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

Monday morning. He approved with unusual fervour, and was actually affected to tears by the last chapter, so it seems to be keeping up. Sam by the way is an abbreviation not of Samuel but of Samwise (the Old E. for Half-wit), as is his father’s name the Gaffer (Ham) for O.E. Hamfast or Stayathome. Hobbits of that class have very Saxon names as a rule – and I am not really satisfied with the surname Gamgee and shd. change it to Goodchild if I thought you would let me. I am going to get these 8 new chapters, XXXIII – XL, which you have not read, typed almost at once to send out to you, one at a time at short intervals. . . . . I have done no serious writing since Monday. Until midday today I was sweating at Section Papers:³ & took my MSS. to the Press at 2 p.m. today – the last possible day. . . . . Yesterday: lecture – puncture, after fetching fish, so I had to foot it to town and back, and as bike-repairs are imposs. with Denis⁴ ill and working slow, I had to squander afternoon in a grimy struggle, which ended at last in my getting tire off, mending 1 puncture in inner tube, and gash in outer, and getting thing on again. lo! triumphum.⁵ But it’s hard work at a bob!. . . .

      Sunday: June 3. . . . . One of the reasons for this second gap since Wednesday is that since I finished setting papers, and before scripts came in, I have been trying to get some chapters typed so that they can be duplicated and sent out to you. I have got two done. A labour at first, as I have not typed for so long. There is little further news of me beyond this Prisca and Mummy went to see Anna Neagle in Emma in the play from Jane Austen, and enjoyed it. I walked home with them, after dining at Pembroke. A poor affair. But it is increasingly heartbreaking as the armies draw near to Rome to hear the crass comments of elderly and stupid old gentlemen. I find the present situation of things more and more distressing. I wonder if you were even able to hear any of the Pope’s words. A propos of that, but concerning another occasion: that you may judge of the atmosphere of tact and courtesy in my beautiful college. I took Rice-Oxley to dine on the second Tuesday in term. The election to the Rectorship of Lincoln had just been announced: the college had elected K. Murray the young Scotch Bursar responsible for the Turl atrocity.⁶ The obvious (and I think proper) person was V. J. Brooke (St Cath’s Censor⁷); but Hanbury⁸ was also a candidate. Sitting next to me, the Master in a loud voice said: ‘Thank heaven they did not elect a Roman Catholic to the Rectorship anyway: disastrous, disastrous for the college.’ ‘Yes, indeed,’ echoed Dr Ramsden, ‘disastrous.’ My guest looked at me and smiled and whispered ‘models of tact and courtesy!’. . . .

      Your own dear Father.

      73 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

      10 June 1944 (FS 30)

      [Written four days after the beginning of the Allied invasion of Normandy.]

      I got your airletter at tea-time yesterday A great deal is happening at this end of the world. But I won’t enlarge on that, as doubtless you get the same news as we do, and as quick; and if one knew anything outside that it would be ‘indiscreet’ to mention it. As a matter of fact I don’t. But thank God it really looks like clearing up a bit this evening. It is calmer, warmer, and there are glimpses of sun and blue sky. I fancy weather is of paramount importance. . . . .

      I last wrote on D. Day June 6. On Wed. I made special efforts with typing. Of the rest I can only remember that on Thursday I dined lugubriously in Pembroke, and then went to Magdalen, where the Lewises, C. Williams, and Edison (author of Ouroboros)¹ were assembled. From 9 until after 12.30 the time was occupied by reading. A long chapter from the Captain,² largely on the system of government in the ancien régime of France, which he managed to make very amusing (though it was very long) followed by Edison with a new chapter from an uncompleted romance³ – of undiminished power and felicity of expression; myself; and C.S.L. Enjoyable, but no longer amid exams and wars to be taken so lightly as of old – especially as I had arisen at 5 a.m. (or 7 a.m. BDST) to get to Mass for Corpus Christi. . . . .

      This morning. . . . was occupied with exams, the afternoon with a mass-meeting at Rhodes House in favour of a local Christian Council. . . . . There was one man. . . . who got up and said that he approved of a C. Council, because he had been Lord Nelson in his previous life, and had much appreciated being in Oxford during part of the present life; but nobody laughed – although he was one of the amiable kind, who would have liked it. He said so. But apparently he has made this speech so often, that it was taken as a matter of course. Just shows how little one can know of one’s own home-town, as I had never seen or heard of him before. . . . .

      [11 June] I was very interested in all the descriptions: both of your abode and of the country. Your sharpened memory is I imagine due to 2 things (1) sharpened desire (2) new images which do not correspond to the old, and so do not overlay and blur them. Few inhabitants of a town who have never gone away can recall even the major changes in a street during the past year. My own rather sharp memory is probably due to the dislocation of all my childhood ‘pictures’ between 3 and 4 by leaving Africa: I was engaged in a constant attention and adjustment. Some of my actual visual memories I now recognize as beautiful blends of African and English details. . . . . As for what to try and write: I don’t know. I tried a diary with portraits (some scathing some comic some commendatory) of persons and events seen; but I found it was not my line. So I took to ‘escapism’: or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in good stead in many hard years since and I still draw on the conceptions then hammered out. But, of course, there was no time except on leave or in hospital. . . . .

      I certainly live on your letters, although my circumstances are so very much more easy. In my case weariness, sheer boredom of sameness is the enemy. If I were younger, I should wish to exchange with you, merely to change! I hope you can read some of this. Certainly sixpenn’orth as far as quantity (not quality I fear) goes. More anon.

      74 From a letter to Stanley Unwin

      29 June 1944

      [Unwin wrote on 22 June, enclosing ‘a further substantial cheque’ for royalties earned by The Hobbit, and telling Tolkien that his son Rayner was now reading English at Oxford as a naval cadet: ‘He will be away next week on leave, but after his return I should much like him to meet you some time.’]

      First about Rayner. I was both delighted and grieved at your news. Delighted because I shall have a chance of seeing him. I hope he will treat me in the most unprofessorial manner, and as soon as he gets back, will just let me know how we can meet: whether I can roll into his rooms, and whether he would care at any time to wander up here to my house and have tea (meagre) in my garden (untidy). Grieved because it is abominable to think that the passage of time and the prolongation of this misery has swept him up. My youngest boy, also Trinity, was carried off last July – in the midst of typing and revising the Hobbit sequel and doing a lovely map – and is now far away and very wretched, in the Orange Free State:¹ the fact that it was my native land does not seem to recommend it to him. I have at the moment another son, a much damaged soldier, at Trinity trying to do some work and recover a shadow of his old health.². . . .

      I am afraid I have treated you badly. Fortune has treated me pretty rough since I last wrote – though not rougher than many others, alas! – and I have had barely the energy or the time to get through the menial day. But I should have thanked you for your note about Foyles³ and for the two copies of the edition. Also I might have let you know what was happening to the sequel to the Hobbit. Not a line on it was possible for a year. One of the results (until I was drowned in an abyss of exams) of release from work for R.N. and R.A.F. was that I managed to bring this (great) work to within sight of conclusion, and am now about to conclude it, disregarding all other calls, as far as is possible.

      I hope you still have some mild interest in it, in spite of paper shortage – at any rate as a possible future. It is frightfully difficult and/or expensive getting anything typed in this town, and when my typewriter broke down nobody would repair it. I have still only one copy, and that needs revision as the thing nears its end. But I hope at last soon to be able to submit a chunk to you. A pity Rayner