Coleridge's "Christabel"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote the long poem, “Christabel”, in two stages, but never finished it. The setting is unspecified mediaeval. The heroine, after whom the poem is named, is the daughter of a widowed baron, Sir Leoline. She encounters a mysterious girl stranger, Geraldine, who, it is hinted, may be a witch or a demon, and who proceeds to win Sir Leoline’s heart. Christabel feels deserted and threatened. Nothing much actually happens, and we have no knowledge as to how the poem might have been completed, but the atmosphere is increasingly sinister and charged with sexual imagery.

The first part was written in 1797, when Coleridge was living in Nether Stowey in north-west Somerset, and he and Wordsworth, who was living nearby, were working on their groundbreaking anthology of poetry, “Lyrical Ballads”. Coleridge wrote two others of his greatest poems, “The Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan” at this time. It was also at then that he began to take opium.
The second part of “Christabel” was not written until 1800, and the location was now definitely placed in the Lake District. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were then living in Dove Cottage by Rydal Water, and Coleridge, with his wife and son, was lodging at Greta Hall, near Keswick. Coleridge continued to take opium, but was also an energetic, not to say reckless, fell-walker.

Neither “Christabel” nor “Kubla Khan” was published until 1916.

I do not propose to contribute to the debate on what the poem is “all about”. What has always interested me, as someone brought up in the Lake District, are the opening stanzas of Part II. They have very little to do with the rest of the poem, apart from helping set the atmosphere. Here we have Coleridge, probably suffering the after-effects of being stoned out of his mind on opium, up on the fells somewhere above Ambleside on a Sunday morning, listening to the church bells:-

“Each matin bell, the baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.
These words Sir Leoline first said
When he rose and found his lady dead:
These words Sir Leoline will say
Many a morn to his dying day.

And hence the custom and law began
That still at dawn the sacristan,
Who duly pulls the heavy bell,
Five and forty beads must tell
Between each stroke: a warning knell
Which not a soul can choose but hear
From Bratha Head to Windermere.

Saith Bracy the bard, so let it knell!
And let the drowsy sacristan
Still count as slowly as he can!
There is no lack of such, I ween,
As well fill up the space between.
In Langdale Pike, and Witch’s Lair,
And Dungeon-Ghyll so foully rent,
With ropes of rock and bells of air
Three sinful sextons’ ghosts are pent
Who all give back, one after t’other,
The death-note to their living brother;
And oft too, by their knell offended,
Just as their one! two! three! is ended,
The devil mocks the doleful tale
With a merry peal from Borrowdale”


I don’t know where “witch’s lair” might be, but the rest of it sounds geographically correct.

I think these are the most sinister lines of great poetry in the English language. The only cheerful note is attributed to the devil!

Opportunities taken, opportunities missed

On a very few occasions one has the possibility of making a really apposite silly comment. Such an opportunity should not be wasted.

I once met a young policeman who told me how he was on duty outside an expensive hotel in the West End of London when this appalling woman flounced out. "Constable!" she summoned him, "Call me a cab!" He wrestled with his professional conscience for a while, but knew that it was no use. "Madam," he replied,  "You are a cab!" Then he fled from the scene before she could take his number. (I suspect this might be a Groucho Marx joke: if not, it certainly ought to be)

By contrast, I missed my chance when I was going round Chatsworth House with a friend. Down in the basement there was an exhibition of servants' costume through the ages, mounted on tailor's dummies. The dummy with the postilian's uniform had broken and fallen over. I said to my friend, should I go up to the attendant at the door and tell him that his postilian had been struck by lightning? (following the legendary entry in a tourists' phrase-book from a previous century, "My postilian has been struck by lightning"). I approached the man, but before I could open my mouth he shot me a glance so savage, and so indicative of not understanding recondite jokes, that I lost my nerve and left the room in silence, to the accompaniment of cries of "Boo! Chicken!" from my friend. This was entirely justified on his part, since I doubt if I will ever again have an opportunity to use this memorable phrase.

Jackie Wullschlager: Inventing Wonderland

This book is about children’s literature, and traces the careers of five “classic” children’s authors: two mid-Victorians; Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear ; two Edwardians; J. M. Barrie and Kenneth Grahame  and one from the inter-war period; A. A. Milne It is a central theme of the book that, of these five, Milne was the only one who enjoyed a normal married life.

“Lewis Carroll” was the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-98), the son of a clerical family, who spent almost all his adult life as a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford. He never married, and was always far more at ease in the company of small girls than with adults. His natural shyness was not helped by a persistent stammer, which was probably nervous in origin. The great actress Ellen Terry, who came to know him well, made the perceptive remark that, “He was as fond of me as he could be of anyone over the age of ten”. Carroll was also one of the pioneers of early photography, but many of his best pictures were of the children of friends; little girls posing scantily clad, or even nude. Carroll always asked permission from parents before doing this, which was usually given. Throughout his life Carroll took with him collections of toys and games, to attract little girls on train journeys and at the seaside, and he wrote long, teasing letters to his child-friends.
Everyone knows how on July 4th 1862 Carroll and his friend Robinson Duckworth went for a boating trip with the three young daughters of Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church (Alice being the middle daughter). Carroll had always enjoyed writing and illustrating nonsense fantasy stories, and on this trip he improvised a story for the occasion: “Alice’s adventures underground”; which eventually became “Alice in Wonderland”, published with John Tenniel’s illustrations in 1865. “Through the Looking-Glass” followed in 1872, by which time Alice Liddell was twenty. She lost touch with him, but despite having many later child-friends, Carroll continued to be obsessed with the memory of her, as is shown in his poems.
Carroll’s behaviour would attract the gravest suspicions nowadays, but the word “paedophile” had not then been invented. Few, if any, parents seem to have raised objections to his close relationship with their daughters. Carroll was a strictly moral Victorian, and it is possible that he genuinely saw nothing abnormal or wrong in his conduct.

Edward Lear (1812-88) was the twentieth of twenty-one children of a stockbroker. Disaster struck when he was four years old: his father went bankrupt, the family was broken up, and Lear was largely brought up by his elder sister. He first made his living as a painter: the crude and childlike sketches which accompany his writings could only have been produced by a genuinely talented artist. Wullschlager argues that, whereas Carroll was an adult attracted to children, Lear in essence was always a child. He was presumably a repressed homosexual; he suffered from epilepsy, extreme short-sightedness and periodic severe depressions, and was obsessed with the belief that he was grotesquely ugly. He became a friend of many important people in the Victorian artistic world, such as Lord Tennyson and Holman Hunt, but never felt at ease, and when his younger friends got married he felt a sense of desertion and betrayal.
The anarchistic world of the Limericks first appeared in the 1830s. Other collections of poems followed, but by the 1870s the mood had become increasingly darker. The limericks showed people rejected by society because of their eccentricities, and many of the longer poems were about finding happiness by running away: the Owl and the Pussy-cat, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, Mr Daddy Longlegs and others. Lear himself ran away to the Riviera, but did not find much happiness even there. The greatest of his later poems, “The Dong with the luminous nose”, spoke only of despair at never finding a lost love. He was buried in the British cemetery in San Remo. None of his friends attended the funeral.

J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)was already a successful author and playwright when he wrote “Peter Pan”. He came from a moderately prosperous background in northern Scotland, but the family was struck by tragedy when he was just six years old. His elder brother died in an accident; a disaster which caused his mother to withdraw to a darkened room for the next six months. Barrie remained close to her until her death, but she never recovered psychologically.
The effect on Barrie himself cannot be assessed. Wullschlager’s verdict is that he was a boy who refused to grow up. On the surface he was ambitious, hard-working and successful. He graduated from Edinburgh University and then went to London with the ambition of becoming a journalist and writer. His books and plays were well-received, but he was always ill-at-ease in the company of women, instead preferring boyish pursuits with other men. He founded a cricket team, mysteriously named the “Allahakbars”, whose members included Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne. Then in 1894 he took a step for which he was entirely unprepared: he got married. The marriage was childless, and probably sexless, and ended in divorce in 1909. But in 1897 Barrie met the true love of his life in the shape of Sylvia and Arthur Llewellyn Davies and their five young sons. They became very close: Barrie delighted in playing pirates and Red Indians with the boys, who undoubtedly provided the inspiration for “Peter Pan”, the eternally youthful boy battling adults. This opened as a play at Christmas 1904. It was a tremendous hit, and was rewritten as a novel in 1911.
Barrie never afterwards wrote anything of equal popular appeal. Instead he found himself acting out his own fantasies. In 1907 Arthur Llewellyn Davies died, after a series of horrible operations which left him unable to speak. Sylvia followed him in 1910, nominating Barrie as guardian of their five boys, aged between seven and seventeen; so Barrie now had “lost boys” of his own. He was always very close to them. Wullschlager discounts any possibility of paedophilia on Barrie’s part: Barrie seems to have been entirely sexless.
Barrie received worldly recognition, being created a baronet in 1913, but the fate of his “lost boys” was not happy. Of the five, George was killed in the First World War, and Michael, always Barrie’s favourite, was drowned in 1921, amidst rumours of a suicide pact involving a homosexual relationship with a friend. Barrie never recovered from the tragedy: he withdrew into seclusion for many years and died in 1937. Peter, another of the “lost boys” threw himself under a train twenty years later. He knew he was the namesake for Peter Pan, and always hated what he called “that terrible masterpiece”.  


Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) had a successful career as a senior official of the Bank of England, but his heart lay in the countryside of the Thames valley, in Berkshire and Oxfordshire. His work allowed him time to write two best-selling books about childhood; “The Golden Age” in 1895 and “Dream Days” in 1898. He was popular, successful and rich; and then at the age of 41 he got married.
The marriage was a disaster. Grahame and his wife, Elspeth, were totally unsuited to each other, and their only child, Alastair, was blind in one eye and had severe psychological problems. Grahame was quickly driven back into his private dream world. In 1906 he moved from London back to the Thames valley at Cookham Dene, whereas Elspeth wanted to stay in the city for the social life, which Grahame hated. Grahame began to tell the stories which came to form “The Wind in the Willows” to keep Alastair happy, but it soon became obvious that he was actually writing them for himself: pouring into them his frustrations, his love of the countryside, his dislike of the modern world (as represented by Mr Toad) and his dread of the working classes (the stoats and weasels). The book was published in 1908, when Grahame retired from the Bank. It was not well received by critics, and the publishers were not optimistic about its chances, but it was an immediate success.
Grahame refused to write anything else, and his later life was thoroughly miserable. Alastair could not settle at school or at university, and in 1920 he was found dead on the railway line. He had committed suicide. The Grahames fled abroad, and could not bear to return to England for several years. Grahame eventually bought a house at Pangbourne, once again on his beloved Thames, and the setting was used by E. H, Shephard for his illustrations for a new edition of “The Wind in the Willows”. Grahame died of a heart attack in 1932, and was buried in Oxford, his favourite city.

The background of A. A. Milne (1882-1956), unlike the others, was one of almost unsullied happiness. He was a popular student at Westminster school and Cambridge University, he joined the staff of the humorous magazine “Punch” in 1906 and married in 1913. Despite his pacifist beliefs, he volunteered for the army in 1915, and survived the battle of the Somme before being invalided home with trench fever; a piece of good fortune shared by a younger writer: J. R. R. Tolkien. His son, Christopher Robin, was born in 1920. By the time Winnie-the-Pooh made his appearance, Milne was already the well-paid author of a number of successful light plays (including “Toad of Toad Hall”: a stage adaptation of “The Wind in the Willows”), and he was able to settle in a country retreat on the edge of Ashdown forest.
Pooh appeared first in a collection of children’s poems, “When We Were Very Young”, published in 1924. It was an great success, and was quickly followed by “Winnie-the-Pooh” in 1926 and “The House at Pooh Corner” in 1927. They were illustrated by E. H. Shephard, and were immediate best-sellers. There was no dark psychological side to Milne’s stories: they were merely harmless tales of the silly adventures of his son’s nursery toys, set in the scenery of Ashdown forest. But, although Milne became rich as a result, other consequences were less happy. Fashions in the theatre changed; no-one wanted to stage his plays any more; and he was remembered solely for Pooh. His wife, Daphne, drifted apart from him. His son hated being identified as “Christopher Robin”, was subjected to endless teasing at school, and resented it ever afterwards.
In 1952 Milne suffered a stroke and survived, crippled and miserable, until dying in 1956. During these last years, Christopher Robin visited him only twice. Daphne lived another fifteen years, but never saw Christopher Robin again.

So of our five classic children's authors, Carroll and Lear were lifelong bachelors, and Barrie and Grahame would have been better remaining as bachelors; but without the darkness in their lives we might not have had the stories from them. Only Milne had a normal married life: the darkness in Milne’s life came after his stories, rather than before.

Roman Chariot Racing

This carving shows us how a Roman racing chariot would have looked:-

We can see from this that the chariot is a small, light vehicle, drawn by four horses (though it might be only two, or in some cases up to ten). The horses appear to be galloping rather than trotting. The charioteer has no more protection than a leather helmet, and has tied the reins round his waist; which could lead to serious injury or even death if he failed to cut himself free in the event of a crash. He is about to make an anticlockwise turn round the spine (the "spina") running down the centre of the racetrack. One chariot is already disappearing round the turn, which is marked by columns called "metae". Races would last for several laps.
   There were traditionally four chariot-racing teams: the Greens, Blues, Reds and Whites. These teams, with their supporters' clubs, attracted violent partisanship among Romans, and at times almost acted like political parties. This all gave several words to the English language: a chariot-racing team was called a "faction", and a supporter of a charioteer an "agitator". Chariot-racing was an expensive business, requiring considerable sponsorship, and, as with horse-racing nowadays, what kept it going was, of course, the betting on the results; to which all Romans were addicted. (The man who sponsored a Roman Games, usually an aspiring politician hoping to win votes, was called an "editor"!).
   Chariot-racing was extremely dangerous. Fatal accidents were common; with crashes (nicknamed "shipwrecks") particularly likely on the difficult sharp turn round the end of the spine. Because of this, professional charioteers usually began as slaves, and many of them were killed whilst still young; but if successful they could become rich and famous, like modern football stars; and the names of some of them (and even the names of their horses!) still survive today.

The Latin word for such a racetrack was a "circus". The most famous chariot racing circuit was the Circus Maximus in Rome itself: a vast structure which was used not only for chariot races but also for gladiatorial contests and wild beast fights. Probably far more Christians were martyred here than in the Coliseum, which was a much later building. The Circus Maximus was originally a long natural valley, called the Murcia, between the Palatine and Aventine hills, which had been used for horse-racing since the earliest days of Rome. The spine was a quarter of a mile in length. Wooden seating was erected along along the valley sides, but after the disastrous fire in Rome in AD 64 it was all rebuilt in stone, and could hold a quarter of a million spectators: the biggest sporting venue in world history! Two enormous obelisks from Egypt decorated the spine, and bronze dolphins were removed from the tops of pillars were used to show how many laps remained.
 Not much is left of the Circus Maximus today, but you can still see the spine, and in the background the remains of one of the imperial palaces on the Palatine. In front of this would be the Imperial Box, overlooking the finishing line.

This is what it could have looked like in the heyday of the Roman Empire (This is from a model of the city)

Hayek's question revisited

"If the market is blind to need or merit, how can those who have no reasonable expectation of benefiting from it be reconciled to their situation?" (Friedrich Hayek)

This is a very good question.  If people are rewarded merely according to their "market value" (i.e. whatever anyone is willing to pay them) rather than according to their needs (e.g. food for their families) or by any moral worth (e.g. the social value of their work), why should they support such a system if they themselves are failing to benefit? A traditional Conservative (or, indeed, Rousseauist) notion of the "organic society" would argue that we have a duty to work for the greater good of all, even if others, who seem to be less worthy, are benefiting more than us; but I doubt if notions of "duty" have any place in free-market philosophy. It is also clear that some people who are benefiting from the free-market system by earning large salaries, show little sense of civic duty; for example, finding complex devices to avoid paying tax.

Who voted for Hitler, 1930-33?

In the Reichstag election of May 1928, the Nazi Party received less than 3% of the German national vote, and only the complex system of proportional representation allowed the party its 12 seats in the Reichstag. Yet in September 1930 the Nazis scored their first real electoral breakthrough, winning 107 seats, and in July 1932 they became the largest party in the Reichstag, with 230 deputies elected. In January 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor, and he cemented his power with almost 44% of the vote in March of that year, and the subsequent Enabling Law which gave him dictatorial powers. How and why had this astonishing rise in Nazi support happened?

It is necessary first of all to have a quick summary of events. Pre-war Imperial Germany had a democratically elected Parliament, the Reichstag, but it was in reality little more than a talking-shop, without any real control of the Kaiser’s government. Then following defeat in the First World War, a new constitution was established, known as the “Weimar Republic”. There was an elected President, with widespread emergency powers, should he choose to use them, and a Reichstag elected by proportional representation. This had the twin disadvantages that even very small parties were represented (such as the Nazis in their early days), and that no one party ever commanded a majority of the seats. Consequently all governments had to be coalitions of several parties, and were often weak, unstable and short-lived.
The history of Weimar was a story of catastrophic failures. Many Germans blamed the democratic politicians for the surrender in autumn 1918 (the “November criminals“); maintaining, quite untruthfully, that Germany would have won the war if only the leaders had kept their nerve. Then there was the Treaty of Versailles, which almost all Germans saw as unjustly punitive. There followed the hyperinflation of 1922-23, and from 1929 the Wall Street Crash and the great depression. Germany had no tradition of democratically-elected politics, and now it seemed clear that democracy had failed. Votes for the extremist parties, the Communists and Nazis rose dramatically from 1930.
Following the Nazi electoral breakthrough in 1930, there was never any concerted attempt to stop Hitler: indeed, most politicians on the Right were trying to bring him into government, and the only surprise in retrospect is that it took so long. The Chancellor from 1930 to 1932, Bruning, had no majority in the Reichstag, nor did his successors, and had to try to run the country by emergency Presidential decree, while the economic situation continued to deteriorate. The Nazis could supply the numbers. Hitler  could have entered the government at any time, as a member of a coalition, but for almost three years he refused all offers.
The President was the old Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who despite his great age was persuaded to stand again for election in March 1932, backed by all the main constitutional parties, but opposed by the Nazis and Communists. In these elections Hitler came a strong second. Soon afterwards Bruning was sacked and replaced by an extremely weak aristocratic cabinet under Franz von Papen, an obscure Catholic politician. Papen’s only hope of gaining a Reichstag majority was to persuade Hitler to join him, so conciliatory gestures were made: the Nazi paramilitaries (the SA and the SS), which had been banned, were now legalised, and the government of Prussia (which included Berlin), that had been under Socialist control, was dissolved and brought under direct central control.
The Reichstag elections of June 1932 were a triumph for the Nazis, who became the biggest party in the Reichstag, with 230 seats. Hitler was now offered the post of Vice-Chancellor. He turned it down, instead demanding to be made Chancellor, with dictatorial powers. His arrogance and rudeness seriously angered the old President. Instead, the Nazis in the Reichstag voted in support of a Communist motion of censure on the government, and von Papen was overwhelmingly defeated.
New elections were held in November, and the Nazi vote fell sharply, whereas the Communists increased their Reichstag representation to 100 seats. It looked as though the Nazis had shot their bolt, but at this point political intrigue took over. An army friend of Hindenburg, General Schleicher, persuaded the President that he could manage to bring in Hitler where others had failed; so Papen was dismissed and Schleicher appointed Chancellor in his place. But Hitler still turned down an offer of a subordinate post. Goebbels was in despair: the Nazi party was bankrupt, its vote collapsing, and Hitler’s obstinacy seemed incomprehensible. But von Papen was now eager for revenge on Schleicher, and in negotiations over Christmas and New Year he agreed to serve as Vice-Chancellor in a government to be headed by Hitler. It appeared that he had won a good deal, giving Hitler no more than an empty semblance of power: there were to be only three Nazis in the new cabinet (Hitler, Goering and Frick), and all the key ministries of defence, foreign policy and finance were to be held by conservative friends of von Papen.
“We’ve hired him!” Papen triumphantly announced to Hindenburg. And yet within a few months Hitler had established a dictatorship. . At the end of February the Reichstag building mysteriously burnt down, which was promptly labelled a Communist outrage, fresh elections were held in a feverish atmosphere (in which the Nazis still did not manage to reach 50% of the vote), and then Hitler demanded an Enabling Law giving him emergency powers. To their eternal shame, the Catholic Centre party voted for the measure, and democracy in Germany was dead. All political parties other than the Nazis were banned, the trades unions outlawed and the structures of local government abolished. There was remarkably little resistance to all this.

It is, of course, not possible to find out which individuals voted for Hitler, but it is known in what districts of Germany the Nazi vote was high, and in what districts it was lower. There are also lists for Nazi Party membership, which can be broken down by age and class, and from these  it is possible to construct a profile of a typical Nazi supporter.
It is hardly surprising that between the elections in 1930 and the seizure of power in 1933 the party increased its membership six fold, to almost 720,000, but what is most noticeable is that it was overwhelmingly a young people’s party, with 43% of the members being under thirty years old. (Hitler became Chancellor at the age of just 43; the youngest government leader in Europe; and all his principal lieutenants, such as Goering, Goebbels, Hiimmler and Hess, were even younger)
In terms of social class, a third of Nazi Party members were described as “working class”; but since the working class made up 46% of the population of Germany, this class was somewhat under-represented in the Nazi Party. Small farmers, who made up no less than 20% of the population, were also under-represented, whereas the classes known to British sociologists as C1s and C2s; the clerical workers, teachers, self-employed artisans and shopkeepers, were over- represented. Nazism has been described as “the panic of the lower middle class”: people whose living standards were under threat from the great depression, who felt the existing political system was doing nothing to help them, but who were afraid of the threat of Communist revolution. The typical Nazi enthusiast would therefore be in his twenties, from a lower middle class background, and worried about the future, both for himself and for his country.

Where did the Nazi voters live? Germany at the time was a federal country, divided into 35 districts (Lander). It was also divided in religious terms. It was possible to draw a diagonal line across the country, from the frontier of Holland to the western corner of Czechoslovakia, and say that, in general terms, south and west of this line was Catholic, and north and east of it was Protestant. Once that is done, it becomes immediately evident that the highest Nazi vote was Protestant northeast; running in 1933 at well over 50% in East Prussia, Leignitz, Frankfurt-on-Oder and Pomerania. By contrast, although the Nazi movement began in Catholic Bavaria, by 1933 the Nazi share of the vote was below average there. The other noticeable feature is that the Nazis polled strongly in the rural areas and the small towns, but much less impressively in the urban industrial centres. In Berlin the Nazi share of the vote never rose above 31%, and in the Rhineland, which was both Catholic and industrial, in Westphalia, Cologne and Dusseldorf, it remained no higher than 35% even in 1933. The typical Nazi voter, therefore, lived in a small town or village in the  Protestant rural areas of the north and east.
Why should this be? And what attracted such a voter? It was partly due to the structure of the German political parties. One of the largest parties was the Catholic Centre, which always took much of the vote from all classes in the Catholic areas. The Socialists and Communists, although well organised, never sought to extend their appeal beyond the urban working classes, where they remained strong throughout the period. On the other hand, there was no single large conservative party in Weimar Germany; just a mass of small factions, none of whom ever mounted much of a popular campaign to win mass votes. Consequently, when the Nazis took the trouble to campaign in the countryside they were, literally, the only game in town. In 1930-33 the votes of the smaller parties collapsed as the Nazi vote rose, though the Socialists, Communists and Catholic Centre remained strong to the very end, when all rival parties were prohibited.
What ideas attracted these voters to Nazism? It is unlikely to have been anti-Semitism. It is noticeable that in the great election campaigns after 1930 the Nazis suddenly acquired spokesmen on agricultural issues and policies calculated to appeal to the farmers, whereas anti-Semitism, which had little relevance to the rural areas, scarcely featured in their propaganda.
Hitler made very few specific policy promises in these elections. Instead he spoke much about the “November criminals” of 1918, the oppression of Germany ever since, and the danger of Communist revolution. There is no doubt that he possessed a powerful charismatic appeal, promising some kind of hope to the young, the unemployed, and to those fearful of the future. Above all his success was a product of the alarming times of the early 1930s, and the fact that none of his rivals took the Nazi threat seriously until it was far too late. Coupled with this, there was manifestly a loss of faith in the democratic system itself. Although the Nazis never won more than 43% of the vote, a majority of Germans by the end of 1932 were casting their ballots either for the Nazis or the Communists. Hitler always told the Germans that they were faced with a straight choice: him or the Communists. He may even have been right.

(The figures are taken from: Noakes & Pridham; "Nazism 1919-1945: A Documentary Reader; vol. 1")

J. R. R. Tolkien: the man

(See also my earlier post on Tolkien's moral ideas)

The first point to note about Tolkien is that he was an orphan. He can hardly have known anything of his father, who died when he was only three years old, and his mother died when he was twelve. Secondly, he was a dedicated Roman Catholic. His mother had been converted to Catholicism when he was eight; but this alienated her from many of her family, so when she died Tolkien and his younger brother Hilary were placed under the guardianship of a local priest, Father Francis Morgan, and lived in lodgings in Birmingham. Here Tolkien met another orphan, Edith Bratt, and fell in love with her; but Father Francis ordered him to break off all contact with her, fearing the affair would interfere with Tolkien’s studies.
     The third point is that Tolkien was a “scholarship boy”; first at King Edward’s School, Birmingham (still the best school in the city!), and then at Exeter College, Oxford. Here he came under the tutelage of Joseph Wright, a most remarkable man who had begun work in a Yorkshire woollen mill at the age of six, taught himself to read and write, saved enough to travel to Germany to study, and was now Professor of Comparative Philology. Tolkien graduated with a First Class degree in English, and never forgot his debt to Joseph Wright.
    By the time of Tolkien’s graduation, the First World War had broken out, and, as with so many of his generation, he volunteered for service. But first he married Edith, whom he had contacted again as soon as he reached his 21st birthday. They did not seem ideally suited to each other, since Edith shared none of Tolkien’s academic interests. They came to have four children. Tolkien survived the Battle of the Somme, when so many young officers were slaughtered, and was then invalided back to England with typhus; a stroke of good fortune which he shared with an older writer: A. A. Milne. Thereafter he was able to pursue an academic career; first at Leeds University, and then as a Professor back in Oxford, where he spent the rest of his working life. His speciality was philology: the structure and development of languages; particularly Anglo-Saxon and Early and Middle English; in which field he was a world-renowned expert.

Even at school Tolkien had liked inventing languages, and the scripts to go with them. He loved the sounds of words, especially of names (The two Elvish languages in “The Lord of the Rings” were based on the languages whose sounds he liked best: Finnish and Welsh). He also wrote and illustrated stories; some to be told to his children (the most famous being, of course, “The Hobbit”, begun around 1930), but others principally for himself. During the war he began to write a series of independent but interconnected stories which came to be known as the “Silmarillion”. The underlying theme of these was the three great magical jewels, the Silmarils, which had been stolen by Morgoth, the original “Dark Lord”, and which Elves, Men and Dwarves fought to recover (though, fatally, they also fought among themselves). The story which was always closest to Tolkien’s heart was that of Beren and Luthien. Beren, a mortal man, falls in love with Luthien, an immortal Elvish princess, but her father refuses his consent to their union unless Beren can bring him a Silmaril taken from Morgoth as a bride-price. This Beren eventually achieves, though the Silmaril brings disaster with it. Tolkien kept revising and rewriting this story, and its emotional importance to him can be seen on his gravestone in Oxford: wording puzzling to anyone unfamiliar with his stories: “Edith Mary Tolkien, Luthien, 1889-1971: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973”. (Many readers surely noticed how the story of Beren and Luthien is echoed in that of Aragorn, who cannot marry Arwen, the daughter of Elrond, until he has become king)

For intellectual stimulus, Tolkien always relied on exclusively male company: the “TCBS” when he was at school, and in Oxford with a group of like-minded friends who came to be known as the “Inklings”. They met in a masculine atmosphere of beer and pipe-smoking; their leading light being the man more responsible than any for Tolkien becoming a published fantasy-writer: C. S. Lewis. They found they had similar tastes, and Lewis maintained that it was Tolkien who persuaded him of the truth of Christianity.  Lewis was shown a version of the Beren story, which he read with enthusiasm, and urged Tolkien to write more. Some time around 1937, Lewis said to Tolkien, “Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves”. Both men set out to do this, but it was Lewis who was more immediately productive. Tolkien was probably a little jealous of the ease with which Lewis churned out large numbers of books: Tolkien found it difficult to complete anything, and was forever rewriting and starting again. Later, he would probably never have completed “The Lord of the Rings” without Lewis urging him on.

“The Hobbit” was published in 1937, andwas an immediate success. The publishers, Allen & Unwin, naturally asked for a sequel, and Tolkien began to write “the second Hobbit”. It was only after a while that he realised what the setting was: the world of the “Silmarillion”, but several thousand years later, so that the “Silmarillion” stories would form the ancient history and mythology of the Hobbit-world - though no hobbits had appeared in the "Silmarillion". The work now took on an altogether grander aspect. Also present was Tolkien’s version of the Atlantis myth: Numenor; the great island which sank beneath the waves, from which a few survivors escaped to bring civilisation to Middle Earth. Thus “The Lord of the Rings” emerged, after sixteen years, and many revisions and rewritings.

By the time the great epic was published in 1954-55, the Inklings had ceased to exist, and Tolkien and Lewis were no longer as close as they had been before the war. Several factors were at work here. Charles Williams, an author largely forgotten today, had joined the Inklings when he came to Oxford. He lectured on Milton and Dante and wrote several “spiritual thrillers” (“War in Heaven” etc). Tolkien liked Williams as a person, but strongly disliked his books, and thought he had a very bad influence on Lewis’s writings. Tolkien did not like Lewis’s “Narnia” stories. Being himself a perfectionist, he thought Lewis’s imaginary world was a “rushed job”: poorly thought out and not credible. Then Tolkien was to be further estranged from Lewis by the latter’s marriage, which he found incomprehensible. But Lewis loved “The Lord of the Rings”, praised it fulsomely in public, and lobbied all his literary contacts to ensure its success.

Once again, the publishers demanded more; and Tolkien attempted to reduce  the multiple drafts of the “Silmarillion” stories to a single coherent book. But he was an old man now, and was unable to complete the task. The last book he managed to write was “Smith of Wooton Major”, published in 1967. This tells of Smith, who as a boy is given a magic token which allows him to visit the land of Faery, where he sees many strange and wonderful things, most of which he fails to understand. But eventually he is told he must give the token back, and he is unable to visit Faery any more. It is the only one of Tolkien’s stories which is clearly an allegory: the autobiographical story of an old man who realises his creative powers are failing. Tolkien died leaving the “Silmarillion” incomplete, and it was left to his son, Christopher, to reduce the mass of manuscripts to publishable form.

Footnote:-

Tolkien was always a great letter-writer. After he became famous, fans would write to him asking him to clear up and explain aspects of “The Lord of the Rings”, and he would reply with letters running to seven or more printed pages. A Jesuit who asked him about the origin of certain “holy” words, such as “God”, was rewarded with a long discourse on the philology. But best of all is a letter he wrote in 1938. “The Hobbit” was being translated into German, and, this being the Nazi era, the German publishers wrote to ask whether he was an Aryan. Tolkien knew that, properly speaking, “Aryan” was a word indicating a language-group, and had nothing to do with race. He therefore replied as follows:-
    “I regret that I am not clear as to what you mean. As far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, or any related dialect. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people”.
    I think this is magnificent  
(The extract is taken from “The letters of J. R. R. Tolkien”, edited by Humphrey Carpenter)


Tolkien dates


1892   John Ronald Reuel Tolkien born in Blomfontein, South Africa; son of  Arthur, a bank manager and his wife Mabel; both from England
1894   Brother Hilary born
1895   Mabel takes the boys back to England; Arthur stays in S. Africa
1896   Arthur dies. Mabel settles in Sarehole, a village near Birmingham
1900   Mabel converted to Catholicism. They move to Edgbaston
1903   Tolkien enters King Edward’s School, Birmingham, on a scholarship
1904   Mabel dies of diabetes. The Tolkien brothers are placed under the guardianship of Father Francis Morgan, and move into lodgings
1908   Tolkien meets Edith Bratt
1910   Morgan forbids Tolkien to contact Edith until he is 21
1911   Tolkien gains an Exhibition scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford
1913   On his 21st birthday he immediately contacts Edith again
1914   Edith becomes a Catholic; she & Tolkien become engaged
1915   Tolkien graduates with a First Class degree in English. He is commissioned in the Lancashire Fusiliers
1916   Tolkien and Edith are married. Battle of the Somme: Tolkien’s battalion is held in reserve on the first day. In November he catches typhus & is invalided back to England
1917   Whilst convalescing at Great Haywood, Staffordshire, Tolkien begins to write a series of linked fantasy stories which come to be known as the “Silmarillion”. He spends much of the year in hospital, and is   never fit enough to return to the front line. His eldest son, John, is born in November
1918   With the Armistice, the Tolkiens return to Oxford. He joins the team researching for the new Oxford English Dictionary
1919   He begins to work as a freelance tutor of undergraduates
1920   Tolkien is appointed Reader in English Language at Leeds University
1925   Publication of his edition of “Sir Gawain & the Green Knight”. He is appointed Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford
1926   C. S. Lewis appointed a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He & Tolkien become friends, and come to form a social & intellectual group known as the “Inklings”. Tolkien continues to write, and  rewrite, “Silmarillion” stories, with encouragement from Lewis
1930   Around this time, Tolkien begins to write “The Hobbit”, but does not finish it
1931   Around this time, Lewis becomes a Christian, & begins to write a series of books on Christian issues
1936   Tolkien’s lecture on “Beowulf”. The unfinished “Hobbit” is seen by a former student who now works for the publishers Allen and Unwin
1937   “The Hobbit” published: an immediate success. The publishers suggest a sequel, which Tolkien begins to write; eventually becoming “The Lord of the Rings”
1938-45   Lewis writes the “Perelandra” trilogy; admired by Tolkien
1939   Tolkien’s lecture “On Fairy Stories”. Charles Williams joins Inklings
1945   Tolkien appointed Professor of English Language and Literature
1949   “Lord of the Rings” completed. Disputes with publishers. Around this time the Inklings decline and eventually stop meeting
1950-56   Lewis writes the seven “Narnia” books; Tolkien does not like them!
1954   First 2 volumes of “LOTR” published. Lewis is appointed Professor of English at Cambridge University, but continues to live in Oxford
1955   Volume 3 of “LOTR” published
1956    Lewis secretly marries Joy Gresham
1959   Tolkien retires from professorship
1960    Joy Lewis dies
1963   C. S. Lewis dies
1967   “Smith of Wootton Major”; Tolkien’s last published work
1968   The Tolkiens move to Bournemouth
1971   Edith Tolkien dies
1972   Tolkien returns to Oxford. He is awarded the CBE
1973   Tolkien dies, leaving the “Silmarillion” stories incomplete
1977   “The Silmarillion” edited and published by his son, Christopher Tolkien