186 From a letter to Joanna de Bortadano (drafts)

[Not dated; April 1956]

Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for Domination). Nuclear physics can be used for that purpose. But they need not be. They need not be used at all. If there is any contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what seems to me the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false. The greatest examples of the action of the spirit and of reason are in abnegation. When you say A[tomic] P[ower] is 'here to stay' you remind me that Chesterton said that whenever he heard that, he knew that whatever it referred to would soon be replaced, and thought pitifully shabby and old-fashioned. So-called 'atomic' power is rather bigger than anything he was thinking of (I have heard it of trams, gas-light, steam-trains). But it surely is clear that there will have to be some 'abnegation' in its use, a deliberate refusal to do some of the things it is possible to do with it, or nothing will stay! However, that is simple stuff, a contemporary & possibly passing and ephemeral problem. I do not think that even Power or Domination is the real centre of my story. It provides the theme of a War, about something dark and threatening enough to seem at that time of supreme importance, but that is mainly 'a setting' for characters to show themselves. The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race 'doomed' to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race 'doomed' not to leave it, until its whole evil-aroused story is complete. But if you have now read Vol. III and the story of Aragorn, you will have perceived that. (This story is placed in an appendix, because I have told the whole tale more or less through 'hobbits'; and that is because another main point in the story for me is the remark of Elrond in Vol. I : 'Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.' Though equally important is Merry's remark (Vol. III p. 146): 'the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace, but for them.') I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Ore gets hold of a ring of power – and then we get and are getting slavery. But all that is rather 'after-thought'. The story is really a story of what happened in B.C. year X, and it just happened to people who were like that!....

I hope you have now 'come by' Vol. III! I am afraid I am always rather pleased when I hear of somebody being obliged to buy the book! An author cannot live on library-subscriptions.

I received a letter the other day from a well known, and certainly not impoverished, man, who informed me as a high compliment that he had become so enthralled that he got out the book several times, and paid heavy fines for keeping it out too long. Words failed me in reply. The L of the R cost some £4000 to produce to begin with, after it left my hands. Before that apart from any other labour I typed it out twice (in places several times). A professional would have charged about £200. There is a laborious practical side even to high Romance – not that hobbits ever forget that.