The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Page 4
I am probably coming to town, to hear Professor Joseph Vendryes at the Academy on Wednesday Oct. 27th. I wonder would that be a suitable day for the luncheon you kindly asked me to last summer? And in any case, I could bring Mr Bliss to the office so as to get the definite advice on what is needed to make it reproducible promised by Mr Furth?
Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
PS. I acknowledge safe receipt of the specimen ‘pictures’ sent to America.
18 From a letter to Stanley Unwin
23 October 1937
[On 19 October, Unwin wrote to Tolkien: ‘I think there is cause for your faint hope. . . . . It is seldom that a children’s writer gets firmly established with one book, but that you will do so very rapidly I have not the slightest doubt. . . . . You are one of those rare people with genius, and, unlike some publishers, it is a word I have not used half a dozen times in thirty years of publishing.’]
Thank you in return for your encouraging letter. I will start something soon, & submit it to your boy at the earliest opportunity.
19 To Stanley Unwin
[Tolkien lunched with Unwin in London on 15 November, and told him about a number of his writings which already existed in manuscript: the series of Father Christmas Letters, which he had addressed to his children each Christmas since 1920; various short tales and poems; and The Silmarillion. Following this meeting, he handed to Allen & Unwin the ‘Quenta Silmarillion’, a prose formulation of the latter book, together with the long unfinished poem ‘The Gest of Beren and Lúthien’. These were shown to one of the firm’s outside readers, Edward Crankshaw, who reported unfavourably on the poem, but praised the prose narrative for its ‘brevity and dignity’, though he said he disliked its ‘eye-splitting Celtic names’. His report continued: ‘It has something of that mad, bright-eyed beauty that perplexes all Anglo-Saxons in face of Celtic art.’ These comments were passed on to Tolkien.]
16 December 1937
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Unwin,
I have been ill and am still rather tottery, and have had others of the common human troubles, so that time has slipped out of my hands: I have accomplished next to nothing of any kind since I saw you. Father Christmas’ 1937 letter is unwritten yet. . . . .
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. I do not mind about the verse-form, which in spite of certain virtuous passages has grave defects, for it is only for me the rough material. But I shall certainly now hope one day to be able, or to be able to afford, to publish the Silmarillion! Your reader’s comment affords me delight. I am sorry the names split his eyes – personally I believe (and here 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 to my feeling by other name-inventors (say Swift or Dunsany!). Needless to say they are not Celtic! Neither are the tales. I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact ‘mad’ as your reader says – but I don’t believe I am. Still I am very grateful for his words, and particularly encouraged that the style is good for the purpose and even gets over the nomenclature.
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 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 ores and dragons (to my mind) was before their time. Perhaps a new (if similar) line? Do you think Tom Bombadil, the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside, could be made into the hero of a story? Or is he, as I suspect, fully enshrined in the enclosed verses?1 Still I could enlarge the portrait.
Which are the four coloured illustrations you are using?2 Have the five originals yet returned? Is there a spare one available of the dragon on his hoard? I have to give a lecture on dragons, (at the Natural History Museum!!!) and they want a picture to make a slide of.3
Could I have four more copies of the Hobbit at author’s rates, to use as Christmas presents?
May I wish you bon voyage – and a safe return.4 I am supposed to be broadcasting from BBC on Jan 14th, but that will I suppose be after your return.5 I shall look forward to seeing you again.
Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien
P.S. I have received several queries, on behalf of children and adults, concerning the runes and whether they are real and can be read. Some children have tried to puzzle them out. Would it be a good thing to provide a runic alphabet? I have had to write one out for several people. Please excuse scrawling and rambling nature of this letter. I feel only half-alive. JRRT.
I have received safely by a later post the Geste (in verse) and the Silmarillion and related fragments.
20 To C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin
[On 17 December, Furth wrote to Tolkien: ‘The demand for The Hobbit became so acute with the beginning of the Christmas orders that we had to rush the reprint though. . . . . At the last minute the crisis was so acute that we fetched part of the reprint from our printers at Woking in a private car.’]
19 December 1937
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Furth,
Thank you for the account of recent events with regard to ‘the Hobbit’. It sounds quite exciting.
I have received four copies of the new impression charged to me, as ordered in my letter to Mr Unwin. I think the coloured pictures have come out well … I am sorry that the Eagle picture (to face p. 118) is not included – merely because I should have liked to see it reproduced. I marvel that four can have been included without raising the price. Perhaps the Americans will use it? Odd folk . . .
I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits – ‘A long expected party’.1 A merry Christmas.
Yrs sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
[P.S.]. . . . Mr Arthur Ransome2 objects to man on p. 27 (line 7 from end). Read fellow as in earlier recension? He also objects to more men on p. 294 1. 11. Read more of us? Men with a capital is, I think, used in text when ‘human kind’ are specifically intended; and man, men with a minuscule are occasionally and loosely used as ‘adult male’ and ‘people’. But perhaps, although this can be mythologically defended (and is according to Anglo-Saxon usage!), it may be as well to avoid raising mythological issues outside the story. Mr Ransome also seems not to like Gandalf’s use of boys on p. 112 (lines 11, 13). But, though I agree that his insult was rather silly and not quite up to form, I do not think anything can be done about it now. Unless oaves would do? JRRT.
21 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
1 February 1938
Would you ask Mr Unwin whether his son, a very reliable critic, would care to read the first chapter of the sequel to The Hobbit? I have typed it. I have no confidence in it, but if he thought it a promising beginning, could add to it the tale that is brewing.
22 To C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin
4 February 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Furth,
I enclose copy of Chapter I ‘A Long-expected Party’ of possible sequel to The Hobbit. . . . .
I received a letter from a young reader in Boston (Lincs) enclosing a list of errata [in The Hobbit]. I then put my youngest son, lying in bed with a bad heart,1 to find any more at twopence a time. He did. I enclose the results – which added to those already submitted should (I hope) make an exhaustive list. I also hope they may one day be required.
Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.
23 To C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin
[The publishers had again been considering the possibility of publishing Mr Bliss, for which see the introductory note to no. 10.]
17 February 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Furth,
‘Mr Bliss’ returned safely. I am sorry you have had so much trouble with him. I wish you could find someone to redraw the pictures properly. I don’t believe I am capable of it. I have at any rate no time now – it is easier to write a story at odd moments than draw (though neither are easy). . . . .
They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‘first chapters’. I have indeed written many. The Hobbit sequel is still where it was, and I have only the vaguest notions of how to proceed. Not ever intending any sequel, I fear I squandered all my favourite ‘motifs’ and characters on the original ‘Hobbit’.
I will write and get your advice on ‘Mr Bliss’ before I do anything. It will hardly be before the Long Vacation, or the end of my ‘research fellowship’.1
Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
24 To Stanley Unwin
[On 11 February, Unwin reported that his son Rayner was ‘delighted with the first chapter’ of the new story.]
18 February 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Dear Mr Unwin,
I am most grateful to your son Rayner; and am encouraged. At the same time I find it only too easy to write opening chapters – and for the moment the story is not unfolding. I have unfortunately very little time, made shorter by a rather disastrous Christmas vacation. 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.
Mr C. S. Lewis tells me that you have allowed him to submit to you ‘Out of the Silent Planet’. I read it, of course; and I have since heard it pass a rather different test: that of being read aloud to our local club (which goes in for reading things short and long aloud). It proved an exciting serial, and was highly approved. But of course we are all rather like-minded.
It is only by an odd accident that the hero is a philologist (one point in which he resembles me) and has your name.1 The latter detail could I am sure be altered: I do not believe it has any special significance.
We originally meant each to write an excursionary ‘Thriller’: a Space-journey and a Time-journey (mine) each discovering Myth.2 But the Space-journey has been finished, and the Time-joumey remains owing to my slowness and uncertainty only a fragment, as you know.3
Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
25 To the editor of the ‘Observer’
[On 16 January 1938, the Observer published a letter, signed ‘Habit’, asking whether hobbits might have been suggested to Tolkien by Julian Huxley’s account of ‘the “little furry men” seen in Africa by natives and. . . . at least one scientist’. The letter-writer also mentioned that a friend had ‘said she remembered an old fairy tale called “The Hobbit” in a collection read about 1904’, in which the creature of that name ‘was definitely frightening’. The writer asked if Tolkien would ‘tell us some more about the name and inception of the intriguing hero of his book. . . . . It would save so many research students so very much trouble in the generations to come. And, by the way, is the hobbit’s stealing of the dragon’s cup based on the cup-stealing episode in Beowulf? I hope so, since one of the book’s charms appears to be its Spenserian harmonising of the brilliant threads of so many branches of epic, mythology, and Victorian fairy literature.’ Tolkien’s reply, though it was not intended for publication (see the conclusion of no. 26), was printed in the Observer on 20 February 1938.]
Sir, – I need no persuasion: I am as susceptible as a dragon to flattery, and would gladly show off my diamond waistcoat, and even discuss its sources, since the Habit (more inquisitive than the Hobbit) has not only professed to admire it, but has also asked where I got it from. But would not that be rather unfair to the research students? To save them trouble is to rob them of any excuse for existing.
However, with regard to the Habit’s principal question there is no danger: I do not remember anything about the name and inception of the hero. I could guess, of course, but the guesses would have no more authority than those of future researchers, and I leave the game to them.
I was born in Africa, and have read several books on African exploration. I have, since about 1896, read even more books of fairy-tales of the genuine kind. Both the facts produced by the Habit would appear, therefore, to be significant.
But are they? I have no waking recollection of furry pigmies (in book or moonlight); nor of any Hobbit bogey in print by 1904. I suspect that the two hobbits are accidental homophones, and am contentfn3 that they are not (it would seem) synonyms. And I protest that my hobbit did not live in Africa, and was not furry, except about the feet. Nor indeed was he like a rabbit. He was a prosperous, well-fed young bachelor of independent means. Calling him a ‘nassty little rabbit’ was a piece of vulgar trollery, just as ‘descendant of rats’ was a piece of dwarfish malice – deliberate insults to his size and feet, which he deeply resented. His feet, if conveniently clad and shod by nature, were as elegant as his long, clever fingers.
As for the rest of the tale it is, as the Habit suggests, derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story – not, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George Macdonald is the chief exception. Beowulf is among my most valued sources; though it was not consciously present to the mind in the process of writing, in which the episode of the theft arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at that point. I fancy the author of Beowulf would say much the same.
My tale is not consciously based on any other book – save one, and that is unpublished: the ‘Silmarillion’, a history of the Elves, to which frequent allusion is made. I had not thought of the future researchers; and as there is only one manuscript there seems at the moment small chance of this reference proving useful.
But these questions are mere preliminaries. Now that I have been made to see Mr. Baggins’s adventures as the subject of future enquiry I realise that a lot of work will be needed. There is the question of nomenclature. The dwarf-names, and the wizard’s, are from the Elder Edda. The hobbit-names from Obvious Sources proper to their kind. The full list of their wealthier families is: Baggins, Boffin, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Brandybuck, Burrowes, Chubb, Grubb, Hornblower, Proudfoot, Sackville, and Took. The dragon bears as name – a pseudonym – the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan, to squeeze through a hole: a low philological jest. The rest of the names are of the Ancient and Elvish World, and have not been modernised.
And why dwarves? Grammar prescribes dwarfs; philology suggests that dwarrows would be the historical form. The real answer is that I knew no better. But dwarves goes well with elves; and, in any case, elf, gnome, goblin, dwarf are only approximate translations of the Old Elvish names for beings of not quite the same kinds and functions.
These dwarves are not quite the dwarfs of better known lore. They have been given Scandinavian names, it is true; but that is an editorial concession. Too many names in the tongues proper to the period might have been alarming. Dwarvish was both complicated and cacophonous. Even early elvish philologists avoided it, and the dwarves were obliged to use oth
er languages, except for entirely private conversations. The language of hobbits was remarkably like English, as one would expect: they only lived on the borders of The Wild, and were mostly unaware of it. Their family names remain for the most part as well known and justly respected in this island as they were in Hobbiton and Bywater.
There is the matter of the Runes. Those used by Thorin and Co., for special purposes, were comprised in an alphabet of thirty-two letters (full list on application), similar to, but not identical, with the runes of Anglo-Saxon inscriptions. There is doubtless an historical connection between the two. The Feanorian alphabet, generally used at that time, was of Elvish origin. It appears in the curse inscribed on the pot of gold in the picture of Smaug’s lair, but had otherwise been transcribed (a facsimile of the original letter left on the mantelpiece can be supplied).
*
And what about the Riddles? There is work to be done here on the sources and analogues. I should not be at all surprised to learn that both the hobbit and Gollum will find their claim to have invented any of them disallowed.
Finally, I present the future researcher with a little problem. The tale halted in the telling for about a year at two separate points: where are they? But probably that would have been discovered anyway. And suddenly I remember that the hobbit thought ‘Old fool’, when the dragon succumbed to blandishment. I fear that the Habit’s comment (and yours) will already be the same. But you must admit that the temptation was strong. – Yours, etc.,