![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamflowerThe first quote for today comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myths: Understanding Middle-earth by Bradley J. Birzer.
I just love this particular quotation, because it shows a side of JRRT that we don’t hear very much about--his sense of humor!
“Tolkien’s jovial personality led him to thoroughly enjoy playing pranks. With C.S. Lewis, he once dressed as a polar bear for a non-costume party, wearing ‘an Icelandic sheepskin hearthrug’ and painting ‘his face white’. As Tolkien and Lewis walked home heavily covered in fur, they claimed convincingly, according to another Inkling, ‘to be two Russian bears’. At a lecture in the 1930s, Tolkien told his audience that leprechauns really existed and pulled out a green, four inch long shoe to prove it. Tolkien’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter noted that Tolkien would chase neighbors away dressed as ‘an Anglo-Saxon warrior complete with axe’. As an elderly man, Tolkien often included his false teeth when paying store clerks. And he loved the slapstick humor of the Marx brothers.”
You know, he might not be as offended as some might imagine by stories about Merry and Pippin playing practical jokes!
And of course, that brings me to a book I must not pass up in quoting: the simply titled Tolkien: A Biography, by the aforementioned Humphrey Carpenter.
In the chapter titled “Oxford Life”, Mr. Carpenter details a typical day in the life of the Professor, from his waking early in the morning, through his meals with his family and his dealings with his students and colleagues. Finally, the end of the day has arrived, and the family is a-bed.
“Edith has gone to bed and the house is in darkness when he gets home. He builds up the fire in the study stove and fills his pipe. He ought, he knows, to some more work on his lecture notes for the next morning, but he cannot resist taking from a drawer the half-finished manuscript of a story that he is writing to amuse himself and his children. It is probably, he suspects, a waste of time; certainly if he is going to devote any attention to this sort of thing it ought to be to The Silmarillion. But something draws him back night after night to this amusing little tale, at least it seems to amuse the boys. He sits down at the desk, fits a new relief nib to his dip pen (which he prefers to a fountain pen), unscrews the ink bottle, takes a sheet of old examination paper ( which still has a candidate’s essay on the Battle of Maldon on the back of it ), and begins to write: ‘When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright.’
We will leave him now. He will be at his desk until half past one or two o’clock, or perhaps even later, with only the scratching of his pen to disturb the silence, while around him Northmoor Road sleeps.”
What a lovely, peaceful picture of our beloved Professor!
I just love this particular quotation, because it shows a side of JRRT that we don’t hear very much about--his sense of humor!
“Tolkien’s jovial personality led him to thoroughly enjoy playing pranks. With C.S. Lewis, he once dressed as a polar bear for a non-costume party, wearing ‘an Icelandic sheepskin hearthrug’ and painting ‘his face white’. As Tolkien and Lewis walked home heavily covered in fur, they claimed convincingly, according to another Inkling, ‘to be two Russian bears’. At a lecture in the 1930s, Tolkien told his audience that leprechauns really existed and pulled out a green, four inch long shoe to prove it. Tolkien’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter noted that Tolkien would chase neighbors away dressed as ‘an Anglo-Saxon warrior complete with axe’. As an elderly man, Tolkien often included his false teeth when paying store clerks. And he loved the slapstick humor of the Marx brothers.”
You know, he might not be as offended as some might imagine by stories about Merry and Pippin playing practical jokes!
And of course, that brings me to a book I must not pass up in quoting: the simply titled Tolkien: A Biography, by the aforementioned Humphrey Carpenter.
In the chapter titled “Oxford Life”, Mr. Carpenter details a typical day in the life of the Professor, from his waking early in the morning, through his meals with his family and his dealings with his students and colleagues. Finally, the end of the day has arrived, and the family is a-bed.
“Edith has gone to bed and the house is in darkness when he gets home. He builds up the fire in the study stove and fills his pipe. He ought, he knows, to some more work on his lecture notes for the next morning, but he cannot resist taking from a drawer the half-finished manuscript of a story that he is writing to amuse himself and his children. It is probably, he suspects, a waste of time; certainly if he is going to devote any attention to this sort of thing it ought to be to The Silmarillion. But something draws him back night after night to this amusing little tale, at least it seems to amuse the boys. He sits down at the desk, fits a new relief nib to his dip pen (which he prefers to a fountain pen), unscrews the ink bottle, takes a sheet of old examination paper ( which still has a candidate’s essay on the Battle of Maldon on the back of it ), and begins to write: ‘When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright.’
We will leave him now. He will be at his desk until half past one or two o’clock, or perhaps even later, with only the scratching of his pen to disturb the silence, while around him Northmoor Road sleeps.”
What a lovely, peaceful picture of our beloved Professor!