"The History of The Lord of the Rings": 2020 Discussion Group

[Extollager]

I've been thinking about why I'm interested in this history of the writing of The Lord of the Rings where I wouldn't be very interested in a comparable history, if it were possible, of other favorite books.

Maybe one factor is that LotR, as it was published at last, changes. It really is a children's book and a sequel to The Hobbit at first, and that's all the more true of the early drafts that Christopher Tolkien is dealing with in the first 200 pages (or more -- I haven't read the whole Return of the Shadow). There was no Chapter 2 "Shadow of the Past" with Gandalf's exposition of the history of the Ring, his words about Sauron, etc. But, though even in its published form it starts as a children's book, LotR becomes a great romance. It's interesting to see how that development proceeded intermittently as Tolkien wrote.

Another factor is that LotR is a book, whatever else it may be, about walking, so in reading the earlier drafts, one revisits imaginary terrain, as if one were talking again a favorite walk, hike, or walking tour. This affords a satisfaction that one wouldn't have if, having read a novel about office politics etc. (Iris Murdoch's A Word Child?), one were to read early drafts of the same novel.

And one gets close to Tolkien. One gets some sense of his commitment to this literary creation that he seems often more to be learning about than inventing.

 

[Hugh]

I'm up to page 50, so here are some comments.

Please note SPOILERS all over the place

pages 20 and 47: Gandalf is described as a "little old man" and as a "small man". I hadn't realised that the original Hobbit had Gandalf as "a little old man"

page 28: "Bingo Baggins" was named after The "Bingos", the family of toy koala bears belonging to the Tolkien children. This may indicate that the idea at that time was still pretty much to entertain the Tolkien children, much like the Hobbit.

page 41: it seems that very early on the story might have been about dragons
Bilbo: "No one can escape quite unscathed from dragons".
and "I want to look again on a live dragon".
Page 42: "Bilbo goes to Elrond to cure dragon-longing...... The dragon-longing comes on Bingo. Also ring-lure".
I'm sure it would have been a really good story about the dragon/s. I'd love to have read it. But it's interesting how the ring began to take centre-stage.

page 47: amazing to read that the original sniffing rider encountered on the road ("The figure uncovered its nose and sniffed; and then sat silent as if listening") was none other than Gandalf, and how seamlessly this evolved into a Black Rider.

page 51: the fox. I've always loved this touch, but never really thought about it. It's always seemed completely natural. I like your reading of it @Extollager .

 

[Extollager]

Hugh, yes, Gandalf is the character who undergoes the greatest change when Tolkien brings us from the children's book world of The Hobbit to the world of Lord of the Rings, isn't he?

That got me wondering about Ransom in C. S. Lewis's cosmic trilogy. He is introduced, of course, in Out of the Silent Planet (finished by 2 Sept. 1937, published 1938), in which book, at the end, Oyarsa says that fearfulness has been his primary weakness, but being sent out into space again to return to Earth will cure him, if he survives (I'm approximating). Ransom is more heroic in Perelandra -- still a middle-aged philologist who has to nerve himself to fight Weston, or rather the body of Weston as animated by the devil. But in the third and final book, That Hideous Strength, Ransom is known as Mr. Fisher-King and has (because of his sojourn in the young planet Venus) become a regal, physically splendid (though wounded) figure. I can't find it now, but I remember that Dorothy L. Sayers had a remark about how she didn't care for this renovated Ransom.

Well, anyway, this looks like being another of those interesting parallels in the Inklings, because just as Ransom is much changed throughout the Lewis cosmic trilogy, Gandalf is much changed in LotR. We'll have to wait to see just what light the History of Middle-earth can shed on this momentous development. But for now it's interesting to see that, so far in the writing of the "New Hobbit" book, Tolkien appears to have no notion of changing Gandalf from the crusty old wizard we are well acquainted with. Thinking about this has prompted me to reflect on the changed Gandalf of Two Towers and Return of the King and to say I'm not sure I'm completely comfortable with him. It's not that anything is spoiled, but his change into a sword-wielding horseman possessing a kind of mystical insight into distant events... hmm. For my money, offhand I'd say the changed Ransom is more convincing. But should we save that discussion for when we get to the writing of Towers?

But the thing might be worth mentioning here as relating to the great years of the Inklings. Lewis's That Hideous Strength was nearing completion by December 1942. I wonder a little if Lewis was influenced in his conception of Fisher-King by Tolkien's changing Gandalf -- or if Tolkien was influenced by Lewis. It will be interesting to find out when it was that Tolkien was writing about the renovated Gandalf -- if the date can be ascertained. In the meantime, I think it must be the case that the two friends were writing of the changes in these two characters at pretty close to the same time.

 

[Extollager]

Hugh, about the fox --

He seems perfectly at home in the world of a Hobbit sequel. But as "the new Hobbit" becomes The Lord of the Rings, we cease to have animals that think and feel (=anthropopathic) like humans.

When we're reading LotR and caught up in the narrative, we don't notice this. We do have the black spying birds that the Fellowship see when they emerge from Moria (and for that matter the Thing in the Pool at the gate of Moria seems to be an animal of some kind, though animated by evil intention -- I will probably have more to say about it when we get there). For that matter, Caradhras the mountain seems like it may be "animated."

But once the Fellowship are well away from Moria this element is over for a long time. We don't have anthropopathic animals or topographic features. (The Ents seem to me a different matter, but maybe others would see strong continuity.) This is an aspect of the change in LotR from its beginning as "the new Hobbit," a book for children, to a more adult book.

And, I admit it, for a long time I haven't been 100% comfortable with the return to the Hobbit-milieu that is involved in the Eagles suddenly arriving, in The Return of the King, to rescue Frodo and Sam -- aquilae ex machina. I'd say about 95% comfortable but not all the way there.

If we stick with The History of Middle-earth and go on to some of the late writings from after publication of LotR, we'll see Tolkien wrestling with such after-the-fact issues.

 

[Extollager]

NB For purposes of this thread, I'd think it is OK to refer to The Lord of the Rings as finally published in any place where the discussion justifies it, but probably as a rule not to leap ahead in The History of Middle-earth. But nobody should feel too restricted by that rule of thumb.

 

[Hugh]

I think part of what makes the LOTR work so well for me is this "evolution" in the writing as it progresses - from homely shire and crusty wizard and talking foxes to epic confrontations of heroes and wizards and good and evil. No amount of re-writing could erase these shifts. If it had been one or the other (homely or epic) throughout, I might not have liked it as much.

You make very interesting points on the interplay of the Inklings: images of intense beer-fuelled discussions and both Ransom and Gandalf emerging transformed out of clouds of pipe smoke.

 

[Extollager]

Here are some further notes on The Return of the Shadow, picking up around page 59, where we find Tolkien definitely linking this book he's writing -- the "new Hobbit" as it was known among the Inklings -- with the vast, almost utterly-unpublished,* "Silmarillion" legendarium. For here Tolkien has a song to Elbereth who dwells in the Farthest West.

It may be that, when many sf and fantasy readers first read The Fellowship of the Ring, they supposed there was little more to "Elbereth" than there was in Lovecraft's stories when there were references to the "plateau of Leng," the "abominable Mi-Go," the Unaussprechlichen Kulten, and so on; i.e. these were perhaps impressive-sounding "references" to things that had no substance. You could call them elements of a Potemkin mythology such as Lord Dunsany reeled off. If so -- how little they knew!

*But not quite. On page 180, Christopher Tolkien refers to verses published all the way back as long ago as 1925 in the Leeds University Gryphon.

 

[Extollager]

71/ "a prime mark of my father's writing" -- an "event" is "given" but its "bearing and significance would afterwards be enormously enlarged"

This reminded me of Tolkien's fellow Inkling writing about how stories might "begin with a picture," e.g. the image of floating islands preceding the full development of Perelandra.

72/ "The geography of the Shire was taking more substantial shape" -- with reference to what CJRT writes here, perhaps cf. "cartographic romance":

Cartographic Romance - Fancyclopedia 3

fancyclopedia.org

74-75/ key concepts for the eventual development of the crisis of LotR -- and (p. 75) the term "the Lord of the Rings" appears. It's interesting that Tolkien eventually gave this epithet of his satanic villain as the name of the entire novel. This made me think about other romances in which the villain supplies the title, such as Haggard's She (=She Who Must be Obeyed), that romance being one of the very few works whose influence upon his writing Tolkien recognized and acknowledged. For reasons I will go into more later, I expect, I wonder if, around the time Tolkien was beginning to write LotR, he got himself in the mood by (re)reading Haggard. Clearly "the new Hobbit" could not be written in the manner of "The Silmarillion."

For Tolkien scholars, the 18th issue of the fanzine Niekas may be the single most important magazine -- fan-produced or professional -- of all, for it prints a long interview with Tolkien. Scroll to page 40. "Amyntas" should be "Amenartas."

eFanzines.com - Niekas

efanzines.com

What about other tales whose titles refer to the villain? Well, obviously, Dracula, and there's Benson's Lord of the World, which I suspect Tolkien read and which I think may be helped to inspire his conception of Saruman....

 

[Extollager]

79/ Gandalf speaks of Gollum as having "wormed his way in like a maggot in the heart of the hills"

Did Tolkien retain this word "maggot" in Fellowship? I thought that might be a bit awkward, if so, since Farmer Maggot is a good character, hospitable and (as we learn from Bombadil) wise. But this usage could be working with an ambiguity in the word "maggot," if, as I understand, it can mean both fly-larva and earthworm. It could be suggested that the former idea is what Gandalf has in mind in referring to Gollum, while "Farmer Maggot" is "Farmer Earthworm."

I'm going to chase a rabbit for a moment. Tolkien's brother, Hilary, was, I believe a farmer or market gardener with an orchard. Tolkien might have discussed agriculture with his young brother. But also, within the circle of the Inklings was Owen Barfield, an adherent of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, and it may be that Tolkien and Barfield (and others present) talked about organic farming, Steiner's biodynamic agriculture, etc. It might then be that Tolkien possessed a more positive notion of earthworms than the typical Oxford professor. Certainly Tolkien's thought seems at times to have affinities with the ideas of agricultural reformers such as the 4th Lord Northbourne (Tolkien's contemporary) and the Kentucky essayist Wendell Berry. Anyone interested in Tolkien and agriculture, ecology, etc. should read Dickerson and Evans's Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien, a really fine, and inspiring, book. I don't want to overstate this, but I think that informing Tolkien's imagination is not only philology but some thinking and deep feeling about farming and nature.

From a 22 June 1930 letter of C. S. Lewis to his friend Arthur Greeves:

“Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when the family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.”

 

[Extollager]

90/ brambles

My Oxford Etymological Dictionary says bramble = blackberry bush.

Brambles in England -- photos from Web.

A personal note: It was my good fortune to grow up in southern Oregon where the Himalaya blackberry is a familiar, and sometimes unwelcome, sight, e.g. along railroad tracks, in alleys, etc. At its best the fruit is truly delicious. Here in North Dakota I'm able to grow black raspberry brambles, and I'm fond of them and they sometimes make me think of Tolkien's Middle-earth. This sequence of the hobbits' journey east, still within the boundaries of the Shire, gets them into some difficulties with natural obstruction such as brambles, and I think this might have been a pretty common childhood experience not so many years ago. But I'm not sure very many youngsters find themselves now having to go out of their way to avoid brambles, or having to step aside so as not to be pricked by stinging nettles. I don't recall running into the latter till I moved to North Dakota over 30 years ago. Getting scratched by a stinging nettle is an interesting experience. You feel -- ouch -- you've been scratched all right. And then the irritant in the nettle really takes hold for a moment and wow!

Well, those are some remarks up to page 100.

Any further comments on anything in the first hundred pages of The Return of the Shadow?

 

[Hugh]

I continued to page 109 in order to include the notes on earlier pages.

There doesn't seem much that I've noted that is different to yourself Extollager, so for the most part I won't repeat your thoughts.

Like you, I was particularly interested in the comment on page 71:
"a prime mark of my father's writing" -- an "event" is "given" but its "bearing and significance would afterwards be enormously enlarged"

Page 73 Bingo: "I suppose some tiny touch of dragon-curse came to me. I am gold-lazy"
Again this leaves me with a tremendous longing for a follow-up to the Hobbit that includes dragons.

Overall I'm very struck by just how much of these early versions has gone straight into the published edition of the LOTR. I found this surprising/impressive.

And Page 81: the crucial importance of Bilbo having made the conscious decision not to kill Gollum is already present.

Page 108: I see re the criticisms from Rayner Unwin and C.S.Lewis that there is too much hobbit-talk, Tolkien wrote: The trouble is that 'hobbit talk' amuses me privately (and to a certain degree also my boy Christopher more than adventures; but I must curb this severely."
Clearly still early days even though parts of the bigger picture are dawning.

One point of interest from the Niekas fanzine for me (thank you for linking it) was Tolkien's total denial of any influence from Charles Williams. He may well have stated this view elsewhere too because I've certainly read it before. Like many others, I'd argue that point. Williams had a remarkable ability to enthrall his audience and transport them to new insights and perceptions, and it is hard not to imagine him having a very significant input to the Inkling discussions not just through his own natural loquaciousness but through his influence on both the Lewis brothers.
I note pages 123-126 of "The Inklings" quotes a lengthy affectionate poem describing Williams written by Tolkien sometime during WWII.
Also the Williams biography page 309 has "When Williams joined the group.......Tolkien....had reached the Council of Elrond, at which Frodo volunteers to become the ringbearer".
Now I know Tolkien was said to be pretty much impervious to criticism or suggestion from the Inklings, but I think it likely that the intense Inkling discussions provided some kind of unconscious backdrop to his creative processes as he pushed on through successive drafts. I don't want to read too much into it, but the LOTR is very different after the Council of Elrond and there may be some effect in all that of the arrival of Charles Williams, cigarette smoke and all.

 

[Extollager]

Hugh, I suppose there isn't a lot we can do about it but speculate, but, yes, I think there may be some generally unrecognized "influence" passing between Tolkien and Charles Williams. If I were going to pursue this (and maybe I will later), I might start with Saruman and Simon -- the villain of Williams's All Hallows' Eve. First, before I got too involved with an inquiry, I'd be interested in seeing if it's true that Tolkien was working on The Tow Towers around the time Williams was working on what turned out to be his final novel. Saruman and Simon are two sinister magicians. Second, I'd perhaps reread, after about 15 years, R. H. Benson's novel Lord of the World. That could be a common influence on both Inklings. Then third (in this unlikely, orderly proceeding) I'd look to see if there are parallels with Saruman and Simon -- which there are bound to be given that they're both bad magicians, right?

Maybe we can take up some of this stuff this summer.

But, as for this idea that Tolkien was impervious to criticism -- I too am a skeptic about that. I don't suppose Tolkien was simply lying. But I think he might have been personally uneasy about asking himself if he was influenced by modern literature; he couldn't afford to second-guess himself because that could impair his creativity. I'm more sure that he wanted people to read his work for what it was, whatever influences it might have drawn upon. And he's right that premature "source-hunting" is undesirable. but after one has come to know and love the work that's been given to the world, then consideration of the tradition(s) out of which it comes -- which is much of what we mean by "influence" -- can enhance our enjoyment and appreciation; though the author has the right to preserve every bit as much of his or her privacy as the author wishes.

 

[Extollager]

Frustration: I can't find my marked printout of The Lord of the World.

[A few minutes later: Found it.]

Would anyone be interested in reading this eschatological novel by a convert from Anglicanism to Romanism? I think it is fairly likely Tolkien would have read it. When I read it first, 15 years ago, I thought Felsenburgh resembled Saruman a bit. I think he may also resemble Simon in Williams's All Hallows' Eve, which might also be a good book to (re)read in connection with the present exploration of Tolkien's creative and social milieux.

Both books are available online:

Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson

Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.

www.gutenberg.org

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400061.txt

 

[Extollager]

When I next post on The Return of the Shadow, I think I'll comment up through p. 229, which brings us to the end of what Christopher Tolkien designates as "the First Phase" of his father's writing of LotR.

 

[Hugh]

Hugh, I suppose there isn't a lot we can do about it but speculate, but, yes, I think there may be some generally unrecognized "influence" passing between Tolkien and Charles Williams. If I were going to pursue this (and maybe I will later), I might start with Saruman and Simon -- the villain of Williams's All Hallows' Eve. First, before I got too involved with an inquiry, I'd be interested in seeing if it's true that Tolkien was working on The Tow Towers around the time Williams was working on what turned out to be his final novel. Saruman and Simon are two sinister magicians. Second, I'd perhaps reread, after about 15 years, R. H. Benson's novel Lord of the World. That could be a common influence on both Inklings. Then third (in this unlikely, orderly proceeding) I'd look to see if there are parallels with Saruman and Simon -- which there are bound to be given that they're both bad magicians, right?

Your knowledge on these matters never ceases to amaze me.

 

[Extollager]

Thanks for the compliment -- but I'm speculating here. For example, so far as I know there's no certainty that CSL, JRRT, or CW read the Benson novel. But it's been fun for years to try to track down their reading -- what's sure, and what's not unlikely. In that connection -- has anyone here read Rider Haggard's Heart of the World?

 

[Extollager]

Continuing comments on The First Phase as described in The Return of the Shadow, up through page 229.

109/Christopher Tolkien (CJRT) states that -- this early in the writing of The Lord of the Rings -- his father stopped for about six months (1938).

Among other things, it would be interesting to know what was going on with the Inklings at this time.

Charles Williams's life is far less documented than those of Tolkien and Lewis. (However, I know a CW scholar -- ask me, if you have any questions about CW, and perhaps I can ask him.)

Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond have a meticulous accounting of Tolkien's life in their Chronology volume of their Companion and Guide to JRRT. Anyone interested in such things will want to consult their book.

What's less well-known is that Joel D. Heck has compiled a comparable reference tool on C. S. Lewis and posted it for free.

Chronologically Lewis

The world’s best source of information on C. S. Lewis. Easily searchable, updated several times each year, over 1000 pages of details of Lewis' life.

www.joelheck.com

I had the whole thing printed out in Dec. 2017 and then stapled the sheets together (using a heavy-duty stapler). It came to seven volumes!

This item might be of interest as regards Lewis's books:

My Cheat Sheet of C.S. Lewis’ Writing Schedule - A Pilgrim in Narnia

For those who study authors of the past, you will soon discover that the publication lists and bibliography of an author are not always terribly helpful. After all, writing, editing, and publishing a book are stages that can each take years. Knowing something is published in 1822 or 1946 tells...

apilgriminnarnia.com

 

[Extollager]

Glancing at Joel Heck's chronology of Lewis, for 1938 I found such things as these:

1.Lewis is lecturing on "Milton and the Epic Tradition." Thus his imagination would be alive with cosmic scale, high themes, heroic war, etc.
2.On 28 March he writes to Owen Barfield with praise of the latter's verse-play Orpheus. This has been published. I have read it once & thought it good, but it's overdue for a second reading. Lewis tells Barfield that he has written to Tolkien -- about a walking tour, I think.
3.CSL writes to John Masefield, who has read Lewis's excellent verse tale The Queen of Drum. It deserves to be far better known, for its own sake as intriguing fantasy and also, btw, because it provides importance evidence with regard to the topic of Lewis and women.
4.On 4 August Lewis read The Queen of Drum at the Oxford Summer Diversions. During the Summer Diversions, Tolkien recited most of Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale.
5.23 September: publication of Out of the Silent Planet.
6.In October, Lewis begins his Prolegomena to Medieval Literature lectures. Ultimately this led to his wonderful late book The Discarded Image. This was also the time of Lewis's notable essay Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?, which might be compared in some ways (but not in all, certainly) to Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, in that both are responses to critical attitudes that the author doesn't affirm.
7.In December, Lewis wrote to Roger Lancelyn Green about H. G. Wells, A Voyage to Arcturus, Stapledon, etc. These all, as I recall, come into the early discussions in The Notion Club Papers, which Tolkien will work on in a few years.

 

[Extollager]

112/ Tolkien's idea of the two Barrow-wights that creep after the hobbits but stop every time Bombadil turns and looks at them is creepy.

127/ About here we might recall Tolkien's letter to Stanley Unwin of 13 Oct. 1938, in which Tolkien expressly acknowledges that the "new Hobbit" book, as it had been called, would be more adult than the earlier book.

137/ Trotter appears. It will take Tolkien quite a while to figure not to use this hobbit with wooden shoes. Trotter's departure from the story is one of the key moments committing Tolkien to something altogether more dark, and more ambitious, than the earlier book.

152/ The Ringwraith tells the Butterbur character to tell Bolger-Baggins that "we are seeking him in haste." Why would the Ringwraiths do that? Tolkien wisely dropped this.

162/ Tolkien didn't foresee the attack on the hobbits at Bree.

I've written a paper that was published in the Tolkien Society's journal Mallorn some years ago, speculating that the attack at Bree is indebted to Rider Haggard's romance Heart of the World. I'm going to post a lot of that essay here. How well the essay will prove to have held up, perhaps we'll see.

 

[Extollager]

I begin the extended excerpts from my 2008 essay "Haggard and Tolkien: Further Indications of Indebtedness." This is now (c) 2020 by Dale Nelson.

Another New World adventure by Haggard, Heart of the World (1895), may have influenced critical elements of Tolkien’s plotting of the story of The Lord of the Rings.

Let’s pause to recollect that the evidence of his comments and manuscripts is that Tolkien did not set out to write the “new Hobbit” story with a plot outline at hand or even a strong desire to write another hobbit adventure. His publisher did not want to follow The Hobbit with some version of the Silmarillion materials; Unwin wanted a sequel. I would argue that this situation put Tolkien under pressure that was bound to nudge him towards the conscious or, more likely, unconscious use of elements of adventure fiction that he liked.

Readers of Christopher Tolkien’s presentation of his father’s drafts have marked what a protracted effort was necessary before Tolkien resolved who “Trotter” was. For a long time, this mysterious stranger, encountered by Frodo and his companions at Bree, was a hobbit who wore wooden shoes. Tolkien tried stubbornly to make this conception “work,” but could not remain content with it. It took him over a year (summer 1938-autumn 1939) to arrive at the conception, instead, of Strider. Christina Scull’s essay “What Did He Know and When Did He Know It?” Planning, Inspiration, and The Lord of the Rings” traces the phases of Tolkien’s struggle. (The paper is printed in The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder. Ed. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006. See 101-112 [especially pp. 105-107].)

The Strider-Aragorn plot is truly fundamental to the narrative of The Lord of the Rings as we have it. Who would have guessed, reading LOTR in 1954-1955 when the book was first published, that this plot was not a part of the story from the time Tolkien began to write? The weather-beaten Ranger is actually Aragorn -- the heir of the sword that was broken and the hidden true king of the now-declining realm of Gondor; he is the king whose triumph gives the third volume, The Return of the King, its title! Having at some time read Rider Haggard’s Heart of the World may have helped Tolkien to drop the wooden-shoed Trotter and develop this much more promising cluster of ideas. I shall have to discuss the Haggard romance at some length.