"I like to attribute the coincidence to a little touch of Gandalf magic," she said. Mountfield said she had forgotten about her own letter from the author until it fell out of a copy of Tolkien's book Tree and Leaf last year, shortly after she herself had received a letter from a former pupil about the influence she had been on him. On the blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I did not and do not know why." In a letter to WH Auden, he wrote: "All I remember about the start of The Hobbit is sitting correcting School Certificate papers in the everlasting weariness of that annual task forced on impecunious academics with children. Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, and would mark School Certificate exams in the summers to add to his salary. I wish I could now tell some of mine (of long ago) how I remember them and things they said, though I was (only, as it appeared) looking out of the window or giggling at my neighbour". He then added a handwritten note to the bottom of the letter, telling Mountfield that "All teaching is exhausting, and depressing and one is seldom comforted by knowing when one has had some effect.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |