The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  This is O[hlmarks]’s first serious piece of presumptuous impertinence. . . . . I was devoted to the University of Leeds, which was very good to me, and to the students, whom I left with regret. The present students are among my most attentive readers, and write to me (especially about the Appendices). If O’s nonsense was to come to the notice of the University it would give offence, and O would have to publicly apologize. As for ‘Fornost’, a glance at the book would show that it is comparable rather to the Kings’ mounds at Old Uppsala than to the city of Leeds!

  One of his most important writings, published in 1953, also treats of another famous homecoming, ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnot, [sic] Beorhthelm’s son.’

  Coming home dead without a head (as Beorhtnoth did) is not very delightful. But this is spoof. O. knows nothing about Beorhtnoth, or his homecoming (never mentioned till I wrote a poem about it) and he has not seen the poem. I do not blame him, except for writing as if he knew.

  The professor began by telling tales about it [Middle-earth] to his children, then to his grandchildren; and they were fascinated and clamoured for more and still more. One can clearly see before one the fireside evenings in the peaceful villa out at Sandfield Road in Headington near Oxford. . . . with the Barrowdowns or Headington Hills in the rear and the Misty Mountains or the 560 feet high Shotover in the background.

  !!This is such outrageous nonsense that I should suspect mockery, if I did not observe that O. is ever ready to assume intimate knowledge that he has not got. I have only two grandchildren. One 18 who first heard of the book 5 years ago. The other is only 2. The book was written before I moved to Headington, which has no hills, but is on a shoulder (as it were) of Shotover.

  The Ring is in a certain way ‘der Nibelungen Ring’. . . .

  Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.

  . . . . which was originally forged by Volund the master-smith, and then by way of Vittka-Andvare passed through the hands of the mighty asar [Æsir] into the possession of Hreidmar and the dragon, after the dragon’s fall coming to Sigurd the dragonslayer, after his murder by treacherous conspirators coming to the Burgundians, after their death in Atle’s snake-pit coming to the Huns, then to the sons of Jonaker, to the Gothic tyrant Ermanrik, etc.

  Thank heaven for the etc. I began to fear that it would turn up in my pocket. Evidently Dr. O thinks that it is in his. But what is the point of all this? Those who know something about the Old Norse side of the ‘Nibelung’ traditions (mainly referred to since the name-forms used are Norse) will think this a farrago of nonsense; those who do not, will hardly be interested. But perhaps they are also meant to conclude that Dr. O also has mästerskap.1 It has nothing whatsoever to do with The Lord of the Rings. As for Wayland Smith being a Pan-type, or being reflected both in Bombadil and in Gollum: this is sufficient example of the silly methods and nonsensical conclusions of Dr. O. He is welcome to the rubbish, but I do not see that he, as a translator, has any right to unload it here.

  Here [in Mordor] rules the personification of satanic might Sauron (read perhaps in the same partial fashion [as other identifications Ohlmarks has made] Stalin).

  There is no ‘perhaps’ about it. I utterly repudiate any such ‘reading’, which angers me. The situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution. Such allegory is entirely foreign to my thought. The placing of Mordor in the east was due to simple narrative and geographical necessity, within my ‘mythology’. The original stronghold of Evil was (as traditionally) in the North; but as that had been destroyed, and was indeed under the sea, there had to be a new stronghold, far removed from the Valar, the Elves, and the sea-power of Númenor.

  There are reminiscences of journeys on foot in his own youth up into the Welsh border-regions.

  As Bilbo said of the dwarves, he seems to know as much of my private pantries as I do myself. Or pretends to. I never walked in Wales or the marches in my youth. Why should I be made an object of fiction while still alive?

  230 From a letter to Rhona Beare

  8 June 1961

  [Answering various questions about The Lord of the Rings.]

  With regard to Aragorn’s boast,1 I think he was reckoning his ancestry through the paternal line for this purpose; but in any case I imagine that Númenóreans, before their knowledge dwindled, knew more about heredity than other people. To this of course they refer by the common symbol of blood. They recognized the fact that in spite of intermarriages, some characteristics would appear in pure form in later generations. Aragorn’s own longevity was a case in point. Gandalf I think refers to the curious fact that even in the much less well preserved house of the stewards Denethor had come out as almost purely Númenórean.

  Vol. II, p. 70.2 Treebeard was not using Entish sounds on this occasion, but using ancient Elvish words mixed up and run together in Entish fashion. The elements are laure, gold, not the metal but the colour, what we should call golden light; ndor, nor, land, country; lin, lind-, a musical sound; malina, yellow; orne, tree; lor, dream; nan, nand-, valley. So that roughly he means: ‘The valley where the trees in a golden light sing musically, a land of music and dreams; there are yellow trees there, it is a tree-yellow land.’ The same applies to the last line on that page,3 where the elements are taure, forest; tumba, deep valley; mor, darkness; lóme, night.

  Mae govannen4 means ‘well met.’

  Treebeard’s greeting5 to Celeborn and Galadriel meant ‘O beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children.’

  The song of praise in Vol. III, p. 2316 is not really a song but is represented by a few phrases taken from the languages heard, in which English represents the common speech. The second, fourth and sixth lines are Sindarin or Grey Elvish. The seventh and ninth are High Elvish. Line 2 means ‘May the Halflings live long, glory to the Halflings.’ The fourth line means ‘Frodo and Sam, princes of the west, glorify (them)’, the sixth, ‘glorify (them)’. The seventh line means ‘Bless them, bless them, long we will praise them.’ The ninth line means ‘The Ring bearers, bless (or praise) them to the height.’

  231 From a letter to Jane Neave

  4 October 1961

  [Tolkien’s aunt Jane Neave, then aged ninety, wrote to ask him ‘if you wouldn’t get out a small book with Tom Bombadil at the heart of it’.]

  I think your idea about Tom Bombadil is a good one, not that I feel inclined to write any more about him. But I think that the original poem (which appeared in the Oxford Magazine long before The Lord of the Rings) might make a pretty booklet of the kind you would like if each verse could be illustrated by Pauline Baynes. If you have not ever seen the original Tom Bombadil poem I will try and find it and have a copy made for you.

  232 From a letter to Joyce Reeves

  4 November 1961

  I always like shrewd sound-hearted maiden aunts. Blessed are those who have them or meet them. Though they are commoner, in my experience, than Saki aunts.1 The professional aunt is a fairly recent development, perhaps; but I was fortunate in having an early example: one of the first women to take a science degree. She is now ninety, but only a few years ago went botanizing in Switzerland. It was in her company (with a mixed party of about the same size as the company in The Hobbit) that I journeyed on foot with a heavy pack through much of Switzerland, and over many high passes. It was approaching the Aletsch that we were nearly destroyed by boulders loosened in the sun rolling down a snow-slope. An enormous rock in fact passed between me and the next in front. That and the ‘thunder-battle’ – a bad night in which we lost our way and slept in a cattle-shed – appear in The Hobbit. It is long ago now. . . . .

  I have enjoyed the tale;2 and hope you will forgive my garrulity. My remarks, I fear, must savour a little of the legendary German professor, who wrote a large book on Das Komische. After which, whenever anyone told him a funny story, he thought for a moment, and then nodded, saying: ‘Yes, there is that joke’.

  233 From a letter to Rayner Unwin

  15 November 1961

 
[Allen & Unwin agreed to the suggestion that Tolkien should put together a small book of poems, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.]

  I have in fact made a search, as far as time allowed, and had copies made of any poems that might conceivably see the light or (somewhat tidied up) be presented again. The harvest is not rich, for one thing there is not much that really goes together with Tom Bombadil. Besides Tom Bombadil (of which you have a copy) I send Errantry and The Man in the Moon, which might go together. About the others I am altogether doubtful; I do not even know if they have any virtue at all, by themselves or in a series. If, however, you think any of them would make a book and might attract Pauline Baynes to illustrate them I should be delighted.

  234 To Jane Neave

  [Tolkien had sent his aunt some of the poems he was considering for inclusion in the new book.]

  22 November 1961

  76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

  My dearest Aunt,

  Thank you for returning the poems. Do not worry about giving me trouble. I have enjoyed myself very much digging out these old half-forgotten things and rubbing them up. All the more because there are other and duller things that I ought to have been doing. At any rate they have had you as an audience. Printed publication is, I fear, very unlikely.

  Never mind about the young! I am not interested in the ‘child’ as such, modern or otherwise, and certainly have no intention of meeting him/her half way, or a quarter of the way. It is a mistaken thing to do anyway, either useless (when applied to the stupid) or pernicious (when inflicted on the gifted). I have only once made the mistake of trying to do it, to my lasting regret, and (I am glad to say) with the disapproval of intelligent children: in the earlier part of The Hobbit. But I had not then given any serious thought to the matter: I had not freed myself from the contemporary delusions about ‘fairy-stories’ and children.

  I had to think about it, however, before I gave an ‘Andrew Lang’ lecture at St Andrews on Fairy-stories; and I must say I think the result was entirely beneficial to The Lord of the Rings, which was a practical demonstration of the views that I expressed. It was not written ‘for children’, or for any kind of person in particular, but for itself. (If any parts or elements in it appear ‘childish’, it is because I am childish, and like that kind of thing myself now.) I believe children do read it or listen to it eagerly, even quite young ones, and I am very pleased to hear it, though they must fail to understand most of it, and it is in any case stuffed with words that they are unlikely to understand – if by that one means ‘recognize as something already known’. I hope it increases their vocabularies.

  As for plenilune and argent,1 they are beautiful words before they are understood – I wish I could have the pleasure of meeting them for the first time again! – and how is one to know them till one does meet them? And surely the first meeting should be in a living context, and not in a dictionary, like dried flowers in a hortus siccus!

  Children are not a class or kind, they are a heterogeneous collection of immature persons, varying, as persons do, in their reach, and in their ability to extend it when stimulated. As soon as you limit your vocabulary to what you suppose to be within their reach, you in fact simply cut off the gifted ones from the chance of extending it.

  And the meaning of fine words cannot be made ‘obvious’, for it is not obvious to any one: least of all to adults, who have stopped listening to the sound because they think they know the meaning. They think argent ‘means’ silver. But it does not. It and silver have a reference to x or chem. Ag, but in each x is clothed in a totally different phonetic incarnation: x + y or x + z; and these do not have the same meaning, not only because they sound different and so arouse different responses, but also because they are not in fact used when talking about Ag. in the same way. It is better, I think, at any rate to begin with, to hear ‘argent’ as a sound only (z without x) in a poetic context, than to think ‘it only means silver’. There is some chance then that you may like it for itself, and later learn to appreciate the heraldic overtones it has, in addition to its own peculiar sound, which ‘silver’ has not.

  I think that this writing down, flattening, Bible-in-basic-English attitude is responsible for the fact that so many older children and younger people have little respect and no love for words, and very limited vocabularies – and alas! little desire left (even when they had the gift which has been stultified) to refine or enlarge them.

  I am sorry about The Pied Piper,2 I loathe it. God help the children! I would as soon give them crude and vulgar plastic toys. Which of course they will play with, to the ruin of their taste. Terrible presage of the most vulgar elements in Disney. But you cannot say that ‘it never fails’. You do not really know what is happening, even in the few cases that have come under your observation. It failed with me, even as a child, when I could not yet distinguish the shallow vulgarity of Browning from the general grown-uppishness of things that I was expected to like. The trouble is one does not really know what is going on, even when a child listens with attention, even when it laughs. Children have one thing (only) in common: a lack of experience and if not of discrimination at least of the language in which to express their perceptions; they are still usually acquiescent (outwardly) in their acceptance of the food presented to them by adults. Though they may mentally or actually throw the stuff over the garden wall, and say demurely how much they have enjoyed it. As my children did (they confess) with their suppers in the garden in summer, giving their parents the permanent delusion that they loved jam-sandwiches. I was of course given Hans Andersen when quite young. At one time I listened with attention which may have looked like rapture to his stories when read to me. I read them myself often. Actually I disliked him intensely; and the vividness of that distaste is the chief thing that I carried down the years in connexion with his name.

  Surely I am ‘childish’ enough, and that ought to be enough for real children or any one ‘childish’ in the same sort of way, and never mind if the old chap knows a lot of jolly words. I send you a little piece of nonsense that I wrote only the other day,3 as evidence of my childishness. Though I have alas! picked up enough grown-up jargon to write in imitation of my elders; and I might say ‘it is a neatly constructed trifle, an amusing attempt to penetrate the elf-childishness of an elfchild, if any such thing existed!’ Excuse type. My scrawly hand won’t last out a long letter. Don’t bother about the ‘opinions’. In fact I write as I do, ill or well, because I cannot write otherwise. If it pleases anybody, large or small, I am as much surprised as delighted. God bless you. Very much love.

  R.

  235 From a letter to Mrs Pauline Gasch (Pauline Baynes)

  6 December 1961

  [Pauline Baynes, who had illustrated Farmer Giles of Ham, had expressed herself willing to provide pictures for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and had been reading typescripts of the poems.]

  If I dare say so, the things sent to you (except the Sea-bell, the poorest, and not one that I shd. really wish to include, at least not with the others) were conceived as a series of very definite, clear and precise, pictures – fantastical, or nonsensical perhaps, but not dreamlike! And I thought of you, because you seem able to produce wonderful pictures with a touch of ‘fantasy’, but primarily bright and clear visions of things that one might really see. Of course what you say about ‘illustrations’ in general is very true, and I once (in a long essay on ‘Fairy-Stories’) ventured at greater length but no more precisely than you, to say much the same.1 But there is a case for illustration (or decoration!) applied to small things such as these verses, which are light-hearted, and (I think) dexterous in words, but not very profound in intention. I suppose one would also have to except ‘The Hoard’ from being ‘light-hearted’, though the woes of the successive (nameless) inheritors are seen merely as pictures in a tapestry of antiquity and do not deeply engage individual pity. I was most interested by your choice of this as your favourite. For it is the least fluid, being written in [a] mode rat
her resembling the oldest English verse – and was in fact inspired by a single line of ancient verse: iúmonna gold galdre bewunden, ‘the gold of men of long ago enmeshed in enchantment’ (Beowulf 3052). But I do appreciate that it is a tricky task! I hope you may feel inclined to attempt it. Alas! you put your finger unerringly on a main difficulty: they are not a unity from any point of view, but made at different times under varying inspiration. I have not much doubt, however, that you would avoid the Scylla of Blyton and the Charybdis of Rackham – though to go to wreck on the latter would be the less evil fate.

  236 To Rayner Unwin

  [Tolkien received a copy of the Puffin Books edition of The Hobbit in September 1961, but did not look at it until December.]

  30 December 1961

  76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

  Dear Rayner,

  . . . . I wish well-meaning folk who think they know could be restrained! I had occasion a day or two ago to look up a passage in The Hobbit, and the ‘puffin’ lying to hand, I looked it up there. So I discovered that one of this breed had been busy again. Penguin Books had, I suppose, no licence to edit my work, and should have reproduced faithfully the printed copy; and at least out of courtesy to Allen and Unwin and myself should have addressed some enquiry before they proceeded to correct the text.

  Dwarves, dwarves’, dwarvish have been corrected throughout (with one exception on p. 21) to the current dictionary forms dwarfs, dwarfs’, dwarfish. Elvish, elvish has been changed to Elfish, elfish 7 times but left unchanged 3 times. I view this procedure with dudgeon. I deliberately used dwarves etc. for a special purpose and effect – that it has an effect can be gauged by comparing the passages with the substitutes dwarfs, especially in verse. The point is dealt with in L.R. iii, p. 415.1 Of course I do not expect compositors or proof-readers to know that, or to know anything about the history of the word ‘dwarf’; but I should have thought it might have occurred, if not to a compositor at least to a reader, that the author would not have used consistently getting on for 300 times a particular form, nor would your readers have passed it, if it was a mere casual mistake in ‘grammar’.