The Most Romantic Spot in Oxford

Today I went to the most romantic spot in Oxford (sadly by myself).

It was not a shaded bench in Christ Church Meadow overlooking the slow-currented Thames.  Nor was it standing atop the rainbow bridge at University Parks.  It wasn't lazing in the sun in one of the lovely Quads of one of Oxford's ancient colleges.

It was a cemetery.  And it wasn't even Oxford's big cemetery but the smaller less impressive Catholic one in Wolvercote.

I stood at the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith.

When his wife was buried, he requested that beneath her name should be carved the name Luthien.  When he was buried several years later beneath his name was engraved Beren.  It gets my overly sentimental self almost weepy just to think about it.

You may not know that at age 12, Tolkien became an orphan and ward of Father Francis Morgan, the priest of his local parish.  When he was 16, Tolkien met Edith Bratt and fell in love.  When Father Morgan found out young Tolkien was seeing a protestant girl, he decreed that his charge was not to have any further contact with Bratt until he reached the age of  21.  Tolkien strictly followed this decree, but on the day of his 21st birthday, he wrote to Edith to resume their relationship.  Much to his surprise, he learned that she had become engaged to someone else.  He went immediately to her and asked her to end that promise and instead to marry him.  She agreed.  Early in their marriage, before Tolkien went to serve in the war, they would take picnics out into the rural countryside where Edith would dance in the freedom of the sun, and Tolkien would watch entranced.

But why the names underneath Edith and J.R.R.?

After being separated from his wife and going to war, Tolkien began to first imagine the contours of the land of Middle Earth.  One of his first writings told the story of a man who in his wandering comes across an elf maiden dancing in a meadow.  He instantly falls in love with this fairy form, but she flees from him at first. He is persistent and finally is able to talk with her.  After some time, she leads him to the home of her Father, the king of the woodland elves Thingol.  The man asks the elven King for his daughter's hand.  Thingol is offended and sets an impossible task for the man to accomplish before the marriage can take place.  Overcoming insurmountable obstacles, the man, with the help of the elven maid accomplishes the task despite losing a hand in the effort.  When he returns to the woodland King, Thingol  sees the depth of the man's love for his daughter and grants the mortal man's request marking the first time a man and an elf are wed.  With the marriage the elven maid gives up her gift of immortality and chooses to face death because of her love.

The man's name Beren.  The elven princess Luthien.

I told you it was romantic.