The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (86 page)

[247]
1.
This account, ‘The Quest of Erebor', is printed in
Unfinished Tales
.

[248]
1.
The pagination is that of
Essays Presented to Charles Williams,
and the passage cited is: ‘It is easy for the student to feel that with all his labour he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them now torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted.'
2.
‘The Christian. . . . may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.'

[249]
1.
Sir James Murray (1837–1915) founded the
Oxford English Dictionary
.

[250]
1.
Possibly a reference to Pius X's recommendation of daily communion and children's communion.
2.
The Second Vatican Council (1962–6).
3.
Tolkien's guardian, Fr Francis Morgan.
4.
Tolkien's home from 1926 until 1930.
5.
Latin, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' (From the Communion service.)
6.
The general practitioner who attended Tolkien during his visits to (and, later, residence in) Bournemouth.
7.
Tolkien's grandson, Michael's son, then at St Andrews University studying English.
8.
See note 5 to no. 19, which gives details about this broadcast.
9.
James Callaghan, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour opposition party at this time. The Labour Party came to power in 1964.
10.
i.e. before 1931, implying that
The Hobbit
was written in this year. (But see
Biography
p. 177.)

[251]
1.
James Dundas-Grant, one of the Inklings.
2.
Lewis's stepson.
3.
Professor of English at Keele University and a former pupil of Lewis.

[252]
1.
The words ‘We were separated. . . . long after the event' are struck through in the draft.
2.
See note 3 to no. 24.

[253]
1.
See Tolkien's drawing ‘The Tree of Amalion', no. 41 in
Pictures
.

[254]
1.
R. W. (‘Dickie') Reynolds; see
Biography
p. 47.
2.
Wiseman became headmaster of Queen's College, Taunton.
3.
Headmaster of King Edward's.

[257]
1.
‘Light as Leaf on Lindentree',
The Gryphon
, new series VI no. 6 (June 1925), p. 217.
2.
‘. . . . to be the bride-price of Lúthien to Thingol her father.' (Misprinted as ‘bride-piece' in all editions for many years, and only recently corrected.) For an account of this poem, see
Inklings
pp. 29–30.
3.
See introductory note to no. 9.
4.
In Cornwall, on the coast not far from Penzance. This holiday was in the summer of 1932.
5.
Tolkien lived in Duchess Road from 1908 until 1910.
6.
Brummagem
is the local (and very old) form of the name of Birmingham.

[261]
1.
Bailey wrote: ‘From the very first tutorial, Lewis consistently mistook me for Geoff Dutton, an Australian and an excellent student, and Dutton for me.'

[267]
1.
Latin, ‘in this city the solemn light.'

[268]
1.
‘“In him one of the mighty steeds of old has returned.”' ‘“Were the West Wind to take a body visible, even so would it appear.”' ‘These were the
mearas
. . . . . Men said of them that Béma (whom the Eldar call Oromë) must have brought their sires from West over Sea.'

[269]
1.
‘“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs: it only ruined them and twisted them.”'

[270]
1.
The offices of the Houghton Mifflin Co. are in Boston, Mass.

[274]
1.
‘They waded the stream, and hurried over a wide open space, rush-grown and treeless, on the further side. Beyond that they came again to a belt of trees: tall oaks, for the most part, with here and there an elm tree or an ash.'

[275]
1.
Sir Cyril Norwood (1875–1956), President of St John's College, Oxford, and author of the Norwood Report on education.

[276]
1.
In fact at least three people beside C. S. Lewis had read the mythology: Christopher Tolkien, Rayner Unwin, and Lord Halsbury.

[278]
1.
Tolkien's remark is certainly enigmatic, because in
Light on C. S. Lewis
(Bles, 1965), Owen Barfield makes a number of comments on Lewis's personality. Possibly Tolkien was referring to Barfield's puzzlement about ‘the great change that took place in [Lewis] between the years 1930 and 1940 – a change that roughly coincided with his conversion … but which did not appear, and does not appear in retrospect, to be inevitably or even naturally connected with it' (p. ix). Barfield continued: ‘
Was
there something, at least in his impressive, indeed splendid, literary personality, which was somehow – and with no taint of insincerity –
voulu
?. . . . some touch of a more than merely
ad hoc
pastiche?' (p. xi). Alternatively, Tolkien may have been alluding to Barfield's remark (p. xvi) about Lewis's ‘distinctive combination of an almost supreme intellectual and “phantastic” maturity, laced with moral energy, on the other hand, with. . . . a certain psychic or spiritual immaturity on the other'.

[281]
1.
This drawing is reproduced as no. 19 in
Pictures.
2.
' “You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?”' (Gandalf to Bilbo).

[293]
1.
Tolkien apparently relented, for Foster's interview with him was published in
The Scotsman
on 25 March 1967.

[294]
1.
W. H. Auden; see no. 284.
2.
See introductory note to no. 9.
3.
According to Tolkien's friend Elaine Griffiths, the MS. was in fact lent by Tolkien to Susan Dagnall, who had heard about it from Miss Griffiths.
4.
For Tolkien's correspondence with Jane Neave, the aunt here mentioned, see nos. 231, 234, 238 and 241.
5.
See no. 202.
6.
By John Christopher, first published in 1956.
7.
See also no. 24 for an account of this.

[295]
1.
It is not known to what letter Tolkien was referring.
2.
Auden had sent Tolkien a typescript of the translation he and Paul B. Taylor had made of the
Völuspá
or ‘Song of the Sibyl'. It was eventually published in a collection of their translations from the Edda, under the title
The Elder Edda: A Selection
(Faber & Faber, 1969); this book was dedicated to Tolkien.
3.
A long unpublished poem entitled ‘Volsungakviða En Nyja', probably written in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Tolkien described it, in a letter to Auden dated 29 January 1968, as ‘written in fornyrðislag 8-line stanzas in English: an attempt to organise the Edda material dealing with Sigurd and Gunnar'.
Fornyrðislag
is the Old Norse stanzaic metre, very closely resembling in its lines those of Old English poetry, in which most of the narrative poems of the Edda were composed.

[297]
1.
This commentary was published, after Tolkien's death, in Jared Lobdell (ed.),
A Tolkien Compass
(La Salle, Illinois, Open Court, 1975), pp. 153–201.

[300]
1.
Nickname for C. S. Lewis.
2.
F. E. Brightman (1856–1932), Fellow of Magdalen College.

[303]
1.
Tolkien lived with his mother and younger brother in a cottage opposite this mill, in a hamlet outside Birmingham, during his early childhood.

[306]
1.
Latin, ‘that was an omen'.
2.
Officers' Training Corps.
3.
‘ “You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.”' ‘“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set.”'
4.
Bishop J. A. T. Robinson, Author of
Honest to God
(1963).
5.
Tolkien's younger brother (1894–1976).
6.
The lecture, delivered on 5 June 1959, was eventually published in
J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller,
ed. M. B. Salu & R. T. Farrell (Cornell University Press, 1979).

[307]
1.
‘Old age has stolen upon me … I am older than I was both in winters [i.e. years] and in learning [i.e. wisdom].'

[309]
1.
J. B. Tolkien (1807–96) was in fact 89 when he died.
2.
But see no. 334, one of many letters signed ‘Ronald' (never ‘John' except to his wife in the days of their courtship), and in which he asks Rayner Unwin to call him this.

[311]
1.
Mrs Parke, who acted as driver and general help to the Tolkiens for several hours a week.

[312]
1.
Wild Flowers of the Cape Peninsula
by Mary Maytham Kidd (Oxford University Press, 1950).

[315]
1.
Tolkien had made over the greater part of his literary income to his sons and daughter; if he survived for seven years after doing so, the gift would be free of death duties.

[316]
1.
This letter was never received by the Dictionary Department, and was probably never sent.
2.
This definition was used, prefaced by the words ‘In the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973)', in the 1976
Supplement
to the Dictionary.
3.
See no. 25.

[318]
1.
See note 3 to no. 1; also no. 308.
2.
See note 4 to no. 1.

[319]
1.
See no. 25.
2.
Green informed Tolkien that the author was E. H. Knatchbull Hugessen and the book was
Stories For My Children
(1869).

[323]
1.
The Morris car which the Tolkiens owned in the 1930s bore a registration plate which began with the letters JO.

[328]
1.
Fellow of Balliol College.

[332]
1.
Tolkien was staying with his son Christopher and family in the village near Oxford where they then lived.
2.
Tolkien's first cousin.

[336]
1.
Idols in a story by Lord Dunsany; see no. 294.

[338]
1.
The song of the Ent and Entwife in the chapter ‘Treebeard'.
2.
German philosopher and writer on Kierkegaard; 1879–1945.

[351]
1.
W. H. Lewis.
2.
T. P. Dunning, C.M., of University College, Dublin; scholar in Anglo-Saxon.
3.
Rosfrith Murray, daughter of Sir James Murray. See no. 249.

[354]
1.
The driver of the hired car by which Tolkien travelled to Bournemouth.
2.
The Bournemouth hotel where Tolkien and his wife had often stayed.

^fn1
Is the presence of ‘conundrums' in
Alice
a parallel to echoes of Northern myth in
The Hobbit
?

^fn2
Not that ‘examining' is very profitable. Quite small sales would surpass it. £100 requires nearly as much labour as a full-sized novel.

^fn3
Not quite. I should like, if possible, to learn more about the fairy-tale collection, c. 1904.

^fn4
Still there are more hobbits, far more of them and about them, in the new story. Gollum reappears, and Gandalf is to the fore: ‘dwarves' come in; and though there is no dragon (so far) there is going to be a Giant; and the new and (very alarming) Ringwraiths are a feature. There ought to be things that people who liked the old mixture will find to have a similar taste.

^fn5
It may mitigate your just wrath, if I say that since I wrote in December my wife's health became much worse. I spent most of last term in an attic in a hotel, with my house derelict and damaged.
¹
I have been ill myself, and hardly able to cope with university work, which for me has trebled.

^fn6
Literature has been (until the modem novel) mainly a masculine business, and in it there is a great deal about the ‘fair and false'. That is on the whole a slander. Women are humans and therefore capable of perfidy. But within the human family, as contrasted with men they are not generally or naturally the more perfidious. Very much the reverse. Except only that women are apt to break down if asked to ‘wait' for a man, too long, and while youth (so precious and necessary to a would-be mother) is swiftly passing. They should, in fact, not be asked to wait.