The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (84 page)

[140]
1.
In a subsequent letter to Rayner Unwin (no. 143), Tolkien is more definite that the Two Towers are ‘Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol'. On the other hand, in his original design for the jacket of
The Two Towers
(see no. 151) the Towers are certainly Orthanc and Minas Morgul. Orthanc is shown as a black tower, three-horned (as seen in
Pictures
no. 27), and with the sign of the White Hand beside it; Minas Morgul is a white tower, with a thin waning moon above it, in reference to its original name, Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Rising Moon (
The Fellowship of the Ring
p. 257). Between the two towers a Nazgûl flies.

[143]
1.
The Appendices to Volume III.

[144]
1.
'
“Uglúk u bagronk shapushdug Saruman-glob búbhosh skai.
”'
2.
‘… all the gardens of the Entwives are wasted: Men call them the Brown Lands now.” ‘
3.
‘“My grand-dad, and my uncle Andy after him, … he had a rope-walk over by Tighfield many a year.” ‘
4.
‘ “Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?”'
5.
Naomi Mitchison's house in Scotland.

[145]
1.
Bannister, a Senior Scholar of Merton College, was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, a record that he achieved at Oxford on 6 May 1954.

[148]
1.
Allen & Unwin wished to publish Tolkien's translation of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
which had been broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in a dramatised version in December 1953, with a repeat (referred to by Tolkien in this letter) in September 1954.

[149]
1.
Peter Green, the biographer of Kenneth Grahame, wrote in the
Daily Telegraph
on 27 August 1954: ‘I presume it is meant to be taken seriously, and am apprehensive that I can find no really adequate reasons for doing so. . . . . And yet this shapeless work has an undeniable fascination: especially to a reviewer with a cold in his head.'
2.
Edwin Muir wrote in the
Observer
on 22 August 1954: ‘This remarkable book makes its appearance at a disadvantage. Nothing but a great masterpiece could survive the bombardment of praise directed at it from the blurb. . . . .
The Fellowship of the Ring
is an extraordinary book Yet for myself I could not resist feeling a certain disappointment. Perhaps this was partly due to the style, which is quite unequal to the theme. . . . . But perhaps it was due more to a lack of the human discrimination and depth which the subject demanded.
3.
J. W. Lambert wrote in the
Sunday Times
on 8 August 1954: ‘Whimsical drivel with a message? No; it sweeps along with a narrative and pictorial force which lifts it above that level. A book for bright children? Well, yes and no.'
4.
A. E. Cherryman wrote in
Truth
on 6 August 1954: ‘It is an amazing piece of work. . . . . He has added something, not only to the world's literature, but to its history.'
5.
Howard Spring wrote in
Country Life
on 26 August 1954: ‘This is a work of art. . . . . It has invention, fancy and imagination. . . . . It is a profound parable of man's everlasting struggle against evil.'
6.
H. l'A. Fawcett wrote in the
Manchester Guardian
on 20 August 1954: ‘Mr Tolkien is one of those born storytellers who makes his readers as wide-eyed as children for more.'
7.
The
Oxford Times
review, signed ‘C.H.H.', was printed on 13 August 1954, and described the book as ‘extraordinary and often beautiful'.

[150]
1.
See note 1 to no. 137 above.

[151]
1.
Tolkien made two finished designs for
The Fellowship of the Ring,
both of which survive. In that referred to here, the Ruling Ring, surrounded by the fiery letters of its inscription, and the Red Ring (Narya) above it, were represented exactly as in the other design, which was adopted, and which is still seen in enlarged form on the jackets of the three-volume hardback and paperback editions published by Allen & Unwin; but in the design referred to here there appeared below to left and right the White Ring (Nenya) and the Blue Ring (Vilya), with their gems turned towards the Ruling Ring in the centre.

[153]
1.
One would expect ‘three cases': cf.
The Lord of the Rings
III 314: ‘There were three unions of the Eldar and the Edain: Lúthien and Beren; Idril and Tuor; Arwen and Aragom. By the last the long-sundered branches of the Half-elven were reunited and their line was restored.'
2.
‘“Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?”'
3.
i.e. the poem ‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil' was first published in that magazine in 1934.
4.
' “We look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be. Have you no such custom at meat?”'

[154]
1.
Naomi Mitchison reviewed
The Fellowship of the Ring
in the
New Statesman
on 18 September 1954. She called it ‘extraordinary, terrifying and beautiful'.
2.
German, ‘realities, technical facts'.
3.
sic, here and elsewhere in the letter.
4.
Mentioned in Mrs Mitchison's review.

[155]
1.
Greek γοητεία (γóης, sorcerer); the English form
Goety
is defined in the O.E.D. as ‘witchcraft or magic performed by the invocation and employment of evil spirits; necromancy.'
2.
Alongside the final paragraph, Tolkien has written: ‘But the Númenóreans used “spells” in making swords?'

[156]
1.
Peter Hastings; see no. 153.
2.
Greek, ‘messenger'.
3.
See note 4 to no. 131.

[157]
1.
Trinity College, of which Katherine Farrer's husband Austin was Chaplain, had reduced the fees for the education of Tolkien's sons when they were undergraduates there.
2.
Perhaps C. S. Lewis's review of
The Fellowship of the Ring
in
Time & Tide,
14 August 1954.
3.
i.e. ‘New York Sunday Times'. Auden reviewed
The Fellowship of the Ring
in the
New York Times Book Review
on Sunday 31 October 1954, and in
Encounter,
November 1954.
4.
Edwin Muir, reviewing
The Two Towers
in the
Observer
on 21 November 1954, wrote of the Ents: ‘Symbolically they are quite convincing, yet they are full of character, too, as formidable and strange as a forest of trees going to war.'

[163]
1.
Auden used the term ‘trilogy' in his letter; for Tolkien's dislike of it as applied to
The Lord of the Rings
see nos. 149 and 165.
2.
From the Anglo-Saxon poem
The Wanderer
, 87:
‘eald enta geweorc idlu stodon
', ‘the old creations of giants [i.e. ancient buildings, erected by a former race] stood desolate.'
3.
The reviewer, Maurice Richardson, wrote: ‘It is all I can do to restrain myself from shouting. . . . “Adults of all ages! Unite against the infantilist invasion.”. . . . Mr Auden has always been captivated by the pubescent world of the saga and the classroom. There are passages in
The Orators
which are not unlike bits of Tolkien's hobbitry.' (18 December 1954.)
4.
Tolkien's second son Michael.
5.
‘The Fall of Gondolin' was in fact read to the Exeter College Essay Club not in 1918 but in 1920, as is recorded in the club's minute book:'. . . on Wednesday March 10th at 8.15 p.m. . . . . the president passed to public business, and called upon Mr J. R. R. Tolkien to read his “Fall of Gondolin”. As a discovery of a new mythological background Mr Tolkien's matter was exceedingly illuminating and marked him as a staunch follower of tradition, a treatment indeed in the manner of such typical romantics as William Morris, George Macdonald, de la Motte Fouqué etc. . . . . The battle of the contending forces of good and evil as represented by the Gongothlim [sic, for Gondothlim, the name for the people of Gondolin in the original ‘Fall of Gondolin'; see
Unfinished Tales
p. 5] and the followers of Melco [sic, for Melko, an early name for Melkor] was very graphically and astonishingly told.' Among those at the meeting were Nevill Coghill and Hugo Dyson.
6.
Latin, ‘who has put down the mighty from their seat and has exalted the humble'; from the
Magnificat
.
7.
A potentially misleading statement. While he was writing
The Lord of the Rings
, Tolkien laboured at revising and rewriting a great part of
The Silmarillion.
On the other hand,
The Silmarillion
was in existence before 1936, and cannot be regarded as having originated between that year and 1953.
8.
‘He is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Berúthiel.' (Aragom of Gandalf in
The Lord of the Rings
, Book II, Chapter 4.) See
Unfinished Tales
pp. 401–2.
9.
An episode from Tolkien's childhood in Bloemfontein; see
Biography
p. 13.

[165]
1.
The English meaning of
tollkühn
.
2.
His mother's maiden name was Suffield.
3.
See
Biography
pp. 168–9.
4.
E. R. Eddison.

[168]
1.
i.e.
Enedwaith.
For the history of this region see
Unfinished Tales
pp. 262–4.

[171]
1.
Second person singular of ‘I wot', with an optional ‘double negative'.

[172]
1.
Tolkien's lecture ‘English and Welsh', the first of the O'Donnell Lectures, was delivered in Oxford on 21 October 1955, and was published in
Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures,
University of Wales Press, 1963.

[174]
1.
See note 8 to no. 163.

[177]
1.
This professorship at Oxford had fallen vacant with the end of C. Day Lewis's term of office, and nominations were being invited for his successor. W. H. Auden was eventually elected.

[180]
1.
International languages, invented during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
2.
See no.211, and also
Unfinished Tales
pp. 389–90, 393–4.
3.
See note 4 to no. 163.

[181]
1.
But see note 5 to no. 131.
2.
A reference to the proposal for a ‘relief' road through Christ Church Meadow.

[188]
1.
The 1947 Swedish translation, published under the title
Hompen
.

[190]
1.
A term signifying an imaginary ‘rustic' county.
2.
i.e
cane,
‘duck', +
étang
, ‘pool, pond'.

[191]
1.
‘Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.'

[192]
1.
‘ “Pity? It was Pity that stayed [Bilbo's] hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”'
2.
‘“Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was
meant
to find the Ring, and
not
by its maker.”' (Gandalf to Frodo.)

[193]
1.
‘She [Morwen] bore him three children in Gondor, of whom Théoden, the second, was his only son.'

[195]
1.
The reference is to a passage in ‘The Scouring of the Shire' (Book VI, Chapter 8) where Frodo tells Pippin: ‘“There is to be no slaying of hobbits, not even if they have gone over to the other side. . . . . No hobbit has ever killed another on purpose in the Shire, and it is not to begin now. And nobody is to be killed at all, if it can be helped.”'

[199]
1.
Eddison in fact read from
The Mezentian Gate
; see no. 73.
2.
‘You may like or dislike his invented worlds (I myself like that of
The Worm Ouroboros
and strongly dislike that of
Mistress of Mistresses
) but there is no quarrel between the theme and the articulation of the story.'

[200]
1.
There is perhaps a contrast here to
Unfinished Tales
p. 254: ‘The probability is that Sauron was in fact one of the Aulëan Maiar, corrupted “before Arda began” by Melkor.' On the ‘attachment' of Olórin to Manwë, see
Unfinished Tales
p. 393.