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1922

?1922–1925 Tolkien creates several varieties of Valmaric script (*Writing systems), which he uses in addition to the Alphabet of Rúmil. – Tolkien writes approximately 120 entries for an English–Qenya dictionary (*‘English–Qenya Dictionary’), primarily in Valmaric script.

1922 Tolkien inscribes this date in his copies of Barzaz-Breiz: chants populaire de la Bretagne, edited by Th. Hersart de la Villemarqué (Paris, 1846); Annales Cambriae (London, 1860) and Brut y Tywysogion, or The Chronicle of the Princes (London, 1860), edited by John Williams ab Ithel; Dosbarth Ederyn Davod Aur, or The Ancient Welsh Grammar, translated with notes by Williams ab Ithel (Llandovery, 1861); Svenskt-Dialect-Lexicon eller Ordbok öfver Svenska allmogespraket by Johann Ernst Reitz (Lund, 1877); Vocabulaire vieux-breton avec commentaire … by Joseph Loth (Paris, 1884); The Text of the Mabinogion and Other Welsh Tales from the Red Book of Hergest, edited by John Rhŷs and J. Gwenogvryn Evans (Oxford, 1887); Iolo Manuscripts, translated with notes by Taliesin Williams (2nd edn., Liverpool, 1888); The Text of The Bruts from the Red Book of Hergest, edited by Rhŷs and Evans (Oxford, 1890); Glossaire moyen-breton by Émile Jean Marie Ernault (Paris, 1895); The Tribal System in Wales by Frederic Seebohm (2nd edn., London, 1904); and L’ancien vers breton by É.J.M. Ernault (Paris, 1912).

Early 1922 Tolkien sends the completed manuscript of A Middle English Vocabulary to Oxford University Press. – George S. Gordon discusses with David Nichol Smith the idea of a book of selections from the works of Geoffrey Chaucer for use by students, and probably in this period talks to Tolkien about it also. This will develop into the ‘Clarendon Chaucer’ (*Geoffrey Chaucer), edited by Gordon and Tolkien, and ultimately abandoned.

January 1922 Tolkien draws up an untitled table of a variety of the Alphabet of Rúmil.

12 January 1922 Term begins at Leeds. E.V. Gordon takes up the post of Assistant Lecturer in English.

?January 1922–1925 Tolkien and E.V. Gordon work together to develop the language side of the Leeds English School. To make it more accessible they form a ‘Viking Club’ (*Societies and clubs) for past and present students of Old Icelandic, who meet to drink beer, read sagas, and sing comic songs and nonsense verses containing linguistic jokes, and popular songs or nursery rhymes translated into Old English, Gothic, or Old Norse. Most of the latter are written by Gordon or Tolkien, and circulated as stencilled sheets (see further, *Songs for the Philologists). The Old English version of The Mermaid (‘It was in the broad Atlantic’) proves particularly popular. Tolkien even composes at least one Old English crossword puzzle to amuse his students.

20 January 1922 Tolkien gives a talk on the Oxford English Dictionary to a poorly attended joint meeting of the Yorkshire Dialect Society and the English Association, held at the University of Leeds. He is probably a member of both organizations by this time (*Societies and clubs).

8 February 1922 C.T. Onions writes to John Johnson to ask the position of Oxford University Press concerning their proposed student’s edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He notes that Tolkien and E.V. Gordon have decided to produce such an edition, and that the University of Leeds is helping to pay for a rotographed facsimile of the original manuscript for the editors’ use. Later in February he will pledge, on behalf of Tolkien and Gordon, that their book will not exceed 160 pages in length.

Beginning of March 1922 Edith and Michael Tolkien have bad colds. Edith records in her account book for the week 27 February–4 March that of a total expenditure of £8 9s 6d, 4s 3d are for medical costs, £2 5s 1d for food, and £4 11s 8d for wages for Mary (the maid?) and the children’s nurse. – Tolkien becomes ill with influenza. – He receives proofs of A Middle English Vocabulary.

11 March 1922 Tolkien returns the bulk of the proofs of A Middle English Vocabulary, heavily corrected, to John Johnson at Oxford University Press. He apologizes for not sending them by return of post due to illness. He has just recovered from influenza.

22 March 1922 Term ends at Leeds.

20 April 1922 Term begins at Leeds.

25 April 1922 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

11 May 1922 A Middle English Vocabulary is published as a separate volume.

13 May 1922 Sir Walter Raleigh dies.

23 May 1922 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

8 June 1922 A Middle English Vocabulary is published in one volume with Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose.

26 June 1922 Tolkien sends a postcard to Henry Bradley, with whom he had worked on the Oxford English Dictionary, hoping that he has recovered from an illness. Tolkien includes a riddle in Old English verse based on a nursery rhyme, ‘Enigma Saxonicum nuper “inventum”’.

1 July 1922 Term ends at Leeds.

Summer 1922 The Tolkien family go on holiday for some weeks at *Filey on the Yorkshire coast. Tolkien spends much of his time marking School Certificate examination papers, an annual chore which he will undertake for many years to earn extra money to support his family. – While at Filey, Tolkien draws in The Book of Ishness a picture of his son John standing on a cliff looking out to sea.

Late July 1922 George S. Gordon resigns his chair at Leeds, having been elected Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford. Tolkien will unsuccessfully apply for the Leeds chair, to which *Lascelles Abercrombie is elected. Michael Sadler, the Vice-Chancellor at Leeds, will inform Tolkien that the University hopes to create a new Professorship of English Language for him.

28 July 1922 By this date Tolkien has agreed to review for G.N. Clark, editor of the English Historical Review, Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem by *R.W. Chambers. He will make several pages of notes, but either does not complete the task or his review is not published.

2 October 1922 Term begins at Leeds.

Leeds academic year 1922–1923 In the absence of a University of Leeds Calendar for 1922–3 (not published), one assumes that Tolkien gives many of the same lectures as in earlier years, but he now shares the burden of Language instruction with E.V. Gordon.

?October 1922 Tolkien writes a poem, The Clerke’s Compleinte, playing on the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, about the chaos of registration at the start of the academic year at Leeds.

17 October 1922 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds. He is appointed to two sub-committees, one to decide what modifications of intermediate courses and examinations should be made for holders of Higher School Certificates, and one to review and report upon degrees in Arts, Commerce, and Law.

25 October 1922 Tolkien gives a talk on ‘Watling Street’ at a meeting of the Language Colloquium at the University, Leeds, held at 12 Beech Grove Terrace at 4.10 p.m.

21 November 1922 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

December 1922 Tolkien’s poem *The Clerke’s [sic] Compleinte is published in The Gryphon, a Leeds University magazine, for December 1922.

14 December 1922 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

20 December 1922 Term ends at Leeds.

Christmas 1922 John and Michael Tolkien attend a party for children of University of Leeds staff. Michael Sadler, the Vice-Chancellor, plays Father Christmas but becomes stuck coming down the chimney; for a while, all those present can see is a pair of waving legs, until Sadler and a pile of parcels crash to the ground. It is probably at this party that both John and Michael catch measles, and in turn infect Edith and their nurse. Tolkien will write on 13 February: ‘By the beginning of January I was the only one in the house left up…. The vacation work lay in ruins; but they (not the work) are all better now and not much the worse. I escaped’ (letter to Elizabeth M. Wright, Letters, p. 11).

?End of 1922 Tolkien writes a poem, Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden (see *The Hoard), inspired by line 3052 in Beowulf (‘the gold of men long ago enmeshed in enchantment’).