The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  I owe a great deal (and perhaps even the Church a little) to being treated, surprisingly for the time, in a more rational way. Fr Francis obtained permission for me to retain my scholarship at K[ing] E[dward’s] S[chool] and continue there, and so I had the advantage of a (then) first rate school and that of a ‘good Catholic home’ – ‘in excelsis’: virtually a junior inmate of the Oratory house, which contained many learned fathers (largely ‘converts’). Observance of religion was strict. Hilary5 and I were supposed to, and usually did, serve Mass before getting on our bikes to go to school in New Street. So I grew up in a two-front state, symbolizable by the Oratorian Italian pronunciation of Latin, and the strictly ‘philological’ pronunciation at that time introduced into our Cambridge dominated school. I was even allowed to attend the Headmaster’s classes on the N[ew] T[estament] (in Greek). I certainly took no ‘harm’, and was better equipped ultimately to make my way in a non-Catholic professional society. I became a close friend of the H[ead] M[aster] and his son, and also made the acquaintance of the Wiseman family through my friendship with Christopher Luke W. (after whom my Christopher is named). His father was one of the most delightful Christian men I have met: the great Frederick Luke W. (whom Fr Francis always referred to as The Pope of Wesley, because he was the President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference). . . . .

  Oct. 1968.

  A part of this letter seems to have got lost in the general confusion of my papers during the move. My bedroom-study at 76 was full of papers and half written works – which I knew where to lay my hand. I ran down-stairs on the afternoon of June 17 and fell. I was picked off the floor of the hall and transported to the Nuffield [Orthopaedic Centre] as I was and never went back again – never saw my room, or my house, again. In addition to the shock of the fall and the operation, this has had a queer effect. It is like reading a story and coming to a sudden break (where a chapter or two seems missing): complete change of scene. For a long time I felt that I was in a (bad) dream and should wake up perhaps and find myself back in my old room. It also made me feel restless & uncomfortable – and ‘suspicious’. I could not mentally settle in the new home, as if it was something unreal & might vanish! Also I am still – since no one seems able to help me, and I have been too lamed to help myself for long without weariness – searching for vanished or scattered notes; and my library is still a wilderness of disordered books. . . . .

  My ‘poetry’ has received little praise – comment even by some admirers being as often as not contemptuous (I refer to reviews by self-styled literary blokes). Perhaps largely because in the contemporary atmosphere – in which ‘poetry’ must only reflect one’s personal agonies of mind or soul, and exterior things are only valued by one’s own ‘reactions’ – it seems hardly ever recognised that the verses in The L.R. are all dramatic: they do not express the poor old professor’s soul-searchings, but are fitted in style and contents to the characters in the story that sing or recite them, and to the situations in it. . . . .

  I have only since I retired learned that I was a successful professor. I had no idea that my lectures had such an effect – and, if I had, they might have been better. My ‘friends’ among dons were chiefly pleased to tell me that I spoke too fast and might have been interesting if I could be heard. True often: due in part to having too much to say in too little time, in larger part to diffidence, which such comments increased.

  I never gave the customary ‘inaugural’ when taking up either of my ‘chairs’ – because I was too frightened of a don-audience. I substituted a ‘valedictory’ in 1959: and to my surprise it was packed out. But the University press refused to publish it (though they always publish inaugurals) because it was not an ‘inaugural’!6 Yet many people wrote approving my choice. Julian Huxley said it was an excellent innovation that should be followed. (‘Inaugurals’ are largely addressed to small audiences, casually assembled (but probably containing some professional ill-wishers who favoured some other candidate), and are either dull, or off the point, or occasionally pompous announcements of changes of policy and what the new professor intends to do.)

  307 From a letter to Amy Ronald

  14 November 1968

  I said to my wife (about 3p.m. today): ‘there’s a man coming to the back door with a box, but it is not from our people so it must be a mistake. Don’t get up! I’ll deal with it.’

  So it was that I received 4 Ports and 3 Sherries, from a cheery fellow, who laughed: ‘It’s all right, you’ll find. Just a nice present from somebody.’

  I should say it is a nice present: and not just from Somebody. I cannot think why youbodyfn122 treat us with such magnificence. But it is very delightful. And, of course, being from you, well-timed. We are fairly snug now in our new home, having learned how to manage the central heating that was unfamiliar; but even here in a sheltered woodland (though within sound of the sea) nights, and days, grow chill. Port and a good sweet sherry are great warmers.

  Elde is me istolen on … ich am eldre than i was a wintre and ek a lore:1 so wrote a moralist (c. AD 1200 or earlier). It did not touch me until recently. I hope ‘ek a lore’ (sc. also in learning, which seems to include the learning of experience, justifying the giving of advice!) is true. But I doubt it.

  308 To Christopher Tolkien

  2 January 1969

  [19 Lakeside Road, Branksome Park, Poole]

  Dearest C.

  This is hardly ‘correspondence’; but I must just write to wish you good fortune in 1969. . . . .

  My library is now in order; and nearly all the things that I thought were lost have turned up. (Also some things which I thought were lost before the move!) Joe Wright’s Gothic Gram[mar] first edn. has vanished; but it is of no importance, except sentimental. It was the acquisition of this by accident that opened my eyes to a window on ‘Gmc. philology’. No doubt it contributed to my poor performance in Hon. Mods.; though it guided me to sit at the feet of old Joe in person. He proved a good friend and adviser. Also he grounded me in G[reek] and L[atin] philology. (It was only many years later that I discovered and met the angelic examiner who gave me α+ in Gk. Philol. and so saved my ‘bacon’, by squeaking into a ‘second’ instead of merited ‘third’, with the consequence that I did not lose my ‘exhibition’, and was allowed by a generous college – Farnell, my tutor and then Rector, had a respect for philology and was one of the dons who in the days of Yorke Powell and Vigfusson had become aware of Northern learning – to transfer to ‘English’ avowedly as a pure philologue with no liking at all for English.). . . .

  I have horrible arthritis in the left hand, which cannot excuse this scrawl, since, mercifully, my right is not yet affected! Love to you both. I wish you were not so far away. (But it is very comfortable here!). . . .

  309 From a letter to Amy Ronald

  2 January 1969

  Now, my dear, as to my name. It is John: a name much used and loved by Christians, and since I was born on the Octave of St John the Evangelist, I take him as my patron – though neither my father, nor my mother at that time, would have thought of anything so Romish as giving me a name because it was a saint’s. I was called John because it was the custom for the eldest son of the eldest son to be called John in my family. My father was Arthur, eldest of my grandfather John Benjamin’s second family; but his elder half-brother John had died leaving only 3 daughters. So John I had to be, and was dandled on the knee of old J.B., as the heir, before he died. (I was only four when he died at 92 in 1896.)1

  My father favoured John Benjamin Reuel (which I should now have liked); but my mother was confident that I should be a daughter, and being fond of more ‘romantic’ (& less O[ld] T[estament] like) names decided on Rosalind. When I turned up, prematurely, and a boy though weak and ailing, Ronald was substituted. It was then a much rarer name in England as a Christian name – I never in fact knew any of my contemporaries at school or Oxford who had the name – though it seems now alas! to be prevalent among the criminal and other degraded classes. Anywa
y I have always treated it with respect, and from earliest days refused to allow it to be abbreviated or tagged with. But for myself I remained John. Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J. Rsquared). . . . .2

  As for an ‘Elvish’ name: I could of course invent one. But I do not really belong inside my invented history; and do not wish to!

  As for Master: I am not one. In high uses it would be presumptuous and profane to adopt such a title; in lower uses it is conceited. I am a ‘professor’ – or was, and occasionally in more inspired moments deserved the title – and it is now at any rate (though not in Oxford of the generation before mine) a customary social title.

  So what? I think if for private reasons John or Ronald is not pleasing for you to use (I quite understand that the collocation John Ronald is so) then we must fall back on ‘Professor’. (And I shall call you Lady!)

  Of course there is always Reuel. This was (I believe) the surname of a friend of my grandfather. The family believed it to be French (which is formally possible); but if so it is an odd chance that it appears twice in the O[ld] T[estament] as an unexplained other name for Jethro Moses’ father-in-law. All my children, and my children’s children, and their children, have the name.

  I think I shall call you Aimée, which I like better than its anglicization, and suits your love & knowledge of French. . . . .

  [As a postscript to the letter:]

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  had a cat called Grimalkin:

  once a familiar of Herr Grimm,

  now he spoke the law to him.

  310 To Camilla Unwin

  [Rayner Unwin’s daughter Camilla was told, as part of a school ‘project’, to write and ask: ‘What is the purpose of life?’]

  20 May 1969

  [19 Lakeside Road, Branksome Park, Poole]

  Dear Miss Unwin,

  I am sorry my reply has been delayed. I hope it will reach you in time. What a very large question! I do not think ‘opinions’, no matter whose, are of much use without some explanation of how they are arrived at; but on this question it is not easy to be brief.

  What does the question really mean? Purpose and Life both need some definition. Is it a purely human and moral question; or does it refer to the Universe? It might mean: How ought I to try and use the life-span allowed to me? OR: What purpose/design do living things serve by being alive? The first question, however, will find an answer (if any) only after the second has been considered.

  I think that questions about ‘purpose’ are only really useful when they refer to the conscious purposes or objects of human beings, or to the uses of things they design and make. As for ‘other things’ their value resides in themselves: they ARE, they would exist even if we did not. But since we do exist one of their functions is to be contemplated by us. If we go up the scale of being to ‘other living things’, such as, say, some small plant, it presents shape and organization: a ‘pattern’ recognizable (with variation) in its kin and offspring; and that is deeply interesting, because these things are ‘other’ and we did not make them, and they seem to proceed from a fountain of invention incalculably richer than our own.

  Human curiosity soon asks the question HOW: in what way did this come to be? And since recognizable ‘pattern’ suggests design, may proceed to WHY? But WHY in this sense, implying reasons and motives, can only refer to a MIND. Only a Mind can have purposes in any way or degree akin to human purposes. So at once any question: ‘Why did life, the community of living things, appear in the physical Universe?’ introduces the Question: Is there a God, a Creator-Designer, a Mind to which our minds are akin (being derived from it) so that It is intelligible to us in part. With that we come to religion and the moral ideas that proceed from it. Of those things I will only say that ‘morals’ have two sides, derived from the fact that we are individuals (as in some degree are all living things) but do not, cannot, live in isolation, and have a bond with all other things, ever closer up to the absolute bond with our own human kind.

  So morals should be a guide to our human purposes, the conduct of our lives: (a) the ways in which our individual talents can be developed without waste or misuse; and (b) without injuring our kindred or interfering with their development. (Beyond this and higher lies self-sacrifice for love.)

  But these are only answers to the smaller question. To the larger there is no answer, because that requires a complete knowledge of God, which is unattainable. If we ask why God included us in his Design, we can really say no more than because He Did.

  If you do not believe in a personal God the question: ‘What is the purpose of life?’ is unaskable and unanswerable. To whom or what would you address the question? But since in an odd corner (or odd corners) of the Universe things have developed with minds that ask questions and try to answer them, you might address one of these peculiar things. As one of them I should venture to say (speaking with absurd arrogance on behalf of the Universe): ‘I am as I am. There is nothing you can do about it. You may go on trying to find out what I am, but you will never succeed. And why you want to know, I do not know. Perhaps the desire to know for the mere sake of knowledge is related to the prayers that some of you address to what you call God. At their highest these seem simply to praise Him for being, as He is, and for making what He has made, as He has made it.’

  Those who believe in a personal God, Creator, do not think the Universe is in itself worshipful, though devoted study of it may be one of the ways of honouring Him. And while as living creatures we are (in part) within it and part of it, our ideas of God and ways of expressing them will be largely derived from contemplating the world about us. (Though there is also revelation both addressed to all men and to particular persons.)

  So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.

  And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD … all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.

  This is much too long, and also much too short – on such a question.

  With best wishes

  J. R. R. Tolkien.

  311 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

  31 July 1969

  I was delighted to get your letter of 27th today, and felt very unhappy about my own silence. I begin to feel a bit desperate: endlessly frustrated. I have at last managed to release the demon of invention only to find myself in the state of a man who after a strong draught of a sleeping potion is waked up and not allowed to lie down for more than a few consecutive minutes. Neither in one world or another. Business – endless – lies neglected, yet I cannot get anything of my real work finished. Then came this latest stroke of malice. I was assailed by very considerable pain, and depression, which no ordinary remedy would relieve. Three weeks ago last Tuesday Tolhurst came and ‘gave me the works’, and diagnosed an inflamed/or diseased gall-bladder. Took me at once off all fats (including butter) and all alcohol. Usually a cheerful and encouraging doctor, he was alarmingly serious, and the prospect looked dark. We (or at least I) know far too little about the complicated machine we inhabit, and (like the totally unmechanical to whom ‘carburettor’ is the name of a small part of the engine of minor and little known function) underestimate the gall-bladder! It is a vital part of the chemical factory, and apart from all else can cause intense pain, if it goes wrong; and if it is ‘diseased’: well you are ‘for it’. – I do not know why one wants to talk about illnesses, espe
c. since details are intricate and boring: cutting short, I was treated with great civility by the X-ray-man. He cut out all protocol, and after second bout he developed the plates at once, and came back to me with a smile, saying ‘the plates will go to your doctor who will report and advise you but I can say, though the plates are still wet, that your g-b is in its right place and is functioning, and I can see no gall-stones or growths. I should go now and have a good lunch.’ Tólhurst came yesterday, and took me off diet: butter and alcohol ‘in moderation’. I feel quite well: i.e. as well as I did before the outset. But life is not easy. The Parke1 has gone sick. Mummy is ailing, and I fear slowly ‘declining’. Also I feel very cut off. . . . .

  312 From a letter to Amy Ronald

  16 November 1969

  I meant to write to let you know how much I am perturbed by and sorry for your afflictions: poor dear. I pray for you – because I have a feeling (more near a certainty) that God, for some ineffable reason which to us may seem almost like humour, is so curiously ready to answer the prayers of the least worthy of his suppliants – if they pray for others. I do not of course mean to say that He only answers the prayers of the unworthy (who ought not to expect to be heard at all), or I should not now be benefitting by the prayers of others. What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in – especially for those who have also the burden of age, whose friends and all they especially care for are afflicted in the same way. Chesterton once said that it is our duty to keep the Flag of This World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. Gandalf added that it is not for us to choose the times into which we are born, but to do what we could to repair them; but the spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and so many-headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than personally to refuse to worship any of the hydras’ heads. . . . .