The Influence of World War I
When the First World War began on July 28, 1914, Tolkien did not immediately enlist. Instead, he continued his studies in Oxford, achieving a first-class degree in June 1915. It was only then that Tolkien enlisted as a Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. While waiting to embark for France, he married Edith on March 22, 1916, at St Mary’s immaculate Roman Catholic Church in Warwick. That summer Tolkien was sent to the front. He later remarked to his son, Michael, how much admiration he had for Edith marrying a penniless man who had not yet embarked upon his career and who was probably going to die in battle.
In this respect, Edith’s situation once again echoed that of Luthien who gained little but lost much because of her love of Beren. The couple’s early-married life also echoed that of Tolkien’s fictional couple. Edith denied a permanent home, followed Tolkien around his various camps in England- rather like Luthien following Beren on his impossible quest. However, unlike Luthien, Edith could not follow Tolkien into battle. However, after four months on the western front, during which he survived the Battle of the Somme, Tolkien was back in England.
Like Beren, who was the last survivor of a group of men who had tried to resist the dark enemy, Morgoth, after his conquest of the far north of Middle Earth, Tolkien was the last survivor of his old band of literary school friends. However, unlike Beren, he was not driven into the elven realm by defeat, but back to England because of trench fever. Tolkien spent the next year commanding a garrison in Yorkshire while he recuperated, at the same time trying to come to terms with the horrors of war and the death he had experienced.
It was during this time, in 1917, when Tolkien was stationed near Hull, that he and Edith went walking in woodland near Roos. There, in a grove of flowering hemlock, Edith began to dance and sing for Tolkien- and Luthien was born. “In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance, ” Tolkien wrote to Christopher in 1972.
Tolkien created Luthien to match the exact physical likeness of his wife on that day- and to capture her musical talent, which led Beren to give his elven princess the nickname of “Tinuviel” or nightingale. That day in the hemlock woods was not just the day that Luthien was born; it was a precious moment from the early marriage of Tolkien and Edith, which he captured forever in the story of Beren and Luthien. It was a moment of peace, tranquility, and hope after the horrors of war, not only for the fictional Beren but also for his creator.