The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (97 page)

“‘I do not choose now”: Tolkien,
The Lord of the Rings
, book 6, chapter 3, 945.

“I do not think … motives and disposition”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 326–27. From drafts of a letter to Eileen Elgar, who resided in the Hotel Miramar, where Tolkien and Edith stayed in Bournemouth. She was deaf, and Tolkien communicated with her mainly by letters. He began composing the letter in September 1963; a significantly altered final version was postmarked October 3, 1963, according to Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 608.

“But I cannot do”: Tolkien,
Sauron Defeated
, 38.

“All my choices have proved ill”: Frodo speaking to Sam in
The Lord of the Rings
, bk. 4, chap. 1, 604; here Frodo, at the beginning of book 4, echoes Aragorn (“all that I do goes amiss”) at the beginning of book 3 (
The Lord of the Rings
, bk. 3, chap. 1, 413). See also Aragorn in book 3, chapter 2, 426.

ofermod
: Tolkien’s interpretation of
ofermod
in the poem “The Battle of Maldon” is contested by Tom Shippey, among other scholars of Old English. See Richard C. West, “T
ú
rin’s
Ofermod
: An Old English Theme in the Development of the Story of T
ú
rin” in
Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on
The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 2000), 233–45.

“I will diminish”: Tolkien,
Lord of the Rings
, bk 2, chap. 7, 366.

“good news”: C. S. Lewis, “The Gods Return to Earth,”
Time and Tide
(August 14, 1954): 1082.

“All this stuff”: Tolkien
, Letters,
145.

“Our Lady”: Ibid., 172.

“a great deal better”: Letter to Rayner Unwin, September 9, 1954, in ibid., 184.

more harm than good: See Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 385.

“I should not have wished other”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 184.

“If Ariosto rivalled it”: C. S. Lewis, dust-jacket endorsement,
Fellowship of the Ring.

“On the jacket Ariosto … whimsical drivel”: J. W. Lambert, “New Fiction,”
The Sunday Times
(London) 6851 (August 8, 1954): 3.

“sound prose” … anti-Soviet allegory: Alfred Leo Duggan, “Heroic Endeavour,”
The Times Literary Supplement
2743 (August 27, 1954): 541.

the allegory didn’t gel: Alfred Leo Duggan, “The Saga of Middle Earth” (review of
The Return of the King
),
The Times Literary Supplement
2804 (November 25, 1955): 704; Alfred Leo Duggan, “Middle Earth Verse” (review of
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
, discussed in relation to
The Lord of the Rings
),
The Times Literary Supplement
3169 (November 23, 1962): 892.

“a bewildering amalgam”: Peter Green, “Outward Bound by Air to an Inappropriate Ending,”
The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post
(August 27, 1954).

423–24
“I must say that I was unfortunate”: Tolkien
, Letters,
184.

“buffoonery … it seems almost as though he has added something”: A. E. Cherryman, “Myth-maker,”
Truth
(August 6, 1954): 988.

“alternating between”: Edwin Muir, “Strange Epic,”
The Observer
(August 22, 1954); “A Boy’s World,”
The Observer
(November 27, 1955).

“no fiction I have read”: Auden, “Hero Is a Hobbit,” 37.

“the suspense of waiting”: W. H. Auden, “A World Imaginary, but Real,”
Encounter
(November 1954): 59–62.

“some critics seem determined”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 244.

“rarely remember a book”: W. H. Auden, “At the End of the Quest, Victory,”
The New York Times Book Review
(January 22, 1956): 226. Tolkien,
Letters
, 239.

“Oo, Those Awful Orcs!… certain people”: Edmund Wilson, “Oo, Those Awful Orcs!”
The Nation
(April 14, 1956): 312–14. Reprinted with some changes in Edmund Wilson,
The Bit Between My Teeth
:
A Literary Chronicle of 1950–1965
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965), 327–32.

“There was a time”: Philip Toynbee, “Dissension Among the Judges,”
The Observer
(August 8, 1961).

“The only criticism that annoyed”: Letter to Houghton Mifflin, Tolkien
, Letters
, 220.

“I think the book quite unsuitable”: Tolkien
, Letters
, 228.

“both J and I warned him”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 235.

“My brother and I”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 54.

“extremely well-written”: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,”
The New York Times
(March 17, 1954): 29.

“conscientious scholar”: Albert Guerard, “At the Top Was the King,”
The New York Times Book Review
(August 15, 1954): 10.

“The O HELL”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 221–22.

“Platonism, Douglas, Lyndsay”: From a progress report from Lewis, conveyed by Frank Percy Wilson to the Delegates of Oxford University Press, quoted by Walter Hooper in Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 235–36.

“ploughing through back numbers”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 44–45.

“Joy, joy, my task is done”: Letter of November 28, 1952, quoted in Hooper,
C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide
, 480.

“Mr. Lewis, now as always”: John Wain, “Pleasure, Controversy, Scholarship,”
The Spectator
193, no. 6588 (October 1, 1954): 403.

“dear and delectable”: Ruth Pitter, journal entry quoted in King,
Letters of Ruth Pitter
, 292.

“The merits of this book”: Dame Helen Gardner, “†Clive Staples Lewis, 1898–1963,” in
Proceedings of the British Academy
51 (1966): 426.

“the Jewish fierceness”: C. S. Lewis, foreword to Joy Davidman,
Smoke on the Mountain
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 9.

“perhaps Miss Pitter’s”: Theresa Furse, “The Mortal Lot,”
The Times Literary Supplement
2690 (August 21, 1953): 537.

“Bright Angel!”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 327.

“Welcome to what”: Ibid., 389.

did not hit it off: Things did not improve after Lewis and Joy were married. Pitter’s biographer, Don King, has found indications in a document among Pitter’s restricted papers in the Bodleian Library that Pitter came to the conclusion (though possibly only in retrospect) that Davidman “used her illness … to manipulate Lewis into marrying her and caring for her two sons.” King,
Hunting the Unicorn
, 306, note 7. Further evidence of Pitter’s resentment may be found in the oral history interview conducted by Lyle W. Dorsett for the Marion E. Wade Center, July 23, 1985.

“if he were not a confirmed bachelor … ‘I’ve burnt my boats’”: Sayer,
Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis
, 348.

“The one miss”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 635.

“Jack should have married”: King,
Hunting the Unicorn
, 197

“if he was mistrustful”: King,
Letters of Ruth Pitter
, 418.

“fortunately, the ‘second string’ declined”: Helen Gardner, “†Clive Staples Lewis,” 427–28.

“fixed up a kind of farewell … a pretty big disappointment”: Blaxland–de Lange
, Owen Barfield
, 38–39.

“a literary oddity … at times”:
The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse
, selected with an introduction and notes by Kenneth Allott (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1950), 71–72.

“I can see no reason … a subject worth attention”: F. R. Leavis,
Common Pursuit
, 250–53.

“in many ways … as a substitute”: Robert Conquest, “The Art of the Enemy,” in
Essays in Criticism
7 (1957): 42–55.

“absorbing after we have got”: T. S. Eliot, “The Significance of Charles Williams,”
The Listener
(December 19, 1946): 894.

a laudatory booklet: John Heath-Stubbs,
Charles Williams
(London: Longmans, Green, 1955), 7.

18. THE DIALECTIC OF DESIRE

“There may be times”: Owen Barfield,
Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1957), 11.

“Somehow,” Barfield recalled, “around that [phrase]”: Quoted in
Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning,
video transcript prepared and edited by G. B. Tennyson with the assistance of George Michos (Encino, Calif.: OwenArts, 1985), 9.

“When I ‘hear a thrush singing’”: Barfield,
Saving the Appearances
, 20.

“It can do no harm … we should then have to write”: Ibid., 37.

“goodness of heart”: Ibid., 161.

“full (of course) of sap … V. good”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 724–30.

“stunner”: Ibid., 853.

“very high opinion”: Barfield Papers, Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 1056, letter from T. S. Eliot to Barfield, March 25, 1960.

“highly”: Letter, Owen Barfield to Valerie Eliot, April 23, 1976, Barfield Papers, Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 1055.

“I am feeling as flat”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 217.

“[My] chief biographical fact”: Ibid., 257.

“
fea
thery … Why must I”: Ibid., 305–307.

“a bit uncompromising … not attracted by”: Rayner Unwin, letter to Tolkien, December 31, 1957, quoted in in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 518.

“orc-cults”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 419. See J.R.R. Tolkien, “The New Shadow,” in J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Peoples of Middle Earth
(
The History of Middle-earth
, vol. 12), ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 409–18.

“sinister and depressing … not worth doing”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 344.

“sometimes the less specific complaints … As his retirement”: Rayner Unwin,
George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrancer
, 116–17.

“the glint of money”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 257.

“Why does Z”: Ibid., 274.

“On Sept. 24 I was involved”: Early English Text Society Archive, quoted in Scull and Hammond,
J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
, 533.

“a massive metal ‘model’”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 261.

“maggot-soup … remarkable”: Ibid., 265. “Maggot-soup” meant nothing more alarming than mushroom soup,
à
la Farmer Maggot. A copy of the menu, signed by Tolkien, is listed under auction at Christie’s, Sale 5138, Lot 365:
www.christies.com/lotfinder/books-manuscripts/811olkien-john-ronald-reuel-a-hobbit-dinne-4930908-details.aspx?from
=
searchresults&intObjectID
=
4930908&sid
=
6cdfcb56-ba08-4431-92c8-889100840e00
(accessed August 20, 2014).

“great delight … a legitimate satisfaction”: Tolkien,
Letters
, 264.

“difficult collaborator”: Anthony Kenny,
A Path from Rome: An Autobiography
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985), 117.

“Yesterday I went up to Cambridge”: Davidman,
Out of My Bone
, 226.

“greatly exaggerated … continuity-in-mutability”: C. S. Lewis, “
De Descriptione Temporum,
” in Lewis,
Selected Literary Essays
, 2.

“somewhere between us and the”: Ibid., 7.

“not the slightest agreement”: Ibid., 9.

445–46
“trump card … the very milestones”: Ibid., 10–11.

“I myself belong … There are not going to be”: Ibid., 13–14.

“it was brilliant”: Davidman,
Out of My Bone
, 228.

“mere episodes”: Herbert Butterfield,
The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800
(London: G. Bell, 1949), vii.

“as clever as they make ’em”: E. M. Forster, “Some Books” (February 3, 1943), in
The BBC Talks of E. M. Forster 1929–1960: A Selected Edition
, ed. Mary Lago, Linda K. Hughes, and Elizabeth MacLeod Walls (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 223.

“obscurantism”: E. M. Forster, “A Letter,”
Twentieth Century
157 (February 1955): 99–100; reprinted as a leaflet
I Assert that there is an Alternative in Humanism
(London: Ethical Union, 1955).

“the silliest of the lot”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 578.

“high-minded old twaddlers”: Ibid., 589.

against the humanist idolatry of culture: C. S. Lewis, “Lilies That Fester,”
Twentieth Century
157 (April 1955), reprinted in
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), 31–49.

shy and insecure … a comfortable daily round: See reminiscence by Richard W. Ladborough, “In Cambridge,” in Como,
C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
, 98–104.

“wild idea of Leavis … Is it just possible”: C. S. Lewis Papers, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Let. C. 220/4. Cited in Green and Hooper,
C. S. Lewis: A Biography
, 289.

“hearing Paxford … it is not Cambridge”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 244.

“A complete flop”: Charles Wrong, “A Chance Meeting,” in Como,
C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
, 109.

“far and away the best … my one big failure”: Letter to Anne Scott, Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 1181; this echoes Lewis’s words in an earlier letter to Herbert Palmer,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 891, and Audrey Sutherland,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 1148.

“worked at it”: C. S. Lewis, introduction to the first British edition of
Till We Have Faces
, quoted in Hooper,
C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide
, 243.