Happy Birthday, Christopher Tolkien

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Greetings! Since I’ve been spending nearly every day from 9am until 7pm or so in the Sir Charles Mackerras Reading Room of the Weston Special Collections, then walking and riding buses and eating and working on the Fahrenheit 2451: Ideas Worth Saving conference and teaching an online course for Politics & Prose, I haven’t been able to set aside time to tell you some of the great things that have been happening.

I’m going to stop over-committing myself. Seriously. I need more breathing room. I need more writing room! No more new conferences, teaching gigs, writing jobs for a couple of years. Just Wyrdhoard clients and my own writing. Okay? Okay!

Let’s talk about last Monday evening. First, I had the great honor of attending Christopher Tolkien at 100: A Celebration at the Weston–as the guest of Owen A. Barfield, the author’s grandson. I’d been on the waiting list for the event since I knew I was coming over here, but he graciously gave me his spare ticket. It was great to chat with Michael Ward, and I got to meet some folks in person whom I’ve only known online, including Catherine McIlwaine, Stephen Winter and Andrew “Trotter” Ferguson. I also met, for the first time, Baillie Tolkien, Simon Horobin, and Giuseppe Pezzini. What utterly delightful people! What a wealth of knowledge. experience, and kindness. I wish we could all download (or upload?) everything we know and dump it into one publicly-accessible space. Oh, wait, I guess that’s what the internet is. And books. Anyway.

The event was a nice amalgam of birthday party for the late Christopher Tolkien, micro scholarly conference in his honor, and funeral orations. Baillie, Catherine, Simon, Giuseppe, and a couple of other people each spoke, either sharing fond memories of Christopher, giving an overview of his life and career, discussing his relationship with and work for his father, or some combination. I got a very good sense of the man himself: funny, brilliant, witty, compassionate, adventuresome, brave, passionate, and incredibly hard working. I was particularly struck by his mental acuity and physical courage during his time as a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force and by his commitment to ecological stewardship. I also enjoyed seeing his gorgeous handwriting. Here’s a sample that someone posted on Reddit:

His career could be considered in two eras: First, his years as lecturer and then fellow at Oxford in Old and Middle English and Old Norse languages and literature (including covering classes for and collaborating with Nevill Coghill), teaching a wide range of courses and tutoring many pupils. Second, his commitment after 1973 to editing and publishing his father’s work. To each of these vocations he brought intensity, deep understanding, a meticulous work ethic, and admirable persistence. One reason he switched from an academic career to editor of Middle-earth (and other) materials was that he found he was much more interested in his father’s invented languages than in real-world ones that have been over-studied. JRRT gave him remarkable freedom when he assigned him as literary executor, giving him enormous scope to do with the unpublished works what he would.

Giuseppe shared this quote from Lord of the Rings, comparing Bilbo’s injunction to Frodo with JRRT’s to Christopher:

I wonder, Frodo my dear fellow, if you would very much mind tidying things up a bit before you go? Collect all my notes and papers, and my diary too, and take them with you, if you will. You see, I haven’t much time for the selection and the arrangement and all that. Get Sam to help, and when you’ve knocked things into shape, come back, and I’ll run over it. I won’t be too critical. […] Thank you, my dear fellow! That really is a very great relief to my mind.

During the Q & A, I asked how much JRRT’s & Christopher’s personalities compared; how alike one another they were. Baillie answered that they were very similar, but Christopher was “More sophisticated and worldly,” pointing out that JRRT didn’t get out as much, didn’t have as many chances to travel, and moved in a smaller circle. She also talked about the fact that Christopher left the faith in his 30s, which was a sorrow to JRRT and gave them different perspectives. I spoke to her about this topic more afterwards, privately, and she expanded a little more upon JRRT’s sadness at Christopher’s move away from Roman Catholicism. She said that, since JRRT believed that leaving the faith meant Christopher would not be in heaven, from one point of view it broke the eternal bond he thought they had. However, she said, JRRT was open-minded enough to have a creative approach to the matter (which she did not explain in any greater depth, but I thought she was hinting that perhaps he believed God’s grace could still embrace his son?), which softened the blow. It did not, she said, create tension or distance between them.

The event was, of course, carefully curated to avoid talking about the most painful episodes in Christopher’s life or anything that could be a source of unpleasant gossip. That’s perfectly understandable; it was not the venue for critique. The omissions raised many questions, but neither is this the place for me to discuss those. For now, I’ll simply say that I was honored to be part of an event celebrating all the good parts of a human being’s life and expressing gratitude to him for his work. That’s what we should do–even which scholarship must also honestly face the less lovely bits people leave behind.

I’ll close with two quotes that struck me, the first spoken by Christopher’s widow Baillie, and the other from remarks Richard Ovenden sent in (sadly being ill and unable to attend):

“He had great learning lightly borne”
and
“He enriched our learning, literature, and lives.”

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