The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (86 page)

“We must be content to feel the highest truths ‘in our bones’”: A. C. Harwood, “About Anthroposophy,” in Como,
C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
, 26; letter dated October 28, 1926.

three sketches: Reproduced in “The ‘Great War’ Letters,” appendix to Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3: 1601–1603.

“words may be made to disgorge the past”: Owen Barfield,
History in English Words
(London: Methuen, 1926; rev. ed., London: Faber & Faber, 1962), 13.

“Sir John Cheke”: Ibid., 62.

“for the Romans themselves”: Ibid., 90.

“The scientists who discovered”: Ibid., 13.

“No one who understands”: Ibid., 135.

“new element”: Ibid., 125.

“Perhaps … it can best be expressed”: Ibid., 127–28.

“when our earliest ancestors”: Ibid., 85.

“there came”: Ibid., 140.

“self-consciousness”: Ibid., 165.

“a change”: Barfield,
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis
, 109–10.

when the human being achieved self-awareness: Jacob Burckhardt,
Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien: Ein Versuch
(1860; Vienna: E. A. Seemann, 1885), 143.

“perfect clearness”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 1498.

“learned, imaginative, moving”: Cyril Connolly, “Telling Words,”
The Sunday Times
(January 24, 1954): 5.

“not merely a theory of poetic diction”: Owen Barfield,
Poetic Diction
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), preface to 2nd ed., 14.

“They decided it wasn’t … whether Coleridge had”: Blaxland–de Lange,
Owen Barfield
, 28.

“in the infancy of society”: Barfield,
Poetic Diction
, 58.

“meant neither
breath
, nor
wind
”: Ibid., 81.

“a re-creating, registering as
thought
”: Ibid., 103.

“felt change”: Ibid., 48.

“in addition to the moment or moments of aesthetic pleasure … Now my normal everyday experience”: Ibid., 55.

“had a permanent effect”: Alan Bede Griffiths, O.S.B., “The Adventure of Faith,” in Como,
C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
, 13.

“Your conception of the ancient semantic unity”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 1509.

For Barfield’s influence on Tolkien, see Verlyn Flieger,
Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World
(Kent, Ohio, and London: The Kent State University Press, 2002) and
A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to
Fa
ë
rie (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997).

“there are no words left to describe his staggerment”: J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), chapter 12, “Inside Information,” 194.

“marvelously absurd … obviously unable to make anything”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 1, 761.

“careful and sensitive … minor poet”: Edmund Blunden, “Mechanisms of Poetry,”
The Times Literary Supplement
1372 (May 17, 1928): 375.

“I see no other way of studying the history of thought”: Arthur Waley,
The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao tê ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1934), 29–30.

“among the few poets and teachers of my acquaintance”: Howard Nemerov, foreword to Barfield,
Poetic Diction
, 1.

Lewis places the land of
Anthroposophia
next to that of
Occultia
: A. C. Harwood, “About Anthroposophy,” in Como,
C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
, 25.

“a reassuring German dullness”: Lewis,
Surprised by Joy
, 207.

“think responsibly and logically”: Blaxland–de Lange,
Owen Barfield
, 29.

6. A MYTHOLOGY FOR ENGLAND

“He is improving but requires hardening”: Quoted from the archives of the Public Record Office by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond,
The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 96.

“small woodland glade … In those days”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 420.

“if you do come out in print”: Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, quoted in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 96.

“become indeed the poet of my race”: James Joyce, letter of September 5, 1909, to Nora Barnacle, in
Selected Letters of James Joyce
, ed. Richard Ellman (London: Faber & Faber, 1975; reprint ed., 1992), 169. A good test of one’s artistic inclinations is to ask oneself whether Joyce or Tolkien better achieved this ambition.

“I was from early days grieved”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 144.

“polysyllabic barbarities”: Gerald Seaman, “France and French Culture,” in Drout,
J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia
, 219, quoting Carpenter,
Tolkien
, 40.

“too lavish … the known form of the primary ‘real’ world”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 144. Nonetheless, in the 1930s Tolkien attempted an Arthurian verse, only to abandon it soon after. The fragment appeared in J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Fall of Arthur
, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 2013).

“a new world … revel in an amazing”: Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 440.

“I am driven by my longing”:
Kalevala: The Land of Heroes
, translated from the original Finnish by W. F. Kirby, vol. 1 (London: J. M. Dent, 1907), 1.

“cool and clear … fair elusive beauty”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 144.

“as ‘given things’”: Carpenter,
Tolkien
, 92.

“
Nu we sculon herigean
” (“Now must we praise”): Caedmon’s Hymn, the West Saxon version appended to Bede’s Latin version in his
Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

“objectively real world”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 239.

“High School Exercise … One who dreams alone”: Tolkien, “The Cottage of Lost Play,”
The Book of Lost Tales
, part 1 (
The History of Middle-earth
, vol. 1), ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 13–14.

“broad and woody plain”: Tolkien, “Cottage of Lost Play,” 13.

“The Music of the Ainur … mighty melodies”: Tolkien, “The Music of the Ainur,”
The Book of Lost Tales
, part 1, 53.

The net effect: For Tolkien’s defense of his archaisms, see the draft letter of September 1955 to his longtime fan and correspondent Hugh Brogan,
Letters
, 225–26.

“facts seemed to run round”: From the obituary by sometime Inkling C. L. Wrenn, “Sir W. Craigie: Stimulus to Study of Germanic Languages,”
The Times
(September 9, 1957): 10.

words from “waggle” to “waggly”: It’s not difficult here to see glimmerings of later Tolkien inventions; his hobbits, for instance, wear waistcoats, use wains, live among wolds, venture into wilds (at least Bilbo and his relatives do); while it may be that any random list of English words will apply to hobbits, it is also true that throughout his life Tolkien obsessively recycled his work.

“learned more … than in any other”: Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 726.

“not only to read texts”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 406.

“natural niggler … I compose only with great difficulty”: Ibid., 257, 313, 113.

“the ordinary machinery of expression … exceptionally full treatment”: J.R.R. Tolkien, “Note,”
A Middle English Vocabulary Designed for Use with SISAM’S Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), 2.

“a mole-hill glossary … accumulated domestic distractions”: Letter to John Johnson, University Printer, quoted in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 588.

“curses on my head”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 11.

“a piece of work … exhaustive textual references”: Margaret L. Lee, “Middle English,” in
The Year’s Work in English Studies
, vol. 2, 1920–1921, edited for the English Association by Sir Sidney Lee and F. S. Boas (London: Oxford University Press, 1922), 42–43.

“terrible to recall”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 11.

“complete cycle of events in an Elfinesse … very graphically and astonishingly told”: Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 110.

“what Gondolin was”: John Garth, “Tolkien, Exeter College and the Great War,” in
Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings:
Sources of Inspiration
, ed. Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger (Zurich and Jena: Walking Tree Publishers, 2008), 53.

“Mrs. Tolkien … North Pole”: J.R.R. Tolkien,
Letters from Father Christmas
, ed. Baillie Tolkien, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 6.

“rotted the curtains … change his collar”: John and Priscilla Tolkien,
Tolkien Family Album
, 45.

“more like a man”: Lewis,
All My Road Before Me
, 240–41.

“It is not often in ‘universities,’”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 56–57.

“his name is a disadvantage”: George Stuart Gordon,
The Letters of George S. Gordon
,
1902–1942
(London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), 146.

“industrious little devil … my devoted friend”: Carpenter,
Tolkien
, 104–105.

Tolkien composed poems and songs for the revels: Douglas A. Anderson, “An Industrious Little Devil: E. V. Gordon as Friend and Collaborator with Tolkien,” in
Tolkien the Medievalist
, ed. Jane Chance (New York: Routledge, 2003), 23.

“not so much a staff as a Club!”: Mary C. Biggar Gordon,
The Life of George S. Gordon 1881–1942
(London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 67.

“team fired not only with a departmental esprit de corps”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 56–57.

“the proportion of ‘language’ students is very high”: Ibid., 11.

“provide the student”: J.R.R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925).

“clearness, conciseness”: Cyrill Brett, review of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
by J.R.R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon,
The Modern Language Review
22, no. 4 (October 1927): 451–58.

“standing by my bedside”: Carpenter,
Tolkien
, 106.

“I have never consulted him without gaining an illumination”: Scull and Hammond,
J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 1.

“there is no philological (or literary) scholar of his generation from whom I have learned so much”: Ibid., 349.

“for many years I have felt strongly”: Eug
è
ne Vinaver quoted in Peter H. Sutcliffe,
The Oxford University Press: An Informal History
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 270.

“wickedness and sloth … I regret those days bitterly”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 340.

“the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford”: Ibid., 26.

“a thousand whispering trees”: Tolkien, “Cottage of Lost Play,” 33.

“The Coming of the Valar”:
Book of Lost Tales
, part 1, 72–73.

“torture … murder”: In an indignant letter to the editor of
The Daily Telegraph
, responding to an article in which overgrown forests are described as places of “a kind of Tolkien gloom, where no bird sings.” Tolkien,
Letters
, 420. See Matthew Dickerson, “Trees,” in Drout,
J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia
, 678.

“a great-limbed poplar”: Tolkien, “Introductory Note,”
Tree and Leaf
, 5.

“a row of coloured Quink”: John and Priscilla Tolkien,
Tolkien Family Album
, 56–57.

his speech was often incomprehensible: The authors once heard the following anecdote from a close friend of Tolkien: “I was visiting him one day and asked him what he really thought of C. S. Lewis. He said, ‘I’ll tell you, but let’s go on a walk while I talk.’ So we walked for twenty or thirty minutes around North Oxford, and he spilled out his heart to me, or so I believed, telling me his real views on his close friend. But the truth is, I have no idea what he said. He was mumbling so much I couldn’t make out a word.”

“I do not remember a single word”: W. H. Auden, “Making, Knowing and Judging,” Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Poetry, Oxford, June 11, 1956, in
The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays
(London: Faber & Faber, 1963), 41–42.

“could turn a lecture room into a mead hall”: J.I.M. Stewart quoted in Philip Norman, “‘More Than a Campus Craze; It’s Like a Drug Dream; The Prevalence of Hobbits: Thirty Years After They Were Invented by a Bored Oxford Don, the Hobbits—‘a Benevolent, Furry-Footed People’—Have Taken a New Generation by Storm,”
The New York Times
, January 15, 1967.

earning one hundred pounds by grading exams: Tolkien,
Letters
, 24.

“the great indiarubber trunks”: J.R.R. Tolkien,
Roverandom
, ed. Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 59.

“the Mountains of Elvenhome”: Ibid., 74.

“poems and major legends”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 342.

“Tolkien’s ultimate tree”: Hammond and Scull,
J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator
, 64.

“I have exposed my heart to be shot at”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 172.

“a new starting-point”: Christopher Tolkien, “The Earliest ‘Silmarillion,’” in J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Shaping of Middle-Earth: The Quenta, the Ambarkanta, and the Annals, Together with the Earliest “Silmarillion” and the First Map
, vol. 4:
The History of Middle-earth
, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 11.