The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (96 page)

“you must be incurring … Dip and spare not”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 31.

“It is … within my knowledge”: Owen Barfield, “The Light of the World,” supplement to
Anthroposophical Movement
31, no. 2 (February 1954): 1–10,
www.owenbarfield.org/the-light-of-the-world/
[accessed August 11, 2014].

392–93
“an appreciable number of married women … get some mutual friend”: Owen Barfield letter, July 6, 1951, Barfield Papers, Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 1055.

“Mrs. B has apparently”: Lewis,
All My Road Before Me
, 439.

Susan Josephine Grant Watson: Details about Barfield’s relationships with Josephine Grant Watson and Marguerite Lundgren are drawn from Blaxland–de Lange,
Owen Barfield
.

“Her mobility was exceptional”: Annelies Davidson, “Eurhythmy and the English Language” in Rudolf Steiner,
Eurhythmy as Visible Speech
, trans. Alan Stott, Coralee Schmandt, and Maren Stott, with an introduction and a companion consisting of a forecast, notes and essays to the lectures, appendices on English Eurhythmy, and an overview (Weobley, UK: Anastasi, 2005), 367.

“the apotheosis”: Marjorie Raff
é
, Cecil Harwood, and Marguerite Lundgren,
Eurythmy and the Impulse of Dance
([London]: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974), 3.

“whereas the experience of movement”: Ibid., 13.

“one of the channels”: Ibid., 27.

“Oh the mails”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 1014.

“men … are only apes”: Joy Davidman, “The Longest Way Round,” in
These Found the Way: Thirteen Converts to Protestant Christianity
, ed. David Wesley Soper (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1951), 16.

“a powerful, well-written novel”: John Cournos, “Geese in the Forum and Other New Works of Fiction,”
The New York Times
(July 14, 1940): 72.

“what neglected”: Davidman, “Longest Way Round,” 22.

“All my defenses … God had always been there”: Ibid., 23.

“moral responsibility … Not Shakespeare”: Ibid., 24–25.

“an enduring impression … bursts of blasphemy”: reviews of
Weeping Bay
by Granville Hicks, “Four New Novels of Interest,”
The New York Times
(March 5, 1950): 211;
Catholic World
, June 1950;
Library Journal
, February 1, 1950.

“neither of us had ever heard of her”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 244.

“no commitment”: Milton Waldman, quoted in Tolkien,
Letters,
134.

“I certainly shall try to extricate … I should”: Ibid.
,
135.

“I am, I fear, a most unsatisfactory person … if you decline”: Ibid., 135–37.

“‘ONOMASTICAL-OUTING’ … the whole Saga”: Ibid., 138.

“I profoundly hope”: Ibid., 139.

“if this is not workable”: Rayner Unwin’s comments enclosed by Stanley Unwin in a letter to Tolkien, quoted in ibid., 140.

“bitterly disappointed”: Stanley Unwin letter to Tolkien, quoted in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 361.

“it is difficult”: Extract from Tolkien’s letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien,
Letters,
143.

“It is … only too likely”: Tolkien,
Letters,
160.

Rayner Unwin … still believed: Ibid., 443, note.

399–400
“behaved badly … Can anything be done”: Ibid., 162–63.

“a great (though not flawless) work … larger number of people”: Ibid., 164–65.

Tolkien “chose an area”: Sayer, “Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien,” 23.

“
If
you believe”: Rayner Unwin,
George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrancer
(Ludlow: Merlin Unwin, 1999), 99.

400–401
“inward chuckle … God bless you”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 249–50.

“to know how soon”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends,
233.

“it will be an enormous liberation … I hardly know how I feel”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 28–29.

“grievous …
now
a house less horrible”: Ibid., 37.

“We cd. read the whole
Aeneid
”: Ibid., 39.

“Minto died”: Ibid., 90.

“the rape of J’s life … crushing misfortune”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 236–37.

“Slav and Balkan”: Ibid., 239.

“knaves … fools”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 147.

“Just got a letter … Lord, he knocked my props out”: Joy Davidman,
Out of My Bone: The Letters of Joy Davidman
, ed. Don W. King (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009), 116.

“as a result of something [Bill] did”: Davidman,
Out of My Bone
, 141.

“she was in love with you”: William Gresham to C. S. Lewis, quoted in ibid., 312.

403–404
“of medium height … Mind you”: Sayer,
Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis
, 352–53.

“completely ‘circumvented’ … asked for one week”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 268.

“many merry days”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 244.

“intensely feminine”: Warren Lewis, “Memoir of C. S. Lewis,” 43.

“there was nothing feminine”: Chad Walsh, quoted in Lyle W. Dorsett,
And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman, Her Life and Marriage to C. S. Lewis
(Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2009), 68.

“we treated her”: Sayer,
Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis
, 353.

“a blessed release … Lewis strongly advised me”: Davidman,
Out of My Bone
, 140.

“Davy’s quite eager”: Ibid., 141–42.

“Bill greeted me … ‘Have you ever known me’”: Ibid., 140–41.

17. THE LONG-EXPECTED SEQUEL

“This charming house has become uninhabitable”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 165.

“endless labour”: Ibid., 167.

“the ‘infernal combustion’ engine”: Ibid., 77.

“billowing cloud”: Ibid., 165.

“almost a world wide mental disease”: Ibid., 88.

“enlarge the scene”: J.R.R. Tolkien, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,”
Monsters and the Critics
, 83.

“the original metre”: Ibid., 74.

“a different metre is a different mode”: T. S. Eliot, “What Dante Means to Me,” in
To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965), 129.

“constructions that are … an idiom that is”: Roger Sale, “Wonderful to Relate,”
The Times Literary Supplement
3861 (March 12, 1976): 289.

“style and diction”: Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 932.

“linguistic shock … dislike exaggeration”: J.R.R. Tolkien, travel diary (
Giornale d’Italia
), quoted in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 465. Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library. All excerpts from the travel diary come from Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 463–74, and
Reader’s Guide
, vol. 2, 434–36.

“I remain in love”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 223.

“elvishly lovely”: Tolkien, travel diary, quoted in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 466.

“an exile … the cursed disease”: Ibid., 464.

“tremendous babel of bells … the great choir”: Ibid., 469–72.

“it is much paler … ochre, brick-red”: Ibid., 464–70.

411–12
“much moved … it has nothing”: Ibid., 466.

“impossible to disentangle”: Ibid., 466.

“
The Lord of the Rings
is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 172.

“This book is like lightning … here are beauties”: Lewis, “The Gods Return to Earth,”
Time and Tide
(August 14, 1954): 1082.

“works like a coral insect”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 1579.

Victorians likened missionaries to coral insects: See Michelle Elleray, “Little Builders: Coral Insects, Missionary Culture, and the Victorian Child,”
Victorian Literature and Culture
39, no. 1 (March 2011): 223–38.

“I met a lot of things”: Tolkien, letter to W. H. Auden (June 7, 1955),
Letters
, 216.

“Make return of ring a motive … not very dangerous”: Tolkien,
Return of the Shadow,
41–42.

“at once native and alien”: Tolkien’s words in a letter to the novelist and poet Naomi Mitchison (sister of the biologist J.B.S. Haldane, the sometime nemesis of Lewis) on December 8, 1955, Tolkien,
Letters
, 229.

“detestable”: Draft letter to “Mr. Rang” (Gunnar Urang, who later published
Shadows of Heaven: Religion and Fantasy in the Writing of C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien
), dated by Tolkien August 1967, in
Letters,
380.

Istari (“wise ones”): Tolkien explained their origins in a 1954 addendum, “The Istari,” included by Christopher Tolkien in J.R.R. Tolkien,
Unfinished Tales of N
ú
menor and Middle-earth,
ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), 371–84, and in drafts for an early 1956 letter to Michael Straight, editor of
The New Republic
(see Tolkien,
Letters
, 237).

“his joy, and his swift wrath”: Tolkien,
Unfinished Tales of N
ú
menor and Middle-earth
, 390–91.

Sam’s real name … Shire place-names: See the detailed account of languages and nomenclature in
The Lord of the Rings
, Appendix F, “The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age.” Tolkien also discusses nomenclature in his draft letter to Gunnar Urang (Tolkien,
Letters
, 379–87). Worried that foreign language editions of
The Lord of the Rings
would overlook such nuances, Tolkien eventually produced a document on “Nomenclature of
The Lord of the Rings
,” specifying which names should be kept as is, and which were intended to have an intelligible meaning that should be conveyed by translation (for “Bracegirdle,” Tolkien suggests
G
ü
rtelspanner
in German). For a critical edition of this document, see Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull,
The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 750–82.

the
Ancrene Wisse
, a sanctuary for Anglo-Saxon: J.R.R. Tolkien, “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Mei
ð
had,”
Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association
14 (1929): 106. See Shippey,
Road to Middle-earth
, 41, and Tolkien’s 1965 letter to Dick Plotz, Tolkien,
Letters
, 360.

“an unobtrusive but very ancient people”: Tolkien,
Lord of the Rings
, bk. 1, prologue, 1–2.

“more or less a Warwickshire village”: Letter to Allen & Unwin, December 12, 1955, Tolkien,
Letters
, 230.

“in spite of all its obvious absurdities”: C. S. Lewis,
That Hideous Strength
, 86.

“It would be a grievous blow”: Tolkien,
Lord of the Rings
, bk. 1, chap. 2, 49.

“eleventy-first”: The formation “eleventy” echoes the Old English
hund endleofantig.

leaving Frodo to distribute the gifts: See Tolkien,
Letters
, 290–91, on Hobbit gift-giving.

“does not grow”: Tolkien,
Lord of the Rings
, bk. 1, chap. 2, 47.

“des Ringes Herr”: Richard Wagner,
Der Ring des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold
, scene 4, Alberich’s curse.

“What a pity”: Tolkien,
Lord of the Rings
, bk. 1, chap. 2, 59.

“the privates and my batmen”: “My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” Letter to James Henry Cotton Minchin (April 16, 1956), currently in private ownership: a scanned image of this letter is reproduced as Lot Number 226 on the Sotheby’s website, where it is listed as having sold for $31,250 on June 11, 2013:
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/manuscripts-n09066/lot.226.html
(accessed August 22, 2014). A portion of Tolkien’s draft of this letter—but not this passage—appears in Tolkien,
Letters
, 247–48. Minchin was a major in the service of the Cameronians and Royal Flying Corps who fought in World War I; he edited
The Legion Book
(1929), featuring wartime writing and illustrations by Rudyard Kipling, Stanley Spencer, and others. Humphrey Carpenter quotes this passage as “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.” Carpenter,
Tolkien
, 81.

“from deadly peril”: Tolkien,
Lord of the Rings
, bk. 1, chap. 5, 104.

sailing without coordinates: Tom Shippey quotes a letter he received from Tolkien in 1970 in which Tolkien stresses the difference between
The Lord of the Rings
as it took shape in the composition and the appearance of design in the finished product. Shippey,
Road to Middle-earth
, preface to the rev. and exp. ed., xviii.

“that Frodo has to be dug out”: Shippey,
Road to Middle-earth
, 104.

“the Fall of Man”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 387.

“order of Grace”: Ibid., 172.

undermines the hero paradigm: See W. H. Auden, “The Hero Is a Hobbit,”
The New York Times Book Review
, October 31, 1954; and Verlyn Flieger, “Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero,” in
Understanding
The Lord of the Rings
: The Best of Tolkien Criticism
, ed. Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 122–45.