The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (76 page)

1 January 1970

I am
not
getting on fast with
The S.
The domestic situation, Mummy's gallant but losing fight against age and disability (and pain), and my own years – and all the interruptions of ‘business' do not leave much time. I have in fact so far been chiefly employed in trying to co-ordinate the nomenclature of the very early and later parts of the
Silmarillion
with the situation in The L.R. ‘Stories' still sprout in my mind from names; but it is a very difficult and complex task.

When you pray for me, pray for ‘time'! I should like to put some of this stuff into readable form, and some sketched for others to make use of. Also I should dearly love to defeat the Inland Revenue and survive beyond the iniquitous 7 years.
¹
(Also I should like time to set down what I know or remember of my childhood and my kin on either side.)

11 September 1970

The matter of
hobbit
is not very important, but I may be forgiven for taking a personal interest in it and being anxious that the meaning intended by me should be made clear.

Unfortunately, as all lexicographers know, ‘don't look into things, unless you are looking for trouble: they nearly always turn out to be less simple than you thought'. You will shortly be receiving a long letter on
hobbit
and related matters, of which, even if it is in time, only a small part may be useful or interesting to you.
¹

For the moment this is held up, because I am having the matter of the
etymology: ‘Invented by J. R. R. Tolkien': investigated by experts. I knew that the claim was not clear, but I had not troubled to look into it, until faced by the inclusion of
hobbit
in the Supplement.

In the meanwhile I submit for your consideration the following definition:

This assumes that the etymology can stand. If not it may be necessary to modify it: e.g. by substituting after ‘race'

If it stands, as I think it will even if an alleged older story called ‘The Hobbit'
³
can be traced, then the ‘(meaning “hole-dweller”)' could be transferred to the etymology.

All Hallows 1970

I have expended your wonderful gift. I felt like a wise man setting out on a long voyage, and storing his craft with the most useful and necessary things:– I still feel this house is a ship or ark: it looks like one (from the garden), contented and quiet but at the same time still a bit surprised, as if it had been dumped here by a wave while asleep, and did not feel sure where it was.

Alas I did not buy any good brandy. My palate has never learned to appreciate it as it deserves. But I have laid in some burgundy – some port which we both like,
^fn125
and some good sherry, some liqueurs, and one bottle of champagne (with a view to Christmas).

22 November 1970

I am most grateful for your kindness in sending me an offprint of your work on Napier. I have been deeply interested in it. Naturally. I entered the English School in T[rinity] T[erm] 1913 at my own request: I had
discovered its existence in the Examination Statutes. I was not as surprised as I ought to have been by the generosity of Exeter College in allowing me to do this without depriving me of my classical exhibition, but your essay confirms my guess that this was due to Farnell.
¹

At any rate he wrote me an introduction to Napier, and I called on him at his house in Headington. I recall that I was ushered into a very dim room and could hardly see Napier. He was courteous, but said little. He never spoke to me again. I attended his lectures, when he was well enough to give them. But alas! I came too late. His illness must have been already far advanced.

But this was compensated by a piece of singular good fortune: Sisam
²
became my tutor. I think I certainly derived from him much of the benefit which he attributes to Napier's example and teaching. To these things Sisam's own great talents were evidently very responsive, and his feelings warmed by affection for a great man in his decline. His teaching was, however, spiced with a pungency, humour and practical wisdom which were his own. I owe him a great debt and have not forgotten it. . . .

Incidentally the foundation of my library was laid by Sisam. He taught me not only to read texts, but to study second-hand book catalogues, of which I was not even aware. Some he marked for me.

8 January 1971

The Ox. E. D. has in preparation of its Second Supplement got to
Hobbit,
which it proposes to include together with its progeny:
hobbitry, -ish,
etc. I have had, therefore, to justify my claim to have invented the word. My claim rests really on my ‘nude parole' or unsupported assertion that I remember the occasion of its invention (by me); and that I had not
then
any knowledge of
Hobberdy, Hobbaty, Hobberdy Dick
etc. (for ‘house-sprites');
^fn126
and that my ‘hobbits' were in any case of wholly dissimilar sort, a diminutive branch of the human race. Also that the only E. word that influenced the invention was ‘hole'; that granted the description of
hobbits,
the trolls' use of
rabbit
was merely an obvious insult, of no more etymological significance than Thorin's insult to Bilbo ‘descendant of rats!' However, doubt was cast on this as far back as 1938.
¹
A review appeared in
The Observer
16 Jan 1938, signed
‘Habit'
(incidentally thus long anticipating Coghill's perception of the similarity of the words in his humorous adj.
‘hobbit-forming' applied to my books). ‘Habit' asserted that a friend claimed to have read, about 20 years earlier (sc. c. 1918) an old ‘fairy story' (in a collection of such tales) called
The Hobbit
, though the creature was very ‘frightening'. I asked for more information, but have never received any; and recent intensive research has not discovered the ‘collection'. I think it is probable that the friend's memory was inaccurate (after 20 years), and the creature probably had a name of the
Hobberdy, Hobbaty
class. However, one cannot exclude the possibility that buried childhood memories might suddenly rise to the surface long after (in my case after 35–40 years), though they might be quite differently applied. I told the researchers that I used (before 1900) to be read to from an ‘old collection' – tattered and without cover or title-page – of which all I can now remember was that (I think) it was by Bulwer Lytton, and contained one story I was then very fond of called
‘Puss Cat Mew'
. They have not discovered it. I wonder if you, the most learned of living scholars in this region, can say anything.
²
Esp. for my own satisfaction about
Puss Cat Mew
– I do not suppose you have found a name precisely
hobbit
or you would have mentioned it. Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

25 January 1971

I was particularly interested in your remarks about Galadriel. . . . . I think it is true that I owe much of this character to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary, but actually Galadriel was a penitent: in her youth a leader in the rebellion against the Valar (the angelic guardians). At the end of the First Age she proudly refused forgiveness or permission to return. She was pardoned because of her resistance to the final and overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself.

4 February 1971

I was most pleased by your reference to the description of ‘glittering caves'. No other critic, I think, has picked it out for special mention. It may interest you to know that the passage was based on the caves in Cheddar Gorge and was written just after I had revisited these in 1940 but was still coloured by my memory of them much earlier before they became so commercialized. I had been there during my honeymoon nearly thirty years before.

18 March 1971

As far as my work goes, things are looking more hopeful now than they have done for some time and it is possible that I may be able to send an instalment of the
Silmarillion
to Allen & Unwin later this year.

Begun about June 2nd. 1971.

[19 Lakeside Road]

My dearest C.

I am sorry that I have been so silent. But only a long ‘tale of woe', of which you know the main outlines, wd. fully explain it. Here we are June 2nd, and May, one of the best of my experience, has escaped, without a stroke of ‘writing'. Not all ‘woe' of course. Our brief holiday to Sidmouth, which was what Dr Tolhurst's advice boiled down to, was very pleasant indeed. We were lucky in our time – in fact the only week available at the hotel – since May was such a wonderful month – and we came in for a ‘spring explosion' of glory, with Devon passing from brown to brilliant yellow-green, and all the flowers leaping out of dead bracken or old grass. (Incidentally the oaks have behaved in a most extraordinary way. The old saw about the oak and the ash, if it has any truth, would usually need wide-spread statistics, since the gap between their wakening is usually so small that it can be changed by minor local differences of situation. But this year there seemed a month between them! The oaks were among the earliest trees to be leafed equalling or beating birch, beech and lime etc. Great cauliflowers of brilliant yellow-ochre tasseled with flowers, while the ashes (in the same situations) were dark, dead, with hardly even a visible sticky bud). . . . .

The Belmont proved a v.g. choice. Indeed the chief changes we observed in Sidmouth was the rise of this rather grim looking hotel (in spite of its perfect position) to be the best in the place – especially for
eating
. . . . . Neither M nor I have eaten so much in a week (without indigestion) for years. In addition our faithful cruise-friends (Boarland) of some six years ago, who recently moved to Sidmouth, and were so anxious to see us again that they vetted our rooms [at] the Belmont, provided us with a car, and took us drives nearly every day. So I saw again much of the country you (especially) and I used to explore in the old days of poor old JO, that valiant sorely-tried old Morris.
¹
An added comfort was the fact that Sidmouth seemed practically unchanged, even the shops: many still having the same names (such as Frisby, Trump, and Potbury). Well that is that, & now, alas, over! I am, of course, still in the doldrums as far as my proper work goes – with time leaking away so fast.

June 10th
. At this point I was interrupted – as usual. But among other things, both M and I have been afflicted with what may be either a ‘virus', or food-poisoning of which the risk is steadily mounting in this polluted country of which a growing proportion of the inhabitants are maniacs. . . . .

I am longing to see you. I am sure there are many more things, which I shall remember as soon as this is posted, that I wished to say. But what I personally need, prob. more than anything, is two or three days general consultation and interchange with
you.
Though I think the course of events ran in an inescapable succession, I now regret daily that we are separated by a distance too great for swift interchange, and I am so immoveable. . . . .

4–5 June 1971

In the matter of
Gondar/Gondor
you touch on a difficult matter, but one of great interest: the nature of the process of ‘linguistic invention' (including nomenclature) in general, and in
The Lord of the Rings
in particular. It would take too long to discuss this – it needs a long essay which I have often in mind but shall probably never write. As far as
Gondor
goes the facts (of which I am aware) are these: 1) I do not recollect ever having heard the name
Gondar
(in Ethiopia) before your letter; 2)
Gondor
is (a) a name fitted to the style and phonetics of
Sindarin,
and (b) has the sense ‘Stone-land' sc. ‘Stone (-using people's) land'.
^fn127
Outside the inner historical fiction, the name was a very early element in the invention of the whole story. Also in the linguistic construction of the tale,
^fn128
which is accurate and detailed,
Gondor
and
Gondar
would be two distinct words/names, and the latter would have no precise sense. Nonetheless one's mind is, of course, stored with a ‘leaf-mould' of memories (submerged) of names, and these rise up to the surface at times, and may provide with modification the bases of ‘invented' names. Owing to the prominence of Ethiopia in the Italian war
Gondar
may have been one such element. But no more than say
Gondwana-land
(that rare venture of geology into poetry). In this case I can actually recollect the reason why the element
^*
gon(o)
,
^*
gond(o)
was selected for the stem of words meaning stone, when I began inventing the ‘Elvish' languages. When about 8 years old I read in a small book (professedly for the young) that nothing of the language of primitive peoples (before the Celts or Germanic invaders) is now known, except perhaps
ond
= ‘stone' (+ one other now forgotten). I have no idea how such a form could even be guessed, but the
ond
seemed to me fitting for the meaning. (The prefixing of g- was much later, after the invention of the history of the relation between
Sindarin & Quenya
in which primitive initial g-was lost in Q: the Q. form of the word remained
ondo
.). . . . .