Read The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Online
Authors: Humphrey Carpenter
*
The sequel to
The Hobbit
has now progressed as far as the end of the third chapter. But stories tend to get out of hand, and this has taken an unpremeditated turn. Mr Lewis and my youngest boy are reading it in bits as a serial. I hesitate to bother your son, though I should value his criticisms. At any rate if he would like to read it in serial form he can. My Christopher and Mr Lewis approve it enough to say that they think it is better than the
Hobbit
; but Rayner need not agree!
I have received a copy of the American edition. Not so bad. I am glad they have included the eagle picture, but I cannot imagine why they have spoilt the Rivendell picture, by slicing the top and cutting out the ornament at the bottom. All the numerous textual errors are of course included. I hope it will some day be possible to get rid of them.
I don't know whether you saw the long and ridiculous letter in
The Observer
of Feb. 20, and thought I had suddenly gone cracked. I think the editor was unfair. There was a letter signed Habit in the paper in January (asking if the hobbit was influenced by Julian Huxley's lectures
on furry African pygmies, and other questions). I sent this jesting reply with a stamped envelope for transmission to Habit; and also a short and fairly sane reply for publication. Nothing happened for a month, and then I woke up to find my ill-considered joke occupying nearly a column.
With best wishes. Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.
[An extract from a letter apparently addressed to Tolkien's American publishers, and probably written in March or April 1938. Houghton Mifflin seem to have asked him to supply drawings of hobbits for use in some future edition of
The Hobbit.
]
I am afraid, if you will need drawings of hobbits in various attitudes, I must leave it in the hands of someone who can draw. My own pictures are an unsafe guide â e.g. the picture of Mr. Baggins in Chapter VI and XII. The very ill-drawn one in Chapter XIX is a better guide than these in general impressions.
I picture a fairly human figure, not a kind of âfairy' rabbit as some of my British reviewers seem to fancy: fattish in the stomach, shortish in the leg. A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and âelvish'; hair short and curling (brown). The feet from the ankles down, covered with brown hairy fur. Clothing: green velvet breeches; red or yellow waistcoat; brown or green jacket; gold (or brass) buttons; a dark green hood and cloak (belonging to a dwarf).
Actual size â only important if other objects are in picture â say about three feet or three feet six inches. The hobbit in the picture of the gold-hoard, Chapter XII, is of course (apart from being fat in the wrong places) enormously too large. But (as my children, at any rate, understand) he is really in a separate picture or âplane' â being invisible to the dragon.
There is in the text no mention of his acquiring of boots. There should be! It has dropped out somehow or other in the various revisions â the bootings occurred at Rivendell; and he was again bootless after leaving Rivendell on the way home. But since leathery soles, and well-brushed furry feet are a feature of essential hobbitness, he ought really to appear unbooted, except in special illustrations of episodes.
[On 1 June, Unwin told Tolkien that Houghton Mifflin had now sold approximately three thousand copies of the American edition of
The Hobbit.
In April, the book had been awarded a $250 prize by the
New York Herald Tribune
for the best juvenile story of the season. Meanwhile Rayner Unwin had criticised the second and third chapters of the new story for having too much âhobbit talk'.]
4 June 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Unwin,
Thank you for your comforting news. It is indeed comforting, for in spite of unexpected strokes of luck, such as the American prize, I am in considerable difficulties; and things will not be improved in September, when I vacate my research fellowship. That will mean, of course, that the pressure on my writing time will be less, except that as far as I can see I shall have to return to the examination treadmill
1
to keep the boat afloat.
Your previous letters of April 29 and May 3 have I fear long lain unanswered. I meant long ago to have thanked Rayner for bothering to read the tentative chapters, and for his excellent criticism. It agrees strikingly with Mr Lewis', which is therefore confirmed. I must plainly bow to my two chief (and most well-disposed) critics. The trouble is that âhobbit talk' amuses me privately (and to a certain degree also my boy Christopher) more than adventures; but I must curb this severely. Although longing to do so, I have not had a chance to touch any story-writing since the Christmas vacation. With three works in Middle English and Old English going to or through the press, and another in Old Norse in a series of which I am an editor under my hand on behalf of the author who is abroad,
2
and students coming in July from Belgium and Canada to work under my direction, I cannot see any loophole left for months!. . . .
Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
P.S. My answer was delayed, because your letter arrived in the midst of our little local strife. You may not have noticed that on June 2 the Rev. Adam Fox
3
was elected Professor of Poetry, defeating a Knight and a noble Lord. He was nominated by Lewis and myself, and miraculously elected: our first public victory over established privilege. For Fox is a member of our literary club of
practising poets
â before whom the
Hobbit
, and other works (such as
the Silent Planet
) have been read. We are slowly getting even into print. One of Fox's works is
Old King Coel
, a rhymed tale in four books (Oxford).
25 July 1938
[Allen & Unwin had negotiated the publication of a German translation of
The Hobbit
with Rütten & Loening of Potsdam. This firm wrote to Tolkien asking if he was of âarisch' (aryan) origin.]
I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten and Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of âarisch' origin from all persons of all countries?
Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any
Bestätigung
1
(although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
You are primarily concerned, and I cannot jeopardize the chance of a German publication without your approval. So I submit two drafts of possible answers.
[One of the âtwo drafts' mentioned by Tolkien in the previous letter. This is the only one preserved in the Allen & Unwin files, and it seems therefore very probable that the English publishers sent the other one to Germany. It is clear that in that letter Tolkien refused to make any declaration of âarisch' origin.]
25 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter. . . . . I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by
arisch
. I am not of
Aryan
extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of
Jewish
origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have
no
ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject â which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in
matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my
Abstammung
.
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I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and
remain yours faithfully
J. R. R. Tolkien.
[Among the stories that Tolkien showed to his publishers during 1937, as a possible successor to
The Hobbit,
was a short version of
Farmer Giles of Ham
. Allen & Unwin liked it, but felt that it would need the companionship of other stories to make it into a book of sufficient length. They also, of course, encouraged Tolkien to write the sequel to
The Hobbit
.]
24 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Furth,
The Hobbit
ought to have come out this year not last. Next year I should have probably had time and mood for a follower. But pressure of work as a âresearch fellow', which has to be wound up if possible by September, has taken all my time, and also dried up invention. The sequel to
the Hobbit
has remained where it stopped. It has lost my favour, and I have no idea what to do with it. For one thing the original Hobbit was never intended to have a sequel â Bilbo âremained very happy to the end of his days and those were extraordinarily long': a sentence I find an almost insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory link. For another nearly all the âmotives' that I can use were packed into the original book, so that a sequel will appear either âthinner' or merely repetitional. For a third: I am personally immensely amused by hobbits as such, and can contemplate them eating and making their rather fatuous jokes indefinitely; but I find that is not the case with even my most devoted âfans' (such as Mr Lewis, and ? Rayner Unwin). Mr Lewis says hobbits are only amusing when in unhobbitlike situations. For a last: my mind on the âstory' side is really preoccupied with the âpure' fairy stories or mythologies of the
Silmarillion,
into which even Mr Baggins got dragged against my original will, and I do not think I shall be able to move much outside it â unless it is finished (and perhaps published) â which has a releasing effect. The only line I have, quite
outside that, is âFarmer Giles' and the Little Kingdom (with its capital at Thame). I rewrote that to about 50% longer, last January, and read it to the Lovelace Society
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in lieu of a paper âon' fairy stories. I was very much surprised at the result. It took nearly twice as long as a proper âpaper' to read aloud; and the audience was apparently not bored â indeed they were generally convulsed with mirth. But I am afraid that means it has taken on a rather more adult and satiric flavour. Anyway I have not written the necessary two or three other stories of the Kingdom to go with it!
It looks like
Mr Bliss
. If you think that is worthy of publication. I can bring it back to you, if you wish. I do not think that I personally can do anything to improve it.
I am really very sorry: for my own sake as well as yours I would like to produce something. But September seems quite out of the question this year. I hope inspiration and the mood will return. It is not for lack of wooing that it holds aloof. But my wooing of late has been perforce intermittent. The Muses do not like such half-heartedness.
Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
[Masefield, then Poet Laureate, together with Nevill Coghill organised an entertainment in Oxford during the summers of 1938 and 1939, entitled
Summer Diversions
. In 1938 he invited Tolkien to impersonate Chaucer and recite from memory the
Nun's Priest's Tale
. He wrote to Tolkien enclosing some lines of verse with which he proposed to introduce him.]
27 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Masefield,
I have no prelude of my own to fire off, and no objection as a performer to being preceded by the lines you send. In any case you are Master of the Diversions, and I am under your good authority.
Privately, as one student of Chaucer to another, I might perhaps say that these lines seem to me to allude to the erroneous imagination that Chaucer was the first English poet, and that before and except for him all was dumb and barbaric. That is of course not true, and is perhaps, even as a way of emphasizing the fact that he possessed a peculiar genius, which would at any period have produced work having a novel flavour, rather misleading. I do not personally connect the North with either night or darkness, especially not in England, in whose long 1200 years of literary tradition Chaucer stands rather in the middle than the beginning. I also do not feel him springlike but autumnal (even if of the
early autumn) and not kinglike but middle-class. However, as I say, these are professional matters, about which the present occasion is hardly one to join battle.
I am not at all happy about the effect of Chaucer in general, or the Nonnes Prestes Tale in particular, in a supposed 14th. C. pronunciation. I will do my best, but I hope it will be sufficiently intelligible for some of the sense to get over. Personally I rather think that a modified modern pronunciation (restoring rhymes but otherwise avoiding archaism) is the best â such as I once heard you use on the Monk's Tale a good many years ago.