The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (59 page)

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.

6 December 1961

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 rather 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.

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'.

Dwarfs
etc. is of course the only recognized modern form of the plural; but the (inconsistent) correction of
elvish
has not even that excuse. The older and ‘historical' form
elvish
is still recognized, and appears even in such popular dictionaries as the ‘Pocket Oxford'. I suppose I should be grateful that Cox and Wyman
²
have not inflicted the change from
elven
to
elfin
and
further
to
farther
on me which Jarrolds
³
attempted, but Jarrolds were at least dealing with a MS. that had a good many casual errors in it. I believe there is only one error remaining in the text from which the Puffin was printed:
like
for
likes
(6th imp. p. 85 line 1; Puffin p. 76, line 23). This crept in in the 6th imp. I think. Not that Gollum would miss the chance of a sibilant! Puffin has not emended it. I suppose Gollum was regarded as ‘without the law' and immune from the dictates of dictionaries or ‘house-rules'. Not so the narrator.

Apart from this the errors appear to be few. I have noted:
waiting
is omitted before
for
(puffin p. 32/11).
ahead
appears as
head
(p. 87/5 from bottom). There is an inverted g in
examining
(p. 225/2 from bottom). And
oubht, bood
appear for
ought
and
good
on p. 228.

I am sorry to inflict such nigglings on you (I am a natural niggler, alas!) which will not seem to anyone else as important as they do to me; and nothing can be done about them now, anyway. Though
Penguin Books
might be informed that they have not passed unobserved. In fact I do not think that I should have signed a copy for Sir Allen Lane,
⁴
if I had observed them before. I feel inclined to tell him so, and offer to emend the copy in my own fair hand, if he will return it!

This is a Fell Winter indeed, and I am expecting White Wolves to cross the river. At present dead calm reigns, as the only car to appear in my road slid backwards downhill and disappeared. There is small chance of this reaching you tomorrow Jan. 1 to wish you a Happy New Year. I hope you have plenty of food in store! It is my birthday on Jan. 3rd, and I look like spending it in the isolation of a house turned igloo; but the companionship of several bottles of what has turned out a most excellent burgundy (since I helped to select it in its infancy) will no doubt mitigate that: Clos de Tart 1949, just at its top. With that hobbit-like note I will close, wishing you and your wife and children all blessings in 1962.

Yours ever,

Ronald Tolkien.

P.S. Will you please thank Miss M.J. Hill (and yourself) for the copy of
School Magazine
Nov. 1961 (N. S. Wales) containing the
Hobbit
extract and the article ‘Something Special'. I thought the latter was well written for its purpose. . . . . But alas! faced with actual stories people are always more ready to believe in learning and arcane knowledge than in invention, especially if they are bemused by the title ‘professor'. There are no songs or stories preserved about Elves or Dwarfs in ancient English, and little enough in any other Germanic language. Words, a few names, that is about all. I do not recall any Dwarf or Elf that plays an actual part in any story save Andvari in the Norse versions of the Nibelung matter. There is no story attached to the name Eikinskjaldi, save the one that I invented for Thorin Oakenshield. As far as old English goes ‘dwarf'
(dweorg)
is a mere gloss for
nanus,
or the name of convulsions and recurrent fevers; and ‘elf' we should suppose to be associated only with rheumatism, toothache and nightmares, if it were not for the occurrence of
aelfsciene
‘elven-fair' applied to Sarah and Judith!, and a few glosses such as
dryades, wuduelfen.
In all Old English poetry ‘elves' (ylfe) occurs once only, in
Beowulf,
associated with trolls, giants, and the Undead, as the accursed offspring of Cain. The gap between that and, say, Elrond or Galadriel is not bridged by learning. Now you will feel this letter has become a pamphlet or a new year garland! But you have a w[aste] p[aper] b[asket] I suppose, at least as capacious as mine. JRRT.

12 April 1962

I have given every moment that I could spare to the ‘poems', in spite of the usual obstacles, and some new ones.

I am afraid that I have lost all confidence in these things, and all
judgement, and unless Pauline Baynes can be inspired by them, I cannot see them making a ‘book'. I do not see why she should be inspired, though I fervently hope that she will be. Some of the things may be good in their way, and all of them privately amuse me; but elderly hobbits are easily pleased.

The various items – all that I now venture to offer, some with misgiving – do not really ‘collect'. The only possible link is the fiction that they come from the Shire from about the period of
The Lord of the Rings.
But that fits some uneasily. I have done a good deal of work, trying to make them fit better: if not much to their good, I hope not to their serious detriment. You may note that I have written a new
Bombadil
poem, which I hope is adequate to go with the older one, though for its understanding it requires some knowledge of the
L.R.
At any rate it performs the service of further ‘integrating' Tom with the world of the
L.R.
into which he was inserted.
^fn89
I am afraid it largely tickles my pedantic fancy, because of its echo of the Norse Niblung matter (the otter's whisker);
¹
and because one of the lines comes straight, incredible though that may seem, from
The Ancrene Wisse
.
²
. . . .

Some kind of foreword might possibly be required. The enclosed is not intended for that purpose! Though one or two of its points might be made more simply. But I found it easier, and more amusing (for myself) to represent to you in the form of a ridiculous editorial fiction what I have done to the verses, and what their references now are. Actually, although a fiction, the relative age, order of writing, and references of the items are pretty nearly represented as they really were.

I hope you are not greatly disappointed by my efforts.

18 July 1962

As for your noble and self-sacrificing suggestion. Cash the cheque, please! And spend it. One cannot attach conditions to a gift; but I should be best pleased, if it was spent soon, and on
yourself
. It is a very small sum. Taken only from my present abundance, over and above the needs of Edith and myself, and of my children. Edith happily does not need a chair; and I could give her one if she did. (It is an astonishing situation, and I hope I am sufficiently grateful to God. Only a little while ago I was
wondering if we should be able to go on living here, on my inadequate pension. I have never been able to give before, and I have received unrepayable gifts in the past. . . . . I receive as a septuagenarian a retirement pension, of which I feel it proper to give away at least what the Tax collectors leave in my hands (a National one, I mean: I refused the University pension, and took the lump sum and invested it in a trust managed by my bank). All this, simply to assure you that the little gift was a personal pleasure, hardly worthy of much thanks; also to assure you that I can help more if needed. Saving universal catastrophe, I am not likely to be hard up again in my time. This is the advice of a very shrewd old publisher. Also I gather that he told Edmund Fuller
¹
that my books were the most important, and also the most profitable thing that he had published in a long life, and that they would certainly remain so after his time and his sons' time. (This is just for you: it is unwise to advertise still more to boast of good fortune, as all Fairy-stories teach. So say nout. I do not want to wake up one morning and find it all a dream!). . . .

I am glad to say that we are both rather better this year. . . . . I had some treatment last September, and have been more or less free and easy on the legs since, though my usual lumbago afflicted me in June. Edith is markedly better this year; and we managed a train journey to Bournemouth in July (2nd to 9th). Diet has done much good. We should have to reorganize life altogether if she was reduced to a chair! She does all the cooking, most of the housework, and some of the gardening. I am afraid that this often means rather heroic effort; but of course, within limits, that is beneficial. Still it is hard being attacked in two different ways at once – or three. Great increase in weight due to operations. Arthritis, which is made more painful and acute by the weight; and an internal complaint, small internal lesions (I gather), which cause pain, often incalculably, either by strain, or vibration, or by digestive irritations. Still we accepted this verdict more or less gratefully, after she had spent some time in a nursing home ‘for observation' (ominous words).