wishes it were possible to hold another T.C.B.S. Council.
19 January 1916 Dora Owen, who has seen Goblin Feet in Oxford Poetry 1915, writes to ask Tolkien if she may include it in a collection of fairy poetry she is compiling for publication by Longmans (The Book of Fairy Poetry, 1920). On receiving the letter Tolkien will send her several of his poems to read and consider.
c. 26 January–22 March 1916 Knowing that he will soon be ordered to the front, Tolkien and Edith set the date for their wedding. Tolkien informs his T.C.B.S. friends (his pertinent letter to Gilson is dated 26 January) and sets his affairs in order to provide for Edith in case the worst happens. He sells his share in the motor cycle, and goes to Birmingham to arrange with Father Francis Morgan the transfer of his modest inheritance into his own name. He intends to tell Father Francis of his forthcoming marriage, but recalling the latter’s past disapproval he finds it impossible to raise the subject. The wedding is arranged to take place in Warwick on 22 March despite the fact that it will be Lent and therefore the marriage service cannot be followed by a nuptial Mass. Tolkien and Edith may have chosen this date because they feared that his departure was imminent, or Tolkien may have chosen it to combine his return to Oxford for his degree ceremony, his wedding, and his honeymoon into one period of leave. He does eventually manage to write of his plans to Father Francis, who replies wishing Tolkien and Edith ‘every blessing and happiness’ (quoted in Biography, p. 78) and saying that he would like to conduct the ceremony himself in the Oratory Church, Birmingham; but it is too late to change the arrangements.
2 February 1916 Dora Owen writes to Tolkien to say how much she has enjoyed his poems. She mentions especially The Trumpets of Faerie, The Princess Nî, A Song of Aryador, Sea-Song of an Elder Day, The Shores of Faery, You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play, and Outside. She praises them for ‘a certain haunting quality in their music’ and feels that he ought to get them published; she suggests that he send them to Sidgwick & Jackson, or Elkin Matthews, or John Lane. She suggests placing The Trumpets of Faerie first.
3 February 1916 Smith writes to Tolkien at M Lines, Brocton Camp, thanking him for a letter. Tolkien probably mentioned a training course, as Smith says that he too has returned to his regiment after time spent on instruction. He encourages Tolkien to try to get his poems published, to write to Sidgwick & Jackson or anyone else. He greatly admires Tolkien’s work,
and my chief consolation is, that if I am scuppered to-night … there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the T.C.B.S. Death is so close to us now that I feel – and I am sure you feel, and all the three other heroes feel, how impuissant it is. Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four!
He urges Tolkien to publish, as ‘you I am sure are chosen…. Make haste, before you come out to this orgy of death and cruelty’ (quoted in Biography, p. 86).
4 February 1916 Wiseman writes to Tolkien, praising Kortirion among the Trees which he returns.
9 February 1916 Smith writes to Tolkien at Brocton Camp about what friendship with the other T.C.B.S. members means to him, and probably in response to Tolkien expressing worry that he is taking up too much of the time of the T.C.B.S. with his poetry. Smith says that they believe in his work and feel that in some way they contribute. He has had a letter in which Tolkien told him that he and Edith are getting married and that he has sent his poems to Sidgwick & Jackson. – The Military Service Act introduces conscription for unmarried men between 18 and 41.
22 February 1916 Smith writes to Tolkien at M Lines, Brocton Camp, urging him to send Kortirion among the Trees to a publisher. He has mentioned it to R.W. Reynolds and asks Tolkien to send him a copy if he has not already done so.
March 1916 Tolkien completes his Qenya poem Narqelion, inspired by Kortirion among the Trees. It is a song to autumn with passing references to Eldamar and the Gnomes (a kindred of the Elves in Tolkien’s mythology, later the Noldoli or Noldor).
1 March 1916 Wiseman writes to Tolkien at Brocton Camp, in reply to a letter telling Wiseman of the forthcoming wedding and perhaps also rebutting one of Wiseman’s comments on Kortirion among the Trees. Wiseman defends his views, and says that while Tolkien is fascinated by night and stars and ‘little, delicate, beautiful creations’, he is ‘more thrilled by enormous, slow-moving, omnipotent things’ and scientific discoveries, ‘the wonderful secrets that man is continually digging out … of the great sun, the great stars, the amazing greatness of mountains’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).
2 March 1916 Tolkien writes to Edith. He has spent a miserable wet afternoon re-reading old military lecture-notes ‘and getting bored with them after an hour and a half. I have done some touches to my nonsense fairy language [Qenya] – to its improvement. I often long to work at it and don’t let myself ’cause though I love it so it does seem such a mad hobby!’ (Letters, p. 8).
4 March 1916 Smith sends Tolkien part of his long poem ‘The Burial of Sophocles’.
5 March 1916 (postmark) Smith writes to Tolkien at M Lines, Brocton Camp, sending the whole of a poem (presumably the last section of ‘The Burial of Sophocles’). He asks Tolkien to read it and then post it in the addressed envelope to a place of safe keeping unless he wants to keep it himself. He mentions that he has just received a long letter from Tolkien.
9 March 1916 Gilson writes to Tolkien at M Lines, Brocton Camp, sending him his good wishes, prayers, and blessings for his approaching marriage.
10 March 1916 R.W. Reynolds writes to Tolkien, thanking him for a letter and for the poem Kortirion among the Trees which he likes. He asks to see more poems.
14, 17, 26 March and 16 April 1916 Wiseman sends to Tolkien at Brocton Camp, forwarded to the School of Signalling, a long letter written in stages. He writes at great length about the T.C.B.S. and his present hopes, and reminisces about the past. He defends his position concerning Kortirion among the Trees, feeling that Tolkien has not grasped what he was trying to express, and notes differences in their tastes. He, Gilson, and Smith have been corresponding about what to give Tolkien and Edith as a wedding present, but have decided to ask them what they want. He would like to hear about the wedding. Tolkien has written to him that ‘the Eldar, the Solosimpe, the Noldoli [different kindreds of Elves in his mythology] are better, warmer, fairer to the heart than the mathematics of the tide, or the vortices that are the winds …’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).
16–18 March 1916 Tolkien writes, or continues to write, a poem, originally called The Wanderer’s Allegiance, concerning Warwick and Oxford (*The Town of Dreams and the City of Present Sorrow). Subsequently this is divided into three parts in a manuscript dated ‘March 16–17–18 1916’ with subtitles ‘Prelude’, ‘The Inland City’, and ‘The Sorrowful City’. A later manuscript will be inscribed in part ‘March 1916, Oxford and Warwick’.
16 March 1916 Tolkien attends his delayed degree ceremony in Oxford.
22 March 1916 Tolkien and Edith are married by Father Murphy after early Mass, in the Church of St Mary the Immaculate in Warwick. The witnesses are Anna M. Johnson, presumably a local friend or someone associated with the church, and Jennie Grove. After the ceremony they travel by train to *Clevedon in Somerset for a week’s honeymoon; while in the train they doodle on the back of a greetings telegram versions of Edith’s new name. During their honeymoon they visit *Cheddar Gorge and Caves which make a great impression on Tolkien.
31 March 1916 Sidgwick & Jackson rejects the volume of poems, The Trumpets of Faerie, that Tolkien had submitted for publication.
April 1916 Edith gives up the house in Warwick she had been renting with Jennie Grove. Tolkien finds lodgings