The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (65 page)

Yes – the
Silmarillion
is growing in the mind (I do not mean getting larger, but coming back to leaf & I hope flower) again. But I am still not through with
Gawain
etc. A troublous year, of endless distraction and much weariness, ending with the blow of C.S.L.'s death.

9 January 1964

76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

My dear Tyndall,

How delightful to get a card from you, and how kind of you to think of me. . . . .

I do remember very clearly the old IVth class room and Dickie;
¹
indeed I even remember that we read with him a non-classical Greek text furbished up by a German (Willamowitz Mollendorf?) in usum scholarum which bored me extremely. I behaved very badly, together with that later model of rectitude and headmasterly seriousness Christopher Wiseman,
²
as did many of those released from the strict regime of the class below under Heath. Dickie was not an inspiring form-master and made Greek and Roman history as boring as I suspect he felt them to be; but he was immensely interesting as a person. I kept up with him and the Beak (R. C. Gilson)
³
until they died.

My memory is mainly pictorial and vague on dates, but I have a notion that you were a little senior to me and left school first, so that the friends of my later year or two were junior, and mostly younger than myself – I stayed on till I was nearly 20! I was brought up to Oxford by car (then a novelty), together with L. K. Sands, by Dickie: in the October of that astonishing hot year 1911, and we found every one in flannels boating on the river. Punts were then as strange to me as camels; but I later learned to manage them. . . . .

I was 72 on Jan 3, and my eldest grandchild (now at St Andrews) comes of age on Saturday next, but as you say I tick over. . . . .

Yours ever,

[signature not on carbon copy]

5 March 1964

The poem on
Fastitocalon
is not like
Cat
and
Oliphaunt
my own invention entirely but a reduced and rewritten form, to suit hobbit fancy, of an item in old ‘bestiaries'. I think it was remarkable that you perceived the Greekness of the name through its corruptions. This I took in fact from a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon bestiary that has survived, thinking that it sounded comic and absurd enough to serve as a hobbit alteration of something more learned and elvish – according to [a] system whereby as English replaces the Shire-speech so Latin and Greek replace the High-elven tongue in names. The learned name in this case seems to have been
Aspido-chelōne
‘turtle with a round shield (of hide)'. Of that
astitocalon
is a corruption no worse than many of the time; but I am afraid the F was put on by the versifier simply to make the name alliterate, as was compulsory for poets in his day, with the other words in his line. Shocking, or charming freedom, according to taste.

He says:
pam is norna cenned/fyrnstreama geflotan Fastitocalon,
‘to him is a name appointed, to the floater in the ancient tides, Fastitocalon'. The notion of the treacherous island that is really a monster seems to
derive from the East: the marine turtles enlarged by myth-making fancy; and I left it at that. But in Europe the monster becomes mixed up with whales, and already in the Anglo-Saxon version he is given whale characteristics, such as feeding by trawling with an open mouth. In moralized bestiaries he is, of course, an allegory of the Devil, and is so used by Milton.

13 May 1964

I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall [of Mordor], but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with
Men
it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless – while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors – like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Ores and going round doing damage. I could have written a ‘thriller' about the plot and its discovery and overthrow – but it would be just that. Not worth doing.

16 July 1964

76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

Dear Bretherton,

Receiving an answer on July 14th to a letter only posted on the 10th was prompt work, even for normal postal conditions. I do not regard typing as a discourtesy. Anyway, I usually type, since my ‘hand' tends to start fair and rapidly fall away into picturesque inscrutability. Also I like typewriters; and my dream is of suddenly finding myself rich enough to have an electric typewriter built to my specifications, to type the Fëanorian script. . . . . I typed out
The Hobbit
– and the whole of
The Lord of the Rings
twice (and several sections many times) on my bed in an attic of Manor Road. In the dark days between the loss of my large house in North Oxford, which I could no longer afford, and my brief elevation to the dignity of an old college house in Holywell.

That became hellish as soon as petrol restrictions ceased. But Headington is no paradise of peace. Sandfield Road was a cul-de-sac
when I came here, but was soon opened at the bottom end, and became for a time an unofficial lorry by-pass, before Headley Way was completed. Now it is a car-park for the field of ‘Oxford United' at the top end. While the actual inhabitants do all that radio, tele, dogs, scooters, buzzbikes, and cars of all sizes but the smallest, can do to produce noise from early morn to about 2 a.m. In addition in a house three doors away dwells a member of a group of young men who are evidently aiming to turn themselves into a Beatle Group. On days when it falls to his turn to have a practice session the noise is indescribable. . . . .

With regard to your question. Not easy to answer, with anything shorter than an autobiography. I began the construction of languages in early boyhood: I am primarily a scientific philologist. My interests were, and remain, largely scientific. But I was also interested in traditional tales (especially those concerning dragons); and writing (not reading) verse and metrical devices. These things began to flow together when I was an undergraduate to the despair of my tutors and near-wrecking of my career. For when officially engaged on ‘Classics' I made the acquaintance of languages not usually studied by the modern English, each with a powerfully individual phonetic aesthetic: Welsh, Finnish, and the remnants of fourth-century Gothic. Finnish also provided a glimpse of an entirely different mythological world.

The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish
Kalevala.
It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as
The Silmarillion
), though as ‘The Children of Húrin' it is entirely changed except in the tragic ending. The second point was the writing, ‘out of my head', of the ‘Fall of Gondolin', the story of Idril and Earendel (III 314), during sickleave from the army in 1917; and by the original version of the ‘Tale of Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren' later in the same year. That was founded on a small wood with a great undergrowth of ‘hemlock' (no doubt many other related plants were also there) near Roos in Holderness, where I was for a while on the Humber Garrison. I carried on with this construction after escaping from the army: during a short time in Oxford, employed on the staff of the then still incomplete great Dictionary; and then when I went to the University of Leeds, 1920–26. In O. I wrote a cosmogonical myth, ‘The Music of the Ainur', defining the relation of The One, the transcendental Creator, to the Valar, the ‘Powers', the angelical First-created, and their part in ordering and carrying out the Primeval Design. It was also told how it came about that Eru, the One, made an addition to the Design: introducing the themes of the Eruhîn, the Children of God, The First-born (Elves) and the Successors (Men), whom the Valar were forbidden to try and dominate by fear or force. At that time I also began to invent
alphabets. In Leeds I began to try and deal with this matter in high and serious style, and wrote much of it in verse. (The first version of the song of Strider concerning Lúthien, now included in I 204, originally appeared in the Leeds Univ. magazine;
¹
but the whole tale, as sketched by Aragorn, was written in a poem of great length, as far as 1206 line 17 ‘her father'.)
²

I returned to Oxford in Jan 1926, and by the time
The Hobbit
appeared (1937) this ‘matter of the Elder Days' was in coherent form.
The Hobbit
was not intended to have anything to do with it. I had the habit while my children were still young of inventing and telling orally, sometimes of writing down, ‘children's stories' for their private amusement – according to the notions I then had, and many still have, of what these should be like in style and attitude. None of these have been published.
The Hobbit
was intended to be one of them. It had no necessary connexion with the ‘mythology', but naturally became attracted towards this dominant construction in my mind, causing the tale to become larger and more heroic as it proceeded. Even so it could really stand quite apart, except for the references (unnecessary, though they give an impression of historical depth) to the Fall of Gondolin, Puffin 57 (hardback 63); the branches of the Elfkin, P. 161 (hardback 173 or 178), and the quarrel of King Thingol, Lúthien's father, with the Dwarves, P. 162.

The Hobbit
saw the light and made my connexion with A. & U. by an accident. It was not known except to my children and to my friend, C. S. Lewis; but I lent it to the Mother Superior of Cherwell Edge to amuse her while recovering from ‘flu. It thus came to the notice of a young woman, a student resident in the house or the friend of one, who worked in A & U's office.
³
Thus it passed to the eyes of Stanley Unwin, who tried it on his younger son Rayner, then a small boy. So it was published. I then offered them the legends of the Elder Days, but their readers turned that down. They wanted a sequel. But I wanted heroic legends and high romance. The result was
The Lord of the Rings
. . . . .

The magic ring was the one obvious thing in
The Hobbit
that could be connected with my mythology. To be the burden of a large story it had to be of supreme importance. I then linked it with the (originally) quite casual reference to the Necromancer, end of Ch. vii and Ch. xix, whose function was hardly more than to provide a reason for Gandalf going away and leaving Bilbo and the Dwarves to fend for themselves, which was necessary for the tale. From
The Hobbit
are also derived the matter of the Dwarves, Durin their prime ancestor, and Moria; and Elrond. The passage in Ch. iii relating him to the Half-elven of the mythology was a fortunate accident, due to the difficulty of constantly inventing good names for new characters. I gave him the name Elrond casually,
but as this came from the mythology (Elros and Elrond the two sons of Eärendel) I made him half-elven. Only in
The Lord
was he identified with the son of Eärendel, and so the great-grandson of Lúthien and Beren, a great power and a Ringholder.

Another ingredient, not before mentioned, also came into operation in my need to provide a great function for Strider-Aragorn. What I might call my Atlantis-haunting. This legend or myth or dim memory of some ancient history has always troubled me. In sleep I had the dreadful dream of the ineluctable Wave, either coming out of the quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green inlands. It still occurs occasionally, though now exorcized by writing about it. It always ends by surrender, and I awake gasping out of deep water. I used to draw it or write bad poems about it. When C. S. Lewis and I tossed up, and he was to write on space-travel and I on time-travel, I began an abortive book of time-travel of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called
Númenor
, the Land in the West. The thread was to be the occurrence time and again in human families (like Durin among the Dwarves) of a father and son called by names that could be interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. These no longer understood are found in the end to refer to the Atlantid-Númenórean situation and mean ‘one loyal to the Valar, content with the bliss and prosperity within the limits prescribed' and ‘one loyal to friendship with the High-elves'. It started with a father-son affinity between Edwin and Elwin of the present, and was supposed to go back into legendary time by way of an Eädwine and iElfwine of circa A.D. 918, and Audoin and Alboin of Lombardic legend, and so the traditions of the North Sea concerning the coming of corn and culture heroes, ancestors of kingly lines, in boats (and their departure in funeral ships). One such Sheaf, or Shield Sheafing, can actually be made out as one of the remote ancestors of our present Queen. In my tale we were to come at last to Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Númenor, when it fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil ‘Elf-friend' was the founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor. But I found my real interest was only in the upper end, the
Akallabêth
or
Atalantie
^fn102
(‘Downfall' in Númenórean and Quenya), so I brought all the stuff I had written on the originally unrelated legends of Númenor into relation with the main mythology.