The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien
and it did not do her much immediate good, though she’s better now; but we had one of Fr. C’s best sermons (and longest). A wonderful commentary on the Gospel of the Sunday (healing of the woman and of Jairus’ daughter), made intensely vivid by his comparison of the three evangelists. (P. was espec. amused by his remark that St Luke being a doctor himself did not like the suggestion that the poor woman was all the worse for them, so he toned that bit down). And also by his vivid illustrations from modern miracles. The similar case of a woman similarly afflicted (owing to a vast uterine tumour) who was cured instantly at Lourdes, so that the tumour could not be found, and her belt was twice too large. And the most moving story of the little boy with tubercular peritonitis who was not healed, and was taken sadly away in the train by his parents, practically dying with 2 nurses attending him. As the train moved away it passed within sight of the Grotto. The little boy sat up. ‘I want to go and talk to the little girl’ – in the same train there was a little girl who had been healed. And he got up and walked there and played with the little girl; and then he came back, and he said ‘I’m hungry now’. And they gave him cake and two bowls of chocolate and enormous potted meat sandwiches, and he ate them! (This was in 1927). So Our Lord told them to give the little daughter of Jairus something to eat. So plain and matter of fact: for so miracles are. They are intrusions (as we say, erring) into real or ordinary life, but they do intrude into real life, and so need ordinary meals and other results. (Of course Fr. C could not resist adding: and there was also a Capuchin Friar who was mortally ill, & had eaten nothing for years, and he was cured, and he was so delighted about it that he rushed off and had two dinners, and that night he had not his old pains but an attack of plain ordinary indigestion). But at the story of the little boy (which is a fully attested fact of course) with its apparent sad ending and then its sudden unhoped-for happy ending, I was deeply moved and had that peculiar emotion we all have – though not often. It is quite unlike any other sensation. And all of a sudden I realized what it was: the very thing that I have been trying to write about and explain – in that fairy-story essay that I so much wish you had read that I think I shall send it to you. For it I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives – if the story has literary ‘truth’ on the second plane (for which see the essay) – that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story – and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love. Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author if it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made to Be, to be true on the Primary Plane. So that in the Primary Miracle (the Resurrection) and the lesser Christian miracles too though less, you have not only that sudden glimpse of the truth behind the apparent Anankê2 of our world, but a glimpse that is actually a ray of light through the very chinks of the universe about us. I was riding along on a bicycle one day, not so long ago, past the Radcliffe Infirmary, when I had one of those sudden clarities which sometimes come in dreams (even anaesthetic-produced ones). I remember saying aloud with absolute conviction: ‘But of course! Of course that’s how things really do work’. But I could not reproduce any argument that had led to this, though the sensation was the same as having been convinced by reason (if without reasoning). And I have since thought that one of the reasons why one can’t recapture the wonderful argument or secret when one wakes up is simply because there was not one: but there was (often maybe) a direct appreciation by the mind (sc. reason) but without the chain of argument we know in our time-serial life. However that’s as may be. To descend to lesser things: I knew I had written a story of worth in ‘The Hobbit’ when reading it (after it was old enough to be detached from me) I had suddenly in a fairly strong measure the ‘eucatastrophic’ emotion at Bilbo’s exclamation: ‘The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!’. . . . And in the last chapter of The Ring that I have yet written I hope you’ll note, when you receive it (it’ll soon be on its way) that Frodo’s face goes livid and convinces Sam that he’s dead, just when Sam gives up hope.
And while we are still, as it were, on the porch of St Gregory’s on Sunday 5 Nov. I saw the most touching sight there. Leaning against the wall as we came out of church was an old tramp in rags, something like sandals tied on his feet with string, an old tin can on one wrist, and in his other hand a rough staff. He had a brown beard, and a curiously ‘clean’ face, with blue eyes, and he was gazing into the distance in some rapt thought not heeding any of the people, cert. not begging. I could not resist the impulse of offering him a small alms, and he took it with grave kindliness, and thanked me courteously, and then went back to his contemplation. Just for once I rather took Fr. C. aback by saying to him that I thought the old man looked a great deal more like St Joseph than the statue in the church – at any rate St Joseph on the way to Egypt. He seems to be (and what a happy thought in these shabby days, where poverty seems only to bring sin and misery) a holy tramp! I could have sworn it anyway, but P. says Betty3 told her that he had been at the early mass, and had been to communion, and his devotion was plain to see, so plain that many were edified. I do not know just why, but I find that immensely comforting and pleasing. Fr. C says he turns up about once a year.
This is becoming a very peculiar letter! I hope it does not seem all very incomprehensible; for events have directed me to topics that are not really treatable without erasions and re-writings, impossible in air letters!. . . . Let us finish the diary. . . . . On Monday (I think) a hen died – one of the bantam twins; cert. it was buried that day. Also I saw C.S.L. and C.W. from about 10.40 to 12.50, but can recollect little of the feast of reason and flow of soul, partly because we all agree so. It was a bright morning, and the mulberry tree in the grove just outside C.S.L.’s window shone like fallow gold against colbalt blue sky. But the weather worsened again, and in the afternoon I did one of the foulest jobs. I grease-banded all the trees (apple) tying 16 filthy little pantelettes on. It took 2 hours, and nearly as long to get the damned stuff off hands and implements. I neglected it last year, and so lost ½ a glorious crop to ‘moth’. It will be like this ‘cacocatastrophic’ fallen world, if next year there ain’t no blossom. Tuesday: lectures and a brief glimpse, at ‘The Bird’, of the Lewis Bros. and Williams. The Bird is now gloriously empty, with improved beer, and a landlord wreathed in welcoming smiles! He lights a special fire for us!. . . .
A propos of yr. reminder about ‘Lord Nelson’ – it was in the preliminary meeting to form a United Christian Council – he’s always about. I forgot to tell you that at Gielgud’s ‘Hamlet’ he seized on a quiet moment to yell from the Dress Circle ‘A very fine performance, and I’m enjoying it very much, but cut out the swear-words!’ He did the same at the Playhouse. He was nearly lynched in the New Theatre. But he goes on his odd way. . . . .
Your own Father.
90 To Christopher Tolkien
24 November 1944 (FS 64)
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
My dearest, there has been a splendid flow of letters from you, since I last wrote. . . . . We were most amused by your account of the Wings ceremony. I wonder how the ‘native band’ enjoyed being whizzed through the air! I also wondered how you came to have seen and to have remembered the quotation from the Exeter Book Gnomics – which (though I had not thought of it before) does cert. provide a most admirable plea in defence of singing in one’s bath. It cheered me a lot to see a bit of Anglo-Saxon, and I hope indeed that you’ll soon be able to return and perfect your study of that noble idiom. As the father said to his son: ‘Is nu fela folca þætte fyrngewntu healdan wille, ac him hyge brosnað.’