Wright married a former pupil. Two children were born to them, but both died in childhood. Nevertheless the Wrights carried on a stoic and lively existence in a huge house built to Joe’s design in the Banbury Road. In 1912 Ronald Tolkien came to Wright as a pupil, and ever afterwards remembered ‘the vastness of Joe Wright’s dining-room table, when I sat alone at one end learning the elements of Greek philology from glinting glasses in the further gloom’. Nor was he ever likely to forget the huge Yorkshire teas given by the Wrights on Sunday afternoons, when Joe would cut gargantuan slices from a heavyweight plum cake, and Jack the Aberdeen terrier would perform his party trick of licking his lips noisily when his master pronounced the Gothic word for fig-tree, smakka-bagms.
As a teacher, Wright communicated to Tolkien his huge enthusiasm for philology, the subject that had raised him from penniless obscurity. Wright was always a demanding teacher, which was just what Tolkien needed. He had begun to feel a little superior to his fellow-classicists, with his wide-ranging knowledge of linguistics. But here was somebody who could tell him that he had a long way to go. At the same time Joe Wright encouraged him to show initiative. Hearing that Tolkien had an embryonic interest in Welsh, he advised him to follow it up – though he gave that advice in a characteristically Yorkshire manner: ‘Go in for Celtic, lad; there’s money in it.’
Tolkien followed this advice, though not exactly in the way that Joe Wright had intended. He managed to find books of medieval Welsh, and he began to read the language that had fascinated him since he saw a few words of it on coal-trucks. He was not disappointed; indeed he was confirmed in all his expectations of beauty. Beauty: that was what pleased him in Welsh; the appearance and sound of the words almost irrespective of their meaning. He once said: ‘Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is “beautiful” ‘, especially if dissociated from its sense (and its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent.’ Tolkien was so enthusiastic about Welsh that it is surprising that he did not visit Wales during his undergraduate days. But in a way this characterised his life. Though he studied the ancient literature of many countries he visited few of them, often through force of circumstance but perhaps partly through lack of inclination. And indeed the page of a medieval text may be more potent than the modern reality of the land that gave it birth.
During his undergraduate days Tolkien developed his childhood interest in painting and drawing and began to show some skill at it, chiefly in the sketching of landscapes. He also paid a great deal of attention to handwriting and calligraphy, and became accomplished in many styles of manuscript. This interest was a combination of his enthusiasm for words and his artist’s eye, but it also reflected his many-sided personality, for as someone who knew him during these years remarked (with only slight exaggeration): ‘He had a different style of handwriting for each of his friends.’
His first vacation from the University, at Christmas 1911, was spent in revisiting old haunts. The T.C.B.S. had survived his departure from King Edward’s, and the club was now preparing for the biggest event in its short history, a performance of Sheridan’s The Rivals. R. Q. Gilson, an enthusiast for the eighteenth century, had started it all, and as his father was headmaster there was no difficulty in obtaining permission, although a play by an English dramatist had never before been performed at the school. He and Christopher Wiseman, who were both still pupils at King Edward’s, allocated parts to their friends. A clear choice for inclusion was G. B. Smith, not yet really regarded as a member of the T.C.B.S. but already much liked by them. And who was to take the crucial comic role of Mrs Malaprop? Who but their very own John Ronald. So Tolkien, at the end of his first term at Oxford, travelled to Birmingham and joined in the final rehearsals.
There was to be only one performance. As it happened the dress rehearsal finished long before curtain-up time, and, rather than hang about, the T.C.B.S. decided to go and have tea at Barrow’s (the department store that had added the ‘B’ to T.C.B.S.’) with coats over their costumes. The ‘Railway Carriage’ was empty when they arrived, so they removed the coats. The astonishment of the waitress and the shop-assistants remained in their memories for the rest of their lives.
Then came the performance. The school magazine reported: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Mrs Malaprop was a real creation, excellent in every way and not least so in make-up. R. Q. Gilson as Captain Absolute was a most attractive hero, bearing the burden of what is a very heavy part with admirable spirit and skill; and as the choleric old Sir Anthony, C. L. Wiseman was extremely effective. Among the minor characters, G. B. Smith’s rendering of the difficult and thankless part of Faulk-land was worthy of high praise.’ The occasion cemented Tolkien’s friendship with G. B. Smith. The friendship was to be lasting and productive, and Smith was henceforth regarded as a full member of the T.C.B.S.
In the summer vacation of 1912 Tolkien went into camp for a fortnight with King Edward’s Horse, a territorial cavalry regiment in which he had recently enrolled. He enjoyed the experience of galloping across the Kentish plains – the camp was near Folkestone – but it was a wet and windy fortnight and the tents were often blown down in the night. This taste of life on horseback and under canvas was enough for him, and he resigned from the regiment after a few months. When the camp had concluded he went on a walking holiday in Berkshire, sketching the villages and climbing the downs. And then, all too soon, his first year as an undergraduate was over.
He had done very little work and he was getting into lazy habits. At Birmingham he had attended mass several times a week, but without Father Francis to watch over him he found it all too easy to stay in bed in the mornings, particularly after sitting up late talking to friends and smoking in front of the fire. He recorded sadly that his first terms at Oxford had passed ‘with practically none or very little practice of religion’. He tried to mend his ways, and he kept a diary for Edith in which he recorded all his misdemeanours and failings. But though she was a shining ideal to him – had they not vowed their love to each other, and did this not commit them to each other? – he was still forbidden to write to her or see her until he was twenty-one, and this would not happen for many months. In the meantime it was easy to while away the terms in expensive dinners, late-night conversations, and hours spent poring over medieval Welsh and invented languages.
At about this time he discovered Finnish. He had hoped to acquire some knowledge of the language ever since he had read the Kalevala in an English translation, and now in Exeter College library he found a Finnish grammar. With its aid he began an assault on the original language of the poems. He said afterwards: ‘It was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.’
He never learned Finnish well enough to do more than work through part of the original Kalevala, but the effect on his language-inventing was fundamental and remarkable. He abandoned neo-Gothic and began to create a private language that was heavily influenced by Finnish. This was the language that would eventually emerge in his stories as ‘Quenya’ or High-elven. That would not happen for many years; yet already a seed of what was to come was germinating in his mind. He read a paper