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when he was in this mood he had a deep sense of impending loss. Nothing was safe. Nothing would last. No battle would be won for ever.
May God bless you, my dear John Ronald, and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.
I wrote on it: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”. Names always generate a story in my mind. Eventually I thought I’d better find out what hobbits were like. But that’s only the beginning.’
‘I am in fact a hobbit,’ he once wrote, ‘in all but size.
Also Bingo Bolger-Baggins a bad name. Let Bingo = Frodo.’ But below this he wrote: ‘No – I am now too used to Bingo.’
‘I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse “applicability” with “allegory”; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.’
Tolkien himself did not think it was flawless. But he told Stanley Unwin: ‘It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other.’
‘I am dreading the publication,’ he told his friend Father Robert Murray, ‘for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.’
‘Being a cult figure in one’s own lifetime I am afraid is not at all pleasant. However I do not find that it tends to puff one up; in my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate. But even the nose of a very modest idol cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense.’
