[As a postscript to the letter:]
J. R. R. Tolkien
had a cat called Grimalkin:
once a familiar of Herr Grimm,
now he spoke the law to him.
310 To Camilla Unwin
[Rayner Unwin's daughter Camilla was told, as pan of a school 'project', to write and ask: 'What is the purpose of life?']
20 May 1969 [19 Lakeside Road, Branksome Park, Poole]
Dear Miss Unwin, I am sorry my reply has been delayed. I hope it will reach you in time. What a very large question! I do not think 'opinions', no matter whose, are of much use without some explanation of how they are arrived at; but on this question it is not easy to be brief.
What does the question really mean? Purpose and Life both need some definition. Is it a purely human and moral question; or does it refer to the Universe? It might mean: How ought I to try and use the life-span allowed to me? OR: What purpose/design do living things serve by being alive? The first question, however, will find an answer (if any) only after the second has been considered.
I think that questions about 'purpose' are only really useful when they refer to the conscious purposes or objects of human beings, or to the uses of things they design and make. As for 'other things' their value resides in themselves: they ARE, they would exist even if we did not. But since we do exist one of their functions is to be contemplated by us. If we go up the scale of being to 'other living things', such as, say, some small plant, it presents shape and organization: a 'pattern' recognizable (with variation) in its kin and offspring; and that is deeply interesting, because these things are 'other' and we did not make them, and they seem to proceed from a fountain of invention incalculably richer than our own.
Human curiosity soon asks the question HOW: in what way did this come to be? And since recognizable 'pattern' suggests design, may proceed to WHY? But WHY in this sense, implying reasons and motives, can only refer to a MIND. Only a Mind can have purposes in any way or degree akin to human purposes. So at once any question: 'Why did life, the community of living things, appear in the physical Universe?' introduces the Question: Is there a God, a Creator-Designer, a Mind to which our minds are akin (being derived from it) so that It is intelligible to us in part. With that we come to religion and the moral ideas that proceed from it. Of those things I will only say that 'morals' have two sides, derived from the fact that we are individuals (as in some degree are all living things) but do not, cannot, live in isolation, and have a bond with all other things, ever closer up to the absolute bond with our own human kind.
So morals should be a guide to our human purposes, the conduct of our lives: (a) the ways in which our individual talents can be developed without waste or misuse; and (b) without injuring our kindred or interfering with their development. (Beyond this and higher lies self-sacrifice for love.) But these are only answers to the smaller question. To the larger there is no answer, because that requires a complete knowledge of God, which is unattainable. If we ask why God included us in his Design, we can really say no more than because He Did.
If you do not believe in a personal God the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable. To whom or what would you address the question? But since in an odd corner (or odd corners) of the Universe things have developed with minds that ask questions and try to answer them, you might address one of these peculiar things. As one of them I should venture to say (speaking with absurd arrogance on behalf of the Universe): 'I am as I am. There is nothing you can do about it. You may go on trying to find out what I am, but you will never succeed. And why you want to know, I do not know. Perhaps the desire to know for the mere sake of knowledge is related to the prayers that some of you address to what you call God. At their highest these seem simply to praise Him for being, as He is, and for making what He has made, as He has made it.'
Those who believe in a personal God, Creator, do not think the Universe is in itself worshipful, though devoted study of it may be one of the ways of honouring Him. And while as living creatures we are (in part) within it and part of it, our ideas of God and ways of expressing them will be largely derived from contemplating the world about us. (Though there is also revelation both addressed to all men and to particular persons.) So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.
And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD ... all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing. This is much too long, and also much too short on such a question.
With best wishes
J. R. R. Tolkien.
311 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien
31 July 1969 I was delighted to get your letter of 27th today, and felt very unhappy about my own silence. I begin to feel a bit desperate: endlessly frustrated. I have at last managed to release the demon of invention only to find myself in the state of a man who after a strong draught of a sleeping potion is waked up and not allowed to lie down for more than a few consecutive minutes. Neither in one world or another. Business endless - lies neglected, yet I cannot get anything of my real work finished. Then came this latest stroke of malice. I was assailed by very considerable pain, and depression, which no ordinary remedy would relieve. Three weeks ago last Tuesday Tolhurst came and 'gave me the works', and diagnosed an inflamed/or diseased gall-bladder. Took me at once off all fats (including butter) and all alcohol. Usually a cheerful and encouraging doctor, he was alarmingly serious, and the prospect looked dark. We (or at least I) know far too little about the complicated machine we inhabit, and (like the totally unmechanical to whom 'carburettor' is the name of a small pan of the engine of minor and little known function) underestimate the gall-bladder! It is a vital part of the chemical factory, and apart from all else can cause intense pain, if it goes wrong; and if it is 'diseased': well you are 'for it'. -1 do not know why one wants to talk about illnesses, espec. since details are intricate and boring: cutting short, I was treated with great civility by the X-ray man. He cut out all protocol, and after second bout he developed the plates at once, and came back to me with a smile, saying 'the plates will go to your doctor who will report and advise you but I can say, though the plates are still wet, that your g-b is in its right place and is functioning, and I can see no gall-stones or growths. I should go now and have a good lunch.' Tolhurst came yesterday, and took me off diet: butter and alcohol 'in moderation'. I feel quite well: i.e. as well as I did before the outset. But life is not easy. The Parke has gone sick. Mummy is ailing, and I fear slowly 'declining'. Also I feel very cut off. ....
312 From a letter to Amy Ronald
16 November 1969 I meant to write to let you know how much I am perturbed by and sorry for your afflictions: poor dear. I pray for you because I have a feeling (more near a certainty) that God, for some ineffable reason which to us may seem almost like humour, is so curiously ready to answer the prayers of the least worthy of his suppliants if they pray for others. I do not of course mean to say that He only answers the prayers of the unworthy (who ought not to expect to be heard at all), or I should not now be benefitting by the prayers of others. What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in especially for those who have also the burden of age, whose friends and all they especially care for are afflicted in the same way. Chesterton once said that it is our duty to keep the Flag of This World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. Gandalf added that it is not for us to choose the times into which we are born, but to do what we could to repair them; but the spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and so many-headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than personally to refuse to worship any of the hydras' heads. ....
I have greatly enjoyed the Cape Flower Book. Quite fascinating in itself and in its general botanical and indeed paleo-implications. I have not seen anything that immediately recalls niphredil or elanor or alfirin: but that I think is because those imagined flowers are lit by a light that would not be seen ever in a growing plant and cannot be recaptured by paint. Lit by that light, niphredil would be simply a delicate kin of a snowdrop; and elanor a pimpernel (perhaps a little enlarged) growing sun-golden flowers and star-silver ones on the same plant, and sometimes the two combined. Alfirin ('immortal') would be an immortelle, but not dry and papery: simply a beautiful bell-like flower, running through many colours, but soft and gentle. ....
All illustrated botany books (or better, contact direct with an unfamiliar flora) have for me a special fascination. Not so much the rare, unusual, or totally unrelated specimens, as in the variations and permutations of flowers that are the evident kin of those I know but not the same. They rouse in me visions of kinship and descent through great ages, and also thoughts of the mystery of pattern/design as a thing other than its individual embodiment, and recognizable. How? I remember once in the comer of a botanical garden growing (unlabelled and unnamed) a plant that fascinated me. I knew of the 'family' Scrofularice, and had always accepted that the scientific bases of grouping plants in 'families' was sound, and that in general this grouping did point to actual physical kinship in descent. But in contemplating say Figwort and the Foxglove, one has to take this on trust. But there I saw a 'missing link'. A beautiful 'fox-glove', bells and all but also a figwort: for the bells were brown-red, the red tincture ran through the veins of all the leaves, and its stem was angular. One of the 17 species (I suppose) of Digitalis which we do not possess in Britain. But such botany books as I have do not comment on such 'links' between the branches of the family (Scrofularia & Digitalis). Just occasionally one actually sees a change take place which might in favourable circumstances become permanent. In a former garden I had a border planted with garden daisies (mostly red); but they seeded into the lawn, where in the struggle for life they reverted to ordinary daisies and conducted their battle with the grass like their ancestors. Some seeds, however, managed to reach a place where an enormously rich soil had developed (rotting grass and deep black bonfire ash). One hardy adventurer tried to do something about it but could only do it in daisy fashion : it grew four times the size with a flower the size of a half-crown. I said 'magnificent; but a little coarse? No real improvement on bellis perennis. ' It or Something may have heard. Next morning it had put out from its flower, on delicate stalks rising in a ring out of the rim of the disc, six pink-tipped little elvish daisies like an airy crown. Far more graceful and patterned than any hen-and-chickens development I had or have seen. (I had not the time or skill to perpetuate it.)
313 From a letter to Michael Tolkien
25 November 1969 I wish I had time to produce an elementary (! both languages are, of course, extremely difficult) grammar and vocabulary of 'elven': sc. Quenya and Sindarin. I am having to do some work on them, in the process of adjusting 'the Silmarillion and all that' to The L.R. Which I am labouring at, under endless difficulties: not least the natural sloth of 77+.
314 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien
15 December 1969 As to your last paragraph! I am wholly in favour of the 'dull stodges'. I had once a considerable experience of what are/were probably England's most (at least apparently) dullest and stodgiest students: Yorkshire's young men and women of sub-public school class and home backgrounds bookless and cultureless. That does not, however, necessarily indicate the actual innate mental capacity largely unawakened of any given individual. A surprisingly large proportion prove 'educable': for which a primary qualification is the willingness to do some work (to learn) (at any level of intelligence).123 Teaching is a most exhausting task. But I would rather spend myself on removing the 'dull' from 'stodges' providing some products of to + quality that retain some sanity a hopeful soil from which another generation with some higher intelligence could arise. Rather rather than waste effort on those of (apparently at any rate) higher intelligence that have been corrupted and disintegrated by school, and the 'climate' of our present days.124 Teaching an organized subject is simply not the instrument for their rehabilitation if anything is. Give me one little stubby root, which possibly in a better soil will send out some leaves, and even eventually produce some seed, rather than a large pink root rotten with carrot fly! Amen. But I am old, and probably unable to envisage the appalling situation now existing. Worse even than the soft roots rotten with disease, are (I imagine) the inferior ones that in my time would have been probably sound, but are now equally rotten, but meaner and nastier.
315 From a letter to Michael Tolkien
1 January 1970 I am not getting on fast with The S. The domestic situation, Mummy's gallant but losing fight against age and disability (and pain), and my own years - and all the interruptions of 'business' do not leave much time. I have in fact so far been chiefly employed in trying to co-ordinate the nomenclature of the very early and later pans of the Silmarillion with the situation in The L.R. 'Stories' still sprout in my mind from names; but it is a very difficult and complex task.
When you pray for me, pray for 'time'! I should like to put some of this stuff into readable form, and some sketched for others to make use of. Also I should dearly love to defeat the Inland Revenue and survive beyond the iniquitous 7 years. (Also I should like time to set down what I know or remember of my childhood and my kin on either side.)
316 From a letter to R. W. Burchfield
[The Oxford English Dictionary staff, under Dr Burchfield, were compiling an entry for hobbit in their Second Supplement. Tolkien's help was sought, particularly on the question of whether he had invented the word, or whether there had been an older story with the same title (see no. 25).]
11 September 1970 The matter of hobbit is not very important, but I may be forgiven for taking a personal interest in it and being anxious that the meaning intended by me should be made clear.
Unfortunately, as all lexicographers know, 'don't look into things, unless you are looking for trouble: they nearly always turn out to be less simple than you thought'. You will shortly be receiving a long letter on hobbit and related matters, of which, even if it is in time, only a small part may be useful or interesting to you.
For the moment this is held up, because I am having the matter of the etymology: 'Invented by J, R. R. Tolkien': investigated by experts. I knew that the claim was not clear, but I had not troubled to look into it, until faced by the inclusion of hobbit in the Supplement.
In the meanwhile I submit for your consideration the following definition: One of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning 'hole-dweller') but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal Men.
This assumes that the etymology can stand. If not it may be necessary to modify it: e.g. by substituting after 'race'
; in the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien said to have given themselves this name, though others called them . . .
If it stands, as I think it will even if an alleged older story called 'The Hobbit' can be traced, then the '(meaning "hole-dweller")' could be transferred to the etymology.
317 From a letter to Amy Ronald
All Hallows 1970 I have expended your wonderful gift. I felt like a wise man setting out on a long voyage, and storing his craft with the most useful and necessary things: I still feel this house is a ship or ark: it looks like one (from the garden), contented and quiet but at the same time still a bit surprised, as if it had been dumped here by a wave while asleep, and did not feel sure where it was.
Alas I did not buy any good brandy. My palate has never learned to appreciate it as it deserves. But I have laid in some burgundy some port which we both like,125 and some good sherry, some liqueurs, and one bottle of champagne (with a view to Christmas).
318 From a letter to Neil Ker
[Ker had sent Tolkien a copy of an article on A. S. Napier (1853-1916), who was Professor of English Language & Literature at Oxford when Tolkien became an undergraduate.]
22 November 1970 I am most grateful for your kindness in sending me an offprint of your work on Napier. I have been deeply interested in it. Naturally. I entered the English School in T[rinity] T[erm] 1913 at my own request: I had discovered its existence in the Examination Statutes. I was not as surprised as I ought to have been by the generosity of Exeter College in allowing me to do this without depriving me of my classical exhibition, but your essay confirms my guess that this was due to Farnell.
At any rate he wrote me an introduction to Napier, and I called on him at his house in Headington. I recall that I was ushered into a very dim room and could hardly see Napier. He was courteous, but said little. He never spoke to me again. I attended his lectures, when he was well enough to give them. But alas! I came too late. His illness must have been already far advanced.
But this was compensated by a piece of singular good fortune: Sisam became my tutor. I think I certainly derived from him much of the benefit which he attributes to Napier's example and teaching. To these things Sisam's own great talents were evidently very responsive, and his feelings warmed by affection for a great man in his decline. His teaching was, however, spiced with a pungency, humour and practical wisdom which were his own. I owe him a great debt and have not forgotten it....
Incidentally the foundation of my library was laid by Sisam. He taught me not only to read texts, but to study second-hand book catalogues, of which I was not even aware. Some he marked for me.
319 From a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green
8 January 1971 The Ox. E. D. has in preparation of its Second Supplement got to Hobbit, which it proposes to include together with its progeny: hobbitry, -ish, etc. I have had, therefore, to justify my claim to have invented the word. My claim rests really on my 'nude parole' or unsupported assertion that I remember the occasion of its invention (by me); and that I had not then any knowledge of Hobberdy, Hobbaty, Hobberdy Dick etc. (for 'house-sprites');126 and that my 'hobbits' were in any case of wholly dissimilar sort, a diminutive branch of the human race. Also that the only E. word that influenced the invention was 'hole'; that granted the description of hobbits, the trolls' use of rabbit was merely an obvious insult, of no more etymological significance than Thorin's insult to Bilbo 'descendant of rats!' However, doubt was cast on this as far back as 1938. A review appeared in The Observer 16 Jan 1938, signed 'Habit' (incidentally thus long anticipating Coghill's perception of the similarity of the words in his humorous adj. 'hobbit-forming' applied to my books). 'Habit' asserted that a friend claimed to have read, about 20 years earlier (sc. c. 1918) an old 'fairy story' (in a collection of such tales) called The Hobbit, though the creature was very 'frightening'. I asked for more information, but have never received any; and recent intensive research has not discovered the 'collection'. I think it is probable that the friend's memory was inaccurate (after 20 years), and the creature probably had a name of the Hobberdy, Hobbaty class. However, one cannot exclude the possibility that buried childhood memories might suddenly rise to the surface long after (in my case after 35-40 years), though they might be quite differently applied. I told the researchers that I used (before 1900) to be read to from an 'old collection' - tattered and without cover or title-page of which all I can now remember was that (I think) it was by Bulwer Lytton, and contained one story I was then very fond of called 'Puss Cat Mew'. They have not discovered it. I wonder if you, the most learned of living scholars in this region, can say anything. Esp. for my own satisfaction about Puss Cat Mew - I do not suppose you have found a name precisely hobbit or you would have mentioned it. Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!