Edith Tolkien

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Edith Tolkien
Edith Bratt in 1906
Born
Edith Mary Bratt

(1889-01-21)21 January 1889
Gloucester, England
Died29 November 1971(1971-11-29) (aged 82)
Bournemouth, England
Spouse
Priscilla Anne

Edith Mary Tolkien (

Lúthien Tinúviel and Arwen Undómiel
.

Biography

Early life

Edith Bratt was born in Gloucester on 21 January 1889. Her mother, Frances Bratt, was 30 years old, unmarried, and was the daughter of a local shoe and bootmaker.[1]

According to Humphrey Carpenter, Frances Bratt never married, and the name of Edith's father is not listed on her birth certificate. Even so, Frances is reported to have always preserved a photograph of him and his name was known within the Bratt family. Edith, however, was always deeply conscious of having been conceived out of wedlock and never told her own children the name of their grandfather.[2] Subsequent research has identified Edith's father as Birmingham paper dealer Alfred Frederick Warrilow, who had previously employed Frances Bratt as governess to his daughter, Nellie Warrilow.[3] When Warrilow died in 1891, he named Frances as his sole executrix in his will.[4]

Edith was brought up in Handsworth, a suburb of Birmingham, by her mother and also her cousin, Jenny Grove (related to Sir George Grove). According to Humphrey Carpenter, the circumstances of Edith's birth were a regular subject of neighbourhood gossip.[1]

Frances Bratt died when her daughter was 14 and Edith was sent to the Dresden House boarding school in Evesham. The school was run by the Watts sisters, who had studied music in Dresden. Although the school had a very "strict regime", Edith was always to remember it fondly. It was at the Dresden House School where Edith "first developed her great love, and talent, for playing the piano."[5]

Following school, Edith was expected to become a concert pianist or at the very least a piano teacher. While she considered how to proceed, Edith's guardian, solicitor Stephen Gateley, found her rooms at Mrs. Faulkner's boarding house at 37 Duchess Road, Birmingham.[2]

Courtship

The boarding house at 37 Duchess Road "was a gloomy, creeper-covered house, hung with dingy lace curtains". It was owned and operated by Mrs. Faulkner, whose husband Louis was "a wine merchant with a taste for his own wares".

Roman Catholic and "an active member" of the parish attached to the nearby Birmingham Oratory.[6]

Mrs. Faulkner hosted musical soirées which were often attended by the Oratory's priests. She was delighted to have, in Edith, a pianist to accompany the soloists. Whenever Edith attempted to practise, however, Mrs. Faulkner "would sweep into the room as soon as the scales and arpeggios began", and say, "Now, Edith dear, that's enough for now!"[2]

In later years, Edith told her children that her life at 37 Duchess Road was "rather restricted". Once, Edith, who "had a lifelong enjoyment of the theatre", announced that she was going to a matinée at the Theatre Royal. In response, Mrs. Faulkner told her that, "she must take a book to read in the interval to avoid the risk of being talked to by strangers!"[7]

Edith first met Tolkien early in 1908, when he and his younger brother Hilary were moved into 37 Duchess Road by their guardian, Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. At the time Tolkien, known within his family as Ronald, was 16 years old and Edith was 19. According to Humphrey Carpenter,

Edith and Ronald took to frequenting Birmingham teashops, especially one which had a balcony overlooking the pavement. There they would sit and throw sugarlumps into the hats of passers-by, moving to the next table when the sugar bowl was empty. ...With two people of their personalities and in their position, romance was bound to flourish. Both were orphans in need of affection, and they found that they could give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love.[8]

However, before the end of the year the relationship had become known to Tolkien's guardian. Viewing Edith as a distraction from Tolkien's schoolwork and bothered by her

Anglican religion, he forbade any contact between them until Tolkien became a legal adult at 21.[9]

Tolkien grudgingly obeyed this instruction to the letter while Father Morgan's guardianship lasted. Edith's legal guardian, solicitor Stephen Gately, arranged for her to move to Cheltenham to stay with a family friend, solicitor C. H. Jessop and his wife.[8]

Edith lived in relative comfort in the Jessop's spacious house and was waited upon by servants. Unlike at Mrs. Faulkner's house, she could play to her content upon the Jessop's

grand piano.[10]

Edith also played the organ at her local Church of England parish, which she later blamed for her subsequent lifetime of back problems.[10] She also joined the Primrose League and attended local Conservative Party meetings. Aside from the local Vicar, however, the Jessops hosted few visitors and, aside from her school friend Molly Field, Edith felt starved for companionship of her own age.[8]

Even though Edith affectionately called her hosts "Uncle Jessop" and "Auntie Jessop",

Beethoven Sonata. She also spent hours copying music meticulously. One or two of her albums still remain, showing her taste ranging from Classical music to the lighter ballads of the time."[10]

However, on the evening of his twenty-first birthday, Tolkien wrote a letter to Edith,[11] which contained a declaration of his love and asked her to marry him. She replied saying that she had recently become engaged to her friend Molly's brother, Warwickshire farmer George Field, but implied that she had done so only because she felt, "on the shelf", and believed that Tolkien had forgotten her. Within a week, Tolkien journeyed to Cheltenham,[12] where Edith met him at the railway station. That day, Edith returned her ring and announced her engagement to Tolkien instead.[13]

Marriage

According to the couple's children John and Priscilla, "Their respective guardians were not enthusiastic, although Father Francis eventually gave his blessing."[14]

John and Priscilla Tolkien later wrote that while their father was attending

Oxford University, "Father Francis sometimes came to visit from Birmingham, once chaperoning Edith. She remembered the train stopping at Banbury and Father Francis insisted upon buying Banbury cakes – the local delicacy – which were very greasy. The grease got everywhere and caused considerable confusion."[15]

Also following her engagement, Edith announced that she was converting to

Roman Catholicism at Tolkien's insistence. Because her "Uncle Jessop", "like many of his age and class, was strongly anti-Catholic", Edith, who feared his explosive temper, at first resisted her fiancé's demands. Despite Edith's misgivings, Jessop was every bit as enraged as she had feared and instantly turned her out of the house.[16][17]

According to the couple's children John and Priscilla Tolkien, "She found a rented house with her cousin, Jenny Grove, and her dog, Sam, in Warwick... Jenny, known in the family as 'Auntie Ie', became a substitute mother to Edith and the nearest thing her four children had to a grandmother."[18] While at Warwick, Edith was also overjoyed to have her own piano, which she continued to play until arthritis forced her to give it up.[19]

The Tolkiens were married in the Catholic

Cheddar Caves.[20]

Soon after their wedding, Tolkien commenced a course at the

Nuptial Mass had been performed; the couple received a nuptial blessing at the Roman Catholic Church of St John the Baptist, in Great Haywood.[20] In a 1941 letter to their son Michael, Tolkien expressed admiration for his wife's willingness to marry a man with no job, little money, and no prospects except the likelihood of being killed in the Great War.[23]

World War I

Tolkien was subsequently commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Lancashire Fusiliers, transferring to the 11th (Service) Battalion, part of the 25th Division, with the British Expeditionary Force. After spending a last night with Edith at the Plough & Harrow Hotel in Birmingham, Tolkien reported to a troop ship at Folkestone[24] and arrived in France on 4 June 1916.[25] He later wrote:

Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then ... it was like a death.[26]

Tolkien's service during the

Passchendaele Ridge. Each time he was wounded, Edith received a telegram."[28]

Homefront

After Tolkien's return from France, their first child, John Francis Reuel (16 November 1917 – 22 January 2003) was born in Cheltenham.

While Tolkien was stationed at

hemlock
:

We walked in a wood where hemlock was growing, a sea of white flowers.[29]

This incident inspired the account of the meeting of Beren and Lúthien, and from that the Song of Beren and Luthien."[30]

Post-war

After

Priscilla Anne Reuel
(1929–2022).

Professor's wife

Tolkien's professional career at the universities of Leeds and Oxford resulted in the family moving to these cities. According to Humphrey Carpenter, Edith was not an intellectual and had a difficult time functioning around her husband's colleagues and their families. As she often had no companionship other than the children and the servants, Edith's loneliness frequently manifested itself as authoritarianism. Another result of her loneliness was her envy and resentment of Tolkien's close friendship with C. S. Lewis, whom she regarded as an intruder into her family.

According to Carpenter,

There was also the problem of Edith's attitude to Catholicism. Before they were married, Ronald had persuaded her to leave the

Lewis: to Edith he presented only his emotional attachment to religion, of which she had little understanding. Occasionally, her smouldering anger about church-going burst into a fury; but at last after one such outburst in 1940 there was true reconciliation between her and Ronald, in which she explained her feelings and even declared that she wished to resume the practice of her religion. In the event she did not return to regular church-going, but for the rest of her life she showed no resentment of Catholicism, and indeed delighted to take an interest in church affairs, so that it appeared even to friends who were Catholics that she was an active church-goer.[31]

Later life

According to Humphrey Carpenter,

Those friends who knew Ronald and Edith Tolkien over the years never doubted that there was deep affection between them. It was visible in the small things, the almost absurd degree in which each worried about the other's health, and the care in which they chose and wrapped each other's birthday presents; and in the large matters, the way in which Ronald willingly abandoned such a large part of his life in retirement to give Edith the last years in Bournemouth that he felt she deserved, and the degree in which she showed pride in his fame as an author. A principal source of happiness to them was their shared love of their family. This bound them together until the end of their lives, and it was perhaps the strongest force in the marriage. They delighted to discuss and mull over every detail of the lives of their children, and later their grandchildren.[32]

In a 1992 lecture,

Sam Gamgee, characters that sustain quite convincingly the story of The Lord of the Rings, and link the high romance to the everyday and the ordinary.[33]

After his retirement during the 1960s, Tolkien decided to move with Edith to a location near Bournemouth, which was then a resort town patronised by the British upper class. Although his status as a best-selling author gave them both easy entry into local society, Tolkien was never comfortable in Bournemouth and missed the company of his fellow intellectuals. Edith, however, was at last in her element as a society matron, which had been Tolkien's intention in selecting their new residence in the first place. Their grandson Simon Tolkien states on his website that Edith loved spending time at Bournemouth's Miramar Hotel.[34]

Death

The grave of J. R. R. and Edith Tolkien, Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford.

Edith Tolkien died on 29 November 1971 in Bournemouth at the age of 82, and was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. Tolkien was buried with her when he died 21 months later.

Legacy

Below the Tolkiens' names on their grave are the names of the characters of

Carcharoth, Lúthien, like Orpheus, approached the Valar
gods and persuaded them to restore her beloved to life.

Shortly after Edith's death, Tolkien wrote the following in a letter to their son Christopher.

I never called Edith Luthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the

Mandos.[35]

In popular culture

References

  1. ^ a b c Carpenter (1977), p. 38.
  2. ^ a b c Carpenter (1977), pp. 38–39.
  3. ^ Duriez (2012), p. 33.
  4. ^ Duriez (2012), p. 222.
  5. ^ Tolkien & Tolkien (1992), p. 27.
  6. ^ Tolkien & Tolkien (1992), p. 26.
  7. ^ Tolkien & Tolkien (1992), p. 28.
  8. ^ a b c d Carpenter (1977), p. 44.
  9. ^ Garth (2003), p. 12.
  10. ^ a b c Tolkien & Tolkien (1992), p. 30.
  11. ^ Garth (2003), p. 29.
  12. ^ Garth (2003), pp. 29 & 43.
  13. ^ Carpenter (1977), pp. 67–69.
  14. ^ John and Priscilla Tolkien (1992), The Tolkien Family Album, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Page 34.
  15. ^ John and Priscilla Tolkien (1992), The Tolkien Family Album, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Page 35.
  16. ^ Carpenter (1977), p. 73.
  17. ^ John and Priscilla Tolkien (1992), The Tolkien Family Album, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Page 36.
  18. ^ John and Priscilla Tolkien (1992), The Tolkien Family Album, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Page 36.
  19. ^ John and Priscilla Tolkien (1992), The Tolkien Family Album, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Page 37.
  20. ^ a b c Garth (2003), p. 134.
  21. ^ "Tolkien plaque unveiled in Warwick". 11 July 2018.
  22. ^ Garth (2003), pp. 134 & 231.
  23. ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letter No. 43
  24. ^ John and Priscilla Tolkien (1992), The Tolkien Family Album, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Page 39.
  25. ^ Garth (2003), pp. 89, 138 & 147.
  26. ^ Garth (2003), p. 138.
  27. ^ Garth 2003, pp. 144–145
  28. ^ John and Priscilla Tolkien (1992), The Tolkien Family Album, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Page 39.
  29. Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota). See John Garth Tolkien and the Great War (Harper Collins/Houghton Mifflin 2003) and Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, & Edmund Weiner The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary
    (OUP 2006).
  30. ^ Cater, Bill (12 April 2001). "We talked of love, death, and fairy tales". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 13 March 2006.
  31. ^ Carpenter (1977), p. 157.
  32. ^ Carpenter (1977), p. 158.
  33. ISBN 978-0-89870-866-0
    .
  34. ^ "My Grandfather". simontolkien.com. Archived from the original on 22 April 2008. Retrieved 27 April 2009.
  35. ^ Carpenter & Tolkien (1981), Letter 340, To Christopher Tolkien.
  36. ^ "Tolkien (2019)". IMDB. Retrieved 5 November 2020.

Bibliography
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