Merton has now provided [me] with a very excellent flat, which will probably accommodate the bulk of my surviving ‘library’. But wholly unexpected ‘strings’ are attached to this! (1) The rent will be ‘merely nominal’ – which means what it implies: something extremely small in comparison with actual market-value. (2) All or any furniture required will be provided free by the college – and a large Wilton carpet has already been assigned to me, covering the whole floor of a sitting room …. (3) Since 21 M[erton] St. is legally part of the college, domestic service is provided free: in the shape of a resident care-taker and his wife as housekeeper [*Charlie and Mavis Carr]. (4) I am entitled to free lunch and dinner throughout the year when in residence: both of a very high standard. This represents – allowing 9 weeks absence – an actual emolument of between £750 and £900 a year which the claws of the I[ncome] Taxgatherers have so far been driven off. (5) The college will provide free of rent two telephones: (a) for local calls, and calls to extensions, which are free, and (b) for long distance calls, which will have a private number and be paid by me. This will have the advantage that business and private calls to family and friends will not pass through the overworked lodge; but it will have the one snag that it will have to appear in the Telephone book, and cannot be ex-directory …. (6) No rates, and gas and electricity bills at a reduced scale. (7) The use of 2 beautiful common-rooms (at a distance of 100 yards) with free writing paper, free newspapers, and mid-morning coffee. It all sounds too good to be true – and of course it all depends on my health …. [Letters, pp. 415–16]
On 16 March 1972 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘I am now at last … IN but not “settled” in [at 21 Merton Street] …. The great bank in the Fellows’ Garden looks like the foreground of a pre-Raphaelite picture: blazing green starred like the Milky Way with blue anemones, purple/white/yellow crocuses, and final surprise, clouded-yellow, peacock, and tortoiseshell butterflies flitting about’ (Letters, p. 417).
A photograph of the façade of 21 Merton Street is reproduced in The Tolkien Family Album, p. 87.
CENTRAL OXFORD
Blackfriars. Blackfriars, the Priory of the Holy Spirit at 64 St Giles, was established in 1929 by Father Bede Jarrett as a House of Studies for the English Province of the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans. The Order had arrived in Oxford as early as August 1221, only five years after its founding in 1216, and there established a priory and school of teaching. The school flourished during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but had declined by 1538 when the Order was suppressed by Henry VIII. The chapel and priory were designed by Edwin Doran Webb, the architect of the *Birmingham Oratory; the chapel was consecrated on 20 May 1929, but the priory buildings were not completed until 1954, though sufficiently advanced in 1929 for a small number of friars to take up residence. *Father Gervase Mathew was a member of the community.
On at least one occasion, in 1945, Tolkien served during Mass in the chapel. On 26 October 1966 he read his still unpublished *Smith of Wootton Major to so large an audience at Blackfriars ‘that the Refectory (a long hall as long as a church) had to be cleared and could not contain it. Arrangements for relay to passages outside had to be hastily made. I am told that more than 800 people gained admittance’ (letter to Michael George Tolkien (see *Michael Tolkien), 28 October 1966, Letters, pp. 370–1).
Blackwell’s Bookshop. The most famous of Oxford booksellers, founded in 1879. Since 1883 its main shop has been at 50 Broad Street, later expanded into nos. 48 and 49 and other buildings nearby. Tolkien was a frequent customer. In 1942 the chairman of the firm, Basil Blackwell, gracefully helped him settle an overdue account (see *Pearl). Tolkien also bought books from the now defunct Parker and Son, once in Broad Street at the present site of Blackwell’s art bookshop.
Bodleian Library. One of the oldest and most important libraries in the world, opened in 1602 through the generosity of Sir Thomas Bodley but on a foundation of books given to the University of Oxford from the early fourteenth century. It is one of six deposit libraries entitled to receive a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom. Its oldest buildings are located south of the Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building, around the Schools Quadrangle. A doorway on the west leads from the Quadrangle to the Proscholium and the Divinity School, constructed from about 1420 through most of the fifteenth century. Above these rooms are Duke Humfrey’s Library (begun 1444, completed 1488, refitted 1598–1602, named for the collection of manuscripts given by Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester) and its extensions Arts End (completed 1612) and Selden End (completed 1637). The Schools Quadrangle (built 1613–19) was originally a series of lecture-rooms with a picture gallery on the top floor, but was taken over by the Library for additional book storage and reading rooms beginning in 1789.
Tolkien used the Bodleian holdings on many occasions. Some of the works he consulted for *On Fairy-Stories are listed with the Bodleian shelfmarks in his notes for that essay. Among the Library’s rich manuscript holdings, MS Bodley 34 was of particular interest to Tolkien: this contains works in the Middle English *Katherine Group. As a member of the English Faculty Library Committee Tolkien advised the Bodleian Library regarding the purchase of foreign books and periodicals on English.
The Radcliffe Camera, a large circular building in Radcliffe Square south of the Schools Quadrangle, was designed by James Gibbs after Nicholas Hawksmoor and built as a general library in 1737–49 with money bequeathed by Dr John Radcliffe. It became a reading room of the Bodleian Library in 1862. Tolkien refers to the ‘Camera’ with its lofty dome in *The Notion Club Papers: it seems to remind Lowdham of the circular, domed temple that Sauron built in Númenor (as described in *The Drowning of Anadûnê and the *Akallabêth).
The New Bodleian Library, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was built on the corner of Broad Street and Parks Road in 1937–40. This more modern building provided book storage, reading rooms, and staff offices to supplement the ‘old’ Bodleian across the street. Due to the Second World War it was not opened officially until 24 October 1946, by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth: Tolkien was present on that occasion, when the ceremonial key broke in the lock and someone had to open the door from the other side. During the war, the building was commandeered for other purposes, housing (for example) the Red Cross Educational Books Section which supplied books to British prisoners of war. The New Bodleian closed at the end of July 2011, and has since been redeveloped as the Weston Library; the new facility opened to special collections researchers in 2014, and to the public in 2015, with new exhibition facilities, shops, and a café. One of the two major collections of Tolkien manuscripts is housed there (see *Libraries and archives), including his academic working papers, some printed books from his personal library, family papers and correspondence, paintings and drawings, and manuscripts of most of his literary works except for those at Marquette University.
Botanic Garden. Founded in 1621 as the Oxford Physick Garden for the Faculty of Medicine, the Botanic Garden is located south of High Street across from *Magdalen College. In its grounds and greenhouses are a wide variety of cultivated plants, including some 150 trees of botanical interest. Tolkien’s rooms in Merton Street near the end of his life overlooked the Garden, to which he was a frequent visitor. In August 1973 he was photographed by his grandson Michael George (see *Michael Tolkien) next to one of his favourite trees, a Pinus nigra (Black or Austrian pine, see Biography, pl. 14b); and that month also he twice walked in the Garden with his friend *Joy Hill. In 2014 the Pinus nigra specimen, now more than 200 years old and considered totemic in Oxford, unfortunately became unsafe and had to be taken down.
Cherwell Edge. Built in 1886–7 in St Cross Road, Cherwell Edge was originally a private house, designed by J.W. Messenger. In 1905 it became a convent of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. In 1907 the Reverend Mother *St Teresa Gale established at Cherwell Edge a house of studies to bring the Society into contact with Oxford University standards of education. Under her guidance it became a centre of Catholic action in Oxford. A chapel and a large residential block (designed by Basil Champneys) were subsequently added to the house, the latter to serve as