The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2. Christina Scull
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to Oxford, Merton made him a resident fellow and provided a set of rooms at 21 Merton Street.
During his years at Merton Tolkien played an active part in college life. He attended most College meetings, an average of eleven per year. He was a member of the Library Committee in 1946–9 and 1952–3, of the Wine Committee in 1947–59, and of the Stipends Committee in 1948–59. He was also on various committees set up to consider specific matters: in 1948, for instance, to recommend a suitable inscription on a commemorative tablet to be placed in the College Chapel. The most onerous of his several College offices was that of Sub-Warden, from 1 August 1953 to 21 June 1955: in this capacity he was ex officio a member of the Finance Committee, and of any other committee set up during his term of office, of which there were many. In September 1947, as fellow attending on the estates progress, Tolkien spent four days with the Warden and Bursar inspecting the College’s extensive holdings of land in Leicestershire and *Lincolnshire. John and Priscilla Tolkien have noted that their father ‘enjoyed warm relationships with the College’s domestic staff. He was their champion, often arguing that they should enjoy better working conditions …’ (The Tolkien Family Album, p. 79). In December 1963 Tolkien was elected to an emeritus Fellowship, and in May 1973 an Honorary Fellow. A memorial service was held for him on 17 November 1973 in Merton College Chapel.
A photograph of Merton College from a distance is reproduced in The Tolkien Family Album, p. 78.
Mitre Hotel. Located at the corner of High Street and Turl Street, the Mitre was founded in 1300, and from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century was a major coaching inn. It has belonged to Lincoln College since 1450. Its present buildings date from c. 1630 with some later additions. The hotel rooms on the upper floors became accommodation for Lincoln College students, and its ground floor a pub/restaurant only. In 1926 its stables were converted into a separate bar. The Mitre was one of the places where the Inklings met during the Second World War.
Old Ashmolean. Now the Museum of the History of Science, the Old Ashmolean was built in 1679–83, probably to the design of Oxford master mason Thomas Wood, to house a collection of natural curiosities inherited by Elias Ashmole as well as a scientific lecture room and a chemical laboratory. Much of the Ashmole collection was transferred to the University Galleries (the Ashmolean Museum; see *Taylor Institution, below) in Beaumont Street at the end of the nineteenth century. The Oxford English Dictionary editorial offices were located in the Old Ashmolean when Tolkien was on the OED staff (1919–20).
A photograph of the interior of the Old Ashmolean, showing the Dictionary Room where Tolkien worked and some of its staff (including Henry Bradley, William Craigie, and Charles Onions), is reproduced in Peter M. Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), p. 5.
Pembroke College. Pembroke College, founded in 1624 by King James I and named after the then Chancellor of the University, William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, lies to the west of St Aldgate’s. Most of its buildings date from the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; its few earlier buildings have been mostly remodelled. Tolkien became a non-stipendiary professorial fellow of Pembroke in 1926. In that year the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge (Asquith Commission) came into force, by which (inter alia) each professor was made ex officio a fellow and member of the governing body of a college; the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship was thus attached to Pembroke, in fact imposed upon the college, and in these circumstances Tolkien seems to have felt that he was not entirely welcome. Also he found the atmosphere at Pembroke rigid and formal: when he moved to Merton College in 1945 he commented to his son Christopher that dining at Merton ‘if agreeably informal is rather shocking to one trained in the severer ceremonies and strict precedence of mediaeval Pembroke’ (Letters, p. 117). Even so, Tolkien attended over half of the College meetings while he was attached to Pembroke, an average of seven per year.
In the Pembroke Record for 1966–7 *R.B. McCallum noted that in 1925 the College consisted of the Master, a professional full-time bursar, three teaching fellows, and about 125 undergraduates. Pembroke was one of the smaller colleges at Oxford, and one of the poorest. But it
kept a good table, the menu being rather old English in its flavour, and our port was, and remains, the best in Oxford. On the undergraduate side Pembroke was known for a remarkably strong beer …. The Fellows after some time passed a limiting order which reduced the quantity anyone could have at one time in Hall. Professor Tolkien, in a minority of one, protested against this enactment, alluding derisively to the continued potations of our very formidable port in the Senior Common Room …. [‘Pembroke 1925–1967’, Pembroke Record, pp. 14–15]
Tolkien seems to have dined regularly at Pembroke, usually on Thursdays, and occasionally entertained guests. He gave some of his classes there, and seems to have hosted meetings of committees set up by the English Faculty Board. During the Second World War Pembroke was partly taken over by the Army and the Ministry of Agriculture. ‘At lunch one day Ronald reported that a notice on the College Lodge now read: PESTS: FIRST FLOOR’ (The Tolkien Family Album, p. 71).
Even after he became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945 Tolkien continued to be an honorary member of the Senior Common Room at Pembroke and occasionally dined there. The College announced his election as an honorary fellow in March 1972.
Randolph Hotel. Oxford’s largest and most prestigious hotel, the Randolph is on the corner of Magdalen and Beaumont streets. It was designed by William Wilkinson in the Victorian Gothic style and opened to the public in 1866. On 1 June 1912 Tolkien enjoyed a nine-course dinner in the hotel as a member of the Apolausticks (*Societies and clubs). In late July 1924 he dined there with George S. Gordon and three visitors from Canada. On 20 January 1965 he waited in the hotel foyer for Denys Gueroult before being interviewed by him for the BBC.
St Aloysius, Church of. A Roman Catholic church at 25 Woodstock Road, designed by Joseph Hansom for the Jesuits and completed in 1875. St Aloysius was one of the churches that Tolkien attended while an undergraduate, and while living in Northmoor Road from 1926 to 1947. His eldest son, John, a Roman Catholic priest, said his first Mass in the church in February 1946.
St Anthony of Padua, Church of. A Roman Catholic church at 115 Headley Way, Headington, built in 1960 after a hall in Jack Straw’s Lane, in which Mass was held, became inadequate for the numbers attending. Tolkien was a parishioner both while he lived in Sandfield Road (until 1968) and after his return to Oxford in 1971. He was driven by taxi to St Anthony’s from Merton Street every Sunday. On 6 September 1973 a Requiem Mass was held for him at St Anthony’s, conducted by his son John, assisted by *Robert Murray and the parish priest Monsignor Wilfrid Doran.
St Gregory and St Augustine, Church of. A Roman Catholic church at 322 Woodstock Road, designed by Ernest Newton in 1912. Tolkien sometimes attended this church while living in Northmoor Road. He had a long and close relationship with the parish priest, *Father Douglas Carter. Tolkien’s eldest son, John, was ordained a priest in the church in February 1946.
Sheldonian Theatre. The Sheldonian, on the south side of Broad Street, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built in 1664–7 at the expense of Gilbert Sheldon, Warden of All Souls (later Archbishop of Canterbury). It provides a venue for various University ceremonies, including meetings of Convocation and, in June, Encaenia when honorary degrees are presented and speeches are made in Latin. Tolkien sat his English Honour School examinations in the Sheldonian in June 1915, as the Examination Schools had been commandeered, and received his B.A. there on 16 March 1916. An honorary Doctorate of Letters was conferred on him in the Sheldonian on 3 June 1972.
Taylor Institution. The Taylor Institution or ‘Taylorian’ at the corner of Beaumont Street and St Giles’ is the centre for the study of modern European languages and literatures at Oxford, established with a bequest from the architect Sir Robert Taylor. Its building was designed by Charles Robert Cockerell and constructed in 1841–4, originally to house both the Taylor Institution and the University Galleries; the latter were enlarged at the end of the nineteenth century and became the Ashmolean