“All Wizards Should Have a Hobbit or Two in Their Care.” Peregrin Took and The Palantír of Orthanc.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 767-773

This is supposed to be a blog about wisdom. About the wisdom found in The Lord of the Rings, but what wisdom do we learn from Peregrin Took in the matter of the Orthanc-stone except, perhaps, as Merry said to his friend, quoting Gildor Inglorion, “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and quick to anger”?

It was Pippin who first picked up the stone after Wormtongue threw it down from a window in Orthanc, hoping to kill one of the party that had parleyed with Saruman at its doors. Gandalf had taken it from him as quickly as possible but Pippin could not get it out of his mind. And so when they all slept in a camp on the road from Isengard to Helm’s Deep he crept silently to where Gandalf lay, took it, and then settled down to take a good look at it.

What he saw terrified him because he saw the Dark Lord himself in Barad-dûr. It was only because Sauron did not think he needed him that he was set free at all. Sauron would send a Nazgûl to Orthanc to bring Pippin to him for further interrogation and, perhaps, to bring him the Ring itself. So confident was he that he would soon have Pippin before him in person that he did not continue his questioning at that moment. Had he done so he would soon have learned much of all his enemies’ plans. Maybe even where the Ring was and how he might find it.

Thankfully at this point Sauron knows nothing of this. He even assumes that what he sees is a prisoner in Orthanc being paraded in front of him for his inspection. Soon, when Aragorn presents himself before Sauron he will learn his mistake but now for a little while he is filled with anticipation at what he will soon know, or even possess.

A disaster has been averted and Gandalf repeats Gildor’s advice to Pippin but is that all we learn?

I would argue that in this, as with all the history of Peregrin Took within The Lord of the Rings, we learn something much more profound. Pippin is kind of divine agent-provocateur within the story and I choose the word, divine, with care here. It was Gandalf who said to Frodo that he was meant to have the Ring and that this was an encouraging thought. What Gandalf meant by this was that he had a sense that he could discern the hand of God, of Eru Ilúvatar, in all the strange events that had led the Ring, first to Bilbo and then to Frodo. It was a hobbit that was meant to find the Ring and to watch over it for a while. Perhaps Bilbo was not the first attempt to put the Ring into the gentle hands of a hobbit but with Déagol all had ended tragically and for hundreds of years the Ring had lain hidden beneath the Misty Mountains.

Tolkien himself had asked the question, “What more can hobbits do?” after his publishers had asked for more about them following the success of The Hobbit and it took him a long time to find out. As he wrote himself, “the tale grew in the telling”, not just in length but depth also. And what Pippin does is to move the story forward time and again. First when he awoke the Balrog of Moria by dropping a stone into the guardroom well, driving Gandalf into a terrible conflict with a mighty foe and then through death itself before returning with power increased for the final struggle. Then when he and Merry were carried by orcs to the eaves of Fangorn Forest in time to awaken the Ents from their long slumber and to destroy Isengard and Saruman’s power. As Gandalf had said their coming to Fangorn “was like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains”. And now Pippin’s misadventure with the Stone of Orthanc propels the story forward to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields before Minas Tirith and to Aragorn’s coming to his kingdom.

Maybe this wisdom, a wisdom that would in most cases be seen as foolishness, can only be divine, because it can only be discerned and not devised. No-one would possibly devise a strategy in which each of the events that I have just outlined was at the heart of it. To do so would be utter folly and would almost certainly end in disaster. But Pippin’s foolishness and his childlike simplicity achieves much in the story that could never be achieved by careful thought. Elrond was right when he said that Pippin should not be a part of the Fellowship of the Ring. There were many within his household more capable than Pippin was. But Gandalf discerned the hand of God at work in bringing Pippin and Merry to Rivendell and so insisted that the young hobbits should be included. In saying that wizards should have a hobbit or two in their care “in order to teach them the meaning of the word”, he only half spoke in jest. He knew that through hobbits much could be achieved that could never be by the hands of those who were greater or wiser.

Only God could bring us this wisdom. Only the truly wise could discern it.

“This is a Strange Friendship.” Treebeard Ponders The Friendship of Legolas and Gimli. An Elf And a Dwarf.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 763-766

Treebeard’s memory is very long indeed. In the very first making of Arda, the earth, Yavanna, the Vala who most loves things that grow, feared for the welfare of trees, seeing how vulnerable they were, how easily cut down. And the creatures that she most feared were Dwarves, the wielders of axes. She desired some kind of protection for her trees and so certain spirits entered some of the trees and Ents were born.

And the oldest of Ents was Treebeard.

After Gandalf has completed his business with Saruman and cast him from the order of wizards he returns with the young hobbits and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to find Treebeard who has remained hidden during the debate. Treebeard welcomes Legolas warmly and looks forward to welcoming him as a guest to Fangorn. But then comes a moment of doubt and uncertainty. Legolas asks leave of Treebeard that he might bring Gimli with him.

“Hoom, hm! Ah now,” said Treebeard, looking dark-eyed at him. “A dwarf and an axe-bearer! Hoom! I have good will to Elves; but you ask much. This is a strange friendship!”

It was no mere coincidence in Tolkien’s mind that as Gimli bowed low, in Dwarf fashion, to greet Treebeard, his axe fell from his belt. It is almost as if the axe were speaking for itself, reminding Treebeard of Aulë’s words to Yavanna that the dwarves, his children, would have need of wood.

Although it was largely the Númenorians that destroyed the forests of Eriador there is only one recorded battle in Tolkien’s work in which it is known for certain that Ents took part and that is the Battle of Sarn Athrad in Beleriand during the First Age of Arda. A Dwarf army was returning from the destruction of the hidden Elven kingdom of Doriath and the killing of Thingol, its king, when they were assailed by a force commanded by Beren who had married Lúthien, Thingol’s daughter. Thingol was avenged by Beren and the trees of Doriath, a forest kingdom, were avenged by Ents. It is almost certain that Treebeard took part in that battle and he has not forgotten.

The friendship between Legolas and Gimli is very strange for they too have memories of a time when things were very different. For Gimli remembers how Glóin, his father, was once a prisoner in Mirkwood of Thranduil, king of that land and Legolas’s father. If Treebeard’s memory is long so is the memory of Dwarves, and in their case that memory is held within families. There may have been a kind of reconciliation between Thranduil’s people and the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain due to their sharing in the Battle of the Five Armies as allies against the orcs of the Misty Mountains but suspicion and dislike remained.

The strange friendship of old foes.

It was Galadriel who created the conditions in which the strange friendship between Legolas and Gimli could be forged. Although Galadriel was of the Noldor, the people of Fëanor who first came to Middle-earth to avenge the theft of the Silmarillion by Morgoth, she came to have a deep love for Melian, the wife of Thingol, who was a healer in the deepest sense of that word, a healer of the earth and of its peoples. And while the Noldor were the makers of fortress cities like Gondolin and Nargothrond, the kingdom that Galadriel was to make was a forest land in Lothlórien, a kingdom like Doriath of old, and the king with whom she ruled it was Celeborn who was himself a son of Doriath. Galadriel too remembered the destruction by the Dwarves of that hidden kingdom and how Melian had departed, broken-hearted, from Middle-earth after Thingol’s death.

Perhaps it is a grace that works in the world during that part of its history that is recorded in The Lord of the Rings that love is awakened in so many hearts and strange friendships are forged. Galadriel’s heart goes out to Gimli when he stands before her grief-stricken by the death of Balin and the fall of Gandalf in Moria and love is awakened in Gimli because of this. Legolas becomes aware both of the compassion shown by Galadriel and by Gimli’s response to it and he enters into what is taking place. If Boromir brought his peril into Lothlórien Gimli brought his capacity to love and to be loved there. So was forged this strange friendship before which even the oldest of all the Ents now stands in wonder.

Galadriel awakens love in the heart of an angry dwarf.

“I Do Not Wish For Mastery.” If Not Mastery, What Does Gandalf Wish For?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 762-766

The accusation came first from Saruman when Gandalf told him that he could only have his freedom if he surrendered the Key of Orthanc and his staff, to be returned later if he merited them.

“Later! Yes, when you also have the Keys of Barad-dûr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the rods of the Five Wizards, and have purchased yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger than those that you wear now”

Last week we thought about how in these words Saruman reveals his own desire, It is he that desires mastery over all things. As Gandalf puts it, “he will not serve, only command.”

Pippin asks Gandalf what he will do to Saruman and receives this reply.

“I? I will do nothing to him. I do not wish for mastery.”

The idea of mastery is often reflected upon in The Lord of the Rings. The title itself, the only title that Tolkien really liked, is about mastery. It is about Sauron’s desire to rule over all things. So is Gandalf saying that mastery is of its very nature wrong? And if Gandalf does not seek for mastery then what does he wish for?

There is a moment in the story when we are given a very different picture of mastery than the one that Saruman and Sauron give us. It comes in the house of Tom Bombadil when Frodo asks Goldberry who Tom Bombadil is.

Goldberry replies” “He is the Master of wood, water and hill.”

Observant readers of Tolkien will immediately recognise one of his characteristic capital letters here in the word, Master. Tolkien uses them in the middle of a sentence when he wants to draw our attention to the importance of something. In this case it is Tom Bombadil’s authority over everything. It is because of this authority that Old Man Willow has to free Merry and Pippin. But when Frodo asks if this means that the land belongs to him Goldberry replies in distress:

“No indeed!.. That would indeed be a burden… The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves.”

In the case of Tom Bombadil Tolkien gives us a glimpse into Eden before the Fall. I wonder if the reason why the chapters in which the hobbits stay with Tom and Goldberry are so beloved of the readers of The Lord of the Rings is because, just for a moment, just after we have been introduced to the Nazgûl for the first time, and just before the hobbits captivity in the barrow, we rest briefly in a place of pure and childlike innocence. Tom is Master in the sense, as Goldberry puts it, “No-one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest… He has no fear.”

In Tom we see a picture of authority without ownership. It is the authority of a great musician in relation to their instrument and the music they play upon it. The musician gives us no anxiety that the music will be too much for them and while we may admire their mastery it is the music to which we give our ultimate attention. The music belongs to itself and a truly great musician allows us to enter a space that we ourselves do not control but within which we experience delight, wonder, exhilaration, peace and sometimes terror.

So mastery is not, of itself, an evil. In fact, in the world of Tom Bombadil, it allows all things to be truly themselves although even Tom has a house and garden although it is a place in which, as in Treebeard’s Wellinghall, the boundaries between what lies inside and outside the house are somewhat porous. So what does Gandalf reject? For Gandalf also has the kind of mastery that Tom enjoys. Few are likely to catch Gandalf out. As Sam put it when the wargs attacked near the gates of Moria, “Whatever may be in store for old Gandalf, I’ll wager it isn’t a wolf’s belly,”

What Gandalf rejects is Saruman’s idea of mastery with ownership. He rejects Saruman’s desire to make all things serve him. As Gandalf would later say to Denethor, he is a steward. He looks after all things in order that they may be truly free in themselves. That is why he came to Middle-earth to free it from a particular tyranny and to allow it, if it would take the opportunity, freedom to be fully alive.

Ten Years of Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings on WordPress.

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It was on October 30th 2013 that I first posted on WordPress seeking Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings. On those first two days I was so excited that nine people around the world had read the introduction to my work. By the end of that year those nine had been added to by a further 390 and so my project had begun.

My daughter, Bethan took this photo of me outside the rooms where she taught Modern European History at Magdalen College, Oxford last year. Fans of the Inklings will know that it was on Addison’s Walk in the gardens of the College that Tolkien and Lewis went for the famous walk that ended with Lewis’s conversion to Christianity.

My first encounter with The Lord of the Rings came in the autumn of 1968. I was 13 years old and a pupil at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe, one of those schools originally founded in the middle of the 16th century in England. And while Tolkien attended a school originally founded in Birmingham by Edward VI, the only son of Henry VIII, mine was founded a few years later by his half-sister, Elizabeth I.

It is worth noting that in 1968 comparatively little of Tolkien’s work had been published and The Silmarillion was yet to come. So apart from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit little was known of the history of Middle-earth except what could be found in the appendices to The Return of the King. But I was a lover and not a scholar and so, in the years to come I returned to what I knew again and again, always with a sense of melancholy as Frodo’s ship went into the West but with the knowledge that I could return to the beginning on another occasion.

It was in the first decade of this century that I began to wonder if I might write about the book that I loved and as I read it once again I began to fill notebooks with my thoughts on the text and to find references to the ideas that I was gleaning from it. I thought that forty years of reading Tolkien might give me some kind of authority to write about his work. But nothing seemed to flow until one evening at home I watched a movie on TV with my wife and younger daughter, Rebecca, and a new idea came to mind.

The movie was called Julie and Julia and in it I was introduced to a thing called a blog. The movie told the story of a young New Yorker, Julie Powell, who decided to cook all 520 recipes in the book written by the legendary cook, Julia Childs in a single year and to tell the story in a blog. As well as enjoying the story itself I began to realise that while I could not construct whole chapters on my favourite book I could construct a short piece of 700 to 800 words. My mind seemed to think in arguments of that kind of length quite naturally. After all I was a church minister, a priest of the Church of England, and I constructed sermons that felt like that.

The first year was a bit of a struggle and in 2014 I published irregularly and my work was read by just a handful of people each day. In 2015 I began to write more regularly and my readership grew to a dozen a day. I would publish a piece once a week and that felt all right within my other commitments. In November 2016 my readership grew to over a thousand in that month for the first time and thereafter kept on steadily growing and by the time I was was appointed to my current post in December 2018 I was being read by about 2000 people each month.

At that point I felt that I could not write regularly and minister to seven busy parishes in rural Worcestershire close to where Tolkien grew up and where his mother’s family used to farm on a farm known locally as Bag End. There was a gap in my publishing of over a year but to my surprise my readership held up pretty well. People were still finding and reading my work.

Then came Covid in March 2020 and we were all locked away inside our homes. Suddenly I had time to write and people had time to read. During that spring and summer I got two mentions in Google News and suddenly my readership grew from a little over 2,000 a month to around 5,000. Even after I was able to return to more normal working practices I kept on writing, getting up at around 5 a.m on a Saturday morning and writing my 700 to 800 words. A further leap in my readership came in the autumn of 2022 with Amazon’s Rings of Power and in September and October of that year I got over 11,000 readers. The number fell back a little bit after the series ended but during this year I have had regularly had between 8,000 and 9,000 readers a month and by the end of 2023 I will have had over 100,000 readers during the year for the very first time. It is a long way from the handful that I was getting each day ten years ago. Over 50 pieces that I have written have been read over 1,000 times and my two most popular posts have been read over 20,000 times.

It has been a rich experience and I would like to say a special thank you to the people who have accompanied me along the way. Brenton Dickieson who writes the blog, A Pilgrim in Narnia, has been an important regular encourager and I will always remember the weekend that he stayed with us as he made his way from Prince Edward Island in Canada to Oxford to give a lecture to the C.S Lewis Society there. We went walking in the Malvern Hills above the town where Lewis went to school and found places to which Lewis made reference in his imaginative works. And I am still incredibly excited every time I see a comment and know that a new conversation might be about to begin with someone new. Just leave a comment and we can start to talk.

So thank you everyone for travelling with me along the way. And thank you to WordPress for being such enabling hosts. I wonder where the blog is going to take me next.

“You Have Become a Fool, Saruman, and Yet Pitiable.” Gandalf Breaks The Staff of Saruman and Casts Him From The Order of Wizards.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 751-762

Isengard lies in ruins and Saruman is a prisoner within Orthanc. His armies are defeated and now he is caught between two enemies. One, the mighty power that lies within Barad-dûr, knows now that he is a traitor, working only for his own purposes. The others, the King of Rohan who he sought to destroy, the Ents of Fangorn who he contemptuously ignored, and Gandalf who he had once imprisoned and would have sent to Mordor, stand before his doors.

Gandalf and Théoden ascend the steps that lead to the door of Orthanc while the rest of the company await their return below. The Ents remain hidden because Gandalf hopes to persuade Saruman to leave his prison and to come down and feels that if the Ents were present he would fear to do so.

Saruman comes to a window and engages in debate, first with Théoden and then with Gandalf, seeking always to turn things to his own advantage, but as Éomer says to Théoden, “so would the trapped wolf speak to the hounds, if he could.”

Saruman has great power in his voice but by seeking to divide his enemies, speaking singly, first to Théoden and then to Gandalf, he fails in his purpose. First Théoden recalls that Saruman went to war with him unprovoked and murdered children in the Westfold. Then Gandalf recalls his imprisonment within Orthanc. Saruman has done too much wrong to too many to be able to persuade them now that his intentions have been anything but malicious.

But in his speech to Gandalf Saruman reveals what he still believes.

“Much we could still accomplish together, to heal the disorders of the world. Let us understand one another and dismiss from thought these lesser folk! Let them wait upon our decisions.”

Of course, by now, Gandalf knows that when Saruman speaks of we what he really means is I. But even if he didn’t Gandalf has long been a servant and not a master. That is the fundamental difference between the two. Saruman has always regarded others as either more or less powerful than himself. If, like Sauron, they are more powerful, then he will seek to ally himself to them, although he will wait for an opportunity to betray them. It was for this purpose that he sent orcs to capture hobbits and so caught Merry and Pippin. He knew that a hobbit was bearing the Ring, probably taking it to Minas Tirith so that it could be used against the Dark Lord.

This is how Saruman treats the mighty. But for those who he regards as “lesser folk” he has only contempt. The House of Eorl is “a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs” and hobbits are “small rag-tag that dangle” at Gandalf’s tail.

And against Gandalf himself he bears almost uncontrollable fury. He has always regarded Gandalf as a foe. Right from the time when the Valar sent the Istari, the wizards, to Middle-earth to contest with Sauron and to encourage and organise resistance to him, Saruman insisted that he, and not Gandalf, should be the leader of the mission. And Saruman always knew that Cirdan of the Grey Havens had given Narya, one of the three Elven Rings, to Gandalf and not to him. When Gandalf demands Saruman’s staff and the keys of Orthanc Saruman replies in uncontrollable rage.

“When you also have the Keys of Barad-dûr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the rods of the Five Wizards, and have purchased yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger than those that you wear now.”

Of course, apart from the rather pathetic reference to boots, we know that what Saruman has revealed here is what he desires. He is the one who has always desired power and domination. Like a seed growing to a mighty tree this desire has long lodged in his heart but its full extent, his desire to be Lord of Middle-earth, has only become something fully formed quite recently. Before that it may only have been revealed in jealousy of Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond, and contempt for Rohan or Ents, his near neighbours.

And, at the end, not knowing the consequence, not just of betraying those who had been friends but of the Valar who gave him his mission, he is summoned by Gandalf to stand and hear his judgement and he has no choice but to obey. His staff is broken and he is cast from the Order. Gandalf has the authority to do this and Saruman’s power is broken. God cannot be mocked forever.

“Many Ents Were Hurling Themselves Against the Orthanc Rock; But That Defeated Them.” Why Couldn’t The Ents Destroy Orthanc?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 734-744

Last week we thought about how when the Ents destroyed the fortress of Isengard it was if the action of tree roots over a hundred years were “all packed into a few moments.”

But the Tower of Orthanc was different. After Saruman was able to make a hasty retreat into it, only just managing to escape the pursuit of Quickbeam, he got his machinery of war into action and Beechbone was killed by a kind of flamethrower. This threw the Ents into a terrible fury and they launched themselves into an attack upon Orthanc.

“Round and round the rock of Orthanc the Ents were striding and storming like a howling gale, breaking pillars, hurling avalanches of boulders down the shafts, tossing up huge slabs of stone into the air like leaves. The tower was in the middle of a spinning whirlwind. I saw Iron posts and blocks of masonry go rocketing up hundreds of feet, and smash against the windows of Orthanc. But Treebeard kept his head. He had not had any burns, luckily. He did not want his folk to hurt themselves in their fury, and he did not want Saruman to escape out of some hole in the confusion. Many of the Ents were hurling themselves against the Orthanc-rock: but that defeated them. It is very smooth and hard. Some wizardry is in it, perhaps, older and stronger than Saruman”s.”

But Orthanc was not built by wizards but by the Dunedain at the end of the Second Age when Elendil and his people escaped the destruction of Númenor and established the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-earth. As the power of these kingdoms began to wane it fell into the hands of the Dunlendings who were later allies of Saruman at the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Eventually Saruman offered to take possession of the fortress and his offer was gratefully received both by the King of Rohan and the Steward of Gondor and for years after he was a valuable ally to them both and Isengard was an important part of the defences of the West against the growing power that first began to arise in Dol Goldur.

Saruman inherited Orthanc but he built the fortress of Isengard; and it was this fortress that the Ents were able to destroy in a single night. But why did Orthanc remain impregnable? It was from a thought in the comments section following last week’s post that this question began to grow in my mind and I want to try to tackle it this week.

I think that there are two main themes in Tolkien’s thought at work here. One is that as a character begins to invest more and more of themselves, of their essence, into the things that they make, so that essence begins to waste away. A kind of entropy is at work. The greatest example of this is, of course, of Sauron and the Ring. Sauron puts so much of himself into the making of the Ring that when it is finally destroyed he falls with it. But the same principle is at work with Saruman and Isengard. When Merry and Pippin speak dismissively of the one who had them captured and who would have tortured them until he found out all they knew, Aragorn replies that “once he was as great as his fame made him. His knowledge was deep, his thought was subtle, and his hands marvellously skilled.”

The other principle is Tolkien’s sense that when we work in harmony with creation and not seeking mastery over it we are able to make something of real significance and of staying power. So we see the way in which Galadriel makes Lothlórien, a place that Sam Gamgee describes as like being inside a song. And we also listened to Gimli speak of the work that he would do in the glittering caves of Aglarond. Great sculptors speak of finding something within the material that they are working with; something that is essentially present. And in the city of Worcester in England near which I live we could contrast the difference between the gothic beauty of that city’s medieval cathedral and the modernist monstrosity that is the technical college next door to it. The conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton, was once asked to reflect on the unpopularity of new housing developments. His brilliant answer was that if a development were to have the quality of a city like Bath and its beautiful architecture then there would never be an objection to it.

The Royal Crescent in Bath. A beautiful example of Georgian architecture from the 18th century. And the interiors are just as beautiful as the facades.

Scruton, like Tolkien, makes beauty the centre of his thought on the things, and not functionality. When function is subordinate to beauty, in which something is made that is in harmony with the materials that are used and which has a transcendent purpose greater than the agrandisement of the maker then it will last. So Isengard is destroyed in a night and Orthanc is impregnable.

“My Business is With Isengard Tonight, With Rock and Stone.” How The Ents Destroyed Saruman”s Fortress

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 734-744

The smoking of pipes at the ruined gates of Isengard had created a quiet mood in which nothing is said but Legolas is anxious to know more about the story of the hobbits after their capture by orcs nine days before. Merry and Pippin spoke of their experience with the Uruk-hai and how they were able to escape amidst the confusion of battle when Éomer’s company attacked. As Gimli said about how Pippin was able to cut his bonds with an orc knife at an earlier point in the story the hobbits were lucky but they were able to seize their luck “with both hands”.

Merry and Pippin went on to speak of their meeting with Treebeard and of Entmoot when the Ents discussed what action they should take against Saruman. Then they spoke of how, at the end of their debate, the Ents “suddenly blew up”, of how they marched upon Isengard, and of how they were followed by huorns who came out of the forest behind them.

They spoke of how, as they reached Nan Curunir, the vale of the wizard, they were met by a tremendous sound of trumpets blaring and thought that they had been discovered by their enemies. But then they had realised that the noise was of the emptying of Isengard as Saruman sent his army to war against Rohan and how for an hour they watched them marching southward towards Helm’s Deep.

Treebeard watched them go and then said to Merry and Pippin, “My business is with Isengard tonight, with rock and stone”.

Tolkien describes how the Ents launched their assault upon the fortress, wonderfully showing how the slow, deliberate action of tree roots over a hundred years, an action about which all householders must be aware, was concentrated into a single night’s furious work.

“They pushed, pulled, tore, shook and hammered; and clang-bang, crash-crack, in five minutes they had these huge gates just lying in ruin; and some were already beginning to eat into the walls, like rabbits in a sand-pit.”

Merry and Pippin go on to describe how the destruction continues, how Saruman tried to respond by means of fire from within his impregnable fastness of Orthanc at the heart of Isengard; and how the Ents diverted the waters of the Isen from its natural course and flooded the fortress, turning Orthanc into an island in the centre of a lake, an island in which Saruman was now a prisoner.

I have already spoken of how, in this powerful piece of description, Tolkien shows how the action of a forest upon a house over many years is concentrated within a single night. We know that if any building is neglected for a period of time nature soon reclaims it, drawing it back into itself as what once seemed to be permanent is shown to be merely temporary. Tolkien did not know of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, in which Lovelock suggested that the earth is a complex self-regulating system within which that which is organic and non-organic interacts in order to maintain the system as a whole but I suspect that he may have been inclined to like it if he did. Many scientists have criticised the hypothesis on the basis that it is teleological, in other words that it is descriptive of a set of conditions that will lead to a particular end, in this case about the survival of planet earth as a place for organic life, but Tolkien was a Christian, and Christians believe that everything is moving towards a conclusion, of a new heaven and a new earth.

In his Music of the Ainur Tolkien places the whole history of the earth within the framework of a single piece of music in which all creatures, both earthly and heavenly are active participants. Only Eru Ilúvatar, only God, knows how the music will end but it will be a beautiful resolution of all that has preceded that end. As the 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich put it, “All shall be well”. There may be a time in which figures like Saruman may triumph but as the Ents show, through their business with the rock and stone of Isengard, they cannot triumph forever.

“Strider the Ranger Has Come Back.” Who is Aragorn? Perhaps Pipe-smoking will give us a clue.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 730-734

Gandalf takes Théoden and Éomer around the walls of the flooded fortress of Isengard to find Treebeard and leaves Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli behind at the gatehouse with Merry and Pippin. So it is that the three hunters are reunited at last with the captives of the orcs in the very place in which Merry and Pippin were to have been held prisoner by Saruman. The young hobbits are able to provide their guests with a decent meal and a choice of wine or beer and then, when hunger is satisfied and a deep sense of contentment gently descends upon these friends Merry and Pippin are able to provide something that will deepen that feeling and that is Longbottom leaf, pipeweed of the very finest quality.

“Now let us take our ease here for a little!” said Ara Aragorn. “We will sit on the edge of ruin and talk, as Gandalf says, while he is busy elsewhere. I feel a weariness such as I have seldom felt before.” He wrapped his grey cloak about him, hiding his mail-shirt, and stretched out his long legs. Then he lay back and sent from his lips a thin stream of smoke.”

All pipe-smokers will know the particular pleasure that is achieved through the careful practice of their art. A really good pipe requires the right state of mind in order that it might be fully enjoyed. If one comes to a pipe in an agitated state then that feeling will be transmitted to the experience; but if one is able to achieve an inner quiet before lighting a well prepared pipe then both pipe and the state of mind can deepen one another. This is Aragorn’s experience now at the end of nine days endless activity since he decided to go in search of the young hobbits across the plains of Rohan.

With some sadness I have to describe myself as a former pipe-smoker and so I have had to draw upon memories of some years ago. I never smoked more than one or, at the most, two pipes in a day and I always did so when the tasks of the day were done and I had a quiet moment for thought or in the pleasant company of a fellow smoker. So for me the experience of pipe-smoking and inner quiet are intimately and delightfully linked.

My pipe-smoking career came to an end when my older daughter came back from school one day and put a screen-saver on my PC with the words, “Daddy, you will die!” It seemed that she had had a class that day in which the dangers of smoking to health were presented to the children. As she listened to the teacher anxiety grew within her about her own father and so she worked out a way of telling me about this. I love my daughter very much and as soon as I saw the message I knew that I could not be the deliberate cause of anxiety in her and so I gave up smoking my pipe on that very day.

If you want to learn a little about the pleasures of pipeweed then could I please recommend a talk by Malcolm Guite that you can find on his YouTube channel. If you search for him on pipe-smoking you will find a number of short videos there as well as much good material, especially the work that he is doing at present on the retelling of the Galahad tales from the Arthurian legends.

It is Pippin who realises that, as he watches Aragorn smoke his pipe, that he is back in the Prancing Pony with the stranger who will eventually introduce himself as Strider. And as he remembers he speaks.

“Strider the Ranger has come back!”

And Aragorn replies: “He has never been away… I am Strider and Dúnadan too, and I belong to Gondor and the North.”

Pippin belongs to the North and it is there that he first met the man who would be his king both there and in Gondor. it was Bilbo who first introduced us to Aragorn as Dúnadan, man of the West, of Númenor, making us realise his deep lineage, beginning with Eärendil and Elwing, and, before them, Beren and Lúthien. And it was Gandalf who told us that to call Aragorn only a Ranger was to misunderstand him completely. Later Pippin would hail Aragorn as Strider in the presence of the lords of that land which would prompt the Prince of Dol Amroth to ask, somewhat sardonically, whether it would be in terms of easy familiarity like this that kings would henceforth be addressed. Aragorn’s reply displayed his mastery of the moment as well as his mastery of himself.

“Strider shall be the name of my house, if that ever be established. In the high tongue it will not sound so ill, and Telcontar I will be and all the heirs of my body.”

“These Hobbits Will Sit on the Edge of Ruin and Discuss the Pleasures of the Table.” Merry and Pippin Amidst the Wreck of Isengard.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 726-729

This week we return from Théoden’s wonder at his first sight of Ents at Helm’s Deep to Merry and Pippin amidst the wreck of Isengard. Not that I think that they mind our neglect, as they are resting after their first good meal since they were captured by orcs over a week before. Treebeard had given them drafts of a drink that not only sustained them but even made them grow, but there is nothing like proper food and drink to achieve contentment and nothing like a hobbit to enjoy it properly.

“These hobbits will sit on the edge of ruin and discuss the pleasures of the table, or the small doings of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and remoter cousins to the ninth degree, if you encourage them with undue patience.” So says Gandalf to Théoden after Merry has begun to discourse on the history of pipe-smoking in the Shire, and we know this to be true, not just because Gandalf says it but because we remember how Merry and Pippin sat down on the edge of Fangorn to eat a piece of lembas as Éomer’s company did battle with the orcs just a few yards away and how, when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli found signs of this meal they commented that this was proof that hobbits had been there. Who else would choose such a spot for a meal?

Gandalf does not say it here but this is why he loves the Shire and his visited it so often over many years. There is a sense in which the whole Shire has been sitting on the edge of the ruin of Eriador as it has been since the fall of the Kingdom of Arnor and its successor, Arthedain, at the hands of the Witch-king of Angmar for many years and has quite simply ignored the fact, being entirely absorbed with its own affairs, the pleasures of the table and the small doings of its families. How different this has been from Gondor, for example, with its endless anxiety about the world beyond its borders, although perhaps in Lossarnach and in their lord, Forlong the Fat, there is something of a hobbit spirit.

Gandalf has needed the Shire for many reasons. In part he has needed it as a place of rest amidst his long and weary travels. But he has also needed it as a place of play, a place where he has learned to play. Sam Gamgee wanted Frodo to include a verse about Gandalf’s fireworks in the lament that he had composed about Gandalf in Lothlórien and that is what Gandalf had meant to him and to most of the people of the Shire. There is a sense that as Gandalf incarnated his Olorin spirit in Middle-earth as one of the Istari sent by the Valar to contend with Sauron, it was the Shire, and its “small doings” that shaped that incarnation in a very particular way. Saruman never understood this, laughed at it, and suspected it too. His own incarnation lay within the walls of what he thought was an impregnable fortress, a place where he could plot the conquest of Rohan and even dream of becoming the Lord of the Rings and master of Middle-earth.

That it was Gandalf who triumphed in the War of the Ring that ended the Third Age of Arda, and not Saruman, was in no small measure because of his love of the Shire. This was not just because, by a set of strange circumstances, the Ring came to the Shire, and then from the Shire to Mount Doom, but also because Merry and Pippin came to Fangorn Forest. It was Gandalf himself who told Frodo how he had chosen Bilbo for the Quest of the Lonely Mountain, a story recounted in Lost Tales, telling Thorin Oakenshield that “a foresight is on me.” This foresight, this world changing intuition, was formed within Gandalf’s soul by hours at hobbit tables on the edge of ruin while he smoked his pipe and listened to tales of the small doings of his hosts. It was from these doings that Sauron and Saruman fell.

“Tales By The Fireside.” Théoden Touches The Perilous Realm.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 716,717

“Is it so long since you have listened to tales by the fireside?”

So Gandalf asks of Théoden as the King tries to make some sense of what he has just seen as Ents emerge from the magical forest that has come from Fangorn to Helm’s Deep.

I promised last week that we would remain in this reflection on the Perilous Realm that J.R.R Tolkien spent a lifetime pondering and, in the creation of his legendarium, making something that has allowed millions of readers to touch and taste it too.

In his essay On Fairy-Stories Tolkien tells us that a fairy story is not one that is about an elf or a fairy but is about “the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country.” He goes on to say that Faërie is essentially indescribable, that it has “many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole.” Indeed analysis will effectively kill the thing that it seeks to describe. Perhaps it always does, reducing the thing that it has observed to its many parts and so failing to see the whole that it first experienced. Tolkien tells us that Faërie “may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic- but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific magician.”

“The vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific magician.” Have we not here been introduced to the Dark Lord himself, hidden in his fastness of Barad-dûr and his most enthusiastic imitator, Saruman? And isn’t the Ring a perfect example of such a device? Saruman was one who lived long in the Undying Land and knew its beauty and yet became seduced by a desire for power, becoming increasingly frustrated by the long, slow history of beauty that, as Gimli describes so well in speaking of the Caves of Aglarond can only be worked with, “with cautious skill, tap by tap- a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day”. Gimli’s description of the work of a true artist in the presence of beauty is light years away from the work of those “laborious, scientific magicians” Sauron and Saruman, who are endlessly frustrated by the slowness of things to be shaped by their will and who become contemptuous of those who are not willing to work as they do. Essentially they become contemptuous of Ilúvatar and the long slow pace of the music of the Ainur that is the story of Creation itself.

Sauron and Saruman live in the same world as Fangorn and Lothlórien, those expressions within Tolkien’s sub-creation of the Perilous Realm, and yet have no understanding of them or of their magic. Their vulgarity is only capable of reducing the magic of these places to their own that is laborious and scientific. But Sauron’s vulgar creation of the Ring is always a temptation to those who have worked long and patiently with the beauty of Middle-earth. When Galadriel is tempted to take the Ring that Frodo freely offers to her she imagines herself as a Dark Queen crying out that “all shall love me and despair!”

It is a misunderstanding of the true nature of evil to imagine Galadriel at this moment as something horrible as Peter Jackson does in the film version of The Lord of the Rings. What the Ring would have given to Galadriel would have been the opportunity to become endlessly and repetitively a terrible beauty that could be seen, desired but never enjoyed. The whole world would be in the thrall of an erotic desire that would endlessly grow in intensity but could never be satisfied. Gimli expresses this when he speaks of “the danger of light and joy”. Legolas rightly praises Gimli for staying faithful to his companions and for giving up the desire that has been awakened within him but Gimli is not comforted by his words.

So perhaps it is safer to keep an experience of beauty within tales by the fireside. As we hear such tales the longing that Gimli knows may perhaps be tasted, may even be a delicious pleasure for a brief moment, but the story will come to an end and it will be time to sleep. Unless, of course, there may be a path that might lead us to an enjoyment of this pleasure; one that never cloys,as the hymn writer puts it.