The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Christina Scull
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her that ‘the things sent to you (except the Sea-bell, the poorest, and not one that I [should] really wish to include, at least not with the others) were conceived as a series of very definite, clear and precise, pictures – fantastical, or nonsensical perhaps, but not dreamlike!’ (6 December, Letters, p. 312). On 8 December, Tolkien wrote to Unwin that Baynes had ‘a great talent for producing vivid and believable pictures while touching them with a delightful air of fantasy which is largely imported by her fluid and dexterous line. But I do agree heartily with her feeling [expressed in a letter to him] that all the pieces are very different and I have some misgivings about lumping them together. I am inclined to think that the vaguer, more subjective and least successful piece labelled The Sea-Bell ought to come out in any case’ (A&U archive; Chronology, p. 582).
Before long, Tolkien saw that the proposed collection had turned into something other than he had planned. It was no longer a small book reprinting a single, existing poem, a burden more for illustrator than author. Now, ‘looking out, furbishing up, or re-writing of further items to go with Tom Bombadil and Errantry, took a lot of work. …’ Also, Tolkien still felt ‘very uncertain’ about his poems, ‘and doubt my own judgment or criticism of what has been really a private past-time’ (14 December, A&U archive; Chronology, p. 582). At Unwin’s invitation, however, he ‘raked over’ his ‘collection of old verses’, found more ‘that might be made use of with a thorough re-handling’, and sent his publisher four of these – Firiel (later The Last Ship), Shadow-Bride, Knocking at the Door (later The Mewlips), and The Trees of Kortirion. Firiel, he thought, ‘apart from the question of whether it is good or bad in its self’, might go with the other poems he had sent thus far. But ‘The Trees is too long and too ambitious, and even if considered good enough would probably upset the boat’ (letter to Rayner Unwin, 5 February 1962, A&U archive; Chronology, pp. 587-8). Tolkien also now suggested that, if still more poems were required, one or two from The Lord of the Rings might be added, such as Oliphaunt and The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late (Frodo’s song at the Prancing Pony).
Though he was under much pressure from other matters, and concerned for his wife’s health after a fall, Tolkien gave every moment he could spare to the collection, as he told Rayner Unwin on 12 April 1962. He remained unhappy about the poems, indeed he had ‘lost all confidence in these things, and all judgement, and unless Pauline Baynes can be inspired by them, I cannot see them making a “book”. I do not see why she should be inspired, though I fervently hope that she will be. Some of the things may be good in their way, and all of them privately amuse me; but elderly hobbits are easily pleased.’ And yet, he entered fully into the spirit of the work and gave it a needed context and frame:
The various items – all that I now venture to offer, some with misgiving – do not really ‘collect’. The only possible link is the fiction that they come from the Shire from about the period of the Lord of the Rings. But that fits some uneasily. I have done a good deal of work, trying to make them fit better: if not much to their good, I hope not to their serious detriment. You may note that I have written a new Bombadil poem [Bombadil Goes Boating], which I hope is adequate to go with the older one, though for its understanding it requires some knowledge of the L.R. At any rate it performs the service of further ‘integrating’ Tom with the world of the L.R. into which he was inserted. …
I have placed the 16 items in an order: roughly Bilboish, Samlike [‘by’ Bilbo Baggins and Sam Gamgee], and Dubious. Some kind of order will be necessary, for the scheme of illustration and decoration. But I am not wedded to this arrangement. I am open to criticisms of it – and of any of the items; and to rejections. Miss Baynes is free to re-arrange things to fit her work, if she wishes.
Some kind of ‘foreword’ might possibly be required. The enclosed is not intended for that purpose! Though one or two of its points might be made more simply. But I found it easier, and more amusing (for myself) to represent to you in the form of a ridiculous editorial fiction what I have done to the verses, and what their references now are. [A&U archive; Letters, pp. 314-15]
Here Tolkien refers to sixteen poems, apparently the final selection as published. By 12 February 1962, he had sent twelve to Allen & Unwin: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Dragon’s Visit, Errantry, Firiel (The Last Ship), The Hoard, Knocking at the Door (The Mewlips), The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, Perry-the-Winkle, Princess Mee, The Sea-Bell, Shadow-Bride, and The Trees of Kortirion. The Trees of Kortirion, a revision of a much earlier ‘Silmarillion’ poem, was later published in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (1983). Christopher Tolkien, the youngest son and literary executor of J.R.R. Tolkien, has speculated that his father also revised another early work, You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play, in the process of ‘rubbing up’ his old poems.
Rayner Unwin agreed that The Trees of Kortirion should be omitted, and The Dragon’s Visit was deleted as well: this account of a dragon set upon by a fire brigade may have proved too difficult to bring into the world of Hobbits. (First published in the Oxford Magazine, The Dragon’s Visit was reprinted in The Annotated Hobbit (1988, 2002), and appeared in revised form in the anthologies Winter’s Tales for Children 1 (1965) and The Young Magicians (1969).) To fill out the collection, Tolkien added three poems from The Lord of the Rings, The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late, Oliphaunt, and The Stone Troll; his new ‘Bombadil’ poem, Bombadil Goes Boating; Cat, which he had written for his granddaughter Joanna in 1956; and a ‘bestiary’ poem revised from an earlier work, Fastitocalon. The final arrangement groups like with like as far as possible. The two ‘Bombadil’ poems are followed by two ‘fairy’ poems, two with the Man in the Moon, and two with trolls; then The Mewlips, an odd man out, placed near the centre; and finally, three ‘bestiary’ poems and four with ‘atmosphere’ and emotion.
Pleased with this selection, and with Tolkien’s ‘editorial fiction’ that the works came from the same ‘source’ as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – the ‘Red Book of Westmarch’ – Rayner Unwin chose to publish the poetry volume for Christmas 1962. Pauline Baynes was now formally engaged to make the illustrations, but could not begin to do so until the middle of June. Her pictures needed careful planning, in concert with Ronald Eames, art editor for Allen & Unwin: some would be in black and white only, while others would have a second (orange) colour added, and for economy, the extra colour would be printed on only one side of each large sheet that made up a gathering. For content, Baynes asked Tolkien for his thoughts, but he gave her a free hand, warning only that his apparently light-hearted verses had a serious undercurrent, and should not be perceived as merely comic.
By the start of August, Baynes delivered the first of her pictures, including art for the binding and dust-jacket, and by 22 August completed six full-page illustrations. Since Allen & Unwin had allowed for only five, Tolkien was asked to decide which one to exclude. ‘Pauline rather carries one away at first sight’, he wrote to Rayner Unwin; ‘but there is an illustrative as well as a pictorial side to take into account’ (29 August 1962, A&U archive; Chronology, p. 596). Although he admired her large pictures for Cat and The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, he felt that each had faults; neither, however, in his view was as deserving of omission as Baynes’s full-page illustration for The Hoard, which Tolkien criticized for its depiction of the young warrior, and of a dragon lying with its head away from, rather than towards, the entrance to its cave. In the event, all six of the larger illustrations were published, and Baynes revised her art for The Hoard (opposite) when the Bombadil collection was reprinted in Poems and Stories (1980).
Tolkien also decided that he was disappointed with Baynes’s cover art once he saw it in proof. A wraparound design, it features the mariner from Errantry on the upper cover and a sleeping Tom Bombadil on the lower, with a panoply of birds, fish, and other creatures against a backdrop of earth, sea, and sky. ‘Alas!’ Tolkien wrote to Ronald Eames, ‘it is only now … that I observe that as an illustration, especially one to fit the general title, the picture should have been reversed: