The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull

Tolkien and his family take a three-week holiday at Filey. They stay in a cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea.

      2 September 1925 When the Tolkiens look out of the window for several nights, they see the full moon rise and make a silver ‘path’ across the sea.

      3 or 4 September 1925 Tolkien takes John and Michael for walks on the shingle beach and shows them how to skim stones into the sea. Michael carries his favourite toy, a miniature dog, made of lead and painted black and white, which he normally refuses to let go even to have his hand washed. Now, in his excitement, he puts it down on the shingle, and when he looks for it later it cannot be found. Tolkien and the boys will search for two days with no success.

      5 September 1925 In the afternoon, the east coast of England is struck by a severe storm which continues into the night. The Tolkiens’ cottage is shaken by the winds so severely that they fear the roof might blow off. Tolkien calms his sons by telling them a story, which is also intended to comfort Michael for the loss of his toy dog. In *Roverandom a real dog is turned into a toy, taken to the moon along a silver ‘moon path’, and (returned to earth) brought under the sea where he disturbs a great serpent, causing a terrible storm. Tolkien does not write down this story at once, but at some time before the end of 1925 he will draw the lunar landscape described in it, titling it in a variety of his Valmaric alphabet (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 72).

      6 September 1925 The Tolkiens go down to the beach at Filey. The high tide, blown inland by the storm, has destroyed beach huts and swept over the promenade. There is now even less hope of finding Michael’s lost toy.

      Mid-September 1925 On one day during their holiday at Filey the Tolkiens walk a long way to see the remains of a German submarine sunk in the First World War near Flamborough Head. – Tolkien writes lines 649–757 of the Lay of Leithian.

      1 October 1925 Term begins at Leeds; Tolkien takes up his appointment as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. To fulfil the notice required by his contract, he will not vacate his chair at Leeds until 31 December 1925, but will continue to live and teach there during the autumn term as well as undertake his new duties at Oxford. His lectures and classes at Leeds are presumably similar to those of the previous year, but necessarily rescheduled to allow him to travel four times (fortnightly) to Oxford, where he lectures on Fridays and Saturdays. – Probably at some time after his return to Oxford, Tolkien makes a manuscript copy of his poem The Clerke’s Compleinte, using letterforms of Chaucer’s time and with emendations from the text published in December 1922. Later still, he will further emend the poem, replacing Leeds with Oxford as the place to which students travel in October.

      6 October 1925 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Senate of the University of Leeds.

      7 October 1925 The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford delivers a speech in Latin to Convocation reviewing the past academic year and welcoming newcomers to positions in the University, including Tolkien as Professor of Anglo-Saxon.

      11 October 1925 Michaelmas Full Term begins at Oxford. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Anglo-Saxon Reader (Selected Extracts, for those who have already acquired the elements of Old English), fortnightly on Fridays and Saturdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 16 October; and Beowulf (Text), fortnightly on Fridays and Saturdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, also beginning 16 October.

      ?18 (received 19) October 1925 George S. Gordon sends to Kenneth Sisam text and notes for the essays for the Clarendon Chaucer. He reports that Tolkien has finished the glossary and has written a first draft of the notes on the text, which he is working to abbreviate when he can find the time.

      20 October 1925 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

      21 October 1925 The University of Leeds Council notes Tolkien’s resignation as of 31 December 1925.

      30 October 1925 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature (of which, at this date, the Oxford English School is still a part) at 3.30 p.m. in the Board Room of the Clarendon Building, Oxford. He is elected a member of the English Fund Committee for three years, and also a member of a committee ‘to consider the conduct of and regulations for the Examination in the Honour School of English and report to the Board’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/10/1/1). He is appointed supervisor of M.G. Last of the Society of Oxford Home-Students, a probationer B.Litt. student wishing to study an Old English subject; and also supervisor of Julia Maud Keays-Young, also of the Society of Oxford Home-Students, who is working on a B.Litt. thesis, England and the English in the Icelandic Sagas. – At one of the Faculty Board meetings in Michaelmas Term 1925 Tolkien will be appointed an elector to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature for three years. Later he will be reappointed at intervals for further terms, but is never called upon to serve.

      4 November 1925 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Senate of the University of Leeds.

      12 November 1925 The University of Leeds Committee on the Chair of English Language discuss a successor to Tolkien and agree unanimously that E.V. Gordon should be appointed to the Chair from 1 January 1926. Tolkien, George S. Gordon, and Allen Mawer of Liverpool have written in support of E.V. Gordon’s application. The Committee also agree to accept an offer of occasional assistance that Tolkien made at some point in 1925, and that he should be paid accordingly.

      17 November 1925 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

      21 November 1925 The committee (including Tolkien) appointed to consider the examination in the Honour School of English at Oxford completes work on its report for the Board of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature. It will be presented to a meeting of the Board, in Tolkien’s absence, on 3 December.

      12 December 1925 Michaelmas Full Term ends at Oxford.

      End of autumn term 1925 or early 1926 Students of the English School at Leeds take up a collection to pay for a photograph of Tolkien to be hung in the staff-house of the Department of English. They make a present to Tolkien of a print of a rejected version.

      19 December 1925 Term ends at Leeds.

      Christmas 1925 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes to John and Michael. He can write only one letter to them this year as he has been busy moving house (as the Tolkiens themselves will do very soon), his old home having been accidentally damaged by the North Polar Bear. But Tolkien also encloses a postscript as from the North Polar Bear, and a double illustration of the accident and of Father Christmas below his new house high on a cliff.

      End of 1925 Tolkien resumes correspondence with R.W. Reynolds, who is now retired from King Edward’s School.

1926

      ?1926–?1930 At some time in this period, Tolkien makes the first ‘Silmarillion’ map, incorporating the much greater geographical detail included in The Lay of the Children of Húrin and the Lay of Leithian (relative to The Book of Lost Tales). It will remain his working map until at least 1932, during which time he will make many additions and emendations. The map is originally only one sheet, but two supplementary sheets extend the area covered to the east and west. – Probably in this period Tolkien translates two portions of the Old Norse poem *Atlakviða into Old English. – For some years after the move to 22 Northmoor Road, a series of Icelandic au pair girls live with the Tolkien family and entertain the boys with tales about trolls. Tolkien himself will continue to tell his children stories, most of which are never written down: some concern the characters Bill Stickers, Major Road Ahead, Timothy Titus, and Tom Bombadil. The latter is inspired by a Dutch doll (i.e. a jointed wooden doll) which belonged to the Tolkien children (according to some sources; according to Biography