(avg. read time: 8–17 mins.)
To finish this supplement of my commentary on Tolkien’s letters, we will now go through the letters not included in the published collection of which I could find pertinent contents online, mostly through Tolkien Gateway. There are plenty of letters out there where I could not verify the contents, and so I am unsure of their pertinence to my interests in this series. But with what I can verify, here is what we can find.
1932: A Philologist on Esperanto
There is not much material of interest in this letter, except for an analogy Tolkien uses. When he wrote to The British Esperantist, he commented on the state of the language. He observes that, like the orthodox Church, the language faces challenges not only of unbelievers, “but schismatics and heretics.” Unanimity and widespread adoption would be more important to its survival than theoretical improvement. Today, almost a century later, Esperanto is still the most spoken language of its type, but estimates of its users are still in the low millions with ~100,000 being native speakers.
Various Letters on Tolkien’s Ecclesial Connections
Since I have treated these letters together in my published work, I might as well treat them together here as well. These letters further show his participation in the Catholic Church via his connections with various people in it. First, one of his letters was published in The Catholic Herald, a Catholic periodical (formerly a newspaper) based in London that was well established and prominent among Catholics even in Tolkien’s time. His letter on “The Name Coventry” was published in the edition of 23 February 1945. Another unpublished letter to Miss Turnbull (11 March 1949) asks for the addressee to send flowers for him to Mother May Michael. She was a nun who befriended him while he was in a hospital being treated for trench fever over three decades ago in 1917. Similarly, he sent a letter of congratulations to Rose MacNamara (12 September 1966) upon hearing of her being set to take her vows as a nun in India.1 He even mentions in this letter how his son, John, said a Latin mass for Rose’s father and Tolkien himself served it.2 In turn, he asks her to pray for him.
Tolkien also joined a group of officials of the Newman Association to write on behalf of Cardinal József Mindszenty of Hungary, who had been arrested for his opposition of communism. The Newman Association was founded in 1942 in honor of John Henry Newman to enact Newman’s wishes for an intelligent, well-instructed laity that lived their faith purposefully, in their case by bringing together Catholic professors and university graduates across Britain. At the time of writing, the association had ~1,500 members, and Tolkien signed the letter of protest as one of the nine honorary vice-presidents. The letter was published in the 28 January 1949 edition of The Times.
24 June 1953: Letter to George Sayer
This letter is of indirect relevance to our interests here, but I just feel like repeating this story. Here, Tolkien is asking advice from Sayer about purchasing a tape recorder. This represents a major change in his reaction from the first time he heard of a tape recorder because of Sayer. He was skeptical of such a machine and felt the need to perform a kind of exorcism on it just to be safe. He did so by having Sayer record him saying the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic, because why not? Sayer said this was part of his worldview in which all of life was part of a cosmic conflict of good and evil, of God and the devil.3 This is a biblical worldview, of course, but as we have noted previously (especially here, but also see other posts on the works here, here, here, and here), it is especially Johannine in emphasis. In any case, afterwards, as the letter indicates, he was interested in using such a machine for various recordings.
12 December 1955: Letter to David Masson
Tolkien wrote this letter in response to a review of The Return of the King from the Times Literary Supplement. Masson had made an issue of there being no references to the Orcs receiving quarter from the Free Peoples. While Tolkien does not explain why he never mentioned this—any more than he mentioned Orc females, although they surely existed within the world of the story—he thinks the matter is beside the point. The whole story “breathes Mercy from start to finish.” This is a point Tolkien made elsewhere in his letters, especially concerning the story’s eucatastrophe, which he also mentions here, and it is a point that appears in various guises through reference to mercy, pity, forgiveness, and so on, as I observe in my commentary. As in Letter #181, he links the climactic scene at Mount Doom to the part of the Lord’s Prayer in Matt 6:12–13, which I also discussed in the pertinent part of my commentary. He simply puts a finer point on the connection here by saying that the scene in the Sammath Naur “was meant to be a ‘fairy-story’ exemplum” of this part of the Lord’s Prayer. Letters like these show where Tolkien is most explicit about the biblical and overall Christian links in his work.
28 March 1956: Letter to Patricia Kirke
Only a little bit of the content of this letter is available online. Amidst the struggles he tells Kirke of, Tolkien says he will try to put these to the side in order to celebrate Easter in honor of what the day signifies. However, that celebration brings its own challenge not because of his aforementioned difficulties, but because of the reform instituted for the liturgy. While Tolkien expresses in the abstract an acknowledgment and approval of the reform, he nevertheless also expresses his fundamentally traditionalist perspective of how ““one feels a little dislocated and even a little sad at my age to know that the ceremonies and modes so long familiar and deeply associated with the season will never be heard again!”4 As we have seen previously in his responses to the Second Vatican Council, the dislocation and sadness would only become more severe for him.
20 December 1956: Letter to Deirdre Levinson
Not much of this letter is available. But the most significant part noted about it is that it quotes lines 104–106 from Cynewulf’s Crist A, which contains the reference to Earendel. We have noted in many other places how significant the works attributed to Cynewulf were for Tolkien, and we need not revisit that here.
9 June 1957: Letter to William Ready
Marquette University has a long-standing relationship with Tolkien, his family, and his estate. One example of such is seen in this letter written to William Ready, the Library Director at the time. Ready was responsible for starting the J. R. R. Tolkien Collection that is there to this day. Only a brief portion of this letter is of relevance to our interests, as Tolkien mentions the reception of his fiction among his fellow Catholics. Apparently, Ready had mentioned how his own book of stories was received more favorably among those outside the Church than among his fellow Catholics. Tolkien says he has had the same experience. The only published Catholic review in Britain that he was aware of at the time in The Tablet was negative, although he mentions that The Tablet of New Zealand had featured one of his “most charming notices.” Of course, it seems to me that the situation has changed today.
1958: Letters to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski
With this correspondence in 1958 with his Polish Catholic friend—who had earned his PhD at Oxford and was introduced to the Inklings by Tolkien—we see Tolkien providing financial support. The framing of this act is notable, as Tolkien says that he guesses this financial gift to be an answer to prayer, “for on the way from church on Sunday I had a sudden clear intuition that you were worried and in difficulties.” This is Tolkien listening to the prompting of the Spirit and thus becoming a willing instrument of Providence. I have been the beneficiary of such promptings of intuition myself, though not quite in this fashion, and I have had this prompting intuition before as well. And it fits with what we have noted of the work of Providence in Tolkien’s fiction and non-fiction that this is a way that God may positively answer prayer.
26 October 1958: Letter to L. M. Cutts
Much like Letter #213, while Tolkien eschews questions of influences or sources for the most part, he acknowledges that “no one of us can really invent or ‘create’ in a void, we can only reconstruct and perhaps impress a personal pattern on ‘ancestral’ material.” But even as in Letter #213, where he nevertheless gives some biographical information that he thinks is pertinent, he puts a fine point on this earlier statement by saying, “if I may say so, with humility, the Christian religion (which I profess) is far the most powerful ultimate source. On a lower plane: my linguistic interest is the more powerful force.” That is, the more pervasive immediate influential force on his work is his linguistic interest. That has been made clear from how the whole story of The Hobbit began, and it is what drives his sub-creative project and the shapes it takes in various places, as he had to figure out how various languages worked, in what contexts they worked, as well as how to name various entities, what those names meant, and how they worked in their contexts. And so on it went, since there are many, many such linguistic elements in his text to consider (and this is to say nothing about how the languages were conveyed in what is a translation project). But on a more overarching level, even if it shows up in some details as well, his own worldview as formed by the Christian religion—specifically, of the Roman Catholic tradition—is what he considers to be the most powerful influence. This fits with what I have noted on multitudinous occasions in my commentaries on Tolkien’s fiction, as well as with comments Tolkien made in many letters linking his sub-creation to his Christian beliefs. Even when Tolkien did not feel obligated to conform the text to his Christian worldview per se, he sought to make it compatible, given its setting in a pre-Christian time (for references on this, see this review and an updated list in the second chapter of my book). Of course, as Tolkien stated in his letter on the name “Coventry,” he saw his Catholic faith as being linked with his linguistic interest and philological work simply because he knew no way to do his work in keeping with Catholic tradition than by “seeking the truth without bias.”
21 October 1963: Letter to Mrs. Munby
Among his unpublished letters, this is probably the one I most regret not having direct access to. Based on the linked summary, there is certainly material in it of interest for my purposes. I suspect his comments related to addressing the apparent absence of God in The Lord of the Rings would be similar to what we have seen in various places in his published collection, but I would obviously like to confirm to see if he added any other interesting details to his response.
Of what has been quoted, one part is particularly interesting. When Tolkien comments on what his story is about—such as in Letters #109, #131, #183, #186, and #211—it is notable that theologically resonant elements come to the fore. Thus it is here when Tolkien says his story “is really about Death and pity and Self-sacrifice.” In my commentary on The Lord of the Rings, I have often pointed to the Christian fashion in which he presents these ideas.
28 November 1963: Letter to George Sayer
I know of only a couple quotations from this letter, which concerns memories of C. S. Lewis. Tolkien first says that a Catholic like him could not say anything about Lewis’s books “without giving widespread offence.” We have seen in other letters and reviews of other biographical details how they disagreed, and the friction that came from Lewis joining the Church of England rather than the Catholic Church after he became a Christian. As for Lewis’s fictional work, Tolkien liked at least the first volume in his Space trilogy (I have not seen anything about his thoughts on the other two), but he did not agree with Lewis’s approach to writing the Narnia books, especially the first one he wrote. And yet, he possessed the whole collection all the same.
As for his non-fiction, Tolkien only mentions The Screwtape Letters. This work was dedicated to Tolkien, but Tolkien was never fond of it or of the dedication. It turns out that Lewis was not fond of the work either, so Tolkien wryly implies this was why Lewis dedicated the book to him. As one can gather from Tolkien’s story, Saruman’s fall was brought about by the fact that he studied the arts of the Enemy, but in the process he was drawn in and influenced to be like Sauron. As Elrond said, “It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill” (II/2). One can also see this in how Saruman’s realm is described. And yet, in no case, are the arts of Saruman, Sauron, or Melkor really described; only the results thereof are described. In line with this, Tolkien thought the whole project of Screwtape was hazardous in trying to study the ways the demons work, as this could lead one down the path of Saruman. Nor is it part of the directives given for spiritual warfare in Scripture.
16 December 1963: Letter to Baronne A. Baeyens
This letter will be more extensively relevant for my next Tolkien post on allegory, but there is one portion here that is pertinent to this post, besides him reiterating how moved he was by Gollum’s near-repentance. He notes that “It would, of course, have been destructive of the ‘historicity’ of an imaginary period in the remote past, if alignment with religion or religious organizations now existing were clearly perceptible. But I am in fact a Roman Catholic—not by inheritance from my German protestant ancestors in Saxony.” This fits with what we have seen in many places throughout this commentary, my book, and the commentary on The Lord of the Rings that previews my forthcoming book. The setting is crucial to understanding how Tolkien’s Catholic Christian worldview is compatible with the apparent lack of religion in Middle-earth and the absence of explicit links with Catholic Christianity as such. But we need not pursue that argument again here.
18 December 1963: Letter to Jonathan Hepworth
The relevance of this letter can be stated briefly. It contains a correspondence with the Christian celebration of Christmas that is befitting a setting of a pre-Christian monotheistic world of natural theology. Tolkien used here a previously unknown phrase in Quenya that would be the equivalent of “Merry Christmas” by reference to Yule/Amanar: nai lye hiruva airea amanar! (“May thee find a blessed Amanar!”)
20–26 January 1964: Letter to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski
I do not have full access to this letter, but what I have read of it is quite sad to read. Tolkien describes the last year as a “dreadful year of loss and frustration.” The worst of it was on November 22, 1963, a day many remember as the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but which Tolkien marked as the day C. S. Lewis died. Thereafter, Tolkien and wife were so ill that they could not properly celebrate Christmas. This dampening of their spirits was only worsened when, shortly after Christmas, Christopher’s wife left him. He says, “I fear they have left their allegiance to Our Mother.” This is a reference to the Church, as he thought their issues stemmed from such lapsing. I am unsure if this was the case, if Christopher was a lifelong Catholic, or what exactly happened.
6 December 1965: Letter to G. S. Rigby Jr.
This one says all too briefly, “There is, in fact, quite a lot of theology included in The Lord of the Rings (I was surprised to find how much when the work was analysed some time ago in a theological periodical), though it is perhaps made more palatable by a sugar coating.” This shows the truth to Tolkien’s words of the powerful influence of the Christian religion on his work. At the same time, it shows, as he has said in other letters (like Letter #142) that this influence was not in the form of his intentional conformity of the work to his faith or in terms of explicit references.
21 December 1967: Letter to Elsie Honeybourne
This response to a fan letter is noteworthy for one line. In response to how Honeybourne appreciated the scene of Pippin’s ride with Gandalf at the end of Book IV, he surmises, “To ride with Gandalf must have been like being borne by a Guardian Angel, with stern gentleness a most comforting combination to children (as we all are).” This fits how Tolkien has elsewhere described Gandalf (and the Istari more generally) in angelic terms.
24 December 1971: Letter to Eileen Elgar
I have actually already reviewed this letter elsewhere. It provides Tolkien’s own explanation for why Tolkien disliked The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and presumably the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia, although he owned the whole series. See here for more.
Unclear date: Letters to Clyde S. Kilby
While Tolkien still lived, Barry Gordon presented the thesis in “Kingship, Priesthood, and Prophecy in The Lord of the Rings”5 that the schema of the threefold redemptive offices of Christ, which are represented by him being Prophet, King, and Priest, are embodied in the story of those who bring about Middle-earth’s redemption. Namely, he identifies Gandalf with what is signified by the shorthand of the prophetic office, Aragorn with the royal office, and Frodo with the priestly office. He also argues that these characters go on to take on more qualities of the other offices as they progress in sanctification as a result of accepting the responsibilities of their respective offices. Tolkien sent the paper to Clyde Kilby and wrote to him, “Much of this is true enough—except, of course, the general impression given (almost irresistibly in articles having that analytical approach, whether by Christians or not) that I had any such ‘schema’ in my conscious mind before or during the writing.”6
Unclear date: Letter to Bruce Mitchell
As far as I know, there is no complete presentation of this letter to Bruce Mitchell, a scholar of Old English. Nor has a date ever been given for it. But Mitchell quoted interesting parts of it in his book On Old English: Selected Papers.7 The first portion he quotes on p. 53 actually appears in full in Tolkien’s Beowulf commentary on pp. 274–75 concerning the character of the story of Beowulf and its message to its contemporary audience (which I also addressed in my commentary on the same volume; cf. here). As far as I know, the other quote is not in any of Tolkien’s works, but it comes from the same letter addressed to Mitchell also related to Beowulf: “I think we fail to grasp imaginatively the pagan ‘heroic’ temper, the almost animal pride and ferocity of ‘nobles’ and champions on the one hand; or on the other hand the immense relief and hope of Christian ethical teaching amidst a world with savage values” (53–54). This well describes the fusion of horizons—but not a true syncretism, as I say in the post on Tolkien’s famous Beowulf essay—between the northern paganism of the old era and the Christianity of the new era.
Rose reads this letter in an interview, the relevant except of which can be found here:
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We can note here another brief reference in a summary of an unpublished letter to W. A. R. Headley, in which Tolkien refers to John performing the requiem and burial for Hilary Tolkien’s wife Magdalen. Available online at: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_to_W.A.R._Hadley.
See George Sayer, “Recollections of J. R. R. Tolkien,” Mallorn 21.2 (Winter 1996): 23. Available online at: https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2123&context=mythlore.
Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion & Guide, rev. and exp. ed., vol. 1: Chronology (London: HarperCollins, 2017), 514.
Clyde S. Kilby, Tolkien & The Silmarillion, (Wheaton, IL: Shaw, 1976), 56.
Bruce Mitchell, On Old English: Selected Papers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).