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

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

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

25 April 1915Trinity Full Term begins.

Trinity Term 1915Tolkien 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 1915In 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 1915Tolkien writes a poem, * Tinfang Warble , only eight lines long. He will later rewrite and lengthen it.

30 April 1915Tolkien 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 1915Tolkien 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 1915Tolkien 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 1915On 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 1915Probably 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 1915G.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 1915Tolkien 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 1915Tolkien 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 1915Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary. – W.E. Hall of Exeter College is killed near Krithia, Turkey during the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) campaign.

28 May 1915The 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) 1915Smith writes to Tolkien. He has been reading Georgian Poetry as well as another book Tolkien has sent him, apparently on medieval scripts.

31 May 1915Zeppelins bomb London for the first time.

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

?10 June 1915Smith 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….