The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (8 page)

Yours sincerely

J. R. R. Tolkien.

31 August 1938

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Furth,

I am not so much pressed, as oppressed (or depressed). Further troubles which I need not detail have occurred, and I collapsed (or bent) under them. I have been unwell, since I saw you – in fact I reached the edge of a breakdown, and was ordered by the doctor to stop short. I have done nothing for a week or two – being in fact quite unable. But I am beginning to feel a good deal better. I am now (tomorrow) going away for a fortnight's holiday; which I had not planned and cannot afford, though it seems required by my own health and my youngest son's. . . . .

I did not entirely forget ‘Farmer Giles': I had it typed. I submit it now, for your consideration in its rather altered scope and tone. A good many folk have found it very diverting (I think that is the right word): but that is as may be! I see that it is
not
long enough to stand alone probably – at least not as a commercial proposition (if indeed it cd. ever be such a thing). It probably requires more of its kind. I have planned out a sequel
¹
(though it does not need one), and have an unfinished pseudo-Celtic fairy-story of a mildly satirical order, which is also amusing as far as it has gone, called the
King of the Green Dozen
.
²
These I might finish off if
Giles
seems to you worthy of print and companionship.

In the last two or three days, after the benefit of idleness and open air, and the sanctioned neglect of duty, I have begun again on the sequel to the ‘Hobbit' – The Lord of the Ring. It is now flowing along, and getting quite out of hand. It has reached about Chapter VII and progresses towards quite unforeseen goals. I must say I think it is a good deal better in places and some ways than the predecessor; but that does
not say that I think it either more suitable or more adapted for its audience. For one thing it is, like my own children (who have the immediate serial rights), rather ‘older'. I can only say that Mr Lewis (my stout backer of the Times and T.L.S.) professes himself more than pleased. If the weather is wet in the next fortnight we may have got still further on. But it is no bed-time story. . . . .

Yours sincerely,

J. R. R. Tolkien.

13 October 1938

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Unwin,

. . . . I have worked very hard for a month (in the time which my doctors said must be devoted to some distraction!) on a sequel to
The Hobbit
. It has reached Chapter XI (though in rather an illegible state); I am now thoroughly engrossed in it, and have the threads all in hand – and I have to put it completely aside, till I do not know when. Even the Christmas vacation will be darkened by New Zealand scripts, as my friend Gordon
¹
died in the middle of their Honours Exams, and I had to finish setting the papers. But I still live in hopes that I may be able to submit it early next year.

When I spoke, in an earlier letter to Mr Furth, of this sequel getting ‘out of hand', I did not mean it to be complimentary to the process. I really meant it was running its course, and forgetting ‘children', and was becoming more terrifying than the Hobbit. It may prove quite unsuitable. It is more ‘adult' – but my own children who criticize it as it appears are now older. However, you will be the judge of that, I hope, some day! The darkness of the present days has had some effect on it. Though it is not an ‘allegory'. (I have already had one letter from America asking for an authoritative exposition of the allegory of The Hobbit).

Yours sincerely

J. R. R. Tolkien.

2 February 1939

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Furth,

By the end of last term the new story –
The Lord of the Rings
– had reached Chapter 12 (and had been re-written several times), running to over 300 MS. pages of the size of this paper and written generally as
closely. It will require 200 at least to finish the story that has developed. Could you give me any idea of the
latest
date by which the completed MSS. ought to reach you? I have worked under difficulties of all kinds, including ill-health. Since the beginning of December I have not been able to touch it. Among many other labours and troubles that the sudden death of my friend Professor Eric Gordon bequeathed to me, I had to clear up the New Zealand examinations, which occupied nearly all last vacation. I then caught influenza, from which I have just recovered. But I have other heavy tasks ahead. I am at the ‘peak' of my educational financial stress, with a second son clamouring for a university and the youngest wanting to go to school (after a year under heart-specialists), and I am obliged to do exams and lectures and what not. Perhaps you ought to be thinking about
Mr Bliss
. And what about
Farmer Giles
? You had the MSS. of the enlarged form in September or October.

I think
The Lord of the Rings
is in itself a good deal better than
The Hobbit
, but it may not prove a very fit sequel. It is more grown up – but the audience for which
The Hobbit
was written has done that also. The readers young and old who clamoured for ‘more about the Necromancer' are to blame, for the N. is not child's play.
^fn4
My eldest son is enthusiastic, but it would be a relief to me to know that my publishers were satisfied. If the part so far written satisfied you, there need be no fear of the whole. I wonder whether it would not be a wise thing to get what I have done typed and let you see it? I shall certainly finish it eventually whatever you think of it; but if it did not seem to be what you want to follow
The Hobbit
there would be no desperate pressure. The writing of
The Lord of the Rings
is laborious, because I have been doing it as well as I know how, and considering every word. The story, too, has (I fondly imagine) some significance. In spare time it would be easier and quicker to write up the plots already composed of the more lighthearted stories of the Little Kingdom to go with
Farmer Giles
. But I would rather finish the long tale, and not let it go cold.

Let me know what you think. I may get part of the Easter Vac. free. Not all – I shall have some papers to set; and some work in preparation for a possible ‘National Emergency' (which will take a week out).
¹
I have to go to Scotland either in March or April. It is conceivable I could finish by June. And the MSS. would be final (no knocking page-proofs about). But I should have no time or energy for illustration. I never
could draw, and the half-baked intimations of it seem wholly to have left me. A map (very necessary) would be all I could do.

Yours sincerely

J. R. R. Tolkien.

10 February 1939

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Furth,

Thank you very much for your letter – and the enclosed cheque: which was rather a welcome tonic. The influenza has not damaged me much, though it caught me in a state of exam-exhaustion; but my throat seems to be getting worse, and I don't feel very bright. . . . .

I will get my stuff typed and let you have it; and (if it meets with approval, and does not demand extensive rewriting) I think I shall make a special effort, at the expense of other duties, to finish it off before June 15th. . . . .

Did
Farmer Giles
in the enlarged form meet with any sort of approval? (I received the typescript safely.) Is it worth anything? Are two more stories, or any more stories of the Little Kingdom, worth contemplating? For instance the completion in the same form of the adventures of Prince George (the farmer's son) and the fat boy Suovetaurilius (vulgarly Suet), and the Battle of Otmoor. I just wonder whether this local family game played in the country just round us is more than silly.

Yours sincerely

J. R. R. Tolkien.

19 December 1939

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Unwin,

I was greatly comforted to receive your kind note this morning, even though it heaped hot coals of fire on my head. In spite of my troubles I
have not really a sufficient excuse for not at least writing or responding to notes and enquiries. My accident just before the outbreak of war
¹
left me very unwell for a long while, and that combined with the anxieties and troubles that all share, and with the lack of any holiday, and with the virtual headship of a department in this bewildered university have made me unpardonably neglectful. I hardly knew how to cope with the further blow of my wife's illness, threatening to come to a climax all through the summer and autumn.

The worst seems over now. I have her back, an invalid but apparently mending at last, and the fear of cancer which was at first entertained apparently dismissed. I am uncommandeered still myself, and shall now probably remain so, as there is (as yet) far too much to do here, and I have lost both my chief assistant and his understudy.

I will try and collect my weary wits and pen a sufficient foreword to the ‘Beowulf' translation,
at once
. . . . .

May I turn now to
The Hobbit
and kindred affairs. I have never quite ceased work on the sequel. It has reached Chapter XVI. I fear it is growing too large. I am not at all sure that it will please quite the same audience (except in so far as that has grown up too). Will there be any chance of publication, if I can get it done before the Spring? If you would like to try it on anyone as a serial I am willing to send in chapters. But I have only one fair copy. I have had to go back and revise early chapters as the plot and plan took firmer shape and so nothing has yet been sufficiently definitive to type.

I suppose the German edition of
The Hobbit
will probably never appear now? It was a great disappointment to my son and myself. We had a bet between us on the version of the opening sentence. My son is now in Italy,
²
whither he has carried
The Hobbit
, and occasionally sends enquiries for more of the sequel, which he knew and approved as far as it went. But there is no time, or very little even when one steals from other more dutiful claims.

I wish you would publish poor ‘Farmer Giles' in the interim. He is at least finished, though very slender in bulk. But he amuses the same people, although Mr Furth seemed to think he has no obvious public. He has mouldered in a drawer since he amused H. S. Bennett's
³
children when I was in Cambridge last March. Admittedly they are bright children. . . . .

Yours sincerely,

J. R. R. Tolkien.

30 March 1940

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Unwin,

Apologies would be vain in the face of my vexatious and uncivil behaviour. So I felt long ago – that the only possible reply to your repeated enquiry of March 5 was copy. I have got into worse trouble than I need – in spite of the many disasters that have befallen me
^fn5
– since I have foolishly wasted much labour and time under a misapprehension, which a more careful consideration of the pagination of the page-proofs might have dispelled.

I knew that a ‘word or two' would suffice (though I could not feel that any words under my name would have any particular value unless they said something worth saying – which takes space). But I believed that more was hoped for. I cannot lay my hand on the relative letter, and in any case I now realise that an earlier stage, before page-proof, was envisaged. I can only regret that I did not get something done at an earlier stage. For a fairly considerable ‘preface' is really required. The so-called ‘Introduction' does not exist, being merely an argument:
²
there is no reference whatever to either a translator's or a critic's problems. I advised originally against any attempt to bring the apparatus of the old book up to date – it can be got by students elsewhere. But I did not expect a reduction to 10 lines, while the ‘argument' (the least useful part) was re-written at length.

That being so I laboured long and hard to compress (and yet enliven) such remarks on
translation
as might both be useful to students and of interest to those using the book without reference to the original text. But the result ran to 17 of my MSS. pages (of some 300 words each) – not counting the metrical appendix,
³
the most original part, which is as long again!

I was in this stage early in March, and trying to make up my mind what to jettison, when your letter of March 27th reached me (yesterday). All very foolish. For the pagination indicates clearly my share as a very small one.

All I can do now is to send in what I have done. You might care to consider it (submitting it to Wrenn) for inclusion later, e.g. if a further edition is required. (Retouched it might make a suitable booklet for students. The metrical account, being on a novel plan, and considering the relations of style and metre, might be attractive, as students are usually rather at sea on this subject.)