The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (24 page)

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, I 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')
¹
are either incomplete or not up to date.

The Fall of Gondolin

The Lay of Beren and Lúthien (verse)

The Children of Húrin

I am distressed (for myself) to be unable to find the ‘Rings of Power', which with the ‘Fall of Númenor' is the link between the
Silmarillion
and the Hobbit world. But its essentials are included in Ch. II of
The Lord of the Rings.
That book would, of course, be easier to write, if the
Silmarillion
were published first!

I will bring you round some
unique MSS.
some time to-day.

Thank you for your remembrance in prayer.

Yrs sincerely

Ronald Tolkien.

5 August 1948

I am not for myself much interested in the fashionableness of these drawings, or in their resemblance to Topolski or Ardizzone. I find their lack of resemblance to their text more marked. This is a definitely located story (one of its virtues if it has any): Oxfordshire and Bucks, with a brief excursion into Wales. The places in it are largely named, or fairly plainly indicated. There is no attempt by the illustrator to represent any of this. The incident of the dog and dragon occurs near Rollright, by
the way, and though that is not plainly stated at least it clearly takes place in Oxfordshire.

The giant is passable – though the artist is a poor drawer of trees. The dragon is absurd. Ridiculously coy, and quite incapable of performing any of the tasks laid on him by the author. I cannot help wondering why he should be so fatuously looking over his right shoulder SE when an obvious if sketchy dog is going off NW. In defiance of the fact that the dog happily did not come on the head end first, but turned his own tail as soon as he came on the dragon's. The Farmer, a large blusterer bigger than his fellows, is made to look like little Joad at the end of a third degree by railway officials. He would hardly have used as a cowshed the shambling hut at which the miller and parson are knocking. He was a prosperous yeoman or franklin.

I gather you do not share my sentiments. Well, if you think that illustrations of this sort, wholly out of keeping with the style or manner of the text, will do, or will for reasons of contemporary taste be an advantage, I am so far in your hands. But are you ever going to induce Miss C. to impart such finish as will not exhaust her or make her too unhappy – in fact to finish the job? And when do you expect to get this book out?

31 October 1948

I managed to go into ‘retreat' in the summer, and am happy to announce that I succeeded at last in bringing the ‘Lord of the Rings' to a successful conclusion. Also, it has been read and approved by Rayner Unwin, who (the original reader of ‘The Hobbit') has had time to grow up while the sequel has been made, and is now here at Trinity. I think there is a chance of it being published though it will be a massive book far too large to make any money for the publisher (let alone the author): it must run to 1200 pages. However length is no obstacle to those who like that kind of thing. If only term had not caught me on the hop again, I should have revised the whole – it is astonishingly difficult to avoid mistakes and changes of name and all kinds of inconsistencies of detail in a long work, as critics forget, who have not tried to make one – and sent it to the typists. I hope to do so soon, and can only say that as soon as I have a spare copy you shall have the loan of one, plus a good deal of explanatory matter, alphabets, history, calendars, and genealogies reserved for the real ‘fans'. I hope this may be possible soon, so that you could have it during the Christmas holidays; but I cannot promise. This university business of earning one's living by teaching, delivering philological lectures, and daily attendance at ‘boards' and other talk-meetings, interferes sadly with serious work.

 

28 February 1949

I have not time to type [
Farmer Giles
] again, and I don't think it is really necessary. I am finding the labour of typing a fair copy of the ‘Lord of the Rings' v. great, and the alternative of having it professionally typed prohibitive in cost. . . . . I believe that after 25 years service I am shortly going to be granted a term of ‘sabbatical' leave, partly on medical grounds. If so, I may really finish a few things.

16 March 1949

Miss Baynes' pictures must have reached Merton on Saturday; but owing to various things I did not see them till yesterday. I merely write to say that I am pleased with them beyond even the expectations aroused by the first examples. They are more than illustrations, they are a collateral theme. I showed them to my friends whose polite comment was that they reduced my text to a commentary on the drawings.

13 July 1949

As for further ‘legends of the Little Kingdom': I put a reference to one in the Foreword, in case they should ever come to anything, or a manuscript of the fragmentary legend should come to light. But Georgius and Suet remains only a sKetch, and it is difficult now to recapture the spirit of the former days, when we used to beat the bounds of the L.K. in an ancient car. The ‘children' now range from 20 to 32. But when I have at last got the ‘Lord of the Rings', of which I have nearly completed a final fair copy, the released spring may do something.

18 December 1949

3 Manor Road, Oxford

Dear Mrs Mitchison,

It was extremely kind of you to write to me. . . . . As for ‘Farmer Giles' it was I fear written very light-heartedly, originally of a ‘no time' in which blunderbusses or anything might occur. Its slightly donnish touching up, as read to the Lovelace Soc., and as published, makes the Blunderbuss rather glaring – though not really worse than all mediæval treatments of Arthurian matter. But it was too embedded to be changed, and some people find the anachronisms amusing. I myself could not forgo the quotation (so very Murrayesque) from the Oxford Dictionary. Greek Fire must have been more like a flammenwerfer: as used on their ships it seems to have been quite deadly. But in the Isle of Britain in archaeological fact there can have been nothing in the least like a fire-arm. But neither was there fourteenth century armour.

I find ‘dragons' a fascinating product of imagination. But I don't think the Beowulf one is frightfully good. But the whole problem of the intrusion of the ‘dragon' into northern imagination and its transformation there is one I do not know enough about. Fáfnir in the late Norse versions of the Sigurd-story is better; and Smaug and his conversation obviously is in debt there.

I know Icelandic pretty well (as I should), and a little Welsh, but in spite of efforts I have always been rather heavily defeated by Old Irish, or indeed its modern descendants. The mix-up was politically and culturally great and complex – but it left very little linguistic trace on Icelandic, save in the borrowing of certain names notably Brian and Nial which became used in Iceland. On Irish the influence was more considerable. But in any case names that were at all similar in sound tended to be equated or confused. . . . .

I hope to give you soon two books, about which at least one criticism will be possible: that they are excessively long! One is a sequel to ‘The Hobbit' which I have just finished after 12 years (intermittent) labour. I fear it is 3 times as long, not
for
children (though that does not mean wholly unsuitable), and rather grim in places. I
think
it is very much better (in a different way). The other is pure myth and legend of times already remote in Bilbo's days.

Thank you again for writing. I hope the reply is in places legible. With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

J. R. R. Tolkien.

5 February 1950

I am sorry that the days have slipped by since I got your note. . . . . As soon as I had dumped the MS. [of
The Lord of the Rings
] on you, I felt
bad about it: weighing down your holiday with a labour that only an author's egotism could have inflicted at such a time. And examining my conscience I had to confess that – as one who has worked alone in a corner and only had the criticism of a few like-minded friends – I was moved greatly by the desire to hear from a fresh mind whether my labour had any wider value, or was just a fruitless private hobby.

All the same I don't think that in fact I burdened you under false pretences. . . . . I believe myself to have no
legal
obligation to Allen and Unwin, since the clause in
The Hobbit
contract with regard to offering the next book seems to have been satisfied either (a) by their rejection of
The Silmarillion
or (b) by their eventual acceptance and publication of
Farmer Giles.
I should (as you note) be glad to leave them, as I have found them in various ways unsatisfactory. But I have friendly personal relations with Stanley (whom all the same I do not much like) and with his second son Rayner (whom I do like very much). It has always been supposed that I am writing a sequel to
The Hobbit.
Rayner has read most of
The Lord of the Rings
and likes it – as a small boy he read the MS. of
The Hobbit.
Sir Stanley has long been aware that
The Lord of the Rings
has outgrown its function, and is not pleased since he sees no money in it for anyone (so he said); but he is anxious to see the final result all the same. If this constitutes a moral obligation then I have one: at least to explain the situation. Did I say something of all this in my letter of Dec. 13th? I certainly meant to. However, I certainly shall try to extricate myself, or at least the
Silmarillion
and all its kin, from the dilatory coils of A. and U. if I can – in a friendly fashion if possible.