The Letters of J. R. R.Tolkien
Page 49
269 From a letter to W. H. Auden
[Auden had asked Tolkien if the notion of the Orcs, an entire race that was irredeemably wicked, was not heretical.]
12 May 1965
With regard to The Lord of the Rings, I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of orcs is heretical or not. I don't feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief, which is asserted somewhere, Book Five, page 190, where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sons and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to be, by us at any rate, unredeemable.....
One of my troubles is that I was just sending into press a revision of my translation of Gawain together with one of Pearl when a desperate problem of U.S.A. copyright fell on me, and I must now devote all the time I have to produce a revision of both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit that can be copyrighted and, it is hoped, defeat the pirates.
270 To Rayner Unwin
[Tolkien had sent Unwin the typescript of his new story Smith of Wootton Mayor. It seemed to Unwin to need the companionship of other stories to make a sufficiently large book. This suggestion came just as Tolkien was revising The Lord of the Rings, so as to produce a new edition that would be protected by U.S.A. copyright. The need for this arose because an American publisher had issued an unauthorised paperback edition of the book, without the consent of Tolkien or Allen & Unwin, and (at first) without paying royalties.]
20 May 1965
76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford
Dear Rayner,
Thank you very much for the return of Smith ofWootton Major. I am delighted that it pleased you, as I was quite unable to make my own mind up about it without your assistance. I am afraid there is nothing of similar sort or length deep among my papers. There is a lot of unfinished material there, but everything belongs definitely to the Silmarillion or all that world. To which I should now be in only a few days returning, if it was not for this infernal copyright business. I shall be sending you the remainder of the text of Gawain and my comments on the specimen pages you sent me, to reach you I hope by Monday next. I cannot produce the prefatory note or the commentary until the revision of The Lord of the Rings is finished. I shall have to work hard to get it to Boston by July 1.
Yours sincerely,
Ronald Tolkien.
PS. I am now inserting in every note of acknowledgement to readers in the U.S.A. a brief note informing them that Ace Books is a pirate, and asking them to inform others.
271 From a letter to Rayner Unwin
25 May 1965
I am not relishing the task of 're-editing' The Lord of the Rings. I think it will prove very difficult if not impossible to make any substantial changes in the general text. Volume I has now been gone through and the number of necessary or desirable corrections is very small. I am bound to say that my admiration for the tightness of the author's construction is somewhat increased. The poor fellow (who now seems to me only a remote friend) must have put a lot of work into it. I am hoping that alteration of the introductions, considerable modifications of the appendices and the inclusion of an index may prove sufficient for the purpose. Incidentally, I am making a point of including a note in every answer or acknowledgement of 'fan' letters from the U.S.A. to the effect that the paperback edition of Ace Books is piratical and issued without the consent of my publishers or myself and of course without remuneration to us. Do you think that if this were done on a larger scale it might be useful?
272 From a letter to Zillah Sherring
20 July 1965
[In a second-hand bookshop in Salisbury, Wiltshire, Zillah Sherring found and bought a copy of The Fifth Book of Thucydides which contained a number of strange inscriptions that had been written in it by a previous owner. Finding Tolkien's name among those on the flyleaf, she wrote to him asking if the inscriptions, particularly a long one at the back, had possibly been his work. She sent him a transcript of it. This is a facsimile of the inscription:]
The book certainly once belonged to me. .... The writing on the back page is in Gothic, or what I thought was Gothic or might be. I had come across this admirable language a year or two before 1910 in Joseph Wright's Primer of the Gothic Language (now replaced by A Grammar of the Gothic Language). It was sold to me by a school-friend interested in missionary work, who had thought it a Bible Society product and had no use for what it was. I was fascinated by Gothic in itself: a beautiful language, which reached the eminence of liturgical use, but failed owing to the tragic history of the Goths to become one of the liturgical languages of the West. At the time I had only the Primer with its small vocabulary, but I had learned from it some of the technique necessary for converting the words of other Germanic languages into Gothic script. I often put 'Gothic' inscriptions in books, sometimes Gothicizing my Norse name and German surname as Ruginwaldus Dwalakoneis. The inscription you cite is at fault (by accident) in HVNDAI which should be HVNDA. It is also bad Gothic in other respects, but was intended to mean: I read the words of these books104 of Greek history ('year-writing') in the sixth month of this year: thousand, nine hundreds, ten, of Our Lord: in order to gain the prize given every year to the boy knowing most about Thucydides, and this I inscribed in my books105 on the twelfth of the sixth (month) after I had already ? first read through all the words carefully. Frvmins is probably an error for frumist 'first'.
You probably will not be interested in other 'errors'. The inscription presented some problems to one having only the vocabulary of short specimens of the fragments of the Gothic versions of the New Testament to go upon. The Gothic word for 'read' was not lisan, las, galisans, which still had only its original meaning 'gather' (a sense which its German and Norse equivalents, lesen and lesa, still retain in addition to the sense 'read' imitated from Latin lego). The Gothic word was ussiggwan 'recite' (sing out). The an of private reading, silent, and with the use only or chiefly of the eyes, was if practised by the 'ancients' mostly forgotten. I believe it is reported that St Ambrose (in the same century as the Gothic versions were made) astonished observers who saw him reading by only moving his eyes from side to side, without moving his lips or at least murmuring. ....
I still feel no compunction in writing in my own books, though I now usually put only notes supposed to be of use – if I can later decipher them.
273 From a letter to Nan C. Scott
21 July 1965
[Mrs Scott was a leading campaigner in the battle to keep the pirate edition of The Lord of the Rings out of the American bookshops.]
I am extremely grateful for the information that you have sent me, and still more for your great kindness and energy in attempting to combat the pirates on my behalf. .... I have been taken off all my other work and driven nearly over the edge by the attempt to get an authorized paperback by Ballantine Books produced as soon as possible.
274 From a letter to the Houghton Mifflin Co.
[Concerning revisions to The Lord of the Rings.]
28 July 1965
The small map 'Pan of the Shire' is most at fault and much needs correction (and some additions), and has caused a number of questions to be asked. The chief fault is that the ferry at Bucklebury and so Brandy Hall and Crickhollow have shifted about 3 miles too far north (about 4 mm.). This cannot be altered at this time, but it is unfortunate that Brandy Hall clearly on the river-bank is placed so that the main road runs in front of it instead of behind. There is also no trace of the wood described at the top of p. 99.
275 From a letter to W. H. Auden
[Auden had invited Tolkien to contribute to a festschrift marking the retirement of Nevill Coghill. He also asked if Tolkien knew that a 'New York Tolkien Society' had been formed, and said he feared that most of the members would be lunatics.]
4 August 1965
I still feel grieved that I haven't anything for Ne
ville's [sic] festschrift. I hope that perhaps an arrangement will be made in the book for people in my position to register their good wishes. The only thing I have ever written about Neville was :
Mr Neville Judson Coghill
Wrote a deal of dangerous doggerill.
Practical, progressive men
Called him Little Poison-pen.
That was at a time when under the name of Judson he was writing what I thought very good and funny verses lampooning forward-looking men like Norwood of St John's.
Yes, I have heard about the Tolkien Society. Real lunatics don't join them, I think. But still such things fill me too with alarm and despondency.
276 To Dick Plotz, 'Thain' of the Tolkien Society of America
12 September 1965
76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford
To the T. S. A. First Communiqué from
the Member for Longbottom.
Dear Mr Plotz,
I have been away in Ireland, and have just received your letter (amid a mountain of mail) on my return. I am much interested to hear of the formation of the 'Tolkien Society', and very grateful for the compliment. I do not, however, see how I can become a 'member' of a society inspired by liking for my works and devoted (I suppose) to study and criticism of them, as at least pan of their activities.
I should, however, be pleased to be associated with you in some informal capacity. I should, for instance, be willing to offer any advice that you wished to seek, or provide information not yet in print – always with the proviso (especially with regard to 'information') that the plea: Engaged on the matter of the Eldar and of Númenor: would be accepted without offence as an adequate excuse for an inadequate answer to enquiries. ....
As for the 'Silmarillion' and its appendages; that is written, but it is in a confused state owing to alteration and enlargement at different dates (including 'writing back' to confirm the links between it and The L. of the Rings). It lacks a thread on which its diversity can be strung. It also presents in a more acute form than even the difficulties that I found in The L. of the R.: the need to acquaint an audience with an unknown mythology without reference to the tales; and to relate a number of long legends dependent on the mythology without holding them up with explanatory digressions. I had hoped by now to be deep in the work necessary to presenting a part of the matter in publishable form..... I think I shall issue it in parts. The first pan may, given still the health and vigour, reach the press next year.
There is also a large amount of matter that is not strictly pan of the Silmarillion: cosmogony and matter concerning the Valar; and later matter concerning Númenor, and the War in Middle-earth (fall of Eregion and death of Celebrimbor, and the history of Celeborn and Galadriel). As for Numenor, the tale of the Akallabêth or Downfall is fully written. The rest of its internal history is only in Annal form, and will probably remain so, except for one long Nukraft-s.rumenokraft-s.rurean tale: The Mariner's Wife: now nearly complete, concerning the story of Aldarion (the 6th Kmg: L.R. III 315, 316) and his tragic relations with his father and his wife. This is supposed to have been preserved in the Downfall, when most of Númenórean lore was lost except that that dealt with the First Age, because it tells how Númenor became involved in the politics of Middle-eanh.
I quite understand the amusement to be got in such a society out of special names for members associated with the story, and of course I see that things are still undecided. But if I might make a suggestion at this stage, I should say that I think it is a mistake to give names of characters (or offices) in the story. Personally I should have liked the society's title to be 'The Shire Society', with perhaps T.S.A. as an explanatory subtitle. But even without any change of title, I think it would be more appropriate and amusing to give members the title of 'Member for Some-place-in-the Shire', or in Bree. Would it not be a good thing to limit the number of persons entitled to a special name in some suitable way: as being earliest members, or later as being those who clearly continue to get some interest or amusement out of membership? There are only about 30 suitable place names in the small section of the Shire printed, but there are more in my map, and if a proper map of the whole Shire were drawn up there could be quite a large number of places entered. The names already entered, even those that seem unlikely (as Nobottle), are in fact devised according to the style, origins, and mode of formation of English (especially Midland) place-names. I should be delighted to construct new names on the same principles as desired and to find them places on the maps of Bree and the Shire. Personally, as an inveterate pipe smoker be happy to accept the title of Member for Longbottom; or if you should wish to accord me mayoral dignity (for which even on Hobbit-scales my years make me just about ripe) the Member for Michel Delving. ....
Núminor. C. S. Lewis was one of the only three persons who have so far read all or a considerable pan of my 'mythology' of the First and Second Ages, which had already been in the main lines constructed before we met. He had the peculiarity that he liked to be read to. All that he knew of my 'matter' was what his capacious but not infallible memory retained from my reading to him as sole audience. His spelling numinor is a hearing error, aided, no doubt, by his association of the name with Latin nūmen, nūmina, and the adjective 'numinous'. Unfortunate, since the name has no such connexions, and has no reference to 'divinity' or sense of its presence. It is a construction from the Eldarin base √NDU 'below, down; descend'; Q. núme 'going down, occident'; númen 'the direction or region of the sunset' +nóre 'land' as an inhabited area. I have often used Westernesse as a translation. This is derived from rare Middle English Westernesse (known to me only in MS. C of King Horn) where the meaning is vague, but may be taken to mean 'Western lands' as distinct from the East inhabited by the Paynim and Saracens. Lewis took no pan in 'research into Númenor'. N. is my personal alteration of the Atlantis myth and/or tradition, and accommodation of it to my general mythology. Of all the mythical or 'archetypal' images this is the one most deeply seated in my imagination, and for many years I had a recurrent Atlantis dream : the stupendous and ineluctable wave advancing from the Sea or over the land, sometimes dark, sometimes green and sunlit.
Lewis was, I think, impressed by 'the Silmarillion and all that', and certainly retained some vague memories of it and of its names in mind. For instance, since he had heard it, before he composed or thought of Out of the Silent Planet, I imagine that Eldil is an echo of the Eldar; in Perelandra 'Tor and Tinidril'are certainly an echo, since Tuor and Idril, parents of Eärendil, are major characters in 'The Fall of Gondolin', the earliest written of the legends of the First Age. But his own mythology (incipient and never fully realized) was quite different. It was at any rate broken to bits before it became coherent by contact with C. S. Williams and his 'Arthurian' stuff – which happened between Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. A pity, I think. But then I was and remain wholly unsympathetic to Williams' mind.
I knew Charles Williams only as a friend of C.S.L. whom I met in his company when, owing to the War, he spent much of his time in Oxford. We liked one another and enjoyed talking (mostly in jest) but we had nothing to say to one another at deeper (or higher) levels. I doubt if he had read anything of mine then available; I had read or heard a good deal of his work, but found it wholly alien, and sometimes very distasteful, occasionally ridiculous. (This is perfectly true as a general statement, but is not intended as a criticism of Williams; rather it is an exhibition of my own limits of sympathy. And of course in so large a range of work I found lines, passages, scenes, and thoughts that I found striking.) I remained entirely unmoved. Lewis was bowled over.
But Lewis was a very impressionable man, and this was abetted by his great generosity and capacity for friendship. The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should
never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion. ....
I send you and the T.S.A. my best wishes. If I were not in an interim between secretaries (pan-time) for a few days, you might have received a briefer letter, more succinct and better typed. Yours sincerely, J. R. R. Tolkien.
277 To Rayner Unwin
[In August 1965 Ballantine Books produced the first 'authorised' American paperback of The Hobbit, without incorporating Tolkien's revisions to the text. The cover picture showed a lion, two emus, and a tree with bulbous fruit. (When the book was reissued by Ballantine the following February, with the revised text, the lion had disappeared beneath yellow-green grass.)]
12 September 1965
I wrote to [his American publishers] expressing (with moderation) my dislike of the cover for [the Ballantine edition of ] The Hobbit. It was a short hasty note by hand, without a copy, but it was to this effect: I think the cover ugly; but I recognize that a main object of a paperback cover is to attract purchasers, and I suppose that you are better judges of what is attractive in USA than I am. I therefore will not enter into a debate about taste – (meaning though I did not say so: horrible colours and foul lettering) – but I must ask this about the vignette: what has it got to do with the story? Where is this place? Why a lion and emus? And what is the thing in the foreground with pink bulbs? I do not understand how anybody who had read the tale (I hope you are one) could think such a picture would please the author.