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

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СКАЧАТЬ – especially as I had arisen at 5 a.m. (or 7 a.m. BDST) to get to Mass for Corpus Christi. . . . .

      This morning. . . . was occupied with exams, the afternoon with a mass-meeting at Rhodes House in favour of a local Christian Council. . . . . There was one man. . . . who got up and said that he approved of a C. Council, because he had been Lord Nelson in his previous life, and had much appreciated being in Oxford during part of the present life; but nobody laughed – although he was one of the amiable kind, who would have liked it. He said so. But apparently he has made this speech so often, that it was taken as a matter of course. Just shows how little one can know of one’s own home-town, as I had never seen or heard of him before. . . . .

      [11 June] I was very interested in all the descriptions: both of your abode and of the country. Your sharpened memory is I imagine due to 2 things (1) sharpened desire (2) new images which do not correspond to the old, and so do not overlay and blur them. Few inhabitants of a town who have never gone away can recall even the major changes in a street during the past year. My own rather sharp memory is probably due to the dislocation of all my childhood ‘pictures’ between 3 and 4 by leaving Africa: I was engaged in a constant attention and adjustment. Some of my actual visual memories I now recognize as beautiful blends of African and English details. . . . . As for what to try and write: I don’t know. I tried a diary with portraits (some scathing some comic some commendatory) of persons and events seen; but I found it was not my line. So I took to ‘escapism’: or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in good stead in many hard years since and I still draw on the conceptions then hammered out. But, of course, there was no time except on leave or in hospital. . . . .

      I certainly live on your letters, although my circumstances are so very much more easy. In my case weariness, sheer boredom of sameness is the enemy. If I were younger, I should wish to exchange with you, merely to change! I hope you can read some of this. Certainly sixpenn’orth as far as quantity (not quality I fear) goes. More anon.

      74 From a letter to Stanley Unwin

      29 June 1944

      [Unwin wrote on 22 June, enclosing ‘a further substantial cheque’ for royalties earned by The Hobbit, and telling Tolkien that his son Rayner was now reading English at Oxford as a naval cadet: ‘He will be away next week on leave, but after his return I should much like him to meet you some time.’]

      First about Rayner. I was both delighted and grieved at your news. Delighted because I shall have a chance of seeing him. I hope he will treat me in the most unprofessorial manner, and as soon as he gets back, will just let me know how we can meet: whether I can roll into his rooms, and whether he would care at any time to wander up here to my house and have tea (meagre) in my garden (untidy). Grieved because it is abominable to think that the passage of time and the prolongation of this misery has swept him up. My youngest boy, also Trinity, was carried off last July – in the midst of typing and revising the Hobbit sequel and doing a lovely map – and is now far away and very wretched, in the Orange Free State:¹ the fact that it was my native land does not seem to recommend it to him. I have at the moment another son, a much damaged soldier, at Trinity trying to do some work and recover a shadow of his old health.². . . .

      I am afraid I have treated you badly. Fortune has treated me pretty rough since I last wrote – though not rougher than many others, alas! – and I have had barely the energy or the time to get through the menial day. But I should have thanked you for your note about Foyles³ and for the two copies of the edition. Also I might have let you know what was happening to the sequel to the Hobbit. Not a line on it was possible for a year. One of the results (until I was drowned in an abyss of exams) of release from work for R.N. and R.A.F. was that I managed to bring this (great) work to within sight of conclusion, and am now about to conclude it, disregarding all other calls, as far as is possible.

      I hope you still have some mild interest in it, in spite of paper shortage – at any rate as a possible future. It is frightfully difficult and/or expensive getting anything typed in this town, and when my typewriter broke down nobody would repair it. I have still only one copy, and that needs revision as the thing nears its end. But I hope at last soon to be able to submit a chunk to you. A pity Rayner is now involved with other and more serious matters. In any case, I fear, the story has grown too long and unjuvenile.

      Thank you very much for the cheque. Even halved it will be very useful. I still labour under debts, mainly due to trying to complete a family’s education after war had taken most of one’s means: not an uncommon experience.

      75 To Christopher Tolkien

      7 July 1944 (FS 36)

      20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

      My Dearest: I thought I would try the experiment of an airletter on my midget type.¹ It is certainly as small, and a lot clearer than I could write. It is only two days since I last wrote, but I have a great desire to talk to you. Not that there is anything but the smallest news to tell. I haven’t had a chance to do any more writing yet. This morning I had shopping and cadets; and when on my way back to town for the second time my back tire blew up with a loud explosion, the inner tube having oozed through a gash in the outer cover. Fortunately this was not far from Denis, and I was able to console myself at The Gardeners’ Arms, not yet discovered by Stars or Stripes,² and where they serve a mixture of College Ale and Bitter. But I had to make a third journey after lunch: and from 5 to 8 was occupied enlarging the house, with bits of old wood and salvaged nails, for the new hen-folk, drat ‘em. I have just heard the news and so goes the day. There is a family of bullfinches, which must have nested in or near our garden, and they are very tame, and have been giving us entertainment lately by their antics feeding their young, often just outside the diningroom window. In sects on the trees and sowthistle seeds seem their chief delight. I had no idea they behaved so much like goldfinches. Old fat father, pink waistcoat and all, hangs absolutely upside down on a thistle-spray, tinking all the while. There are also a few wrens about. Otherwise nothing of note, though all birds are vastly increased in numbers, after the mild winters, and in these relatively catless days. The garden is its usual wilderness self, all deep green again, and still with abundant roses. The bright summer day turned to rain again by night and we have had a lot more, though not without breaks. . . . .

      [9 July] A propos of bullfinches, did you know that they had a connexion with the noble art of brewing ale? I was looking at the Kalevala the other day – one of the books which I don’t think you have yet read? Or have you? – and I came across Runo XX, which I used to like: it deals largely with the origin of beer. When the fermentation was first managed, the beer was only in birch tubs and it foamed all over the place, and of course the heroes came and lapped it up, and got mightily drunk. Drunk was Ahti, drunk was Kauko, drunken was the ruddy rascal, with the ale of Osmo’s daughter – Kirby’s translation³ is funnier than the original. It was the bullfinch who then suggested to Osmo’s daughter the notion of putting the stuff in oak casks with hoops of copper and storing it in a cellar. Thus was ale at first created … best of drinks for prudent people; Women soon it brings to laughter, Men it warms into good humour, but it brings the fools to raving. Sound sentiments. Poor old Finns, and their queer language, they look like being scuppered. I wish I could have visited the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes before this war. Finnish nearly ruined my Hon. Mods,⁴ and was the original germ of the Silmarillion. . . . .

      I wonder how you are getting on with your flying since you first went solo – the last news we had of this. I especially noted your observations on the skimming martins. That touches to the heart of things, doesn’t it? There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it СКАЧАТЬ