The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology

1915

?Early 1915 Mary Jane Tolkien, Tolkien’s paternal grandmother, dies.

January 1915 Tolkien writes a poem, As Two Fair Trees, perhaps to celebrate the anniversary of his reunion with Edith. – He revises his poem The Tides, now called Sea-Chant of an Elder Day.

17 January 1915 Hilary Full Term begins.

Hilary Term 1915 Tolkien attends the continuation of A.S. Napier’s lectures on Pearl on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Ashmolean Museum, beginning 26 January, and on Beowulf on Thursdays and Saturdays at 12.00 noon in the Ashmolean, beginning 21 January. He also attends Sir Walter Raleigh’s lectures on Drama in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. at Magdalen College, beginning 19 January. If he has not done so already in 1914, he now attends W.A. Craigie’s lectures on Hrafnkel’s Saga on Thursdays at 5.00 p.m. in the Taylor Institution, beginning 21 January. He probably continues to have a weekly tutorial with Kenneth Sisam, and probably attends Sisam’s lectures on English Poetry before the Norman Conquest on Saturdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Ashmolean, beginning 23 January. He possibly attends lectures by Sir John Rhys on Welsh on Tuesdays and Fridays at 6.00 p.m. at Jesus College, beginning 22 January.

Hilary and Trinity Terms 1915 Tolkien is President of the Junior Common Room.

25 January 1915 At a meeting of the Stapeldon Society a member proposes that a key to the baths at Exeter College should be placed in a glass case to provide for the possibility of Zeppelin raiders (presumably, so that the baths can be used for shelter). Tolkien is among those who oppose the motion, which fails. The members strongly disapprove of the curtailment of baths as a method of economy. Tolkien tells the House that the Bursar believes that half the College is unwashed, and if the baths were closed down the other half might become likewise. The minutes record that ‘Class II O.T.C. [Officers Training Corps] in the person of Mr Tolkien then gave Class I and others valuable hints on drilling a boy entitled “Jones best ever ready word of command, always useful, will never wear out, Hip hop!”’ (Exeter College archives).

February 1915 Tolkien reads to the Exeter College Essay Club the essay on the Kalevala he had earlier read to the Sundial Society (22 November 1914).

1 February 1915 The Stapeldon Society meets.

8 February 1915 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Stapeldon Society. The members discuss the tearing up of troublesome tram lines by the Oxford Town Clerk. They decide that the Secretary should write to applaud his actions, and ask for the gift of a tram rail or even a portion of one.

15 February 1915 The Stapeldon Society meets.

22 February 1915 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Stapeldon Society. The Town Clerk has given them a seven-foot length of tram rail. The minutes of the meeting will read:

On the motion of Mr Tolkien it was carried (a) that it should be present at the last meeting in every term (b) that it should be carried in procession to the new Pres[ident]’s rooms by the first year [i.e. the first-year members] (c) that every Pres[ident]’s name should be engraved upon it. The House then adjourned to the quad and a procession was formed headed by the officers, who were followed by the tram line supported by selected members of the first year followed by the rest of the house in order of precedence, slowly and steadfastly round the quad, the first year stentoriously breathing, the rest all singing a mournful dirge alternating with Tipperary [the song ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’]. When they reached the foot of the staircase enthusiasm grew apace and the line was soon safely deposited under the Pres[ident]’s bed. [Exeter College archives]

March 1915 At a meeting of the Exeter College Essay Club Tolkien reads a further revised version of his poem Sea-Chant of an Elder Day; but when sending a typed copy of the work to G.B. Smith during this month, the title becomes Sea-Song of an Elder Day. Possibly at the same time, he paints in The Book of Ishness a watercolour entitled Water, Wind & Sand (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 42) and inscribes on the facing page ‘Illustration to Sea-Song of an Elder Day’. The small figure enclosed in a white sphere in the foreground of the painting may be the seed from which the ‘Silmarillion’ frame-story emerged, that the poem was the song that Tuor sang to his son Eärendel in their exile after the fall of Gondolin. – Tolkien writes a poem for Edith, Sparrow-song (Bilink) (later simply Sparrow Song). The word bilink will later occur in a lexicon of his invented language Gnomish, in the form bilin, bilinc ‘a small bird, esp. sparrow’.

1 March 1915 The Stapeldon Society meets. – Rob Gilson writes to Tolkien, urging him to attend a T.C.B.S. meeting at Cambridge on the weekend of 6–7 March.

2 March 1915 Christopher Wiseman writes to Tolkien, urging him to come to the T.C.B.S. meeting. He is sure that he can get him rooms in college. G.B. Smith is to attend, and if they do not take this opportunity Wiseman does not know when the four will be able to gather together again.

6 March 1915 Tolkien having failed to reply to their letters, Gilson and Wiseman send him a telegram, in jest claiming his resignation from the T.C.B.S. unless he appears at the weekend. – In the event, he does not go to Cambridge.

8 March 1915 Tolkien rewrites his poem Dark (first composed in December 1914), now with the alternate title Copernicus v. Ptolemy or Copernicus and Ptolemy. He shares it with Wiseman and Smith, who will mention it in letters of 15 April and ?25 March respectively. – Tolkien attends a meeting of the Stapeldon Society. He is recorded as making criticisms of the minutes.

?10 (possibly, less likely 17) March 1915 G.B. Smith writes to Tolkien (see note) from Magdalen College, Oxford, where he is billeted with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Tolkien has sent him either the whole poem concerning Eärendel that he wrote late in 1914, or the first part to which he will later give the title The Bidding of the Minstrel. Smith thinks that it is very good, except that it tails off at the end. He asks Tolkien to send him typewritten copies of his poems, which after reading he will send on to Gilson if Tolkien wishes. He is having typed the poem he intends to enter for the annual Newdigate Prize for poetry (established 1806; the set topic in 1915 was ‘Glastonbury’).

10–11 March 1915 Tolkien writes a poem, Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon (An East Anglian Phantasy) (*The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon), later prefixed A Faërie.

11 March 1915 Wiseman writes to Tolkien, adding comments from Gilson as they reread one of Tolkien’s letters. Tolkien seems to have explained that his failure to reply immediately to their letters of 1 and 2 March was due to the fact that he has set a specific day in the week for answering letters. They wonder why Tolkien is so often the one absent from T.C.B.S. meetings, and describe what he missed in Cambridge the previous weekend. Tolkien has evidently suggested a three-day meeting on a weekend early in Trinity Term. Wiseman explains that as his mother is recovering from an operation he does not think that they can meet at his home in London; they might meet instead at a hotel in the Cotswolds. Gilson adds a postscript that in order to obtain leave from the Army he needs to know early to plan his weekend leaves.

13 March 1915 Hilary Full Term ends.

Easter vacation 1915 Tolkien spends most or possibly all of his vacation in Warwick. He probably adds another watercolour, Tanaqui, to The Book of Ishness: this seems to depict Kôr, in Tolkien’s mythology the shining city of the Elves in Eldamar, about which he will write a poem on 30 April. The painting agrees with the poem, but also shows details such as the slender silver tower of the house of Inwë ‘shooting skyward like a needle’ which Tolkien will not describe in writing until several years later in *The Book of Lost Tales.

?15 (possibly, less likely, 22) March 1915 Smith writes to Tolkien. He is very glad to have received Tolkien’s typed verses, and comments on The Sea-Song of an Elder Day, Outside, As Two Fair Trees, and Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon.

17–18 March 1915 Tolkien reworks the latter part of the Eärendel poem of ?late 1914 as an independent work entitled The Mermaid’s Flute. This may be in response to comments made by Smith in his letter of ?10 March.

?Spring 1915 Probably no earlier than spring 1915 Tolkien begins to make a systematic record of his invented language Qenya in a small notebook previously used for notes on Gothic, which he will now continue to use for several years. He will call this *Qenyaqetsa. Eventually the book will contain a phonology and a lexicon, both heavily worked.

22 March 1915 Gilson writes to Tolkien, explaining that he can get leave only every other week, and cannot keep holding weekends open for a meeting of the T.C.B.S. He asks Tolkien to let him know at once, if possible, which weekends are best for him.

?25 March 1915 Smith writes to Tolkien. He has shown Tolkien’s verses to their friend and fellow Oxford poet *H.T. Wade-Gery, who thinks Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon and As Two Fair Trees very good, but that Sea-Chant of an Elder Day though good in places is too exaggerated. He also approves of Copernicus and Ptolemy (Dark). Smith sends Tolkien the poem he intends to submit for the Newdigate Prize, ‘Glastonbury’. He will send Tolkien’s poems and his own to Gilson as soon as he can. He cannot arrange a meeting of the T.C.B.S. unless Tolkien comes to Oxford for Easter (Easter Sunday 1915 was on 4 April). He thinks that his battalion will be leaving before 12 April, and he cannot get leave before then.

26 March 1915 (postmark) Wiseman replies to a postcard from Tolkien. He thinks it doubtful that he can attend a T.C.B.S. meeting on 11 or 17 April.

30 March 1915 (postmark) Wiseman, now at Cleeve Hill, Cheltenham, writes to Tolkien, proposing a T.C.B.S. meeting on 18 April in Tolkien’s St John Street rooms. He relies on Tolkien to arrange this with his landlady.

31 March 1915 Gilson writes to Tolkien that he has received his poems safely (via Smith) but has not yet read them. Wiseman has told him that a T.C.B.S. meeting on 18 April at Oxford has been settled.

April 1915 Tolkien writes in a notebook, which he dates to this month, notes on The Owl and the Nightingale, chiefly about its vocabulary.

?3 April 1915 Smith writes to Tolkien. He is unwell and sick at heart, but finds consolation in Tolkien’s letters and his comments on Smith’s Newdigate Prize entry. He has now forwarded to Gilson Tolkien’s poems, except the ‘“Earendel” things’. He thinks that Tolkien’s verse ‘is very apt to get too complicated and twisted and to be most damned difficult to make out’; The Mermaid’s Flute is rather bad in this respect (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford). He would like Tolkien to make his verse more lucid without losing its luxuriance, and suggests that he read shorter lyrics by William Blake as an example of the clear and simple. He does not know if he will be in Oxford on 18 April.

4 April 1915 Tolkien writes to Wiseman (letter not seen).

5 April 1915 (postmark) Wiseman again writes to Tolkien, repeating his message of 30 March.

6 April 1915 Tolkien sends a postcard to Wiseman (not seen).

10 April 1915 Tolkien writes to Wiseman, possibly giving news about Smith (letter not seen). Wiseman replies at once that he now received Tolkien’s messages of 4, 6, and 10 April. He has advised Smith to ask for leave next week.

12 April 1915 Smith writes to Tolkien from his home in West Bromwich that he is on sick leave, and will not be able to attend the T.C.B.S. meeting on 18 April. He is trying to arrange a transfer into a battalion which Tolkien could also join after his examinations. Before Tolkien receives this letter, he sends a telegram (contents unknown) to Wiseman, who finds it disturbing.

13 April 1915 Wiseman sends a telegram to Tolkien in Warwick, asking what arrangements he has made for their Oxford ‘council’ as problems have arisen. In a letter written the same day, he explains that Gilson has been ill since 6 April and it will be very difficult for him to get leave the next weekend. If Gilson cannot attend, Wiseman’s mother would welcome the smaller group at Cleeve Hill; if Smith also cannot attend, the meeting will not take place.

14 April 1915 Gilson writes to Tolkien from Marston Green, where he has been on sick leave. He will return to his battalion on Friday, 16 April, and there is no possibility of getting leave for the weekend. He believes that Wiseman is now trying to arrange a meeting in Cambridge.

15 April 1915 Wiseman writes to Tolkien. The ‘Council of Oxford’ must be abandoned. He has received Tolkien’s poems via Gilson and has nearly finished a musical setting for Wood-sunshine. He asks Tolkien to spend the next weekend with him and his family.

15–16 April 1915 Tolkien writes a poem, Courage Speaks with the Love of Earth. The title will be changed to Courage Speaks with a Child of Earth, and later to Now and Ever and The Two Riders.

16 April 1915 Wiseman receives a postcard from Tolkien indicating that the latter will not be able to visit the Wisemans at the weekend.

?19 April 1915 Smith replies to a note from Tolkien. He is soon to join the 8th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Regiment at No. 1 Camp, Sutton Veny, Wiltshire. By now, he has applied to transfer to the 19th Battalion of the *Lancashire Fusiliers, but is not yet able to join them at their training camp in Wales. He is not sure if he can get Tolkien a commission in the battalion he hopes to join, but will do his best. Apparently in response to doubts expressed by Tolkien, he gives arguments in favour of Tolkien enlisting as soon as he has taken his degree in June: these include better prospects for choosing a battalion, and Army pay.

20–21 April 1915 Tolkien writes this date on a manuscript of his poem May Day (later called May Day in a Backward Year and May-day).

22 April 1915 Tolkien rewrites his poem Evening (first composed in March 1910). Later he will give it a new title, Completorium.

25 April 1915 Trinity Full Term begins.

Trinity Term 1915 Tolkien probably attends the conclusion of A.S. Napier’s lectures on Beowulf on Thursdays and Saturdays at 12.00 noon in the Ashmolean Museum, beginning 1 May, and on Pearl on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Ashmolean Museum, beginning 4 May. He possibly attends *H.F.B. Brett-Smith’s lectures on Shakespeare on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. at Corpus Christi College, beginning 27 April; D. Nichol Smith’s lectures on Dryden on Wednesdays and Fridays at 12.00 noon in the Ashmolean Museum, beginning 28 April; and Percy Simpson’s lectures on Elizabethan Drama on Mondays at 11.00 a.m. in Oriel College, beginning 26 April. He probably continues to have a weekly tutorial with Kenneth Sisam. Although his final examinations are fast approaching he will find time to write several poems in the early part of the term. – Wiseman writes to Tolkien with comments on his poems, which Wiseman has discussed with Gilson this afternoon. He says that Smith is enthusiastic about them, while he himself is ‘wildly braced…. I can’t think where you get all your amazing words from’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford). He refers to Copernicus and Ptolemy, Earendel, Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, From Iffley (From the Many-Willow’d Margin of the Immemorial Thames), As Two Fair Trees, and Wood-sunshine. – British, Australian, and New Zealand troops land on the Gallipoli peninsula.

27–28 April 1915 In his rooms at 59 St John Street, Tolkien writes two poems, You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play (*The Little House of Lost Play: Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva) and *Goblin Feet. The first, evidently influenced by thoughts of Edith, introduces the ‘Cottage of Lost Play’ which will be the setting of much of the story-telling in The Book of Lost Tales. Goblin Feet seems to have been merely a fairy poem written to please Edith. Later Tolkien will come to dislike it, with its images of tiny fairies (rejected in his mythology), and wish that it could be buried and forgotten, but now he submits it (with You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play) to the annual volume of Oxford Poetry, co-edited by T.W. Earp. Of the two poems, only Goblin Feet will be chosen for publication.

29–30 April 1915 Tolkien writes a poem, *Tinfang Warble, only eight lines long. He will later rewrite and lengthen it.

30 April 1915 Tolkien writes the poem Kôr: In a City Lost and Dead (*The City of the Gods). Its ‘sable hill’ and ‘marble temples white’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 136) agree with the watercolour Tanaqui painted during Easter vacation 1915.

2 May 1915 Tolkien revises his poem Darkness on the Road (first composed in November 1911). He also makes a fair copy of his poem The Mermaid’s Flute.

3 May 1915 Tolkien writes a poem, Morning Song, a revision of Morning (composed in March 1910). – At about this time he has several of his poems typed by the copying office of William Hunt at 18 Broad Street, Oxford, and the typescripts stapled in a booklet. – The Stapeldon Society meets.

10 May 1915 On one page of The Book of Ishness Tolkien paints a watercolour, another view of the Elvish city Kôr (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 44). The city is framed by two dying trees from whose branches grow a crescent Moon and a blazing Sun – an early, visual expression of the Two Trees which will become an essential feature in Tolkien’s mythology – while in the sky is a single star. On the opposite blank (verso) page of the book Tolkien writes ‘The Shores of Faery’. (See further, entry for 8–9 July 1915 and related note.)

?Mid-May 1915 Probably at about the same time, on the next opening in The Book of Ishness Tolkien paints a watercolour described on the facing page as ‘Illustr[ation]: To “Man in the Moon”’ (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 45), and underneath this inscription he writes out four lines of the poem he had composed in March: Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon. When he comes to describe the vessel of the Moon in The Book of Lost Tales some four years later, he apparently will look back to this picture for inspiration (‘Rods there were and perchance they were of ice, and they rose upon it like aëry masts, and sails were caught to them by slender threads’, The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (1983), p. 192).

?14 May 1915 G.B. Smith writes to Tolkien. He is now in the 19th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, temporarily at the Grand Hotel, Penmaenmawr, Wales. Needing a Welsh grammar, he asks Tolkien to send his (Smith’s) copy if he has it, or to buy him a new one, or to sell him Tolkien’s own Welsh grammar. He expects that Tolkien will send him Georgian Poetry, and asks Tolkien to show some of Smith’s verses to the editor of Oxford Poetry 1915.

17 May 1915 Tolkien apparently is absent from a meeting of the Stapeldon Society, since T.W. Earp will be reported as having spoken on his behalf.

22 May 1915 Tolkien attends an eight-course dinner given by a fellow student at Exeter College, E.E. St L. Hill, for friends before the latter joins the 19th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. Tolkien obtains many signatures on his printed menu.

23 May 1915 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary. – W.E. Hall of Exeter College is killed near Krithia, Turkey during the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) campaign.

28 May 1915 The Psittakoi, an Oxford student society of which T.W. Earp is president, meets in R.H. Barrow’s rooms at Exeter College. Tolkien gives a paper on The Quest of Beauty and Other Poems by *H.R. Freston. See note.

?29 May (?5 June) 1915 Smith writes to Tolkien. He has been reading Georgian Poetry as well as another book Tolkien has sent him, apparently on medieval scripts.

31 May 1915 Zeppelins bomb London for the first time.

Before 10 June 1915 Tolkien borrows from the Exeter College library the Cambridge History of English Literature and introductions to Dryden, Keats, and Shakespeare. See note.

?10 June 1915 Smith writes to Tolkien, who has asked advice on being posted to Smith’s regiment. Smith suggests that Tolkien write to Colonel Stainforth of the 19th Lancashire Fusiliers, and ask if Stainforth will consider his application for a commission. If he is successful, Smith will do his best to get Tolkien into his hut and company.

I think it is quite on the cards that I shall be in Birmingham next week, because I have toothache like Satan himself, and must see my dentist. I am strongly in favour of your going to Allports’, Cotmore Row for your clothing. They are no dearer and far and away better than anybody outside London, or perhaps inside it. I have worn these clothes hard and solid ever since I had them, and there are no signs of wearing out. Now you have one uniform, and the most you want is another tunic, a pair of slacks, perhaps a pair of breeches, and perhaps a British Warm. If you can get slacks under 35/- you will be a genius; and breeches are Allports’ extra special article. If you could manage to be in Birmingham during the next week we might visit that distinguished emporium together…. It is most important to buy only the darkest stuffs for breeches and Warm, because the [Commanding Officer] here hates anything light….