Was Tolkien riffing on Genesis A 36-38 at RK 5.vi.841? From the houses of lamentation to the House of Mirth.

While reading the Old English poem Genesis A this Monday evening (as one does) I came across the word helleheafas in the following passage (lines 36-38):

                                 sceop þam werlogan 

            wræclicne ham    weorce to leane,

            helleheafas,   hearde niðas

        [God] appointed for the faithbreakers
a miserable home    in repayment for their deed,
the lamentations of hell,      hard troubles.

The context here is the war in heaven imagined to have taken place before creation began, that is, before Genesis1. So, despite the title of the poem, it begins before the beginning, which for the early medieval English was an even better place to start. (It wasn't much of a war either. God swatted them into Hell without the least ado.)

Now, while I recognized 'hell' in the first half of the word, I didn't immediately scan the second part as 'lamentation, mourning, wailing'. Checking the Dictionary of Old English the word helleheaf seems to occur only here in extant Old English. There isn't even an entry for it in the older Bosworth-Toller Old English Dictionary. When a word appears only once, scholars have a term for that, and like all 'proper' scholarly terms originating before the 20th Century, that term comes from Latin or in this case Greek: hapax legomenon (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον). It means 'said once.' A. N. Doane, the editor of my text of Genesis A, points out that there are some odd marks in the manuscript which make helleheafas hard to make out at first. It looks like it says helleheaftas, the second part of which -- heaftas -- doesn't seem to exist in Old English. 

This is precisely the sort of thing that would have made an old-school bold philologist like Tolkien cock an eyebrow. Hold that thought a moment.

Two things resonated in my head as a I read these lines. First, given the association of 'misery' and 'home' in the phrase wrætlicne ham in line 37, the retribution for the angels' rebellion in weorce to leane ('in repayment for their deed'), and the 'lamentations of hell' of helleheafas, I was reminded of RK 5.vi.841, where the Witch-king threatens Éowyn with ghastly payback for trying to hinder him:

‘Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.’

Second, the juxtaposition of the vowels in helleheafas made me think of a simliar juxtaposition in line 101 of Beowulf, which calls Grendel a feond in helle, 'a devil in hell.' Now some scholars have argued from time to time since the 1880s that, since Grendel is quite alive at this moment in the poem and thus is clearly not in hell, we should emend the words feond in helle to feond in healle. In this case Grendel is not 'a devil in hell', but a 'devil in the hall,' that is, in Heorot, Hrothgar's hall in Beowulf. Tolkien certainly knew of this suggested emendation, but appears to have discounted it. In his translation and commentary he uses 'devil in hell,' though he signals his awareness that Grendel's place in hell is at least metaphorical to start with (Beowulf T&C 158-59).

What I am wondering in view of all of this, is if Tolkien might have looked at helleheafas, 'lamentations of hell' and thought healleheafas, 'hall of lamentations' or 'halls of lamentation'? Not as a proposed emendation to the text of Genesis A, but simply as a word that might have existed and been an apt description of the house of misery where retribution is meted out. 

Consider also that the Witch-king immediately afterwards calls Éowyn a fool because 'no living man can hinder' him' and she laughs at him because she is 'no living man,' and the text underlines her laughter by noting that to Merry it seemed 'of all the sounds in that hour the strangest.' So we have a reference to 'the houses of lamentation' and someone laughing and being called a fool. This brings to mind Ecclesiastes 7:4 (KJV): 'The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

In Tolkien's day this verse would have been quite well known, a popularity made even greater by the widespread fame of Edith Wharton's splendid and successful 1905 novel, The House of Mirth. Whether Tolkien read Wharton's novel is anybody's guess -- don't count him out -- but the title would have been familiar to him and its allusion would at any rate have been entirely clear. The Old English word heaf, which we find in helleheaf, may also be translated as 'mourning.' So the houses of lamentation to which the Witch-king refers are also the houses of mourning. And, as we all know, it is he who is really the fool here, not Éowyn. For him the house of mirth and the house of lamentation are one. So Tolkien is not simply retasking Macbeth in this particular scene, but also Ecclesiastes, maybe Edith Wharton, and just perhaps, with truly magnificent philological obscurity, Genesis A as well. 

__________________________

I'd like to thank my good friend, Simon Cook, for quoting a bit of Beowulf which reminded me of a bit of Genesis A, which sent me down a delightful rabbit-hole at 2 AM. ;-)

The Avoidance of 'Sin' in Tolkien

        In my forthcoming book, Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many, I discuss Tolkien's use of the Greek word ἁμαρτία (hamartia) in his essay Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics (17). He mentions the word there in connection with 'doom' as alternative factors effecting the tragedy we often see in human life and portray in stories. He is clearly thinking about Aristotle's use of ἁμαρτία in The Poetics, where it refers to the 'mistake' or 'flaw' in action, understanding, or both that causes the reversal of fortune and downfall of tragic protagonists like Oedipus. As the many mistakes and flawed choices made by characters such as the doomed character Túrin show, Tolkien saw both fate and choice as significant questions in the mythic world he created. 

        Of course Tolkien was also quite well aware that ἁμαρτία had another meaning, a Christian meaning, namely 'sin.' So I took the time to investigate places in his works where we find the word 'sin', and I thought some about what it might have to tell us. I found the time interesting and well spent, but for various reasons I decided not to include my discussion of it in the final copy of my book. But I still think what I found is interesting, and thought that some others might, too. I may yet spend more time on it and write it up as an article, but for now I'll just share it here. No doubt in some places the discussion will seem to refer to a larger discussion, which will (surprise) be found in my book when it appears later this year.

 ______________________

        In view of the spiritual harm mortal Ring-bearers suffer from possessing and using the Rings of Power, and the significance we have already attached to how they begin their possession of it, both of which have a bearing on pity especially in this wider context, we should recall that another meaning of hamartia was available to Tolkien’s mind. For in the writings of early Christianity hamartia commonly means ‘sin.’[i] Yet in recalling this particular meaning we must not ignore that, though mistakes and misdeeds abound within the legendarium, Tolkien eschews the word sin in telling of them. It never appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, or The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, or in any of the original texts published in the eleven volumes of The History of Middle-earth. The three occasions in The History of Middle-earth where we find ‘sin’ used are editorial – once Christopher Tolkien, once C. S. Lewis, and once Tolkien himself – and serve only to emphasize how far from direct contact with his legendarium Tolkien kept the word and the concept.[ii]

        Similarly, in The Nature of Middle-earth three of the four uses of ‘sin’ are also editorial. In his appendix on the Metaphysical and Theological Themes found within the legendarium, Carl F. Hostetter discusses Death and the Fall of Man as related by Andreth in connection with the Roman Catholic view on ‘original sin’ (Nature 408-09). Tolkien himself, in a note from the 1970s speculating on life-cycles of the Elves, comments that it was ‘uncertain’ whether the fading of the Eldar was always a part of their nature or a ‘“punishment” for the sins of the Eldar’ (Nature 156). Finally, however, in a text written in the mid-1950s from the perspective of someone within the legendarium the unnamed author states that the Eldar did not regard eating the flesh of animals as ‘sinful or against the will of Eru’ (Nature 271). Indeed the closest engagement with ‘sin’ comes in his translations of the Hail Mary and the Our Father into his Elven tongues, a feat which blends his ‘secret vice’ with this personal devotion and gives it expression through the once widespread practice of translating English verse into ancient tongues, whether as a lark or a lesson.[iii] Tolkien’s contemporary, Maurice Bowra, may have produced a brilliant rendering of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan into Ancient Greek verse, but he didn’t have to invent Greek, too.[iv]

        From what we can see, Tolkien generally avoided categorizing the misdeeds and mistakes of characters as ‘sins,’ despite ample opportunities across decades of writing; or, if he did so name them, as we have seen him do on rare occasions after he finished The Lord of the Rings his practice resembles the editorial comments of his editors, like Christopher Tolkien and Carl F. Hostetter, or the mock editorial engagement of C. S. Lewis with The Lay of Leithian. Morgoth and Sauron, for example, and their works may be called evil, but neither narrator nor character within the legendarium calls them sinful or their deeds sins. So much for what we find in Tolkien’s writings in or on the legendarium. What of ‘sin’ in his letters, which are likely the single most important source for the legendarium that is not itself a part of it?

        Of the ten letters which speak of ‘sin,’ six use the word wholly in connection with Tolkien’s personal faith and his life in this world, with no mention at all of his writings.[v] Of the remaining four, one is a bit of a joke to his son, Christopher, about the RAF planes, called ‘Mordor-gadgets,’ whose destructive power and purpose Tolkien detested as an actualization of the desire to dominate others (no. 75, p. 88). In the other three, he is pondering certain actions or possibilities within the Secondary World in terms of the Christian understanding of ‘sin,’ but he is once again cautious in the application of Primary World Christian terminology to the theology of the Secondary World. In Letter 153 (p.195) in answering a fellow Catholic’s theological queries and objections about The Lord of the Rings he accepts that some acts within the legendarium can be viewed as ‘sinful,’ but at the same time he makes clear that in doing so he is undertaking a characterization in Primary World terms of what would be the case within the Secondary World if Morgoth or the Valar took certain actions contrary to the will of Eru.[vi] In Letter 181 (p. 237) he speaks of the Istari being susceptible to ‘the possibility of “fall”, of sin, if you will.’ Lastly, in Letter 212 (p. 285) he points out that the Elvish view of Death as the Gift of Ilúvatar to Men ‘does not necessarily have anything to say for or against such beliefs as the Christian that “death” is not part of human nature, but a punishment for sin (rebellion).’ His caution signals that he sees the applicability of the terminology of one world to the other, but that he resists going further. ‘Mistake’ and ‘sin’ both exist along the continuum of meaning inhabited by the word hamartia, but within Arda Marred the mistakes the characters make or avoid making determine whether they are in a tragedy of some sort or a fairy-story. In the same way the truth of myth partakes of the truth of the evangelium (OFS ¶ 103), but that does not make them the same.

        The avoidance of ‘sin’ suits the focus on pity and the problematic nature of justice being imposed by anyone who cannot provide justice for those who die but do not deserve to die as much as for those who do deserve death. Healing is another concern Gandalf has for both Gollum and Bilbo, but the death Gandalf admits that Gollum deserves perforce denies all possibility of the healing he hopes against hope that Gollum might find. The avoidance of ‘sin’ also better suits the pagan world of the Third Age of Middle-earth and better allows pity to span the divide between the hope of Christians and the hopelessness of Heathens. Just as the vision of the Beowulf-poet looks back from the Christian day into the Heathen night, so does Tolkien.

---

[i] In Romans 5:13, Saint Paul writes: ‘Before the Law sin existed in the world, but sin is not counted [against us] if there is no Law.’ (‘ἄχρι γὰρ νόμου ἁμαρτία ἦν ἐν κόσμῳ, ἁμαρτία δὲ οὐκ ἐλλογεῖται μὴ ὄντος νόμου’.). That an accounting was not made of sins before the law existed might possibly have some bearing on why Tolkien almost never uses the various forms of the word sin within the legendarium.

[ii] Christopher Tolkien states that ‘suicide is declared a sin’ in his father’s description of why Túrin chose against it at LT II 125, but this is rather the son’s characterization than the father’s words. At Lays 379 ‘sin’ occurs in one of C. S. Lewis’ mock commentaries on The Lay of Leithian. Finally, in Morgoth’s Ring (392) Tolkien himself comments that ‘Manwë must be shown to have his own inherent faults (though not sin)’ which he follows directly with a footnote, pointing out that such a ‘weakness’ or ‘inadequacy’ ‘is not sinful when not willed, and when the creature does his best…as he sees it – with the conscious intent of serving Eru.’ So, in his one mention of ‘sin’ Tolkien mentions it only to deny it would be right to describe the fault in question as sin.

[iii] On the prayers, see J. R. R. Tolkien, Vinyar Tengwar 43 (2002) 5-39; 44 (2002) 5-38. On Tolkien’s ‘secret vice’ of language invention, see Tolkien, D. Fimi and A. Higgins.

[iv] C. M. Bowra’s rendering has the added charm of translating the cultural references into meaningful Greek equivalents. Kubla Khan becomes Minos, and Xanadu become Knossos. Such translations were something of a college industry at the time. Thus, Bowra’s Greek could be published alongside Coleridge’s original without explanation. See S.T. Coleridge, C.M. Bowra, et al. (178-82). Tolkien and Bowra were acquainted, if not always friendly. Tolkien once claimed to have poured melted butter over Bowra’s head and Bowra wrote a letter opposing honors proposed for Tolkien. Any link between the events is speculative. See Scull and Hammond (“C&G”) 2.195-96.

[v] Letters no. 43, p. 48 (to Michael Tolkien); no. 89, p. 101 (to Christopher Tolkien); no. 113, p. 127 (to C. S. Lewis); no. 213, p. 288 (to Deborah Webster[Rogers]); no. 250, p. 337 (to Michael Tolkien); no. 306, p. 395 (to Michael Tolkien).

[vi] Tolkien’s correspondent here was the manager of a Catholic bookshop in Oxford. In the passage, Tolkien’s is careful in his wording, as he imagines what ‘would’ or ‘could’ or ‘might’ come about, ‘if [the Valar or Maiar] fell.’

I also cite:

• The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (978-0261102637)
• Tolkien of Fairy-stories (978-0007582914)
• The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, vol 2 (978-0008214524)
• S. T. Coleridge, Maurice Bowra, et al. 'Versions' in Greece and Rome 3 (1934) 178-82.

"Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring" shortlisted for The Tolkien Society Best Book Award 2024

 

Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring:

 To Rule the Fate of Many

by 

Thomas P. Hillman

A brief description

As the magical ring Bilbo found in The Hobbit became the One Ring to rule them all in The Lord of the Rings, the tale he told of how he had won it became a lie, and the pity that spared Gollum’s life emerged from the darkness beneath the Misty Mountains to challenge the might of Sauron. Yet the pity that Gandalf holds essential to destroying the Ring and defeating Sauron offers the bearer no protection against the corruptions of its power. By joining Tolkien and Frodo on their long and weary road, Pity, Power, and the Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many illuminates the inner struggle Frodo had to face, and Tolkien had to create and explore, between the power Frodo weighs in his hand and the pity for the darkness he comes to hold in his heart.

In composing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent over a decade exploring the dynamics of the power of the Ring and powerlessness of pity. As he did so, all the themes his mythology had embodied since its earliest days during The Great War – Death and Immortality, Fate and Free Will, Divine Justice and the Problem of Evil, Power and War – took on a new aspect at once more vulnerable and more heroic in Frodo Baggins. In turn, as Tolkien began to ponder the expression of these constant themes in The Lord of the Rings, his meditations led him onward to a more philosophical and theological treatment of the unfolding of Ilúvatar's themes in history in later works like the Atrabeth Finrod a Andreth and Laws and Customs Among the Eldar. Like the Beowulf-poet he understood so well, Tolkien could encompass in his sympathy Christian religion and Pagan mythology, the Primary World in which he lived the questions of life and the Secondary World in which he imagined the working out of their answers.

Kent State University Press has in recent years extended a warm welcome to the study of The Inklings, publishing twenty-seven titles so far, including fourteen on J. R. R. Tolkien. It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I announce the forthcoming publication of my book, Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many, which studies the evolving dynamics of the Ring of Power and the paradoxical yet all-important quality of pity, and how this quality came to resonate throughout the entire legendarium as a result of the decade and more Tolkien spent unfolding the history of Arda through the writing of The Lord of the Rings. 

I am abashed, to say the least, to find my book keeping the company of works by scholars such as Verlyn Flieger, Diana Pavlac Glyer, and Amy Amendt-Radeuge -- to name only those who have won The Mythopoeic Society's award for scholaship in Inklings Studies for their work on Tolkien. These and the other scholars who have published on the Inklings with Kent State University Press have of course been nominated for or won awards from scholarly bodies too many to mention here. It is a very flattering thing for my book to be included among them, to borrow a phrase from Tolkien, as a member of 'a class not as a competitor' (Letters no. 156, p. 201)

The ISBN for my book is 9781606354711. It may be purchased from all the usual suspects. 

Two Paragraphs and Two Threats Converging in Tolkien (FR 2.ix.382)

Here's a piece of analysis I decided to take out of my book, To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity and the Ring of Power, about which I hope to have an official, public announcement soon. (Absit omen!). I didn't really want to remove it, but I don't think it shows us as much about the argument I am making in my book as it does about Tolkien's ability to construct a scene in a landscape that is more than a backdrop but contributes meaningfully to the way in which this scene from the journey of the Company on the river quite literally flows. The River moves them all along, dividing them, grouping them, moving them apart and back together; and in the eddy and flow of the narrator's attention as it shifts from one character to the next the dreams, thoughts, and anxieties of the members of the Company converge in the two threats threatening them, one from within and one from without. So much of what we've learned about these characters and theirs stories so far is implicit here, and so much that will become clear after the convergence of the threats causes the threads of their stories to separate after the breaking of the Fellowship on Amon Hen and the meeting of Frodo and Gollum in the Emyn Muil.

_____________________

The heart of Legolas was running under the stars of a summer night in some northern glade amid the beech-woods; Gimli was fingering gold in his mind, and wondering if it were fit to be wrought into the housing of the Lady's gift. Merry and Pippin in the middle boat were ill at ease, for Boromir sat muttering to himself, sometimes biting his nails, as if some restlessness or doubt consumed him, sometimes seizing a paddle and driving the boat close behind Aragorn's. Then Pippin, who sat in the bow looking back, caught a queer gleam in his eye, as he peered forward gazing at Frodo. Sam had long ago made up his mind that, though boats were maybe not as dangerous as he had been brought up to believe, they were far more uncomfortable than even he had imagined. He was cramped and miserable, having nothing to do but stare at the winter-lands crawling by and the grey water on either side of him. Even when the paddles were in use they did not trust Sam with one.

As dusk drew down on the fourth day, he was looking back over the bowed heads of Frodo and Aragorn and the following boats; he was drowsy and longed for camp and the feel of earth under his toes. Suddenly something caught his sight: at first he stared at it listlessly, then he sat up and rubbed his eyes; but when he looked again he could not see it any more.

(FR 2.ix.382)

What beautiful paragraphs these are in detail and movement, from character to character, from boat to boat, and from threat to threat. Beginning with the loveliness of Legolas' vivid, dreamlike memory, and Gimli's chivalrous, romantic imaginings, we never expect the uncomfortable turn it takes, with the uneasiness of Merry and Pippin at the disturbing, almost threatening, behavior of Boromir. We then follow Boromir's gaze through Pippin's eyes straight to Frodo in the boat ahead with Strider and Sam. But suddenly and unexpectedly, since our attention has just been directed to Frodo, we find ourselves with Sam instead. But the introduction of Sam here, uncomfortable, unhappy, and untrusted Sam, is a misdirection. It lightens the menace of the sentences on Boromir, but only in order to refocus it a moment later on another threat that is present on the Great River, another one who has his had eyes fixed on Frodo and Frodo's burden for some time now.

It is of course Gollum whom Sam has seen, but the way in which the narrator shifts our gaze from Boromir to Gollum is masterful. Notice how Sam is looking back towards the boats behind his own. Given the previous paragraph, we might expect him to have caught the same look in Boromir's eyes as Pippin had. But it is not so. For just as we followed Boromir's gaze forward to Frodo, but found Sam instead, so, too, we now follow Sam's back, not to Boromir, but to Gollum. When Sam comes to tell Frodo what he has seen, he remarks over and over again on Gollum's eyes, five times in all, thus further pairing these two threats (FR 2.ix.382-83). Nor is this the first time that Frodo has been the object of the intense gaze of Gollum and Boromir (FR 2.vi.345; vii.358; viii.369; ix.383; cf. ix.388). As the day draws near when Frodo must decide between Minas Tirith and Mordor, danger is converging on him from more than one direction. From Gollum of course, as he tracks Frodo down the Great River, but also from his companion Boromir, who, desperate to save his homeland, feels quite keenly the anguish of the choice which lies before Frodo as he sits in the boat just ahead of him with Sam and Strider. And if Gollum, as Boromir himself said, is 'small, but great in mischief' (FR 2.ii.255), what is Boromir?

Tolkien between two publishers, feeling like a fool

14 April 1950

Dear Unwin,

It was odd that our letters crossed. I might have waited a day longer; but the matter is for me becoming urgent. Weeks have become precious. I want a decision yes, or no: to the proposal I made, and not to any imagined possibilities.

Letters  no. 127

________

17 April 1950

[Sir Stanley Unwin to Tolkien:]

.... As you demand an immediate "yes" or "no" the answer is "no"; but it might well have been yes given adequate time and the sight of the complete typescript.

Quoted in note on Letters 128

I've recently been working on an article in which I argue that Tolkien's famous letter 131, so often cited and quoted, actually plays a large role in shaping the subsequent course of his writings on Middle-earth. For in this letter he is attempting to persuade Milton Waldman and Collins publishing to bring out The Lord of the Rings and 'The Silmarillion' together, and in order to do so he has to step back himself and come up with an explanation of how it all fits together, from the Ainulindalë to the tale of Beren One-hand and the Great Jewel, to the tale of Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom. In the Waldman letter Tolkien undertakes for his legendarium what he accomplished for Beowulf in his essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics and for fantasy in On Fairy-stories. The Beowulf essay directly precedes the writing of The Lord of the Rings; On Fairy-stories was written and re-written while he wrote The Lord of the Rings; and the Waldman letter follows immediately after its completion and marks a turning point towards the more philosophically and metaphysically focused writings on the 1950s -- works such as Laws and Customs among the Eldar and the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. Together these three -- the Beowulf essay, On Fairy-stories, and the Waldman letter are indispensable for understanding the shape of The Lord of the Rings, most immediately, and the legendarium as a whole. 

But I digress. 

As I was looking through the Letters the other night and thinking about Tolkien's struggle, first with Allen and Unwin, and then with Collins, to get someone to publish his work as he thought it should be published, I spotted some details that were both very funny and very interesting. In the first place, there is the humor innate in Tolkien, whose writing process could not unfairly be called asymptotic, demanding an immediate 'yes' or 'no' answer to whether Allen and Unwin would publish both The Lord of the Rings (12 years in the writing and only just 'completed') and 'The Silmarillion' (over 30 years in the writing and not even close to finished, then or later).

What struck me as very funny, however, was the transition from his addressing Sir Stanley Unwin as 'Dear Unwin' in Letter 127 to his addressing Milton Waldman in Letter 131 far more personally as 'My dear Milton'. Tolkien had been in correspondence with Sir Stanley Unwin for more than a dozen years by this time. For at least the first four and a half years Tolkien had addressed his letters to 'Dear Mister Unwin'. Somewhere between February of 1942 (Letters no. 47) and March of 1945 (Letters no. 98), Tolkien became more familiar, dropping 'Mister' and beginning, as we saw above, with 'Dear Unwin'. By the time Tolkien wrote Letter 105 in the summer of 1946 Unwin had been knighted, and so Tolkien, as was proper, addressed him as 'Dear Sir Stanley.' Within a year, however, Sir Stanley suggested that they dispense with titles such as 'Sir' and 'Professor' altogether, to which Tolkien agreed and resumed addressing him as 'Dear Unwin' (Letters no 109).

Now many these days might find 'Dear Unwin' and 'Dear Tolkien' to be a little distant still, perhaps even frosty, but it was not so. For in Beleriand in those days using someone's first name was a privilege reserved for family and maybe very close friends. Tolkien and Lewis were for a long time extremely close, but even they did not call each other by their first names. Lewis called him Tollers or Tolkien. Tolkien called him Lewis or Jack (which was not of course Lewis's name at all). To illustrate this custom, no better or more appropriate authority can be cited than Tolkien's own letter from December 1965 to Rayner Unwin, son of Sir Stanley:

Very Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year. Do you think you could mark the New Year by dropping the Professor? I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family, but like the dwarves kept them private, and for even their intimates used surnames (or perversions of them), or nicknames, or (occasionally) Christian names that did not belong to them. Even C. S. Lewis never called me by a Christian name (or I him). So I will be content with a surname. I wish I could be rid of the 'professor' altogether, at any rate when not writing technical matter. It gives a false impression of 'learning', especially in 'folklore' and all that. It also gives a probably truer impression of pedantry; but it is a pity to have my pedantry advertised and underlined, so that people sniff it even when it is not there.

(Letters no. 281)

So it is remarkable to see Tolkien in late 1951 addressing Waldman, whom he had met only in in the autumn of 1949, and whom he was addressing as 'Dear Waldman' in March 1950 (Letters no. 126), as 'My dear Milton'. It stands out even more when we notice that about a year and a half passed between Sir Stanley's rejection of Tolkien's ultimatum, which freed Tolkien to make a deal with Waldman and Collins, and Tolkien's 'My dear Milton,' a year and a half in which Tolkien found himself unexpectedly encountering resistance to his hopes and requests that The Lord of the Rings itself be cut. By late 1951 Tolkien's prospects for publication at Collins were fading, so much so that Waldman himself suggested that Tolkien write a letter to convince Waldman's associates at Collins that the two books must be published together. In this context, 'My dear Milton' has the ring of 'Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.'

At about the same time Tolkien was composing his 10,000+ word letter to Waldman, in late November 1951, called upon Tolkien at home in Oxford, but did not see him since Tolkien was unwell (Scull and Hammond, C&G 1.401). He followed up with a letter, in which among other things he asked Tolkien if he could see 'The Silmarillion', but Tolkien did not reply. By the time Rayner Unwin wrote again in June of 1952 Tolkien's relations with Collins had completely failed, in a manner not unlike his negotiations with Sir Stanley two years earlier, ultimatum, rejection, and all. The failure was catastrophically disheartening and embarrassing for Tolkien, and you can hear it in his response to Rayner Unwin:

When I have a moment to turn round I will collect the Silmarillion fragments in process of completion – or rather the original outline which is more or less complete, and you can read it. My difficulty is, of course, that owing to the expense of typing and the lack of time to do my own (I typed nearly all of The Lord of the Rings) I have no spare copies to let out. But what about The Lord of the Rings? Can anything be done about that, to unlock gates I slammed myself?

(Letters no. 133)

The Salutation? 

Wait for it. 

'My dear Rayner'.

And if 'My dear Milton' makes me think of Princess Leia begging for Obi Wan's help, 'My dear Rayner' reminds me of Frodo's plea to Gandalf: 'O Gandalf, best of friends, what am I to do?' (FR 1.ii.59).

As we know, Tolkien and Allen & Unwin were able to work out their differences, and Tolkien never finished 'The Silmarillion'. 

It may be worth noting that Tolkien's Letters preserve only two further letters addressed to Stanley Unwin. Both come more than ten years after Tolkien's return to Allen & Unwin. In the only one of the two to preserve the salutation, Tolkien reverts to the more formal 'Dear Sir Stanley' (Letters nos. 241 and 248). Rayner Unwin, however, records an amusing and entirely predictable moment, the last time his father and Tolkien ever met, in 1967, which is quoted in Scull and Hammond (C&G III 1369):

"'It was at the Garrick [Club in London]. They were both rather deaf. My father talked about the balance sheet, which Tolkien didn't understand, and he talked about The Silmarillion, which my father didn't understand. But they were full of goodwill. They knew they owed each other a lot -- but they weren't sure for what.'"

Finally, for all Sir Stanley's attention to the balance sheet, in fairness to him we should remember that when Rayner told him in the autumn of 1952 that The Lord of the Rings could lose £1,000, which was a lot of money at the time, Sir Stanley replied:

'If you believe it is a work of genius, then you may lose a thousand pounds.'

_________________

According the Scull and Hammond's Companion and Guide, the last paragraph of Tolkien's Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin was written on a page torn from September in a 1951 planner. Since Tolkien must have begun writing his massive letter to Waldman soon afterwards, I wonder if this is why Tolkien stopped writing the much loved and much longed for story of Tuor. As John Garth has rightly pointed out to me, Tolkien had a lot of other work to do in the fall of 1951 and was also not well, so the Waldman letter may not be solely to blame for Tolkien's ceasing work on Tuor. Even if the Waldman letter should be the reason, however, for Tolkien's stopping, it would not be the reason why he never resumed this marvelous regrettably unfinished tale. Unless, perhaps, we consider the disappointment he felt at the failure of the Waldman letter to secure the simultaneous publication of 'The Silmarillion' and The Lord of the Rings. That surely stung, as did the fact that his experience with Collins had played out similarly to the his experience with Allen & Unwin had done. When Tolkien did return to work on 'The Silmarillion' a couple of years later, his concerns were more philosophical and theological as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. That is, I believe, a result of the overview of his legendarium which the Waldman letter necessitated. But I will argue this in much greater detail elsewhere. 

(Kudos if you got the joke in the title of this post.)

There's a lot more that could be said here. For the moment, I'll just give you the sources. In addition to Letters, there is Scull and Hammond's Companion and Guide for the relevant dates and people, Carpenter's biography of Tolkien, and Rayner Unwin's George Allen and Unwin: A Remembrancer.