The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  You probably will not be interested in other ‘errors’. The inscription presented some problems to one having only the vocabulary of short specimens of the fragments of the Gothic versions of the New Testament to go upon. The Gothic word for ‘read’ was not lisan, las, galisans, which still had only its original meaning ‘gather’ (a sense which its German and Norse equivalents, lesen and lesa, still retain in addition to the sense ‘read’ imitated from Latin lego). The Gothic word was ussiggwan ‘recite’ (sing out). The art of private reading, silent, and with the use only or chiefly of the eyes, was if practised by the ‘ancients’ mostly forgotten. I believe it is reported that St Ambrose (in the same century as the Gothic versions were made) astonished observers who saw him reading by only moving his eyes from side to side, without moving his lips or at least murmuring. . . . .

  I still feel no compunction in writing in my own books, though I now usually put only notes supposed to be of use – if I can later decipher them.

  273 From a letter to Nan C. Scott

  21 July 1965

  [Mrs Scott was a leading campaigner in the battle to keep the pirate edition of The Lord of the Rings out of the American bookshops.]

  I am extremely grateful for the information that you have sent me, and still more for your great kindness and energy in attempting to combat the pirates on my behalf. . . . . I have been taken off all my other work and driven nearly over the edge by the attempt to get an authorized paperback by Ballantine Books produced as soon as possible.

  274 From a letter to the Houghton Mifflin Co.

  28 July 1965

  [Concerning revisions to The Lord of the Rings.]

  The small map ‘Part of the Shire’ is most at fault and much needs correction (and some additions), and has caused a number of questions to be asked. The chief fault is that the ferry at Bucklebury and so Brandy Hall and Crickhollow have shifted about 3 miles too far north (about 4 mm.). This cannot be altered at this time, but it is unfortunate that Brandy Hall clearly on the river-bank is placed so that the main road runs in front of it instead of behind. There is also no trace of the wood described at the top of p. 99.1

  275 From a letter to W. H. Auden

  4 August 1965

  [Auden had invited Tolkien to contribute to a festschrift marking the retirement of Nevill Coghill. He also asked if Tolkien knew that a ‘New York Tolkien Society’ had been formed, and said he feared that most of the members would be lunatics.]

  I still feel grieved that I haven’t anything for Neville’s [sic] festschrift. I hope that perhaps an arrangement will be made in the book for people in my position to register their good wishes. The only thing I have ever written about Neville was:

  Mr Neville Judson Coghill

  Wrote a deal of dangerous doggerill.

  Practical, progressive men

  Called him Little Poison-pen.

  That was at a time when under the name of Judson he was writing what I thought very good and funny verses lampooning forward-looking men like Norwood of St John’s.1

  Yes, I have heard about the Tolkien Society. Real lunatics don’t join them, I think. But still such things fill me too with alarm and despondency.

  276 To Dick Plotz, ‘Thain’ of the Tolkien Society of America

  12 September 1965

  76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

  To the T. S. A. First Communiqué from the Member for Longbottom.

  Dear Mr Plotz,

  I have been away in Ireland, and have just received your letter (amid a mountain of mail) on my return. I am much interested to hear of the formation of the ‘Tolkien Society’, and very grateful for the compliment. I do not, however, see how I can become a ‘member’ of a society inspired by liking for my works and devoted (I suppose) to study and criticism of them, as at least part of their activities.

  I should, however, be pleased to be associated with you in some informal capacity. I should, for instance, be willing to offer any advice that you wished to seek, or provide information not yet in print – always with the proviso (especially with regard to ‘information’) that the plea: Engaged on the matter of the Eldar and of Númenor: would be accepted without offence as an adequate excuse for an inadequate answer to enquiries. . . . .

  As for the ‘Silmarillion’ and its appendages; that is written, but it is in a confused state owing to alteration and enlargement at different dates (including ‘writing back’ to confirm the links between it and The L. of the Rings). It lacks a thread on which its diversity can be strung. It also presents in a more acute form than even the difficulties that I found in The L. of the R.: the need to acquaint an audience with an unknown mythology without reference to the tales; and to relate a number of long legends dependent on the mythology without holding them up with explanatory digressions. I had hoped by now to be deep in the work necessary to presenting a part of the matter in publishable form. . . . . I think I shall issue it in parts. The first part may, given still the health and vigour, reach the press next year.

  There is also a large amount of matter that is not strictly part of the Silmarillion: cosmogony and matter concerning the Valar; and later matter concerning Númenor, and the War in Middle-earth (fall of Eregion and death of Celebrimbor, and the history of Celeborn and Galadriel). As for Númenor, the tale of the Akallabêth or Downfall is fully written. The rest of its internal history is only in Annal form, and will probably remain so, except for one long Númenórean tale: The Mariner’s Wife: now nearly complete, concerning the story of Aldarion (the 6th King: L.R. III 315, 316) and his tragic relations with his father and his wife. This is supposed to have been preserved in the Downfall, when most of Númenórean lore was lost except that that dealt with the First Age, because it tells how Númenor became involved in the politics of Middle-earth.

  I quite understand the amusement to be got in such a society out of special names for members associated with the story, and of course I see that things are still undecided. But if I might make a suggestion at this stage, I should say that I think it is a mistake to give names of characters (or offices) in the story. Personally I should have liked the society’s title to be ‘The Shire Society’, with perhaps T.S.A. as an explanatory sub-title. But even without any change of title, I think it would be more appropriate and amusing to give members the title of ‘Member for Some-place-in-the Shire’, or in Bree. Would it not be a good thing to limit the number of persons entitled to a special name in some suitable way: as being earliest members, or later as being those who clearly continue to get some interest or amusement out of membership? There are only about 30 suitable place names in the small section of the Shire printed, but there are more in my map, and if a proper map of the whole Shire were drawn up there could be quite a large number of places entered. The names already entered, even those that seem unlikely (as Nobottle), are in fact devised according to the style, origins, and mode of formation of English (especially Midland) place-names. I should be delighted to construct new names on the same principles as desired and to find them places on the maps of Bree and the Shire. Personally, as an inveterate pipe smoker be happy to accept the title of Member for Longbottom; or if you should wish to accord me mayoral dignity (for which even on Hobbit-scales my years make me just about ripe) the Member for Michel Delving. . . . .

  Núminor. C. S. Lewis was one of the only three persons who have so far read all or a considerable part of my ‘mythology’ of the First and Second Ages,1 which had already been in the main lines constructed before we met. He had the peculiarity that he liked to be read to. All that he knew of my ‘matter’ was what his capacious but not infallible memory retained from my reading to him as sole audience. His spelling numinor is a hearing error, aided, no doubt, by his association of the name with Latin nūmen, nūmina, and the adjective ‘numinous’. Unfortunate, since the name has no such connexions, and has no reference to ‘divinity’ or sense of its presence. It is a construction from the Eldarin base √NDU ‘below, down; descend’; Q. núme ‘go
ing down, occident’; númen ‘the direction or region of the sunset’ + nóre ‘land’ as an inhabited area. I have often used Westernesse as a translation. This is derived from rare Middle English Westernesse (known to me only in MS. C of King Horn) where the meaning is vague, but may be taken to mean ‘Western lands’ as distinct from the East inhabited by the Paynim and Saracens. Lewis took no part in ‘research into Númenor’. N. is my personal alteration of the Atlantis myth and/or tradition, and accommodation of it to my general mythology. Of all the mythical or ‘archetypal’ images this is the one most deeply seated in my imagination, and for many years I had a recurrent Atlantis dream: the stupendous and ineluctable wave advancing from the Sea or over the land, sometimes dark, sometimes green and sunlit.

  Lewis was, I think, impressed by ‘the Silmarillion and all that’, and certainly retained some vague memories of it and of its names in mind. For instance, since he had heard it, before he composed or thought of Out of the Silent Planet, I imagine that Eldil is an echo of the Eldar; in Perelandra ‘Tor and Tinidril’ are certainly an echo, since Tuor and Idril, parents of Eärendil, are major characters in ‘The Fall of Gondolin’, the earliest written of the legends of the First Age. But his own mythology (incipient and never fully realized) was quite different. It was at any rate broken to bits before it became coherent by contact with C. S. Williams and his ‘Arthurian’ stuff – which happened between Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. A pity, I think. But then I was and remain wholly unsympathetic to Williams’ mind.

  I knew Charles Williams only as a friend of C.S.L. whom I met in his company when, owing to the War, he spent much of his time in Oxford. We liked one another and enjoyed talking (mostly in jest) but we had nothing to say to one another at deeper (or higher) levels. I doubt if he had read anything of mine then available; I had read or heard a good deal of his work, but found it wholly alien, and sometimes very distasteful, occasionally ridiculous. (This is perfectly true as a general statement, but is not intended as a criticism of Williams; rather it is an exhibition of my own limits of sympathy. And of course in so large a range of work I found lines, passages, scenes, and thoughts that I found striking.) I remained entirely unmoved. Lewis was bowled over.

  But Lewis was a very impressionable man, and this was abetted by his great generosity and capacity for friendship. The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not ‘influence’ as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion. . . . .

  I send you and the T.S.A. my best wishes. If I were not in an interim between secretaries (part-time) for a few days, you might have received a briefer letter, more succinct and better typed.

  Yours sincerely,

  J. R. R. Tolkien.

  277 To Rayner Unwin

  12 September 1965

  [In August 1965 Ballantine Books produced the first ‘authorised’ American paperback of The Hobbit, without incorporating Tolkien’s revisions to the text. The cover picture showed a lion, two emus, and a tree with bulbous fruit. (When the book was reissued by Ballantine the following February, with the revised text, the lion had disappeared beneath yellow-green grass.)]

  I wrote to [his American publishers] expressing (with moderation) my dislike of the cover for [the Ballantine edition of] The Hobbit. It was a short hasty note by hand, without a copy, but it was to this effect: I think the cover ugly; but I recognize that a main object of a paperback cover is to attract purchasers, and I suppose that you are better judges of what is attractive in USA than I am. I therefore will not enter into a debate about taste – (meaning though I did not say so: horrible colours and foul lettering) – but I must ask this about the vignette: what has it got to do with the story? Where is this place? Why a lion and emus? And what is the thing in the foreground with pink bulbs? I do not understand how anybody who had read the tale (I hope you are one) could think such a picture would please the author.

  These points have never been taken up, and are ignored in [their] latest letter. These people seem never to read letters, or have a highly cultivated deafness to anything but ‘favorable reactions’.

  Mrs. —— [a representative of the paperback publishers] did not find time to visit me. She rang me up. I had a longish conversation; but she seemed to me impermeable. I should judge that all she wanted was that I should recant, be a good boy and react favorably. When I made the above points again, her voice rose several tones and she cried: ‘But the man hadn’t TIME to read the book!’ (As if that settled it. A few minutes conversation with the ‘man’, and a glance at the American edition’s pictures should have been sufficient.) With regard to the pink bulbs she said as if to one of complete obtusity: ‘they are meant to suggest a Christmas Tree’. Why is such a woman let loose? I begin to feel that I am shut up in a madhouse. Perhaps with more experience you know of some way out of the lunatic labyrinth. I want to finish off Gawain and Pearl, and get on with the Silmarillion and feel that I cannot deal with H[oughton] M[ifflin] or Ballantine Books any more. Could you suggest that I am now going into purdah (to commune with my creative soul), the veil of which only you have authority to lift – if you think fit?

  278 From a letter to Clyde S. Kilby

  20 October 1965

  I have recently received a copy of Light on C. S. Lewis. I hope you have. It is interesting, I think, and does throw a little light on Lewis, though it seems odd to me how they all miss one of the essential points of his temperament. Barfield who knew him longest. . . . gets nearest to the central point. I am afraid I must leave that enigmatic, as I have not time, at the moment, to enlarge upon it.1

  279 From a letter to Michael George Tolkien

  30 October 1965

  I think it unlikely that we shall move from Oxford. Anywhere in sight of the sea proves too vastly expensive, while the service problem (our chief trouble) is as bad or worse than here. I am not ‘rolling in gold’, but by continuing to work I am (so far) continuing to have an income about the same as a professor-in-cathedra, which leaves me with a margin above my needs nowadays. If I had not had singular good fortune with my ‘unprofessional’ work, I should now be eking out a penurious existence on a perishable annuity of not ‘half-pay’ but more like ¼ pay. Literary capital is not, however, by its originator realizable. If an author sells any of his rights the proceeds (unlike those of other property) are reckoned to be part of his income for the year, and I. tax and Surtax pocket all or nearly all of them. So I certainly cannot provide the thousandsfn106 now asked for a flat or bungalow near the sea. However, on the income-front things still go well. My campaign in U.S.A. has gone well. ‘Ace Books’ are in quite a spot, and many institutions have banned all their products. They are selling their pirate edition quite well, but it is being discovered to be very badly and erroneously printed; and I am getting such an advt. from the rumpus that I expect my ‘authorized’ paper-back will in fact sell more copies than it would, if there had been no trouble or competition.

  280 From a letter to Rayner Unwin

  8 November 1965

  Sir Gawain and Pearl

  I expect you are getting anxious about these. . . . . It was rather disastrous that I had to put them aside, while I had them fully in mind. The work on the ‘revision’ of The Lord of the Rings took me clean away, and I now find work on anything else tiresome.

  I am finding the selection of notes, and compressing them, and the introduction difficult. Too much to say, and not sure of my target. The main target is, of course, the general reader of literary bent with no knowledge of Middle English; but it cannot be doubted that the book will be read by students, and by academic folk of ‘English Departments’. Some of the latter have their pistols loose in the holsters.

  I have, of course, had to do an enormous amount of editorial work, unshown, in order to arrive at a version
; and I have, as I think, made important discoveries with regard to certain words, and some passages (as importance in the little world of M[iddle] E[nglish] goes). The exposition of these points, of course, must await articles in the academic journals; but in the meanwhile I think it desirable to indicate to those who possess the original texts where and how my readings differ from the received.

  Could you possibly tell me what amount of pages, beyond those absorbed by the two texts, I can be allowed? I can then tailor my trimmings.

  281 From a letter to Rayner Unwin

  15 December 1965

  [Concerning preparations for a British paperback edition of The Hobbit.]

  The U[nwin Books] cover [of The Hobbit]. I do not recollect when the rough sketch of the Death of Smaug1 was made; but I think it must have been before the first publication, and 1936 must be near the mark. I am in your hands, but I am still not very happy about the use of this scrawl as a cover. It seems too much in the modern mode in which those who can draw try to conceal it. But perhaps there is a distinction between their productions and one by a man who obviously cannot draw what he sees.