which G. B. Smith was serving, but to the 13th. His training began in July at Bedford, where he was billeted in a house in the town with half a dozen other officers. He learnt to drill a platoon, and attended military lectures. He bought a motor bicycle which he shared with a fellow officer, and when he could get weekend leave he rode over to Warwick to visit Edith. He grew a moustache. For most of the time he looked and behaved like any other young officer.

In August he moved to Staffords.h.i.+re, and during the succeeding weeks he and his battalion were s.h.i.+fted about from one camp to another with the apparent lack of plan which characterises troop-movements in wartime. Conditions were uniformly uncomfortable, and in the intervals between inedible meals, trench drill, and lectures on machine-guns, there was little to do except play bridge (which he enjoyed) and listen to ragtime on the gramophone (which he did not). Nor did he care for the majority of his fellow officers. Gentlemen are non-existent among the superiors,'

he told Edith, and even human beings rare indeed.' He spent some of his time reading Icelandic - he was determined to keep up with his academic work during the war - but the time pa.s.sed slowly. These grey days,' he wrote, wasted in wearily going over, over and over again, the dreary topics, the dull backwaters of the art of killing, are not enjoyable.'

By the beginning of 1916 he had decided to specialise in signalling, for the prospect of dealing with words, messages, and codes was more appealing than the drudgery and responsibility of commanding a platoon. So he learnt Morse code, flag and disc signalling, the transmission of messages by heliograph and lamp, the use of signal-rockets and field-telephones, and even how to handle carrier-pigeons (which were sometimes used on the battlefield). Eventually he was appointed battalion signalling officer.

Embarkation for France was now near, and he and Edith decided to get married before he left, for the appalling death-roll among the British troops made it clear that he might never return. They had in any case waited more than long enough, for he was twenty-four and she twenty-seven. They did not have much money, but at least he was earning regular pay in the Army, and he decided to ask Father Francis Morgan to transfer all of his modest share capital to his own name. He also hoped to get some income from his poetry. His poem Goblin Feet' had been accepted by Blackwells for the annual volume of Oxford Poetry, and encouraged by this he sent a selection of his verses to the publishers Sidgwick & Jackson. To add to his capital he also sold his share in the motorbike.

He went to Birmingham to see Father Francis about the money, and to tell him that he was going to marry Edith. He managed to arrange the money matters, but when it came to the point he could not bring himself to tell his old guardian about the marriage, and he left the Oratory without mentioning it; he could not forget Father Francis's opposition to the romance six years before. It was not until a fortnight before the wedding that he finally wrote and explained. The letter that came back was kindly; indeed Father Francis wished them both every blessing and happiness', and declared that he would conduct the ceremony himself in the Oratory Church. Alas, it was too late.

Arrangements had already been made for the marriage to take place in the Catholic church at Warwick.

Ronald Tolkien and Edith Bratt were married by Father Murphy after early ma.s.s on Wednesday 22 March 1916.

They had chosen a Wednesday because that was the day of the week on which they had been reunited in 1913.

There was one unfortunate incident: Edith did not realise that when she signed the register she would have to give her father's name, and she had never told Ronald about her illegitimacy. Confronted by the register she panicked and wrote the name of an uncle, Frederick Bratt; but she could think of nothing to put under the heading Rank or profession of father', so she left it blank. Afterwards she told Ronald the truth. I think I love you even more tenderly because of all that, my wife,' he wrote to her, but we must as far as possible forget it and entrust it to G.o.d.' After the wedding they left by train for Clevedon in Somerset where they were to stay for a week, and in the compartment they both doodled (on the back of a greetings telegram) versions of Edith's new signature-Edith Mary Tolkien ...

Edith Tolkien ... Mrs Tolkien Mrs J. R. R. Tolkien. It looked splendid.

When he got back from his honeymoon, Tolkien found a letter from Sidgwick & Jackson rejecting his poems. He had half expected this, but it was a disappointment. Edith returned to Warwick, but only to wind up her affairs in that town. They had decided that for the duration of the war she would not have a permanent home, but would live in furnished rooms as near as possible to Ronald's camp. She and her cousin Jennie (who was still living with her) came to Great Haywood, a Staffords.h.i.+re village near the camp where Ronald was posted. There was a Catholic church in the village with a kindly priest, and Ronald had found good lodgings. But scarcely had he seen Edith settled than he received embarkation orders, and late on ; Sunday 4 June 1916 he set off for London and thence to France.

Everyone in England had known for some time that The Big Push' was imminent. A virtual stalemate had continued throughout 1915 on the Western Front, and neither poison-gas at Ypres nor ma.s.s slaughter at Verdun had altered the line by more than a few miles. But now that the hundreds of thousands of new recruits had filtered through the training camps and had emerged as a New Army, it was clear that something spectacular was about to happen.

Tolkien arrived at Calais on Tuesday 6 June and was taken to base camp at Staples. Somehow on the journey his entire kit had been lost: camp-bed, sleeping-bag, mattress, spare boots, wash-stand, everything that he had chosen with care and bought at great expense had vanished without trace into the interstices of the army transport system, leaving him to beg, borrow, and buy replacements.

The days pa.s.sed at Staples, and nothing happened. The nervous excitement of embarkation relapsed into a weary boredom made worse by a total ignorance of what was going on. Tolkien wrote a poem about England, took part in training exercises, and listened to the seagulls wheeling overhead. Along with many of his fellow officers he was transferred to the llth Battalion, where he found little congenial company. The junior officers were all recruits like himself, some less than twenty-one years old; while the older company commanders and adjutants were in many cases professional soldiers dug out of retirement, men with narrow minds and endless stories of India or the Boer War. These old campaigners were ready to take advantage of any slip made by a recruit, and Tolkien reported that they treated him like an inferior schoolboy. He had more respect for the men', the N.C.O.s and privates who made up the other eight hundred or so members of the battalion. A few of them were from South Wales but most were Lancas.h.i.+re men. Officers could not make friends among them, for the system did not permit it; but each officer had a batman, a servant who was detailed to look after his kit and care for him much in the manner of an Oxford scout.

Through this, Tolkien got to know several of the men very well. Discussing one of the princ.i.p.al characters in The Lord of the Rings he wrote many years later: My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.'

After three weeks at Etaples the battalion set off for the Front. The train journey was almost unbelievably slow, interrupted by innumerable halts, and it was more than twenty-four hours before the flat featureless landscape of the Pas de Calais gave way to more hilly country where a ca.n.a.lised river with poplar-lined banks flowed alongside the railway. This was the Somme. And already they could hear gunfire.

Tolkien's battalion disembarked in Amiens, were given food from cookers in the main square, and then marched out of the town, heavily laden with their kit, stepping aside or halting when horses came by, pulling ammunition wagons or huge guns. Soon they were in the open Picardy countryside. By the sides of the straight road the houses gave way to fields of scarlet poppies or yellow mustard. It began to rain in torrents, and within moments the dusty surface of the road changed to a white chalky mud. The battalion marched on, dripping and cursing, to a hamlet called Rubempre, ten miles from Amiens. Here they were billeted for the night in conditions that they would soon be accustomed to: straw bunks in barns and sheds for the men, floor-s.p.a.ce for camp beds in the farmhouses for the officers. The buildings were ancient and solid with warped beams and mud walls. Outside beyond the crossroads and the low houses, fields of rain-swept cornflowers stretched away to the horizon me war was inescapable: there were broken roofs and ruined biddings, while from the near distance came the sound that they had been approaching all day, the whine, crash, and boom of the Allied bombardment of German lines.

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