332 To Michael Tolkien

[Merton College, of which Tolkien had been a Fellow from 1945 to 1959, had offered him accommodation now that his home in Poole was being given up.]

24 January 1972

West Hanney

Dearest Mick,

.... I think the news will comfort and please you. By an act of great generosity – in spite of great internal difficulties – Merton has now provided [me] with a very excellent flat, which will probably accommodate the bulk of my surviving 'library'. But wholly unexpected 'strings' are attached to this! (1) The rent will be 'merely nominal' — which means what it implies: something extremely small in comparison with actual market-value; (2) All or any furniture required will be provided free by the college – and a large Wilton carpet has already been assigned to me, covering the whole floor of a sitting room having nearly the same floor-space as our big s[itting]-r[oom] at 19 Lakeside Road (it is a little shorter and a little broader). (3) Since 21 M[erton] St. is legally pan of the college, domestic service is provided free: in the shape of a resident care-taker and his wife as housekeeper: (4) I am entitled to free lunch and dinner throughout the year when in residence: both of a very high standard. This represents – allowing 9 weeks absence – an actual emolument of between £750 and £900 a year from which the claws of the I. Taxgatherers have so far been driven off. (5) The college will provide free of rent two telephones: (a) for local calls, and calls to extensions, which ire free, and (b) for long distance calls, which will have a private number and be paid by me. This will have the advantage that business and private calls to family and friends will not pass through the overworked lodge; but it will have the one snag that it will have to appear in the Telephone book, and cannot be ex-directory. But I had already found in Poole that the disadvantages of an ex-directory number (which are considerable) really outweigh its protection. If it proves a nuisance I shall have a telephone answerer installed, that can be switched on at need. (6) No rates, and gas and electricity bills at a reduced scale; (7) The use of 2 beautiful common-rooms (at a distance of 100 yards) with free writing paper, free newspapers, and mid-morning coffee. It all sounds too good to be true – and of course it all depends on my health : for it has, quite justly and rightly, been pointed out to me that it is only my apparent good health and mobility for my age that makes this arrangement possible. I do not myself feel very secure on this point since my illness in October (in which in a week or so I lost over a stone), that did not really lose its head until after Christmas. But the feeling of insecurity is possibly (and I hope) due mainly to the maiming effect of the bereavement we have suffered. I do not feel quite 'real' or whole, and in a sense there is no one to talk to. (You share this, of course, especially in the matter of letters.) Since I came of age, and our 3 years separation was ended, we had shared all joys and griefs, and all opinions (in agreement or otherwise), so that I still often find myself thinking 'I must tell E. about this' – and then suddenly I feel like a castaway left on a barren island under a heedless sky after the loss of a great ship. I remember trying to tell Marjorie Incledon this feeling, when I was not yet thirteen after the death of my mother (Nov. 9. 1904), and vainly waving a hand at the sky saying 'it is so empty and cold'. And again I remember after the death of Fr Francis my 'second father' (at 77 in 1934)¹³⁰, saying to C. S. Lewis: 'I feel like a lost survivor into a new alien world after the real world has passed away.' But of course these griefs however poignant (especially the first) came in youth with life and work still unfolding. In 1904 we (H[ilary] & I) had the sudden miraculous experience of Fr Francis' love and care and humour – and only 5 years later (the equiv. of 20 years experience in later life) I met the Lúthien Tinúviel of my own personal 'romance' with her long dark hair, fair face and starry eyes, and beautiful voice. And in 1934 she was still with me, and her beautiful children. But now she has gone before Beren, leaving him indeed one-handed, but he has no power to move the inexorable Mandos, and there is no Dor Gyrth i chuinar, the Land of the Dead that Live, in this Fallen Kingdom of Arda, where the servants of Morgoth are worshipped. ....