306 From a letter to Michael Tolkien

[At the top, Tolkien has written: 'Found among my scattered papers. Not sent or finished for reasons now forgotten. JRRT. 11/Oct/68.' But the letter was eventually sent to Michael Tolkien. It was begun at 76 Sandfield Road (Tolkien noted) 'sometime after Aug. 25,1967' and was finished at 19 Lakeside Road, the new house, whose postal address was Poole, Dorset, but which was in effect in a suburb of Bournemouth.]

I am.... delighted that you have made the acquaintance of Switzerland, and of the very part that I once knew best and which had the deepest effect on me. The hobbit's (Bilbo's) journey from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains, including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods, is based on my adventures in 1911¹²⁰: the annus mirabilis of sunshine in which there was virtually no rain between April and the end of October, except on the eve and morning of George V's coronation. (Adfuit Omen!)¹²¹¹

Our wanderings mainly on foot in a party of 12 are not now clear in sequence, but leave many vivid pictures as clear as yesterday (that is as clear as an old man's remoter memories become). We went on foot carrying great packs practically all the way from Interlaken, mainly by mountain paths, to Lauterbrunnen and so to Mürren and eventually to the head of the Lauterbrunnenthal in a wilderness of morains. We slept rough – the men-folk – often in hayloft or cowbyre, since we were walking by map and avoided roads and never booked, and after a meagre breakfast fed ourselves in the open: cooking utensils and quantities of 'spridvin' (as the one uneducated French-speaking member of the party both called and wrote it, for 'methylated spirit'). We must then have gone eastward over the two Scheidegge to Grindelwald, with Eiger and Mönch on our right, and eventually reached Meiringen. I left the view of Jungfrau with deep regret: eternal snow, etched as it seemed against eternal sunshine, and the Silberhorn sharp against dark blue: the Silvertine (Celebdil) of my dreams. We later crossed the Grimsell Pass down on to the dusty highway, beside the Rhone, on which horse 'diligences' still plied: but not for us. We reached Brig on foot, a mere memory of noise : then a network of trams that screeched on their rails for it seemed at least 20 hrs of the day. After a night of that we climbed up some thousands of feet to a village at the foot of the Aletsch glacier, and there spent some nights in a châlet inn under a roof and in beds (or rather under them: the bett being a shapeless bag under which you snuggled). I can remember several incidents there! One was going to confession in Latin; others less exemplary were the invention of a method of dealing with your friends the harvestmen spiders, by dropping hot wax from a candle onto their fat bodies (this was not approved of by the servants); also the practice of the beaver-game which had always fascinated me. A wonderful place for the game, plenty of water at that altitude coming down in rills, abundant damming material in loose stones, heather, grass and mud. We soon had a beautiful little 'pond' (containing I guess at least 200 gallons). Then the pangs of hunger smote us, and one of the hobbits of the party (he is still alive) shouted 'lunch' and wrecked the dam with his alpenstock. The water soared down the hill-side, and we then observed that we had dammed a rill that ran down to feed the tanks and butts behind the inn. At that moment an old dame trotted out with a bucket to fetch some water, and was greeted by a mass of foaming water. She dropped the bucket and fled calling on the saints. We lay more doggo than 'men of the moss-hags' for some time, and eventually wound our way round to present ourselves grubby (but we were usually so on that trip) and sweetly innocent at 'lunch'. One day we went on a long march with guides up the Aletsch glacier – when I came near to perishing. We had guides, but either the effects of the hot summer were beyond their experience, or they did not much care, or we were late in starting. Any way at noon we were strung out in file along a narrow track with a snow-slope on the right going up to the horizon, and on the left a plunge down into a ravine. The summer of that year had melted away much snow, and stones and boulders were exposed that (I suppose) were normally covered. The heat of the day continued the melting and we were alarmed to see many of them starting to roll down the slope at gathering speed: anything from the size of oranges to large footballs, and a few much larger. They were whizzing across our path and plunging into the ravine. 'Hard pounding,' ladies and gentlemen. They started slowly, and then usually held a straight line of descent, but the path was rough and one had also to keep an eye on one's feet. I remember the member of the party just in front of me (an elderly schoolmistress) gave a sudden squeak and jumped forward as a large lump of rock shot between us. About a foot at most before my unmanly knees. After this we went on into Valais, and my memories are less clear; though I remember our arrival, bedraggled, one evening in Zermatt and the lorgnette stares of the French bourgeoises dames. We climbed with guides up to [a] high hut of the Alpine Club, roped (or I should have fallen into a snow-crevasse), and I remember the dazzling whiteness of the tumbled snow-desert between us and the black horn of the Matterhom some miles away.

I do not suppose all this is very interesting now. But it was a remarkable experience for me at 19, after a poor boy's childhood. I went up to Oxford that autumn. ....

'Trends' in the Church are .... serious, especially to those accustomed to find in it a solace and a 'pax' in times of temporal trouble, and not just another arena of strife and change. But imagine the experience of those born (as I) between the Golden and the Diamond Jubilee of Victoria. Both senses or imaginations of security have been progressively stripped away from us. Now we find ourselves nakedly confronting the will of God, as concerns ourselves and our position in Time (Vide Gandalf I 70 and III 155). 'Back to normal' – political and Christian predicaments – as a Catholic professor once said to me, when I bemoaned the collapse of all my world that began just after I achieved 21.1 know quite well that, to you as to me, the Church which once felt like a refuge, now often feels like a trap. There is nowhere else to go! (I wonder if this desperate feeling, the last state of loyalty hanging on, was not, even more often than is actually recorded in the Gospels, felt by Our Lord's followers in His earthly life-time?) I think there is nothing to do but to pray, for the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and for ourselves; and meanwhile to exercise the virtue of loyalty, which indeed only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it. There are, of course, various elements in the present situation, which are confused, though in fact distinct (as indeed in the behaviour of modern youth, pan of which is inspired by admirable motives such as anti-regimentation, and anti-drabness, a sort of lurking romantic longing for 'cavaliers', and is not necessarily allied to the drugs or the cults of fainéance and filth). The 'protestant' search backwards for 'simplicity' and directness – which, of course, though it contains some good or at least intelligible motives, is mistaken and indeed vain. Because 'primitive Christianity' is now and in spite of all 'research' will ever remain largely unknown; because 'primitiveness' is no guarantee of value, and is and was in great part a reflection of ignorance. Grave abuses were as much an element in Christian 'liturgical' behaviour from the beginning as now. (St Paul's strictures on eucharistic behaviour are sufficient to show this!) Still more because 'my church' was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history – the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the 'mustard-seed' and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is pan of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree. Very good: but in husbandry the authorities, the keepers of the Tree, must look after it, according to such wisdom as they possess, prune it, remove cankers, rid it of parasites, and so forth. (With trepidation, knowing how little their knowledge of growth is!) But they will certainly do harm, if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth of the plant when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unafflicted by evils. The other motive (now so confused with the primitivist one, even in the mind of any one of the reformers): aggiornamento: bringing up to date: that has its own grave dangers, as has been apparent throughout history. With this 'ecumenicalness' has also become confused.

I find myself in sympathy with those developments that are strictly 'ecumenical', that is concerned with other groups or churches that call themselves (and often truly are) 'Christian'. We have prayed endlessly for Christian re-union, but it is difficult to see, if one reflects, how that could possibly begin to come about except as it has, with all its inevitable minor absurdities. An increase in 'charity' is an enormous gain. As Christians those faithful to the Vicar of Christ must put aside the resentments that as mere humans they feel – e.g. at the 'cockiness' of our new friends (esp. C[hurch] of E[ngland]). One is now often patted on the back, as a representative of a church that has seen the error of its ways, abandoned its arrogance and hauteur, and its separatism; but I have not yet met a 'protestant' who shows or expresses any realization of the reasons in this country for our attitude : ancient or modern : from torture and expropriation down to 'Robinson' and all that. Has it ever been mentioned that R[oman] C[atholic]s still suffer from disabilities not even applicable to Jews? As a man whose childhood was darkened by persecution, I find this hard. But charity must cover a multitude of sins! There are dangers (of course), but a Church militant cannot afford to shut up all its soldiers in a fortress. It had as bad effects on the Maginot Line.

I owe a great deal (and perhaps even the Church a little) to being treated, surprisingly for the time, in a more rational way. Fr Francis obtained permission for me to retain my scholarship at K[ing] E[dward's] S[chool] and continue there, and so I had the advantage of a (then) first rate school and that of a 'good Catholic home' – 'in excelsis': virtually a junior inmate of the Oratory house, which contained many learned fathers (largely 'converts'). Observance of religion was strict. Hilary and I were supposed to, and usually did, serve Mass before getting on our bikes to go to school in New Street. So I grew up in a two-front state, symbolizable by the Oratorian Italian pronunciation of Latin, and the strictly 'philological' pronunciation at that time introduced into our Cambridge dominated school. I was even allowed to attend the Headmaster's classes on the N[ew] T[estament] (in Greek). I certainly took no 'harm', and was better equipped ultimately to make my way in a non-Catholic professional society. I became a close friend of the H[ead] M[aster] and his son, and also made the acquaintance of the Wiseman family through my friendship with Christopher Luke W. (after whom my Christopher is named). His father was one of the most delightful Christian men I have met: the great Frederick Luke W. (whom Fr Francis always referred to as The Pope of Wesley, because he was the President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference). ....

Oct. 1968.

A part of this letter seems to have got lost in the general confusion of my papers during the move. My bedroom-study at 76 was full of papers and half written works — which I knew where to lay my hand. I ran down-stairs on the afternoon of June 17 and fell. I was picked off the floor of the hall and transported to the Nuffield [Orthopaedic Centre] as I was and never went back again – never saw my room, or my house, again. In addition to the shock of the fall and the operation, this has had a queer effect. It is like reading a story and coming to a sudden break (where a chapter or two seems missing): complete change of scene. For a long time I felt that I was in a (bad) dream and should wake up perhaps and find myself back in my old room. It also made me feel restless & uncomfortable – and 'suspicious'. I could not mentally settle in the new home, as if it was something unreal & might vanish! Also I am still – since no one seems able to help me, and I have been too lamed to help myself for long without weariness – searching for vanished or scattered notes; and my library is still a wilderness of disordered books. ....

My 'poetry' has received little praise – comment even by some admirers being as often as not contemptuous (I refer to reviews by self-styled literary blokes). Perhaps largely because in the contemporary atmosphere — in which 'poetry' must only reflect one's personal agonies of mind or soul, and exterior things are only valued by one's own 'reactions' – it seems hardly ever recognised that the verses in The L.R. are all dramatic: they do not express the poor old professor's soul-searchings, but are fitted in style and contents to the characters in the story that sing or recite them, and to the situations in it. ....

I have only since I retired learned that I was a successful professor. I had no idea that my lectures had such an effect – and, if I had, they might have been better. My 'friends' among dons were chiefly pleased to tell me that I spoke too fast and might have been interesting if I could be heard. True often: due in part to having too much to say in too little time, in larger part to diffidence, which such comments increased.

I never gave the customary 'inaugural' when taking up either of my 'chairs' — because I was too frightened of a don-audience. I substituted a 'valedictory' in 1959: and to my surprise it was packed out. But the University press refused to publish it (though they always publish inaugurals) because it was not an 'inaugural'! Yet many people wrote approving my choice. Julian Huxley said it was an excellent innovation that should be followed. ('Inaugurals' are largely addressed to small audiences, casually assembled (but probably containing some professional ill-wishers who favoured some other candidate), and are either dull, or off the point, or occasionally pompous announcements of changes of policy and what the new professor intends to do.)