The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (89 page)

“Lo, there was a certain philosopher”: Owen Barfield, “C.S.L.: Biographia Theologica.” Owen Barfield Manuscripts, Marion E. Wade Center, OB / MS-6. Translation by John Zaleski.

“I don’t think I ever showed it”: Ibid., note on verso.

9. INKLINGS ASSEMBLE

“prove more lasting”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 387.

“unpublished compositions … immediate criticism”: Ibid., 388.

“undetermined and unelected”: Ibid., 388.

“philosophical discussion”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 1, 692.

“one of the pleasantest spots … Sometimes we talk”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 16.

“ridiculously combative”: Owen Barfield, foreword,
VII [Seven]:
An Anglo-American Literary Review
1 (March 1980): 9.

“Had I known”: Warren Lewis,
C. S. Lewis: A Biography
, unpublished draft, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, quoted in Colin Duriez,
C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Friendship
(Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2013), 134.

“red-brick universities”: Warren Lewis, “Memoir of C. S. Lewis,” 34.

“surprisingly successful”: Owen Barfield, “The Inklings Remembered,”
The World & I
5, no. 4 (April 1990): 549.

“quite unreal”: Lyle W. Dorsett, oral history interview with Dr. Robert E. Havard, July 26, 1984, in the Marion E. Wade Collection, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois (1986), 37.

“but better known” 
…
“a poet … intolerant”: J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Notion Club Papers,
in
Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age
(The History of
The Lord of the Rings,
Part Four)
;
The Notion Club Papers; and
The Drowning of Anadûnê
(
The History of Middle-earth
, vol. 9), ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 1992), 159.

He identified Ramer as “Self”: Christopher Tolkien’s commentary, Tolkien,
Notion Club Papers
, in
Sauron Defeated
, 150.

“not to look for their own faces”: Tolkien,
Notion Club Papers
, in
Sauron Defeated
, 149.

“read aloud … was highly approved”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 29.

“a feeling for literature”: David Cecil, “Oxford’s Magic Circle,”
Books and Bookmen
24, no. 4 (January 1979): 10, quoted by Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 429.

“There’s no sound I like better”: From a biographical sketch Lewis provided at the request of his American publisher, Macmillan; quoted and discussed by Alan Jacobs in the introduction to his Lewis biography: Alan Jacobs,
The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis
(New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), xviii–xix.

“In each of my friends”: C. S. Lewis,
The Four Loves
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960; reprint ed. (Orlando: Harcourt, 1991), 61–62.

a mutual interest in Thomas Aquinas: On Havard’s first meeting with Lewis, see Lyle W. Dorsett, oral history interview with Dr. Robert E. Havard, 17.

“Occasionally he would hold a note”: Jenifer Wayne,
The Purple Dress: Growing Up in the Thirties
(London: Gollancz, 1979), 65–66, quoted in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 1124.

“elegant yet at the same time spontaneously gauche … David and Rachel”: Rachel Trickett, “Cecil, Lord (Edward Christian) David Gascoyne- (1902–1986),” rev. ed.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Oct. 2006 online ed.,
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39801
(accessed July 17, 2014).

“the pleasure of poetry”: Adam Fox,
Poetry for Pleasure: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford, 2 November, 1938
(Oxford: Oxford University, 1938), 7, 13.

“were always made by the way”: Oral history interview with R. E. Havard, conducted by Lyle W. Dorsett for the Marion E. Wade Center, July 26, 1984, quoted in Colin Duriez,
Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
:
The Gift of Friendship
(Mahwah, N.J.: HiddenSpring, 2003), 83.

“The ritual of an Inklings … no rules”: Warren Lewis, “Memoir of C. S. Lewis,” 34. It is not entirely clear whether this description covers also the earliest Inklings meetings.

“the talk might turn … the cut and parry”: C. S. Lewis, preface,
Essays Presented to Charles Williams
(London, New York, Toronto: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1947), x–xi.

“sold his birthright”: Barfield, “Inklings Remembered,” 549.

“His whole manner”: Oral history interview with R. E. Havard, conducted by Lyle W. Dorsett for the Marion E. Wade Center, July 26, 1984, quoted in Duriez,
Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
, 83.

“We smoked”: Lewis, preface,
Essays Presented to Charles Williams
, v.

also read works in progress: Inklings scholar David Bratman has compiled an impressive list of “Published works known to have been read or heard by other Inklings prior to publication,” but it is not clear how many of these works were actually read aloud at Inklings meetings,
www.dianaglyer.com/scholarship/the-company-they-keep/supporting-bibliographic-material/
(accessed July 25, 2014). This and other supporting bibliographies were compiled by Bratman in connection with Diana Pavlac Glyer,
The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community
(Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2007).

“Since term began”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 96.

“only slightly taller”: The Tolkien children loved hearing about Snergs, and Michael set about creating Snerg stories of his own. In a letter to Auden, Tolkien says that
The Marvellous Land of Snergs
was “probably an unconscious source-book! For the Hobbits, not of anything else” (Tolkien,
Letters
, 215 footnote).

other creative and scholarly work: This would include translating
Beowulf
; preparing the 1936 Israel Gollancz lecture (“
Beowulf
: The Monsters and the Critics”); an alliterative verse retelling of the Norse lays of Sigurd the V
ö
lsung and the fall of the Niflungs (unfinished; but edited with extensive commentaries by Christopher Tolkien and published in 2009 as
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudr
ú
n
[London: HarperCollins, 2009]); an (unfinished)
Lay of Leithian
telling the story of Beren and L
ú
thien; the 1930
Quenta Silmarillion
; and
First Annals
.

John and Michael remembered: Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide
, 386.

“wrote it ages ago”: Christopher Tolkien, foreword to
The Hobbit
, 50th-anniversary ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), vi–vii.

“In a hole in the ground”: Tolkien’s account in a BBC interview, quoted in Douglas A. Anderson,
The Annotated Hobbit
, rev. and exp. ed. annotated by Douglas A. Anderson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 11. See also the June 7, 1955 letter to W. H. Auden, in which Tolkien relates the same story, in Tolkien,
Letters
, 215.

“Babbitt”: Tolkien’s suggestion in an interview: see Michael N. Stanton, “Hobbits,” in Drout,
J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia
, 280.

“rabbit”: Tom Shippey sees some merit in the “rabbit” connection: Shippey,
Road to Middle-earth
, 67–70; see Tolkien’s letters on this subject,
Letters
, 30, 406–407.

a single instance of “hobbit”: In Michael Aislable Denham,
The Denham Tracts
, Publications of the Folk-Lore Society 35 (London: D. Nutt, 1895). Discussed by Anderson,
Annotated Hobbit
, 9, and Marjorie Burns, “Tracking the Elusive Hobbit (in Its Pre-Shire Den),”
Tolkien Studies
4 (2007): 200–11. See John D. Rateliff,
The History of the Hobbit
, part 2, appendix 1, “The Denham Tracts” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2007), 841–54.

very little about Tolkien’s creative process: Shippey,
Road to Middle-earth
, 66–67.

“had been inside language”: C. S. Lewis, unsigned obituary for Tolkien (written far in advance of Tolkien’s death), “Professor J. R. R. Tolkien: Creator of Hobbits and inventor of a new mythology,”
The Times
(London), September 3, 1973.

Oxford English Dictionary
: Tolkien discusses the
OED
entry for Hobbit in his 1971 letter to Roger Lancelyn Green,
Letters
, 406–407. Hobbit (n.) first appeared in the
OED
in 1976, along with hobbitish (a.), hobbitomane (n.), and hobbitry (n.); so far no etymology is provided, but future updates are promised. As far as capitalization is concerned, Tolkien is not entirely consistent, but his rule of thumb seems to have been to capitalize words like Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, where the reference is to a race—to Mankind, and its analogues—but to use lowercase when it is a matter of referring to one or more individual members. See his December 1937 letter on this subject to Allen & Unwin: Tolkien,
Letters
, 28; we have generally followed this practice.

Several scholars have labored mightily: Since Humphrey Carpenter made the first attempt in his 1977 Tolkien biography, and Tom Shippey followed the trail in
The Road to Middle-earth
(which first appeared in 1982), the problem has been studied by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, by Douglas A. Anderson, who established the work’s publication history and created
The Annotated Hobbit
(1988; rev. and exp. ed., 2002), and by John D. Rateliff, who spent nearly twenty years piecing together the earliest draft from manuscripts at Marquette, producing a two-volume
History of the Hobbit
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), a project initiated by the Tolkien scholar Taum Santoski (before his death in 1991), modeled in part on Christopher Tolkien’s twelve-volume
History of Middle-earth.

Beorn: Either “man” or “warrior” in Old English but suggestive of
bjorn
for “bear” in Old Norse, and of Berserker legends.

Tolkien borrowed the names for the dwarves from the
Dvergatal
:

10. There was Motsognir | the mightiest made

Of all the dwarfs, | and Durin next;

Many a likeness | of men they made,

The dwarfs in the earth, | as Durin said.

11. Nyi and Nithi, | Northri and Suthri,

Austri and Vestri, | Althjof, Dvalin,

Nar and Nain, | Niping, Dain,

Bifur, Bofur, | Bombur, Nori,

An and Onar, | Ai, Mjothvitnir.

12. Vigg and Gandalf [
=
Magic Elf]
| Vindalf, Thrain,

Thekk and Thorin, | Thror, Vit and Lit,

Nyr and Nyrath,— | now have I told—

Regin and Rathsvith— | the list aright.

13. Fili, Kili, | Fundin, Nali,

Heptifili, | Hannar, Sviur,

Frar, Hornbori, | Fr
æ
g and Loni,

Aurvang, Jari, | Eikinskjaldi
[
=
Oak Shield]
.

From
The Poetic Edda
, trans. Henry Adams Bellows (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936). See Rateliff,
The History of the Hobbit
, part 2, appendix 3: “The
Dvergatal
(The Dwarf Names),” 866–71.

“a low philological jest … hole-dweller”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 31. A fanciful etymology would come later, as part of the work of retrofitting necessitated by the
Hobbit
“sequel,”
The Lord of the Rings
. Reasoning backward from “hobbit” in search of plausible archaic roots, Tolkien notes in the final appendix to
The Lord of the Rings
that the Shire-folk originally called themselves
kuduk
, a “worn-down form” of
k
û
d-d
û
kan
, which means “hole-dweller” in the tongue of Rohan; translating
k
û
d-d
û
kan
into (imaginary) Old English yields
holbytla
, from which “hobbit” would have evolved by a similar erosion, if the word had actually existed in our own language. Tolkien,
The Lord of the Rings
, appendix F, 1130, 1138. The necessarily speculative character of this etymology helps to create the effect Tom Shippey calls “asterisk reality” (
Road to Middle-earth
, 19–22). See also John William Houghton on “asterisk cosmogony,” in
Tolkien the Medievalist
, ed. Jane Chance, 171–82.

the very Smaug-like dragon: See Tolkien’s 1949 letter to Naomi Mitchison in which he says that he prefers F
á
fnir to the dragon in
Beowulf
, and that “Smaug and his conversation obviously is in debt there.” Tolkien,
Letters
, 134.

a battle of wits with a loquacious dragon: See
Á
rmann Jakobsson, “Talk to the Dragon: Tolkien as Translator,”
Tolkien Studies
6 (2009): 27–39.

“more praiseworthy than the professionals”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 215.

“from fairy-tale to the noble and high”: Ibid., 159.

“And what would you do”: Tolkien,
Hobbit
, 8. See letter (draft) to Walter Allen,
New Statesman
, April 1959, Tolkien,
Letters
, 297.

Mirkwood (Old Norse
Myrkvi
ð
r
): William Morris anglicized
Myrkvi
ð
r
into “Mirkwood” in his 1899 prose and verse fantasy,
A Tale of the House of the Wolflings and All the Kindreds of the Mark
.