Rupert Dolbear

From Tolkien Gateway
Rupert Dolbear
Englishman
Afalstein - Notion Club Papers - Dolbear.png
"Notion Club Papers - Dolbear" by Afalstein
Biographical Information
Other namesRuthless Rufus; Rufus
PositionResearch Chemist
AffiliationThe Notion Club
LanguageEnglish
Birth1929
Physical Description
GenderMale
Hair colorRed hair and beard
GalleryImages of Rupert Dolbear

Rupert Dolbear (born in 1929) was a member of the Notion Club.

History[edit | edit source]

Rupert Dolbear was a Research Chemist who gained an education at Wadham College, and among his interests were philosophy, psychoanalysis, and gardening. He was a close friend of Michael George Ramer and was known to the Club as Ruthless Rufus.[1] He had a habit of sleeping loudly during long readings or discussions, but he would rouse up in the middle of a debate, showing that he had an odd ability of both sleeping and listening (he said that it was a time-saving habit that long membership of the Club had forced him to acquire).[2]

Inspiration[edit | edit source]

There was a chemist's shop in Oxford called Dolbear & Goodall and Christopher Tolkien recollects that his father found this particularly engaging and that it may be that Tolkien found in Dolbear the chemist a comic appropriateness to Robert Havard or to Havard as he was going to present him, since in one of the manuscripts he wrote Havard beneath Dolbear, indicating that Dolbear, with his red hair and beard and his nickname in the Club, can be seen as a sort of a parody of Havard.[3]

References

Members of the Notion Club
Michael George Ramer · Rupert Dolbear · Nicholas Guildford · Alwin Arundel Lowdham · Philip Frankley · Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy
James Jones · Abel Pitt · Colombo Arditi · Jonathan Markison · Gerard Manface · Ranulph Stainer · Alexander Cameron · John Jethro Rashbold