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

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СКАЧАТЬ Medical Board at Humber Garrison headquarters in Hull. The Board declares him fit for general service, and orders him to remain with his unit at Thirtle Bridge until further notice.

      ?Early June 1917 For a brief time early in Tolkien’s posting to the Humber Garrison he is put in charge of an outpost and given quarters which allow Edith to live with him for a while. See note. – Tolkien will annotate a later version of his poem Sea-Song of an Elder Day (after 31 August–2 September 1917, see below): ‘Present shape due to rewriting and adding introd[uction] & ending in a lonely house near Roos, Holderness (Thirtle Bridge Camp) Spring 1917’ (quoted in *The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986), p. 215). The ‘lonely house’ is probably to be identified with the officer’s quarters provided to Tolkien as commander of the outpost. The extant manuscript of the poem as written out in March 1915 (as Sea-Chant of an Elder Day) includes a later addition, a short prose introduction which connects the poem to the story of the fall of Gondolin (see entry for End of 1916–early 1917): it becomes ‘the song that Tuor told to Eärendel his son what time the Exiles of Gondolin dwelt awhile in Dor Tathrin the Land of Willows after the burning of their city’ (quoted in The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 214). – Tolkien also continues to work on his Gnomish lexicon, rewriting in ink over an earlier pencil layer. An inscription indicates that this stage at least is written at ‘Tol Withernon’, almost certainly a Gnomish reference to ‘Withernsea’.

      Tolkien and Edith visit a wood near Roos. There she dances for him, a seminal event in the development of his mythology. As he will describe it in 1964 in a letter to Christopher Bretherton: ‘the original version of the “Tale of Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren” … was founded on a small wood with a great undergrowth of ‘hemlock’ (no doubt many other related plants were also there) near Roos in Holderness, where I was for a while on the Humber Garrison’ (Letters, p. 345); and in a letter to his son Christopher in 1972: ‘I never called Edith Lúthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire … . In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance’ (Letters, p. 420). See note.

      Summer 1917 Hilary Tolkien receives minor shrapnel wounds while helping to carry supplies over the Passchendaele Ridge near Ypres.

      ?Late June–early July 1917 Christopher Wiseman writes to Tolkien and returns the typewritten copies of Smith’s poems, with a suggested arrangement. He is convinced that only a selection of Smith’s best work should be published, and it should be arranged most effectively rather than by strict order of writing. He suggests that some of the poems might be accompanied by explanatory notes of the circumstances in which they were written. He also comments at length on the political situation. He has not heard from Tolkien since he saw him in Harrogate.

      ?c. 14–21 July 1917 Tolkien is at the Royal Engineers Signal Depot, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, for a signalling examination or, perhaps, a refresher course. See note.

      31 July 1917 T.K. Barnsley from King Edward’s School is killed in action in the Third Battle of Ypres.

      1 August 1917 Tolkien attends the elaborate dinner with which the 3rd Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers celebrates Minden Day. He signs his menu card and obtains the signatures of twenty-three others at the dinner, including L.R. Huxtable. – Tolkien writes a poem, Companions of the Rose, dedicated ‘For RQG [R.Q. Gilson] Suffolk Regiment GBS [G.B. Smith] Lancashire Fusiliers’. On Minden Day, roses are worn by all ranks in the Lancashire Fusiliers, and a toast is drunk to those who fell at Minden. (Gilson’s regiment had also fought in that battle.)

      Mid-August 1917 Tolkien is admitted to ‘Brooklands’, an officers’ hospital in Cottingham Road, Hull, by 13 August, and for six weeks runs a fever. He finds congenial company among the other patients, including a friend from the Lancashire Fusiliers, and continues his writing, including The Tale of Tinúviel. – The hospital is visited by nuns of the order of the Sisters of Mercy who have a house in Hull. One of these, Sister Mary Michael, becomes a lifelong correspondent and friend, and godmother to Tolkien’s second son, Michael. See note.

      ?Mid- to late August or ?September 1917 Tolkien writes a poem, *The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel. At a later date he will write on the manuscript: ‘Brooklands Red [Cross] hosp[ital] Cottingham Road, Hull Sept or Aug 1917?’

      Between 21 and 24 August 1917 Unhappy in their lodgings in Yorkshire and unable to visit Tolkien in hospital often because of the difficult journey to Hull, and with Edith now in an advanced state of pregnancy, Edith and Jennie decide to return to Cheltenham until the birth of the child. Their address will be 37 Montpellier Villas, Cheltenham, until 11 September inclusive.

      22 August 1917 In the early hours German Zeppelins attack the Yorkshire coast, including the mouth of the Humber, with high-explosive and incendiary bombs.

      31 August–2 September 1917 Tolkien again rewrites his poem Sea-Song of an Elder Day, now with an added title, The Horns of Ulmo (> The Horns of Ylmir), to fit it explicitly within his mythology. He writes on the manuscript ‘Aug[ust] 31 Sep[tember] 2 1917 Hospital Hull’. Later he will write out a fair copy of the poem, incorporating emendations, with the annotation described above (see entry for Spring 1917).

      September 1917 Tolkien further revises his poem The Mermaid’s Flute.

      1 September, 7 and 10 October 1917 Wiseman replies in stages to a letter by Tolkien, who has heard about the death of Wiseman’s mother. Wiseman apologizes for not sending an earlier letter, and provides details. He has heard from Tolkien that he and Edith are expecting a baby and says it is great news. He agrees with Tolkien’s arrangement of G.B. Smith’s poems for publication. He has heard from Mrs Incledon that Tolkien is still in hospital in Hull. He approves of the poem Companions of the Rose which Tolkien had enclosed with his last letter, and says that he is ‘sorry it is the only one [presumably, the only entirely new poem] this year’. But the Muse ‘has not been entirely idle because you have spent a good time on the mythology’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford). He discusses at length an anonymous leader he has read in the Times Literary Supplement (20 September 1917, pp. 445–6) entitled Creation and Invention, on the distinction between ‘invention’ and ‘imagination’. Wiseman sees the former in Tolkien’s poem Copernicus and Ptolemy and the latter in his mythology.

      12 September 1917 By this date, Edith and Jennie move to 6 Royal Well Terrace, Cheltenham. They will lodge there through at least 15 October.

      25 September 1917 German Zeppelins attack the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire coasts between midnight and 3 am. Although they are unable to penetrate far inland because of defensive gunfire, they drop sixteen bombs on Hull, with little material damage.

      16 October 1917 Tolkien is examined by a Medical Board at Humber Garrison headquarters in Hull. He has been in hospital for nine weeks, and though his temperature returned to normal three weeks ago, he still has not recovered his strength, he suffers from debility and pain in his arms and shins, and he looks delicate. The Board declares him 30 per cent disabled, unfit for general and home service for one month but fit for light duty at home, and orders him to rejoin the 3rd Lancashire Fusiliers at Thirtle Bridge. He leaves the hospital on this date.

      30 October 1917 *Walter Rolfe Brown of Exeter College, a member of the Apolausticks and the Chequers Clubbe, is killed in action with the Artists’ Rifles in the Second Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres).

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