Walking Down Narrow Streets by Marta

Notes

To some of you, what I have written may seem like alternate universe, even unlikely. I do not consider this piece A.U. because to me that label implies that what I have written breaks canon. There is no canon when it comes to Tolkien’s life because canon is what a creator chooses to make authoritative about a certain world – it is the rule-stick. If we read the Red Book et al as fiction rather than history then Tolkien can give us canon there; but certainly he cannot be the only author of the historical events of his own life, any more than Bilbo’s perceptions would have captured the whole of the Quest for Erebor.

Still, I have tried my best to be consistent, both with Tolkien’s views expressed in his letters and with general historical knowledge of the period. While we are not told that most of the events in question ever happened, I have done my best to make sure they could have happened this way. I also have tried to honor the spirit of Tolkien’s conceit that his books might be translations, to explore how translating something he might not approve of would have affected him.

A few line-notes on some issues to explain my thinking; feel free to skip. :-)

There will be time to murder and create etc.: The poetry quoted throughout is from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” You can read it here .

“mad hobby”: This description comes from Letter #4: “I often long to work at it and don’t let myself ‘cause though I love it so it does seem such a mad hobby!”

Wiseman and curry: Wiseman is Christopher Wiseman, a member of the T.C.B.S. (Letter #5) This incident is my invention (though curry appeared in British cookbooks as early as 1747, so it’s certainly possible).

Gilson and Hume: Rob Gilson is another one of Tolkien’s friends from the T.C.B.S. The Hume referred to is David Hume’s essay Of the Standards of Taste , particularly paragraphs 10-12.

Earendel: Tolkien had a draft of the “Earendel” poem as early as 1914 – see letter #2. If as I suggest the historical documents he “translated” only became available when he was at Leeds (1924-1925), his writing of the Earendel poem has to be explained by other means. The spelling of Earendel is deliberate; this is how Tolkien spells it when referring to his poem.

Fr. Francis: This is the Catholic priest who raised Tolkien after his mother died.

Midgaard Codices: The name Midgaard is Old English for Middle-earth.

Thegnsboc: My attempt at Old English for the Thain's Book, the version of the Red Book that received some annotations in Gondor, and was cited by Tolkien as one of his sources in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings.

Azaghâl: The incident of Fingon and Maedhros exchanging Azaghâl’s helmet as a gift comes from the “Narn i Hin Hurin” (section: “The Departure of Turin”), incidentally never published in Tolkien’s lifetime. The idea that the word for “gift” here has a specific connotation of a romantic gift is my own invention. I really do not intend to argue that Fingon/Maedhros is a canonical slash pairing, but merely used this as a potential incident to advance the plot

mitgift: This is the Old English word for a gift given to a bride on marrying her; literally, wife-gift.

aesthetes: During Tolkien’s time at Oxford there was a counterculture of aesthete students – that is, homosexual individuals. Tyellas summarizes this situation very nicely in her essay Warm Beds Are Good ; Tyellas in turn draws on Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, pp. 21-77. So while Tolkien’s letters on sexuality suggest he didn’t approve of homosexuality, he most likely would have had students who he knew were homosexual.

sodomy: Sodomy was still a crime in England as late as 1967, and even after that there were significantly more restrictions on same-sex sexual activity than different-sex homosexuality. (For instance, until 1994 the age of consent for homosexual sexual acts was twenty-one, compared to sixteen for heterosexual sexual acts). Tolkien is very likely right that at the point of this story, homosexual sexual activity would still be a criminal activity.