The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2

Another work by Nesbit with elements analogous to some in Tolkien’s fiction is The Enchanted Castle, first published in 1907. Among the treasures of an estate (the ‘castle’ of the title) in England’s West Country is a magic ring whose power changes according to whatever its possessor declares – sometimes unwittingly, and as always in a Nesbit story, with unfortunate consequences. Most notably, the ring can confer invisibility, but has no effect on the wearer’s shadow: ‘In the blazing sunlight that flooded the High Street four shadows to three children seemed dangerously noticeable. A butcher’s boy looked far too earnestly at the extra shadow, and his big liver-coloured lurcher snuffed at the legs of that shadow’s mistress and whined uncomfortably’ (ch. 3). The presence of a shadow cast by an otherwise unseen person recalls The Hobbit, Chapter 5, in which goblins see the invisible Bilbo’s shadow as he escapes through the back-gate, while the ability of a dog to detect someone who cannot be seen brings to mind early texts of The Lord of the Rings in which Bingo puts on the Ring, becoming invisible, in the house of Farmer Maggot, but the farmer’s dog ‘remained behind jumping and frisking round Bingo to his annoyance’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 94) or ‘halted near Bingo sniffing and growling with the hair rising on its neck, and a puzzled look in its eyes’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 290). In another scene, when the invisible Mabel is having tea, ‘it was rather horrid to see the bread and butter waving about in the air, and bite after bite disappearing from it apparently by no human agency; and the spoon rising with apple in it and returning to the plate empty’, or ‘a mug of milk was suspended in the air without visible means of support’ (ch. 3). Compare again, perhaps, invisible Bingo’s (later Frodo’s) visit to Farmer Maggot during which a ‘mug left the table, rose, tilted in the air, and then returned empty to its place’ (The Return of the Shadow, pp. 96, 292).

Neither Christopher nor Priscilla Tolkien recall having read The Enchanted Castle, though other books by Nesbit were on their shelves.

See further, Noel Streatfeild, Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and Her Children’s Books (1958), and Julia Briggs, A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858–1924 (1987).

Netherlands. Tolkien visited the Netherlands from 28 to 31 March 1958, at the invitation of the Rotterdam booksellers Voorhoeve en Dietrich (the Dutch translation of *The Lord of the Rings had been published in 1956–7). He arrived by sea at the Hook of Holland early on 28 March, then went by train to Rotterdam. Together with a representative of his Dutch publisher, Het Spectrum, he ‘saw a good deal of the depressing world of ruined and half-rebuilt [postwar] Rotterdam … with its gigantic and largely dehumanized reconstruction’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 8 April 1958, Letters, p. 265). In the evening he attended, as guest of honour, a ‘Hobbit Maaltijd’ or hobbit-themed dinner at the Flevrestaurant in Rotterdam. On 29 March he went with his friend, Professor Piet Harting of Amsterdam University, to the Mauritshuis at The Hague, and then to Amsterdam for a private dinner. On 30 and 31 March Tolkien visited Amsterdam and the University; there he was joined by students of the English department and ‘made an extremely hobbit-like expedition to [the distillery] Wynand Fockink’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 8 April 1958, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins).

See further, René van Rossenberg, Hobbits in Holland: Leven en Werk van J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973); Johan Vanhecke, J.R.R. Tolkien, 1892–1992 (1992); René van Rossenberg, ‘Tolkien’s Exceptional Visit to Holland: A Reconstruction’, in Proceedings of the Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995); Johan Vanhecke, In de Ban Van de Hobbit: Leven en Werk van Tolkien (2005).

New English Dictionary see Oxford English Dictionary

A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District. Written by Walter E. Haigh and published by Oxford University Press (*Publishers) in January 1928, with a foreword by Tolkien, pp. xiii–xviii. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B11.

Haigh’s Glossary concerns the dialect spoken in South Yorkshire ‘in the geographical basin, measuring some ten to fifteen miles across, which lies in the south-west corner of the West Riding, close under the main ridges of the Pennines’ (p. vii). Tolkien first became acquainted with the work in 1923, ‘when Mr. Haigh had already lavished endless time and care upon it; almost my only contribution since has been to urge him to go on, and to assure him of the value of his work, not only to local patriotism, but to English philology generally’ (p. xiii). He compliments Haigh for having compiled a complete, not selective, glossary, which is essential for the full understanding of a dialect. Because it includes all types of words, including those of more recent times, it more nearly approaches ‘a true and lively picture of its dialect, and is of much greater value to philologists, than if it had dealt only with those rare or venerable words which are imagined to interest such people specially’ (p. xiv).

Tolkien commends the work also for ‘the excellence, humour, and idiomatic raciness of its illustrative quotations, which bear the mark of the native speaker.’ Dialect words are dead when isolated from ‘colloquial instances’ (p. xiv). A ‘foreigner’ to the district, Tolkien is interested in its speech because

even if not a student of dialect generally, … his attention is at once aroused by this dialect because of the very region to which it belongs – the North-West … the field of dialectal competition and mingling at a particularly important boundary, the borders of the Northern and the (Western) Midland, and the scene of the swaying fortunes of different types of English since very early times …. [p. xv]

He also remarks that

the North-West became later, in the fourteenth century, the centre of a revival of writings in vernacular speech, of which the most interesting examples preserved are poems in an alliterative metre descended from the old verse of Anglo-Saxon times, though clothed in a language now difficult to read because of its strong Scandinavian element and its many other peculiar and obscure dialectal words …. [p. xvi]

Books such as Haigh’s Glossary ‘throw valuable light on the meanings or forms of words’ in old poems, including *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, *Pearl, and the Wars of Alexander (p. xvi).

See further, Janet Brennan Croft, ‘Walter E. Haigh, Author of A New Glossary of the Huddersfield District’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007). Croft suggests that ‘Tolkien most likely met Haigh [1856–1931] through the Yorkshire Dialect Society’ (p. 185).

‘The New Lay of Gudrún’ see The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’ see The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

The New Shadow. Abandoned sequel to *The Lord of the Rings, published with commentary and notes in *The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996), pp. 409–21.

The brief text is set during the reign of Eldarion, son of King Elessar. Borlas, son of Beregond, now an old man, is visited by Saelon (in earlier versions Egalmoth or Arthael), whom he had rebuked as a boy not only for stealing good fruit, but also for destroying unripe fruit, calling his action ‘Orcs’ work’. The two discuss that occasion, the roots of evil in Men (‘the roots of Evil lie deep, and from far off comes the poison that works in us’, p. 414), and ‘rumours’ they have heard. Saelon invites Borlas, if he would know more, to come with him that evening. It is not clear if Saelon is working with or against a barely suggested conspiracy.

In a letter to Colin Bailey, 13 May 1964, Tolkien comments that he began ‘a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall [of Sauron], but it proved both sinister and depressing’, showing ‘the most regrettable feature’ of human nature,

quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless – while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors …. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage. I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow – but it would be just that. Not worth doing. [Letters, p. 344]

Compare his letter to Father Douglas Carter, ?6 June 1972:

I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age. (Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Eldaron about 100 years after the death of Aragorn. Then I of course discovered that the King’s Peace would contain no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies practising dark cults, and ‘orc-cults’ among adolescents.) [Letters, p. 419]

It seems unlikely that Tolkien began to write The New Shadow before the publication of The Lord of the Rings (1954–5), but there is evidence that its first versions were in existence by late 1958. The first draft opening of the story extends for two sides of a sheet and is accompanied by other manuscript material. Tolkien then wrote a clear manuscript, followed by a typescript in which he made minor emendations and improvements; both manuscript and typescript end at the same point, at the farthest point the story ever reached. The typescript and an amanuensis typescript based upon it were both produced on the machine that Tolkien used up to the end of 1958, except for the first page of the amanuensis typescript, which was made on the typewriter he used from the beginning of 1959. Several years later, probably at the beginning of 1968, Tolkien made another typescript with many emendations, none of significance to the story: this did not reach as far as the earlier versions.

Newby, Percy Howard (1918–1997). P.H. Newby was a prolific writer of novels, including A Journey to the Interior (1945) and The Picnic at Sakkara (1955). His Something to Answer For (1968) was the first winner of the Booker Prize. He also wrote non-fiction books, such as The Warrior Pharaohs (1980). In 1946–8 he lectured in English literature at Fouad I University in Cairo. In 1949 he joined BBC radio as a producer in the Talks Department; in that capacity, in June–July 1953, he expressed an interest in broadcasting Tolkien’s Modern English translation of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien and Newby met for tea at Merton College, Oxford on 31 July 1953 to discuss how the work should be read and introduced. Although Tolkien wanted to do this himself, Newby felt that he was not good enough to read the whole poem; in the event, it was read by several voices.

Newby and Tolkien later discussed other possible topics for radio talks, such as the eighteenth-century Grammarians, fairy-stories, and Tolkien’s old teacher *Joseph Wright; but none came about, at least not with Tolkien in the broadcast. Newby was also instrumental in fostering interest at the BBC in Tolkien’s verse dialogue of the Battle of Maldon, *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son (1953). He was not impressed, however, with *Smith of Wootton Major, which Tolkien stipulated should not be cut, or with Tolkien’s offer to read it himself.

Late in 1958 Newby became Controller of the BBC Third Programme, and at the end of 1971 rose to the position of Director of Programmes, Radio. He retired in 1978.

A photograph of P.H. Newby is reproduced in The Envy of the World by Humphrey Carpenter (1996), following p. 274. A website devoted to Newby, phnewby.net, includes photographs, links to articles, and other features.

Newcastle upon Tyne. A major city in the north-east of England, historically part of Northumberland, now in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, but during Tolkien’s youth (and since 1400) a county in its own right. At the turn of the twentieth century, and long afterward, it was known for coal mining, glassmaking and ceramics, and shipbuilding. An important centre of the Industrial Revolution, it was not without culture, the Laing Art Gallery having been established there in 1901.

Newcastle attracted engineers like William Charles Mountain (see *Mountain family), of the company Ernest Scott and Mountain, maker of electric lighting for mills and factories, as well as pumps, dynamos, and high-speed engines for railways and collieries. Mountain, his wife (Grace Bindley Tolkien, see *Tolkien family), and their two children lived in the Newcastle area and were often visited by Ronald and *Hilary Tolkien during school holidays after their mother’s death.

Nichol Smith, David (1875–1962). Educated at the University of Edinburgh and the Sorbonne, D. Nichol Smith held posts at the University of Glasgow (as assistant to Professor *Walter Raleigh) and at Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne, before his election as Goldsmiths’ Reader in English at *Oxford in 1908. Raleigh had preceded Nichol Smith to Oxford, as Professor of English Literature, and now together again, they made significant contributions to the development of the fledgling English School. ‘If Raleigh’s brilliance as a lecturer and his undogmatic and stimulating mind gave the new school much of its distinction, his “indifference to system” might have retarded its growth, if the calm and orderly mind of Nichol Smith had not been available with suggestion and criticism’ (James Sutherland, ‘David Nichol Smith, 1875–1962’, in Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962), p. 453). In particular, Nichol Smith helped to improve the B.Litt. course, making it more rigorous and methodical. In 1929 he became Merton Professor of English Literature, a chair he held until 1946.

His special interest was the eighteenth century, and on critical attitudes of the eighteenth century towards earlier literature. His publications include Eighteenth-Century Essays on Shakespeare (1903) and Some Observations on Eighteenth-Century Poetry (1937), and editions of Dryden, Johnson, Swift, among other authors of the period. As an undergraduate Tolkien certainly attended lectures by Nichol Smith on Samuel Johnson and his friends, and possibly also his lectures on Dryden, and on English literature from Caxton to Milton. Upon Tolkien’s election to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon in 1925 he and Nichol Smith became colleagues, and served together on the English Faculty Board and numerous committees.

Nichol Smith was also an adviser on English literature to the Oxford University Press, its chief adviser in that field after the death of Raleigh in 1922 and a confidant to *Kenneth Sisam. He was also consulted by *George S. Gordon when Gordon and Tolkien agreed to produce for the Press the ‘Clarendon Chaucer’ (see *Geoffrey Chaucer), and later by Tolkien in a vain attempt to reduce his mass of notes for that book. From c. 1938 Nichol Smith was one of the first three editors of the Oxford English Monographs series, together with Tolkien and *C.S. Lewis.

See further, *F.P. Wilson, ‘A List of Writings of David Nichol Smith, 1896–1945’, in Essays on the Eighteenth Century: Presented to David Nichol Smith (1945).

Nieninque. Poem, first published in *The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983), pp. 215–16.

Composed in Qenya (later Quenya, see *Languages, Invented), Nieninque concerns the maiden Niéle ‘like a snowdrop (Nieninqe), to whom the air gives kisses’. Tolkien included it in his lecture *A Secret Vice (written ?autumn 1931, delivered 29 November 1931) as an example of his ‘vice’ of language invention and its outlet in poetry. The word nieninqe is Qenya, defined in the *Qenyaqetsa lexicon as ‘snowdrop’, literally ‘white tear’, while nieninque is a later form of the word, in Quenya.

A discussion of five texts of the poem, the first four in the earlier Qenya, was published as ‘Nieninqe’ in Parma Eldalamberon 16 (2006), pp. 88–97, ed. Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, and Carl F. Hostetter. This includes transcriptions of the first, second, and fifth versions, with Tolkien’s English versions of the first and second; a note on the language of the second version, appended to the poem; variant readings of the third version; and a fifth version, with Tolkien’s glossarial comments. The fourth text in this sequence, following on the sequence of the earlier three versions, was the one incorporated by Tolkien in A Secret Vice. The first text was written in ?1921, the fourth in ?1931, and the fifth on a page from a desk calendar for 26 June–2 July 1955.

Noel. Poem, a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, published in The ‘Annual’ of Our Lady’s School, Abingdon, no. 12 (1936), pp. 4–5. A child is born into a world grim, grey, dark, and cold, where ‘all ways and paths were wild’. A star comes ‘shining white and clear’, the voice of Mary rises in song ‘o’er mist and over mountains snow’, and ‘the hall is filled with laughter and light’ as the bells of Paradise ring.

Our Lady’s School, now Our Lady’s Abingdon, was founded in 1860 as a convent school by the Sisters of Mercy, a Roman Catholic order of nuns members of whom Tolkien met while in hospital during the First World War. Noel was composed probably close to the time of its publication.

‘Of the Noldor in Beleriand’. The fifteenth chapter of the *‘Quenta Silmarillion’, published in *The Silmarillion (1977), pp. 125–30.

SYNOPSIS

Inspired by the Vala Ulmo, Turgon of Nevrast discovers the hidden Vale of Tumladen, a suitable place for a refuge. After the Dagor Aglareb he sends some of his people to build a city there, while he himself remains in Nevrast. Fifty-two years later, the city of Gondolin is completed. Ulmo tells Turgon it that will endure longest of the realms of the Noldor, and when a time of peril draws near, one will come to warn him, wearing armour which Turgon is directed to leave behind in Nevrast. Turgon and all of his people, both Noldor and Sindar, make their way secretly to Gondolin. In that fair city the inhabitants remain concealed for over 350 years, not leaving until they take part in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

Meanwhile, Finrod Felagund prepares the refuge of Nargothrond, and his sister Galadriel dwells with her kinsman Thingol and with Melian in Doriath. Pressed for information by Melian, who sees that some shadow lies on her and her kin, Galadriel tells her of the theft of the Silmarils and the death of Finwë, but not of the Oath or the Kinslaying. Melian foresees the significance of the Silmarils, and warns Thingol against the sons of Fëanor, but he still sees them and the Noldor as allies against Morgoth.

Rumours of the deeds of the Noldor in Valinor, perhaps spread and enhanced by Morgoth, come to the ears of Círdan, who reports them to Thingol at a time when Finrod and his brothers are visiting Doriath. When Thingol accuses the brothers of concealing the matter from him, they plead their innocence in the Kinslaying and tell of Fëanor’s treachery against them. Thingol is prepared to forgive them, as well as Fingolfin and his people, but forbids the language (Quenya, *Languages, Invented) of those who had slain his kin at Alqualondë to be spoken in his realm. The Sindar obey his decree, and the Noldor begin to use Sindarin for their daily speech. Otherwise Quenya is spoken only by Noldorin lords among themselves, or used as a language of lore.

Finrod celebrates the completion of Nargothrond with a feast. When Galadriel, who is staying with him, asks Finrod why he has no wife, foresight comes upon him that he will be bound by an oath, and his realm will not endure for a son to inherit. But Amarië of the Vanyar, whom he loved, had stayed behind in Valinor.

HISTORY

Only isolated threads of this chapter can be found in *The Book of Lost Tales (c. 1916–20), which says little directly of the early years of the Noldor in Beleriand. An outline for the unwritten part of Gilfanon’s Tale: The Travail of the Noldoli and the Coming of Mankind refers to Turgon founding Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (the Nirnaeth Arnoediad), but there is nothing between this and the first written of the Lost Tales, The Fall of Gondolin, which takes place when the city is nearing its end. Turgon’s former dwelling at Nevrast, and the armour left there, do not appear in the tale. Although Gondolin is a hidden secret city, it is not so cut off; some Noldoli manage to find their way to it. The caves inhabited by the Rodothlim, refugee Noldoli led by Orodreth, in The Tale of Turambar are a precursor of Nargothrond, but in The Book of Lost Tales Finrod Felagund has not yet been introduced. Artanor (Doriath) is ruled by Tinwelint and Gwendeling, less noble versions of the later Thingol and Melian. Galadriel does not enter the history of the First Age until after the writing of *The Lord of the Rings.

In *The Lay of the Children of Húrin (c. 1919–25) the rulers of Doriath are Thingol and Melian, and the Noldorin stronghold of Nargothrond has replaced the more humble caves of the Rodothlim. Although two of Fëanor’s sons, Celegorm and Curufin, establish Nargothrond, at the time of the events of the Lay it is ruled by Orodreth, who seems to be unrelated to Finwë. *Christopher Tolkien has suggested, as an explanation of the change of ruler, that when writing the early part of the lay his father thought of Nargothrond as being founded after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears by Celegorm and Curufin, but as the writing progressed he decided that it was founded before that battle, but afterwards the brothers settled elsewhere, and Orodreth became the ruler of Nargothrond.

The first consecutive, if brief, account of the matter of this chapter appeared in the *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926). At this stage Thingol willingly accepts the Noldor in his realm. Turgon still builds Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, inspired by Ylmir (Ulmo), who foretells that it will last the longest of elven refuges. As written, Celegorm and Curufin establish Nargothrond, but are replaced in an emendation by Felagund and his brothers (Felagund, Orodreth, Angrod, and Egnor having already appeared by emendation earlier in the story as the sons of Finrod (later Finarfin) and grandsons of Finwë). This same development took place during the writing of the *Lay of Leithian in the second half of the 1920s. In the *Quenta Noldorinwa (c. 1930) Felagund founds Nargothrond after the Battle of Sudden Flame, in which his brothers Angrod and Egnor were slain. Christopher Tolkien comments that, though in the Quenta Noldorinwa Gondolin is still established after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the description of its building suggests a much longer period than the chronology allows.

The ‘earliest’ *Annals of Beleriand (early 1930s) provide a chronological framework for the events. In the entry for Year 50 Tolkien introduced the idea that Turgon and Felagund were inspired by dreams and foreboding to build their strongholds, which both do immediately: thus Gondolin is founded before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, which takes place in Year 172, when for the first time since its founding Turgon and his people leave Gondolin. In an incomplete second version of these annals, Turgon finds the site of Gondolin in Year 50, but does not lead his people there until the following year, after the Dagor Aglareb. The building of both Nargothrond and Gondolin is complete at about Year 102. Although Tolkien did not finish this version, it is clear that the Battle of Unnumbered Tears would have taken place in Year 272. In the ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand of the mid-1930s Turgon delays his departure until Year 52 (emended to Year 64). The *Quenta Silmarillion (begun mid-1930s) seems to tell the same story.