Old man, new manuscripts

Oxford’s Bodleian library is currently running an exhibition called ‘Tolkien:

Maker of Middle-Earth’. More than anything it exhibits Tolkien's colossal

diligence—with almost identical maps drawn and redrawn countless times—a

diligent imagination that over decades created one of England’s greatest

mythologies. But only a portion of what Tolkien wrote was published in his

lifetime, and as Stephen King observed,

a thousand pages of hobbit hasn’t been enough for three generations of

post-World War II fantasy fans; even when you add in that clumsy,

galumphing dirigible of an epilogue, The Silmarillion, it hasn't been

enough. Hence Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan, the

questing rabbits of Watership Down and half a hundred others. The

writers of these books are creating the hobbits they still love and pine

for; they are trying to bring Frodo and Sam back from the Grey Havens

because Tolkien is no longer around to do it for them.

But his son is around, and lately he’s been prolific in meeting that longing.

The world’s most dedicated student of JRR’s manuscripts, Christopher

Tolkien has not only reassembled three of his father’s novels set in Middle

Earth but also published some of his translations—including one of Beowulf.

They’ve proven popular, of course, but I don’t think that’s just because people

want more hobbits; I think they want more Tolkien.

And so the Bodleian’s exhibition, where some of Tolkien’s art and letters have

been made public for the first time. (The art is beautiful.) And also the real

point of my drivelling on. One of the exhibits was a spoof exam paper devised

by Tolkien for a walking holiday with his fellow Inklings, a group of writers

that included CS Lewis and Owen Barfield. It’s nonsensical, hilarious, and

nowhere else on the internet. One way and another, Tolkien's genius is getting

out.

College of Cretaceous Perambulators

Re-entrance Examination

April 1938

No more than 14 questions should be answered

1 Comment on the following

(1) It is no good setting them that, they would know it

(2) 'The poet sat in the third and laughed'

(3) 'Ten twenty thirty you're so very dirty'

(4) 'The armada can wait but my bowels can't'

(5) παντα σφαιρει ('everything on earth')

(6) Felix qui portuit felis cognoscere caudam ('happy is he who has

been able to know a cat's tail')

2 What are the five principle weaknesses of the 'Orpheus'?

3 Discuss the orchestral uses and abuses of the Viol de Gambons, the

Silver Trumpet, the Cor Anglais and the Cuckold's Horn

4 Distinguish between (a) Thursday and Friday (b) the man who was

Thursday and Man Friday (c) Basingstoke and Alton (d) Coming on a

walking tour and directing it (e) gibbets and Hobbits

5 Where do you get off?

6 Compare Poetic Diction.

7 Define a cone. See question (11)

8 On a given Field either

(a) Erect a perpendicular edifice subtending at the extremities of the

Field angles whose sum is equal to half the erection.

or

(b) Exterminate all pests

(c) Conjugate the principle parts

9 'In acute cases of Differential Calculus Stone Ginger has been found

a Sovereign Remedy' - T Brown. Discuss

10 Who were Owen Glendower, Owen Nares, Robert Owen, Owen

Moore, Owen Barfield, Vale Owen, Owain, Ywain, Rowena, Bowen,

Rowin', Sowin', Hoein', Growin', Knowin', and Glóin

11 And stuff it up.

12 Estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss and trace to its principle

sources Everything.

* Dinner will be served for the candidates when the examiners are

satisfied.

(Though I think Tolkien’s lines might have landed better if he’d known which ones to cut. Or

maybe there are just a lot of Inkling in-jokes here.)