Guest author Isaac Copeland is a graduate student at Catholic University in the Department of History and Anthropology.

In 1978, five years after the death of renowned author and scholar J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Theodore Meyer took the podium to recount his memories of his famous friend, sketch the life of the famous author, and donate his collection of Tolkien’s linguistic library to the Catholic University of America. This lecture is filled with humorous anecdotes and memories of Tolkien, from Meyer’s first meeting with him during a conversation about the Irish hero Cu Chulainn, to Meyer’s comments about the atrocity of Tolkien’s driving, and finally the humorous notes Tolkien scrawled in the margins of his copy of Canterbury Tales.   

Only one record of this lecture exists, 25 photocopied pages of Meyer’s handwritten notes. It is said that the more intelligent a person is, the worse their handwriting and this adage certainly holds true in the case of Meyer. Boasting a scrawl to match any physician, Meyer’s handwriting ranged from difficult to indecipherable. It was clear that this lecture, so rich in tales and anecdotes of Meyer’s time with Tolkien, needed an update, or more accurately, a deciphering.

The first and most obvious challenge to a transcript of Meyer’s lecture was his handwriting. This document was not intended for eyes other than Meyer’s to read, and he took no pains to make his writing legible. Words devolve into squiggles, and letters disappear entirely. Prepositions are marked with little more than a single dash of the pen. Long minutes were spent in debate over a single mark, and words required second, or even third opinions, as we struggled to make sense of Meyer’s scrawl.

Even when the first barrier of Meyer’s handwriting was cleared, other hurdles loomed ahead. The greatest tool to decipher a mysterious word, or unknown jerk of the pen is the context of the clearer words around it. Names, however, are almost completely free of context. It is simple to determine if “and” or “at” better fits a sentence, but the difference between “Gervase” and “Gerald” cannot be determined by the words around it. The only hope is that somewhere he wrote the name more legibly. Additionally, many of the names found in the lecture hail from other languages. Meyer and Tolkien were both students of the Celtic languages of the British Isles, and Welsh held pride of place in Tolkien’s heart. To people with no knowledge of Welsh, the many consonants of Meyer’s transcription of Welsh names were completely opaque.

Welsh was by no means the only other language found in the text. Both Latin and Greek made their appearances. Latin at least shares an alphabet with English, and paired with Meyer’s own translation given in the text, was little more difficult than his English.  His Greek, however, was indeed Greek to me. Meyer seemed to take more time with his Greek lettering, as seemingly no letters were dropped, but whether this was a product of his own care, or the change from English cursive to Greek print is unclear. Whatever the case, it took consultation with people who actually spoke the language to decipher his quotations.

Should all those challenges of transcription be overcome, one final problem loomed over the entire project. The only remaining copy of this lecture that exists in the archive, to our knowledge, is a photocopy of the original. Whoever made this photocopy cut off the bottom two or three lines off of every page. With over twenty pages in the lecture, over fifty lines are missing from the original. As it stands, these lines are irrecoverable without the original. Sadly the original remains lost. So while the transcript of what exists may improve with more eyes and more time, it will sadly never be complete.

Despite all these challenges and the missing pieces, the vast majority of the lecture now has a transcription, and Robert Meyer’s words live again. Meyer’s delightful voice wanders off the page with all the eccentric charm of one of Tolkien’s hobbits. He meanders from story to story recounting the biography of Tolkien and a number of his other friends in Oxford. From the pages not only a clear image of Tolkien emerges in his tweed suit and anachronistic romanticism, but also Meyer, with digressions into the intricacies of Celtic etymology, and philologic historiography. It is a window into another time that looks even further back, filled with old Oxford dons, archaic languages, cups of tea, and a little more green in the world.

Special thanks to Alexis Howlett for her invaluable assistance. Additionally, thanks to former CUA graduate student Andrew Marsh for their help and assistance in working with the author to transcribe the Tolkien transcript. See also previous posts about our ‘lost’ Tolkien book and related exhibit.  Inquiries about the Meyer Papers can be directed to lib-archives@cua.edu.