276 To Dick Plotz, 'Thain' of the Tolkien Society of America

12 September 1965

76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

To the T. S. A. First Communiqué from
the Member for Longbottom.

Dear Mr Plotz,

I have been away in Ireland, and have just received your letter (amid a mountain of mail) on my return. I am much interested to hear of the formation of the 'Tolkien Society', and very grateful for the compliment. I do not, however, see how I can become a 'member' of a society inspired by liking for my works and devoted (I suppose) to study and criticism of them, as at least pan of their activities.

I should, however, be pleased to be associated with you in some informal capacity. I should, for instance, be willing to offer any advice that you wished to seek, or provide information not yet in print – always with the proviso (especially with regard to 'information') that the plea: Engaged on the matter of the Eldar and of Númenor: would be accepted without offence as an adequate excuse for an inadequate answer to enquiries. ....

As for the 'Silmarillion' and its appendages; that is written, but it is in a confused state owing to alteration and enlargement at different dates (including 'writing back' to confirm the links between it and The L. of the Rings). It lacks a thread on which its diversity can be strung. It also presents in a more acute form than even the difficulties that I found in The L. of the R.: the need to acquaint an audience with an unknown mythology without reference to the tales; and to relate a number of long legends dependent on the mythology without holding them up with explanatory digressions. I had hoped by now to be deep in the work necessary to presenting a part of the matter in publishable form..... I think I shall issue it in parts. The first pan may, given still the health and vigour, reach the press next year.

There is also a large amount of matter that is not strictly pan of the Silmarillion: cosmogony and matter concerning the Valar; and later matter concerning Númenor, and the War in Middle-earth (fall of Eregion and death of Celebrimbor, and the history of Celeborn and Galadriel). As for Numenor, the tale of the Akallabêth or Downfall is fully written. The rest of its internal history is only in Annal form, and will probably remain so, except for one long Nukraft-s.rumenokraft-s.rurean tale: The Mariner's Wife: now nearly complete, concerning the story of Aldarion (the 6th Kmg: L.R. III 315, 316) and his tragic relations with his father and his wife. This is supposed to have been preserved in the Downfall, when most of Númenórean lore was lost except that that dealt with the First Age, because it tells how Númenor became involved in the politics of Middle-eanh.

I quite understand the amusement to be got in such a society out of special names for members associated with the story, and of course I see that things are still undecided. But if I might make a suggestion at this stage, I should say that I think it is a mistake to give names of characters (or offices) in the story. Personally I should have liked the society's title to be 'The Shire Society', with perhaps T.S.A. as an explanatory subtitle. But even without any change of title, I think it would be more appropriate and amusing to give members the title of 'Member for Some-place-in-the Shire', or in Bree. Would it not be a good thing to limit the number of persons entitled to a special name in some suitable way: as being earliest members, or later as being those who clearly continue to get some interest or amusement out of membership? There are only about 30 suitable place names in the small section of the Shire printed, but there are more in my map, and if a proper map of the whole Shire were drawn up there could be quite a large number of places entered. The names already entered, even those that seem unlikely (as Nobottle), are in fact devised according to the style, origins, and mode of formation of English (especially Midland) place-names. I should be delighted to construct new names on the same principles as desired and to find them places on the maps of Bree and the Shire. Personally, as an inveterate pipe smoker be happy to accept the title of Member for Longbottom; or if you should wish to accord me mayoral dignity (for which even on Hobbit-scales my years make me just about ripe) the Member for Michel Delving. ....

Núminor. C. S. Lewis was one of the only three persons who have so far read all or a considerable pan of my 'mythology' of the First and Second Ages, which had already been in the main lines constructed before we met. He had the peculiarity that he liked to be read to. All that he knew of my 'matter' was what his capacious but not infallible memory retained from my reading to him as sole audience. His spelling numinor is a hearing error, aided, no doubt, by his association of the name with Latin nūmen, nūmina, and the adjective 'numinous'. Unfortunate, since the name has no such connexions, and has no reference to 'divinity' or sense of its presence. It is a construction from the Eldarin base √NDU 'below, down; descend'; Q. núme 'going down, occident'; númen 'the direction or region of the sunset' +nóre 'land' as an inhabited area. I have often used Westernesse as a translation. This is derived from rare Middle English Westernesse (known to me only in MS. C of King Horn) where the meaning is vague, but may be taken to mean 'Western lands' as distinct from the East inhabited by the Paynim and Saracens. Lewis took no pan in 'research into Númenor'. N. is my personal alteration of the Atlantis myth and/or tradition, and accommodation of it to my general mythology. Of all the mythical or 'archetypal' images this is the one most deeply seated in my imagination, and for many years I had a recurrent Atlantis dream : the stupendous and ineluctable wave advancing from the Sea or over the land, sometimes dark, sometimes green and sunlit.

Lewis was, I think, impressed by 'the Silmarillion and all that', and certainly retained some vague memories of it and of its names in mind. For instance, since he had heard it, before he composed or thought of Out of the Silent Planet, I imagine that Eldil is an echo of the Eldar; in Perelandra 'Tor and Tinidril'are certainly an echo, since Tuor and Idril, parents of Eärendil, are major characters in 'The Fall of Gondolin', the earliest written of the legends of the First Age. But his own mythology (incipient and never fully realized) was quite different. It was at any rate broken to bits before it became coherent by contact with C. S. Williams and his 'Arthurian' stuff – which happened between Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. A pity, I think. But then I was and remain wholly unsympathetic to Williams' mind.

I knew Charles Williams only as a friend of C.S.L. whom I met in his company when, owing to the War, he spent much of his time in Oxford. We liked one another and enjoyed talking (mostly in jest) but we had nothing to say to one another at deeper (or higher) levels. I doubt if he had read anything of mine then available; I had read or heard a good deal of his work, but found it wholly alien, and sometimes very distasteful, occasionally ridiculous. (This is perfectly true as a general statement, but is not intended as a criticism of Williams; rather it is an exhibition of my own limits of sympathy. And of course in so large a range of work I found lines, passages, scenes, and thoughts that I found striking.) I remained entirely unmoved. Lewis was bowled over.

But Lewis was a very impressionable man, and this was abetted by his great generosity and capacity for friendship. The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion. ....

I send you and the T.S.A. my best wishes. If I were not in an interim between secretaries (pan-time) for a few days, you might have received a briefer letter, more succinct and better typed. Yours sincerely, J. R. R. Tolkien.