https://theoddestinkling.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/the-long-defeat/ (@Oddest_Inkling)
(3) A headless Emperor walked
One
week later, Prof. Tolkien walked swiftly through the empty street, until he
came to the corner of St. Giles and Beaumont Street, next to the silent,
shuttered Ashmolean Museum. He was thinking of his son, Christopher, flying at
this moment with the RAF. He was thinking of his other children and of the
refugees he and Edith had taken into their house. He was thinking of Major
Warnie Lewis, Jack’s brother, recalled to active duty at age forty-nine, who
had fought in France, was supposed to be evacuated at Dunkirk, but had been
taken prisoner and never heard from again. He was praying for the safety of
them all. He was remembering the encouraging words of the Mass this morning:
“And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled:
for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” And he was
thinking of Beowulf—he was lecturing on the ending of that great poem
today—and pondering the brave northern warriors who fought on when hope was
gone. His quick steps echoed off of the stone floors and walls, beating back
against him as he strode on, lecture notes in hand. He passed between the
columns of the Taylor Institution, one of the many buildings in the Bodleian
Library system, threw open the huge doors, and walked up to the lectern just as
the great bells of Tom Tower were striking the hour.
The
seats in the hall were empty.
He
arranged his notes. Still no students appeared. Hilary term was drawing to a
close, and ordinarily his lectures would have been packed at this time, as
students crammed for final essays and exams. Tolkien adjusted his black gown,
checked a translation note, and waited. No one came.
Slowly,
sadly, he began lecturing to the desolate room, as if trying to speak across
the miles and through the defeat, past the lines of Nazi troops who were
nearing London, to reach his son, in the air over France, to reach Lewis’s
brother, presumably in a German POW camp somewhere, to reach Williams’s
colleagues at Oxford University Press’s publishing house in the city, to reach
all the men and women who were falling now, wheat cut down by the indifferent
sickle, lying in the mud of Hastings or the streets of Amen Corner. His voice
mumbled on, around the stem of his pipe (which he still kept in his mouth at
all times, in spite of the lack of tobacco), weaving together the tragedy of
the battle of Maldon with the Norse concept of bitter courage, tying both to
the tragedy of his times. His swift mind leaped from point to point, masterful
in its control of language, timeless and modern as it faced the facts.
The
huge doors opened. Lewis and Williams came in, walked down the central aisle,
Lewis heavily, Williams deftly, and sat down in two of the empty chairs.
Williams looked up at Tolkien, his eyes red-rimmed and brimming. Lewis buried
his face in his hands. Tolkien’s voice wobbled to a stop, and he struggled down
from the podium and sat beside his friends.
These
cheerful veterans and makers of myth, their keen eyes honed by one war and
their hearts steeled by another, their minds sharpened by contact with the
conflicts and hopes of many cultures that had gone before, sat in numb silence
in the vacant hall.
At
last Lewis shook himself and spoke.
“It
does not matter whether we are sent to France or kept at home. It does not
matter whether we stay here to nurture good philosophy to combat the bad
ideas.”
Williams
picked up the thread of his thought: “The collective wisdom of Oxford cannot
long be protected behind the golden walls of its ancient colleges.”
“What
is the latest news?” Tolkien asked, trembling a little.
“London
is finished,” Lewis told him. “Panzers are unloading at all of England’s
southern ports.”
“The
Wehrmacht’s infantry has swarmed up the white cliffs and is marching inland
across untended fields,” Williams went on.
There
had been little military resistance. An entire generation of British youth had
been erased on the killing fields of France. Their fathers and uncles—and even
some of their mothers and sisters—were stranded on the Continent, swiping
ineffectually at the enemy’s backside, or languishing in POW camps, while the
systematic extermination of Europe’s Jewish population went on unchecked. The
refugee children, hiding behind Oxford’s walls, were being orphaned day by day.
The
door opened again, and Owen Barfield stood there, a slender silhouette against
the dreary light of a rainy English afternoon.
“The
King has surrendered,” he whispered. “Hitler has landed.”
A
silence fell on the group. Lewis gripped Tolkien’s shoulder. Williams took off
his spectacles and wiped his eyes, then clutched at his stomach as he was
racked by a spasm of pain. Barfield crossed the flagstone floor and folded
himself up in a chair beside them. At last Williams looked up, cleared his
throat, and spoke strange lines in his Cockney accent:
“There
on the waves a headless Emperor walked
coped
in a foul indecent crimson; octopods
round
him stretched giant tentacles and crawled
heavily
on the slimy surface of the tangled sea,
goggling
with lidless eyes at the coast of the Empire.”
“But
in your myth, Williams, the Empire rallies,” said Lewis. “The young pope prays,
and the invaders are defeated on Christmas day. Surely in this Easter season—”
His
strong voice trailed away.
“And
in yours, John Ronald,” Barfield said to Tolkien, “the tyrant will go down into
defeat, conquered by the little people at last, will he not?”
“He
will. On the Feast of the Annunciation,” Tolkien mumbled. “Which is also the
last day of Creation. But that is only one small victory in the whole history
of the legendarium. Sauron is the servant of Melkor or Morgoth, and—”
Lewis
interrupted him.
“Let’s
not go into your whole convoluted history of Middle-earth just now, Tollers.
We’ll never get back out to real history, which is looking bleak enough right
now without adding the fading of the Elves to it.”
Tolkien
nodded.
“But
you see,” he said. “I am a Christian. I believe we are fighting the long
defeat. I do not look for hope in this world.”
“All
the peoples await the Parousia,” Williams muttered, “and even your elves look
forward to a victory at the end of all times.”
(to be
continued)
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