The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  [154] 1. Naomi Mitchison reviewed The Fellowship of the Ring in the New Statesman on 18 September 1954. She called it ‘extraordinary, terrifying and beautiful’. 2. German, ‘realities, technical facts’. 3. sic, here and elsewhere in the letter. 4. Mentioned in Mrs Mitchison’s review.

  [155] 1. Greek γοητεία (γóης, sorcerer); the English form Goety is defined in the O.E.D. as ‘witchcraft or magic performed by the invocation and employment of evil spirits; necromancy.’ 2. Alongside the final paragraph, Tolkien has written: ‘But the Númenóreans used “spells” in making swords?’

  [156] 1. Peter Hastings; see no. 153. 2. Greek, ‘messenger’. 3. See note 4 to no. 131.

  [157] 1. Trinity College, of which Katherine Farrer’s husband Austin was Chaplain, had reduced the fees for the education of Tolkien’s sons when they were undergraduates there. 2. Perhaps C. S. Lewis’s review of The Fellowship of the Ring in Time & Tide, 14 August 1954. 3. i.e. ‘New York Sunday Times’. Auden reviewed The Fellowship of the Ring in the New York Times Book Review on Sunday 31 October 1954, and in Encounter, November 1954. 4. Edwin Muir, reviewing The Two Towers in the Observer on 21 November 1954, wrote of the Ents: ‘Symbolically they are quite convincing, yet they are full of character, too, as formidable and strange as a forest of trees going to war.’

  [163] 1. Auden used the term ‘trilogy’ in his letter; for Tolkien’s dislike of it as applied to The Lord of the Rings see nos. 149 and 165. 2. From the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer, 87: ‘eald enta geweorc idlu stodon’, ‘the old creations of giants [i.e. ancient buildings, erected by a former race] stood desolate.’ 3. The reviewer, Maurice Richardson, wrote: ‘It is all I can do to restrain myself from shouting. . . . “Adults of all ages! Unite against the infantilist invasion.”. . . . Mr Auden has always been captivated by the pubescent world of the saga and the classroom. There are passages in The Orators which are not unlike bits of Tolkien’s hobbitry.’ (18 December 1954.) 4. Tolkien’s second son Michael. 5. ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ was in fact read to the Exeter College Essay Club not in 1918 but in 1920, as is recorded in the club’s minute book:’. . . on Wednesday March 10th at 8.15 p.m. . . . . the president passed to public business, and called upon Mr J. R. R. Tolkien to read his “Fall of Gondolin”. As a discovery of a new mythological background Mr Tolkien’s matter was exceedingly illuminating and marked him as a staunch follower of tradition, a treatment indeed in the manner of such typical romantics as William Morris, George Macdonald, de la Motte Fouqué etc. . . . . The battle of the contending forces of good and evil as represented by the Gongothlim [sic, for Gondothlim, the name for the people of Gondolin in the original ‘Fall of Gondolin’; see Unfinished Tales p. 5] and the followers of Melco [sic, for Melko, an early name for Melkor] was very graphically and astonishingly told.’ Among those at the meeting were Nevill Coghill and Hugo Dyson. 6. Latin, ‘who has put down the mighty from their seat and has exalted the humble’; from the Magnificat. 7. A potentially misleading statement. While he was writing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien laboured at revising and rewriting a great part of The Silmarillion. On the other hand, The Silmarillion was in existence before 1936, and cannot be regarded as having originated between that year and 1953. 8. ‘He is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Berúthiel.’ (Aragom of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 4.) See Unfinished Tales pp. 401–2. 9. An episode from Tolkien’s childhood in Bloemfontein; see Biography p. 13.

  [165] 1. The English meaning of tollkühn. 2. His mother’s maiden name was Suffield. 3. See Biography pp. 168–9. 4. E. R. Eddison.

  [168] 1. i.e. Enedwaith. For the history of this region see Unfinished Tales pp. 262–4.

  [171] 1. Second person singular of ‘I wot’, with an optional ‘double negative’.

  [172] 1. Tolkien’s lecture ‘English and Welsh’, the first of the O’Donnell Lectures, was delivered in Oxford on 21 October 1955, and was published in Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures, University of Wales Press, 1963.

  [174] 1. See note 8 to no. 163.

  [177] 1. This professorship at Oxford had fallen vacant with the end of C. Day Lewis’s term of office, and nominations were being invited for his successor. W. H. Auden was eventually elected.

  [180] 1. International languages, invented during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 2. See no.211, and also Unfinished Tales pp. 389–90, 393–4. 3. See note 4 to no. 163.

  [181] 1. But see note 5 to no. 131. 2. A reference to the proposal for a ‘relief’ road through Christ Church Meadow.

  [188] 1. The 1947 Swedish translation, published under the title Hompen.

  [190] 1. A term signifying an imaginary ‘rustic’ county. 2. i.e cane, ‘duck’, + étang, ‘pool, pond’.

  [191] 1. ‘Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.’

  [192] 1. ‘ “Pity? It was Pity that stayed [Bilbo’s] hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”’ 2. ‘“Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker.”’ (Gandalf to Frodo.)

  [193] 1. ‘She [Morwen] bore him three children in Gondor, of whom Théoden, the second, was his only son.’

  [195] 1. The reference is to a passage in ‘The Scouring of the Shire’ (Book VI, Chapter 8) where Frodo tells Pippin: ‘“There is to be no slaying of hobbits, not even if they have gone over to the other side. . . . . No hobbit has ever killed another on purpose in the Shire, and it is not to begin now. And nobody is to be killed at all, if it can be helped.”’

  [199] 1. Eddison in fact read from The Mezentian Gate; see no. 73. 2. ‘You may like or dislike his invented worlds (I myself like that of The Worm Ouroboros and strongly dislike that of Mistress of Mistresses) but there is no quarrel between the theme and the articulation of the story.’

  [200] 1. There is perhaps a contrast here to Unfinished Tales p. 254: ‘The probability is that Sauron was in fact one of the Aulëan Maiar, corrupted “before Arda began” by Melkor.’ On the ‘attachment’ of Olórin to Manwë, see Unfinished Tales p. 393.

  [203] 1. The text of this letter is taken from an article in Mallorn 10, p. 19, with silent emendation of the uncharacteristic ‘that’s’, ‘there’s’, etc., to ‘that is’, ‘there is’, which was Tolkien’s normal usage.

  [204] 1. Almqvist & Wiksell Förlag AB, Stockholm, one of Tolkien’s Swedish publishers. 2. The translator of the Swedish edition of The Lord of the Rings. 3. The translator of the Dutch edition. 4. Björnavad: ‘Bear-ford’. Gamleby: ‘Old village’. Månbergen: ‘Moon-mountains’. Ljusa slätterna: ‘Bright plains’. In fact Månbergen seems not to have been used, but the River Lune and the Gulf of Lune were translated Månfloden, Mångolfen.

  [205] 1. Christopher Tolkien said in his lecture: ‘In the hosts of Attila there went men of many Germanic peoples. . . . . Indeed, his name itself appears to be Gothic, a diminutive of atta, the Gothic for “father”.’ 2. ‘A star shines on the hour of our meeting’ (The Lord of the Rings, Book I, Chapter 3). The reading in the letter, omentielmo, is the same as in the first edition of the book, but Tolkien later changed it to omentielvo. The Elvish language Quenya makes a distinction in its dual inflexion, which turns on the number of persons involved; failure to understand this was, Tolkien remarked, ‘a mistake generally made by mortals’. So in this case, Tolkien made a note that the ‘Thain’s Book of Minas Tirith’, one of the supposed sources of The Lord of the Rings, had the reading omentielvo, but that Frodo’s original (lost) manuscript probably had omentielmo; and that omentielvo
is the correct form in the context. (The Ballantine paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings has the erroneous reading ‘omentilmo’.)

  [206] 1. The publishers of the Dutch edition of The Lord of the Rings. 2. Professor Piet Harting of Amsterdam University, a friend of Tolkien for many years. 3. See further Biography pp. 225–6.

  [207] 1. Forrest J. Ackerman, agent for the film company; see no. 202.

  [210] 1. ‘Gandalf was shorter in stature than the other two; but his long white hair, his sweeping silver beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend. In his aged face under great snowy brows his dark eyes were set like coals that could leap suddenly into fire.’ 2. i.e. in the inn at Bree. 3. ‘The darkness was breaking too soon, before the date that his Master had set it.’ 4. The slaying of the Lord of the Nazgûl by Éowyn. 5. ‘The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die. . . . . It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.’ 6. ‘But here and there bright sunbeams fell in glimmering shafts from the eastern windows, high under the deep eaves.’ ‘The sunlight was blotted out from the eastern windows; the whole hall became suddenly dark as night.’

  [211] 1. This reading was adopted in later printings. 2. In Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings (III. 315) the King of Númenor preceding Ar-Adûnakhôr was Tar-Calmacil; the mention here of Tar-Atanamir seems to be no more than a slip. See further Unfinished Tales pp. 226–7. 3. Elsewhere Tolkien called the other two wizards Ithryn Luin, the Blue Wizards; see Unfinished Tales pp. 389–90. 4. In the Index to The Silmarillion the names Elrond, Elros, and Elwing are translated ‘Star-dome’, ‘Star-foam’, and ‘Star-spray’. These interpretations of the names are later than those in the present letter. 5. This paragraph is taken from another text of the letter (a draft). The version sent is more brief on this point. 6. ‘The regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea.’

  [212] 1. In The Silmarillion (pp. 43–4) there is no mention of the ‘six mates’.

  [214] 1. Mr Nunn’s letter called Tolkien ‘a model of scholarship’. 2. See The Lord of the Rings III 413 (Appendix F). 3. A derivative of Anglo-Saxon byrd, ‘birth’. 4. Two Pontos are named in the family tree of Baggins of Hobbiton (The Lord of the Rings III 380), the first being an ancestor of Peregrin Took and Meriadoc Brandybuck. 5. Lalia the Great is not mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, but her husband Fortinbras II appears in the family tree of Took of Great Smials (The Lord of the Rings III 381).

  [220] 1. Federated Superannuation Scheme for Universities. 2. As an examiner to the National University of Ireland.

  [224] 1. Latin, ‘therefore I will keep silent’.

  [228] 1. Ake Ohlmarks, translator of the Swedish edition of The Lord of the Rings; he had included a biographical article about Tolkien in his translation of the book.

  [229] 1. Swedish, ‘mastery, masterly skill’.

  [230] 1. ‘I am. . . . of the race of the West [i.e. Numenor] unmingled’ (III 249). 2. ‘Laurelindorean lindelorendor malinornélion ornemalin.’ 3. ‘Taurelilómëa-Tumbaletaurëa Lómëanor.’ 4. From Glorfindel’s greeting to Aragorn: ‘Ai na vedui Dúnadan! Mae govannen!’ (I 222). 5. ‘A vanimar, vanimálion nostari!’ (III 259). 6. The following lines are translated by Tolkien in the letter. Line 2: ‘Cuio i Pheriain anann! Aglar’ni Pheriannath!’ Line 4: ‘Daur a Berhael, Conin en Annûn! Eglerio!’ Line 6: ‘Eglerio!’ Line 7: ‘A laita te, laita te! Andave laituvalmet!’ Line 9: ‘Cormacolindor, a laita tárienna!’

  [232] 1. i.e. in the tales of ‘Saki’ (H. H. Munro). 2. A story entitled Woorroo, published by Joyce Reeves under the name of Joyce Gard (Gollancz, 1961). She had sent a copy to Tolkien.

  [234] 1. ‘with silver tipped at plenilune / his spear was hewn of ebony’ (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil p. 27). ‘At plenilune in his argent moon / in his heart he longed for Fire’ (ibid., p. 36). 2. Jane Neave had written to Tolkien: ‘The Pied Piper never palls! It is asked for every day of every visit when the children are here. But yours would be so much more welcome.’ 3. Probably not a poem included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; most of the verses in that book were composed some years before it was published.

  [235] 1. ‘However good in themselves, illustrations do little good to fairy-stories. The radical distinction between all art (including drama) that offers a visible presentation and true literature is that it imposes one visible form. Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive.’ (‘On Fairy-Stories’, Note E.)

  [236] 1. The paragraph in Appendix F beginning ‘It is to mark this that I have ventured to use the form dwarves …’ 2. The printers of the Puffin edition. 3. The printers of The Lord of the Rings (3-volume hardback, first and second editions). 4. Founder and Chairman of Penguin Books, of which Puffin is a division.

  [237] 1. ‘ “Your mother if she saw you, / she’d never know her son, unless ‘twas by a whisker.” ’ (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, p. 19.) Cf.: ‘The Aesir handed over the treasure to Hreidmar, stuffed the otterskin full and set it on its feet. Then the Aesir had to pile the gold alongside and cover it up. When that was completed, Hreidmar went up and saw a single whisker, and told them to cover that.’ (Völsungasaga, Chapter 14; translation by R. G. Finch.) 2. ‘queer tales from Bree, and talk at smithy, mill, and cheaping’. (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, p. 21.) Cf.: ‘From mulne ant from chepinge, from smiððe ant from ancre hus me tidinge bringeð.’ (‘From mill and from market, from smithy and from anchor-house one hears the news.’) (Ancrene Wisse, edited by J. R. R. Tolkien, Early English Text Society, 1962, p. 48; translation from The Ancrene Riwle by M. B. Salu, Burns and Oates, 1955, p. 39.)

  [238] 1. American critic, who visited Tolkien and Unwin in the summer of 1962. 2. The broadcast was actually on 7 August 1936. It was initiated by Guy Pocock, who had seen the MS. of Tolkien’s translation while he was with the publishing house of Dent, to whom it was offered. Pocock later joined the staff of the BBC. 3. The poem is ‘The Nameless Land’, published in G. S. Tancred (ed.), Realities, an anthology of verse (Leeds, at the Swan Press; London, Gay & Hancock, 1927), p. 24. It is written in the Pearl stanza, and begins:

  There lingering lights do golden lie

  On grass more green than in gardens here. . . .

  [239] 1. Two words are in question: (1) Greek gnōmē, ‘thought, intelligence’ (and in the plural ‘maxims, sayings’, whence the English word gnome, a maxim or aphorism, and adjective gnomic) – and (2) the word gnome used by the 16th-century writer Paracelsus as a synonym of pygmaeus. Paracelsus ‘says that the beings so called have the earth as their element. . . . through which they move unobstructed as fish do through water, or birds and land animals through air’ (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. Gnome2). The O.E.D. suggests that whether Paracelsus invented the word himself or not it was intended to mean ‘earth-dweller’, and it discounts any connection with the other word Gnome.

  [240] 1. ‘suddenly. . . . there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown and a long blue feather stuck in the band’. 2. ‘He made no secret that he owed his recent knowledge to Farmer Maggot, whom he seemed to regard as a person of more importance than they had imagined.’ 3. Sir Thomas Browne, Vulgar Errors, III Chapter 10: ‘That a Kingfisher, hanged by the bill, showeth where the wind lay.’ 4. See note 1 to no. 237. 5. See note 2 to no. 237.

  [241] 1. On p.3 of ‘English and Welsh’ Tolkien writes: ‘[A] story. . . . which I first met in the pages of Andrew Boord [sic], physician of Henry VIII. . . . tells how the language of Heaven was changed. St Peter, instructed to find a cure for the din and chatter which disturbed the celestial mansions, went outside the Gates and cried caws bobi, and slammed the Gates to again before the Welshmen that had surged out discovered that this was a trap without cheese.’ 2. ‘My college. . . . was shocked when the only prize I ever won. . . . the Skeat Prize for English
at Exeter College, was spent on Welsh.’ (‘English and Welsh’, p. 38.) 3. ‘. . . . not presuming to enter the litigious lists of the accredited Celtic scholars. . . .’ 4. Lady Agnew, a resident of Northmoor Road. 5. But in the foreword to Tree and Leaf (1964), Tolkien wrote: ‘It was suddenly lopped and mutilated It is cut down now.’

  [242] 1. The book was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement on 23 November 1962 (p. 892) and in the Listener on 22 November 1962 (p. 831). The latter review was very enthusiastic, and talked of Tolkien’s ‘superb technical skill. . . . something close to genius’.

  [244] 1. ‘Faramir. . . . held out a white rod; but Aragorn took the rod and gave it back, saying: “That office is not ended, and it shall be thine and thy heirs’ as long as my line shall last.”’

  [246] 1. ‘And there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will nor madness, nor any fear. . . . . “The Quest is achieved, and now all is over,” [said Frodo].’ 2. Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the first page of the chapter ‘Many Partings’ (Book VI Chapter 6); and this passage: ‘We can’t go any quicker, if we are going to see Bilbo. I am going to Rivendell first, whatever happens.’ 3. Elrond’s blessing to Frodo at the end of Book VI Chapter 6. 4. ‘His mind was hot with wrath. . . . . It would be just to slay this treacherous, murderous creature. . . . . But deep in his heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched.’ 5. ‘Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr.’