The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2

At the end of an hour with Lewis I always felt a complete ignoramus; no doubt an accurate impression but also a rather painful one; and if you did venture to challenge one of his theories the ground was cut away from beneath your feet with lightning speed. It was a fool’s mate in three moves with Lewis smiling at you from the other side of the board in unmalicious glee at his victory. By contrast Tolkien was the soul of affability. He did all the talking, but he made you feel you were his intellectual equal. Yet his views beneath the deep paternal charm were passionately held. At the first of these classes he handed round some sample passages of medieval English he had typed out. One of them was an English translation of the first verses of the Gospel According to John. ‘You see,’ he said triumphantly, ‘English was a language that could move easily in abstract concepts when French was still a vulgar Norman patois.’ [‘Remembering Tolkien and Lewis’, British Book News, June 1977, p. 429]

Eric Stanley, later Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, described his experience as an undergraduate in 1948–51, of attending Tolkien’s weekly seminars for four or five terms;

We were less than a dozen …. Our papers, read out to the seminar, were not supposed to go on for longer than 15 or at most 20 minutes on the subject Tolkien had chosen. His patience was not infinite. [A] German graduate student went on and on, exemplifying ad nauseam some point of grammar, syntax I think. After about half an hour, it may have been more … Tolkien stopped him, saying something like, ‘Thank you very much. Now what conclusion have you arrived at?’ …

Tolkien was usually very patient, very encouraging, very polite, very friendly, except when some fundamental philological mistake had, in his eyes, ruined some student’s paper …. Tolkien treated philology not as an end in itself but as the handmaid of literature. Literature is what he knew, Old English and Middle English, Old Icelandic, the medieval literatures in the Celtic languages, and of course he knew Greek and Latin ….

Tolkien did not usually need to prepare his seminars. To provide evidence for views that he expressed, he pulled down books from his well-stocked shelves in Merton …. [‘C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as I Knew Them (Never Well)’, Journal of Inklings Studies 4, no. 1 (April 2014), pp. 137–8]

Another major demand on Tolkien’s time was examining, mainly the Final Honour School papers, but also Pass Moderations, and in the Second World War examinations set for cadets. He was an examiner in the Final Examinations in 1927–9, 1932–3, 1940–2, and 1952–3, and several times was chairman of the examiners. The papers were usually set by the examiners in the spring, then from about mid-June to the end of July examining involved ‘a 7-day week, and a 12-hour day’ (letter to *Rayner Unwin, 22 June 1952, Letters, p. 162).

In addition to lecturing, teaching, supervising, and examining Tolkien carried a heavy administrative burden. By virtue of his successive professorships he was always a member of the English Faculty Board which met twice a term. At almost every other meeting he was appointed to a subcommittee to consider some matter, such as changes to the syllabus or set books, candidates for a lecturership, and the need for more staff. The subcommittee was usually required to report at the next meeting of the Board, and no doubt meetings of the subcommittee were required in the interim. Tolkien was elected chairman of the Board at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 1939, and in the difficulties imposed by the war was re-elected several times, serving until Michaelmas Term 1946. On the unexpected death of the chairman (R.F.W. Fletcher) in October 1950, Tolkien served a further two years, from 1950 to 1952. The chairman of the Board was always also a member of the English Faculty Library Committee, and ex officio of any English Faculty Board subcommittees. During the academic years 1929–32 and 1938–47 Tolkien also served on the General Board, which met about every two weeks in term time, but from Michaelmas Term 1946 every week.

To these duties were added many other calls on Tolkien’s time: organizing lecture lists, writing references for colleagues and former students, taking part in elections to various chairs and readerships, answering questions sent to him by his colleagues, and thanking those who sent him offprints of articles they had written, inter alia.

In letters to his sons Tolkien commented generally about Oxford University, teaching, and students. On 1 November 1963 he wrote to Michael:

I remember clearly enough when I was your age (in 1935). I had returned 10 years before (still dewy-eyed with boyish illusions) to Oxford, and now disliked undergraduates and all their ways, and had begun really to know dons. Years before I had rejected as disgusting cynicism by an old vulgarian the words of warning given me by old Joseph Wright. ‘What do you take Oxford for, lad?’ ‘A university, a place of learning.’ ‘Nay, lad, it’s a factory! And what’s it making? I’ll tell you. It’s making fees. Get that in your head, and you’ll begin to understand what goes on.’

Alas! by 1935 I now knew that it was perfectly true. At any rate as a key to dons’ behaviour. Quite true, but not the whole truth …. I was stonewalled and hindered in my efforts (as a schedule B professor on a reduced salary, though with schedule A duties) for the good of my subject and the reform of its teaching, by vested interests in fees and fellowships ….

The devotion to ‘learning’, as such and without reference to one’s own repute, is a high and even in a sense spiritual vocation; and since it is ‘high’ it is inevitably lowered by false brethren, by tired brethren, by the desire of money (or even the legitimate need of money), and by pride: the folk who say ‘my subject’ & do not mean the one I am humbly engaged in, but the subject I adorn, or have ‘made my own’. Certainly this devotion is generally degraded and smirched in universities. But it is still there. [Letters, pp. 336–7]

On 15 December 1969 he wrote to Christopher:

I had once a considerable experience of what are/were probably England’s most (at least apparently) dullest and stodgiest students: Yorkshire’s young men and women of sub-public school class and home backgrounds bookless and cultureless. That does not, however, necessarily indicate the actual innate mental capacity – largely unawakened – of any given individual. A surprisingly large proportion proved ‘educable’: for which a primary qualification is the willingness to do some work (to learn) (at any level of intelligence). Teaching is a most exhausting task. But I would rather spend myself on removing the ‘dull’ from ‘stodges’ – providing some products of β to β + quality that retain some sanity – a hopeful soil from which another generation with some higher intelligence could arise. Rather – rather than waste effort on those of (apparently at any rate) higher intelligence that have been corrupted and disintegrated by school, and the ‘climate’ of our present days. Teaching an organized subject is simply not the instrument for their rehabilitation – if anything is. [Letters, pp. 403–4]

In an article by Penny Radford shortly after Tolkien’s death, his colleague Nevill Coghill remembered him as ‘always the most accessible of men’ who ‘gave unstinted help to all who asked for it. I have known him plan a set of lectures for another don who was a beginner’ (‘Professor Tolkien Leaves an Unpublished Book’, The Times (London), 3 September 1973, p. 1).

The Oxford English School. Essay, published in the Oxford Magazine for 29 May 1930, pp. 778–80, 782, one of a series by a variety of authors concerned with different schools at the University of *Oxford. In this Tolkien took the opportunity to examine the failings of the English syllabus as it stood at the time (see *Oxford English School), and to suggest improvements. His comments were ‘purely personal’, and if one part of the English School receives more notice, it is because it was Tolkien’s

principal concern, not because I regard it as the most important – though I do not measure importance by counting heads in final examinations. The length of the comment may be excused by those who reflect that the position of an English School in an English-speaking University is peculiar, and presents special problems too seldom considered ….

‘English’ plainly belongs by nature to a group of schools whose primary concern is with ‘books,’ written in one of the literary languages of Europe, ancient, medieval or modern, and with that language itself. Yet its ‘books’ are not in a foreign tongue, the language is the vernacular – although it may be held that for all the related schools the fact that the language studied is precisely not English is of fundamental importance.

The divergence between the two ‘sides’ of the English School, its ‘sub-schools,’ may be regarded as the result of different attempts at solving the special problem of an English English School. [p. 778]

He notes that the two sides are generally dubbed, not entirely accurately, as ‘language’ and ‘literature’, the latter more popular being preferred by more than ninety per cent of the English students. He proceeds to criticize the current regulations of the School, which mean that the ‘literature’ student who wishes to gain a knowledge of Old and Middle English (a ‘language’ subject) cannot do so in depth, while a ‘language’ student is ‘scarcely required to study any “books” in the modern period.’ ‘No one person’, therefore, ‘can be expected to deal adequately with both of the “sub-schools”’ (pp. 778–9).

Tolkien surmises that the ‘literature’ curriculum ‘is felt unsatisfactory by all’ because it allows for only an elementary linguistic component; though ‘it is probable that some would prefer its equivalent (e.g., “Latin and Greek without tears”) rather than its re-ordering and revival.’ Personally he favours

curtailing the thousand years at the modern end, jettisoning certainly the nineteenth century (unless parts of it could appear as an ‘additional subject’); and the substitution of a scholarly study of worthy Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts, with a paper of unseen translation, for the extracts and the meagre ‘philology.’ If real philology is required it should deal with the periods also studied as literature, and be examined in the same connection; otherwise it is valueless. [p. 779]

In contrast, he praises the ‘language’ curriculum and extols the importance of a study of Old English, Middle English, and Old Icelandic (Old Norse): Philology ‘is essential to the critical apparatus of student and scholar’ and ‘language is more important than any of its special functions, such as literature. Its study is profound and fundamental’ (p. 780). Old Icelandic, Tolkien believes, should ‘be prescribed for all and made more central.’ Texts in the three languages should be increased, with definite books prescribed. ‘The specialised history, especially the phonetic history, of modern English should disappear as a compulsion from this branch of the School.’ Chaucer should be recovered as a mediaeval author, ‘and part of his works become once more the subject of detailed and scholarly study. The pretence that no “English” curriculum is humane which does not include Shakespeare must naturally be abandoned, since that author lies quite outside the purview of such a course’ (p. 782).

Related to the theme of this essay is Tolkien’s poem Lit’ and Lang’, written while he was at *Leeds and later published in *Songs for the Philologists. In this there are ‘two little groups, / Called Lit’ and Lang’’, i.e. the Literature and Language sides of an English school curriculum. Lit’ does not like philology and ‘was lazy till she died, / Of homophemes’ (words of different meaning or spelling which require the same position of the lips – that is, Lit’ was too lazy to look at the words themselves). When doctors cut up the corpse of Lit’ ‘they couldn’t find the brain’. Lang’ does not mourn her death.

Oxford Letter. Letter apparently written at the editor’s request, published as by ‘Oxon’ in the King Edward’s School Chronicle n.s. 28, no. 202 (December 1913), pp. 80–1. Tolkien’s authorship is revealed in his papers. The letter contains news of Old Edwardians (former pupils at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham) now at the University of *Oxford. *G.B. Smith is prominently mentioned.

Oxford Poetry 1915. Third in a series of annual volumes of verse written by undergraduates or graduates of *Oxford (the first covered 1910–13), published December 1915 in Oxford by B.H. Blackwell (*Publishers). See further, Descriptive Bibliography B1.

The 1915 volume, edited by Gerald Crow and *T.W. Earp, includes Tolkien’s poem *Goblin Feet. Altogether the volume contains fifty-two poems by twenty-five authors. Among the latter, in addition to Tolkien, are several poets who had or were later to have personal connections: T.W. Earp, Naomi M. Haldane (*Naomi Mitchison), *Leonard Rice-Oxley, *G.B. Smith, and *H.T. Wade-Gery. Other contributors include Aldous Huxley; Dorothy L. Sayers; and *H.R. Freston, soon to die in the Somme, about whose poems Tolkien delivered a paper to an Oxford student society in May 1915.

P (#ulink_18362746-d40b-5c7b-bf99-a2ff5bd9c8ca)

The Palantíri. Various writings concerning the palantíri, made by Tolkien while revising *The Lord of the Rings for its second edition, formed by *Christopher Tolkien into a continuous essay and published with notes in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 403–15.

The Palantíri expands upon the history and nature of the seeing-stones, how they were used and what could be seen in them, why they were forgotten in the latter part of the Third Age, what was known to the White Council and what Saruman concealed from it. It reveals that no thought had been given to the use Sauron might make of the Ithil-stone if he had seized it when Minas Ithil fell, and explains that while riding to Minas Tirith with Pippin and answering his questions about the Orthanc-stone, Gandalf was pondering the possibility that Denethor had used the Anor-stone and might have fallen, which was one reason for Gandalf’s haste. The essay points out also that Gandalf could not know when Denethor began to use the Anor-stone, and presumed that Denethor had not used it until peril grew great; but in fact Denethor had been using it since he succeeded to the Stewardship. Tolkien discusses how Denethor used the stone, and how the use affected him. Denethor is said to have withstood Sauron’s domination partly because of his character, but also because, as a Steward for the heirs of Elendil, he had a lawful right to use the Anor-stone.

Since changes consequent on these were not incorporated into The Lord of the Rings until the second printing (1967) of the Allen & Unwin second edition, they date probably from 1966 or early 1967.

Part of the Legend of Amroth and Nimrodel Recounted in Brief

seeThe History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lórien

Payton, Ralph Stuart (1894–1916). R.S. Payton, known as ‘the Baby’, was a friend of Tolkien at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, entering in January 1906, and a fellow member of the *T.C.B.S. Like his elder brother *Wilfrid, Ralph was involved in a wide range of school activities – football, the Shooting Club, the School magazine, the Debating Society – and in most of these he held office. As Debating Secretary he ‘performed with great energy’ the ‘less pleasant duties’ of the office, ‘especially the finding of new speakers. In his own speeches he is more successful as a humorist, and does not often contrive to be serious without being dull’ (‘Characters, 1911–12’, King Edward’s School Chronicle n.s. 27, no. 193 (June 1912), p. 41). But he was outwardly modest, and his delivery in debate was often faulted. He also served as Prefect, Sub-Treasurer, and School Captain and General Secretary. In 1913 he followed his brother to Cambridge, on an open scholarship for Classics at Christ’s College.

In November 1915 Payton joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment (14th (1st Birmingham Pals) Battalion) and was made a lieutenant, in charge of Lewis (light machine) guns. He was killed on the Somme on 22 July 1916 while leading his men into action.

Payton, Wilfrid Hugh (1892–1965). W.H. Payton, known as ‘Whiffy’, was a friend of Tolkien at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, entering in January 1904, and a fellow member of the *T.C.B.S. Like his younger brother *Ralph, he was involved in msny school activities – football, the Shooting Club, the School library and magazine, the Debating Society, the Literary Society – in most of which he held office and was highly regarded. He also served as Prefect, Sub-Treasurer, and School Captain and General Secretary. In 1911 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, on an open exhibition for Classics.

In 1915 Payton won a place with the India Civil Service. In the First World War he joined the Indian Reserve of Officers and rose to the rank of captain. He was attached to the 6th Gurkha Rifles, and later to the Khyber Rifles, on the Afghan frontier. His later Civil Service work in Burma earned him in 1945 the honour of Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.

Pearl. Alliterative poem in Middle English. It is attributed to the same anonymous late fourteenth-century poet who wrote *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, another of four works preserved in the same manuscript (British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, with the poems Patience and Cleanness).

SYNOPSIS

The subject of Pearl (or The Pearl) is the poet’s daughter, who died as a child. As he wanders in the garden in which his child is buried, the poet slips, ‘and to sudden sleep was brought, / O’er that precious pearl’. He has a vision of a fair land of marvels and splendour, of a deep stream beyond which lies Paradise, and of ‘a gentle maid of courtly grace’ arrayed in pearls: his daughter grown to maturity. ‘Lament alone by night I made,’ he tells her, ‘Much longing I have hid for thee forlorn, / Since to the grass you from me strayed.’ She upbraids him for excessive grief, and explains that she is in a blissful state of grace, the bride of Christ. Headlong her father plunges into the stream, eager to join her, but ‘right as I rushed then to the shore / That fury made my dream to fade’, and he wakes from his trance. If, he says, it is true that his daughter is ‘set at ease, / Then happy I, though chained in care, / That you that Prince indeed do please’ (translation by Tolkien).

HISTORY

The excellence of the poem is observed by *Kenneth Sisam in his Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose (1921):

If [the contemporary poem] Piers Plowman gives a realistic picture of the drabness of mediaeval life, Pearl, more especially in the early stanzas, shows a richness of imagery and a luxuriance in light and colour that seem scarcely English. Yet they have their parallels in the decorative art of the time – the elaborate carving in wood and stone; the rich colouring of tapestries, of illuminated books and painted glass; the designs of the jewellers, goldsmiths, and silversmiths, which even the notaries who made the old inventories cannot pass without a word of admiration. The Pearl reminds us of the tribute due to the artists and craftsmen of the fourteenth century. [p. 57]

Tolkien first encountered the work while still at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, as part of his private study of early English literature. A few years later, it was part of his required reading as a student in the English School at *Oxford. At Easter 1913 Tolkien inscribed his name in a 1910 printing of Charles Grosvenor Osgood’s edition of Pearl (first published 1906). He attended lectures on Pearl by *A.S. Napier, and very probably a class on the work taught by Sisam. The West Midlands dialect of Middle English in which Pearl was written was a subject of special interest to Tolkien; see *English language and *A Fourteenth-Century Romance.

Pearl was also part of the curriculum at *Leeds when Tolkien was on the staff of the University’s English School, and also at Oxford. In May 1924 Tolkien wrote a poem, *The Nameless Land, inspired by reading Pearl for examination papers (see *Examinations).

MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

After the publication of their Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 1925, Tolkien and his colleague *E.V. Gordon began work on an edition of Pearl in Middle English. But Tolkien made little or no contribution to it for many years; instead he prepared, in spare moments during ?1925–6, a Modern English translation of the poem. On ?26 April 1926 he sent a copy of this to Kenneth Sisam, for whose Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose he had prepared a glossary (*A Middle English Vocabulary). At some time by summer 1936 Tolkien offered the translation to the publisher J.M. Dent: it was rejected, but was seen by Guy Pocock, who having joined the staff of BBC Radio arranged for part of the translation to be read, with Tolkien’s permission, in August 1936 on London regional radio. In October 1936 *Stanley Unwin, of the firm George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), expressed an interest in publishing the translation; but with the success of *The Hobbit the following year, his main desire was soon for a sequel to that work.

By August 1942 the translation apparently had been lent to the Oxford bookseller and publisher *Basil Blackwell. He wrote to Tolkien, expressed delight in the work, and asked if Tolkien would write, for publication with the poem, an introduction to Pearl aimed at the lay reader rather than the student. He offered to purchase the copyright to the translation, with the sum placed against Tolkien’s outstanding account at Blackwell’s Bookshop. Tolkien agreed, and proofs of the poem were ready in late March 1943. The introduction, however, was not forthcoming at once; and in September 1944 Blackwell, wondering if Tolkien’s delay was caused by objection to giving up copyright, now suggested that publication proceed instead on the basis of a royalty. Tolkien certainly wished to proceed: in a letter of 23–5 September 1944 he wrote to his son *Christopher: ‘I must try and get on with the Pearl and stop the eager maw of Basil Blackwell’ (Letters, p. 94). Six months later, c. 18 March 1945, he was still ‘in trouble with Blackwell who has set up my translation of Pearl, and needs corrections and an introduction’, as he wrote to Stanley Unwin (Letters, p. 114).

In the event, Tolkien never finished this work for Blackwell. In late 1950 Stanley Unwin again enquired about Pearl, in conjunction with Tolkien’s Modern English translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it was not until August 1959, after the completion and successful publication of *The Lord of the Rings, that plans for Allen & Unwin to publish both Pearl and Sir Gawain were actively discussed. On 24 August Tolkien met with Basil Blackwell, who magnanimously relinquished any rights in the translation of Pearl and refused any compensation for the cost of the abortive typesetting. On finding the Blackwell galley proofs for Pearl in his son Christopher’s library, Tolkien felt less guilty about Blackwell’s sacrifice, as ‘inspection showed them to have been of an astonishing badness; so that the cost of correction of about a thousand fatuous mistakes (from reasonable copy), which would have arisen if I had proceeded with the publication, was at any rate spared’ (letter to *Rayner Unwin, 25 August 1959, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 27 August Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin of his desire

to get Gawain and Pearl into your hands as soon as possible. The spirit is indeed willing; but the flesh is weak and rebellious. It has contracted lumbago, from amongst its weapons of delay – with the colourable excuse that an old man, robbed of helpers by mischance, should not shift bookcases and books unaided. Every book and paper I possess is now on the floor, at home and in college, and I have only a table to type on. When the turmoil will subside, I do not know for certain; nor in what state of weariness I shall then be. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]