Fellows' Recollections

This anecdote was recounted to me by Douglas Gray, my Prelims Tutor and (later) colleague in the English Faculty. Tolkien first held the Chair of Anglo-Saxon (coupled with a Professorial Fellowship at Pembroke College) and was therefore an ex officio elector to the Merton Chair. When the electors met and reviewed the field of applicants, they were not too impressed by the candidates, but agreed on one who was 'the best of a poor bunch'. At which point, JRR stood up and asked if it would make any difference to their deliberations if he were to declare himself a candidate. Indeed, it would. He left the room for a few moments, but was soon recalled to learn that he was the unanimous choice of the electors. In those days (and perhaps so today, though I could not possibly comment) the Merton chef was acknowledged to be the best in Oxford, which might have explained his strange migration from a Chair he was entirely suited to, to one for which his narrow specialism in Old English made him less appropriate.

-Christopher Ball (1956) 

Two Fellows had close association with Tolkien. Norman Davis held the Merton chair after Tolkien and wore learning lightly. Norman also took war in his stride. Sentenced to death in absentia as a SOE operative in Bulgaria, he recounted how this draconian verdict puzzled folk back home in New Zealand who couldn’t find Absentia on any map. The Emeritus English tutor Hugo Dyson, elected a Fellow in 1945, the same year as Tolkien, was closer still. Impish in figure and speech, Hugo is mostly remembered now for his outburst at the Inklings on Tolkien reading Lord of the Rings ('Oh no, not another *** elf!') and for his part in the box-office hit Darling (1965), which won three Oscars and four BAFTAs, when he was invited to play a character called Professor Walter Southgate and essentially played himself. Dyson and Tolkien were the persuasive pair whose nocturnal ramble round Addison’s Walk with CS Lewis in 1931 was instrumental in returning Lewis to Christianity.

- Philip Waller (Emeritus Fellow)

You may be interested in the following note in my papers on the Merton College Christmas Pantomime in 1972:

Undoubtedly, the most satisfactory review of the production came from JRR Tolkien. He was coming towards the end of his life then and Merton had made him an Emeritus Fellow which meant he lived in the College and was effectively looked after by it. He watched one of the performances from the minstrels’ gallery with one of the College Fellows, Philip Waller next to him. Philip reported that, at the end of the show, the great man turned to Philip and said, 'Simple Philip, simple but amusing; very, very amusing.'

-Martin Read CBE (1971)Honorary Fellow

I enjoyed talking to Tolkien on occasions we sat next to each other on High Table, and I was glad the College gave him sanctuary. Because he had long lived under virtual siege from fans, and this afforded him some protection. I alluded to that period, the early ‘70s, in my memorial of Sir Rex Richards (Postmaster, 2020, p.101): ‘Two large sacks of mail arrived each morning addressed to Fellows. Our village joke was that one sack was for Tolkien, whom we harboured in 21 Merton Street, the other sack for the rest of us.’ Americans led the fan club, and stories were legion of how, when living in Headington and Bournemouth, he’d be picketed by autograph hunters and get phone calls in the middle of the night from callers oblivious of the time difference. It’s not hard to imagine his relief that, while he could never again pass as an ordinary don in the street, colleagues at Merton did not make an intolerable nuisance and fuss over him in his final years. How many Fellows actually read his fantasies is anyone’s guess. There was more than a whiff of 1960s counter-culture about the eruption of Tolkien mania, which may have been off-putting to some; but it was and is the case that Fellows are preoccupied with teaching and research, invariably take colleagues for granted however famous, and don’t immerse themselves in each other’s work unless it bears on their own or carries a personal appeal. Fellowships resemble a zoo in which beasts are largely kept in separate cages, yet at feeding times they mix amicably enough. 

-Philip Waller (Emeritus Fellow)