320 From a letter to Mrs Ruth Austin
25 January 1971 I was particularly interested in your remarks about Galadriel. .... I think it is true that I owe much of this character to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary, but actually Galadriel was a penitent: in her youth a leader in the rebellion against the Valar (the angelic guardians). At the end of the First Age she proudly refused forgiveness or permission to return. She was pardoned because of her resistance to the final and overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself.
321 From a letter to P. Rorke, S.J.
4 February 1971 [With reference to the Caverns of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings. ]
I was most pleased by your reference to the description of 'glittering caves'. No other critic, I think, has picked it out for special mention. It may interest you to know that the passage was based on the caves in Cheddar Gorge and was written just after I had revisited these in 1940 but was still coloured by my memory of them much earlier before they became so commercialized. I had been there during my honeymoon nearly thirty years before.
322 From a letter to William Cater
18 March 1971 As far as my work goes, things are looking more hopeful now than they have done for some time and it is possible that I may be able to send an instalment of the Silmarillion to Allen & Unwin later this year.
323 To Christopher Tolkien
Begun about June 2nd. 1971.
[19 Lakeside Road]
My dearest C.
I am sorry that I have been so silent. But only a long 'tale of woe', of which you know the main outlines, wd. fully explain it. Here we are June 2nd, and May, one of the best of my experience, has escaped, without a stroke of 'writing'. Not all 'woe' of course. Our brief holiday to Sidmouth, which was what Dr Tolhurst's advice boiled down to, was very pleasant indeed. We were lucky in our time in fact the only week available at the hotel - since May was such a wonderful month - and we came in for a 'spring explosion' of glory, with Devon passing from brown to brilliant yellow-green, and all the flowers leaping out of dead bracken or old grass. (Incidentally the oaks have behaved in a most extraordinary way. The old saw about the oak and the ash, if it has any truth, would usually need wide-spread statistics, since the gap between their wakening is usually so small that it can be changed by minor local differences of situation. But this year there seemed a month between them ! The oaks were among the earliest trees to be leafed equalling or beating birch, beech and lime etc. Great cauliflowers of brilliant yellow-ochre tasseled with flowers, while the ashes (in the same situations) were dark, dead, with hardly even a visible sticky bud). ....
The Belmont proved a v.g. choice. Indeed the chief changes we observed in Sidmouth was the rise of this rather grim looking hotel (in spite of its perfect position) to be the best in the place especially for eating. .... Neither M nor I have eaten so much in a week (without indigestion) for years. In addition our faithful cruise-friends (Boarland) of some six years ago, who recently moved to Sidmouth, and were so anxious to see us again that they vetted our rooms [at] the Belmont, provided us with a car, and took us drives nearly every day. So I saw again much of the country you (especially) and I used to explore in the old days of poor old JO, that valiant sorely-tried old Morris. An added comfort was the fact that Sidmouth seemed practically unchanged, even the shops: many still having the same names (such as Frisby, Trump, and Potbury). Well that is that, & now, alas, over! I am, of course, still in the doldrums as far as my proper work goes with time leaking away so fast.
June 10th. At this point I was interrupted as usual. But among other things, both M and I have been afflicted with what may be either a 'virus', or rood-poisoning of which the risk is steadily mounting in this polluted country of which a growing proportion of the inhabitants are maniacs. ....
I am longing to see you. I am sure there are many more things, which I shall remember as soon as this is posted, that I wished to say. But what I personally need, prob. more than anything, is two or three days general consultation and interchange with you. Though I think the course of events ran in an inescapable succession, I now regret daily that we are separated by a distance too great for swift interchange, and I am so immoveable.....
324 From a letter to Graham Tayar
[Tayar had asked about the use of the name 'Gamgee' in The Lord of the Rings, and whether the name 'Gondor' had been suggested by Gondar in Ethiopia.]
4-5 June 1971 In the matter of Gondar/Gondor you touch on a difficult matter, but one of great interest: the nature of the process of 'linguistic invention' (including nomenclature) in general, and in The Lord of the Rings in particular. It would take too long to discuss this it needs a long essay which I have often in mind but shall probably never write. As far as Gondor goes the facts (of which I am aware) are these: 1) I do not recollect ever having heard the name Gondar (in Ethiopia) before your letter; 2) Gondor is (a) a name fitted to the style and phonetics of Sindarin, and (b) has the sense 'Stone-land' sc. 'Stone (-using people's) land'.127 Outside the inner historical fiction, the name was a very early element in the invention of the whole story. Also in the linguistic construction of the tale,128 which is accurate and detailed, Gondor and Gondar would be two distinct words/names, and the latter would have no precise sense. Nonetheless one's mind is, of course, stored with a 'leaf-mould' of memories (submerged) of names, and these rise up to the surface at times, and may provide with modification the bases of 'invented' names. Owing to the prominence of Ethiopia in the Italian war Gondar may have been one such element. But no more than say Gondwana-land (that rare venture of geology into poetry). In this case I can actually recollect the reason why the element *gon(o), *gond(o) was selected for the stem of words meaning stone, when I began inventing the 'Elvish' languages. When about 8 years old I read in a small book (professedly for the young) that nothing of the language of primitive peoples (before the Celts or Germanic invaders) is now known, except perhaps ond = 'stone' (+ one other now forgotten). I have no idea how such a form could even be guessed, but the ond seemed to me fitting for the meaning. (The prefixing of g- was much later, after the invention of the history of the relation between Sindarin & Quenya in which primitive initial g- was lost in Q: the Q. form of the word remained ondo.) ....
Gamgee is quite a different matter. In my early days gamgee was the word we used for what is/was more generally called 'cotton-wool'..... Recently in the English Place Names Society volumes on Gloucestershire (vol. iii) I came across forms that could conceivably explain the curious Gamgee as a variant of the not uncommon surname Gamage (Gammage, Gammidge). This name is ultimately derived from a surname de Gamaches.... but early records of the forms of this name in England, as Carriages, de Gamagis, de Gemegis, might well provide a variant Gamagi > Gamgee.
Your reference to Samson Gamgee is thus very interesting. Since he is mentioned in a book on Birmingham Jewry, I wonder if this family was also Jewish. In which case the origin of the name might be quite different. Not that a name of French or Francized form is impossible for a Jewish surname, especially if it is one long established in England. We now associate Jewish names largely with German, and with a colloquial Yiddish that is predominantly German in origin.129* But the lingua franca of medival Jewry was (I was told by Cecil Roth, a friend of mine) of French or mixed French-Provencal character.
325 From a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green
17 July 1971 The 'immortals' who were permitted to leave Middle-earth and seek Aman the undying lands of Valinor and Eressa, an island assigned to the Eldar set sail in ships specially made and hallowed for this voyage, and steered due West towards the ancient site of these lands. They only set out after sundown; but if any keen-eyed observer from that shore had watched one of these ships he might have seen that it never became hull-down but dwindled only by distance until it vanished in the twilight: it followed the straight road to the true West and not the bent road of the earth's surface. As it vanished it left the physical world. There was no return. The Elves who took this road and those few 'mortals' who by special grace went with them, had abandoned the 'History of the world' and could play no further part in it.
The angelic immortals (incarnate only at their own will), the Valar or regents under God, and others of the same order but less power and majesty (such as Olrin = Gandalf) needed no transport, unless they for a time remained incarnate, and they could, if allowed or commanded, return.
As for Frodo or other mortals, they could only dwell in Aman for a limited time whether brief or long. The Valar had neither the power nor the right to confer 'immortality' upon them. Their sojourn was a 'purgatory', but one of peace and healing and they would eventually pass away (die at their own desire and of free will) to destinations of which the Elves knew nothing.
This general idea lies behind the events of The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, but it is not put forward as geologically or astronomically 'true'; except that some special physical catastrophe is supposed to lie behind the legends and marked the first stage in the succession of Men to dominion of the world. But the legends are mainly of 'Mannish' origin blended with those of the Sindar (Gray-elves) and others who had never left Middle-earth.
326 From a letter to Rayner Unwin
24 July 1971 [Since the death of Sir Stanley Unwin, Rayner had been Chairman of Allen & Unwin.]
I do miss seeing you very much, though it is inevitable since your accession to the throne: + of course all the care of men: uneasy lies the head that wears the father's bowler.
327 From a letter to Robert H. Boyer
[Answering a question about his acquaintance with W. H. Auden.]
25 August 1971 I did not know Auden personally as a young man and in fact I have only met and spoken to him very few times in my life.
So far as his interest in Old English Poetry was due to me, this was derived from my public lectures and was mainly due to his own natural talents and the possession of an 'open ear' among the majority of the deaf.
I am, however, very deeply in Auden's debt in recent years. His support of me and interest in my work has been one of my chief encouragements. He gave me very good reviews, notices and letters from the beginning when it was by no means a popular thing to do. He was, in fact, sneered at for it.
I regard him as one of my great friends although we have so seldom met except through letters and gifts of his works. I tried to repay him and express part of my feelings by writing a commendatory poem in Old English, which appeared in a volume of Shenandoah celebrating his sixtieth birthday.
328 To Carole Batten-Phelps (draft)
[Autumn 1971]
[19 Lakeside Road]
Dear Miss Batten-Phelps, I am sorry that your letter (written on August 20th) was delayed in reaching me, and has then again waited so long for an answer. I am harassed by many things and the endless 'business' of my affairs; and I am in constant anxiety owing to my wife's failing health. ....
I was much interested in your references to M. R. Ridley. We of course knew one another well at Oxford..... Not until I got your letter did I learn that he had done me the honour of placing the works of his old colleague in the ranks of 'literature', and gaining me intelligent and well-equipped readers. Not a soil in which the fungus-growth of cults is likely to arise. The horrors of the American scene I will pass over, though they have given me great distress and labour. (They arise in an entirely different mental climate and soil, polluted and impoverished to a degree only paralleled by the lunatic destruction of the physical lands which Americans inhabit.)....
I am very grateful for your remarks on the critics and for your account of your personal delight in The Lord of the Rings. You write in terms of such high praise that [to] accept it with just a 'thank you' might seem complacently conceited, though actually it only makes me wonder how this has been achieved by me! Of course the book was written to please myself (at different levels), and as an experiment in the arts of long narrative, and of inducing 'Secondary Belief. It was written slowly and with great care for detail, & finally emerged as a Frameless Picture: a searchlight, as it were, on a brief episode in History, and on a small part of our Middle-earth, surrounded by the glimmer of limitless extensions in time and space. Very well: that may explain to some extent why it 'feels' like history; why it was accepted for publication; and why it has proved readable for a large number of very different kinds of people. But it does not fully explain what has actually happened. Looking back on the wholly unexpected things that have followed its publication beginning at once with the appearance of Vol. I I feel as if an ever darkening sky over our present world had been suddenly pierced, the clouds rolled back, and an almost forgotten sunlight had poured down again. As if indeed the horns of Hope had been heard again, as Pippin heard them suddenly at the absolute nadir of the fortunes of the West. But How? and Why?
I think I can now guess what Gandalf would reply. A few years ago I was visited in Oxford by a man whose name I have forgotten (though I believe he was well-known). He had been much struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to him to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time. He brought one or two reproductions. I think he wanted at first simply to discover whether my imagination had fed on pictures, as it clearly had been by certain kinds of literature and languages. When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquainted with pictorial An, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said: 'Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?'
Pure Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G. to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said: 'No, I don't suppose so any longer.' I have never since been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of 'chosen instruments', and indeed what sometimes seems their lamentable unfitness for the purpose.
You speak of 'a sanity and sanctity' in the L.R. 'which is a power in itself. I was deeply moved. Nothing of the kind had been said to me before. But by a strange chance, just as I was beginning this letter, I had one from a man, who classified himself as 'an unbeliever, or at best a man of belatedly and dimly dawning religious feeling ... but you', he said, 'create a world in which some sort of faith seems to be everywhere without a visible source, like light from an invisible lamp'. I can only answer: 'Of his own sanity no man can securely judge. If sanctity inhabits his work or as a pervading light illumines it then it does not come from him but through him. And neither of you would perceive it in these terms unless it was with you also. Otherwise you would see and feel nothing, or (if some other spirit was present) you would be filled with contempt, nausea, hatred. "Leaves out of the elf-country, gah!" "Lembas dust and ashes, we don't eat that."
Of course The L.R. does not belong to me. It has been brought forth and must now go its appointed way in the world, though naturally I take a deep interest in its fortunes, as a parent would of a child. I am comforted to know that it has good friends to defend it against the malice of its enemies. (But all the fools are not in the other camp.) With best wishes to one of its best friends. I am Yours sincerely
J. R. R. Tolkien.
329 From a letter to Peter Szab Szentmihlyi (draft)
[October 1971]
I have no time to provide bibliographical material concerning criticisms, reviews, or translations.
The following points, however, I should like to make briefly. (1) One of my strongest opinions is that investigation of an author's biography (or such other glimpses of his 'personality' as can be gleaned by the curious) is an entirely vain and false approach to his works and especially to a work of narrative art, of which the object aimed at by the author was to be enjoyed as such: to be read with literary pleasure. So that any reader whom the author has (to his great satisfaction) succeded in 'pleasing' (exciting, engrossing, moving etc.), should, if he wishes others to be similarly pleased, endeavour in his own words, with only the book itself as his source, to induce them to read it for literary pleasure. When they have read it, some readers will (I suppose) wish to 'criticize' it, and even to analyze it, and if that is their mentality they are, of course, at liberty to do these things so long as they have first read it with attention throughout. Not that this attitude of mind has my sympathy: as should be clearly perceived in Vol. I p. 272: Gandalf: 'He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.'
(2) I have very little interest in serial literary history, and no interest at all in the history or present situation of the English 'novel'. My work is not a 'novel', but an 'heroic romance' a much older and quite different variety of literature.
(3) Affixing 'labels' to writers, living or dead, is an inept procedure, in any circumstances: a childish amusement of small minds: and very 'deadening', since at best it overemphasizes what is common to a selected group of writers, and distracts attention from what is individual (and not classifiable) in each of them, and is the element that gives them life (if they have any). But I cannot understand how I should be labelled 'a believer in moral didacticism'. Who by? It is in any case the exact opposite of my procedure in The Lord of the Rings. I neither preach nor teach.
330 From a letter to William Cater
1 November 1971 [During this month. Cater visited Tolkien to interview him for the Sunday Times. The interview was published on 2 January 1972, as part of an eightieth birthday tribute to Tolkien.]
I am v. sorry about this : your letter of 19th October is still unanswered, although it was one of the most kind and encouraging letters I have received from any one. I must ask you to believe that letters (of any length) to an isolated man are like bread to a prisoner starving in a tower.