The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  Good sermons require some art, some virtue, some knowledge. Real sermons require some special grace which does not transcend art but arrives at it by instinct or ‘inspiration’; indeed the Holy Spirit seems sometimes to speak through a human mouth providing art, virtue and insight he does not himself possess: but the occasions are rare. In other times I don’t think an educated person is required to suppress the critical faculty, but it should be kept in order by a constant endeavour to apply the truth (if any), even in cliché form, to oneself exclusively! A difficult exercise. . . . .

  I was much amused by your account of your journey to Jo’burg on Maundy Thursday. . . . . If you fetch up at Bloemfontein I shall wonder if the little old stone bank-house (Bank of South Africa) where I was born is still standing. And I wonder if my Father’s grave is there still. I have never done anything about it, but I believe my mother had a stone-cross put up or sent out.6 (A. R. Tolkien died 1896). If not it will be lost now, prob., unless there are any records. . . . .

  64 To Christopher Tolkien

  30 April 1944 (FS 20)

  20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

  My dearest:

  I have decided to send you another air letter, not an airgraph, in the hope that I may so cheer you up a little more. . . . . I do miss you so, and I do find all this mighty hard to bear on my own account and on yours. The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not is and will be necessary to face it in an evil world. But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about 30 years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches most about fire.

  I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. But the historical version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives. . . . . But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do. And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this. Probable under God that we shall meet again, ‘in hale and in unity’, before very long, dearest, and certain that we have some special bond to last beyond this life – subject of course always to the mystery of free will, by which either of us could throw away ‘salvation’. In which case God would arrange matters differently!. . . .

  On Thursday I gave 2 lectures and had some troublesome business in town and was too tired to attend the Lewis séance. I hope to see him tomorrow, and read some more of ‘the Ring’. It is growing and sprouting again (I did a whole day at it yesterday to the neglect of many matters) and opening out in unexpected ways. So far in the new chapters Frodo and Sam have traversed Sarn Gebir, climbed down the cliff, encountered and temporarily tamed Gollum. They have with his guidance crossed the Dead Marshes and the slag-heaps of Mordor, lain in hiding outside the main gates and found them impassable, and set out for a more secret entrance near Minas Morghul (formerly M. Ithil). It will turn out to be the deadly Kirith Ungol and Gollum will play false. But at moment they are in Ithilien (which is proving a lovely land); there has been a lot of bother about stewed rabbit; and they have been captured by Gondorians, and witnessed them ambushing a Swerting army (dark men of South) marching to Mordor’s aid. A large elephant of prehistoric size, a war-elephant of the Swertings, is loose, and Sam has gratified a life-long wish to see an Oliphaunt, an animal about which there was a hobbit nursery-rhyme (though it was commonly supposed to be mythical). In the chapter next to be done they will get to Kirith Ungol and Frodo will be caught. Here is the rhyme cited by Sam: Grey as a mouse,/Big as a house,/Nose like a snake,/I make the earth quake,/As I tramp through the grass;/Trees crack as I pass./With horns in my mouth/I walk in the South/Flapping big ears./Beyond count of years/I’ve stumped round and round,/Never lie on the ground,/Not even to die./Oliphaunt am I,/Biggest of All,/huge, old, and tall./If ever you’d met me,/You wouldn’t forget me./If you never do,/You won’t think I’m true;/But old Oliphaunt am I,/and I never lie. I hope that has something of the ‘nursery rhyme’ flavour. On the whole Sam is behaving well, and living up to repute. He treats Gollum rather like Ariel to Caliban. . . . .

  It is full Maytime by the trees and grass now. But the heavens are full of roar and riot. You cannot even hold a shouting conversation in the garden now, save about 1 a.m. and 7 p.m. – unless the day is too foul to be out. How I wish the ‘infernal combustion’ engine had never been invented. Or (more difficult still since humanity and engineers in special are both nitwitted and malicious as a rule) that it could have been put to rational uses – if any. . . . .

  Now we can only link with this flimsy bit of paper! But may it speed to you and arrive safely. I wish that it might be written in Runes beyond the craft of Celebrimbor of Hollin, shining like silver, filled with the visions and horizons that open in my mind. Though I have without you no one to speak my thought. I first began to write the ‘H. of the Gnomes’1 in army huts, crowded, filled with the noise of gramophones – and there you are in the same prison. May you, too, escape – strengthened. Take care of yourself, in soul and body, in all ways proper and possible, for the love that you have to your own Father.

  65 From an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien

  4 May 1944 (FS 21)

  I saw Lewis (solo) on Monday and read another chapter: am busy now with the next; we shall soon be in the shadows of Mordor at last. I will send you some copies, as soon as I can get them made.

  66 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

  6 May 1944 (FS 22)

  I sent off to you yesterday an airgraph, FS 21 (written Thursday), and there was not room to tell you that that morn. (Friday) your airletter (Z) had arrived; now your airletter (Y) has come, and I have 2 to answer. We don’t mind your grousing at all – you have no one else, and I expect it relieves the strain. I used to write in just the same way or worse to poor old Fr. Vincent Reade,1 I remember. Life in camp seems not to have changed at all, and what makes it so exasperating is the fact that all its worse features are unnecessary, and due to human stupidity which (as ‘planners’ refuse to see) is always magnified indefinitely by ‘organization’. But England in 1917, 1918 was in a poor way, and it is a bit thicker that in a land of relative plenty, you shd. have such conditions. And the taxpayers would like to know where are all the millions going, if the pick of their sons are so treated. However it is, humans being what they are, quite inevitable, and the only cure (short of universal Conversion) is not to have wars – nor planning, nor organization, nor regimentation. Your service is, of course, as anybody with any intelligence and ears and eyes knows, a very bad one, living on the repute of a few gallant men, and you are probably in a particularly bad corner of it. But all Big Things planned in a big way feel like t
hat to the toad under the harrow, though on a general view they do function and do their job. An ultimately evil job. For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side. . . . . Well, there you are: a hobbit amongst the Urukhai. Keep up your hobbitry in heart, and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them. You are inside a very great story! I think also that you are suffering from suppressed ‘writing’. That may be my fault. You have had rather too much of me and my peculiar mode of thought and reaction. And as we are so akin it has proved rather powerful. Possibly inhibited you. I think if you could begin to write, and find your own mode, or even (for a start) imitate mine, you would find it a great relief. I sense amongst all your pains (some merely physical) the desire to express your feeling about good, evil, fair, foul in some way: to rationalize it, and prevent it just festering. In my case it generated Morgoth and the History of the Gnomes. Lots of the early parts of which (and the languages) – discarded or absorbed – were done in grimy canteens, at lectures in cold fogs, in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire. It did not make for efficiency and present-mindedness, of course, and I was not a good officer. . . . .

  Nothing much has happened here since I wrote on Thursday. Weather foul. Cold, windy; roads littered with torn leaves, and broken blossom. It has veered from SW > W > NW > NE. Buchan is at it (as usual).2 I wrote in the morning, wasted an afternoon in footling Board Meetings, and wrote again. P. and Mummy went to the Playhouse at 6. I had some brief peace; a late supper with them (about 9). A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir – and he is holding up the ‘catastrophe’ by a lot of stuff about the history of Gondor and Rohan (with some very sound reflections no doubt on martial glory and true glory): but if he goes on much more a lot of him will have to be removed to the appendices – where already some fascinating material on the hobbit Tobacco industry and the Languages of the West have gone. There has been a battle – with a monstrous Oliphaunt (the Mâmuk of Harad) included – and after a short while in a cave behind a waterfall, I think I shall get Sam and Frodo at last into Kirith Ungol and the webs of the Spiders. Then the Great Offensive will burst out. And so with the death of Theoden (by a Nazgûl) and the arrival of the hosts of the White Rider before the Gates of Mordor we shall reach the denouement and the swift unravelling. As soon as I can get the new matter written legibly, I will have it typed and sent to you.

  67 From an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien

  11 May 1944 (FS 23)

  I completed my fourth new chapter (‘Faramir’), which rec’d fullest approbation from C.S.L. and C.W. on Monday morning. I visited church on your behalf. Lunched with Mummy in town. Saw C.S.L. on Tuesday morning. Dined at Pembroke (Rice-Oxley1 as guest): boring. McCallum seems to think well of Mick’s work.2 Rest of time filled with lectures, house, garden (very exigent just now: lawns, hedges, marrow-beds, weeding) & what can be spared for ‘Ring’. Another chapter proceeding, leading to disaster at Kirith Ungol where Frodo is captured. Story then switches back to Gondor, & runs fairly swiftly (I hope) to denouement. Ithilien (you may remember its situation on the map you made) is revealed as rather a lovely land. I wish I had you here, doing something useful and pleasant, completing the maps and typing.

  68 From an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien

  12 May 1944 (FS 24)

  Spent a morning writing and we are now in sight of Minas Morghul. Gardening in sultry (and properly midday) heat this afternoon. . . . . I have done nothing about getting new copies typed to send to you of fresh chapters, as I am pushing on while there is a chance and cannot wait to make fair copy. . . . . Very much love to you, and all my thoughts and prayers. How much I wish to know! ‘When you return to the lands of the living, and we re-tell our tales, sitting by a wall in the sun, laughing at old grief, you shall tell me then’ (Faramir to Frodo).

  69 To Christopher Tolkien

  14 May 1944 (FS 25)

  20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

  Well my dearest, here goes to begin a proper letter again … I did a certain amount of writing yesterday but was hindered by two things: the need to clear up the study (which had got into the chaos that always indicates literary or philological preoccupation) and attend to business; and trouble with the moon. By which I mean that I found my moons in the crucial days between Frodo’s flight and the present situation (arrival at Minas Morghul) were doing impossible things, rising in one part of the country and setting simultaneously in another. Rewriting bits of back chapters took all afternoon!. . . . Fr C.1 gave a pretty stirring little sermon, based on Rogation Days (next Mon – Wed) in which he suggested we were all a lot of untutored robots for not saying Grace; and did not suggest but categorically pronounced Oxford to deserve to be wiped out with fire and blood in the wrath of God for the abominations and wickedness there perpetrated. We all woke up. I am afraid it is all too horribly true. But I wonder if it is specially true now? A small knowledge of history depresses one with the sense of the everlasting mass and weight of human iniquity: old, old, dreary, endless repetitive unchanging incurable wickedness. All towns, all villages, all habitations of men – sinks! And at the same time one knows that there is always good: much more hidden, much less clearly discerned, seldom breaking out into recognizable, visible, beauties of word or deed or face – not even when in fact sanctity, far greater than the visible advertised wickedness, is really there. But I fear that in the individual lives of all but a few, the balance is debit – we do so little that is positive good, even if we negatively avoid what is actively evil. It must be terrible to be a priest!. . . .

  Monday 4 p.m. . . . . I saw C.S.L. from 10.45 to 12.30 this morning: heard 2 chapters of his ‘Who Goes Home?’2 – a new allegory on Heaven and Hell; and I read my 6th new chapter ‘Journey to the Cross Roads’ with complete approval. So far it has gone well: but I am now coming to the nub, when the threads must be gathered and the times synchronized and the narrative interwoven; while the whole thing has grown so large in significance that the sketches of concluding chapters (written ages ago) are quite inadequate, being on a more ‘juvenile’ level. . . . .

  I suddenly got an idea for a new story (of about length of Niggle3) – in church yesterday, I fear. A man sitting at a high window and seeing not the fortunes of a man or of people, but of one small piece of land (about the size of a garden) all down the ages. He just sees it illumined, in borders of mist, and things, animals and men just walk on and off, and the plants and trees grow and die and change. One of the points would be that plants and animals change from one fantastic shape to another but men (in spite of different dress) don’t change at all. At intervals all down the ages from Palaeolithic to Today a couple of women (or men) would stroll across scene saying exactly the same thing (e.g. It oughtn’t to be allowed. They ought to stop it. Or, I said to her, I’m not one to make a fuss, I said, but . . .). . . .

  Your own dear and loving Father.

  70 To Christopher Tolkien

  21 May 1944 (FS 26)

  20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

  My dearest,

  I am afraid I have not written for some time. . . . . I have taken advantage of a bitter cold grey week (in which the lawns have not grown in spite of a little rain) to write: but struck a sticky patch. All that I had sketched or written before proved of little use, as times, motives, etc., have all changed. However at last with v. great labour, and some neglect of other duties, I have now written or nearly written all the matter up to the capture of Frodo in the high pass on the very brink of Mordor. Now I must go back to the other folk and try and bring things to the final crash with some speed. Do you t
hink Shelob is a good name for a monstrous spider creature? It is of course only ‘she+lob’ (= spider), but written as one, it seems to be quite noisome. . . . .

  Monday 22 May. . . . . It was a wretched cold day yesterday (Sunday). I worked very hard at my chapter – it is most exhausting work; especially as the climax approaches and one has to keep the pitch up: no easy level will do; and there are all sorts of minor problems of plot and mechanism. I wrote and tore up and rewrote most of it a good many times; but I was rewarded this morning, as both C.S.L and C.W. thought it an admirable performance, and the latest chapters the best so far. Gollum continues to develop into a most intriguing character. I was on ‘key duty’ last night and not supposed to retire, but did so at 3.30 a.m. A bit tired this morning. And I have to be on all night at the HQ Post tonight. . . . .

  Your own Father.

  71 To Christopher Tolkien (airgraph)

  25 May 1944 (FS 27)

  20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

  Dearest Chris, Letters, immensely welcome, have poured in. . . . . I was disposed, at last, to envy you a little; or rather to wish I could be with you ‘in the hills’. There is something in nativity, and though I have few pictorial memories, there is always a curious sense of reminiscence about any stories of Africa, which always move me deeply. Strange that you, my dearest, should have gone back there. . . . . There is not much to report of self since Monday. That night I never slept at all (quite literally): partly owing to deafening traffic (on moldan on úprodore1): and gave up trying at 6 a.m. I was not frightfully bright at lecture on Tuesday, as a result. Chief reason, however, is absorption in Frodo, which now has a great grip and takes a lot out of me: chapter on Shelob and the disaster in Kirith Ungol has been written several times. Whole thing comes out of the wash quite different to any preliminary sketch! Apart from making a hen-coop and chick-run (I succumbed at last: couldn’t stand the untidy box and jumbled net which did duty on the lawn) I have given most of my energies to that task. Two lectures this morning; and this evening I am taking ‘off’, and going to Magdalen, where there’s supposed to be a full assembly, including Dyson. . . . . I hope you will have some more leave in genuine Africa, ere too long. Away from the ‘lesser servants of Mordor’. Yes, I think the ores as real a creation as anything in ‘realistic’ fiction: your vigorous words well describe the tribe; only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For ‘romance’ has grown out of ‘allegory’, and its wars are still derived from the ‘inner war’ of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of ores, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels. But it does make some difference who are your captains and whether they are ore-like per se! And what it is all about (or thought to be). It is even in this world possible to be (more or less) in the wrong or in the right. I could not stand Gaudy Night.2 I followed P. Wimsey from his attractive beginnings so far, by which time I conceived a loathing for him (and his creatrix) not surpassed by any other character in literature known to me, unless by his Harriet. The honeymoon one (Busman’s H.?) was worse. I was sick. . . . . God bless you. Your own Father. Finished 3.45 p.m.: 25 May 1944.