The Letters of J. R. R.Tolkien
Page 44
Enough of that. I hope you are not bored. I enclose on a separate sheet the opening stanza in the original, and in my version, as a specimen.
239 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
[With reference to the Spanish translation of The Hobbit.]
20 July 1962
If gnomos is used as a translation of dwarves, then it must not appear on p. 63 in the elves that are now called Gnomes. I need not trouble the translator, or you, with the long explanation needed to account for this aberration; but the word was used as a translation of the real name, according to my mythology, of the High-elven people of the West. Pedantically, associating it with Greek gnome 'thought, intelligence'. But I have abandoned it, since it is quite impossible to dissociate the name from the popular associations of the Paracelsan gnomus = pygmaeus. Since this word is used – for its aptness in preference to Sp[anish] enano I am not able to judge – for 'dwarves', regrettable confusion would be caused, if it is also applied to the High Elves. I earnestly suggest that on p. 63, lines 6-7, the translator should translate old swords of the High Elves of the West; and on p. 173, line 14, should delete (or Gnomes) altogether. I think these are the only places where Gnomes appears in The Hobbit.
240 To Mrs Pauline Gasch (Pauline Baynes)
[Pauline Baynes, who was illustrating The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, pointed out that the typescript of the title poem described Tom as wearing a peacock's feather in his hat, but the version in the galley-proofs had the reading 'a swan-wing feather'.]
1 August 1962
76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford
Dear Mrs Gasch,
I am sorry that you have been bothered by this detail. There have been a number of minor changes made at various times in the process of assimilating Tom B. to the Lord of the Rings world.
The peacock's feather belongs to an old draft. Being unsuitable to the L.R. this becomes in the L.R. (I p. 130) 'a long blue feather'. In the poems as now to be published Tom appears (in line 4 of the first poem) with a 'swan-wing feather': to increase the riverishness, and to allow for the incident in the second poem, the gift of a blue feather by the king's fisher. That incident also explains the blue feather of the L.R. Poem one is evidently, as said in the introduction, a hobbit-version of things long before the days of the L.R. But the second poem refers to the days of growing shadow, before Frodo set out (as the consultation with Maggot shows: cf. L.R.I p. 143). When therefore Tom appears in the L.R. he is wearing a blue feather.
As far as you are concerned peacocks are out. A swan-feather in the first poem; and a blue one after the kingfisher incident.
Thank you for taking so much trouble. I may say that a number of changes were made in the drafts that were originally submitted to you. Only the galleys are reliable.
For instance, in the altercation with the kingfisher, I found that no variety likely to be in our parts of the world has a scarlet crest. (Scarlet breasts are more likely though ones I know are pinkish!) Also, more interesting, I found that the bird's name did not mean, as I had supposed, 'a King that fishes'. It was originally the king's fisher. That links the swan (traditionally the property of the King) with the fisher-bird; explains both their rivalry, and their special friendship with Tom: they were creatures who looked for the return of their rightful Lord, the true King.
Do not be put off by this sort of thing unless it affects the picture! The inwardly seen picture is to me the most important. I look forward to your interpretation. The donnish detail is just a private pleasure which I do not expect anyone to notice. (E.g. the hanging up of a kingfisher to see the way of the wind, which comes from Sir T. Browne; the otter's whisker sticking out of the gold, from the Norse Nibelung legends; and the three places for gossip, smithy, mill, and cheaping (market), from a mediaeval instructive work that I have been editing!) With very best wishes
Yours sincerely
Ronald Tolkien.
241 From a letter to Jane Neave
[Tolkien's aunt, who was living in Wales, had been reading a proof copy of his lecture 'English and Welsh', delivered in 1955 and published in 1963 in the volume Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures.]
8-9 September 1962
I was so pleased to hear from you again. I was a bit afraid that I had overstepped the mark with that lecture: much of it rather dull except to dons. It is not really 'learned': my task was to thread together items of common (professional) knowledge in an attempt to interest English people. The only 'original' things in it, are the autobiographical bits, and the reference to 'beauty' in language; and the theory that one's 'native language' is not the same as one's 'cradle-tongue'.
I should not be surprised to hear that your postman did not know bobi: caws bobi. It seems not to be mentioned in modern dictionaries, and is probably obsolete. It means or meant 'toasted cheese', i.e. Welsh rabbit, pobi is the Welsh word for 'cook, roast, toast', and (if Andrew Boorde got it right) it has changed p- to b- because pobi is used as an adjective, after a noun. London was for a while very Welsh-conscious at the time (as seen in Shakespeare), and bits of Welsh crop up in plays and tales. But the notion that Welsh was the 'language of heaven' was much older. Andrew B. was simply making fun of an often heard Welsh claim. I expect the postman will have heard of it. Postmen are on the whole a good tribe – especially the country ones who still walk. But Welsh postmen seem specially kind, and also learned. Sir John Morris Jones, a famous Welsh scholar (and author of the grammar that I bought with prize-money as related) said, commenting on the work of a learned French scholar (Loth) on Welsh metres: 'I get more learning and sense on the topic out of my postman.'
Which did not mean, of course, that Loth was as ignorant as a mere postman 'passing the time of day'; but that the postman was better read and more learned than a French professor. It may have been true – in Welsh matters. For as a 'poor country' even yet Wales has not learnt to associate art or knowledge solely with certain classes. But the Welsh for all their virtues are contentious and often malicious; and they do not always whet their tongues against 'foreigners', they often turn the sharp edge upon their own kind (who do not readily forgive). All 'scholars' are apt to be quarrelsome, but Welsh scholarship and philology are a faction-fight. My reference on p. 3 to 'entering the litigious lists' was not mere rhetoric, but a necessary disclaimer against belonging to any one of the factions.
It is said that Sir John M. J. built himself a fine house near Bangor overlooking the Menai Straits, to Môn (Anglesey). But the 'friendly' nickname for the inhabitants of that isle is (on the mainland) moch 'swine'. Some gentry from Beaumaris paid him a visit, and after admiring his house, asked if he was going to give it a name. 'Yes', said he, 'I shall call it Gadara View. '. . . .
I am now sending you 'Leaf by Niggle'. I have had a copy made specially to keep if you wish – from the Dublin Review in which it appeared nearly 20 years ago. It was written (I think) just before the War began, though I first read it aloud to my friends early in 1940.1 recollect nothing about the writing, except that I woke one morning with it in my head, scribbled it down – and the printed form in the main hardly differs from the first hasty version at all. I find it still quite moving, when I reread it.
It is not really or properly an 'allegory' so much as 'mythical'. For Niggle is meant to be a real mixed-quality person and not an 'allegory' of any single vice or virtue. The name Parish proved convenient, for the Porter's joke, but it was not given with any intention of special significance. I once knew of a gardener called Parish. (I see there are six Parishes in our telephone book.) Of course some elements are explicable in biographical terms (so obsessively interesting to modern critics that they often value a piece of 'literature' solely in so far as it reveals the author, and especially if that is in a discreditable light). There was a great tree – a huge poplar with vast limbs – visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it. It had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs – though of course not
with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled. Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate. (Too often the hate is irrational, a fear of anything large and alive, and not easily tamed or destroyed, though it may clothe itself in pseudo-rational terms.) This fool89 said that it cut off the sun from her house and garden, and that she feared for her house if it should crash in a high wind. It stood due east of her front door, across a wide road, at a distance nearly thrice its total height. Thus only about the equinox would it even cast a shadow in her direction, and only in the very early morning one that reached across the road to the pavement outside her front gate. And any wind that could have uprooted it and hurled it on her house, would have demolished her and her house without any assistance from the tree. I believe it still stands where it did. Though many winds have blown since. (The great gale in which the dreadful winter of 46—47 ended (on March 17, 1947) blew down nearly all the mighty trees of the Broadwalk in Christchurch Meadows, and devastated Magdalen deer park – but it did not lose a bough.) Also, of course, I was anxious about my own internal Tree, The Lord of the Rings. It was growing out of hand, and revealing endless new vistas – and I wanted to finish it, but the world was threatening. And I was dead stuck, somewhere about Ch. 10 (Voice of Saruman) in Book III – with fragments ahead some of which eventually fitted into Ch. 1 and 3 of Book V, but most of which proved wrong especially about Mordor – and I did not know how to go on. It was not until Christopher was carried off to S. Africa that I forced myself to write Book IV, which was sent out to him bit by bit. That was 1944. (I did not finish the first rough writing till 1949, when I remember blotting the pages (which now represent the welcome of Frodo and Sam on the Field of Cormallen) with tears as I wrote. I then myself typed the whole of that work all VI books out, and then once again in revision (in places many times), mostly on my bed in the attic of the tiny terrace-house to which war had exiled us from the house in which my family had grown up.) But none of that really illuminates 'Leaf by Niggle' much, does it? If it has any virtues, they remain as such, whether you know all this or do not. I hope you think it has some virtue. (But for quite different reasons, I think you may like the personal details. That is because you are a dear, and take an interest in other people, especially as rightly your kin.)
242 From a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin
[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was published on 22 November.]
28 November 1962
I have so far seen two reviews of 'Tom Bombadil': T. Litt. Suppl. and Listener: I was agreeably surprised: I expected remarks far more snooty and patronizing. Also I was rather pleased, since it seemed that the reviewers had both started out not wanting to be amused, but had failed to maintain their Victorian dignity intact.
Still, I remain puzzled, as before: wondering why if a 'professor' shows any knowledge of his professional techniques it must be 'waggery', but if a writer shows, say, knowledge of law or law-courts it is held interesting and creditable.
243 To Michael Tolkien
19 December 1962
76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford
Dearest Mick,
A merry Christmas and God bless you all. I enclose for you a little somewhat that may help, I hope. It is made possible by the unexpected financial success of my verses (never mind the critics). Almost in 'the red', I was, as being now practically 'self-employed' I usually have to wait until May before 'A & U' fork out proceeds for the past year. But they have made me an advance, since 'T. B.' sold nearly 8,000 copies before publication (caught on the hop they have had to reprint hastily), and that, even on a minute initial royalty, means more than is at all usual for anyone but Betjeman to make on verse!....
I am extremely weary after returning to term, amidst other labours (of which T.B. for all its slendemess caused quite a lot of sweat). My Ancrene Wisse also got between covers this week at last, but as it is only a text (with textual footnotes) in extremely archaic M. English, I do not think you would be amused by it. But when the translation of Sir Gawain and Pearl appears (early next year, I hope) you shall have a copy. Then ho! for Númenor and dark and difficult legends. I have also been honoured by a 'Festschrift' – a volume of contributions by 22 'Anglists' with a prefatory ode by Auden for my 70th birthday. A plot hatched and carried out by Rayner Unwin & Norman Davis (my successor) of which I knew nothing until a few weeks ago.....
Well here comes Christmas! That astonishing thing that no 'commercialism' can in fact defile – unless you let it. I hope, my dearest, that it will bring you some rest and refreshment in every way, & I shall remember you in communion (as always but specially) and wish that I had all my family beside me in the ancient patriarchal way! Your own Father.
244 From a draft to a reader of The Lord of the Rings
[A fragment at the top of which Tolkien has written: 'Comments on a criticism (now lost?) concerning Faramir & Eowyn (c. 1963).']
Eowyn: It is possible to love more than one person (of the other sex) at the same time, but in a different mode and intensity. I do not think that Eowyn's feelings for Aragorn really changed much; and when he was revealed as so lofty a figure, in descent and office, she was able to go on loving and admiring him. He was old, and that is not only a physical quality: when not accompanied by any physical decay age can be alarming or awe-inspiring. Also she was not herself ambitious in the true political sense. Though not a 'dry nurse' in temper, she was also not really a soldier or 'amazon', but like many brave women was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis.
I think you misunderstand Faramir. He was daunted by his father: not only in the ordinary way of a family with a stern proud father of great force of character, but as a Númenórean before the chief of the one surviving Númenórean state. He was motherless and sisterless (Eowyn was also motherless), and had a 'bossy' brother. He had been accustomed to giving way and not giving his own opinions air, while retaining a power of command among men, such as a man may obtain who is evidently personally courageous and decisive, but also modest, fair-minded and scrupulously just, and very merciful. I think he understood Eowyn very well. Also to be Prince of Ithilien, the greatest noble after Dol Amroth in the revived Númenórean state of Gondor, soon to be of imperial power and prestige, was not a 'market-garden job' as you term it. Until much had been done by the restored King, the P. of Ithilien would be the resident march-warden of Gondor, in its main eastward outpost – and also would have many duties in rehabilitating the lost territory, and clearing it of outlaws and orc-remnants, not to speak of the dreadful vale of Minas Ithil (Morgul). I did not, naturally, go into details about the way in which Aragorn, as King of Gondor, would govern the realm. But it was made clear that there was much fighting, and in the earlier years of A.'s reign expeditions against enemies in the East. The chief commanders, under the King, would be Faramir and Imrahil; and one of these would normally remain a military commander at home in the King's absence. A Númenórean King was monarch, with the power of unquestioned decision in debate; but he governed the realm with the frame of ancient law, of which he was administrator (and interpreter) but not the maker. In all debatable matters of importance domestic, or external, however, even Denethor had a Council, and at least listened to what the Lords of the Fiefs and the Captains of the Forces had to say. Aragorn re-established the Great Council of Gondor, and in that Faramir, who remained90 by inheritance the Steward (or representative of the King during his absence abroad, or sickness, or between his death and the accession of his heir) would [be] the chief counsellor.
Criticism of the speed of the relationship or 'love' of Faramir and Eowyn. In my experience feelings and decisions ripen very quickly (as measured by mere 'clock-time', which is actually not justly applicable) in periods of great stress, and especially under the expectation of imminent death. And I do not think that persons of high estate and breeding need all the petty fencing and approaches in matters of 'love'. This tale does not deal with a period of 'Courtly Love
' and its pretences; but with a culture more primitive (sc. less corrupt) and nobler.
245 To Rhona Beare
[Answers to the following questions: (1) In the 'English runes' used for Anglo-Saxon inscriptions, the rune does not stand for G as it does in The Lord of the Rings. Why not? (2) What happened to Elves when they died in battle?]
25 June 1963
76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford
Dear Miss Beare,
The 'cirth' or runes in the 'L.R.' were invented for that story and, within it, have no supposed historical connexion with the Germanic Runic alphabet, to which the English gave its most elaborate development. There is thus nothing to be surprised at if similar signs have different values. The similarity of shapes is inevitable in alphabets devised primarily for cut[ting] or scratching on wood and so made of lines directly or diagonally across the grain. The signs used in the cirth are nearly [all] to be extracted from the basic pattern ;the possibilities being decreased by the avoidance of the juncture of a diagonal with the bottom of an upright (the exceptions are few and limited to cases where as in there is also juncture at the top). They are increased by the repetition on the opposite side of an upright of any diagonal appendage, & by repeating half the basic pattern: hence etc.