*
While some members are more-or-less
based upon real life Inklings (such as Ramer on Tolkien and Dolbear
on Havard), each member of the Notion Club in his origin contains
playful elements of parodic melange, as appropriate for the status of
the NCPs being designed to be read aloud to, and provoke discussion
from, the Inklings.
As they progressed, as is usual for
Tolkien, the NCPs became more serious, and pulled in (or were
pulled-into) Tolkiens deepest concerns.
Yet the playful origins of the NCPs are
clear in the earliest draft versions of the Foreword, and the first
entry recording the club meetings.
*
Preface to the Inklings
While listening to this fantasia (if
you do), I beg of the present company not to look for their own faces
in the mirror. For the mirror is cracked, and at the best you will
only see your countenances distorted, and adorned maybe with noses
(and other features) that are not your own, but belong to other
members of the company – if to anybody.
*
The Inklings were being told to look-out for characteristic features of group members, and parodic inversions of such features, but transposed between
members.
In other words, the early drafts of
the NCPs would have been stuffed with 'in jokes' – only some of
which can now be decoded; yet the presence of an in joke is often
implied by context, even when we cannot decode it.
*
Just to recap the six main Inklings
members in the period leading up to 1945-6 when the NCPs was written; and therefore those members whose identities were most
probably the models to be listed, inverted and mashed-up; in no
particular order they were:
Inklings
Jack Lewis
Warnie Lewis
Tolkien
Havard
Dyson
and Charles Williams
(who died about 6 months before NCPs were
drafted)
Notion Club
Ramer
Lowdham
Frankley
Dolbear
Guildford
Jeremy
*
There is apparently no character that
is 'based upon' Charles Williams, at least not obviously; quite
likely because his absence was too recent and too keenly felt to permit of jesting parody –
but it is not hard to suppose that a few scattered references in
relation to Jeremy and elsewhere may have raised a rueful reminiscent smile from
the surviving Inklings.
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/who-is-wilfrid-jeremy-cw-crt.html
As an example of parodic inversion, early notes indicate that the character Frankley was originally
'based on' Jack Lewis, yet he is described as suffering from 'horror
borealis', that is the supposed medical condition of being 'intolerant
of all things Northern or Germanic' – which is the opposite
preference from Lewis's own well-known Nordic preferences.
*
The first entry in
the NCPs, part one, is Night 54:
A wet night. Only Frankley and
Dolbear arrived (Dolbear's house).
Dolbear reports that Philip never
said a word worth recording, but read him an unintelligable poem
about a Mechanical Nightingale (or he thought that was the subject).
Frankley reports that Rufus was
drowsy and kept on chuckling to himself. The only clearly audible
remark that he made was 'going off the deep end I think'. This was in
reply to an enquiry about Michael Ramer, and whether D had seen him
lately.
After F had read a poem (later read
again) called The Canticle of Artegall they parted.
*
Aside from the
single 'plot point' regarding Ramer possibly going off the deep end
(i.e. going crazy); night 54 reads very much like an in-joke, as if
it was based on an actual incident – presumably a meeting between
Jack Lewis and Havard, and perhaps based on the fact that afterwards
each gave a very different account of the proceedings.
The entry is
written in a droll style, yet it is not clear what the actual jokes
are. Possibly these include a mishearing of a poem title (maybe even
Keats 'ode to a' nightingale being misheard as 'mechanical', and the drowsiness of Dolbear/ Havard.
As noted elsewhere
on this blog, I have asked the real-life Havard's eldest son John
whether it was characteristic of his father to be drowsy or nod off
to sleep in company, and John says he has no recollection that this
was the case.
Yet, of course, it
would only need a single such incident of doziness (plausibly, since
Havard was a doctor, after being kept awake all the previous night by
on-call medical work), an incident quite likely unknown to his son,
for the doziness of Havard to become an established stereotype and a
'running joke' among the Inklings – that is exactly the way things
often work in groups of men (or boys).
*
As for the Canticle
of Artegall, Christopher Tolkien has drawn a blank in unravelling the
meaning of Artegall beyond noting that the Irish for article is
arteagal.
My guess at the
in-joke here is that Jack Lewis, at some point in an Inklings
meeting, slipped into his Ulster accent and pronounced
article as phonetically transcribed by 'artegall' – provoking first
incomprehension then jocularity – and that this also became a
running joke such that the 'song of artegall' was an amusing title
for a poem by the parody Lewis.
*
Whether I have
guessed right about these NCP in-jokes is probably unknowable, and
not as important as the internal evidence that they are indeed in-jokes; and
can be understood as intended to refer to some kind of running-joke of
the Inklings.
(If the NCPs had ever reached the stage of being prepared for publication, these bits of private humour would most likely have been deleted.)
Such in-jokes and running jokes were
entirely characteristic of the Inklings, as we know from other
sources such as the Lewis brothers' letters and journals - although
by no means restricted to the Inklings, but indeed to be found
wherever men (or boys) gather for extended periods.
*
4 comments:
Artegall is the knight of Justice and a major character in Book V of The Faerie Queene. He is destined to marry Britomart.
@W - which is certainly very Lewisian!
And would also provide a punning basis for the comment; perhaps amplified by Spenser's Irish connection.
I wonder why Christopher T. didn't mention this relationship? I didn't bother doing the Google search which would have instantly revealed the FQ connection, because I assumed that CRT had done some hunting and drawn a blank on the word. Presumably he shares his Father's aversion to Spenser...
Re the "mechanical nightingale" -- there's something of that description in a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. To me this almost sounds as if Frankley is being given characteristics of Charles Williams, i.e. long poems about knights!
@ Interesting...
It is interesting to try and unpack Night 54, isn't it; but the difficulty of the exercise emphasizes that (in a work written to be read-out-loud) it must be packed with humerous references transparent only to the intended audience.
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