Tolkien's mildew

[calimac]

When I wrote in a previous post that John Carey had reported that "green mildew grew on [Tolkien's academic] gown," but I queried whether this was really likely, desperance referred me to Tolkien's Gown & Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books by Rick Gekoski (Constable, 2004) for the definitive word on this vital topic.

Gekoski became the unlikely owner of this relic in 1972. The newly-widowed Tolkien, on moving into a residence owned by Merton College, asked his scout, Charlie Carr, "to help clear away a lot of unwanted rubbish," including his gown and some old shoes and jackets. (14) Carr thought of Gekoski, whom he had scouted for when Gekoski was a grad student a few years earlier, as a possible customer. Gekoski, by then teaching at Warwick University, whimsically decided to take the gown, and stored it in his attic for some ten years, until he sold it through his catalogue when he began a new career as a rare-book dealer.

How does Gekoski describe the gown? As a "raggedy old scrap of black cloth" with "many DNA-rich stains," and, in book-dealer language in his catalogue, as "slightly frayed and with a little soiling." (14-15)

At the question of whether Carey, a bored undergraduate sitting some distance away in a lecture, might have mistaken these stains for green mildew, I find I have reached the limit of my devotion to Tolkienian arcana.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I find I have reached the limit of my devotion to Tolkienian arcana.

Hee. I'm kind of delighted to find that you have one.

(From my own experience, I can report that the one time we met, he was wearing what we used to call a sports jacket, a baggy old tweed that smelled ripely of tobacco, and he kept his pipe - as is only proper - in one pocket. If there were scorch-marks I didn't spot them, but I was twelve, and, y'know. In the presence of God. I didn't notice anything much.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The most over-devoted Tolkienist I ever knew started collecting stuff related to the tv comedy writer Mel Tolkin (nee Tolchinsky), because his name resembled Tolkien's. That was overdoing it with a vengeance.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I only ever met the prof via a snail mail correspondence over arcane Anglo Saxon linguistic matters when I was an undergrad, but I do remember that he sparkled in his letters to a young woman like old men do sometimes. :o)

[(Anonymous)]

OK, but I'm glad that you were</ within your limit with this topic, because even if trivial, it was interesting. And I'd like to express my enthusiasm for your piece in the current Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, about Lewis's alleged statement that he "hated" Lord Nuffield. Your paper was an absolute model of scholarly detective work -- thorough, judicious, readable. Dale Nelson