The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (75 page)

As for Master: I am not one. In high uses it would be presumptuous and profane to adopt such a title; in lower uses it is conceited. I am a ‘professor' – or was, and occasionally in more inspired moments deserved the title – and it is now at any rate (though not in Oxford of the generation before mine) a customary social title.

So what? I think if for private reasons
John
or
Ronald
is not pleasing for you to use (I quite understand that the collocation John Ronald is so) then we must fall back on ‘Professor'. (And I shall call you Lady!)

Of course there is always
Reuel.
This was (I believe) the surname of a friend of my grandfather. The family believed it to be French (which is formally possible); but if so it is an odd chance that it appears twice in the O[ld] T[estament] as an unexplained other name for Jethro Moses' father-in-law. All my children, and my children's children, and their children, have the name.

I think I shall call you Aimée, which I like better than its anglicization, and suits your love & knowledge of French. . . . .

[As a postscript to the letter:]

20 May 1969

[19 Lakeside Road, Branksome Park, Poole]

Dear Miss Unwin,

I am sorry my reply has been delayed. I hope it will reach you in time. What a very large question! I do not think ‘opinions', no matter whose, are of much use without some explanation of how they are arrived at; but on this question it is not easy to be brief.

What does the question really mean?
Purpose
and
Life
both need some definition. Is it a purely human and moral question; or does it refer to the Universe? It might mean: How ought I to try and use the life-span allowed to me? OR: What purpose/design do living things serve by being alive? The first question, however, will find an answer (if any) only after the second has been considered.

I think that questions about ‘purpose' are only really useful when they refer to the conscious purposes or objects of human beings, or to the uses of things they design and make. As for ‘other things' their value resides in themselves: they ARE, they would exist even if we did not. But since we do exist one of their functions is to be contemplated by us. If we go up the scale of being to ‘other living things', such as, say, some small plant, it presents shape and organization: a ‘pattern' recognizable (with variation) in its kin and offspring; and that is deeply interesting, because these things are ‘other' and we did not make them, and they seem to proceed from a fountain of invention incalculably richer than our own.

Human curiosity soon asks the question HOW: in what way did this come to be? And since recognizable ‘pattern' suggests design, may proceed to WHY? But WHY in this sense, implying reasons and motives, can only refer to a MIND. Only a Mind can have purposes in any way or degree akin to human purposes. So at once any question: ‘Why did life, the community of living things, appear in the physical Universe?' introduces the Question: Is there a God, a Creator-Designer, a Mind to which our minds are akin (being derived from it) so that It is intelligible to us in part. With that we come to religion and the moral ideas that proceed from it. Of those things I will only say that ‘morals' have two sides, derived from the fact that we are individuals (as in some degree are all living things) but do not, cannot, live in isolation, and have a bond with all other things, ever closer up to the absolute bond with our own human kind.

So morals should be a guide to our human purposes, the conduct of our lives: (a) the ways in which our individual talents can be developed
without waste or misuse; and (b) without injuring our kindred or interfering with their development. (Beyond this and higher lies self-sacrifice for love.)

But these are only answers to the smaller question. To the larger there is no answer, because that requires a
complete
knowledge of God, which is unattainable. If we ask why God included us in his Design, we can really say no more than because He Did.

If you do not believe in a personal God the question: ‘What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable. To whom or what would you address the question? But since in an odd corner (or odd corners) of the Universe things have developed with minds that ask questions and try to answer them, you might address one of these peculiar things. As one of them I should venture to say (speaking with absurd arrogance on behalf of the Universe): ‘I am as I am. There is nothing you can do about it. You may go on trying to find out what I am, but you will never succeed. And why you want to know, I do not know. Perhaps the desire to know for the mere sake of knowledge is related to the prayers that some of you address to what you call God. At their highest these seem simply to praise Him for being, as He is, and for making what He has made, as He has made it.'

Those who believe in a personal God, Creator, do not think the Universe is in itself worshipful, though devoted study of it may be one of the ways of honouring Him. And while as living creatures we are (in part) within it and part of it, our ideas of God and ways of expressing them will be largely derived from contemplating the world about us. (Though there is also revelation both addressed to all men and to particular persons.)

So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the
Gloria in Excelsis
: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.

And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD … all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.

This is much too long, and also much too short – on such a question.

With best wishes

J. R. R. Tolkien.

31 July 1969

I was delighted to get your letter of 27th today, and felt very unhappy about my own silence. I begin to feel a bit desperate: endlessly frustrated. I have at last managed to release the demon of invention only to find myself in the state of a man who after a strong draught of a sleeping potion is waked up and not allowed to lie down for more than a few consecutive minutes. Neither in one world or another. Business – endless – lies neglected, yet I cannot get anything of my real work finished. Then came this latest stroke of malice. I was assailed by very considerable pain, and depression, which no ordinary remedy would relieve. Three weeks ago last Tuesday Tolhurst came and ‘gave me the works', and diagnosed an inflamed/or diseased gall-bladder. Took me at once off all fats (including butter) and all alcohol. Usually a cheerful and encouraging doctor, he was alarmingly serious, and the prospect looked dark. We (or at least I) know far too little about the complicated machine we inhabit, and (like the totally unmechanical to whom ‘carburettor' is the name of a small part of the engine of minor and little known function) underestimate the gall-bladder! It is a vital part of the chemical factory, and apart from all else can cause intense pain, if it goes wrong; and if it is ‘diseased': well you are ‘for it'. – I do not know why one wants to talk about illnesses, espec. since details are intricate and boring: cutting short, I was treated with great civility by the X-ray-man. He cut out all protocol, and after second bout he developed the plates at once, and came back to me with a smile, saying ‘the plates will go to your doctor who will report and advise you but I can say, though the plates are still wet, that your g-b is in its right place and is functioning, and I can see no gall-stones or growths. I should go now and have a good lunch.' Tólhurst came yesterday, and took me off diet: butter and alcohol ‘in moderation'. I feel quite well: i.e. as well as I did before the outset. But life is not easy. The Parke
¹
has gone sick. Mummy is ailing, and I fear slowly ‘declining'. Also I feel very cut off. . . . .

16 November 1969

I meant to write to let you know how much I am perturbed by and sorry for your afflictions: poor dear. I pray for you – because I have a feeling (more near a certainty) that God, for some ineffable reason which to us may seem almost like humour, is so curiously ready to answer the prayers of the
least
worthy of his suppliants – if they pray for others. I do not of course mean to say that He only answers the prayers of the unworthy (who ought not to expect to be heard at all), or I should not now be benefitting by the prayers of others. What a dreadful,
fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in – especially for those who have also the burden of age, whose friends and all they especially care for are afflicted in the same way. Chesterton once said that it is our duty to keep the Flag of This World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. Gandalf added that it is not for us to choose the times into which we are born, but to do what we could to repair them; but the spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and so many-headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than personally to refuse to worship any of the hydras' heads. . . . .

I have greatly enjoyed the Cape Flower Book.
¹
Quite fascinating in itself and in its general botanical and indeed paleo-implications. I have not seen anything that immediately recalls
niphredil
or
elanor
or
alfirin
: but that I think is because those imagined flowers are lit by a light that would not be seen ever in a growing plant and cannot be recaptured by paint. Lit by that light,
niphredil
would be simply a delicate kin of a snowdrop; and
elanor
a pimpernel (perhaps a little enlarged) growing sun-golden flowers and star-silver ones on the same plant, and sometimes the two combined.
Alfirin
(‘immortal') would be an immortelle, but not dry and papery: simply a beautiful bell-like flower, running through many colours, but soft and gentle. . . . .

All illustrated botany books (or better, contact direct with an unfamiliar flora) have for me a special fascination. Not so much the rare, unusual, or totally unrelated specimens, as in the variations and permutations of flowers that are the evident
kin
of those I know – but not the same. They rouse in me visions of kinship and descent through great ages, and also thoughts of the mystery of pattern/design as a thing other than its individual embodiment, and recognizable. How? I remember once in the corner of a botanical garden growing (unlabelled and unnamed) a plant that fascinated me. I knew of the ‘family' Scrofulariceæ, and had always accepted that the scientific bases of grouping plants in ‘families' was sound, and that in general this grouping did point to actual physical kinship in descent. But in contemplating say Figwort and the Foxglove, one has to take this on trust. But there I saw a ‘missing link'. A beautiful ‘fox-glove', bells and all – but also a figwort: for the bells were brown-red, the red tincture ran through the veins of all the leaves, and its stem was angular. One of the 17 species (I suppose) of Digitalis which we do not possess in Britain. But such botany books as I have do not comment on such ‘links' between the
branches
of the family (Scrofularia & Digitalis). Just occasionally one actually sees a change take place – which might in favourable circumstances become permanent. In a former garden I had a border planted with garden daisies (mostly red); but they seeded into the lawn, where in the struggle
for life they reverted to ordinary daisies and conducted their battle with the grass like their ancestors. Some seeds, however, managed to reach a place where an enormously rich soil had developed (rotting grass and deep black bonfire ash). One hardy adventurer tried to do something about it – but could only do it in daisy fashion: it grew four times the size with a flower the size of a half-crown. I said ‘magnificent; but a little coarse? No real improvement on
bellis perennis
.' It or Something may have heard. Next morning it had put out from its flower, on delicate stalks rising in a ring out of the rim of the disc, six pink-tipped little elvish daisies like an airy crown. Far more graceful and patterned than any hen-and-chickens development I had – or have – seen. (I had not the time or skill to perpetuate it.)

25 November 1969

I wish I had time to produce an elementary (! both languages are, of course, extremely difficult) grammar and vocabulary of ‘elven': sc. Quenya and Sindarin. I am having to do some work on them, in the process of adjusting ‘the Silmarillion and all that' to The L.R. Which I am labouring at, under endless difficulties: not least the natural sloth of 77+.

15 December 1969

As to your last paragraph! I am wholly in favour of the ‘dull stodges'. I had once a considerable experience of what are/were probably England's most (at least apparently) dullest and stodgiest students: Yorkshire's young men and women of sub-public school class and home backgrounds bookless and cultureless. That does not, however, necessarily indicate the actual innate mental capacity – largely unawakened – of any given individual. A surprisingly large proportion prove ‘educable': for which a primary qualification is the willingness
to do some work
(to learn) (at any level of intelligence).
^fn123
Teaching is a most exhausting task. But I would rather spend myself on removing the ‘dull' from ‘stodges' – providing some products of β to β + quality that retain some sanity – a hopeful soil from which another generation with some higher intelligence could arise. Rather – rather than waste effort on those of (apparently at any rate) higher intelligence that have been corrupted and disintegrated by school, and the ‘climate' of our present days.
^fn124
Teaching an organized subject is simply not the instrument for their rehabilitation – if anything is. Give me one little stubby root, which possibly in a better soil will send out some leaves, and even eventually produce some seed, rather than a large pink root rotten with carrot fly! Amen. But I am old, and probably unable to envisage the appalling situation now existing. Worse even than the soft roots rotten with disease, are (I imagine) the inferior ones that in my time would have been probably sound, but are now equally rotten, but meaner and nastier.