The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (57 page)

24 November 1959

I am deeply grateful to the Board of the Faculty of English for the extremely generous terms in which they have addressed me. My only misgiving is that they present a picture of a professor far superior to the one that has retired. However, conscious merit is no doubt a solace and support, but there is nonetheless a peculiar pleasure in receiving honours and compliments one doesn't deserve. One result of retirement that I never expected is that I actually miss the meetings of the Board. Not, of course, the agenda, but the gathering together of so many dear friends.

9 December 1959

My delay in answering your letter of December 3rd is mainly due to the fact that I have become immersed again in work in which you are interested. I am afraid that you may be perturbed rather than surprised (knowing too well the vagaries of authors, or at least of mine), to hear that this is in wrong order. With the help of my secretary I have been charging well ahead with the reconstruction of the
Silmarillion
etc. Your letter comes as a timely if unwelcome jerk on the reins. Quite clearly I must take up
Gawain
immediately. I shall not manage it before Christmas; but I recently ordered and inspected the material and I do not think that the actual text of the translation of
Gawain
and of
Pearl
now need very much work. I shall be able to let you have the text of the two poems soon after Christmas; they can be set up separately. I am still a little uncertain about what other matter to add to them by way of introduction or notes. I think very little, since people who buy the translations will probably belong to one of two classes: those who just want the translation, and those who have access to editions and other full treatments of the problems presented by the poems.

31 July 1960

I am in fact utterly stuck – lost in a bottomless bog, and anything that would cheer me would be welcome. The crimes of omission that I committed in order to complete the ‘L. of the R.' are being avenged. The chief is the
Ancrene Riwle.
My edition of the prime MS. should have
been completed
many years
ago! I did at least try to clear it out of the way before retirement, and by a vast effort sent in the text in Sept.
1958
. But then one of the misfortunes that attend on delay occurred; and my MS. disappeared into the confusion of the Printing Strike. The proofs actually arrived at the beginning of
this
June, when I was in full tide of composition for the
Silmarillion,
and had lost the threads of the M[iddle] E[nglish] work. I stalled for a while, but I am now under extreme pressure: 10 hours hard per diem day after day, trying to induce order into a set of confused and desperately tricky proofs, and notes. And then I have to write an introduction. (And then there is
Sir Gawain
.) Until the proofs of the
text
at least have gone back, I cannot lift my head.

12 September 1960

I have just received a copy of C.S.L.'s latest:
Studies in Words.
Alas! His ponderous silliness is becoming a fixed manner. I am deeply relieved to find I am not mentioned.

I wrote for him a long analysis of the semantics and formal history of
^fn88
BHŪ with special reference to
. All that remains is the first 9 lines of PHUSIS (pp. 33–34) with the characteristic Lewisian intrusion of ‘beards and cucumbers'. The rest is dismissed on p. 36 with ‘we have not a shred of evidence'. He remains at best and worst an Oxford ‘classical' don – when dealing with words. I think the best bit is the last chapter, and the only really wise remark is on the last page: ‘I think we must get it firmly fixed in our minds that the very occasions on which we should most like to write a slashing review are precisely those on which we had much better hold our tongues.' Ergo silebo.
¹

10 December 1960

Thank you for your news of the ‘Puffin' offer, and your advice. I may safely leave the decision to your own wisdom. The chances of profit or loss, in cash or otherwise, are evidently neatly balanced. If you wish to know my personal feelings: I am no longer able to ignore cash-profit, even to the odd £100, but I do share your reluctance to cheapen the old Hobbit. Unless the profit or advantage is clear, I would much rather leave him to amble along; and he still shows a good walking-pace. And I am not fond of Puffins or Penguins or other soft-shelled fowl: they eat other birds' eggs, and are better left to vacated nests.

31 December 1960

The Lord of the Rings
was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in
The House of the Wolfings
or
The Roots of the Mountains
.

5 January 1961

Númenor, shortened form of
Númenórë
, is my own invention, compounded from
numē–n
, ‘going down' √ndū, nu), sunset, West, and
nōrë
‘land, country' =
Westernesse
. The legends of
Númenórë
are only in the background of
The Lord of the Rings
, though (of course) they were written first, and are only summarised in Appendix A. They are my own use for my own purposes of the
Atlantis
legend, but not based on special
knowledge,
but on a special personal concern with this tradition of the culture-bearing men of the Sea, which so profoundly affected the imagination of peoples of Europe with westward-shores.

C. S. Lewis is a very old friend and colleague of mine, and indeed I owe to his encouragement the fact that in spite of obstacles (including the 1939 war!) I persevered and eventually finished
The Lord of the Rings.
He heard all of it, bit by bit, read aloud, but never saw it in print till after his trilogy was published. His
Numinor
was derived, by ear, from
Númenor
, and was indeed intended to refer to my work and other legends (not published) of mine, which he had heard.

I am now under contract engaged (among alas! other less congenial tasks) in putting into order for publication the mythology and stories of the First and Second Ages – written long ago, but judged hardly publishable, until (so it seems) the surprising success of
The Lord of the Rings,
which comes at the end, has provided a probable demand for the beginnings. But there are, I fear, no
hobbits
in
The Silmarillion
(or history of the Three Jewels), little fun or earthiness but mostly grief and disaster. Those critics who scoffed at
The Lord
because ‘all the good boys came home safe and everyone was happy ever after' (quite untrue) ought to be satisfied. They will not be, of course – even if they deign to notice the book!

24 January 1961

I have great sympathy with any foreign publisher adventurous enough to embark on a translation of my work. After all, my chief interest in being translated is pecuniary, as long as the basic text is treated with respect; so that even if the touchiness of parenthood is outraged, I should wish to refrain from doing or saying anything that may damage the good business of being published in other countries. And I have also Messrs. Allen and Unwin to consider. But the matter of the Appendices has a pecuniary aspect.

I do not believe that they give the work a ‘scholarly' (? read
pedantisk
) look, and they play a major part in producing the total effect: as Messrs. Gebers' translator has himself pointed out (selecting the detail and the
documentation
as two chief ingredients in producing the compelling sense of historical reality). In any case, purchasers of vol. iii will presumably be already involved: vol. iii is not a separate book to be purchased solely on its own merits. Actually, an analysis of many hundreds of letters shows that the Appendices have played a very large part in reader's pleasure, in turning library readers into purchasers (since the Appendices are needed for reference), and in creating the demand for another book. A sharp distinction must be drawn between the tastes of reviewers (‘donnish folly' and all that) and of readers! I think I understand the tastes of simple-minded folk (like myself) pretty well. But I do appreciate the question of costs and retail prices. There is a price beyond which simple-minded folk cannot go, even if they would like to. . . . .

I do not know what the situation is with regard to the sale of the English book in countries where a translation has been published. I suppose that no obstacle, direct or indirect, is put in the way of obtaining them, and they can in any case be ordered by a determined purchaser through a bookseller. The demand is no doubt very small. . . . and not of any financial interest. But I am interested in the point. The original is my only protection against the translators. I cannot exercise any control over the translation of such a large text, even into the few languages that I know anything about; yet the translators are guilty of some very strange mistakes. (As I should be, working as they must under pressure in a limited time).

Dr Ohlmarks,
¹
for instance, though he is reported to me to be clever and ingenious, can produce such things as this. In translating vol. i p. 12, ‘they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough leathery soles and
were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads', he read the text as ‘. . . their feet had thick
fea
thery soles, and they were clad in a thick curling hair …' and so produces in his Introduction a picture of hobbits whose outdoor garb was of matted hair, while under their feet they had solid feather-cushion treads! This is made doubly absurd, since it occurs in a passage where he is suggesting that the hobbits are modelled on the inhabitants of the idyllic suburb of Headington.

I do not object to biographical notice, if it is desirable (the Dutch did without it). But it should be correct, and it should be pertinent. I think I must ask to be allowed to see anything of this kind in future, before it is printed. Or alternatively I will draw up a brief statement which I will submit to you as a possible hand-out in case of any demand for such material.

Who is Who
is not a safe source in the hands of foreigners ignorant of England. From it Ohlmarks has woven a ridiculous fantasy. Ohlmarks is a very vain man (as I discovered in our correspondence), preferring his own fancy to facts, and very ready to pretend to knowledge which he does not possess. He does not hesitate to attribute to me sentiments and beliefs which I repudiate. Among them a dislike of the University of Leeds, because it was ‘northern' and no older than the Victorian seventies. This is impertinent and entirely untrue. If it should come to the knowledge of Leeds (fortunately unlikely) I should make him apologize.

23 February 1961

I now enclose a copy and version of Ohlmarks' nonsense. In the hope that you may think it justifies my annoyance. I have not looked at his second outburst. I feel I cannot just now take any more.

It is hard to believe that the deep-rooted native-born hobbit from Middle South England. . . . would feel very much at home [in Leeds]. Inauguration into the Anglo-Saxon chair in Oxford was for him like coming home again from a trial expedition up to the distant ‘Fornost'.