107 From a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin
[On the subject of a German edition of The Hobbit..]
7 December 1946 I continue to receive letters from poor Horus Engels about a German translation. He does not seem necessarily to propose himself as a translator. He has sent me some illustrations (of the Trolls and Gollum) which despite certain merits, such as one would expect of a German, are I fear too 'Disnified' for my taste: Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of. ....
I am shortly moving to a small house (3 Manor Road) and so hoping to solve the intolerable domestic problems which thieve so much of the little time that is left over. I still hope shortly to finish my 'magnum opus': the Lord of the Rings: and let you see it, before long, or before January. I am on the last chapters.
108 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
[Allen & Unwin had decided to publish Farmer Giles of Ham as a separate volume.]
5 July 1947 I am now sending back (a week late) under separate cover the MS. of Farmer Giles of Ham, revised for the press. I have as you will see gone through it carefully, making a good many alterations, for the better (I think and hope) in both style and narrative. ....
You will note that, whoever may buy it, this story was not written/or children; though as in the case of other books that will not necessarily prevent them from being amused by it. I think it might be as well to emphasize the fact that this is a tale specially composed for reading aloud: it goes very well so, for those that like this kind of thing at all. It was, in fact, written to order, to be read to the Lovelace Society at Worcester College; and was read to them at a sitting.
For that reason I should like to put an inscription to C. H. Wilkinson on a fly-leaf, since it was Col. Wilkinson of that College who egged me to it, and has since constantly egged me to publication.
109 To Sir Stanley Unwin
[Tolkien lunched with Unwin in London on 9 July, and agreed that Rayner Unwin should see Book I of The Lord of the Rings which was in 'fair' typescript. On 28 July, Tolkien was sent Rayner's comments; Rayner wrote: 'The tortuous and contending currents of events in this world within a world almost overpower one .... The struggle between darkness and light (sometimes one suspects leaving the story proper to become pure allegory) is macabre and intensified beyond that in "Hobbit" .... Converting the original Ring into this new and powerful instrument takes some explaining away and Gandalf is hard put to it to find reasons for many of the original Hobbit's actions, but the linking of the books is well done on the whole.... Quite honestly I don't know who is expected to read it ... If grown ups will not feel infra dig to read it many will undoubtedly enjoy themselves .... The proof reader will have to correct a number of omitted changes from "Hamilcar" to "Belisarius".' Despite these criticisms and hesitations, Rayner judged the book to be 'a brilliant and gripping story'. Tolkien wrote the following reply on 31 July, but did not send it until 21 September, for reasons given in the letter of that date.]
31 July 1947 Merton College, Oxford Dear Unwin, I will certainly address you so, cum permissu, though it hardly seems a fair exchange for the loss of 'professor', a title one has rather to live down than to insist on.
I was surprised to get the instalment of The Ring back so quickly. It may be a large book, but evidently it will be none too long in the reading for those who have the appetite. And it was very kind of you to send me Rayner's impressions. Any criticism from outside the small circle that has known the thing as it has grown (and becoming familiar with its world have long ceased to be overpowered) would be welcome; but this critic is worth listening to.
I must now wait with patience until he has seen more. I will send another instalment at the end of August. And I have now another urgent reason, in addition to the clamour of the circle, for finishing it off, so that it can be finally judged.
I return Rayner's remarks with thanks to you both. I am sorry he felt overpowered, and I particularly miss any reference to the comedy, with which I imagined the first 'book' was well supplied. It may have misfired. I cannot bear funny books or plays myself, I mean those that set out to be all comic; but it seems to me that in real life, as here, it is precisely against the darkness of the world that comedy arises, and is best when that is not hidden. Evidently I have managed to make the horror really horrible, and that is a great comfort; for every romance that takes things seriously must have a warp of fear and horror, if however remotely or representatively it is to resemble reality, and not be the merest escapism. But I have failed if it does not seem possible that mere mundane hobbits could cope with such things. I think that there is no horror conceivable that such creatures cannot surmount, by grace (here appearing in mythological forms) combined with a refusal of their nature and reason at the last pinch to compromise or submit.
But in spite of this, do not let Rayner suspect 'Allegory'. There is a 'moral', I suppose, in any tale worth telling. But that is not the same thing. Even the struggle between darkness and light (as he calls it, not me) is for me just a particular phase of history, one example of its pattern, perhaps, but not The Pattern; and the actors are individuals they each, of course, contain universals, or they would not live at all, but they never represent them as such.
Of course, Allegory and Story converge, meeting somewhere in Truth. So that the only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily can it be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it. But the two start out from opposite ends. You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work. You cannot write a story about an apparently simple magic ring without that bursting in, if you really take the ring seriously, and make things happen that would happen, if such a thing existed.
Rayner has, of course, spotted a weakness (inevitable): the linking. I am glad that he thinks that the linking has on the whole been well done. That is the best that could be hoped. I have done the best I could, since I had to have hobbits (whom I love), and must still have a glimpse of Bilbo for old times' sake. But I don't feel worried by the discovery that the ring was more serious than appeared; that is just the way of all easy ways out. Nor is it Bilbo's actions, I think, that need explanation. The weakness is Gollum, and his action in offering the ring as a present. However, Gollum later becomes a prime character, and I do not rely on Gandalf to make his psychology intelligible. I hope it will come off, and Gandalf finally be revealed as perceptive rather than 'hard put to it'. Still I must bear this in mind, when I revise chapter II for press : I intend, in any case, to shorten it. The proper way to negotiate the difficulty would be slightly to remodel the former story in its chapter V. That is not a practical question; though I certainly hope to leave behind me the whole thing revised and in final form, for the world to throw into the waste-paper basket. All books come there in me end, in this world, anyway.
As for who is to read it? The world seems to be becoming more and more divided into impenetrable factions, Morlocks and Eloi, and others. But those that like this kind of thing at all, like it very much, and cannot get anything like enough of it, or at sufficiently great length to appease hunger. The taste may be (alas!) numerically limited, even if, as I suspect, growing, and chiefly needing supply for further growth. But where it exists the taste is not limited by age or profession (unless one excludes those wholly devoted to machines). The audience that has so far followed The Ring, chapter by chapter, and has re-read it, and clamours for more, contains some odd folk of similar literary tastes: such as C. S. Lewis, the late Charles Williams, and my son Christopher; they are probably a very small and unrequiting minority. But it has included others: a solicitor, a doctor (professionally interested in cancer), an elderly army officer, an elementary school-mistress, an artist, and a farmer. Which is a fairly wide selection, even if one excludes professionally literary folk, whose own interests would seem to be far removed, such as David Cecil.
At any rate the proof-reader, if it ever comes to that, will, I hope, have very little to do. I was bowed under other work and had no time to look over the chapters I sent in. Belisarius must have been scribbled as a suggestion over the name Hamilcar in a few cases. The choice matters little, though the change had a purpose; but at any rate I hope that most detestable slovenliness of not keeping even a minor character's name firm will not disfigure the final form. Also: it is inevitable that the knowledge of the previous book should be presumed; but there is in existence a Foreword, or opening chapter, 'Concerning Hobbits'. That gives the gist of Chapter V 'Riddles in the Dark', and retells the information supplied in the first two pages or so of the other book, besides explaining many points that 'fans' have enquired about: such as tobacco, and references to policemen and the king (p. 43), and the appearance of houses in the picture of Hobbiton. The Hobbit was after all not as simple as it seemed, and was torn rather at random out of a world in which it already existed, and which has not been newly devised just to make a sequel. The only liberty, if such it is, has been to make Bilbo's Ring the One Ring: all rings had the same source, before ever he put his hand on it in the dark. The horrors were already lurking there, as on page 36, and 303 ; and Elrond saw that they could not be banished by any White Council.
Well, I have talked quite long enough about my own follies. The thing is to finish the thing as devised and then let it be judged. But forgive me! It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other. I fear it must stand or fall as it substantially is. It would be idle to pretend that I do not greatly desire publication, since a solitary art is no art; nor that I have not a pleasure in praise, with as little vanity as fallen man can manage (he has not much more share in his writings than in his children of the body, but it is something to have a function); yet the chief thing is to complete one's work, as far as completion has any real sense.
I am deeply grateful for being taken seriously by a busy man who has dealt and deals with many men of greater learning and talent. I wish you and Rayner a good voyage, successful business, and then great days among the Mountains. How I long to see the snows and the great heights again!
Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.
Talking about revising The Hobbit. Any alteration of any radical kind is of course impossible, and unnecessary. But there are still quite a number of misprints in it. I have twice, I think, sent in lists of these, and I hope they have been corrected this time. Also there are minor errors, which the researches of fans have revealed, and some closer attention of my own has discovered. I wish there could be a chance of putting them right. I enclose a list again.
110 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
[Tolkien's American publishers, the Houghton Mifflin Co., applied to Allen & Unwin for permission to use several riddles from The Hobbit in an anthology of poetry. Allen & Unwin suggested to Tolkien that 'the riddles were taken from common folk lore and were not invented by you'.]
20 September 1947 As for the Riddles: they are 'all my own work' except for 'Thirty White Horses' which is traditional, and 'No-legs'. The remainder, though their style and method is that of old literary (but not 'folk-lore') riddles, have no models as far as I am aware, save only the egg-riddle which is a reduction to a couplet (my own) of a longer literary riddle which appears in some 'Nursery Rhyme' books, notably American ones. So I feel that to try and use them without fee would be about as just as walking off with somebody's chair because it was a Chippendale copy, or drinking his wine because it was labelled 'port-type'. I feel also constrained to remark that 'Sun on the Daisies' is not in verse (any more than 'No-legs') being but the etymology of the word 'daisy', expressed in riddle-form.
111 From a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin
21 September 1947 I wrote to you on the last day of July, but I put the letter aside, as it seemed too much of a pother about my works. ....
Hyde (or Jekyll) has had to have his way, and I have been obliged to devote myself mainly to philology, especially as my colleague from Liege, with whom I had been embarking on 'research' before the war, was staying here to help to get our work ready for press.
Now I am about to go off again for a few days on college business. It is my turn to go with the Warden and Bursar to inspect estates in Cambridge and Lincolnshire. So rather than leave your letter of July 28 unanswered any longer, I send along herewith my original and now rather tattered answer. With it I send Rayner's comments; also some notes on The Hobbit; and (for the possible amusement of yourself and Rayner) a specimen of re-writing of Chapter V of that work, which would simplify, though not necessarily improve, my present task.
I have tried unsuccessfully to squeeze in, in the intervals of 'research' and journeys, some revision of Book II of The Lord of the Rings. But, as I should like very much to benefit by Rayner's reading (and yours, if you have any time), I send it along under separate cover, with its many defects of detail. But Rayner may note, if he has time to bother with this packet, that Chapter XIV has been re-written, to match the re-writing or Chapter II 'Ancient History' which he has read. Chapter II is now called 'The Shadow of the Past' and most of its 'historical' material has been cut out, while a little more attention is paid to Gollum. So that if XIV seems repetitive, it is not actually so; practically nothing now in XIV will appear in II.
I send also the preliminary chapter of Foreword to the whole: 'Concerning Hobbits', which acts as a link to the earlier book and at the same time answers questions that have been asked.
112 To Katherine Farrer
[A postcard, apparently written on 30 November 1947, using the system of runes employed in The Hobbit ; a transcription will be found on p. 441. Mrs Farrer, a writer of detective stories, was married to the theologian Austin Farrer, then Chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford. She had apparently asked Tolkien to sign her copy of The Hobbit.]
113 To C.S.Lewis
[The exact circumstances behind this letter are not clear, but it seems that Tolkien and Lewis had been corresponding about criticisms that Tolkien had made of a piece of Lewis's work read aloud to the Inklings. This may have been part of Lewis's English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, in the Oxford History of English Literature ('OHEL') series, which is referred to in the letter.]
Septuagesima 1948 My dear Jack, It was good of you to write in return. But you write largely on 'offence'; though surely I amended 'offended' in my letter to 'pained'? Pained we cannot help being by the painful. I knew well enough that you wd. not allow pain to grow into resentment, not even if (or still less because) that may be a tendency of your nature. Woe to him, though, by whom the temptations come. I regret causing pain, even if and in so far as I had the right; and I am very sorry indeed still for having caused it quite excessively and unnecessarily. My verses and my letter were due to a sudden very acute realization (I shall not quickly forget it) of the pain that may enter into authorship, both in the making and in the 'publication', which is an essential pan of the full process. The vividness of the perception was due, of course, to the fact that you, for whom I have deep affection and sympathy, were the victim and I myself the culprit. But I felt myself tingling under the half-patronizing half-mocking lash, with the small things of my heart made the mere excuse for verbal butchery.
I have been possessed on occasions (few, happily) with a sort of furor scribendi, in which the pen finds the words rather than head or heart; and this was one of them. But nothing in your speech or manner gave me any reason to suppose that you felt 'offended'. Yet I could see that you felt you would have been hardly human otherwise -, and your letter shows how much. I daresay under grace that will do good rather than harm, but that is between you and God. It is one of the mysteries of pain that it is, for the sufferer, an opportunity for good, a path of ascent however hard. But it remains an 'evil', and it must dismay any conscience to have caused it carelessly, or in excess, let alone wilfully. And even under necessity or privilege, as of a father or master in punishment, or even of a man beating a dog, it is the rod of God only to be wielded with trepidation. There may have been one or two of my comments that were just or valid, but I should have limited myself to them, and expressed them differently. He is a savage physician who coats a not wholly unpalatable pill with a covering of gall!
But as for your feelings about me as a 'critic', whether exercising the function wisely or foolishly. I am not a critic. I do not want to be one.10 I am capable on occasion (after long pondering) of 'criticism', but I am not naturally a critical man. I have been partly and in a sense unnaturally galvanized into it by the strongly 'critical' tendency of the brotherhood. I am not really 'hyper-critical'. For I am usually only trying to express 'liking' not universally valid criticism. As a rule I am in fact merely lost in a chartless alien sea. I need food of particular kinds, not exercise for my analytical wits (which are normally employed in other fields). For I have something that I deeply desire to make, and which it is the (largely frustrated) bent of my nature to make. Without any vanity or exaggerated notion of the universal importance of this, it remains a fact that other things are to me less important. I am sure that most of them are a great deal more important to the world. But that does not help my situation. I think this prevents me from being a critic worth considering, as a rule; and it probably makes me at my worst when the other writer's lines come too near (as do yours at times): there is liable to be a short circuit, a flash, an explosion and even a bad smell, one ingredient of which may be mere jealousy. Still, it would be fairer to say of me not that I tend to be imprisoned in my own taste, so much as to be burdened with my own small but peculiar 'message'. In fact, suffering (for a variety of reasons, not all blameworthy) from 'suppressed composition'. Indeed a savage creature, a soreheaded bear (if I can liken myself to anything so large), a painful friend. But God bless you for your goodness. And instead of confessing as sinful the natural and inevitable feeling of pain and its reactions (I am sure never unresisted, and immediately), do me the great generosity of making me a present of the pains I have caused, so that I may share in the good you have put them to.
I do not know if I make myself clear. But I suppose that it is in our power, as members of Christ, to make such gifts effectively. In me simplest case: if a man has stolen something from me, then before God I declare it a gift. That is, of course, a simple way of making use of a wrong, and getting rid of the sting, but that is not the direct object (or it would not be effective); for it seems to me probable that such a gift has effect on the culprit's situation before God, and in any case in any true desire to 'forgive' the desire that that should be so must be present. It would be wonderful when summoned to judgement, to answer innumerable charges of wrongdoing to one's brethren, to find unexpectedly that many were not going to be preferred at all! And indeed that instead one had a share in the good made of one's evil. And no less wonderful for the giver. An eternal interaction of relief and gratitude. (But the culprit must be sorry. Otherwise I suppose in the terrible realms of doom the coals of fire would bum intolerably).
(What happens when the culprit is genuinely repentant, but the sufferer is deeply resentful and witholds all 'forgiveness'? It is a terrible thought, to deter anyone from running the risk of needlessly causing such an 'evil'. Of course, the power of mercy is only delegated and is always exercised with or without cooperation by Higher Authority. But the joys and healing of cooperation must be lost?) While I was thinking of all this, I came across a passage dealing with the charming relations between G. M. Hopkins and his 'pen-friend' Canon Dixon. Two men starved of 'recognition'. Poor Dixon whose History of the Church of England (and whose poems) received but a casual glance, and Hopkins unappreciated in his own order. H. seems clearly to have seen that 'recognition' with some understanding is in this world an essential part of authorship, and the want of it a suffering to be distinguished from (even when mixed with) mere desire for the pleasures of fame and praise. Dixon was rather bowled over by being appreciated by Hopkins; and much moved by Burne-Jones' words (said to H. who quoted them) that 'one works really for the one man who may rise to understand one'. But H. then demurred, perceiving that Bume-Jones' hope can also in this world be frustrated, as easily as general fame: a painter (like Niggle) may work for what the burning of his picture, or an accident of death to the admirer, may wholly destroy. He summed up: The only just literary critic is Christ, who admires more than does any man the gifts He Himself has bestowed. Then let us 'bekenne either other to Crist'. God keep you.
I write only because I find it easier so to say such things as I really want to say. If they are foolish or seem so, I am not present when they fall flat. (My whispering asides are most often due to sheer pusillanimity, and a fear of being laughed at by the general company.) This requires no answer. But as for yourself: rest in peace, as far as I am any 'critic' of behaviour. At least you are the fautlest freke that I know. 'Loudness' did you say? Nay! That is largely a self-defensive rumour put about by Hugo. If it has any basis (for him), it is but that noise begets noise. We are safe in your presence and presidency from contention, ill will, detraction, or accusations without evidence. Doubtless, as you say, I have as a member of me brotherhood a right to criticize, an I please. But I shall not lightly forget my vision of the wounds; and I shall be deterred from rash dispraise, for myself. Indeed, I do not really think that for any man valuable 'criticism' is usually to be attained hot on the spot: it is then too mixed with mere reaction. Let us listen again more patiently. And let me beg of you to bring out OHEL, with no coy ness.
But I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge. (It is an Inkling's duty to be bored willingly. It is his privilege to be a borer on occasion). I sometimes conceive and write other things than verses or romance! And I may come back at you. Indeed, if our beloved and esteemed physician is to pose us with problems of the earth as a dynamo, I can think of other problems as intricate if more petty to present to his notice if only for the malicious delight of seeing Hugo (if present), slightly heated with alcohol, giving an imitation of the intelligent boy of the class. But Lord save you all! I don't find myself in any need of practising forbearance towards any of you save on the rarest occasions, when I myself am tired and exhausted: then I find mere noise and vulgarity trying. But I am not yet so hoar (nor so refined) that that has become a permanent state. I want noise often enough. I know no more pleasant sound than arriving at the B. and B. and hearing a roar, and knowing that one can plunge in.
Yours
J.R.R.T.
As you see, I have delayed nearly a week in sending this. Re-reading it, I do not think it will do any harm. And in any case, I send it lest you shd. think that my recent absences from the Inklings are in any way connected. I have missed three: one because I was desperately tired, the others for domestic reasons the last because my daughter (bless her! always mindful of Thursdays) was obliged to go out that evening.
114 From a letter to Hugh Brogan
[Brogan, then a schoolboy, had written to Tolkien praising The Hobbit and asking for more information about the world it described.]
7 April 1948 I am glad you enjoyed 'the Hobbit'. I have in fact been engaged for ten years on writing another (longer) work about the same world and period of history, in which at any rate all can be learned about the Necromancer and the mines of Moria. Only the difficulty of writing the last chapters, and the shortage of paper have so far prevented its printing. I hope at least to finish it this year, and will certainly let you have advance information. I wrote long ago (and passed the proofs a year ago) another (short) work on a rather different period: Farmer Giles of Ham. I don't know what, beyond paper, is holding it up, but it should appear this autumn or winter. But it will not satisfy any curiosity about the older world. I am afraid you would not find any information about that in ordinary works of reference, since I possess all the documents, and publishers won't publish them. What you really require is The Silmarillion, which is virtually a history of the Eldali (or Elves, by a not very accurate translation) from their rise to the Last Alliance, and the first temporary overthrow of Sauron (the Necromancer): that would bring you nearly down to the period of The Hobbit'. Also desirable would be some maps, chronological tables, and some elementary information about the Eldarin (or Elvish) languages. I have got all those things, of course, and they are known in a small circle which includes my sons (all once at the Dragon School). If I can find some time and way of reproducing them, or part of them, say in typescript, and you remain interested in this little-explored region of pre-history, I will let you have some of the documents.
115 To Katherine Farrer
[Mrs Farrer had apparently expressed a desire to read The Silmarillion and related manuscripts.]
15 June [year not given; possibly 1948]
Merton College, Oxford Dear Mrs Farrer, I am sorry that I have been so long in replying and so may have seemed ungrateful, when I was really very touched by your kind letter and also excited. For though I have (in the cracks of time!) laboured at these things since about 1914,1 have never found anyone but C.S.L. and my Christopher who wanted to read them; and no one will publish them. I have spent what time I could spare since you wrote in collecting out of the unfinished mass such things as are more or less finished and readable (I mean legible). You may find the 'compendious history' or Silmarillion tolerable though it is only really half-revised.
The long tales out of which it is drawn (by 'Pengolod') are either incomplete or not up to date.