235 From a letter to Mrs Pauline Gasch (Pauline Baynes)

[Pauline Baynes, who had illustrated Fanner Giles of Ham, had expressed herself willing to provide pictures for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and had been reading typescripts of the poems.]

6 December 1961

If I dare say so, the things sent to you (except the Sea-bell, the poorest, and not one that I shd. really wish to include, at least not with the others) were conceived as a series of very definite, clear and precise, pictures – fantastical, or nonsensical perhaps, but not dreamlike! And I thought of you, because you seem able to produce wonderful pictures with a touch of 'fantasy', but primarily bright and clear visions of things that one might really see. Of course what you say about 'illustrations' in general is very true, and I once (in a long essay on 'Fairy-Stories') ventured at greater length but no more precisely than you, to say much the same. But there is a case for illustration (or decoration!) applied to small things such as these verses, which are light-hearted, and (I think) dexterous in words, but not very profound in intention. I suppose one would also have to except 'The Hoard' from being 'light-heaned', though the woes of the successive (nameless) inheritors are seen merely as pictures in a tapestry of antiquity and do not deeply engage individual pity. I was most interested by your choice of this as your favourite. For it is the least fluid, being written in [a] mode rather resembling the oldest English verse — and was in fact inspired by a single line of ancient verse: iúmonna gold galdre bewunden, 'the gold of men of long ago enmeshed in enchantment' (Beowulf 3052). But I do appreciate that it is a tricky task! I hope you may feel inclined to attempt it. Alas! you put your finger unerringly on a main difficulty: they are not a unity from any point of view, but made at different times under varying inspiration. I have not much doubt, however, that you would avoid the Scylla of Blyton and the Charybdis of Rackham – though to go to wreck on the latter would be the less evil fate.