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

by heart you never need for words of joy. It is also a good and admirable thing to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, for you can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstance keeps you from hearing Mass. So endeth Fæder lar his suna.¹ With very much love.

      Longaoð þonne þy lǽs þe him con léoþa worn,

      oþþe mid hondum con hearpan grétan;

      hafaþ him his glíwes giefe, þe him God sealde.

      From the Exeter Book. Less doth yearning trouble him who knoweth many songs, or with his hands can touch the harp: his possession is his gift of ‘glee’ (= music and/or verse) which God gave him.

      How these old words smite one out of the dark antiquity! ‘Longaoð’! All down the ages men (of our kind, most awarely) have felt it: not necessarily caused by sorrow, or the hard world, but sharpened by it.

      55 To Christopher Tolkien

      [Christopher had now left for South Africa, where he was to train as a pilot. This is the first of a long series of letters to him, which were numbered, for reasons which Tolkien gives here.]

      18 January 1944

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      Fæder his þriddan suna (1)¹

      My dearest,

      I am afraid it is a very long time (or it seems so: actually it is about 8 days) since I wrote; but I did not quite know what to do, until we got your letter yesterday. . . . . I am glad my last long letter caught you before you went! We don’t know yet, of course, just when that was, or whither. . . . .

      I gave 2 lectures yesterday, and then conferred with Gabriel Turville-Petre² about Cardiff. . . . . I managed just to catch the last post with my Cardiff report. Then I had to go and sleep (???) at C. HeadQ.³ I did not – not much. I was in the small C33 room: very cold and damp. But an incident occurred which moved me and made the occasion memorable. My companion in misfortune was Cecil Roth (the learned Jew historian).⁴ I found him charming, full of gentleness (in every sense); and we sat up till after 12 talking. He lent me his watch as there were no going clocks in the place: – and nonetheless himself came and called me at 10 to 7: so that I could go to Communion! It seemed like a fleeting glimpse of an unfallen world. Actually I was awake, and just (as one does) discovering a number of reasons (other than tiredness and having no chance to shave or even wash), such as the desirability of getting home in good time to open up and un-black and all that, why I should not go. But the incursion of this gentle Jew, and his sombre glance at my rosary by my bed, settled it. I was down at St Aloysius at 7.15 just in time to go to Confession before Mass; and I came home just before the end of Mass. . . . . I lectured at 11 a.m. (after collecting fish);⁵ and managed to have a colloguing with the brothers Lewis and C. Williams (at the White Horse).⁶ And that is about all the top off the news as far as I am concerned! Except that the fouls⁷ do not lay, but I have still to clean out their den. . . . .

      I start to-day numbering each letter, and each page, so that if any go awry you will know – and the bare news of importance can be made up. This is (No. 1) of Pater ad Filium Natu (sed haud alioquin) minimum:⁸ Fæder suna his ágnum, þám gingstan nalles unléofestan.⁹ (I suppose a professor of Old English may be permitted to use that language to a former pupil?: query for ref. to censor, if any). I can’t write Russian and find Polish rather sticky yet. I expect poor old Poptawski¹⁰ will be wondering how I am getting on, soon. It will be a long time before I can be of any assistance to him in devising a new technical vocabulary!!! The vocab. will just happen along anyway (if there are any Poles and Poland left). . . .

      56 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

      1 March 1944 (FS 6)

      [For ‘The Useless Quack’, see the introductory note to no. 48.]

      As I have hardly seen anybody in the last few weeks there is no quip, jest, or other item of merriment to record. The Useless Quack has returned to Oxford! Almost the only wire I have ever pulled that has rung a bell. But there he is, uniform, red-beard, slow smile and all, still in Navy, but living at home and working on his research Board (Malaria). He seems pleased, and so do the Board. All done at the Mitre – where I picked up an urgent enquiry as to his whereabouts, as being the one man wanted. He was on the other side of the globe just then. Lewis is as energetic and jolly as ever, but getting too much publicity for his or any of our tastes. ‘Peterborough’, usually fairly reasonable, did him the doubtful honour of a peculiarly misrepresentative and asinine paragraph in the Daily Telegraph of Tuesday last. It began ‘Ascetic Mr Lewis’ ——!!! I ask you! He put away three pints in a very short session we had this morning, and said he was ‘going short for Lent’. I suppose all the stuff you see in print is about as accurate about Tom, Dick, or Harry. It is a pity newspapers can’t leave people alone, and don’t make some effort to understand what they say (if it is worth it): at any rate they might have some standards that would prevent them saying things about people which are quite untrue, even if not actually (as often) painful, angering, or indeed injurious. . . . .

      Still very cold. Snow last night. But there is no mistaking the growing power of a March sun. Clumps of yellow crocus are out, and the white-mauve ones beginning; green buds are appearing. I wonder what you think of the season-reverse south of the Line? More or less the equivalent of early September with you, I suppose. My earliest recollection of Christmas is of a blazing hot day.¹

      57 From an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien

      30 March 1944 (FS 12)

      I saw the two Lewis bros. yesterday, & lunched with C.S.L.: quite an outing for me. The indefatigable man read me part of a new story! But he is putting the screw on me to finish mine. I needed some pressure, & shall probably respond; but the ‘vac.’ is already half over & the exam. wood only just cleared.

      58 To Christopher Tolkien

      [A description of a visit to Birmingham, where Tolkien was attending a lunch given by the new headmaster of his school, King Edward’s, which since his schooldays had moved to new buildings in another part of the city.]

      3 April 1944 (FS 13)

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      My dearest,

      I wrote you an airgraph¹ on Thursday last at night; but unfortunately it was not sent off on Friday, and on Saturday I went off early and in a rush to Brum. So it has only gone today. Nothing more has come from you since yours of 13 March (arrived 28). I can’t remember much about Friday, except that the morning was wrecked by shopping and queueing: result one slab of pork-pie; and that I had a dreadfully bad and lugubriously dull dinner in college, and was glad to get home before 9 p.m. But I have begun to nibble at Hobbit again. I have started to do some (painful) work on the chapter which picks up the adventures of Frodo and Sam again; and to get myself attuned have been copying and polishing the last written chapter (Orthanc-Stone). Saturday was a memorable day. Grey, damp and unpleasing. But I got off about 9 a.m. Cycled to Pembroke and deposited bike and lamps. Caught the 9.30, which (just, I suppose, because I had time to spare) left Oxford on time (!!!), for the first time in human memory, and reached Brum only a few minutes late. I found myself in a carriage occupied by an R.A.F. officer (this war’s wings, who had been to South Africa though he looked a bit elderly), and a very nice young American Officer, New-Englander. I stood the hot-air they let off as long as I could; but when I heard the Yank burbling about ‘Feudalism’ and its results on English class-distinctions and social behaviour, I opened a broadside. The poor boob had not, of course, the very faintest notions about ‘Feudalism’, or history at all – being a chemical engineer. But you can’t knock ‘Feudalism’ out of an American’s head, any more than the ‘Oxford Accent’. He was impressed I think when I said that an Englishman’s relations with porters, butlers, and tradesmen had as much connexion with ‘Feudalism’ as skyscrapers