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approved, though only because Allen & Unwin felt that the project would be good for sales of his book.
During the summer of 1955 Tiller sent Tolkien scripts for the first three episodes. Tolkien seems to have found room for improvement and suggested alterations, which Tiller seems to have accepted – the archive is vague and incomplete on this point, as on others. Moreover, Tiller wisely asked Tolkien’s advice about accents for his characters’ speech. Tolkien replied:
I quite understand that the need for characterization, and making different speakers audibly recognizable, may well override my opinion. Also the skill of the actors may be inadequate to deal in nuances.
The relative passages are Vol. III, pp. 408 and 411 [of The Lord of the Rings, first edition, both in Appendix F, ‘On Hobbits’ and the beginning of ‘On Translation’]. From these, and from the actual characterization in my text, I think it can be seen that the Hobbit ‘gentry’ should not be made rustical in actual tones and accents. Their divergence from High Speech is cast rather in forms of grammar and idiom: they just speak unstudied modern English. Merry and Pippin are the two young hobbits of the highest birth in the land (heirs of the Master and the Thain) and should at any rate not speak differently from Frodo. I am against anything more than the merest tinge of ‘country’ (if any) in their speech. (Frodo’s superior linguistic skill would be exhibited only in Elvish.) The difference between ‘gentlehobbits’ and the Great is envisaged rather as one of period (in our terms) than dialect. The Great use a more archaic language (when functioning as the Great), and speak with greater solemnity and precision. The Hobbits just use our own rather slack colloquial.
But Sam and Butterbur (for Breelanders, Men and Hobbits, were in the same linguistic position) may well be characterized by speaking with a ‘country accent’ of some kind – fairly but not too strongly marked.
As for what kind of ‘accent’ – I do not think that matters very much, as long as it can be consistently maintained by the speakers. You say ‘West-Country’. Well since Elizabethan days that seems to have been favoured as ‘stage dialect’, though not often with any local or historical accuracy. ‘Accuracy’ fortunately does not matter at all in this translation into modern terms of a vanished past, and as long as the ‘accent’ used is fairly consistent, and such as to seem to the average listener vaguely ‘countrified’, that will do.
But you may note that I have deliberately avoided making the dropping or misuse of h a feature of any kind of hobbit-speech. I should prefer that this should be observed, though it is not, of course, vital (in the cases of Sam and Butterbur). Also I personally should prefer not to have any supposedly ‘Zummerzet’ z/v for s/f initially.
If I might make a particular suggestion: I should use the pronunciation of r as a main characterizing detail. Hobbit-gentry should speak more or less as we do (at our most unstudied). Sam, in addition to a rustic tone and vowel-colouring, should use the burred (or reverted) r. The Great, and especially the Elves, should sound their rs as a trill (though not with a Scots extravagance) in all positions. It is a great enhancement of English, as well as (now) bearing an archaic flavour. However, that is by the way. Some people find it difficult to do!
I am sure the whole matter is safe in your hands; and only on the point of not making Meriadoc or Pippin rustic (nor indeed any of the 144 gentry at the party) do I place any final importance. [10 September 1955, BBC Written Archives Centre]
In late September 1955 Tiller finally was able to send Tolkien copies of all six scripts. In his covering note he warned that Tolkien would ‘at first be a little shocked at the extent of the cutting: six half hours are pitifully brief [the running time per instalment had been cut to only thirty minutes, rather than forty-five], and inevitably a great deal of the flavour of your work has been lost. Nevertheless, I think the addition of music, and of living voices, will do much to replace such losses’ (21 September 1955, BBC Written Archives Centre). He telescoped certain incidents and simplified geographical details, but hoped that the main themes of the work were not totally obscured or mutilated. Tolkien replied that he was very interested in what Tiller had done, in an intellectual sense, as of course he had not yet heard the work performed on the air, and with music (by Anthony Smith-Masters); but the procedure had led him to some conclusions:
If a weakness of the book is the necessity of historical build-up concurrent with the tale of events – except for those who like the imaginary ‘history’ for its own sake – it is a greater weakness in a ‘dramatic’ form, in so far as this form still has to include a good deal of ‘explanations’. But what chiefly interested me in reading your scripts – beyond the interest in noting what you had picked out and what you had cut – was the fact that the inevitable reduction of background and detail had tended to reduce the whole thing, making it much more of a ‘fairy-tale’ in the ordinary sense. The hobbits seem sillier and the others more stilted. Though, of course, living voices may make a great difference, as you say. Anyway, as an author, I was comforted by being confirmed in my opinion that there are actually few, if any, unnecessary details in the long narrative! The loss of any of them deprives the story of significance at some later point. [27 September 1955, BBC Written Archives Centre]
Tolkien next wrote again at length to Tiller on 8 December 1955, after the adaptation had begun to be broadcast (14 November–18 December), and following a discussion of it on the programme The Critics (14 November):
I am glad The Times was appreciative; even though that seemed to infuriate the precious self-styled ‘critics’. I thought they were intolerable, with a superiority that only ignorance can maintain. You cannot expect to please many readers (or the author) at many points; but if it is any comfort to you I may say that I have a good many letters about the radio-version, and while some are adverse many ‘readers’ enjoy it, and also tell me that non-readers get a great deal out of it. … I do not agree with most of the criticisms myself … [such] as the one that wanted hobbits to pipe and squeak. Why should tones rise with fall in stature? Some of the silliest high-pitched voices I have heard belonged to people over six feet.
I liked Glóin’s foreign accent – though it was perhaps a bit heavily laid on …: dwarves spoke the Common Tongue natively …; but they had an uvular back R. But it does not matter. I was a bit disappointed that Bilbo sounded not only old but bored. The Elvish, and the names were managed excellently. But it was a pity that the preliminary announcer (unless I misheard) called Goldberry ‘Bombadil’s daughter’ (!) and asserted that the evil willow was an ally of Mordor. Mordor is not the master of all things hostile to the ‘humane’; and, so to say, there is much that seems evil to us that is not in league with the Devil!
I thought the cutting down of the difficult Chap. II of Book II (council [of Elrond]) was masterly, and got in all essentials without serious loss. [BBC Written Archives Centre]
Tiller for his part was not as unhappy about Bilbo as Tolkien, and noted that one or two letters sent to the BBC suggested that the Elves should have been more virile, while some maintained that Frodo was a good deal younger than the actor employed for the broadcast. Tiller admitted that it was his fault that Goldberry was described as Bombadil’s daughter: the relationship between them was never definitely expressed, and Goldberry ‘felt’ to Tiller like a female and second-generation Bombadil. ‘I really am sorry about this error’, he wrote to Tolkien, ‘but who is she?’ (12 December 1955, BBC Written Archives Centre). Tolkien did not answer this question, but commented that he ‘ought to remember that not all is in the “book”, and it is asking a lot to expect even that to be known. I think I had quite forgotten that Bombadil’s adventures as set out in the Oxford Magazine of 1934 (!) [see *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil] were not included. … Authors are no doubt often peevish folk!’ (letter to Tiller, 15 December 1955, BBC Written Archives Centre).
In other letters, however, Tolkien was more candid about his feelings. On 30 November he wrote to Molly Waldron: ‘I think the book quite unsuitable for “dramatization”, and have not enjoyed the broadcasts – though they have improved’ (Letters, p. 228). On 8 December he wrote to *Naomi Mitchison: ‘I think poorly of the broadcast adaptations. Except for a few details I think they are not well