Until the late nineteenth century the holders of most college
fellowships at Oxford, that is the majority of teachers in the
University, had to take holy orders and were not permitted to
marry while they remained in office. The reformers of that era
introduced non-clerical fellowships and abolished the requirement
of celibacy. In so doing they changed the face of Oxford, and
changed it visibly; for in the years that followed a tide of
brick flowed steadily northwards from the old boundary of the
city, covering the fields along the Banbury and Woodstock Roads
as the speculators erected hundreds of homes for the new married
dons. By the beginning of the twentieth century North Oxford
was a concentrated colony of academics, their wives, their children
and their servants, its inhabitants occupying a variety of mansions
ranging from the gothic and palatial (complete with turrets
and stained glass) to the frankly suburban villa. Churches,
schools, and clusters of shops were erected to serve the needs
of this strange community, and soon few acres were left unoccupied.
There was, however, a small amount of building still in progress
during the nineteen-twenties; and in one of the North Oxford
streets Tolkien found and bought a modest new house, L-shaped
and of pale brick, with one wing running towards the road. The
family travelled down from Leeds at the beginning of 1926 and
moved in.
Here, in Northmoor Road, they remained for twenty-one years.
Later in 1929 a larger neighbouring house was vacated by Basil
Blackwell the bookseller and publisher, and the Tolkiens decided
to buy it, moving from number twenty-two to number twenty early
in the next year. This second house was broad and grey, more
imposing than its neighbour, with small leaded windows and a
high slate roof. Shortly before the move a fourth and last child
was born, the daughter that Edith had long hoped for, and was
christened Priscilla Mary Reuel.
Apart from these two incidents, the birth of Priscilla in 1929
and the change of houses in 1930, life at Northmoor Road was
without major event; or rather it was a life of pattern, almost
of routine, in which there were minor interruptions but no significant
change. So perhaps the best way to describe it is to follow
Tolkien through a typical (though entirely imaginary) day in
the early nineteen-thirties.
It is a saint’s day, so it begins early. The alarm rings at
seven in Tolkien’s bedroom, a back room that looks east over
the garden. It is really a bathroom-cum-dressing-room, and there
is a bath one corner of it, but he sleeps here because Edith
finds his snoring tiresome, and because he keeps late hours
that do not harmonise with her habits. So they have their own
rooms and do not disturb one another.
He gets up unwilling (he has never been an early riser by nature),
decides to shave after mass, and goes in his dressing-gown along
the passage to the boys’ bedrooms to wake Michael and Christopher.
John, the eldest boy, is now aged fourteen and away at a Catholic
boarding-school in Berkshire, but the two younger sons, aged
eleven and seven respectively, are still living at home.
Going into Michael’s bedroom, Tolkien nearly trips over a model
railway engine that has been left in the middle of the floor.
He curses to himself. Michael and Christopher have a passion
for railways at the moment, and they have devoted a complete
upstairs room to a track layout. They also go to watch engines,
and draw (with impressive precision) pictures of Great Western
Railway locomotives. Tolkien does not understand or really approve
of what he calls their ‘railway-mania’; to him railways only
mean noise and dirt, and the despoiling of the countryside.
But he tolerates the hobby, and can even be persuaded on occasions
to take them on expeditions to a distant station to watch the
Cheltenham Flyer pass through.
When he has woken the boys, he gets dressed in his usual weekday
outfit of flannel trousers and tweed jacket. Then he and his
sons, who are wearing their dark blue Dragon School jackets
and shorts, get their bicycles out of the garage and set off
along the silent Northmoor Road, where the bedroom curtains
are still drawn in other houses, up Linton Road, and into the
broad Banbury Road where the occasional car or bus passes them
on its way into the city. It is a spring morning and there is
a fine display of blossom on the cherry-trees that hang over
the pavements from the front gardens.
They bicycle three-quarters of a mile into the town, to St
Aloysius’ Catholic Church, an unlovely edifice next to the hospital
in the Woodstock Road. Mass is at seven-thirty, so by the time
they get home they are just a few minutes late for breakfast.
This is always served punctually at eight – strictly speaking
at seven fifty-five, since Edith like to keep the clocks in
the house five minutes fast. Phoebe Coles, the daily help, has
just arrived in the kitchen and is clattering about with dishes.
Phoebe, who wears a housemaid’s cap and works in the house all
day, has been with the family for a couple of years and shows
every sign of staying for many more; which is a blessing, since
before her arrival there were endless difficulties with servants.
During breakfast, Tolkien glances at the newspaper, but only
in the most cursory fashion. He, like his friend C.S. Lewis,
regards ‘news’ as on the whole trivial and fit to be ignored,
and they both argue (to the annoyance of many of their friends)
that the only ‘truth’ is to be found in literature. However,
both men enjoy the crossword.
When breakfast is over, Tolkien goes into his study to light
the stove. It is not a warm day and the house (like most middle-class
English houses at the time) has no central heating, so he will
need to get a good blaze going to make the room habitable. He
is in a hurry, for he has a pupil coming at nine and he wants
to check his lecture notes for the morning, so he clears out
the ashes from the previous night’s fire rather hastily; they
are still warm, for he did not finish work and go to bed until
after two o’clock. When he has lit the fire he throws a good
deal of coal on to it, shuts the door of the stove, and opens
the draught regulator to full. Then he hurries upstairs to shave.
The boys go off to school.
He has not finished shaving when the front door bell rings.
Edith answers it, but she calls him and he comes downstairs
with half his face still covered in lather. It is only the postman,
but he says that there is a great deal of smoke coming out of
the study chimney, and ought Mr Tolkien to see if everything
is all right? Tolkien rushes into the study and finds that,
as so often happens, the fire has blazed up in the stove and
is about to set the chimney alight. He damps it down, thanks
the postman, and exchanges some remarks with him about the growing
of spring vegetables. Then he begins to open the post, remembers
that he has not finished shaving, and only makes himself presentable
just in time for the arrival of his pupil.
This is a young woman graduate who is studying Middle English.
By ten past nine she and Tolkien are hard at work in the study
discussing the significance of an awkward word in Ancrene
Wisse. If you were to put your head around the study door
you would not be able to see them, for inside the door is a
tunnel of books formed by a double row of bookcases, and it
is not until the visitor emerges from this that the rest of
the room becomes visible. There are windows on two sides, so
that the room looks southwards towards a neighbouring garden
and west towards the road. Tolkien’s desk is in the south-facing
window, but he is not sitting at it; he is standing by the fireplace
waving his pope in the air while he talks. The pupil frowns
slightly as she puzzles over the complexities of what he is
saying, and the difficulty of hearing all of it clearly, for
is talking very fast and sometimes indistinctly. But she begins
to see the shape of his argument and the point to which he is
leading, and scribbles enthusiastically in her notebook. By
the time her ‘hour’ of supervision finishes, later, at twenty
to eleven, she feels that she has been given a new insight into
the way in which a medieval author chose his words. She leaves
on her bicycle, reflecting that if all Oxford philologists could
teach in this fashion, the English School would be a livelier
place.
When he has seen her to the gate, Tolkien hurries back to his
study and gathers up his lecture notes. He did not have time
to check through them after all, and he hopes that everything
he needs is there. He also takes a copy of the text that he
is to lecture on, the Old English poem Exodus, knowing
that if the worst happens and his notes do fail him, he can
always expound directly from it extempore. Then, with his briefcase
and his M.A. gown in the basket of his bicycle, he rides down
to the town.
Sometimes he lectures in his own college, Pembroke, but this
morning (as is more often the case) his destination is the Examination
Schools, an oppressively grandiose late Victorian building in
the High Street. Lectures on popular subjects are allocated
a large hall, such as the East School, where today C.S. Lewis
will be drawing a large audience for his series on medieval
studies. Tolkien himself gets a good attendance for his general
lectures on Beowulf, which are intended for the non-specialist
undergraduates; but today he is talking about a text that is
required reading only for those few men and women in the English
School who have opted for the philological course, and consequently
he goes along the passage to a small dark ground-floor room
where a mere eight or ten undergraduates, knowing his punctual
habits, are already waiting for him in their gowns. He puts
on his own gown and begins to lecture exactly as the deep bell
of Merton clock a quarter of a mile away strikes eleven.
He lectures fluently, chiefly from his notes, but with occasional
impromptu additions. He works through the text line by line,
discussing the significance of certain words and expressions,
and the problems raised by them. The undergraduates in the audience
know him well and are faithful followers of his lectures, not
only because he provides an illuminating interpretation of the
text but also because they like him: they enjoy his jokes,
are used to his quick-fire manner of speaking, and find him
thoroughly humane, certainly more humane than some of his colleagues,
who lecture with a total disregard for their audience.
He need not have worried that his notes will run out. The chimes
for twelve o’clock and the noise of people in the passage bring
him to a halt long before he can finish his prepared material.
Indeed for the last ten minutes he has departed entirely from
his notes, and has been talking about a particular point of
relation between Gothic and Old English that was suggested by
a word in the text. Now he gathers up his papers, converses
briefly with one of the undergraduates, and then departs to
make way for the next lecturer.
In the passage he catches up for a moment with C.S. Lewis,
and has a brief conversation with him. He wishes it were a Monday,
on which day he regularly has a pint of beer with Lewis and
talks for an hour or so, but neither man has time today, and
Tolkien has to do some shopping before going home for lunch.
He leaves Lewis and bicycles up the High Street to the busy
arcade known as the Covered Market, where he has to collect
sausages from Lindsey the butcher; Edith forgot to include them
in the week’s order that was delivered the day before. He exchanges
a joke with Mr Lindsey, and also calls in at the stationer on
the corner of Market Street to buy some pen nibs. Then he bicycles
home up the Banbury Road, and manages to fit in fifteen minutes
at a long-overdue letter to E.V. Gordon about their plans to
collaborate on an edition of Pearl. He begins to type
the letter on his Hammond typewriter, a big machine with interchangeable
typefaces on a revolving disc; his model has italics and the
Anglo-Saxon letters þ, ð, and æ. Edith rings the handbell for
lunch before he can finish.
Lunch, at which all the family is present, is chiefly taken
up with a discussion of about Michael’s dislike of swimming
lessons at school, and whether or not a septic toe should be
allowed to prevent the boy from bathing. After the meal, Tolkien
goes into the garden to see how the broad beans are coming along.
Edith brings Priscilla out to play on the lawn, and discusses
with him whether they should dig up the remainder of the old
tennis court, to increase the size of the vegetable plot. Then,
leaving Edith to feed the canaries and budgerigars in her aviary
at the side of the house, he gets on his bicycle once more and
pedals down to the town, this time for a meeting of the English
Faculty.
The meeting is in Merton College, for the Faculty has no premises
of its own other than a cramped library in the attic of the
Examination Schools, and Merton is the college most closely
associated with it. Tolkien himself is a Fellow of Pembroke,
but he is not much involved with his college, and like all professors
his first responsibility is towards the Faculty. The meeting
begins at half past two. Besides the other professors – Wyld,
who holds the chair of English Language and Literature, and
Nichol Smith, the professor of English literature – there are
about a dozen dons present, several of them women. Sometimes
these meetings can be acrimonious, and Tolkien himself has attended
many when, while trying to initiate reforms of the syllabus,
he has been the target for bitter attacks from the ‘literature’
camp. But those days are passed, and his reforms have been accepted
and put into practice. Today’s meeting is mostly concerned with
routine business such as the dates of examinations, minor details
of the syllabus, and the question of funds for the Faculty library.
It all takes time, and the meeting does not break up until nearly
four, which just gives Tolkien a few minutes to call at the
Bodleian Library and look up something in a book that he ordered
from the stack the previous day. Then he rides home again in
time for the children’s tea at half past four.
After tea he manages to put in an hour and a half at his desk,
finishing the letter to E.V. Gordon and beginning to arrange
his lecture notes for the next day. When life goes according
to plan he manages to prepare an entire course of lectures before
the beginning of term, but too often pressure of time forces
him to leave the work until the last minute. Even now he does
not get very much done, for Michael wants help with his Latin
prose homework, and this occupies twenty minutes. All too soon
it is half past six and he must change into a dinner-jacket.
He does not dine out more than once or twice a week, but tonight
there is a guest night at his college, Pembroke, and he has
promised to be there to meet a friend’s guest. He ties his black
tie hastily and again mounts his bicycle, leaving Edith to an
early supper at home.
He reaches college in time for sherry in the Senior Common
Room. His position at Pembroke is somewhat anomalous, thanks
to the confused and confusing administrative practices of Oxford.
It could almost be said that the colleges are the University,
for the majority of the teaching staff hold college fellowships,
and their primary responsibility is to instruct undergraduates
in their own college. But professors are in a different position.
They are primarily outside the collegiate system, for they teach
on a faculty basis, irrespective of what college their pupils
may belong to. However, so that a professor shall not be deprived
of the social facilities and other conveniences of college life,
he is allocated to a college and given a fellowship in it ex
officio. This sometimes leads to bad feeling, for in all
other circumstances colleges elect their own fellows, whereas
‘Professorial Fellows’ such as Tolkien are to some extent wished
upon them. Tolkien thinks that Pembroke resents him a little;
certainly the atmosphere in the common room is unfriendly and
austere. Fortunately there is a junior fellow, R.B. McCallum,
a lively man several years younger than Tolkien, who is an ally;
and he is waiting now to introduce his guest. Dinner proves
to be enjoyable – and edible, since the food is plain without
any suggestion of that tiresome French cooking which (Tolkien
reflects with disgust) is beginning to invade the high tables
of several colleges.
After dinner he makes his excuses and leaves early, crossing
the town to Balliol College where there is to be a meeting of
the Coalbiters in John Bryson’s rooms. The Kolbítar,
to give it the Icelandic title (meaning those who lounge so
close to the fire in winter that they ‘bite the coal’), is an
informal reading club founded by Tolkien somewhat on the model
of the Viking Club in Leeds, except that its members are all
dons. They meet for an evening several times each term to read
Icelandic sagas. Tonight there is a good turn-out: George Gordon,
now the President of Magdalen, Nevil Coghill of Exeter, C.T.
Onions from the Dictionary, Dawkins the Professor of Byzantine
and Modern Greek, Bryson himself, and – Tolkien is glad to note
– C.S. Lewis, who chides him noisily for being late. They are
currently reading Grettis Saga, and Tolkien himself begins,
which is customary as he is easily the best Norse scholar of
anyone in the club. He resumes at the point where they left
off last time, improvising a fluent translation from the text
that is spread open on his knees. After he has done a couple
of pages Dawkins takes over. He too is fluent, though not quite
as fluent as Tolkien, but when the others take their turn they
proceed much more slowly, each of them translating no more than
half a page, for none of them professes to be more than a beginner
at the language. This however is the hole purpose of the Coalbiters,
for Tolkien started the club to persuade his friends that Icelandic
literatures is worth reading in the original language; and he
encourages their somewhat halting steps and applauds their efforts.
After an hour or so they reach a good stopping-place, and the
whisky bottle is opened while they discuss the saga. Then they
listen to a scurrilous and very funny poem that Tolkien has
just written about a member of the English Faculty. It is after
eleven when they break up. Tolkien walks with Lewis to the end
of Broad Street, and then they go their separate ways, Lewis
towards Magdalen (for he is a bachelor and usually sleeps in
college in term-time) and Tolkien on his bicycle back to Northmoor
Road.
Edith has gone to bed and the house is in darkness when he
gets home. He builds up the fire in they study stove and fills
his pipe. He ought, he knows, to do some more work on his lecture
notes for the next morning, but he cannot resist taking from
a drawer the half-finished manuscript of a story that he is
writing to amuse himself and his children. It is probably, he
suspects, a waste of time; certainly if he is going to devote
any attention to this sort of thing it ought to be to The
Silmarillion. But something draws him back night after night
to this amusing little tale – at least it seems to amuse the
boys. He sits down at the desk, fits a new relief nib into his
dip pen (which he prefers to a fountain pen), unscrews the ink
bottle, takes a sheet of old examination paper (which still
has a candidate’s essay on the Battle of Maldon on the back
of it), and begins to write: ‘When Bilbo opened his eyes, he
wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut.
No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright!...’
We will leave him now. He will be at his desk until half past
one, or two o’clock, or perhaps even later, with only the scratching
of his pen to disturb the silence, while around Northmoor Road
sleeps.
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