likely that Tolkien originally intended Part Two to proceed differently, since an outline for it begins: ‘Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga, with Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford and Ramer taking part’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 281). But there is no indication of how the ‘Eriol-Saga’ was to be introduced. Since Arundel Loudham (changed to Lowdham during the writing of the first version of Part Two) was to play an important role in the ‘Atlantis story’, Tolkien made additions to Part One to suggest Lowdham’s interest in the myth. A link is provided by a fragmentary entry reporting the end of a meeting on 13 March, when Lowdham tells Ramer and Guildford that he has been having strange experiences. As the story proceeds, it becomes clear that he is haunted subconsciously by Númenor, and is reminded of the temple Sauron built there when he sees what appears to be smoke coming from the lantern of the Radcliffe Camera.
At the first meeting of the Club in Trinity Term 1987, on 8 May, the members discuss neologisms (the use of new words or expressions), the misuse of established words, and the way that language changes and evolves. They also talk about legends of origin and cultural myths, and whether, if one could go back in time, one would find that myth dissolves into history, or real history becomes more mythical. At some point Lowdham becomes upset, curses ‘Zigûr’, and cries out: ‘Behold the Eagles of the Lords of the West! They are coming over Nūmenōr!’ Ramer says that Nūmenōr is his name for Atlantis, and fellow member Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy says that he also has some recollection of hearing the name. At the meeting on 22 May Lowdham comments on his strange names Alwin Arundel, chosen when his mother objected to the Ælfwine Éarendel his father, Edwin, had wanted to give him. He tells how his father set out in his ship The Éarendel (in the first text Éarendel Star) one day in 1947 and was never seen again. Lowdham remembers his father keeping a diary in a strange script, and that after his disappearance Lowdham had found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. The members discuss the meanings of the names Ælfwine and Éadwine, and historical figures with those and related names. (See also *Eriol and Ælfwine.)
This in turn leads to a discussion of the name Éarendel in the lines from the Old English Crist: Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtost / ofer middangeard monnum sended. Lowdham says that he has heard the similar ëarendil in another language, ‘where it actually means Great Mariner, or literally Friend of the Sea; though it also has, I think, some connexion with the stars’ (p. 237). When he is asked ‘what language?’ he tells the members that since he was about ten he has had ‘words, even occasional phrases’, ringing in his ears; ‘both in dream and waking abstraction. They come into my mind unbidden, or I wake to hear myself repeating them. Sometimes they seem to be quite isolated, just words or names …. It was a long time before I began to piece the fragments together’ (pp. 237–8). He recorded these, and after removing Anglo-Saxon or related elements, most of the remainder seem to belong to two languages which he had never come across. He associates both languages with a place called Nūmenōr in the first language (which he calls Avallonian, in fact Quenya; see *Languages, Invented), and Anadūnē in the second (which he calls Adunaic).
He discusses other words, and notes that even those in Old English came to him before he began to learn that language. Among the longer passages of Old English are a line which means ‘a straight way lay westward, now it is bent’, and some verses, one of which includes lines Lowdham translates as: ‘There is many a thing in the west of the world unknown to men; marvels and strange beings, [a land lovely to look on,] the dwelling place of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods’ (pp. 243, 244).
By the next meeting, in Ramer’s rooms on 12 June 1987, Lowdham has heard a much longer passage in his two unidentified languages. His incomplete translation shows that it is an account of the Fall of Númenor – the coming of Sauron, the attempt to invade the land of the Lords of the West, the drowning of Númenor, and the changing of the shape of the world so that there is no longer a straight path to the West. He mentions the name Sauron, and its Adunaic equivalent Zigūr, at which Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy reacts strangely. Both he and Lowdham seem to relive the destruction of Númenor, as dark clouds roll over the sky from the West and a violent thunderstorm breaks. Lowdham addresses Jeremy as ‘Voronwë’, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as ‘Elendil’; both rush out into the freak storm. During the evening, Lowdham mentions again the sheet with the strange script he had found among his father’s papers, intending to say something about it later, but does not. The other members leave when the storm subsides, and Ramer picks up a sheet of paper and puts it in a drawer.
On 26 June a brief letter from Lowdham and Jeremy is read to the Club, saying they ‘were cast up far away when the wind fell’ (p. 254) and are now doing research. Ramer produces the sheet dropped by Lowdham at the last meeting. Since Lowdham had mentioned that some of the words he received were in Old English, on the chance that this was the language of the strange script, Ramer took the sheet to old Professor Rashbold of Pembroke, who deciphered it and positively identified the language as ‘Old English of a strongly Mercian (West Midland) colour, ninth century’ (p. 257). Translated into Modern English, it turns out to be another, longer account of the last days of Númenor.
The next meeting, on 25 September 1987, begins with Philip Frankley, another member affected by the resonances of Númenor, reading a poem, The Death of St Brendan (see *Imram), which includes allusions to Tolkien’s mythology (*‘The Silmarillion’). He woke ‘four days ago with the thing largely fixed’ in his mind (p. 265). The members discuss possible influences from real accounts of St Brendan, but note there seems no source for the lines describing ‘the round world’ plunging ‘steeply down’ while ‘the old road’ goes on ‘as an unseen bridge … on arches’ (p. 264).
Lowdham and Jeremy then describe their travels around the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and the rumours they heard of huge phantom waves. They recount that while staying in Porlock (in Somerset on the coast of the Bristol Channel) they both dreamed themselves back to tenth century England in a hall crowded with warriors who had come to join Edward the Elder’s fight against the invading Danes. In that dream Lowdham, now the minstrel Ælfwine, was called upon to entertain those in the hall, and recited a verse about his sea-longing, while Jeremy, now Tréowine from the Marches, told the story of King Sheave. They finish their account for that evening as these Anglo-Saxon personas leave the hall and promise to tell the members more at the next meeting.
At this point, however, Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Path, and see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has ‘sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them’, and ‘At the end … Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor’ (p. 279).
ASSOCIATED ‘PAPERS’
In addition to this inner core of the minutes of the Notion Club, as part of their fictional ‘frame’, Tolkien also produced associated ‘papers’. The layer nearest the core is the framework of the (fictional) book Leaves from the Notion Club Papers, subdivided into Part One and Part Two, supposedly edited by one Howard Green and published in 2014, for which Tolkien produced a facsimile title-page (Sauron Defeated, p. 154). According to the ‘editor’s’ foreword, Green found the Club’s papers ‘after the Summer Examinations of 2012 on the top of one of a number of sacks of waste paper in the basement of the Examination Schools in Oxford …’ (p. 155), but was unable to discover how they had got there. They appear to be the incomplete reports of the meetings of an Oxford club from approximately 1980 to 1990, with references to an event as late as 1987, apparently prepared for publication with notes; but ‘Brown’ could find no trace of the existence of a Notion Club. He describes the surviving papers, including a list of members.
Another layer is a ‘Note to the Second Edition’ of the book, in which Howard Green
