The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien

to think he has no obvious public. He has mouldered in a drawer since he amused H. S. Bennett’s³ children when I was in Cambridge last March. Admittedly they are bright children. . . . .

      Yours sincerely,

      J. R. R. Tolkien.

      38 To Stanley Unwin

      [Tolkien had still not delivered the foreword to the Clark Hall Beowulf translation by 27 March, when Allen & Unwin wrote a desperate letter asking what had happened to it, and telling him that ‘a word or two’ would be enough. The text sent by Tolkien with the following letter was, despite its length, used in full when the book was published.]

      30 March 1940

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      Dear Mr Unwin,

      Apologies would be vain in the face of my vexatious and uncivil behaviour. So I felt long ago – that the only possible reply to your repeated enquiry of March 5 was copy. I have got into worse trouble than I need – in spite of the many disasters that have befallen me^fn5 – since I have foolishly wasted much labour and time under a misapprehension, which a more careful consideration of the pagination of the page-proofs might have dispelled.

      I knew that a ‘word or two’ would suffice (though I could not feel that any words under my name would have any particular value unless they said something worth saying – which takes space). But I believed that more was hoped for. I cannot lay my hand on the relative letter, and in any case I now realise that an earlier stage, before page-proof, was envisaged. I can only regret that I did not get something done at an earlier stage. For a fairly considerable ‘preface’ is really required. The so-called ‘Introduction’ does not exist, being merely an argument:² there is no reference whatever to either a translator’s or a critic’s problems. I advised originally against any attempt to bring the apparatus of the old book up to date – it can be got by students elsewhere. But I did not expect a reduction to 10 lines, while the ‘argument’ (the least useful part) was re-written at length.

      That being so I laboured long and hard to compress (and yet enliven) such remarks on translation as might both be useful to students and of interest to those using the book without reference to the original text. But the result ran to 17 of my MSS. pages (of some 300 words each) – not counting the metrical appendix,³ the most original part, which is as long again!

      I was in this stage early in March, and trying to make up my mind what to jettison, when your letter of March 27th reached me (yesterday). All very foolish. For the pagination indicates clearly my share as a very small one.

      All I can do now is to send in what I have done. You might care to consider it (submitting it to Wrenn) for inclusion later, e.g. if a further edition is required. (Retouched it might make a suitable booklet for students. The metrical account, being on a novel plan, and considering the relations of style and metre, might be attractive, as students are usually rather at sea on this subject.)

      To meet the immediate emergency – I suggest (with grief, reluctance, and penitence) that the passages marked in red (? 1400 words), or those in blue (750–800?) might serve. If not too long.

      Yours sincerely

      J. R. R. Tolkien.

      39 From a letter to Michael Tolkien

      29 September 1940

      [In the late summer of 1940, two women evacuees were billeted for a short time on the Tolkien household.]

      Our evacuees went off again this morning, back home to Ashford (they were railway folk), after scenes of comedy and pathos. I have never come across more simple, helpless, gentle and unhappy souls (mother and daughter-in-law). They had been away from their husbands for the first time in their married lives, and found they would prefer to be blown to bits.

      40 From a letter to Michael Tolkien

      6 October 1940

      [In September 1939 Tolkien’s second son, then aged nearly nineteen, volunteered for army service, but was instructed to spend one year at university and then enlist. He entered Trinity College, Oxford, and left it again the following summer to train as an anti-aircraft gunner.]

      I am very sorry indeed, dear boy, that your Varsity career has been cut in two. It would have been better, if you had been the elder and could have finished before the army took you. But I still hope you will be able to come back again. And certainly you will learn a lot, first! Though in times of peace we get, perhaps (and naturally and for the purpose rightly), too engrossed in thinking of everything as a preparation or training or a making one fit – for what? At any minute it is what we are and are doing, not what we plan to be and do that counts. But I cannot pretend that I myself found that idea much comfort against the waste of time and militarism of the army. It isn’t the tough stuff one minds so much. I was pitched into it all, just when I was full of stuff to write, and of things to learn; and never picked it all up again.

      41 From a letter to Michael Tolkien

      2 January 1941

      I have been clearing up arrears of correspondence, and have at last got as far as getting out my story again; but as soon as I get really started, term will be casting its shadow ahead, and I shall have to think of lectures and committees.

      42 To Michael Tolkien

      [After taking part with his gun-battery in the defence of aerodromes during the Battle of Britain, Michael was injured in an accident with an army vehicle during night training, and was sent to hospital in Worcester. This is one of several letters his father sent to him there.]

      12 January 1941

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      My dearest Mick,

      It seems a long time since I wrote: and it has been a rather dreary and busy time, with a foul east wind blowing steadily, day after day, and the weather varying from bone-piercing cold to grey damp chill I have had one amusement lately: Dr Havard¹ took me and the Lewis brothers² out to a pub at Appleton on a snowy skiddy night last Tuesday. J.B. had given me a little pot of snuff as a birthday present. So I brought it out of my pocket and read out the ancient label: ‘AS SUPPLIED to THEIR MAJESTIES the KINGS of HANOVER & BELGIUM etc. the DUKE of CUMBERLAND and the DUCHESS of KENT’. ‘Will any one have any?’ I said. Many horny hands of yokels were thrust out. And several caplifting explosions followed! You had better not tell J.B. what I did with (a small portion) of the precious Fribourg and Treyer stuff. Major Lewis – unaware that Blackwell³ lives at Appleton and that the locals were all ears – gave an amusing account of visiting Blackwell’s shop with Hugo Dyson.⁴ When he came to the point at which the assistant returned to Hugo and said: Sorry, sir, we have no second-hand copy, but we have a new copy (and H. replied Well, rub it on the floor and make it second-hand: it’s all the same to me), there was loud applause. Apart from this brief interlude, life has been rather dull, and much too full of committees and legislative business, which has kept me up late several nights. . . . .

      Air Raid warnings are frequent here, but (so far) remain just Warnings … I fancy things will ‘blow up’ earlier this year than last – weather permitting – and that we shall have a pretty hectic time in every corner of this island! It is also plain that our dear old friends the U.S.S.R. are up to some mischief.⁵ It is a pretty close race with time. . . . . I don’t suppose mere ‘citizens’ really have any knowledge of what is going on. But plain reasoning seems to show that Hitler must attack this country direct and v. heavily soon, and before the summer. Meanwhile the ‘Daily Worker’⁶ is cried in the streets unmolested. We shall have some lively times after the War even if we win it as far as Germany is concerned.

      God bless you, my dear son. I pray for you constantly. Remember me. Do you want anything specially?