J. R. R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  Tolkien got down to work. On 10 August 1936 he wrote: ‘The Hobbit is now nearly finished, and the publishers clamouring for it.’ He engaged his son Michael, who had cut his right hand badly on a school window, to help with the typing, using his left hand. The whole labour was finished by the first week in October, and the typescript was sent to Allen & Unwin’s offices near the British Museum, bearing the title The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.

  The firm’s chairman, Stanley Unwin, believed that the best judges of children’s books were children, so he handed The Hobbit to his ten-year-old son Rayner, who read it and wrote this report:

  Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit who lived in his hobbit-hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his dwarves perswaded him to go. He had a very exiting time fighting goblins and wargs, at last they got to the lonley mountain; Smaug, the dragon who gawreds it is killed and after a terrific battle with the goblins he returned home – rich! This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9.

  The boy earned a shilling for the report, and the book was accepted for publication.

  Despite what Rayner Unwin had written, it was decided that The Hobbit did need illustrations. Tolkien was modest about his talents as an artist, and when at the publishers’ suggestion he submitted a number of drawings which he had made for the story he commented: ‘The pictures seem to me mostly only to prove that the author cannot draw.’ But Allen & Unwin did not agree, and they gladly accepted eight of his black and white illustrations.

  Although Tolkien had some idea of the processes involved in the production of books, he was surprised by the number of difficulties and disappointments during the following months; indeed the machinations and occasionally the downright incompetence of publishers and printers continued to amaze him until the end of his life. The Hobbit maps had to be redrawn by him because his originals had incorporated too many colours, and even then his scheme of having the general map as an endpaper and Thror’s map placed within the text of Chapter One was not followed. The publishers had decided that both maps should be used as endpapers, and in consequence his plan for ‘invisible lettering’ which would appear when Thror’s map was held up to the light, had to be abandoned. He also had to spend a good deal of time on the proofs – though this was entirely his fault. When the page-proofs arrived at Northmoor Road in February 1937 he decided that he ought to make substantial revisions to several parts of the book, for he had let the manuscript go without checking it with his usual thoroughness, and he was now unhappy about a number of passages in the story; in particular he did not like many of the patronising ‘asides’ to juvenile readers, and he also saw that there were many inconsistencies in the description of the topography, details which only the most acute and painstaking reader would notice, but which he himself with his passion for perfection could not allow to pass. In a few days he had covered the proofs with a host of alterations. With typical consideration for the printers he ensured that his revisions occupied an identical area of type to the original wording – though here he was wasting his time, for the printers decided to reset the entire sections that he had revised.

  The Hobbit was published on 21 September 1937. Tolkien was a little nervous of Oxford reaction, especially as he was currently holding a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, and he remarked: ‘I shall now find it very hard to make people believe that this is not the major fruits of “research” 1936-7.’ He need not have worried: at first Oxford paid almost no attention.

  A few days after publication the book received an accolade in the columns of The Times. ‘All who love that kind of children’s book which can be read and re-read by adults’ wrote the reviewer, ‘should take note that a new star has appeared in this constellation. To the trained eye some characters will seem almost mythopoeic.’ The eye in question was that of C. S. Lewis, at that time a regular reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, who had managed to get this notice of his friend’s book into the parent journal. Naturally, he also reviewed the book in glowing terms in the Supplement itself. There was an equally enthusiastic reaction from many other critics, although some took a delight in pointing out the ineptness of the publisher’s ‘blurb’ that compared the book to Alice in Wonderland simply because both were the work of Oxford dons; and there were a few dissenting voices, among them that of the reviewer who wrote (somewhat puzzlingly) in Junior Bookshelf. ‘The courageous freedom of real adventure doesn’t appear.’

  The first edition of The Hobbit had sold out by Christmas. A reprint was hurried through, and four of the five coloured illustrations that Tolkien had drawn for the book were now included in it; he had apparently never offered them to Allen & Unwin, and it was not until they passed through the publisher’s office on the way to Houghton Mifflin, who were to publish the book in America, that their existence was discovered. When the American edition was issued a few months later it too received approbation from most critics, and it was awarded the New York Herald Tribune prize for the best juvenile book of the season. Stanley Unwin realised that he had a children’s best-seller in his list. He wrote to Tolkien: ‘A large public will be clamouring next year to hear more from you about Hobbits!’

  CHAPTER II

  ‘THE NEW HOBBIT’

  A few weeks after The Hobbit had been published Tolkien went to London and had lunch with Stanley Unwin to discuss a possible successor to the book. He found that the publisher, small, bright-eyed, and bearded, looked ‘exactly like one of my dwarves, only I don’t think he smokes’. Unwin certainly did not smoke, nor did he drink alcohol (he came from a strict Nonconformist family), and each man found the other rather strange. Unwin learnt that Tolkien had a large mythological work called The Silmarillion that he now wanted to publish, though Tolkien admitted that it was not very suitable as a successor to the adventures of Bilbo Baggins; he also said that he had several short stories for children, ‘Mr Bliss’ ‘Farmer Giles of Ham’ and ‘Roverandom’ and there was an unfinished novel called ‘The Lost Road’. Unwin asked Tolkien to send all of these manuscripts to his office in Museum Street.

  They were sent, and they were read. The children’s stories were all enjoyed, but none of them was about hobbits, and Stanley Unwin was certain that this was what the people who had enjoyed the first book wanted. As for ‘The Lost Road’ it was obviously unsuitable for a juvenile audience. But The Silmarillion presented a more complex problem.

  The manuscript of this lengthy work – or rather, the bundle of manuscripts – had arrived in a somewhat disordered state, and the only clearly continuous section seemed to be the long poem ‘The Gest of Beren and Lúthien’. So this poem was passed to a publisher’s reader. The reader did not think much of it; in fact in his report he was very rude about the rhyming couplets. But he hastened to say that he found the prose version of the Beren and Lúthien story enthralling – Tolkien had presumably attached it to the poem for the purpose of completing the story, for the poem itself was unfinished. ‘The tale here proceeds at a stinging pace,’ the reader reported to Stanley Unwin, and continued enthusiastically (albeit in rather nonsensical terms of praise) : ‘It is told with a picturesque brevity and dignity that holds the reader’s interest in spite of its eye-splitting Celtic names. It has something of that mad, bright-eyed beauty that perplexes all Anglo-Saxons in face of Celtic art.’

  There is no evidence that any other part of The Silmarillion was read by Allen & Unwin at this juncture. Nevertheless Stanley Unwin wrote to Tolkien on 15 December 1937:

  The Silmarillion contains plenty of wonderful material; in fact it is a mine to be explored in writing further books like The Hobbit rather than a book in itself. I think this was partly your own view, was it not? What we badly need is another book with which to follow up our success with The Hobbit and alas! neither of these manuscripts (the poem and The Silmarillion itself) quite fits the bill. I still hope that you will be inspired to write another book about
the Hobbit.

  In his letter Unwin also passed on to Tolkien the reader’s enthusiastic if misguided compliments about the section of The Silmarillion that he had seen.

  Tolkien replied (on 16 December 1937):

  My chief joy comes from learning that The Silmarillion is not rejected with scorn. I have suffered a sense of fear and bereavement, quite ridiculous, since I let this private and beloved nonsense out; and I think if it had seemed to you to be nonsense I should have felt really crushed. But I shall certainly now hope one day to be able, or to be able to afford, to publish The Silmarillion! Your reader’s comments afford me delight. I am sorry the names split his eyes – personally I believe (and here I believe I am a good judge) they are good, and a large part of the effect. They are coherent and consistent and made upon two related linguistic formulae, so that they achieve a reality not fully achieved by other name-inventors (say Swift or Dunsany!). Needless to say they are not Celtic! Neither are the tales.

  I did not think any of the stuff I dropped on you filled the bill. But I did want to know whether any of the stuff had any exterior or non-personal value. I think it is plain that quite apart from it, a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called for. I promise to give this thought and attention. But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils are in my heart. So that goodness knows what will happen. Mr Baggins began as a comic tale among conventional and inconsistent Grimm’s fairy-tale dwarves, and got drawn into the edge of it – so that even Sauron the terrible peeped over the edge. And what more can hobbits do? They can be comic, but their comedy is suburban unless it is set against things more elemental. But the real fun about orcs and dragons (to my mind) was before their time. Perhaps a new (if similar) line?

  Stanley Unwin probably did not understand much of this letter; but in any case Tolkien was really thinking aloud and beginning to plan, for a mere three days later, on 19 December 1937, he wrote to Charles Furth, one of the editorial staff at Allen & Unwin: ‘I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits – “A long expected party”.’

  The new story began rather like the first hobbit tale. Mr Bilbo Baggins of Hobbiton gives a party to celebrate his birthday, and after making a speech to his guests he slips on the magic ring that he acquired in The Hobbit, and vanishes. The reason for his disappearance, as given in this first draft, is that Bilbo ‘had not got any money or jewels left’ and was going off in search of more dragon-gold. At this point the first version of the opening chapter breaks off, unfinished.

  Tolkien had as yet no clear idea of what the new story was going to be about. At the end of The Hobbit he had stated that Bilbo ‘remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long’. So how could the hobbit have any new adventures worth the name without this being contradicted? And had he not explored most of the possibilities in Bilbo’s character? He decided to introduce a new hobbit, Bilbo’s son – and to give him the name of a family of toy koala bears owned by his children. ‘The Bingos’. So he crossed out ‘Bilbo’ in the first draft and above it wrote ‘Bingo’. Then another idea occurred to him, and he wrote it down in memorandum form (as he was often to do during the invention of this new story) : ‘Make return of ring a motive.’

  The ring, after all, was both a link with the earlier book and one of the few elements in it that had not been fully developed. Bilbo had acquired it accidentally from the slimy Gollum beneath the Misty Mountains. Its power of making the wearer invisible had been exploited fully in The Hobbit, but it might be supposed to have other properties. Tolkien made some further notes: ‘The Ring: whence its origin? Necromancer? Not very dangerous, when used for good purpose. But it exacts its penalty. You must either lose it, or yourself.’ Then he rewrote the opening chapter, calling the hero ‘Bingo Bolger-Baggins’ and making him Bilbo’s nephew rather than his son. He typed it out, and at the beginning of February 1938 he sent it to Allen & Unwin, asking if Stanley Unwin’s son Rayner, who had written the original report on The Hobbit, would care to let him have an opinion on it.

  Stanley Unwin wrote on 11 February that Rayner had read it and was delighted with it, and he told Tolkien: ‘Go right ahead.’

  Tolkien was encouraged, but he replied: ‘I find it only too easy to write opening chapters – and at the moment the story is not unfolding. I squandered so much on the original “Hobbit” (which was not meant to have a sequel) that it is difficult to find anything new in that world.’ Nevertheless he set to work again and wrote a second chapter which he called ‘Three’s Company’. It told how Bingo with his cousins Odo and Frodo set off to make a journey across the countryside under the stars.

  ‘Stories tend to get out of hand.’ Tolkien wrote to his publisher a few weeks later, ‘and this has taken an unpremeditated turn.’ He was referring to the appearance, unplanned by him, of a sinister ‘Black Rider’ who is clearly searching for the hobbits. It was indeed the first of several unpremeditated turns that the story was to take. Unconsciously, and usually without forethought, Tolkien was bending his tale away from the jolly style of The Hobbit towards something darker and grander, and closer in concept to The Silmarillion.

  A third chapter was written, untitled but in essence the same chapter that was eventually published as ‘A Short Cut to Mushrooms’. Tolkien then typed out everything he had written (and rewritten), and once again sent it to Rayner Unwin for comment. Again the boy approved of it, though he said that there was ‘too much hobbit talk’ and asked what the book would be called.

  What indeed? And, much more important, Tolkien still did not have a clear idea what it was all about. Nor did he have much time to devote to it. Besides the usual calls on his attention – lecturing, examining, administration, research – there was the additional worry of a mysterious heart condition that had been diagnosed in his son Christopher; the boy, who had recently followed his brothers to a Catholic boarding-school in Berkshire, was ordered to stay at home for many months and kept lying on his back, and his father devoted much time and care to him. Not for many weeks was the new story again considered. Tolkien had made a note at the end of the three chapters that he had already written: ‘Bingo is going to do something about the Necromancer who is planning an attack on the Shire. They have to find Gollum, and find where he got the ring, for 3 are wanted.’ But promising as this may have seemed at first, it did not immediately produce results, and on 24 July 1938 he wrote to Charles Furth at Allen & Unwin: ‘The sequel to The Hobbit has remained where it stopped. It has lost my favour, and I have no idea what to do with it.’

  Shortly afterwards news came of E. V. Gordon’s death in hospital, and this blow contributed further to delay with the new story. Yet at about this time Tolkien began to organise his thoughts on the central matter of the Ring, and began to write some dialogue between Bingo and the elf Gildor, explaining the nature of it. It is, says the elf, one of a number of rings that were made by the Necromancer, and it seems that he is looking for it. The Black Riders, explains the elf, are ‘Ring-wraiths’ who have been made permanently invisible by other rings. Now at last ideas began to flow, and Tolkien wrote a passage of dialogue between Bingo and the wizard Gandalf in which it is determined that the Ring must be taken many hundreds of miles to the dark land of Mordor, and there cast into ‘one of the Cracks of Earth’ where a great fire burns. This was basis enough for the story to be continued, taking the hobbits to the house of Tom Bombadil. When this was done, on 31 August 1938, Tolkien wrote to Allen & Unwin that the book was ‘flowing along, and getting quite out of hand. It has reached about Chapter VII and progresses towards quite unforeseen goals’. Then he went off with the family, including Christopher who was now in much better health, for a holiday at Sidmouth.

  There he did a good deal of work on the story, bringing the hobbits to a village inn at ‘Bree’ where they meet a strange character, another unpremeditated element in the narra
tive. In the first drafts Tolkien described this person as ‘a queer-looking brown-faced hobbit’ and named him ‘Trotter’. Later he was to be recast as a man of heroic stature, the king whose return to power gives the third volume of the book its title: but as yet Tolkien had no more idea than the hobbits who he was. The writing continued, bringing Bingo to Rivendell; and at about this time Tolkien scribbled on a spare sheet: ‘Too many hobbits. Also Bingo Bolger-Baggins a bad name. Let Bingo = Frodo.’ But below this he wrote: ‘No – I am now too used to Bingo.’ There was also the problem of why the Ring seemed so important to everyone – that had not yet been established clearly. Suddenly an idea occurred to him, and he wrote: ‘Bilbo’s ring proved to be the one ruling Ring – all others had come back to Mordor: but this one had been lost.’

  The one ruling ring that controlled all the others; the ring that was the source and instrument of the power of Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor; the ring that must be carried to its destruction by the hobbits, or else the whole world will come under Sauron’s domination. Now everything fell into place, and the story was lifted from the ‘juvenile’ level of The Hobbit into the sphere of grand and heroic romance. There was even a name for it: when next he wrote about it to Allen & Unwin. Tolkien referred to it as ‘The Lord of the Rings’.