The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

Yours sincerely

J. R. R. Tolkien.

32 To John Masefield

[Masefield, then Poet Laureate, together with Nevill Coghill organised an entertainment in Oxford during the summers of 1938 and 1939, entitled Summer Diversions. In 1938 he invited Tolkien to impersonate Chaucer and recite from memory the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. He wrote to Tolkien enclosing some lines of verse with which he proposed to introduce him.]

27 July 1938

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Masefield,

I have no prelude of my own to fire off, and no objection as a performer to being preceded by the lines you send. In any case you are Master of the Diversions, and I am under your good authority.

Privately, as one student of Chaucer to another, I might perhaps say that these lines seem to me to allude to the erroneous imagination that Chaucer was the first English poet, and that before and except for him all was dumb and barbaric. That is of course not true, and is perhaps, even as a way of emphasizing the fact that he possessed a peculiar genius, which would at any period have produced work having a novel flavour, rather misleading. I do not personally connect the North with either night or darkness, especially not in England, in whose long 1200 years of literary tradition Chaucer stands rather in the middle than the beginning. I also do not feel him springlike but autumnal (even if of the early autumn) and not kinglike but middle-class. However, as I say, these are professional matters, about which the present occasion is hardly one to join battle.

I am not at all happy about the effect of Chaucer in general, or the Nonnes Prestes Tale in particular, in a supposed 14th. C. pronunciation. I will do my best, but I hope it will be sufficiently intelligible for some of the sense to get over. Personally I rather think that a modified modern pronunciation (restoring rhymes but otherwise avoiding archaism) is the best – such as I once heard you use on the Monk’s Tale a good many years ago.

Yours sincerely

J. R. R. Tolkien.

33 To C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin

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

(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.

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.

34 To Stanley Unwin

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

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.

35 To C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin

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.

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).

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.

36 To C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin

[On 8 February, Furth sent a royalty cheque for The Hobbit, and told Tolkien that the middle of June was the latest date by which Allen & Unwin must have the new story if they were going to publish it by Christmas.]

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. . . . .