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

13 July 1915Smith writes to Tolkien at Abbotsford, Moseley, Birmingham (forwarded on 15 July to Tolkien at the Incledons, Barnt Green). He advises Tolkien to write to the Colonel of the 13th Battalion, and to Colonel Stainforth of the 19th, asking if his posting to the 13th is a mistake.

c. 13–14 July 1915Wiseman writes to Tolkien. Wiseman and his mother will be staying in Bromsgrove for about a week; he and Tolkien must spend some time together, and his mother insists that Tolkien and Edith join them for tea at Barrow’s Stores, possibly on 15 July. He asks if Tolkien can shorten his visit to Moseley and go to Barnt Green earlier, so that they can go walking for a day. He will ring Tolkien the next evening. (There is no evidence that Tolkien and Wiseman were able to meet as Wiseman suggests, though it would have been possible before Tolkien had to leave for Bedford on 19 July.)

13–14 July 1915Now at Barnt Green, Tolkien writes a poem, The Trumpets of Faery (later The Trumpets of Faerie ), describing a procession of Elves winding its way through woods. He probably also begins to work on the first version of another poem, * The Happy Mariners , using in part the verso of his draft letter to Mr How written on 11 July.

16 July 1915The War Office issues Tolkien’s commission as a temporary second lieutenant in the Infantry. See note .

17 July 1915Tolkien’s commission is announced in the Times ’ ‘London Gazette’ column.

18 July 1915G.B. Smith, who has heard nothing further from Tolkien, writes to him at Abbotsford, Moseley, to cheer him up.

19 July 1915Tolkien begins Army training at Bedford. He is billeted in a house with other trainee officers. – R.W. Reynolds writes to Tolkien. He comments on poems Tolkien has sent him: You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play, The Shores of Faery, Kôr: In a City Lost and Dead , and The Princess Nî are mentioned. He finds in them echoes of Icelandic sagas, William Morris, Rudyard Kipling, and Walter de la Mare. – Probably after he begins training at Bedford, Tolkien writes a poem, Thoughts on Parade .

?23 July 1915Smith writes to Tolkien, probably in reply to a letter. Tolkien can still try to get a transfer after his training, if both commanding officers agree.

24 July 1915Tolkien completes the first version of his poem The Happy Mariners , which he dates to 24 July. He will inscribe a later version ‘Barnt Green July 1915 and Bedford and later’, which suggests that he began the poem when he was at Barnt Green earlier in July and continued to work on it after reporting for duty at Bedford. Elements and imagery of The Happy Mariners , such as the white tower in the Twilit Isles that ‘glimmers like a spike of lonely pearl’ and ‘Night’s dragon-headed doors’ ( Stapeldon Magazine , June 1920), will come to figure in Tolkien’s mythology.

26 July 1915Wiseman writes to Tolkien, in reply to a card. He suggests that Tolkien and Edith visit the Wisemans in London on some weekend after about 14 August.

August 1915While still at Bedford Tolkien revises his poem The Trumpets of Faery . – After his initial instruction he joins the rest of the 13th Battalion in Lichfield, *Staffordshire. He apparently is billeted in an encampment outside the city. He does not feel much affinity with his fellow officers, or share their taste for ragtime music; nor does he enjoy the constant drilling and lectures. He will later write of ‘these grey days wasted in wearily going over, over and over again, the dreary topics, the dull backwaters of the art of killing’ (quoted in Biography , p. 78). He spends some time reading Old Icelandic so as not to forget his studies. He will recall being in a dirty wet marquee ‘crowded with (mostly) depressed and wet creatures … listening to somebody lecturing on map-reading, or camp-hygiene, or the art of sticking a fellow through … [when] the man next to me said suddenly in a dreamy voice: “Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!”’ (* A Secret Vice , in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays , p. 199) – someone else interested in inventing languages. – At some point during his training Tolkien specializes in signalling. By the beginning of 1916 he will study various ways of transmitting messages by flag, heliograph, and lamp, using codes such as Morse code. Also he has to learn how to use signal-rockets and field-telephones, and carrier-pigeons. One of the books he uses in his studies is Signalling: Morse, Semaphore, Station Work, Despatch Riding, Telephone Cables, Map Reading , ed. E.J. Solano (1915).

2 August 1915R.W. Reynolds writes to thank Tolkien for sending him another poem (possibly The Happy Mariners ). In response to a request from Tolkien he sends advice about publishing a book of poems. In normal times, Reynolds would have advised Tolkien to first publish single poems in magazines, to establish his name; but as ‘the odds are against your being able to have the leisure for some time to come to go bombarding editors and publishing verses’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford), Tolkien should go ahead with his book, though he should not be disappointed if it fails. Fairy poems, Reynolds thinks, are Tolkien’s strong suit. He is not altogether happy with a title Tolkien has proposed for his book. – Tolkien has also consulted Smith on this point, who (in an undated letter) thinks it worthwhile for Tolkien to publish his poems.

4 August 1915Tolkien rewrites his poem Thoughts on Parade , now called The Swallow and the Traveller on the Plains .

?Mid–late August 1915Christopher Wiseman urges Tolkien and Edith to spend one of the next two weekends at the Wiseman home in London. He will try to get Smith to come as well. (There is no evidence that the visit occurred.)

9 September 1915Tolkien rewrites The Happy Mariners , now linked explicitly with Eärendel.

12 September 1915Tolkien writes a poem, * A Song of Aryador , while at Whittington Heath camp near Lichfield. Later, in The Book of Lost Tales , it will be said that when Men entered Hisilómë which they called Aryador , some of the Elves who were lost on the march to Valinor still dwelt there and were feared by Men who called them the Shadow Folk.

13 September 1915After a long silence Rob Gilson, temporarily in the 3rd Durham Temporary Hospital, Sunderland, writes to Tolkien at Exeter College, forwarded to Whittington Heath. He is annoyed that he has not taken up Tolkien’s invitation to criticize his poems, as he feels that one of the best things the T.C.B.S. can do at present is to help its members with their creative work.

14 September 1915At Whittington Heath, Tolkien writes a poem, Dark Are the Clouds about the North .

17 September 1915Gilson writes from the 3rd Durham Temporary Hospital, Sunderland, to Tolkien at Whittington Heath. He has received a number of T.C.B.S. letters in the past few days, including one from Tolkien enclosing some of his poems. Gilson is about to be released from hospital and will have a week of sick leave at Marston Green; if Tolkien cannot visit him there, Gilson will travel to Lichfield.

19 September 1915R.W. Reynolds writes to Tolkien at Whittington Heath and thanks him for sending his poems. He likes all of them, though he makes some criticisms. He wonders if Tolkien has thought of a new title for his book.