I intended to publish this on Tolkien’s birthday, but was unable to because of family obligations.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3rd, 1892 and passed through transition on September 2nd, 1973. He was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He was born in South Africa later returning with his mother, Mabel, and his brother, to England at the age of three. Unfortunately, his father died of rheumatic fever, leaving his family without any income.
Mabel Tolkien moved in with her parents and taught her two sons herself. It was from her, that Ronald, as he was known, got his love of language. Mabel Tolkien was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1900 despite vehement protests by her Baptist family,who then stopped all financial assistance to her. Mabel died when Tolkien was 12, of acute diabetes. She was 34.
At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt. His guardian, Father Francis Morgan, viewed Edith as a distraction from Tolkien’s school work and was horrified that his young charge was seriously involved with a Protestant girl. Father Francis prohibited Tolkien from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with Edith until he was twenty-one.
On the evening of his twenty-first birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith a declaration of his love and asked her to marry him. Edith replied saying that she had already agreed to marry another man, but that she had only done so because she had believed Tolkien had forgotten her. The two met and renewed their love. Edith returned her engagement ring and announced that she was marrying Tolkien instead. Following their engagement Edith began the process to convert to Catholicism. Her landlord, a staunch Protestant, was infuriated and evicted her.Edith and Ronald were formally engaged in 1913, and were married on March 22nd, 1916.
He served in World War I, serving as a signals officer participating in the Battle of Thiepval Ridge and the subsequent assault on the Schwaben Redoubt, from 1915 to 1916. Tolkien also served as a code breaker in World War II.
The Hobbit
Tolkien was grading papers during the summer of 1928 when he came across a page which had been left blank. Tolkien was an inveterate doodler on any paper or margin that was available. Many of the earlier stories in his Middle-earth “mythologies” were first recorded this way, and The Hobbit was no exception.
On that blank page, Tolkien wrote the sentence, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” This has since become one of the most recognizable sentences in all of English literature.
Tolkien, of course, had no idea what the sentence meant. He had never heard of “hobbits” and hadn’t the foggiest idea what a hobbit was. But as with most of Tolkien’s stories, the idea begins with a word…usually a name.
There many mystical threads weaved through out the Lord of the Rings series. All one has to do is read books or view any of movies to catch the high-mind, spiritual aspiration.
This short blog does not do you justice, Beren. Thank you for your contribution to our culture. The world is a richer place because you lived.
