J. R. R. Tolkien – A Biography

344 Pages·2000·4.269 MB·English

by  Humphrey Carpenter

Dedicated to the memory of
‘The T.C.B.S.’
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Part One
A VISIT
PART TWO: 1892–1916: Early years
CHAPTER I: BLOEMFONTEIN
CHAPTER II: BIRMINGHAM
CHAPTER III: ‘PRIVATE LANG.’ – AND EDITH
CHAPTER IV: ‘T.C, B.S., ETC.’
CHAPTER V: OXFORD
CHAPTER VI: REUNION
CHAPTER VII: WAR
CHAPTER VIII: THE BREAKING OF THE FELLOWSHIP
PART THREE: 1917–1925: The making of a mythology
CHAPTER I: LOST TALES
CHAPTER II: OXFORD INTERLUDE
CHAPTER III: NORTHERN VENTURE
PART FOUR: 1925–1949(i):‘In a hole in the ground there lived a
hobbit’
CHAPTER I: OXFORD LIFE
CHAPTER II: PHOTOGRAPHS OBSERVED
CHAPTER III: ‘HE HAD BEEN INSIDE LANGUAGE’
CHAPTER IV: JACK
Additional Images
CHAPTER V: NORTHMOOR ROAD
CHAPTER VI: THE STORYTELLER
PART FIVE : 1925–1949(ii): The Third Age
CHAPTER I : ENTER MR BAGGINS
CHAPTER II: ‘THE NEW HOBBIT’
PART SIX : 1949–1966: Success
CHAPTER I : SLAMMING THE GATES
CHAPTER II : A BIG RISK
CHAPTER III: CASH OR KUDOS
PART SEVEN: 1959–1973: Last years
CHAPTER I: HEADINGTON
CHAPTER II: BOURNEMOUTH
CHAPTER III: MERTON STREET
POSTSCRIPT: THE TREE
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX C
APPENDIX D
INDEX
About the Author
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ALSO BY HUMPHREY CARPENTER
Copyright
Part One
A VISIT
It is mid-morning on a spring day in 1967. I have driven from the
centre of Oxford, over Magdalen Bridge, along the London road,
and up a hill into the respectable but dull suburb of Headington.
Near a large private school for girls I turn left into Sand�eld Road,
a residential street of two-storey brick houses, each with its tidy
front garden.
Number seventy-six is a long way down the road. The house is
painted white and is partially screened by a tall fence, a hedge, and
overhanging trees. I park the car, open the arched gate, go up the
short path between rose bushes, and ring the front door bell.
For a long time there is silence, except for the rumble of distant
tra�c in the main road. I am beginning to think of ringing again or
of turning away when the door is opened by Professor Tolkien.
He is slightly smaller than I expected. Tallness is a quality of
which he makes much in his books, so it is a little surprising to see
that he himself is slightly less than the average height – not much,
but just enough to be noticeable. I introduce myself, and (since I
made this appointment in advance and am expected) the quizzical
and somewhat defensive look that �rst met me is replaced by a
smile. A hand is o�ered and my own is �rmly grasped.
Behind him I can see the entrance-hall, which is small and tidy
and contains nothing that one would not expect in the house of a
middle-class elderly couple. W. H. Auden, in an injudicious remark
quoted in the newspapers, has called the house ‘hideous’, but that is
nonsense. It is simply ordinary and suburban.
Mrs Tolkien appears for a moment, to greet me. She is smaller
than her husband, a neat old lady with white hair bound close to her
head, and dark eyebrows. Pleasantries are exchanged, and then the
Professor comes out of the front door and takes me into his ‘o�ce’
at the side of the house.
This proves to be the garage, long abandoned by any car – he
explains that he has not had a car since the beginning of the Second
World War – and, since his retirement, made habitable and given
over to the housing of books and papers formerly kept in his college
room. The shelves are crammed with dictionaries, works on
etymology and philology, and editions of texts in many languages,
predominant among which are Old and Middle English and Old
Norse; but there is also a section devoted to translations of The Lord
of the Rings into Polish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Japanese; and
the map of his invented ‘Middle-earth’ is pinned to the window-
ledge. On the �oor is a very old portmanteau full of letters, and on
the desk are ink-bottles, nibs and pen-holders, and two typewriters.
The room smells of books and tobacco smoke.
It is not very comfortable, and the Professor apologises for
receiving me here, but he explains that there is no space in the
study-bedroom in the house where he actually does his writing. He
says that in any case this is all temporary: soon he will, he hopes
manage to �nish at least the major part of the work promised to his
publishers, and then he and Mrs Tolkien will be able to move to
more comfortable quarters and congenial surroundings, away from
visitors and intrusions. He looks slightly embarrassed after the last
remark.
I climb past the electric �re and, at his bidding, seat myself in a
wheel-back chair, as he takes his pipe from the pocket of his tweed
jacket and launches into an explanation of his inability to spare me
more than a few minutes. A shiny blue alarm clock ticks noisily
across the room as if to emphasise the point. He says that he has to
clear up an apparent contradiction in a passage of The Lord of the
Rings that has been pointed out in a letter from a reader; the matter
requires his urgent consideration as a revised edition of the book is
about to go to press. He explains it all in great detail, talking about
his book not as a work of �ction but as a chronicle of actual events;
he seems to see himself not as an author who has made a slight
error that must now be corrected or explained away, but as a
historian who must cast light on an obscurity in a historical
document.
Disconcertingly, he seems to think that I know the book as well
as he does. I have read it many times, but he is talking about details
that mean little or nothing to me. I begin to fear that he will throw
some penetrating question at me that will reveal my ignorance –
and indeed now he does ask me a question, but fortunately it is
rhetorical and clearly requires no more than the answer ‘yes’.
I am still nervous that there will be other and harder questions,
doubly nervous because I cannot hear everything that he is saying.
He has a strange voice, deep but without resonance, entirely English
but with some quality in it that I cannot de�ne, as if he had come
from another age or civilisation. Yet for much of the time he does
not speak clearly. Words come out in eager rushes. Whole phrases
are elided or compressed in the haste of emphasis. Often his hand
comes up and grasps his mouth, which makes it even harder to hear
him. He speaks in complex sentences, scarcely hesitating – but then
there comes a long pause in which I am surely expected to reply.
Reply to what? If there was a question, I did not understand it.
Suddenly he resumes (never having �nished his sentence) and now
he reaches an emphatic conclusion. As he does so, he jams his pipe
between his teeth, speaks on through clenched jaws, and strikes a
match just as the full stop is reached.
Again I struggle to think of an intelligent remark, and again he
resumes before I can �nd one. Following some slender connecting
thread, he begins to talk about a remark in a newspaper that has
made him angry. Now I feel that I can contribute a little, and I say
something that I hope sounds intelligent. He listens with courteous
interest, and answers me at some length, turning my remark (which
was really very trivial) to excellent use, and so making me feel that
I have said something worth saying. Then he is o� on some
tangential topic, and I am once more out of my depth, able to
contribute no more than a monosyllable of agreement here and
there; though it does occur to me that I am perhaps valued just as
much as a listener as a participant in the conversation.
As he talks he moves unceasingly, pacing about the dark little
room with an energy that hints at restlessness. He waves his pipe in
the air, knocks it out in an ashtray, �lls it, strikes a match, but
scarcely ever smokes for more than a few pu�s. He has small, neat,
wrinkled hands, with a plain wedding-ring on the third �nger of the
left hand. His clothes are a little rumpled, but they sit well on him,
and though he is in his seventy-sixth year there is only a suggestion
of tubbiness behind the buttons of his coloured waistcoat. I cannot
for long keep my attention from his eyes, which may wander about
the room or stare out of the window, yet now and then will return
to dart a glance at me or rest a steady gaze as some vital point is
made. They are surrounded by wrinkles and folds that change with
and emphasise each mood.
The �ood of words has dried up for a moment and the pipe is
being lit again. I perceive my opportunity, and state my business,
which now seems unimportant. Yet he turns to it immediately with
enthusiasm, and listens to me attentively. Then, when this part of
the conversation is done, I get up to go; but for the moment my
departure is evidently neither expected nor desired, for he has
started to talk again. Once more he refers to his own mythology.
His eyes �x on some distant object, and he seems to have forgotten
that I am there as he clutches his pipe and speaks through its stem.
It occurs to me that in all externals he resembles the archetypal
Oxford don, at times even the stage caricature of a don. But that is
exactly what he is not. It is rather as if some strange spirit had
taken on the guise of an elderly professor. The body may be pacing
this shabby little suburban room, but the mind is far away, roaming
the plains and mountains of Middle-earth.
Then it is all over, and I am being ushered out of the garage and
taken to the garden gate – the smaller one opposite the front door:
he explains that he has to keep the garage gates padlocked to stop
football spectators parking their cars in his drive when they attend
matches at the local stadium. Rather to my surprise, he asks me to