Remembering J.R.R. Tolkien
by Theresa Carson

Like many of his characters, J.R.R. Tolkien often found himself living in a culture that was different from his own. English professors and literary students alike frequently comment on the Christian themes that appear in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. What they often do not realize is that Tolkien, an Oxford professor who died 25 years ago this September, was a devout Catholic with a story of his own.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's faith saga begins with his mother, the former Mabel Suffield. The daughter of a Birmingham, England, businessman, Mabel had an adventurous spirit and a mind of her own. Even as a teenager, she was active in putting her Protestant beliefs into practice.

At age 19, Mabel greatly distressed her father when she accepted Arthur Tolkien's marriage proposal. Arthur's father had inherited a piano-manufacturing firm, hut before his son was old enough to join the business, he was forced to sell it. Arthur decided to seek his destiny in South Africa. lie found work with the Bank of Africa and was stationed in Bloemfontein, the Orange Free State capital.

In March 1891, three years after their betrothment, Mabel left for South Africa to become Mrs. Arthur Tolkien. The following January, Ronald was born. Two years later, Mabel gave birth to another son, Hilary.

Although the family led a happy life there, Mabel had a difficult time tolerating the hot South African climate. When the weather began to adversely affect little Ronald's health, his parents decided that a sabbatical in England was in order.

Because of business pressures, Arthur chose to remain in Bloemfontein for a time until his workload slowed down a bit. When Mabel left for Birmingham with the children, she thought her husband would soon follow. But before he could join them, Arthur contracted rheumatic fever. A few months later, the illness led to a fatal hemorrhage.

Now having no reason to return to South Africa, Mabel found a small home for her sons in Sarehole, England. She also decided to actively pursue another choice she had been considering: joining the Catholic Church.

It was a dramatic decision. At that time in England there was little love lost between Catholics and Protestants. In 1896, the Vatican had denounced Anglican Holy Orders as invalid. As a result, the Church of England had moved away from traditional Catholic rituals because they seemed too closely tied to Rome.

In June 1900, Mabel and her sister May Incledon joined the Catholic Church. Ronald and Hilary became members a little later. May's husband, Walter, vehemently opposed the idea of his wife becoming a "papist" and bounded her until she left the Church. She refused to return to the Anglican fold and, instead, became a spiritualist. In the meantime, Mabel lost both the financial and emotional support she had received from Walter and from her Protestant relatives.

In searching for a parish, Mabel found the spiritual home and friendship she was seeking at the Birmingham Oratory [of Saint Philip Neri]. The Oratory, an English congregation, had been founded by the prominent convert Cardinal John Henry Newman. Before his death in 1890, it had been his sanctuary.

Many of the priests who lived there when the Tolkiens arrived had known the late cardinal. Among them was Father Francis Xavier Morgan, who was of English, Welsh and Spanish descent.

Mabel rented a house next door to the community. She moved Ronald from King Edward's School and enrolled both boys in the Catholic Grammar School of St. Philip. But St. Philip's wasn't academically challenging enough for young Ronald and so he was sent back to King Edward's.

In 1904, the boys went through a series of ailments: measles, whooping cough and pneumonia. Worn out from nursing them through each illness, Mabel went to the doctor and learned she had diabetes.

Within 11 months, Mabel died. Father Morgan and her sister May were at her bedside when she passed away. Ronald was 12; Hilary, 10.

Even in his old age, Tolkien believed his relatives' harsh reactions to his mothers conversion exacerbated her failing health and quickened her death.

Mabel had named Father Morgan as her sons' guardian. He encouraged the boys' educations, using his family money to help them and opening his library to them.

At King Edward's School, Ronald's talent for languages bloomed. He was taught the classics as well as Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. After studying Welsh and Finnish, he began to invent his own "Elvish" language.

Concerned that the boys' Catholic education should also continue, Father Morgan sent them to live with one of their aunts by marriage. She had been widowed and showed no opposition to their Catholic upbringing. But after a time there, the young men were still unhappy, so Father Morgan placed them with a foster parent named Mrs. Faulkner.

In this new home, Ronald met his future wife, Edith Bratt. She was three years his senior and also an orphan. His interest in the young lady began to cause friction between himself and his guardian. Father Morgan opposed the courtship because Edith was not Catholic; he made Ronald promise they wouldn't see each other until he reached his 21st birthday.

After the armistice in 1918, he commented that all but one of his close friends had died in the war.

One account of Tolkien's life says he agreed and kept the promise. Another says he agreed out of respect for the priest but -- just as his parents had done when they were young -- continued to secretly communicate with his sweetheart.

Father Morgan made plans to keep the two teenagers apart, an act that Tolkien later said cemented their romance. They became engaged in 1914 and married in March 1916.

Before the wedding, Edith converted to Catholicism. And, reminiscent of the opposition Mabel had faced, Edith's choice angered and alienated the people she had come to know as family.

In the end, Father Morgan accepted Edith and blessed the couple's marriage.

By this time, Tolkien had graduated from Exeter College, Oxford, and -- with World War I raging -- had taken up his commission as a second lieutenant in the British army. Soon after the wedding, he left to fight in France. But it wasn't long before he was forced to return home to recuperate after coming down with trench fever. After the armistice in 1918, he commented that all but one of his close friends had died in the war.

Despite the great losses and the financial poverty of his youth, Tolkien held onto Roman Catholicism. Thanks to his mothers sacrifices, the faith had become an integral part of his life.

Tolkien accepted a job on the staff of the New English Dictionary. In 1920, he cook a position in the English language department at Leeds University, and five years later was appointed a professor at Oxford University. During his long tenure at Oxford, Tolkien crafted most of his now-famous novels and became known as one of the world's greatest philologists -- one who studies languages.

He and Edith had four children, and the stories he told them became the foundation of the "Middle Earth" myths, tales and legends of The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) and The Silmarillion (1977). (See article on the Tolkiens' children below.) Still, during those years when his teaching and writing were meeting with great success, he was always a bit of an outsider at Oxford because he was Catholic.

After his retirement, Tolkien and his wife moved to Bournemouth, where Edith died in 1971. He returned to Oxford, where he died after a brief illness on Sept. 2, 1973.

Some 15 years earlier, in the late 1950s, Tolkien had commented on the interplay between a writer's life and his works. "Only one's guardian angel," he said, "or indeed God himself, could unravel the relationship between" the two. Even so, among the "significant facts" he deemed worthy of noting about his own life was his Catholicism.

Tolkien always credited his mother for his faith, he referred to her as a martyr who gave her life so that her two sons might live in Christ.

And although he steadfastly questioned the influence an author's personal life has on his or her work, readers can't help but see that his Catholic beliefs formed the philosophical blueprint for his own writing, for the tales and the lessons he wanted to share with his own children and then the world.

The Children of Ronald and Edith Tolkien
by Theresa Carson

J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith raised three sons and a daughter. The eldest, John Francis Reuel, was born in 1917 and named after his father and the priest who had been his father's guardian, Father Francis Xavier Morgan. In the footsteps of his namesakes, John ardently practiced the Catholic faith. He entered the seminary, studied in Rome and then returned to England to serve as a parish priest.

Second son Michael was born in 1920. He attended Trinity College and, like his father, became an educator.

The couple's third son, Christopher, is best known for completing his father's last book, The Silmarillion, after Tolkien's death. Born in 1924, Christopher also attended Trinity College and became a college lecturer.

Ronald and Edith's only daughter, Priscilla, was born in 1929. She did undergraduate work at Lady Margaret Hall and eventually became a probations officer in Oxford.

Today the Tolkien stories they first heard as fairy tales continue to be enjoyed by millions of young people and the young at heart.

Theresa Carson is director of public relations for the Catholic Church Extension Society.

These articles originally appeared in Catholic Heritage magazine, published by Our Sunday Visitor.