Tolkien's Undisclosed 1946 Lecture on The Notion Club Papers at Stonyhurst

 Tolkien's Undisclosed 1946 Lecture on The Notion Club Papers at Stonyhurst

Oronzo Cilli

A few years ago, I began research on John F. R. Tolkien and his time as a seminarian (1939-1946). The research resulted in a first article, published in «Vive in fondo alle cose la freschezza piùcara». Percorsi umani, letterari e filosofici nella Terra di Mezzo di Tolkien (2021), and which I summarize here. Further research provided the finding of unpublished news regarding John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and one of his works.

John Francis Reuel, J. R. R. Tolkien's eldest son, was ordained a priest after attending the Venerable English College, commonly referred to as the English College, a Catholic seminary in Rome, Italy, for the training of priests from England and Wales. John attended the seminary in Rome from 1939 to September 1940 when, coinciding with Italy joining the war, until the end of the conflict the College moved its headquarters and seminarians to Stonyhurst St Mary's Hall, an independent co-educational Catholic school founded by the Society of Jesus.

During his years as a seminarian, John F. R. held the position of gaffer (in charge of looking after the garden and vegetable patch), a role he held until May 1944.

In an issue of the College magazine, «The Venerabile» (November 1942), John wrote a very long article, The Gardening, about his activities as a Gaffer. At the end of the assignment, in May 1944, it was welcomed in the issue:

 

[October] 9th Saturday. This week we record the retirement of our indefatigable gaffer, Mr Tolkien. While saluting him for his fine work, we would draw our reader's attention to the fact that Mr Tolkien has laid the foundations of a splendid gardening tradition which we hope will soon be continued at Palazzolo.

During his College years, John participated in many College initiatives, in the theatrical and literary fields. John presented papers at meetings of the Wiseman Society, the society born in honor of Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman (1802–1865), an eminent figure in the Catholic Church who contributed to the conversion of John Henry Newman.

John read his first paper in Rome on Old and Middle English Poetry and Prose (April 4th 1940), while two others were read by him during his stay at Stonyhurst: Chaucer, the End and the Beginning (October 22nd 1941), and on Lewis Carroll “which provided an interesting and enjoyable evening” (21st June 1943).

On the first two papers, the College magazine wrote:

 

There was something delightfully refreshing about our excursion into Old and Middle English with Mr Tolkien as our guide. He concentrated on “Beowulf” and “Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight”; Chaucer was pronounced a modern which made us feel very young indeed. But actually it will be seen that almost unconsciously the paper fitted into the scheme, for it helped to make us alive to the Catholic heritage in England which is far larger than we sometimes allow ourselves to think, and which may eventually greatly assist our work in the conversion of England with the help of those very English men, the Martyrs. («The Venerabile» Nov. 1940, p. 483)

 

To most people Chaucer means the Canterbury Tales and no more. But, as Mr Tolkien showed, to be content with this is to miss a greater part of Chaucer—the Chaucer of the lyric and allegory. This came as a shock to his audience, and it would have been better to have spent the rest of the paper illustrating this new aspect of Chaucer rather than embarking upon a general discussion of the art of the troubadour and its relation to reality. As it was the audience was quite at sea by the end of the paper. The discussion or rather the lack of discussion proved this unmistakably. We do not criticise this paper simply as a paper on Chaucer, but as a paper written for the Wiseman Society in the College. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, or so you might think, but in the last two years, the two papers which have been, as it were, “best sellers” have both sounded the depths of philosophy. («The Venerabile» Nov. 1942, p. 86)

Now I shall present the discovery I made in my research into John's time as a seminarian.

Thanks to Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond, everybody may learn about the relationship between J. R. R. Tolkien and Stonyhurst, which began when J. R. R. was still a student. From the Chronology, we read that:

25 March–1 April 1946 Tolkien stays at New Lodge in Stonyhurst, Lancashire, where his son John had stayed several times in the period 1942–5. In the register Tolkien firmly declares himself ‘English’ rather than (as in other entries) ‘British’.

I found that Tolkien, on 31st March, was a guest of the Venerable English College at Stonyhurst when was called to give a lecture to the seminarians.

In addition to this discovery, which is in itself very interesting, what appears extraordinary is that Tolkien reported on a story he had been working on since 1945, The Notion Club Papers. The report of the meeting is preserved in the register of the Literary Society of the College for the years 1945-1950, number 598, page 360:

On Sunday March 31st, Professor J. R. Tolkien addressed the Society an “Leaves from The Notion Club Papers,” which was a book Professor Tolkien was writing.He read his paper from the MS. of the book and unfortunately he was scarcely audible to most of the people in the House.

The book was a clear skit on, the well know publications of Mr. H. G. Wells. Mr. Wells in his books has often portrayed life in the planets and the means of getting there by specially constructed rockets etc. Professor Tolkien in his book has stressed more the mental side than the material and has marked his characters to reach the planets by means of the mind.

In the questions that followed, it was plain to see that some members of the house had missed the whole point of the paper, because the majorities of questions put were irrelevant dealing with the psychological aspect of dreams rather than the actual book itself. Mr. Williams gave the vote of thanks.

The College magazine, «The Venerabile», also wrote about Tolkien's lecture in its November 1946 issue.

[Literary Society] Professor Tolkien very kindly interrupted his holiday to re ad us some extracts from his new book. This meeting was chiefly remarkable for question time, where the discussion turned mainly upon dreams and was the occasion of interesting confessions by members of the audience, although we would have been spared these self-revelations had more of the listeners grasped the real point at issue. («The Venerabile», vol. XIII no. 1, November 1946, p. 65)

The discovery of this conference by Tolkien is a further piece in the reconstruction of the history of this story which remained incomplete and would only be published in 1992 in Sauron Defeated, ninth volume of the History of Middle-earth.

The original register, together with other documents on the papers presented by John, are in the exhibition I curated, Tolkien. Uomo, Professore, Autore, set up in Rome (Nov. 2023-Feb. 2024) and today in Naples, in Palazzo Reale (Mar.-Jul. 2024).

[To cite this article: Oronzo Cilli (12 Apr 2024): “Tolkien, 'The Notion Club Papers' and Stonyhurst: An unpublished story (1946)”, Tolkien Archive, https://tolkienarchive.blogspot.com/2024/04/tolkiens-undisclosed-1946-lecture-on.html]