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the name ‘Gandalf’ (taken, like all the dwarf-names, from the Elder Edda) was given to the wizard, for whom it was eminently suitable on account of its Icelandic meaning of ‘scorcerer-elf’ and hence ‘wizard’.
the machinations and occasionally the downright incompetence of publishers and printers continued to amaze him until the end of his life.
Tolkien had not really wanted to write any more stories like The Hobbit; he had wanted to get on with the serious business of his mythology. And that was what he could now do. The new story had attached itself firmly to The Silmarillion, and was to acquire the dignity of purpose and the high style of the earlier book.
However this does not mean that the placing of Mordor (the seat of evil in The Lord of the Rings) in the East is an allegorical reference to contemporary world politics, for as Tolkien himself affirmed it was a ‘simple narrative and geographical necessity’.
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons – ‘twas our right (used or misused). That right has not decayed: we make still by the law in which we’re made.
Tolkien had moved from the comparatively colloquial approach of the opening chapters into a manner that was more and more archaic and solemn as he progressed. He was well aware of this; indeed it was entirely deliberate, and it was discussed by him at the time in print
‘People in this land,’ he wrote in 1941, ‘seem not even yet to realise that in the Germans we have enemies whose virtues (and they are virtues) of obedience and patriotism are greater than ours in the mass. I have in this War a burning private grudge against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler for ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.’
in 1942 even the original Hobbit had to go out of print when the warehouse stock of copies was burnt in the London blitz.
One cause of the difficulty was his perfectionism. Not content with writing a large and complex book, he felt he must ensure that every single detail fitted satisfactorily into the total pattern. Geography, chronology, and nomenclature all had to be entirely consistent.
In part the increasing coolness on Tolkien’s side was probably due to his dislike of Lewis’s ‘Narnia’ stories for children.
The seven ‘Narnia’ stories were written and published in a mere seven years, less than half the period in which The Lord of the Rings gestated.
Tolkien recalled that he ‘actually wept’ when writing the account of the heroes’ welcome that is given to the hobbits on the Field of Cormallen.
Then he typed out a fair copy, balancing his typewriter on his attic bed because there was no room on his desk, and using two fingers because he had never learned to type with ten.
No romance can repel the charge of ‘escapism’ with such confidence. If it errs, it errs in precisely the opposite direction: all victories of hope deferred and the merciless piling up of odds against the heroes are near to being too painful. And the long coda after the eucatastrophe, whether you intended it or no, has the effect of reminding us that victory is as transitory as conflict, that (as Byron says) there’s no sterner moralist than pleasure’ and so leaving a final impression of profound melancholy.
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.’
It had taken twelve years to write The Lord of the Rings. By the time that he had finished it, Tolkien was not far from his sixtieth birthday.
‘My work has escaped from my control,’ he told them, ‘and I have produced a monster: an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and rather terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion.
Tolkien had never before encountered a tape-recorder at close quarters – he pretended to regard Sayer’s machine with great suspicion, pronouncing the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic into the microphone to cast out any devils that might be lurking within. But after the recording sessions at Malvern he was so impressed with the device that he acquired a machine to use at home, and began to amuse himself by making further tapes of his work.
Rayner sent a telegram to his father to ask whether they could publish the book, admitting that it was ‘a big risk’ and warning that the firm could lose up to a thousand pounds through the project. But he concluded that in his opinion it was a work of genius. Sir Stanley replied by cable, telling him to publish it.
Rayner Unwin wrote to Tolkien to say that the firm would like to publish The Lord of the Rings under a profit-sharing agreement. This meant that Tolkien would not receive conventional royalty payments on a percentage basis. Instead he would be paid ‘half profits’ that is, he would receive nothing until the sales of the book had been sufficient to cover its costs, but thenceforward he would share equally with the publisher in any profits that might accrue. This method, which had once been common practice but was by this time little used by other firms, was still favoured by Sir Stanley Unwin
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He was also infuriated by his first sight of the proofs, for he found that the printers had changed several of his spellings, altering dwarves to dwarfs, elvish to elfish, further to farther, and (‘worst of all’ said Tolkien) elvin to elfin. The printers were reproved; they said in self-defence that they had merely followed the dictionary spellings. (Similar ‘corrections’ to Tolkien’s spellings were made in 1961 when Puffin Books issued The Hobbit as a paperback, and this time to Tolkien’s distress the mistake was not discovered until the book had reached the shops.)
he was already receiving from readers who took the book almost as history, and demanded more information on many topics. This attitude to his story flattered him, for it was the type of response that he had hoped to arouse, yet he remarked: ‘I am not at all sure that the tendency to treat this whole thing as a kind of vast game is really good – certainly not for me, who find that kind of thing only too fatally attractive.’
‘Venice seemed incredibly, elvishly lovely – to me like a dream of Old Gondor, or Pelargir of the Numenorean Ships, before the return of the Shadow.’
‘The book is too original and too opulent for any final judgement on a first reading. But we know at once that it has done things to us. We are not quite the same men.’ A new voice was added to the chorus of praise when Bernard Levin wrote in Truth that he believed it to be ‘one of the most remarkable works of literature in our, or any, time. It is comforting, in this troubled day, to be once more assured that the meek shall inherit the earth’.
And this was how it was to remain for the rest of Tolkien’s life: extreme praise from one faction, total contempt from the other. On the whole Tolkien himself did not mind this very much; indeed it amused him. He wrote of it: The Lord of the Rings is one of those things: if you like you do: if you don’t, then you boo!
a radio dramatisation of the book, which inevitably did not meet with Tolkien’s approval, for if he had reservations about drama in general he was even more strongly opposed to the ‘adaptation’ of stories, believing that this process invariably reduced them to their merely human and thus most trivial level.
Besides money, The Lord of the Rings was bringing Tolkien a large number of fan-letters. Those who wrote included a real Sam Gamgee, who had not read The Lord of the Rings but had heard that his name appeared in the story. Tolkien was delighted, explained how he had come by the name, and sent Mr Gamgee a signed copy of all three volumes. Later he said: ‘For some time I lived in fear of receiving a letter signed “S. Gollum”. That would have been more difficult to deal with.’
So Tolkien began, though he turned not to The Lord of the Rings for which revision was urgent, but to The Hobbit for which it was not. He spent many hours searching for some revision notes that he had already made, but he could not find them. Instead he found a typescript of ‘The New Shadow’ a sequel to The Lord of the Rings which he had begun a long time ago but had abandoned after a few pages. It was about the return of evil to Middle-earth. He sat up till four a.m. reading it and thinking about it. When the next day he did get down to The Hobbit he found a good deal of it ‘very poor’ and
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Tolkien could only answer: ‘I begin to feel that I am shut up in a madhouse.’
He had been accustomed to ‘waste’ many hours that ought to have been spent on completing work for publication by writing innumerable replies to fan-letters, but this did mean that he had already built up an affectionate following of many dozens of enthusiastic correspondents, especially in America, and they were now only too glad to spring to his defence. On his own initiative he began to include a note in all his replies to American readers, informing them that the Ace edition was unauthorised, and asking them to tell their friends. This soon had a remarkable effect. American readers not only
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As for Tolkien himself, writing to his colleague Norman Davis he referred to the widespread enthusiasm for his books as ‘my deplorable cultus’ and to a reporter who asked him if he was pleased by the enthusiasm of the young Americans he replied: ‘Art moves them and they don’t know what they’ve been moved by and they get quite drunk on it. Many young Americans are involved in the stories in a way that I’m not.’
He wrote to a reader: ‘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.’
He was having to deal with a huge mound of correspondence from fans, and many readers did not merely send him letters. They enclosed gifts of every kind: paintings, sculptures, drinking-goblets, photographs of themselves dressed as characters from the books, tape-recordings, food, drink, tobacco, and tapestries.
Nor would he dine away from home unless Priscilla or a friend was able to keep Edith company for the evening. Concern for her well-being always took precedence with him.
he and Edith did not install any electrical gadgets in the home, for they had never been accustomed to them and did not imagine that they needed them now. Not only was there no television in the house, but no washing-machine or dishwasher either.
The concept of the family, something that they had scarcely known themselves as children, had always mattered to them, and they now found the role of grandparents entirely to their liking, delighting in the visits of grandchildren. Their Golden Wedding, celebrated in 1966 with much ceremony, gave them great pleasure.
Even when he did do some actual writing, it was not usually concerned with the revision of the narrative but with the huge mass of ancillary material that had now accumulated. Much of this material was in the form of essays on what might be called ‘technical’ aspects of the mythology, such as the relation between the ageing processes of elves and men, or the death of animals and plants in Middle-earth. He felt that every detail of his cosmos needed attention, whether or not the essays themselves would ever be published. Sub-creation had become a sufficiently rewarding pastime in itself, quite
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Almost certainly he did not expect to die so soon. He told his former pupil Mary Salu that there was a tradition of longevity among his ancestors, and that he believed he would live for many years more.
Where did it come from, this imagination that peopled Middle-earth with elves, orcs, and hobbits? What was the source of the literary vision that changed the life of this obscure scholar? And why did that vision so strike the minds and harmonise with the aspirations of numberless readers around the world?
He disapproved of biography as an aid to literary appreciation; and perhaps he was right. His real biography is The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion; for the truth about him lies within their pages.
Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt and guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. ‘It’s a gift!’ he said.
