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1931

Early 1930s from ?1931 Tolkien writes various undated texts closely associated with but later than the Quenta Noldorinwa and the first version of the ‘earliest’ Annals of Beleriand. These are the ‘earliest’ Annals of Valinor, a chronological record of events during 3000 Valian Years (30,000 of our years) from the time the Valar entered the World until the return of the Elves to Middle-earth and the rising of the Sun and the Moon; two texts of the same work in Old English; and a second version of the ‘earliest’ Annals of Beleriand, virtually a new work but unfinished.

?1931–Trinity Term 1933 The members of Edward Tangye Lean’s ‘Inklings’ society, including Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, meet to read aloud unpublished compositions and receive criticism. Among those works is an early version of *Errantry. Tolkien will later write that the group ‘met in T.-L.’s rooms in University College…. If the club thought fit a [composition] might be voted to be worthy of entry in a Record Book. (I was the scribe and keeper of the book)’ (letter to William Luther White, 11 September 1967, Letters, pp. 387–8). See note. – Using the verso of an early manuscript of Errantry, Tolkien works on a version of his verse drama *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.

?1931 Tolkien writes several manuscripts in an invented Elvish script (*Writing systems). Among these are versions of his poems Errantry and *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (Pictures no. 48), both apparently composed around this time.

18 January 1931 Hilary Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures and classes for this term are: Old English Minor Poems (continued): Judith, Riddles, and The Battle of Brunanburh on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 20 January; the Old English Exodus on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 20 January; Gothic Traditions, Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 22 January; Carmina Scaldica: Introduction to Reading of Scaldic Poetry, at an hour and place to be arranged; and Old English Textual Criticism, at an hour and place to be arranged.

22 January 1931 Tolkien writes to Kenneth Sisam. He has done as much work as possible on the Clarendon Chaucer despite a ‘shattered vac[ation]’ (Oxford University Press archives), and Pass Moderations and external examining at four universities will now leave him no leisure before August. He asks for guidance on the permitted length of the book and the audience at which it is aimed, to avoid wasted labour. He has been unable to do any research, though ‘obscurities and unsatisfactory explanations’ remain. Further work on the Chaucer will have to be extracted from time normally given to sleep or study, but Tolkien vows to complete the book before the summer if physically possible. Then he will think about an edition of the Ancrene Riwle on the lines that Sisam has indicated.

30 January 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

6 February 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is appointed to a committee on proposed new regulations for the Honour School. The Applications Committee has readmitted L.E. Jones of Lady Margaret Hall as a B.Litt. student, with Tolkien as her supervisor.

12 February 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. The Committee will now have two meetings per term, to be held on the second and seventh Thursdays.

13 February 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

24 February 1931 Tolkien and thirteen others sign a letter to the General Board, requesting that the Chair of Comparative Philology be raised from Grade B to Grade A.

25 February 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

26 February 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. The Committee discuss what might be read only in the Library and what might be borrowed. Tolkien raises the question of making the bulk of the Napier Collection (the Library’s Old and Middle English holdings, based on the personal library of A.S. Napier) open to circulation.

27 February 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

6 March 1931 Tolkien attends the sixtieth anniversary dinner of the Johnson Society of Pembroke College. He and the Society’s Secretary, E.V.E. White, give the toast to ‘The College’.

13 March 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Faculty Board regrets the refusal of the General Board to provide for another Reader in English Literature. David Nichol Smith and Tolkien undertake to prepare for the next meeting of the Board a draft reply on the needs of the faculty. – Tolkien also attends a Pembroke College meeting.

14 March 1931 Hilary Full Term ends.

16 March 1931 First Public Examination (Pass Moderations) begins. Tolkien is an examiner.

April 1931 The Tolkien family take a holiday in Milford-on-Sea, the home of Michael Tolkien’s godfather, Father Augustin Emery, formerly parish priest at Great Haywood. John Tolkien will remember walking with his father along the shingle spit to Hurst Castle where Charles I had been imprisoned, a fort jutting out into the Solent (conversation with the authors).

7 April 1931 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien, explaining that the Clarendon Chaucer should have fewer notes than an ordinary school edition, as it is not to be for beginners, and that the notes should be concerned only with major difficulties.

9 April 1931 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien, forwarding a query from a correspondent about a possible connection between Middle English aliri and the word aleary in a children’s rhyme.

26 April 1931 Trinity Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: The Battle of Brunanburh on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 28 April; the Old English Exodus (continued) on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 30 April; and Old English Textual Criticism (continued) on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 30 April. See note. – C.L. Wrenn replaces Tolkien as the supervisor of E.V. Williams.

29 April 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

5 May 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. He again proposes that the Napier books, except the most valuable, be allowed to circulate. With the Committee’s agreement he is left to obtain the necessary permission from the Faculty Board.

8 May 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

15 May 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He proposes that C.L. Wrenn be appointed to the University Lectureship in English Language for a period of five years from the first day of Michaelmas Term 1931. David Nichol Smith and Tolkien present a draft reply to the General Board on the needs of the faculty, which the English Faculty Board approves. The report of the Committee on the Regulations is presented, but the Board decides to consider it at an adjourned meeting on 22 May. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien and C.T. Onions examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of *Alistair Campbell of Balliol College, The Production of Diphthongs by ‘Breaking’ in Old English from 700 to 900.

16 May 1931 Tolkien reads a paper, Chaucer’s Use of Dialects (*Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale), to the Philological Society in Oxford.

22 May 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. This deals with, among other matters, the constitution of the Board of Faculty of English Language and Literature, and a statement asking the Board its policy in regard to the Honour School of English. – Tolkien attends an adjourned meeting of the English Faculty Board at 3.00 p.m. The new regulations for the syllabus of the English School are amended and adopted to come into force with examinations in 1933. Among documents discussed is one which considers whether ‘English Literature from 1850 till Present Time’ should be an A Paper. Tolkien submits a typescript, based on a statement provided possibly by H.F.B. Brett-Smith and probably representing the views of several members of the faculty, which does not approve the compulsory inclusion of Literature after 1800 in the work of all candidates taking the Modern Literature Course III, and which recommends that the existing papers be retained. To this Tolkien adds a manuscript note: ‘Professor Tolkien would agree to the modification but considers it a matter primarily for the decision of those mainly concerned with the direction of the work in modern literature’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3).

5 June 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

10 June 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

11 June 1931 English Final Honour School Examinations begin.

12 June 1931 Tolkien and C.T. Onions examine Alistair Campbell of Balliol College viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, The Production of Diphthongs by ‘Breaking’ in Old English from 700 to 900, at 2.30 p.m. in the Examination Schools.

15 June 1931 Tolkien and Onions sign their report (written by Tolkien) on their examination of Alistair Campbell.

17 June 1931 Tolkien is listed in the Oxford University Gazette for 17 June as a member of the Committee for Comparative Philology, concerned with Section D (Germanic), and ‘will see Diploma Students by appointment and direct their work in the respective Sections offered by them’ (p. 680).

19 June 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting, at which he is appointed to a committee to consider the memorandum of the General Board on the Final Pass School.

20 June 1931 Trinity Full Term ends.

24 June 1931 Encaenia.

28 July 1931 Tolkien attends a meeting of the English Faculty Board at 12.15 p.m.

?Autumn 1931 Tolkien writes a paper, A Secret Vice, for delivery on 29 November. The ‘vice’ is the creation of languages for personal enjoyment. The paper includes examples of poetry in Elvish languages (with versions in English) related to the ‘Silmarillion’ mythology: Oilima Markirya (The Last Ark), Nieninque, and Earendel (*Earendel at the Helm) in Qenya, and a ‘fragment’ in Noldorin. Associated with this are word-lists in Qenya (*‘Qenya Word-Lists’).

September 1931 Tolkien continues to write the Lay of Leithian, which may have reached line 3860 at the beginning of the previous October. He notes the following dates on the manuscript, all in Canto XIII: line 3881, 14 September; line 3887, 15 September; line 3962, 16 September; line 4029, 14 September (sic); line 4045, 16 September (sic); line 4085, 17 September. He will write no further dates in the manuscript, but will continue it to line 4223, Canto XIV. He apparently abandons the poem, leaving it unfinished, in September 1931. – Tolkien’s eldest son, John, begins to attend the Oratory School, a Catholic boarding school, once in Birmingham, now at Caversham, near Reading in Berkshire.

19–20 September 1931 Tolkien dines with C.S. Lewis and their friend *H.V.D. ‘Hugo’ Dyson at Magdalen College, Oxford. After dinner they stroll along Addison’s Walk in the college grounds, discussing metaphor and myth. But they are ‘interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We all held our breath, the other two appreciating the ecstasy of such a thing almost as you would’ (C.S. Lewis, 18 October 1931, They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), p. 421). They retire to Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen to talk further. They discuss Christianity, the difference between love and friendship, poetry, and books. Tolkien goes home at 3.00 a.m.; Lewis and Dyson talk a while longer. The evening is a seminal moment for Lewis, who had abandoned atheism for theism, and now will move from believing in God to accepting Christ.

?Late 1931–?1932 The Lay of Leithian having been abandoned, Tolkien returns briefly to the story of Túrin and begins a poem in rhyming couplets, entitled The Children of Húrin. This is based on the second version of the alliterative lay of the same title, but is abandoned in turn after only 170 lines. – Around this time Tolkien also writes two companion poems, Völsungakviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’) and Guðrúnarkviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of Gudrún’), of 339 and 166 eight-line stanzas respectively. After the Second World War he will have an amanuensis typescript made of them; otherwise each survives only in a fair copy manuscript. On 29 March 1967 Tolkien will write to *W.H. Auden, who had sent him part of the Elder Edda translated into Modern English: ‘In return again I hope to send you … a thing I did many years ago when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’ (Letters, p. 379). See note.

4 October 1931 On the Feast of Saint Francis Tolkien attends the formal opening of the new Franciscan friary at Oxford, next to the parish church of Saints Edmund and Frideswide in the Iffley Road. The blessing is given by the Archbishop of Birmingham, and the sermon by Father Francis Devas, S.J., on the subject of the Franciscan spirit in history. Also present, among many distinguished guests, are the Vice-Chancellor of the University, the Mayor of Oxford, Father Ronald Knox, and Professor Francis de Zulueta. In its account of the event, The Tablet for 10 October 1931 will describe Tolkien as ‘the Censor of St. Catherine’s Society’ (‘The New Franciscan Friary at Oxford’, p. 478).

7 October 1931 Tolkien attends a special meeting of the English Faculty Library Committee at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. *J.L.N. O’Loughlin of St Edmund Hall, Oxford is nominated to succeed to the post of Assistant Librarian. There is further discussion of opening the Napier Collection to readers.

11 October 1931 Michaelmas Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Beowulf on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 13 October; Guðrúnarkviða en forna on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 13 October; Problems of Old English Philology on Thursdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 15 October.

Michaelmas Term 1931 Tolkien is nominated to serve as an examiner in the Honour School of English Language and Literature from Hilary Term 1932 to Hilary Term 1934.

14 October 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

15 October 1931 A poem by Tolkien, *Progress in Bimble Town, one of the ‘Tales and Songs of Bimble Bay’, written probably c. 1927–8, is published as by ‘K. Bagpuize’ in the Oxford Magazine for 15 October 1931.

22 October 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library.

23 October 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. He is re-elected to the Standing Committee on Responsions, Holy Scripture, and Pass Moderations.

30 October 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is re-elected to the Library Committee. The report of the committee (including Tolkien) appointed to consider a memorandum for the General Board relating to the reform of the Final Pass School is presented, and adopted with minor amendments. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien supervisor of probationer B.Litt. students *E.O.G. Turville-Petre of Christ Church and A.F. Colborn of St Edmund Hall.

31 October 1931 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes to his children in reply to early letters. He says that he has not begun to think about Christmas.

5 November 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

6 November 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

22 November 1931 C.S. Lewis writes to his brother *Warren H. ‘Warnie’ Lewis that it has become a regular custom for Tolkien to call on him at Magdalen College on Monday mornings for conversation and to drink a glass.

29 November 1931 At 9.00 p.m. Tolkien delivers his paper A Secret Vice at a meeting of the Johnson Society of Pembroke College.

2 December 1931 R.E.M. Wheeler writes to Tolkien. The Society of Antiquaries is to publish a report on the excavations at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire. Wheeler returns a note that Tolkien had written some time earlier, on the name Nodens (*The Name ‘Nodens’), together with a proof. – The governing committee of the Early English Text Society (*Societies and clubs) commissions its Secretary, *Mabel Day, to inquire whether Professors C.T. Onions and J.R.R. Tolkien contemplate editing the Ancrene Riwle.

3 December 1931 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Committee for Comparative Philology at 4.15 p.m. in the Delegates Room of the Clarendon Building.

Between c. 3 and 8 December 1931 Tolkien replies to R.E.M. Wheeler, speculating about connections between the names Nuada, Lludd, and Lydney.

Between c. 3 and 11 December 1931 Tolkien writes to Allen Mawer, a noted scholar of English place-names, about Lydney.

4 December 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting. Now, or at the meeting on 5 February 1932, the Board considers an undated report on the section of the General Board’s paper Revision of Needs of Faculties which relates to the English School. The report identifies the need to establish a statutory University Lectureship in English Literature; to endow a readership or lectureship in medieval Scandinavian languages; and to erect a new building with more space for the English Library. – The Applications Committee has admitted A.F. Colborn as a B.Litt student under Tolkien’s supervision. His thesis is to be A Critical Text of Hali Meiðhad Together with a Grammar and Glossarial Note. Tolkien and C.L. Wrenn are appointed examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of Allan McIntyre Trounce of St Catherine’s Society, An Edition of the Middle English Romance of ‘Athelstan’ with Historical, Literary and Linguistic Introduction, Notes and a Glossary.

5 December 1931 Michaelmas Full Term ends.

9 December 1931 R.E.M. Wheeler writes to thank Tolkien for his note. The idea that Tolkien proposes is one which he himself had long considered. Wheeler suggests that Tolkien keep the proof of his note on Nodens while he decides whether or not to rewrite it to include the Nuada–Lludd–Lydney association. (In the event, Tolkien will discuss Nuada and Lludd but not Lydney.)

12 December 1931 Allen Mawer replies to Tolkien that he himself had looked into the name Lydney some time ago, but came to no clear conclusions.

Christmas 1931 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes to his children. The letter is dated 23 December, but a note on the envelope as from the North Polar Bear apologizes for forgetting to post it. The letter is very elaborate, in green and red ink and with many decorative letters, and with comments as by the North Polar Bear in the margins. Father Christmas apologizes for not being able to send the children all that they asked for, but they must remember that there are many poor and starving people in the world. Since the children are most interested in railways, he sends them ‘mostly things of that sort’. Most of the letter tells of the consequences when the North Polar Bear let a candle fall in the cellar in which firework crackers and sparklers were stored, and the tricks played by Polar Bear’s nephews who have been staying with him. The letter is accompanied by three pictures: one, roughly drawn (with an apology that Father Christmas had no time to do a proper picture), depicts both the firework explosion and Father Christmas and Polar Bear in the kitchen; a second, inscribed ‘My latest portrait’, shows Father Christmas packing parcels, with a pencil sketch of Father Christmas in his sleigh on the verso; and the third, attributed to the North Polar Bear, is both a self-portrait and a stylized landscape of the sun rising or setting behind mountains.