OXFORD, England — Tucked away in North Oxford lies a small, nondescript pub that has become an informal pilgrimage site for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, the British professor of literature who wrote "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings."
It was here, in a small wood-paneled back room at The Eagle and Child public house, that the earliest drafts of Tolkien's stories were read aloud to a group of friends and writers who called themselves "The Inklings."
The famous drinking club's members included "Chronicles of Narnia" author C.S. Lewis, poet Charles Williams, Tolkien and others. They met regularly on Tuesdays between the years 1939 and 1962 to nurse a pint or two near the fireplace as they carried on lively debates about philosophy, literature, art and theology.
Despite its fabled reputation as a gathering place for literati, the pub has managed to stay free of garish marketing ploys and tourism gimmicks. Today the place the Inklings affectionately dubbed "The Bird and Baby" remains largely unfazed by a resurgence of interest in Tolkien's life that has accompanied the making of his "Lord of the Rings" into a series of blockbuster films. The second part of the trilogy, "The Two Towers," was released in U.S. theatres last Wednesday.
The 350-year-old Eagle and Child pub is a local hangout, where students and professors mingle with neighborhood residents and the odd tourist in dimly lit rooms under low-beamed ceilings. Two Swedish visitors, Birgitta Aruidsson and her daughter Liza, 12, said they half expected to see a hobbit behind the bar when they went up to order cheese sandwiches.
"I can imagine how Tolkien got influences from here," Aruidsson said.
The place still looks much as it did during Tolkien's days, though it has been expanded in the back so that the "Rabbit Room" where The Inklings once gathered now is located in the middle of the narrow building.
The only evidence that this was once a hub of intellectual and literary ferment is a wooden plaque to the left of the bar, several unlabeled black-and-white photographs of Inklings hanging on the walls, and a framed note over the fireplace in the Rabbit Room that bears the signatures of Tolkien, Lewis and other Inklings, testifying that they drank to the health of the landlord there one day in 1949.
The manager sells some T-shirts and lighters with the pub logo on them but nothing bearing the names of Tolkien or The Inklings.
"It has a reputation, but it doesn't live on that reputation," said Ron Bushyager, a 25-year-old theology student from Pittsburgh who is a regular at the pub. He and two of his friends who are training to be vicars like to meet there weekly to soak up the atmosphere. Sitting grouped around a small wooden table to smoke near one of the pub's three fireplaces, they said they are conscious of the weight of history but not oppressed by it.
"It's not over-marketed," said Alison Munro-Smith, a 29-year-old theology student from Glastonbury, England. "And that is to be celebrated because it could so easily have done so. A lot of Oxford places have."
Peter Gross, a 22-year-old fellow theology student from Charlotte, N.C., originally sought the pub for its reputation as The Inklings' meeting place and ended up working behind the bar for a while.
"I just think it's awesome to be in a place that has so much history," Gross said. "Lewis used to keep his slippers behind the bar, he felt so at home here. There's just a certain feel to it, a kind of smell."
There are some hours during the summer when there seem to be hundreds of gawking Americans in the pub, admitted assistant manager Corrie Jones. But he added that such moments are the exception rather than the rule, which is the way things should be
He is proud of the pub and its history but does not see the need to take more aggressive advantage of The Inklings' world-renowned reputation to sell beer and merchandise.
"It's not our style," Jones said. "They're famous for drinking here, but a pub's a pub, and the pub would still be a good pub if they hadn't drunk here. Personally, I find it more fascinating that the pub was used in the (English) Civil War as a pay house for the soldiers."