The Last Word of Tolkien's Teacher, Joseph Wright

Joseph Wright was a remarkable man, especially for his day. He was born in a time when the children of poor families only rarely learned to read and write, let alone rise to be the Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford University. As if that weren't enough, his crowning achievement was his English Dialect Dictionary, which held 80,000 entries in its six massive volumes. His was the life Jude Fawley wanted to live, Jude the Obscure with a happy ending. Almost.

Many fans of Tolkien will know that Wright taught Tolkien philology in his years at Oxford. When Wright died, his wife, Elizabeth Mary Wright, wrote a two volume biography of him. She describes his death and their relationship, both personal and professional, on p. 682 of the second volume:

There was only one thing more which had to be done, a last message to leave behind on the last day of all: and so he gathered up his strength in the midst of a long stretch of silence, and framed his lips to say to me quite clearly the one word ‘Dictionary’. It was, in essence, a humble echo of the words of One greater than he, when the hour had come : ‘I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.’ At the time I thought all he wanted to say was to remind me of his wish to be ‘remembered by’ that one literary achievement. Later, when I came to re-read his letters which had lain in an old red morocco case for over thirty-four years, I saw in that one word a message and a reminder of deeper significance. Might it not be that he was thinking of the Dictionary as the seal and token of that priceless and imperishable gift he had given me long years ago, which had sustained every moment of our life together, the love which is stronger than death ? He wrote of the Dictionary : ‘It is a work that is a most sacred task to me. . . . Had it not been for you, nothing in the world could have induced me to undertake what seemed an impossibility to everybody else. But deep genuine love can overcome impossibilities’ ; and also —as I have already quoted among the extracts from these letters: ‘It would be premature to enlighten the world at present, but someday it will all be made known what a man’s deep love for a woman can inspire him to do.’

He died in the evening of February 27, 1930.

Really, what more is there to say? 

Joseph and Elizabeth Wright with their children, ca. 1907.
Photographer unknown. Public Domain.

 

"...the language ... of Mordor, which I will not utter here."

 ‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ said Frodo in a quavering voice. 

‘No,’ said Gandalf, ‘but I can. The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here. But this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough: 

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, 
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

(FR 1.ii.50)

From time to time someone will ask why Gandalf will not utter the Black Speech in Bag End, but will do so in Rivendell. I saw this just the other day. It's a reasonable question. Here's the passage from The Council of Elrond for comparison. 

Upon this very ring which you have here seen held aloft, round and unadorned, the letters that Isildur reported may still be read, if one has the strength of will to set the golden thing in the fire a while. That I have done, and this I have read: 

            Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk
                                        agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

The change in the wizard’s voice was astounding. Suddenly it became menacing, powerful, harsh as stone. A shadow seemed to pass over the high sun, and the porch for a moment grew dark. All trembled, and the Elves stopped their ears.

‘Never before has any voice dared to utter words of that tongue in Imladris, Gandalf the Grey,’ said Elrond, as the shadow passed and the company breathed once more.

(FR 2.ii.254)

Gandalf recites the enchantment in the Common Speech in Bag End. Nothing happens. Gandalf recites the enchantment in the Black Speech in Rivendell, the power of the Ring is invoked. The Elves don't just cover their ears because Gandalf has said some ugly words. His indiscretion is not social. He is not Gandalf the Gauche. He is Gandalf the Grey, a being of great power, calling upon the Ring of Sauron in a language it understands, as it were. A moment later he again recites the spell in the Common Speech. Again, nothing happens.

So, when Gandalf said to Frodo that he would "not utter [the language of Mordor] here," the word here does not mean here in the Shire. It means here in the presence of the Ring. He won't do it because he has an idea of what is going to happen. True, he doesn't want to frighten Frodo any more than he is already frightened. True, he doesn't want to risk drawing the attention of the Eye. The Shire is not safe enough. Rivendell is much safer than Hobbiton. Why does he do it at all? He is making a point and removing all doubt that this is in fact the One Ring.

"So let us forgive him" -- from the stairs of Cirith Ungol to the slopes of Mt Doom

The scene in The Two Towers where Gollum comes back down the stairs of Cirith Ungol to find Frodo and Sam asleep is remarkable for many reasons. Gollum, looking upon them, nearly repents of his decision to betray the hobbits to Shelob so he can get the Ring back. Sam, who has every reason to suspect Gollum is up to no good, treats Gollum harshly and Gollum responds in kind. Gollum's "repentance is blighted," as Tolkien says in one of his letters (Letters #246 p. 466). The reader is left in the unaccustomed position of pitying Gollum and being disappointed in Sam. Gollum, who began the scene close to repentance, ends it with a renewed commitment to treachery. Sam, who began in anger and suspicion, ends in grudging remorse and apology. Frodo's attempt at conciliation fails utterly.

The scene is about two pages long. Gollum is the only character awake for the first half page. Sam wakes up and clashes with Gollum on the second half of that page. At the start of the second page Sam awakens Frodo. Just before Sam wakes up, the narrator draws attention to the fact that neither Frodo nor Sam could have witnessed Gollum's moment of near repentance, and explains what they would have seen if they had been awake. It is the moment that sets up the astonishing pathos of the scene:

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.

(TT 4.viii.714). 

One of the most basic conceits of The Lord of the Rings is that Frodo largely wrote the book he gave to Sam to finish. Obviously, Frodo could have written what he saw after he woke up, and Sam could have told him about what had gone on after he woke up. Not only would Gollum have been unlikely to have filled Frodo and Sam in on what he was experiencing at the start of the scene, but after the end of this scene they see very little of Gollum for the rest of the book. So the narrator of the book isn't supposed to be omniscient, and Sam couldn't have seen more than an old weary looking Gollum touching Frodo's knee. Incredulity is a very weak argument, but it is very hard to believe that Tolkien both slipped up on the narrator's perspective and then called attention to that slip by pointing out that no one could have seen Gollum before Sam woke up. What we see here is one of the most thematically significant moments in the whole story, the moment in which the reader suddenly sees Gollum precisely as Bilbo saw him in The Hobbit, precisely as Gandalf thought Frodo needed to see him, though he at first refused to do so, and precisely as Sam sees him on the slopes of Mt Doom. With pity. If this happened by chance, it's chance-if-chance-you-call it.

But what is more important than how we might square the creation of this scene with the supposed narrator's limited perspective -- and I have my theories -- is how we read this moment in the thematic context of the book. We need to read it in the context of the movement from pity to mercy and thence to forgiveness. That forgiveness comes only after Gollum betrays them once more and is again shown mercy, this time by Sam who has finally suffered enough to realize what he saw when he opened his eyes on the stairs of Cirith Ungol. That mercy enabled the eucatastrophe in the Chambers of Fire. I think we may be able to fully understand the importance of what happens on the stairs if we read it in dialogue with Frodo's words after the Ring is destroyed:

‘Your poor hand!’ he said. ‘And I have nothing to bind it with, or comfort it. I would have spared him a whole hand of mine rather. But he’s gone now beyond recall, gone for ever.’ ‘

Yes,’ said Frodo. ‘But do you remember Gandalf’s words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.' 

(RK 6.iii.947)

I really think that reading the second scene in the context of the first is much more important than sorting out the narrative questions arising from the sudden seeming omniscience of the narrator on the stairs. Going forward from the forgiveness meted out on the slopes of Mt Doom, there is no further context to consider, unless it's Frodo's attempt to spare Saruman and Wormtongue in the Shire. For Gollum is never mentioned again within the story. Frodo's last word on Gollum is "So let us forgive him."

"Foul" and "Vile" in The Book of Lost Tales

The Book of Lost Tales uses the words "foul" and "vile" in pretty much the way you'd expect.

"Foul" describes the following beings or things associated with them:

• Orcs: LT II 14, 159, 193, 232
• Karkaras (Carcharoth): LT II 34, 38, 239
• Melkor: LT I 55; LT II 37, 42 
• Glaurung (Glorund): LT II 85, 86 (3 times), 98
• Thingol, reproached by Tinúviel for Beren's "foul captivity" by Melkor: LT II 37 
• Brandir (Tamar), his "foul speech" that Nienor committed suicide, as described by Túrin: LT II 111
• Ungoliant (Wirilómë): 152
• Water, as polluted by blood or evil: LT II 38, 287

"Vile" describes the following beings or things associated with them:

• Glaurung: LT II 106, 107
• The dragon's hoard is Thingol's "vile reward": LT  II 135

"Foul" occurs more often in direct or indirect connection with the dragon than with anyone or anything else. So, too, of course, it occurs most often in "Of Turambar and the Foalókë," seven out of a total of sixteen times in both volumes of The Book of Lost Tales. Túrin and Morwen both address Glaurung with this word, calling him "foul worm," and "foul beast" (LT II.86, 98). It appears four times in a single page when he first enters the tale and meets Túrin (LT II 85-86). "Vile" is twice applied to Glaurung, again in "Of Turambar and the Foalókë," and once in a deleted passage by Húrin when he scornfully gives him Glaurung's hoard from Nargothrond as his "vile reward" for what he wrongly thinks is Thingol's failure to care for Húrin's family (LT 135).

There is one final passage to look at, in which both words occur in the same sentence. Here, Túrin, having killed Glaurung, learned that his wife is actually his sister and that she has killed herself, and then killed the man who gave him the news, asks his sword to kill him:

"Thee only have I now—slay me therefore and be swift, for life is a curse, and all my days are creeping foul, and all my deeds are vile, and all I love is dead.”

(LT II.112).

Given the usage of these two words in The Book of Lost Tales, one might conclude that Túrin feels he has become as evil as Glaurung himself.

_______________________

I noticed not long before finishing this post that the second half of Túrin's words to his sword can be read as two lines of iambic pentameter:

and all my days are creeping foul, and all

my deeds are vile, and all I love is dead.

(The first half of the sentence is not far off either)

 

Númenor: the Downfall is in the Details

Tolkien speaks of (some of) the names the island we mostly call Númenor in three different versions of "The Fall of Númenor," and in a chapter of his unfinished novel "The Lost Road." The first two versions of "The Fall of Númenor" and the chapters from "The Lost Road," all written shortly before Tolkien began The Lord of the Rings, were published by Christopher Tolkien in The Lost Road. The third version of "The Fall of Númenor," written in the mid-1940s in connection with "The Notion Club Papers," was published in Sauron Defeated.

Please note that "The Lost Road" is not the same as The Lost Road. The first is an unfinished story, and the second is the volume of The History of Middle-earth in which the first is published. So, too, "The Fall of Númenor" is not The Fall of Númenor, the elegant compendium of Númenor's history published by Brian Sibley in 2022.

The first version of "The Fall of Númenor" says:

It was called by the Gods Andor, the Land of Gift, but by its own folk Vinya, the Young; but when the men of that land spake of it to the men of Middle-earth they named it Númenor, that is Westernesse, for it lay west of all lands inhabited by mortals. Yet it was not in the true West, for there was the land of the Gods. The chief city of Númenor was in the midmost of its western coasts, and in the days of its might it was called Andúnië, because it faced the sunset; but after its fall it was named in the legends of those that fled from it Atalantë the Downfall.

(Lost Road, 19). 

The second version of "The Fall of Númenor" says:

That land was called by the Valar Andor, the Land of Gift, and by its own folk it was at first called Vinya, the Young; but in the days of its pride they named it Númenor, that is Westernesse, for it lay west of all lands inhabited by mortals; yet it was far from the true West, for that is Valinor, the land of the Gods. But its glory fell and its name perished; for after its ruin it was named in the legends of those that fled from it Atalantë, the Downfallen.

(Lost Road 24-25)

In "The Lost Road" Elendil says:

"And for the men of the Three Houses they made Vinya, the New Land, west of Middle-earth in the midst of the Great Sea, and named it Andor, the Land of Gift; and they endowed the land and all that lived thereon with good beyond other lands of mortals."

(Lost Road 64-65).  

 The third version of "The Fall of Númenor" says:

That land the Valar called Andor, the Land of Gift; and by its own folk it was at first called Vinya, the Young; but in the days of its pride they named it Númenor, that is Westernesse, for it lay west of all lands inhabited by mortals; yet it was far from the true West, for that is Valinor, the land of the Gods. But the glory of Númenor was thrown down [> overthrown] and its name perished; and after its ruin it was named in the legends of those that fled from it Atalantë, the Downfallen.

(Sauron Defeated 332-333)

Of all the names we see in these texts, "Vinya, the Young," is the one I find most interesting. In the first place "Vinya" suggests that at this point Men possess an innocence and humility before the Gods/Valar and even a sense of wonder at this island manufactured expressly for them in the midst of the Sea. Yet the shadow is always closer than we think. The name Númenor is a mark of its pride, an assertion of its preeminent glory to the seemingly lesser mortals back in Middle-earth, and above all it asserts the claim of Númenor to be "the true West." In each version of "The Fall of Númenor" the claim is swiftly rejected, and the downfall follows at once as proof of the error of false pride. 

In the other text, "The Lost Road," Elendil twice refers to the island as Vinya and twice as Andor (Lost Road 58, 64-65). The uses of Vinya are particularly revealing in a couple of ways. In the passage quoted above, he is speaking of the history of the island to his son. In the other passage he wishes that it had not been his fate to be born in Vinya because he would rather be in Tol Eressëa (58). This is a measure of his respect and admiration for the Elves and Valar. In both passages, Tolkien originally had Elendil say "Númenor" but then changed it to "Vinya" (70 n.3). In fact, "Vinya" as well as "Andor" first appeared in a replacement passage. The original was much briefer and more neutral, with any hint of the pride of the Númenóreans buried much deeper, if it is there at all:

It was called Númenor, that is Westernesse, and Andúnië or the Sunsetland, and its chief city in the midmost of its western coasts was in the days of its might called Númar or Númenos; but after its fall it was named in legend Atalantë, the Ruin.

(14)

Vinya, the Young, disappears in the transition from the earlier versions of Númenor's story to Akallabêth, its final version. Why Tolkien made this change we do not know. Presumably, the change reflects the much greater prominence given to Eärendil as the star that guided the ships of the Edain to Númenor, and to the new name for the island, "Elenna," which means "Starwards" (S 260-61). More thought is needed on this change, but today is not that day. Still, I find something quite appealing in the notion that the name by which we all know the island, and by which everyone in The Lord of the Rings wistfully calls the island, was once a product of the pride that destroyed it. 

______________________

Aldarion founded a great harbor on the shores of Middle-earth, which he called "Vinyalondë." This is usually taken to mean "New Haven," perhaps the "vinya" here refers to Númenor itself, and so would mean "Númenor-haven."