Tolkien and the Great War (45 page)

p.207

Medical board
: JRRT service record. Correspondence address: 22 November 1916 form, ibid. JRRT considers Royal Engineers: CLW to JRRT, 8 December 1916. T. E. Mitton: KES register; Heath,
Service Record of King Edward's School, Birmingham
, 102.

pp.207-8

‘The Grey Bridge at Tavrobel': published (like ‘Tinfang Warble') in the late 1920s in a journal referred to by JRRT as
‘I.U.M.'
(Hammond with Anderson,
Bibliography
, 344; Douglas A. Anderson to the author.)

p.207

Tavrobel
:
Parma Eldalamberon
11, 69.
Haywood: LT2
, 328.

Heraldic devices (footnote):
Parma Eldalamberon
13, 93-6.

p.208

‘magnificent', etc.: CLW to JRRT, 8 December 1916.

p.209

‘
rather below his usual standard', etc.: CLW to JRRT, 16 November 1916. Billeting officer; ‘Fur undercoats…', etc.: 19th LF war diary. ‘sheer vacancy
': GBS to JRRT, 16 September 1916. ‘for such I am…': ibid., 16 November 1916.

‘
My career in the Army…
': GBS to JRRT, 12 January. ‘The Corps Commander…': ibid., 18 November 1916.

‘engaging rascal', etc.: RQG, report on GBS's paper ‘Early English Ballads',
KESC
, December 1911, 90. ‘wild and whole-hearted admirer': ibid., 3 February 1916.

p.210

Military writing: Keegan,
The Face of Battle
, 20-2. ‘Owing to hostile MG fire…': GBS's intelligence report, 1 July 1916, 19th LF war diary.

‘
Who battled have with bloody hands…
': GBS, ‘We who have bowed ourselves to time',
A Spring Harvest
, 49. ‘Shapes in the mist…': ‘Memories', ibid. 63.

Riding experiences
: Ruth Smith to JRRT, 13 November 1916.

‘
I hope I shall be able…
': GBS to JRRT, 16 November 1916.

p.211

GBS's death: GBS service record; 19th LF war diary; Ruth Smith to JRRT, 22 December 1916 (‘after that he quickly sank…'). Words of CO (Major J. Ambrose Smith) to Ruth Smith: ibid., 26 December 1916.

pp.211-12

‘O seven times happy…': GBS, ‘The Burial of Sophocles',
A Spring Harvest
, 77. History of poem: ibid. 7; GBS to JRRT, 2 December 1915. Riposte to axiom about those the Gods love: ibid., 9 February 1916.

p.212

‘
My dear JR…
': CLW to JRRT, 16 December 1916. GBS as his mother's chief support: ibid., 18 January 1917.

Request for poems: Ruth Smith to JRRT, 22 December 1916. ‘The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa':
Parma Eldalamberon
12, xvii-xxi, 29-106
passim.
If JRRT left his
Qenya lexicon at home when he went to France (as seems likely in view of Smith losing ‘The Burial of Sophocles'), perhaps this new word list was written in hospital in Birmingham so he could refamiliarize himself with Qenya. It adds little to the content of the lexicon (upon which he continued to work), and makes no attempt at alphabetical order.

pp.212, 214

‘Early chart of names';
Earendl
, etc.:
Parma Eldalamberon
13, 98-9.

p.214

‘
almost fully formed
':
Letters
, 215. JRRT recalled that ‘The Fall of Gondolin' was ‘written in hospital and on leave after surviving the Battle of the Somme in 1916' (
Letters
221; cf. 366). At Le Touquet he had a high fever but by the end of the second week in November he was writing letters from the Birmingham University Hospital; his handwriting on a 22 November form (service record) was firm and assured. He also said the tale emerged ‘during sick-leave at the end of 1916' (215; cf. 345). Other letters (345, 386) indicate that composition continued into 1917. Feasibly the tale was written after ‘The Cottage of Lost Play' (see Chapter 12), and the hospital in question might have been in Harrogate, where he spent most of March 1917.

pp.215-23

Aryador
, etc.: where possible, names and other readings in ‘The Fall of Gondolin' are given as first written, in the text referred to by its editor, Christopher Tolkien, as ‘Tuor A' (
LT2
, 202-3). But most quotations here are from the revised text, ‘Tuor B' (which was written over the top of the original, largely obscuring it, and is published in
LT2
, 149-97). To give one illustrative example of the name changes involved, the shadow land of
Aryador
became by emendation to the first manuscript
Mathusdor
and then
Dor Lómin
, which was the name that endured.

p.215

‘
he wandered…
':
LT2
, 151.

p.216

‘
Now there dwelt…
': ibid., 153-4.

Tuor at 23: ‘Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin',
Unfinished Tales
, 20. ‘Oxford “sleepies”':
Biography
, 73. ‘dream of the gods':
LT2
, 159.

‘
hide their land…
': ibid., 162.

p.217

‘
stand as long as Taniquetil…
': ibid. 171. ‘No tide of evil…':
LT2
, 297.

‘
That, I suppose…
': 1964 interview with Denis Gueroult, BBC Sound Archives.

‘
little, delicate, beautiful creatures
': CLW to JRRT, 1 March 1916. ‘small and slender and lithe':
LT2
, 198 (note 18).

p.218

kalimbardi
, etc.:
Parma Eldalamberon
12, 44.
Calum(oth
) (footnote):
Parma Eldalamberon
13, 99. ‘folk of dreadful hate':
LT2
, 160.

‘
That you are going to win…
': RCG to JRRT, 14 August 1916. ‘for all the evil…': JRRT to GBS, 12 August 1916 (
Letters
, 10; reading clarified by Douglas A. Anderson).

p.219

‘
I've never had those…
': Norman,
Sunday Times Magazine
, London, 15 January 1967, 34-6.

‘
I think the orcs…
':
Letters
, 82. ‘beauty and grace…': ibid. 85.

‘
they of the Heavenly Arch…
':
LT2
, 173.

p.220

‘the subterranean…', ‘Their hearts…':
LT2
, 159-60.

orc
:
Letters
, 177-8;
Morgoth's Ring
, 124, 422; JRRT, ‘Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings', in Lobdell (ed.),
A Tolkien Compass
, 171.

Balrog: Parma Eldalamberon
11, 21, 42; see also
LT1
, 240.

‘From the greatness…', ‘beasts like snakes…':
LT2
, 169.

‘
smiths and sorcerers', ‘iron so cunningly linked…
': ibid. 170. ‘by reason of the exceeding…', ‘their hollow bellies…': ibid. 176.

p.221

‘
the icthyosaurus, jabberwocks…
': civilian Frederick Arthur Robinson, quoted in Brown,
The Imperial War Museum Book of the Somme
, 267. Ernst,
Celebes:
see Cork,
A Bitter Truth
, 170, 258-60. ‘The monster approached…':
The Times
, 25 October 1916, citing the
Dusseldorfer Generalanzeiger.
‘like fairy-tales of war…': Gibbs,
Now It Can Be Told.

pp.221-2

Road to hell: ‘Gylfaginning' Chapter 49, in Snorri Sturluson,
Edda.

p.222

‘Winter, and his blue-tipped spears…' (footnote)
:
LT1
, 34. ‘wintry spell of Yelin', etc.: written on the envelope of a
letter from RQG to JRRT, 19 October 1915.
Yelin, Yelur: Parma Eldalamberon
12, 105-6. ‘
Yelur
= Melko' in the Qenya lexicon may have preceded the separate entry for
Melko;
both seem to have been added after Tolkien made the list of ‘Poetic and Mythologic Words'. In Gnomish,
c
.1917, Melko was labelled ‘Lord of utter heat and cold, of violence and evil', with bynames
Geluim
, ‘Ice', related to
Gilim
, ‘winter';
Parma Eldalamberon
11, 22, 38.

‘a binding terror', etc.:
LT2
, 159. ‘drown his fear and disquiet': ibid. 169.

p.223

‘
unconquerable eagerness…
':
LT2
, 159. Thrall-Noldoli bent with their labours: ibid. 198 (note 18).

p.224

‘
You ought to start…
': CLW to JRRT, 18 January 1917.

There is no knowing when Tolkien had announced his plans for an epic, but it seems likely that Wiseman was here responding to a letter (no longer extant) written prior to Smith's death, perhaps as early as November.

‘
The Cottage of Lost Play
': name changes in or between the first, undated text and a fair copy begun by Edith Tolkien on 12 February 1917 match those in the early chart of names in ‘The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa', which clearly predated ‘The Fall of Gondolin'. The elf-king's name
Ing
in ‘The Cottage of Lost Play' was emended to
Inwë
, his name in ‘The Fall of Gondolin'. The sun-tree of Valinor was first
Glingol
, a name given in the latter to the tree's seedling in Gondolin itself. Most interesting is the occurrence of
Manwë
as a name for an Elf (emended to
Valwë
): in ‘The Fall of Gondolin' and all later mythological texts
Manwë
is the name of the chief of the Valar. (
LT1
, 13, 21-2;
Parma Eldalamberon
12, xx;
Parma Eldalamberon
13, 98-9.)

pp.224-5

Background of Ottor/Eriol; ‘the true tradition…':
LT2
, 290-2. Animalic
Otter:
Wynne and Smith, ‘Tolkien and Esperanto', in
Seven
17, 32-3.

p.225

‘
all who enter…
':
LT1
, 14.

pp.225-6

‘At that same moment…'; ‘the walls shake with mirth': ibid. 15.

p.226

‘
hearing the lament of the world
': ibid. 16.

pp.226-7

‘
This was the Cottage…'; ‘the children of the fathers…'; ‘Of the misty aftermemories…
': ibid. 19.

pp.227-8

‘
old tales…'; ‘lonely children…'; ‘shall be thronged…
': ibid. 20.

p.228

‘
the Faring Forth…
': ibid. 17.

p.229

‘
Golden Book
':
LT2
, 290-1;
Parma Eldalamberon
12, 72;
Parma Eldalamberon
11, 63.
i·band a·gwentin laithra:
ibid. 11-12.

‘
the lost
Tale of Wade
': Chambers,
Widsith
, 98. ‘So this world…', etc.: ibid. 3-4. Recreating early Roman poems: Macaulay,
Lays of Ancient Rome
, 405-9. Cf. Shippey,
Author of the Century
, 233-6.

‘
Do not laugh…
':
Letters
, 144.

p.230

Support for Irish Home Rule: JRRT to CLW, 16 November 1914.

‘
as an ambition…
': Boas and Herford (eds.),
The Year's Work in English Studies, 1925
, 59-60.

p.231

Poetic output in 1917: CLW to JRRT, 1 September 1917. End of leave; 23 January medical board: JRRT service record. ‘unreservedly glad'; ‘malinger…': CLW to JRRT, 18 January 1917.

pp.231-2

Late February: service record. The 3rd LF commanding officer had been kept informed of JRRT's situation since 15 December 1916.

p.232

‘
Every day in bed…
':
Biography
, 95. It may be noted here that where Humphrey Carpenter's account of 1917 does not seem to match JRRT's service record, I have followed the latter.

Council of Harrogate
: CLW to JRRT, 14, 15 (‘I am going to burst into…', etc.) and 17 April 1917.

‘
As you said, it is you and I now…
': ibid., 4 March 1917.

pp.232-3

Surviving TCBSites and GBS's poetry: ibid., 18 January 1917.

p.233

Roger Smith's death: ibid., 4 March 1917; service record; Ruth
Smith to JRRT, 6 March 1917. Never knew of GBS's death: ibid., 22 January 1917.

‘
I suppose very few…'; ‘a few acres of mud
': CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.

‘
the starvation-year
':
Letters
, 53. The
Asturias:
Gibson and Prendergast,
The German Submarine War 1914-1918
, 164.

Shipping losses: Taylor,
English History 1914-1945
, 84.

p.234

Hornsea:
Biography
, 95. Musketry school:
Lancashire Fusiliers' Annual 1917
, 304.

Holderness defences: Dorman,
Guardians of the Humber
, 13-65.

Wives' visits to Thirtle Bridge: Cyril Dunn to the author. ‘Here some sixty…': Platt papers.

Officers' service fitness: weekly return of the British Army.