The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (82 page)

[47]
1.
During 1942 Tolkien began to serve as an Air Raid Warden.
2.
In the first draft of
The Lord of the Rings
the chapters were numbered continuously. XXXI was ‘Flotsam and Jetsam', which became Book III, Chapter 9.

[48]
1.
Presumably a lecture on the Arthurian matter.
2.
This initial is meant to stand for ‘Tollers', Lewis's usual name for Tolkien.

[49]
1.
The text of
Christian Behaviour
was later incorporated into Lewis's book
Mere Christianity
.
2.
Over
permanent
is written
lifelong.
This and subsequent alterations are in pencil; the text of the letter is in ink.
3.
Altered to read
total human health.
4.
Altered to
with.
5.
all
is underlined in pencil.
6.
permanent
is again altered to
lifelong
.
7.
‘Social Morality' was the title of an earlier chapter in the book.
8.
elaborate
is replaced by
defend
.
9.
Lewis suggested that if an audience were to watch not a striptease, but a cover being slowly lifted off a dish of bacon, then one would conclude that ‘something had gone wrong with the appetite for food'.
10.
Reno, Nevada, famed for its instant divorces.
11.
Latin, ‘To hold an opinion with the Church.'

[50]
1.
An office manned by Air Raid Wardens for the North Oxford area.

[52]
1.
Latin, ‘I do not wish to be made a bishop.'
2.
Two lines from Tolkien's unpublished poem ‘Mythopoeia', written for C. S. Lewis.

[53]
1.
Charles Williams, who was now living in Oxford.
2.
The Teheran Conference, held in November 1943, was attended by the British, American and Russian leaders.
3.
i.e. Winston Spencer Churchill.
4.
‘Collie' Knox, a writer and popular journalist.
5.
The dash is in the original letter; no name is given.

[54]
1.
Anglo-Saxon, ‘[The] father's counsel [to] his son.'

[55]
1.
Anglo-Saxon, ‘[The] father [to] his third son.'
2.
Reader in Old Icelandic at Oxford.
3.
The Air Raid post mentioned in no. 50.
4.
Reader in Jewish Studies at Oxford.
5.
i.e. from the fishmonger.
6.
A pub in Broad Street.
7.
The Tolkiens were now keeping hens, and this is a pun on ‘fowls'.
8.
Latin, ‘[The] Father in his Son[,] Born the youngest (but not at all in other respects [the least]).'
9.
Anglo-Saxon, ‘[The] Father to his own son, the youngest [but] by no means the least loved.'
10.
A Polish officer who had consulted Tolkien a few weeks earlier.

[56]
1.
Tolkien spent the first three years of his life in South Africa, where his father was a bank manager in Bloemfontein. See also no. 163.

[58]
1.
A method of sending letters to servicemen overseas. The text was photographed by the postal authorities, and was delivered to the addressee in the form of a small bromide print which could then be read with the aid of a magnifying glass.

[60]
1.
Dutch, ‘Opened by the Censor.'
2.
i.e. ‘Mummy and Priscilla'.
3.
C. S. Lewis's brother Warren H. Lewis.
4.
Lord David Cecil, Fellow of New College and an occasional attender at the Inklings.
5.
Sarah Connaughton, a family friend.
6.
David Nichol Smith was Professor of English Literature at Oxford, 1929–46.
7.
Elaine Griffiths; q.v. in note 1 to no. 15 (commentary to jacket-flap).
8.
i.e. proofs of University of Wales examination papers.

[61]
1.
Christopher Tolkien sailed to South Africa on the S.S.
Cameronia.
Conditions on board were so unpleasant that he and his companions nicknamed it the
Altrsaark,
after the German prison-ship of that name.
2.
Heaton Park Camp, Manchester, where Christopher Tolkien had been stationed.
3.
Beowulf
1395–6: ‘For this day have thou patience in every woe, even as I know thou wilt.'
4.
Beowulf
1386–8: ‘To each one of us shall come in time the end of life in this world; let him who may earn glory ere his death.' (This and the above are taken from Tolkien's translation of the poem.)
5.
Frank Pakenham, later Lord Longford, was Tutor in Politics at Christ Church, 1934–46.
6.
Mary Salu, a graduate pupil of Tolkien's, who later published a translation of the
Ancrene Riwle
with a preface by Tolkien.
7.
Latin, ‘Keep a calm mind, restrain the tongue.'

[63]
1.
i.e. the air-raid siren.
2.
The Mitre Hotel in Turl Street.
3.
Tolkien was an executor of the will of Joseph Wright, who died in 1930.
4.
‘fellow-Christians'.
5.
Anglo-Saxon, ‘God alone knows.'
6.
Mabel Tolkien was on ‘home leave' in England when her husband died, and was not able to return to Bloemfontein for the funeral.

[64]
1.
An early title for
The Silmarillion
was ‘The History of the Gnomes' – i.e. of the Noldorin elves. See no. 239.

[66]
1.
A priest at the Birmingham Oratory.
2.
Alexander Buchan (1829–1907), a meteorologist who foretold certain periods of cold weather as being of annual occurrence, and gave his name to the cold spell of May 9–14, which is known as ‘Buchan's winter'.

[67]
1.
Leonard Rice-Oxley, Fellow of Keble College.
2.
R. B. McCallum, Fellow of Pembroke College, who at this time was tutoring Michael Tolkien, who had returned to Oxford to read History.

[69]
1.
Father Douglas Carter, parish priest of St Gregory's Catholic Church in Oxford.
2.
‘Who Goes Home' was later re-titled
The Great Divorce
.
3.
i.e. of Tolkien's story ‘Leaf by Niggle', first published in the
Dublin Review
, January 1945.

[71]
1.
Anglo-Saxon, ‘on earth and in heaven'.
2.
Gaudy Night
by Dorothy Sayers (1935).

[72]
1.
H. L. Drake, Walter Ramsden and L. E. Salt, Fellows of Pembroke College, where Tolkien held a Professorial Fellowship.
2.
i.e. Hugo Dyson.
3.
Examination papers for the naval cadets reading English at Oxford.
4.
Proprietor of a bicycle repair shop.
5.
Latin, ‘Ah! triumph'.
6.
An annexe to Lincoln College built in Turl Street.
7.
Censor (i.e. head) of St Catherine's Society, Oxford.
8.
H. G. Hanbury, Fellow of Lincoln College and Lecturer in Law.

[73]
1.
E. R. Eddison [sic], author of
The Worm Ouroboros
and other romances. This was his second visit to the Inklings (see
Inklings
p. 190).
2.
W. H. Lewis held the rank of Captain in the Royal Army Service Corps until his promotion to Major at the outbreak of the Second World War.
3.
The Mezentian Gate
, which remained incomplete at Eddison's death in 1945, though a text was edited by his brother C. R. Eddison and published in 1958.

[74]
1.
After some weeks in the Transvaal, Christopher Tolkien was moved to an air training school at Kroonstad.
2.
Michael Tolkien had been judged unfit for further military service as a result of ‘severe shock to nervous system due to prolonged exposure to enemy action'.
3.
An edition of
The Hobbit
was issued by Foyles of London in 1942; see no. 47.

[75]
1.
Tolkien owned a Hammond typewriter with interchangeable typefaces, one of which was very small.
2.
American servicemen, who were in the Oxford area in large numbers.
3.
The translation by W. H. Kirby, published in the Everyman series in 1907.
4.
Classical Honour Moderations; see note 3 to no. 43.

[76]
1.
While on holiday with his family at Lamorna Cove in Cornwall in 1932, Tolkien amused the children by giving the nickname ‘Gaffer Gamgee' to a local ‘character'. See no. 257.
2.
At the Oxford Playhouse.

[77]
1.
News had come of Allied Advances in Normandy; meanwhile von Papen, the German ambassador to Turkey, had cut short his holiday and returned to Ankara following reports that the Turkish government might break off diplomatic relations with Germany.
2.
Latin, ‘Carthage must be destroyed' (Plutarch,
Life of Cato
).

[79]
1.
A nickname for the Eagle & Child pub.

[81]
1.
Another letter to Christopher Tolkien, dated 22 September 1943, refers to Lewis's ‘new translation in rhymed alexandrines of the Aeneid'. It was not published.
2.
Tolkien had promised his translation of
Pearl
to Blackwell, who wanted to publish it, and had the text set up in type. But Tolkien failed to provide an introduction to the book, and the project was eventually abandoned.

[83]
1.
C. S. Lewis was known to his friends as ‘Jack'; ‘Warnie' was the nickname of his brother Warren.
2.
‘Trotter' was the original name of the character Strider in
The Lord of the Rings.
3.
Sir William Walton (b. 1902).
4.
A colleague of Tolkien's in the English Department at Leeds University, and the author of many books of poetry.
5.
Father Martin D'Arcy, S.J., Principal of Campion Hall, Oxford, 1932–45.
6.
Old Icelandic, ‘world-doom'.

[89]
1.
Also known as the Forty Hours' Devotion. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed on a throne in a monstrance and the faithful pray before it, in turns, throughout forty hours; this length of time was probably fixed on as the period during which Christ's body rested in the tomb.
2.
Greek
‘necessity, constraint'.
3.
Elizabeth Jennings, later to become well known as a poet; her family were friends of the Tolkiens.

[91]
1.
This ‘final chapter' was written in the form of an Epilogue to
The Lord of the Rings
, which Tolkien eventually decided not to publish.

[92]
1.
Lewis's next published novel after
That Hideous Strength
and
The Great Divorce
was
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
. Tolkien is, however, almost certainly referring to some other book of Lewis's that was never completed. Tolkien's ‘dimly projected third' may have been ‘The Notion Club Papers': see
Biography
pp. 171–2.
2.
Lewis told Chad Walsh, who visited him in the summer of 1948, that this book was to be called ‘Language and Human Nature' and was to be published the following year by the Student Christian Movement Press; but this never happened. In 1950, Lewis wrote to a friend: ‘My book with Tolkien – any book in collaboration with that great, but dilatory and unmethodical man – is dated I fear to appear on the Greek Calends' (
Letters of C. S. Lewis
, p. 222).

[94]
1.
22 Northmoor Road, in which Tolkien lived from 1926 to 1930.
2.
i.e. Mr Anthony Eden, speaking in the House of Commons.