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

Autumn 1915Tolkien and a fellow officer buy a motor cycle. Tolkien will use it to visit Edith and friends when he has leave.

21 September 1915Gilson writes from Marston Green to Tolkien at Whittington Heath. He has sent telegrams to Wiseman and Smith asking them to come to Lichfield on Saturday (25 September) if possible.

23 September 1915Wiseman, now at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, writes to Tolkien at Whittington Heath. He intends to be present at the ‘Council of Lichfield’ on 25–26 September. – Gilson, who has heard from Smith, writes to Tolkien that all four T.C.B.S. members can be in Lichfield on 25 September, and asks if Tolkien can find three beds there for the night. He suggests that they have lunch the following day at the Gilsons’ home at Marston Green and a quiet afternoon in the garden.

24 September 1915Gilson informs Tolkien by telegram that he and Smith will arrive in Lichfield at 10.34 am on the 25th and make the George Hotel their headquarters.

25 September 1915At 11.00 a.m. Gilson and Smith write to Tolkien from the George Hotel, Lichfield. They hope to meet him at the hotel when they return from sightseeing just before 1.00 p.m., if not sooner. – O.O. Staples, B.J. Tolhurst, and M.W.M. Windle of Exeter College are killed in action in the Battle of Loos.

25–26 September 1915The T.C.B.S. ‘Council of Lichfield’. This is the last time that Tolkien, Gilson, Smith, and Wiseman meet together before being separated by war, and apparently the last time that Tolkien sees Gilson.

5 October 1915Gilson, now with his battalion at No. 2 Camp, Sutton Veny, writes to Tolkien. He and Smith have decided that Tolkien should send his book of poems to the publisher Sidgwick & Jackson. Tolkien should not forget the proposed ‘Council of Bath’, and should try to keep both 16 and 23 October as possible dates.

6 October 1915Smith writes to Tolkien from the York House Hotel, Bath. Smith and Gilson are making a preliminary excursion to Bath and have practically engaged inexpensive rooms in the South Parade for a T.C.B.S. ‘council’ on 23 October.

9 October 1915Smith writes to Tolkien that he is sorry he has not had time to reply to Tolkien’s impressive postcard. He recommends that Tolkien send his poems to the publisher Hodder and Stoughton, or to Sidgwick & Jackson, and asks for copies of Tolkien’s later poems so that he can show them to H.T. Wade-Gery.

19 October 1915Smith, now at No. 6 Camp, Codford St Mary, Wiltshire, writes to Tolkien. Tolkien should let him know as soon as possible if he is coming to Bath, and inform Gilson by telegram so that he can book rooms. – Gilson writes from No. 3 Camp, Sutton Veny, to Tolkien at Brocton Camp, *Staffordshire, forwarded to him at Penkridge, Rugeley (i.e. Rugeley Camp on Cannock Chase). See note . Gilson is likely to be sent to the front very soon, and if at all possible would like the T.C.B.S. to meet the next weekend.

24 October 1915Smith writes to Tolkien at Whittington Heath from the Wisemans’ house in London. He has heard from Tolkien that he cannot join them for the weekend. Tolkien seems to have been depressed about various matters, one of which is that Edith is ill. Smith thanks Tolkien for sending more poems and is particularly impressed with The Happy Mariners and Dark Are the Clouds about the North . Smith and Gilson have not gone to Bath, but on impulse have joined Wiseman in London. There they have reaffirmed the principles of the T.C.B.S. and have decided ‘once again on the work it will have to do after the war is over: to drive from life, letters, the stage and society that dabbling in and hankering after the unpleasant sides and incidents in life and nature which have captured the larger and worser tastes in Oxford, London and the world: … to reestablish sanity, cleanliness, and the love of real and true beauty in everybody’s breast’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).

27 October 1915Wiseman writes to Tolkien, giving an account of the previous weekend.

31 October 1915Gilson writes to Tolkien at Whittington Heath, giving his account of the weekend 23–24 October. He was very sorry that Tolkien could not come; he feels that the T.C.B.S. is not complete unless all four are present.

November 1915Tolkien moves with the 13th Battalion to Rugeley Camp in Staffordshire. – G.B. Smith goes to France with the 19th Lancashire Fusiliers.

November 1915–early 1916While stationed at Cannock Chase Tolkien takes the opportunity to visit Phoenix Farm, Gedling. Colin Brookes-Smith will later recall that Tolkien arrived on an AJS motor cycle, and one morning allowed Colin to ride it up the road and back. Probably during this period Tolkien also participates in the cutting up of a poached deer, an event to which he will later refer during lectures on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at Oxford. See note .

?21–28 November 1915Tolkien writes a poem, Kortirion among the Trees (* The Trees of Kortirion ); one of its earliest copies will be inscribed ‘dedicated to Warwick’. A fair copy will be dated ‘Nov. 21–28’, and a later typescript inscribed ‘Warwick, a week’s leave from camp – written largely in a house in Victoria Street [where Edith and Jennie Grove live] and in [mine?] in Northgate St.’ In fact Tolkien is in camp on 25 and 26 November, from which he writes on each date to Edith (see below), and in the second letter says that he has ‘written out a pencil copy of “Kortirion”’ ( Letters , p. 8). This suggests that Edith knows about the work already, that Tolkien may have begun the poem during a visit to Warwick and continued to work on it when he returned to camp, and that after writing out the pencil copy on 26 November he made further alterations (27–28 November) before making the dated fair copy. – To a fair copy of the poem Tolkien will append a prose introduction which explains that Kortirion was a city of the fairies (later Elves) in the Lonely Isle ‘after the great wars with Melko and the ruin of Gondolin’, built ‘in memory of their ancient dwelling of Kôr in Valinor’ ( The Book of Lost Tales, Part One , p. 25). It is clear that he intends Warwick to be the site where earlier had stood Kortirion, whose memory still lingers, and his mythology to be particularly connected with England (the ‘Lonely Isle’). Although the date of this prose introduction is uncertain, its sentimental yet hopeful tone, so like that of the poem, suggests that both were written at roughly the same time. If that is so, several very notable elements have been added by Tolkien to his rapidly growing mythology. On one early copy he gives the poem a subsidiary (but not entirely legible) title in Qenya, Narqelion la . . tu y aldalin Kortirionwen , ‘Autumn (among) the Trees of Kortirion’. On one of the surviving working sheets he drafts four lines of a poem in Qenya on a similar theme (* Narqelion ). By now, Tolkien has developed his invented language to the extent that he is able to use it in composition.

21 November 1915Gilson writes to Tolkien that the last he has heard from him is a letter Smith showed him in London. He hopes that Tolkien is no longer depressed and that Edith is now better. – Hilary Tolkien lands in Boulogne with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

25 November 1915Tolkien writes to Edith from Rugeley Camp.

26 November 1915Tolkien writes to Edith from Rugeley Camp, giving an account of his day:

The usual kind of morning standing about and freezing and then trotting to get warmer so as to freeze again. We ended up by an hour’s bomb-throwing with dummies. Lunch and a freezing afternoon. All the hot days of summer we doubled about at full speed and perspiration, and now we stand in icy groups being talked at! Tea and another scramble − I fought for a place at the stove and made a piece of toast on the end of a knife: what days! [ Letters , p. 8]