The Realms of Tolkien
In 1954, when I was working in a university science faculty, Allen & Unwin published a Book. The effect upon the learned and respectable body of people who composed the faculty staff was extraordinary. Lecturers and other responsible people went about quoting it, drawing maps of its geography in enthusiastic detail; one head of a department used to leave messages for his colleagues in High Elven, and for his secretary in Grey Elven.
The Book was, of course, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, which was followed by the two companions that complete the three-volume work, The Lord of the Rings.
The publication of a book of this nature could be called an adventure, for though its predecessor, The Hobbit, had been a successful children’s book, no one could have seen quite such a wildly enthusiastic reception for what is, after all, the unusual and special product of a unique talent.
For those not fortunate enough to have encountered The Lord of the Rings, I should explain that it is extremely difficult to classify-if one has to classify a work of fiction. It is a combination of almost everything good you can think of in a story. It has high adventure, romance, fantasy, wonder, convincing people and dialogue, horror, humour, and a noble story of the struggle of good against evil. It concerns the alliance of the Hobbits, a little furry people, with Men descended from the Kings of Númenor and with Elves, against the powers of Evil sent forth by Sauron, the Dark Lord, from the Land of Mordor, and against the many servants who present themselves in amazingly varied and unpleasant guises. Each race in the book has its own language and customs; and we are given details of food, clothing, plant life, and terrain. Its addicts are many and generally incurable. After England, it overran America like wildfire; and since the paperback edition reached the U.S.A., hoardings and subway walls in various parts of the continent have been adorned with fervent exclamations of “Frodo lives!” “Gandalf is God,” and other expressions which show how strongly the Tolkien-fever has wrought.
I went to see Professor Tolkien in his house in Headington, Oxford, not long ago. The house is a pleasant one, dripping, at this time of year, with white roses and overhanging tree foliage. He had told me firmly that he was giving no more interviews, and then relented to add, “But I’ll make an exception for you, as you’re an old student of mine.” I think that others of his former students would remember many such acts of kindness. Such as, for instance, the failure of some minor examination, and the administration by him of glasses of sherry and the consoling words. “But, my dear girl, everybody fails that!”
He talks very quickly, striding up and down the converted garage which serves as his study, waving his pipe, making little jabs with it to mark important points; and now and them jamming it back in and talking around it. It is not always easy to hear him; and one dares not miss anything, for he has the habits of speech of the true storyteller, and seldom indulges in the phrase-ridden and repetitive ways most people use nowadays. Every sentence is important, lively, and striking—“deeply buried,” he says, “in the lunatic beliefs of children,” and “my heart is in my works, not on my sleeve.”
His first fictional work, The Hobbit, came into print almost by accident, after a friend who had read it in manuscript had recommended it lovingly to a friend of hers, who worked for Allen and Unwin.
It was, in fact, written after he had already begun to chronicle privately The Lord of the Rings, and the events referred to in that book as part of its historical background, the story of the Silmaril, and so on. More chronicles, he hopes, will come; but time poses an extremely difficult problem for him, and he is at present working on the revision of the next edition of The Lord of the Rings.
