J.R.R. Tolkien: A Life Inspired by Wyatt North

Author:Wyatt North
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Wyatt North Publishing, LLC
Published: 2014-11-21T07:00:00+00:00

Children’s Stories

Tolkien devotedly helped to rear his growing family on a somewhat meager income, but the needs of his family were difficult to juggle with his academic life. For years he had graded examination papers for the extra pay it provided, exacerbating an already overburdened work schedule. The trouble was, it was only at the end of the nineteenth century that Oxford faculty were even allowed to marry, and the lifestyle was not well suited to the married life. Dons were expected to attend chapel at 8 a.m. and then eat breakfast together. Tutorials ran from 9 until 1, and lectures and research filled the afternoon. Dinner was at 7:15. Students often met after dinner to continue their discussions. Accordingly, Edith was forced to suffer her husband’s habitual absence.

Tolkien made the best of the situation by not living in his campus rooms. He met students in his home as often as possible in order to spend more time with his family. As orphans, the parents’ commitment to their children ran deep. The father made certain that he was always home for lunch and tea. The children were given free admission to his study as long as he wasn’t teaching there. Even so, it was necessary to race back and forth between campus and home several times a day. Wearing the traditional black robes of the Oxford don, he made the circuit on a high-seated bicycle.

More children had come in due course. A third son, Christopher John Reuel, arrived at Leeds in 1924, and Edith’s wished-for daughter, Priscilla Anne Reuel, finally came in 1929. Tolkien fell into the pleasant habit of writing stories for the children. This practice had begun in 1920, when John was only three and Tolkien had started the tradition of sending a letter from Father Christmas. Each year for twenty years, the children received an illustrated letter from the North Pole relating the various amusing incidents that befell Father Christmas and his associates.

Then, too, there were the wonderful nightly stories requested by the children. Stories about elves and dwarves were favorites. Tom Bombadil stemmed from Michael Tolkien’s brightly colored Dutch doll on a shelf. As he evolved, Tom Bombadil came to represent for Tolkien the spirit of the vanishing English countryside. For Michael in particular, there was a story about treelike beings because Michael shared his father’s love of trees. At the time of his father’s death, Michael recalled how funny and exciting the stories were, far better than the books available. Michael believed it was their realism that made them so special; Tolkien made listeners feel that they were inside the story. It was this quality in his books that made him so appreciated by countless readers. Sadly, Tolkien didn’t write down most of these bedtime tales, but they aided him down the path of fiction and fantasy.

In this way grew his tale about a hobbit, which his sons recalled first hearing about as bedtime stories toward the end of the 1920s. Eventually, the oral stories would take form as a written work.

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