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

times, of the sort that tried folk’sglove for foxglove!, by whom we’ve been led astray. As for the latter, the only part of the name that is doubtful is the glove, not the fox. Foxes glófa occurs in Anglo-Saxon but also in form -clófa: in old herbals, where it seems pretty rashly applied to plants with big broad leaves, e.g. burdock (called also foxes clife, cf. clifwyrt^fn8=foxglove). The causes of these ancient associations with animals are little known or understood. Perhaps they sometimes depend on lost beast-fables. It would be tempting to try and make some fables to fit the names.

      Are you still inventing names for the nameless flowers you meet? If so, remember that the old names are not always descriptive, but often mysterious! My best inventions (in elvish of the Gnomish dialect) were elanor and nifredil; though I like A-S symbelmynë or evermind found on the Great Mound of Rohan. I think I shall have to invent some more for Sam’s garden at the end.

      94 To Christopher Tolkien

      28 December 1944 (FS 71)

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      My dearest:

      You have no need to reproach yourself! We are getting lots of letters from you, and v. quickly. . . . . I am glad the third lot of Ring arrived to date, and that you liked it – although it seems to have added to yr. homesickness. It just shows the difference between life and literature: for anyone who found himself actually on the stairs of Kirith Ungol would wish to exchange it for almost any other place in the world, save Mordor itself. But if lit. teaches us anything at all, it is this: that we have in us an eternal element, free from care and fear, which can survey the things that in ‘life’ we call evil with serenity (that is not without appreciating their quality, but without any disturbance of our spiritual equilibrium). Not in the same way, but in some such way, we shall all doubtless survey our own story when we know it (and a great deal more of the Whole Story). I am afraid the next two chapters won’t come for some time (about middle of Jan) which is a pity, as not only are they (I think) v. moving and exciting, but Sam has some interesting comments on the rel. of stories and actual ‘adventures’. But I count it a triumph that these two chapters, which I did not think as good as the rest of Book IV, could distract you from the noise of the Air Crew Room!. . . .

      The weather has for me been one of the chief events of Christmas. It froze hard with a heavy fog, and so we have had displays of Hoarfrost such as I only remember once in Oxford before (in the other house¹ I think) and only twice before in my life. One of the most lovely events of Northern Nature. We woke (late) on St Stephen’s Day to find all our windows opaque, painted over with frost-patterns, and outside a dim silent misty world, all white, but with a light jewelry of rime; every cobweb a little lace net, even the old fowls’ tent a diamond-patterned pavilion. I spent the day (after chores, that is from about 11.30, as I got up late) out of doors, well wrapped up in old rags, hewing old brambles and making a fire the smoke of which rose in a still unmoving column straight up into the fog-roof. . . . . The rime was yesterday even thicker and more fantastic. When a gleam of sun (about 11) got through it was breathtakingly beautiful: trees like motionless fountains of white branching spray against a golden light and, high overhead, a pale translucent blue. It did not melt. About 11 p.m. the fog cleared and a high round moon lit the whole scene with a deadly white light: a vision of some other world or time. It was so still that I stood in the garden hatless and uncloaked without a shiver, though there must have been many degrees of frost. . . . .

      Mr Eden in the house² the other day expressed pain at the occurrences in Greece ‘the home of democracy’. Is he ignorant, or insincere? δημοχρατìα was not in Greek a word of approval but was nearly equivalent to ‘mob-rule’; and he neglected to note that Greek Philosophers – and far more is Greece the home of philosophy – did not approve of it. And the great Greek states, esp. Athens at the time of its high art and power, were rather Dictatorships, if they were not military monarchies like Sparta! And modern Greece has as little connexion with ancient Hellas as we have with Britain before Julius Agricola. . . . .

      Your own Father.

      95 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

      18 January 1945 (FS 76)

      I read till 11.50, browsing through the packed and to me enthralling pages of Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England. A period mostly filled with most intriguing Question Marks. I’d give a bit for a time-machine. But of course my mind being what it is (and wholly different from Stenton’s) it is the things of racial and linguistic significance that attract me and stick in my memory. Still, I hope one day you’ll be able (if you wish) to delve into this intriguing story of the origins of our peculiar people. And indeed of us in particular. For barring the Tolkien (which must long ago have become a pretty thin strand) you are a Mercian or Hwiccian (of Wychwood) on both sides.

      96 To Christopher Tolkien

      30 January 1945 (FS 78)

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      My dearest Chris,

      . . . . The minor imp of Slubgob’s brood who specially attends to preventing C.S.L. and myself from meeting provided a special attraction in the morning with the leaking of the scullery tap coinciding with the blocking of the sink! It took me until nearly 11 a.m. to get that cleared up. But I got to Magdalen, where after a brief shiver over 2 depressing elm-logs (elm won’t burn) we decided to seek warmth and beer at the Mitre: we got both (pubs manage their business better than bursars: upon my word, I don’t think the latter gentry would even hold down a Kiwi job in the R.A.F.!). A good many things happened then. My rest was rudely broken by a ‘phone call on business from which quite incidentally I learned the startling news that Prof. H. C. Wyld¹ died on Saturday. God rest his soul. But he leaves me a legacy of terrestrial trouble. For one thing I’ve got to make up mind what to do about the succession. Five years ago I’d have been thinking of how to get the Merton chair myself: my ambition was to get C.S.L. and myself into the 2 Merton Chairs.² It would be marvellous to be both in the same college – and for me to be in a real college and shake off the dust of miserable Pembroke. But I think prob. not – even if there was a chance … To continue the tale. About supper time the glass fell and the therm, rose, and a great downfall of snow with a wind (W to SW) began. It was piled high against the doors before midnight, but was really thawing underneath, so that although it went on, off and on, all night it was nowhere much over ½ a foot except in knee high drifts. All the same coal, coke, and fowls had vanished, and I had a most laborious morning digging things out before going to lecture. I arrived late (after an appalling acrobatic ride) attired like a ‘Skegness’ fisherman,³ and my apology for being late on the platform (Taylorian theatre) as I had been catching sardines, was very well received, better indeed than my subsequent disquisition on Offa of Angel, or on the itinerary of Israel from Egypt to the Red Sea. At the subsequent Bird and B. session (thank heaven, no fish arrived in port!) the UQ (alias Honest Humphrey) arrived tricked out in mountaineering kit. When asked why he was out of uniform he replied: ‘I am not in the Swiss Navy. The British Navy does not come out in snow.’ Alas, he’s being transferred to Liverpool soon. Indescribable mixture of ice and slush. I fell off three times, and was, of course, hustled into the gutter and drenched in fountains of filthy squelch by those amiable people who drive ‘private cars’. It took me till nigh 3.30 to finish the clearance of snow and clear drains, and then I settled down to your delightful letters. I hadn’t a moment to look at them when they arrived at breakfast time. But they had their effect by merely arriving, as you can see by my skittishness on the platform and from C.S.L.’s remark at the B & B.: ‘What’s the matter with him this moming, he’s quite above himself?’. . . .

      As for Eden. I think most Christians, except the v. simple and uneducated or those protected in other ways, have been rather bustled and hustled now for some generations by the self-styled scientists, and they’ve sort of tucked Genesis into a lumber-room of their mind as not very fashionable furniture, a bit ashamed to have it about the house, don’t you know, when the bright clever young people called: