234 To Jane Neave

[Tolkien had sent his aunt some of the poems he was considering for inclusion in the new book.]

22 November 1961

76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

My dearest Aunt,

Thank you for returning the poems. Do not worry about giving me trouble. I have enjoyed myself very much digging out these old half-forgotten things and rubbing them up. All the more because there are other and duller things that I ought to have been doing. At any rate they have had you as an audience. Printed publication is, I fear, very unlikely.

Never mind about the young! I am not interested in the 'child' as such, modern or otherwise, and certainly have no intention of meeting him/her half way, or a quarter of the way. It is a mistaken thing to do anyway, either useless (when applied to the stupid) or pernicious (when inflicted on the gifted). I have only once made the mistake of trying to do it, to my lasting regret, and (I am glad to say) with the disapproval of intelligent children: in the earlier part of The Hobbit. But I had not then given any serious thought to the matter: I had not freed myself from the contemporary delusions about 'fairy-stories' and children.

I had to think about it, however, before I gave an 'Andrew Lang' lecture at St Andrews on Fairy-stories; and I must say I think the result was entirely beneficial to The Lord of the Rings, which was a practical demonstration of the views that I expressed. It was not written 'for children', or for any kind of person in particular, but for itself. (If any parts or elements in it appear 'childish', it is because I am childish, and like that kind of thing myself now.) I believe children do read it or listen to it eagerly, even quite young ones, and I am very pleased to hear it, though they must fail to understand most of it, and it is in any case stuffed with words that they are unlikely to understand – if by that one means 'recognize as something already known'. I hope it increases their vocabularies.

As for plenilune and argent, they are beautiful words before they are understood – I wish I could have the pleasure of meeting them for the first time again! — and how is one to know them till one does meet them? And surely the first meeting should be in a living context, and not in a dictionary, like dried flowers in a hortus siccus!

Children are not a class or kind, they are a heterogeneous collection of immature persons, varying, as persons do, in their reach, and in their ability to extend it when stimulated. As soon as you limit your vocabulary to what you suppose to be within their reach, you in fact simply cut off the gifted ones from the chance of extending it.

And the meaning of fine words cannot be made 'obvious', for it is not obvious to any one: least of all to adults, who have stopped listening to the sound because they think they know the meaning. They think argent 'means' silver. But it does not. It and silver have a reference to x or chem. Ag, but in each x is clothed in a totally different phonetic incarnation : x+y or x+z ; and these do not have the same meaning, not only because they sound different and so arouse different responses, but also because they are not in fact used when talking about Ag. in the same way. It is better, I think, at any rate to begin with, to hear 'argent' as a sound only (z without x) in a poetic context, than to think 'it only means silver'. There is some chance then that you may like it for itself, and later learn to appreciate the heraldic overtones it has, in addition to its own peculiar sound, which 'silver' has not.

I think that this writing down, flattening, Bible-in-basic-English attitude is responsible for the fact that so many older children and younger people have little respect and no love for words, and very limited vocabularies – and alas! little desire left (even when they had the gift which has been stultified) to refine or enlarge them.

I am sorry about The Pied Piper. I loathe it. God help the children ! I would as soon give them crude and vulgar plastic toys. Which of course they will play with, to the ruin of their taste. Terrible presage of the most vulgar elements in Disney. But you cannot say that 'it never fails'. You do not really know what is happening, even in the few cases that have come under your observation. It failed with me, even as a child, when I could not yet distinguish the shallow vulgarity of Browning from the general grown-uppishness of things that I was expected to like. The trouble is one does not really know what is going on, even when a child listens with attention, even when it laughs. Children have one thing (only) in common : a lack of experience and if not of discrimination at least of the language in which to express their perceptions; they are still usually acquiescent (outwardly) in their acceptance of the food presented to them by adults. Though they may mentally or actually throw the stuff over the garden wall, and say demurely how much they have enjoyed it. As my children did (they confess) with their suppers in the garden in summer, giving their parents the permanent delusion that they loved jam-sandwiches. I was of course given Hans Andersen when quite young. At one time I listened with attention which may have looked like rapture to his stories when read to me. I read them myself often. Actually I disliked him intensely; and the vividness of that distaste is the chief thing that I carried down the years in connexion with his name.

Surely I am 'childish' enough, and that ought to be enough for real children or any one 'childish' in the same sort of way, and never mind if the old chap knows a lot of jolly words. I send you a little piece of nonsense that I wrote only the other day, as evidence of my childishness. Though I have alas! picked up enough grown-up jargon to write in imitation of my elders; and I might say 'it is a neatly constructed trifle, an amusing attempt to penetrate the elf-childishness of an elf-child, if any such thing existed!' Excuse type. My scrawly hand won't last out a long letter. Don't bother about the 'opinions'. In fact I write as I do, ill or well, because I cannot write otherwise. If it pleases anybody, large or small, I am as much surprised as delighted. God bless you. Very much love.

R.