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

at the moment. We are waiting. I wonder for how long now. Not long I think. I see from paper that Air Crew training in Canada is being cut: fewer A.C. generally are now to be trained. I thought I guessed from your letter that you do not now expect to come to G. B. to finish. I hope that is not so. But who knows? We are in God’s hands. Our lot has fallen on evil days: but that cannot be by mere ill chance. Take care of yourself in all due ways (aequam serva mentem, comprime linguam⁷). . . .

      62 From an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien

      23 April 1944 (FS 18)

      I read my second chapter, Passage of the Dead Marshes, to Lewis and Williams on Wed. moming. It was approved. I have now nearly done a third: Gates of the Land of Shadow. But this story takes me in charge, and I have already taken three chapters over what was meant to be one! And I have neglected too many things to do it. I am just enmeshed in it now, and have to wrench my mind away to tackle exam-paper proofs, and lectures (beginning on Tuesday).

      63 To Christopher Tolkien

      24 April 1944 (FS 19)

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      My dearest Chris,

      Your airletter. . . . arrived at breakfast this morn. I had the uncommon luxury of lying a-bed with toast and home-made marmalade (a good many oranges and lemons lately) and your letter. St George’s day passed uneventfully; I sat up ‘on duty’ till 1.30 this morn, and then decided to retire: it is so warm one can sleep with open windows and hear alerts. I was drawing my curtains when I noted a v. white light S.W., and I was just putting foot in much desired sheets when Ulysses’ Peril¹ let off her wail. Did not in fact get to bed till past 3.30, or sleep till 4, or wake till 8.45, or get up till 9.45. . . . . I spent what was left of this morning in town doing odd jobs, among them that of getting my head-harvest reaped: a big crop: still fertile soil evidently. Mitre² was locked! Have not tasted beer since Thursday last when our barrel ran dry, & has not yet been replaced. I have to lecture tomorrow, so now I must stop for the moment. . . . .

      Wed. 26 April. . . . . Yesterday felt effects of Sunday night. Went off early to town and did some executor’s business for Mrs Wright,³ gave a poor lecture, saw the Lewises and C.W. (White Horse) for ½ hour; mowed three lawns, and wrote letter to John, and struggled with recalcitrant passage in ‘The Ring’. At this point I require to know how much later the moon gets up each night when nearing full, and how to stew a rabbit! No Lewis this morning, as he has been appointed Clarke Lecturer in Cambridge, and leaves early to lecture there at 5 p.m. on Wednesdays. . . . .

      3.45 Wed. A record college meeting (12½ mins.)! Arrived back to find Biddy had broken another egg (about the 7th), so, despairing that the ‘henwife’ would attend to it, I have spent an agreeable time catching her (i.e. the bird), cleaning her, trimming her and disinfecting her – and then disinfecting myself. Grr! The fourth lawn will have to wait. I was pleased that you managed to get some church at the end of Holy Week, though not too pleased with your Even-christians (as they called ‘em in O. & M.E.).⁴ However that cannot be helped. The only salve is the sudden reflection that one of them is prob. making an adverse judgement on oneself, not unreasonable as founded on one’s looks and deportment, but as wide of the mark of the inner self as our own are! God ána wát.⁵ But as for sermons! They are bad, aren’t they! Most of them from any point of view. The answer to the mystery is prob. not simple; but part of it is that ‘rhetoric’ (of which preaching is a dept.) is an art, which requires (a) some native talent and (b) learning and practice. The instrument used is v. much more complex than a piano, yet most performers are in the position of a man who sits down to a piano and expects to move his audience without any knowledge of the notes at all. The art can be learned (granted some modicum of aptitude) and can then be effective, in a way, when wholly unconnected with sincerity, sanctity etc. But preaching is complicated by the fact that we expect in it not only a performance, but truth and sincerity, and also at least no word, tone, or note that suggests the possession of vices (such as hypocrisy, vanity) or defects (such as folly, ignorance) in the preacher.

      Good sermons require some art, some virtue, some knowledge. Real sermons require some special grace which does not transcend art but arrives at it by instinct or ‘inspiration’; indeed the Holy Spirit seems sometimes to speak through a human mouth providing art, virtue and insight he does not himself possess: but the occasions are rare. In other times I don’t think an educated person is required to suppress the critical faculty, but it should be kept in order by a constant endeavour to apply the truth (if any), even in cliché form, to oneself exclusively! A difficult exercise. . . . .

      I was much amused by your account of your journey to Jo’burg on Maundy Thursday. . . . . If you fetch up at Bloemfontein I shall wonder if the little old stone bank-house (Bank of South Africa) where I was born is still standing. And I wonder if my Father’s grave is there still. I have never done anything about it, but I believe my mother had a stone-cross put up or sent out.⁶ (A. R. Tolkien died 1896). If not it will be lost now, prob., unless there are any records. . . . .

      64 To Christopher Tolkien

      30 April 1944 (FS 20)

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      My dearest:

      I have decided to send you another air letter, not an airgraph, in the hope that I may so cheer you up a little more. . . . . I do miss you so, and I do find all this mighty hard to bear on my own account and on yours. The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not is and will be necessary to face it in an evil world. But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about 30 years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches most about fire.

      I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. But the historical version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives. . . . . But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do. And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this. Probable under God that we shall meet again, ‘in hale and in unity’, before very long, dearest, and certain that we have some special bond to last beyond this life – subject of course always to the mystery of free will, by which either of us could throw away ‘salvation’. In which case God would arrange matters differently!. . . .

      On Thursday I gave 2 lectures and had some troublesome business in town and was too tired to attend the Lewis séance. I hope to see him tomorrow, and read some more of ‘the Ring’. It is growing and sprouting again (I did a whole day at it yesterday to the neglect of many matters) and opening out in unexpected ways. So far in the new chapters Frodo and Sam have traversed Sarn Gebir, climbed down the cliff, encountered and temporarily tamed Gollum. They have with his guidance crossed the Dead Marshes