Appendix IV Tolkien’s Correspondence with Arthur Ransome
1 ‘No one ever influenced Tolkien – you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch’ (CSL to Charles Moorman, 15th May 1959; Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. Walter Hooper [1988], page 481). However, not only did Tolkien change the wording in The Lord of the Rings at one point when Rhona Beare questioned the implications of one phrase (see Letters pp. 277 & 279), but Lewis himself had a significant impact on ‘The Lay of Leithian’ (see HME III.315–329). Perhaps significantly, Tolkien tended not to adopt Lewis’s suggestions but instead recast passages that Lewis had criticized. It seems fair to conclude, therefore, that he gladly corrected errors brought to his attention but often changed things in his own way rather than directly accepting others’ suggestions.
2 For more on Ransome and ‘Ric’ (Eric Rucker) Eddison, see Ransome’s autobiography (The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis [1976], pages 37–40) and also the biography by Hugh Brogan† (The Life of Arthur Ransome [1984], pages 10–11). Tolkien admired Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros [1922] (except for the nomenclature, which is markedly eccentric), but strongly objected to the philosophy behind Eddison’s later ‘Zimiamvian’ books (Mistress of Mistresses [1935], A Fish Dinner in Memison [1941], and the unfinished The Mezentian Gate [1958]) – cf. JRRT to Caroline Whitman Everett, letter of 24th June 1957; Letters p. 258. Tolkien and Eddison actually met at least twice when ERE attended Inklings meetings at Lewis’s invitation in 1943 and 1944, at which he read from his later works.
† Brogan himself was a correspondent of JRRT when young; see Letters pp. 129, 131, 132, 185–186, 224, 225–226, & 230.
3 The books in the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ series are as follows: #1. Swallows and Amazons [1930], #2. Swallowdale [1931], #3. Peter Duck [1932], #4. Winter Holiday [1933], #5. Coot Club [1934], #6. Pigeon Post [1936], #7. We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea [1937], #8. Secret Water [1939], #9. The Big Sic [1940], #10. Missee Lee [1941], #11. The Picts and the Martyrs [1943], #12. Great Northern? [1947], #13. Coots in the North [unfinished; posthumously publ. 1988].
4 Subsequent Carnegie medal winners include such famous books as Mary Norton’s The Borrowers [1952], C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle [1956], Richard Adams’ Watership Down [1972], and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Book I: Northern Lights [1995].†
† This last is better known in the United States as The Golden Compass.
5 See Ransome’s autobiography, pages 268–269, and also Unwin’s autobiography, The Truth About a Publisher [1960], pages 165–166, for the two men’s perspectives.
6 I have taken the text of this letter from a tengwar inscription Tolkien made [Ad.Ms.H.6]. In addition to being very lightly punctuated, the tengwar copy differs in some details from the text published in Ransome’s collected letters (Signalling from Mars: The Letters of Arthur Ransome, ed. Hugh Brogan [1997], pp. 249–250). For example, Brogan prints ‘excitable hobbit’, ‘no doubt right’, ‘Thorin is surely misinterpreted’, and ‘the chronicle’. I am grateful to Arden Smith for his aid in translating Tolkien’s beautiful tengwar calligraphy back into English letters.
7 The following text is a composite: the first half of Tolkien’s letter I have taken from another tengwar transcription by Tolkien himself [Ad.Ms.H.7], while the second half comes from Ransome’s collected letters; see Note 10 below. Once again I am grateful to Arden Smith for his timely aid.
8 Men rather than children: John Tolkien was now twenty years old, and Michael seventeen. Confirmation of Tolkien’s statement that the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ books were popular in the Tolkien household and that his sons retained their Ransomes even after they were grown was discovered by researcher Lyn Mellone in the summer of 2006. According to her posting on TarBoard, the online Arthur Ransome discussion board (http://www.tarboard.net/tarboard/messages/23986.htm), Adam Tolkien, Christopher’s younger son, responded to her queries by affirming the popularity of the books among Tolkien’s children, stating that not only did ‘Christopher [recall] specifically Swallows and Amazons and Missee Lee’ – which, as Mellone notes, was published four years after The Hobbit and thus testifies to continued interest on their part – but that he had in turn passed them along to his own son, Adam, who had enjoyed them very much in his turn.
9 Here Tolkien accidentally wrote ‘212’ in his tengwar transcription, but the passage in question actually occurs on p. 112 of the first edition; Brogan gives the citation correctly (Signalling from Mars p. 250).
10 At this point, Tolkien’s tengwar transcription ends, at the bottom of a page [Ad.Ms.H.7], the verso of which [Ad.Ms.H.6] is covered by his transcription of Ransome’s letter to him (see above). If Tolkien continued his transcription, it was on a separate sheet of paper which has since become lost. Accordingly, from this point onwards I take the text from Brogan’s edition of Ransome’s letters, Signalling from Mars pp. 250–251.
As before, the tengwar text differs slightly from that published in Ransome’s collected letters – e.g., ‘could expect’ there becomes ‘could have expected’, ‘so close an acquaintance with’ becomes ‘so close a scrutiny of’, and ‘will go up’ becomes ‘would go up’. More importantly, the transcription includes a passage omitted from the published text (the line ‘You tempt me grievously’ through ‘of such import’), in which Tolkien briefly places ‘the history of the hobbit’ into context with that of ‘the world into which Mr. Baggins strayed’ – i.e., that of the Silmarillion texts.
11 Ransome’s operation: he had undergone surgery for a hernia (Brogan, Signalling from Mars, page 249). The ‘nursing home’ in which he was staying, by the way, was not a euphemism for an old folks’ home but rather a convalescent home for those recovering from long-term illness or major surgery.
12 See Mellone’s account, detailing each annotation, at the online Ransome discussion list TarBoard, specifically ‘http://www.tarboard.net/tarboard/messages/23986.htm. I am also grateful to her for reading and critiquing this Appendix.’
Picture Section
Thror’s Map I. This version (‘Copied by B. Baggins’) retains the northward orientation of Fimbulfambi’s Map.
The ‘home manuscript’ version of the Mirkwood/Wilderland map, with Bilbo’s outward journey marked in red.
The Long Lake and Lonely Mountain. One of the set of maps accompanying the ‘home manuscript’.
A schematic view of the Lonely Mountain from the West looking East.
‘One Morning early in the Quiet of the World’: Gandalf (and adventure) approach the unsuspecting Bilbo’s door.
Gandalf on the doorstep at Bag-End.
‘The Hill: Hobbiton’, showing the path Bilbo ran down from his front door in the distance to the Great Mill in the foreground.
‘Trolls’ Hill’: a mood piece showing the distant firelight that lured the dwarves to near-disaster.
‘The Three Trolls are turned to Stone’: note Bilbo caught in the bushes left of centre.
‘Riding down into Rivendell’: Elrond’s valley revealed among the desolate lands all around.
The 1932 Father Christmas Letter.
Detail showing Smaug painted on the cave wall and Gollum peering around the corner.
‘Firelight in Beorn’s house’: an alternate view, directly based on a re-creation of Hrolf Kraki’s Hall (Heorot).
The lost Mirkwood halftone, based on Tolkien’s earlier picture of Taur-na-Fuin.
Detail showing a Mirkwood spider.
Night-time view of the Elf-hill in Mirkwood. Note the cobwebs to left and right.
Barrel-rider: unfinished pastel of Bilbo’s arrival at the huts of the raft-elves.
‘Esgaroth’: alternate image of Lake Town. Note the dwarves’ heads emerging from the barrels to the left.
‘The Back Door’: A flurry of dwarven activity in the hidden bay on the western side of the Mountain.
‘View from Back Door’: companion piece to the preceding, showing the view from inside the secret tunnel looking out toward
s the setting sun.
Dwarves marching, with sketch of Smaug flying overhead.
‘The Front Door’: the Lonely Mountain by daylight. Note the smoke-rings above the Mountain, the river looping around the ruins of Dale, and the opening on Ravenhill.
‘Smaug flies round the Mountain’: a night-time scene in muted colour. Note placement of Dale and aberrant phase of the moon.
‘Conversation with Smaug’: Bilbo’s meeting with the Dragon in a picture full of significant detail. Note the dwarven curse on the jar to the lower left.
‘The wrong way to do it’: even before he began writing The Hobbit, Tolkien was thinking about dragons, and this drawing from 1928 shows one of the ‘creeping’ kind being attacked in ‘the wrong way’.
‘Death of Smaug’: Tolkien’s annotated sketch showing the destruction of Lake Town.
‘Not competent produce drawings required. Can send rough sketch and directions [to] artist’: previously unpublished sketch of Bilbo.
‘The Coming of the Eagles’: this rough sketch shows the only known depiction of the Battle of the Five Armies, with the figure in the foreground possibly that of Bilbo.
Copyright
This revised and expanded one-volume edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011
1
First published in Great Britain as The History of The Hobbit: Mr Baggins and The History of The Hobbit: Return to Bag-End by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007
All material from The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
© The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 2007, 2011
All illustrations © The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust 2007
Introduction, commentary and notes © John D. Rateliff 2007, 2011
isbn 978 000744082 5
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The History of the Hobbit Page 137