The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (83 page)

[96]
1.
Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford.
2.
i.e. the Merton Professorships of English Language and Literature and of English Literature.
3.
A reference to a celebrated poster advertising the ‘bracing' air of the sea-resort of Skegness, on which there appeared a cheery-looking fisherman clad entirely in oilskins.
4.
This was probably the essay ‘Myth became Fact', first published in
World Dominion
, September/October 1944, and reprinted in Lewis's book
Undeceptions
(American title:
God in the Dock
).
5.
Greek, ‘would that I were'; quoted, as are the words that follow, from Rupert Brooke's ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester'.
6.
Latin, ‘singly, separately'.

[98]
1.
A second cousin of Rayner Unwin; his real name was Harold.
2.
Christopher Tolkien was never officially a pupil of his father, but he did receive some informal tuition from him during his year as an undergraduate (1942–3) before joining the R.A.F.
3.
It is impossible to say what Tolkien had in mind. Perhaps he was alluding to the embryonic story referred to at the end of no. 69.
4.
This footnote carries no indication, in the original letter, as to which part of the text it refers to. Its placing here is therefore conjectural.

5.
The Tolkien/d'Ardenne edition of the Western Middle English MS.
Katerine
, which was never completed.
6.
Tolkien's edition of the MS.
Ancrene Wisse
, not in fact completed until 1962.
7.
British Daylight Saving Time.

[103]
1.
Tolkien wanted to rent a college house, because 20 Northmoor Road was proving too large for his family's present needs.
2.
Hugo Dyson was elected a Fellow of Merton and was admitted to the college at the same time as Tolkien.

[105]
1.
‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun'.
2.
‘The Notion Club Papers': see
Biography
pp. 171–2.

[107]
1.
Nothing is known of this person's identity.
2.
Tolkien had arranged to rent this house from Merton College.

[108]
1.
C. H. Wilkinson was the English tutor at Worcester College.

[109]
1.
See note 1 to no. 128.
2.
The first three people in this list were probably Owen Barfield, R. E. Havard and W. H. Lewis; the others cannot certainly be identified, though the artist may have been Tolkien's first cousin Marjorie Incledon, who was a painter.
3.
An earlier name for Fredegar or Fatty Bolger.
4.
‘“Policemen never come so far, and the map-makers have not reached this country yet. They have seldom even heard of the king round here. . . . . ”' (
The Hobbit
, Chapter 2.) This passage was greatly changed in a later revision.
5.
These pages contain references to the Necromancer.
6.
The Unwins were travelling to Switzerland.

[111]
1.
S. R. T. O. d'Ardenne.

[112]
Transcription
(pairs of letters in italics are represented by one character in the runes):

TH
RE MANOR R
OA
D

SUNDAY NOV[E]MBER

TH
E
TH
IRTIE
TH

D
E
AR MRS FARRER: OF COURSE I WILL SIGN YO UR COPY OF
TH
E HOBBIT. I AM HONOURED BY
TH
E RECWEST. IT IS G
OO
D NEWS
TH
AT
TH
E BOOK IS OBTAIN ABLE AGAIN.
TH
E NEXT B
OO
K WILL CO[N]TAIN MORE D ETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT RUNES AND O
TH
ER ALFABETS IN RESPO[N]SE TO MANY ENCWIRIES. IN
TH
E M
E
ANTIME WHILE
TH
E GR
EA
T WORK IS BEI
NG
FINIS[H] ED I WONDER IF YOU WOULD LIKE A PROPER KEY TO THE SPECIAL DWARVIS[H] ADAPTATION OF
TH
E E
N
GLIS[H] RUNIC ALFABET ONLY PART OF WHICH A
PP
EARS IN
TH
E HO
BB
IT INCLUDI
NG
TH
E COVER. WE ENIOYED LAST MONDAY EUENI
NG
VERY MU CH AND HOPE FOR A RETURN MATCH S
OO
N.

YOURS SINCERELY

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

[113]
1.
Sir Gawain
, line 2363, ‘the most faultless knight'.
2.
It appears that Hugo Dyson had been putting it about that Tolkien objected to Lewis's ‘loud' manner in the Inklings.
3.
Archaic, ‘if'.
4.
Bird and Baby, i.e. Eagle and Child pub.

[114]
1.
Hugh Brogan had been a pupil at the school.

[115]
1.
An Elvish sage in Tol Eressëa from whom the mariner Aelfwine heard the legends that make up
The Silmarillion
; see
Biography
pp. 90, 169.

[118]
Transcription
(in the runic passage, pairs of letters in italics are represented by one character in the runes; the letter ‘Z' is used for the voiced ‘S'):

D
EA
R HU
GH
THIS [I]Z JUST TO WI
SH
Y
OU
A HA
PP
Y C
H
RISTMAS IN DWARF RUNEZ.

dear hugh: this iz just to wish you a very happy christmas in two styles of elvish script: i am sending some explanations, and hope you wont find them too complicated.

The third inscription repeats the wording of the second, inserting the word ‘I' between ‘and' and ‘hope'.

[124]
1.
Tolkien was overestimating the combined length of the two works by several hundred thousand words.
2.
i.e. the planned sequel to
Farmer Giles of Ham
.

[126]
1.
Another Merton College house, not far from 3 Manor Road, which had proved too small for the Tolkiens' needs.

[127]
1.
Unwin's second letter was an acknowledgement of Tolkien's note of 2 April.
2.
Tolkien's anger with Allen & Unwin is shown by the much more strongly-worded draft for this letter, which is quoted in
Biography
p. 210, in the passage beginning ‘i.e. that you may be willing to take. . . .'

[128]
1.
In the original version of Chapter 5 of
The Hobbit
, Gollum really does intend to give Bilbo the Ring when the hobbit wins the riddle-game, and is deeply apologetic when he finds that it is missing: ‘I don't know how many times Gollum begged Bilbo's pardon. He kept on saying: “We are ssorry; we didn't mean to cheat, we meant to give it our only present, if it won the competition.” He even offered to catch Bilbo some nice juicy fish to eat as a consolation.' Bilbo, who has the Ring in his pocket, persuades Gollum to lead him out of the underground passages, which Gollum does, and the two of them part company in a civil manner.

[130]
1.
The note, which was included in the second edition of
The Hobbit
, explained the change of text in Chapter 5: ‘There the true story of the ending of the Riddle Game, as it was eventually revealed (under pressure) by Bilbo to Gandalf, is now given according to the Red Book, in place of the version Bilbo first gave to his friends, and actually set down in his diary. This departure from truth on the part of a most honest hobbit was a portent of great significance. It does not, however, concern the present story, and those who in this edition make their first acquaintance with hobbit-lore need not trouble about it. Its explanation lies in the history of the Ring, as set out in the chronicles of the Red Book of Westmarch, and it must await their publication.'

[131]
1.
See introductory note to no. 19.
2.
Noumenon, neuter of the present participle of
(noein), to apprehend, conceive; introduced by Kant in contrast to ‘phenomenon', and given the meaning ‘an object of purely intellectual intuition, devoid of all phenomenal attributes'.
3.
The text of this letter is taken from a typescript made, at Milton Waldman's instigation, by a professional typist (there are a number of mis-spellings of names, which Tolkien has corrected); it appears that here the typist has omitted some words from Tolkien's MS.
4.
Tar-Calion (the Quenya name for Ar-Pharazôn) was originally the thirteenth ruler of Niimenor; in later developments of the history of Númenor he became the twenty-fifth (usually recorded as the twenty-fourth, but see
Unfinished Tales
p. 226, note 11).
5.
As earlier letters in this book show,
The Lord of the Rings
was in fact begun in December 1937.

[132]
1.
C. L. Wrenn succeeded Tolkien as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

[133]
1.
Rayner Unwin's letter of 29 [sic] November said that he was ‘hoping that I might get the chance of seeing
Silmarillion
. Believe it or not I am still quite certain that you have something most important for publication in this book and
The Lords of the Ring
! [sic]'
2.
Maurice Bowra, Warden of Wadham College and, at this time, Vice Chancellor of Oxford University.
3.
In a later letter on the subject of the oral transmission of ‘Errantry', Tolkien noted that ‘a curious feature was the preservation of the word
sigaldry,
which I got from a thirteenth-century text'. (To Donald Swann, 14 October 1966.)
4.
See
Inklings
p. 57.
5.
Sir John Burnett-Stuart [sic] commanded the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade in the Second World War.
6.
i.e. ‘Authorised Version' and ‘Revised Version'.
7.
Russell Meiggs, who edited the
Oxford Magazine
in the 1930s, is uncertain which member of the Nowell Smith family was among his predecessors.
8.
It may appear at a first glance that Tolkien did write another poem in this metre, ‘Earendil was a mariner', which appears in Book II Chapter 1 of
The Lord of the Rings
. But this poem is arguably a development of ‘Errantry' rather than a separate composition.

[134]
1.
Michael Tolkien was teaching at the Oratory School in Berkshire and had a cottage nearby.
2.
The offices of Allen & Unwin, near the British Museum.
3.
For more about these tape-recordings, some of which were issued on gramophone records in 1975, see
Biography
p. 213.

[135]
1.
Tolkien's contribution to
Essays & Studies
was ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm's Son', which was published in this journal in 1953.
2.
The lecture, given in Glasgow on 15 April 1953, consisted of a discussion of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
with particular attention to Gawain's temptation to commit adultery with the Lady, and his confession in the chapel at Bercilak's court before going out to meet the Green Knight.
3.
The first British atomic bomb test took place in the Monte Bello Islands, off Australia, on 3 October 1952.

[136]
1.
A list of contents to
The Lord of the Rings
written by Tolkien and included in the manuscript of that book at Marquette University, Milwaukee, U.S.A., has a different set of titles: Vol. I
The First Journey
and
The Journey of the Nine Companions
; Vol. II
The Treason of Isengard
and
The Journey of the Ringbearers
; Vol. III
The War of the Ring
and
The End of the Third Age
.

[137]
1.
A note on Volume I of the first edition of
The Lord of the Rings
promised that Volume III would contain ‘some abridged family-trees. . . . an index of names and strange words with some explanations. . . . [and] some brief account. . . . of the languages, alphabets and calendars'. The ‘index of names' did not, in the event, appear in the first edition of Volume III.
2.
The inscription around the West Gate of the Mines of Moria.
3.
Tolkien had planned to include facsimiles of the damaged pages of the ‘Book of Mazarbul', but these had to be omitted because of cost (they were in several colours). They are reproduced as no. 23 in
Pictures.
4.
The subject of his W. P. Ker Lecture; see note 2 to no. 135 above.
5.
Tolkien is here referring to his long letter to Milton Waldman (no. 131).