The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (19 page)

A propos of yr. reminder about ‘Lord Nelson' – it was in the preliminary meeting to form a United Christian Council – he's always about. I forgot to tell you that at Gielgud's ‘Hamlet' he seized on a quiet moment to yell from the Dress Circle ‘A very fine performance, and I'm enjoying it very much, but cut out the swear-words!' He did the same at the Playhouse. He was nearly lynched in the New Theatre. But he goes on his odd way. . . . .

Your own Father.

24 November 1944 (FS 64)

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

My dearest, there has been a splendid flow of letters from you, since I last wrote. . . . . We were most amused by your account of the Wings ceremony. I wonder how the ‘native band' enjoyed being whizzed through the air! I also wondered how you came to have seen and to have remembered the quotation from the Exeter Book Gnomics – which (though I had not thought of it before) does cert. provide a most admirable plea in defence of singing in one's bath. It cheered me a lot to see a bit of Anglo-Saxon, and I hope indeed that you'll soon be able to return and perfect your study of that noble idiom. As the father said to his son: ‘Is nu fela folca þætte fyrngewntu healdan wille, ac him hyge
brosnað.' Which might be a comment on the crowding of universities and the decline of wit. ‘There is now a crowd of folks that want to get hold of the old documents, but their wits are decaying!' I have to teach or talk about Old English to such a lot of young persons who simply are not equipped by talent or character to grasp it or profit by it. . . . . Yesterday 2 lectures, re-drafting findings of Committee on Emergency Exams. . . . and then a great event: an evening Inklings. I reached the Mitre at 8 where I was joined by C.W. and the Red Admiral (Havard), resolved to take fuel on board before joining the well-oiled diners in Magdalen (C.S.L. and Owen Barfield). C.S.L. was highly flown, but we were also in good fettle; while O.B. is the only man who can tackle C.S.L. making him define everything and interrupting his most dogmatic pronouncements with subtle
distinguo's.
The result was a most amusing and highly contentious evening, on which (had an outsider eavesdropped) he would have thought it a meeting of fell enemies hurling deadly insults before drawing their guns. Warnie was in excellent majoral form. On one occasion when the audience had flatly refused to hear Jack discourse on and define ‘Chance', Jack said: ‘Very well, some other time, but if you die tonight you'll be cut off knowing a great deal less about Chance than you might have.' Warnie: ‘That only illustrates what I've always said: every cloud has a silver lining.' But there was some quite interesting stuff. A short play on Jason and Medea by Barfield, 2 excellent sonnets sent by a young poet to C.S.L.; and some illuminating discussion of ‘ghosts', and of the special nature of Hymns (CSL has been on the Committee revising Ancient and Modern). I did not leave till 12.30, and reached my bed about 1 a.m. this morn. . . . .

Your own father.

29 November 1944

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

My dearest,

Here is a small consignment of ‘The Ring': the last two chapters that have been written, and the end of the Fourth Book of that great Romance, in which you will see that, as is all too easy, I have got the hero into such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty. Lewis was moved almost to tears by the last chapter. All the same, I chiefly want to hear what you think, as for a long time now I have written with you most in mind.

I see from my Register that I sent 3 chapters off on October 14th, and another 2 on October 25th. Those must have been: Herbs and Stewed
Rabbit; Faramir; and The Forbidden Pool; and Journey to the Crossroads; and the Stairs of Kirith Ungol. The first lot should have reached you by now, I hope about your birthday; the second should soon come; and I hope this lot will get to you early in the New Year. I eagerly await your verdict. Very trying having your chief audience Ten Thousand Miles away, on or off The Walloping Window-blind. Even more trying for the audience, doubtless, but authors, qua authors, are a hopelessly egotist tribe. Book Five and Last opens with the ride of Gandalf to Minas Tirith, with which The Palantir, last chapter of Book Three closed. Some of this is written or sketched. Then should follow the raising of the siege of Minas Tirith by the onset of the Riders of Rohan, in which King Theoden falls; the driving back of the enemy, by Gandalf and Aragorn, to the Black Gate; the parley in which Sauron shows various tokens (such as the mithril coat) to prove that he has captured Frodo, but Gandalf refuses to treat (a horrible dilemma, all the same, even for a wizard). Then we shift back to Frodo, and his rescue by Sam. From a high place they see all Sauron's vast reserves loosed through the Black Gate, and then hurry on to Mount Doom through a deserted Mordor. With the destruction of the Ring, the exact manner of which is not certain – all these last bits were written ages ago, but no longer fit in detail, nor in elevation (for the whole thing has become much larger and loftier) – Baraddur crashes, and the forces of Gandalf sweep into Mordor. Frodo and Sam, fighting with the last Nazgul on an island of rock surrounded by the fire of the erupting Mount Doom, are rescued by Gandalf's eagle; and then the clearing up of all loose threads, down even to Bill Femy's pony, must take place. A lot of this work will be done in a final chapter where Sam is found reading out of an enormous book to his children, and answering all their questions about what happened to everybody (that will link up with his discourse on the nature of stories in the Stairs of Kirith Ungol).
¹
But the final scene will be the passage of Bilbo and Elrond and Galadriel through the woods of the Shire on their way to the Grey Havens. Frodo will join them and pass over the Sea (linking with the vision he had of a far green country in the house of Tom Bombadil). So ends the Middle Age and the Dominion of Men begins, and Aragom far away on the throne of Gondor labours to bring some order and to preserve some memory of old among the welter of men that Sauron has poured into the West. But Elrond has gone, and all the High Elves. What happens to the Ents I don't yet know. It will probably work out very differently from this plan when it really gets written, as the thing seems to write itself once I get going, as if the truth comes out then, only imperfectly glimpsed in the preliminary sketch. . . . .

All the love of your own father.

18 December 1944 (FS 68)

Your news of yourself does not in some ways add to my equanimity: a dangerous trade, but may God keep you, dear boy; but as you seem to be enjoying part of it more than anything up to now, I take comfort in that. I should feel happier, if your time was better organized, so that you could get reasonable rest: training by straining seems irrational. But I fear an Air Force is a fundamentally irrational thing
per se
. I could wish dearly that you had nothing to do with anything so monstrous. It is in fact a sore trial to me that any son of mine should serve this modern Moloch. But such wishes are vain, and it is, I clearly understand, your duty to do as well in such service as you have the strength and aptitude to do. In any case, it is only a kind of squeamishness, perhaps, like a man who enjoys steak and kidney (or did), but would not be connected with the butchery business. As long as war is fought with such weapons, and one accepts any profits that may accrue (such as preservation of one's skin and even ‘victory') it is merely shirking the issue to hold war-aircraft in special horror. I do so all the same. . . . .

This morning. . . . I saw C.S.L. for a while. His fourth (or fifth?) novel is brewing, and seems likely to clash with mine (my dimly projected third).
¹
I have been getting a lot of new ideas about Prehistory lately (via Beowulf and other sources of which I may have written) and want to work them into the long shelved time-travel story I began. C.S.L. is planning a story about the descendants of Seth and Cain. We also begin to consider writing a book in collaboration on ‘Language' (Nature, Origins, Functions).
²
Would there were time for all these projects!

24 December 1944 (FS 70)

I am v. glad that you enjoyed the next three ch. of the Ring. The 3rd consignment shd. reach you about Dec. 10 and the last on 14 Jan. I shall be eager for more comments when you have time. Cert. Sam is the most closely drawn character, the successor to Bilbo of the first book, the genuine hobbit. Frodo is not so interesting, because he has to be highminded, and has (as it were) a vocation. The book will prob. end up with Sam. Frodo will naturally become too ennobled and rarefied by the achievement of the great Quest, and will pass West with all the great figures; but S. will settle down to the Shire and gardens and inns. C. Williams who is reading it all says the great thing is that its
centre
is not in strife and war and heroism (though they are understood and depicted) but in freedom, peace, ordinary life and good liking. Yet he agrees that these very things require the existence of a great world outside the Shire
– lest they should grow stale by custom and turn into the humdrum. . . . .

By the way, you wrote
Harebell
and emended it to
Hairbell.
I don't know whether it will interest you, but I looked up the whole matter of this name once – after an argument with a dogmatic scientist. It is plain (a) that the ancient name is
harebell
(an animal name, like so many old flower-names), and (b) that this meant the
hyacinth
not the
campanula
.
Bluebell
, not so old a name, was coined for the campanula, and the ‘bluebells' of Scotland are, of course, not the hyacinths but the campanulas. The transference of the name (in England, not in Scotland, nor indeed in uncorrupted country-speech in parts of England) and its fictitious alteration
hairbell
seems to be due to ignorant (of etymology) and meddlesome book-botanists of recent times, of the sort that tried
folk'sglove
for
foxglove
!, by whom we've been led astray. As for the latter, the only part of the name that is doubtful is the
glove,
not the
fox
.
Foxes glófa
occurs in Anglo-Saxon but also in form
-clófa:
in old herbals, where it seems pretty rashly applied to plants with big broad leaves, e.g.
burdock
(called also
foxes clife,
cf.
clifwyrt
^fn8
=foxglove
). The causes of these ancient associations with animals are little known or understood. Perhaps they sometimes depend on lost beast-fables. It would be tempting to try and make some fables to fit the names.

Are you still inventing names for the nameless flowers you meet? If so, remember that the old names are not always descriptive, but often mysterious! My best inventions (in elvish of the Gnomish dialect) were
elanor
and
nifredil
; though I like A-S
symbelmynë
or
evermind
found on the Great Mound of Rohan. I think I shall have to invent some more for Sam's garden at the end.

28 December 1944 (FS 71)

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

My dearest:

You have no need to reproach yourself! We are getting lots of letters from you, and v. quickly. . . . . I am glad the third lot of Ring arrived to date, and that you liked it – although it seems to have added to yr. homesickness. It just shows the difference between life and literature: for anyone who found himself actually on the stairs of Kirith Ungol would wish to exchange it for almost any other place in the world, save Mordor itself. But if lit. teaches us anything at all, it is this: that we have in us an eternal element, free from care and fear, which can survey the things that in ‘life' we call evil with serenity (that is not without
appreciating their quality, but without any disturbance of our spiritual equilibrium). Not in the same way, but in some such way, we shall all doubtless survey our own story when we know it (and a great deal more of the Whole Story). I am afraid the next two chapters won't come for some time (about middle of Jan) which is a pity, as not only are they (I think) v. moving and exciting, but Sam has some interesting comments on the rel. of stories and actual ‘adventures'. But I count it a triumph that these two chapters, which I did not think as good as the rest of Book IV, could distract you from the noise of the Air Crew Room!. . . .

The weather has for me been one of the chief events of Christmas. It froze hard with a heavy fog, and so we have had displays of Hoarfrost such as I only remember once in Oxford before (in the other house
¹
I think) and only twice before in my life. One of the most lovely events of Northern Nature. We woke (late) on St Stephen's Day to find all our windows opaque, painted over with frost-patterns, and outside a dim silent misty world, all white, but with a light jewelry of rime; every cobweb a little lace net, even the old fowls' tent a diamond-patterned pavilion. I spent the day (after chores, that is from about 11.30, as I got up late) out of doors, well wrapped up in old rags, hewing old brambles and making a fire the smoke of which rose in a still unmoving column straight up into the fog-roof. . . . . The rime was yesterday even thicker and more fantastic. When a gleam of sun (about 11) got through it was breathtakingly beautiful: trees like motionless fountains of white branching spray against a golden light and, high overhead, a pale translucent blue. It did not melt. About 11 p.m. the fog cleared and a high round moon lit the whole scene with a deadly white light: a vision of some other world or time. It was so still that I stood in the garden hatless and uncloaked without a shiver, though there must have been many degrees of frost. . . . .

Mr Eden in the house
²
the other day expressed pain at the occurrences in Greece ‘the home of democracy'. Is he ignorant, or insincere?
δημοχρατìα
was not in Greek a word of approval but was nearly equivalent to ‘mob-rule'; and he neglected to note that Greek Philosophers – and far more is Greece the home of philosophy – did
not
approve of it. And the great Greek states, esp. Athens at the time of its high art and power, were rather Dictatorships, if they were not military monarchies like Sparta! And modern Greece has as little connexion with ancient Hellas as we have with Britain before Julius Agricola. . . . .