Lewis Carroll's Influence on Tolkien

[littlemanpoet]

In On Faerie Stories, Tolkien uses the works of Lewis Carroll as, first a negative illustration of that which is not fairy-story; and second as a positive illustration of that which is fantasy.

First, as a negative illustration of "what is a fairy-story":

It is at any rate essential to a genuine fairy-story, as distinct from the employment of this form [that of fairy-tale] for lesser or debased purposes, that it should be presented as "true". The meaning of "true" in this connexion I will consider in a moment. But since the fairy-story deals with "marvels," it cannot tolerate any frame or machinery suggesting that the whole story in which they occur is a figment or illusion. The tale itself may, of course, be so good that one can ignore the frame. or it may be successful and amusing as a dream-story. So are Lewis Carroll's [my bold] Alice stories, with their dream-frame and dream-transitions. For this (and other reasons) they are not fairy-stories.

And later, as a positive illustration of fantasy:

For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itslef in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men could really not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.

This reveals that Tolkien distinguished between fantasy and fairy-story. All well and good.

I can't remember where I read it, but I did read that whereas Tolkien disliked the Alice stories, he enjoyed the Sylvie and Bruno stories by Lewis Carroll. I have been reading the first of the two
Sylvie and Bruno stories, frankly only because Tolkien said he liked them.

I expect that most of you have not had the opportunity to read them, which I found in The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll, Octopus Books, Ltd., 1982. The illustrations are the famous ones (think of the Mad Hatter). Anyway, reflecting on the two quotes above, it is clear why Tolkien liked the Sylvie and Bruno stories. Sylvie, an eight or so year old girl, and her 4 year old little brother, Bruno, begin the story as human children, but they become fairies. Unlike in Alice, they are presented to the reader as real, and able to transition between fairy-land as fairies and mundane England as children, according to certain laws of fairy-nature.

Now for my discovery.

In one of the English segments of the story, the following exchange occurs. A young English gentleman who has fallen for one Lady Muriel, holds forth on the interesting (to him) fact that the smaller the animal, the more legs it has. Then this:

"The other alternative," said the Earl [Lady Muriel's father] "would be a diminuendo of repetitions of the same type. Never mind the monotony of it: let's see how it would work in other ways. Begin wtih the race of men, and the creatures they require: let us say horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs - we don't exactly require frogs and spiders, do we, Muriel?"

Lady Muriel shuddered perceptibly: it was evidently a painful subject. "We can dispense with them," she said gravely.

"Well, then we'll have a second race of men, half-a-yard high----"

"---who would have one source of exquisite enjoyment, not possessed of by ordinary men!" Arthur interrupted.

"What soure?" said the Earl.

"Why, the grandeur of scenery! Surely the grandeur of a mountain, to me, depends on its size, relative to me? Double the height of the mountain, and of course it's twice as grand. Halve myheight, and you produce the same effect."

"Happy, happy, happy Small!" Lady Muriel murmured rapturously. "None but the Short, none but the Short, none but the Short enjoy the Tall!"

Well, you can imagine what popped into my mind as soon as I read that, having been steeped for thirty-six years in the works of Tolkien! Is this (perhaps at a subconscious level) what got Tolkien thinking of "In a hole lived a Hobbit"? Pure speculation, I grant you. But here also you have an illustration of Wonder.

So here's the question, since there needs to be one for there to be a discussion, I suppose: How likely do you think it is that Tolkien got his idea for half-yard-high Hobbits from reading Sylvie and Bruno?

-LMP

[Estelyn Telcontar]

What an interesting connection, LMP! I haven't read Sylvie and Bruno yet, but I just dug out my Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll (I'm assuming you mean the same illustrations, by John Tenniel; mine's a paperback edition though.) and will start reading them as soon as I can. Half a yard is shorter than the average Hobbit, of course, but perhaps this is part of the "leaf-mould" that went into the fertile creative soil of The Hobbit and LotR.

It's an interesting coincidence that has been noted before, that two Oxford dons should write such popular children's books!

[Bêthberry]

Very fascinating observation, lmp and a wonderful example of how to use the Letters and other of Tolkien's writing for fruitful consideration which extends our understand of him.

As with Estelyn, I also have not read the Sylvie and Bruno stories, but will immediately add them to my list of definite reads over the holidays, so I have nothing substantive to add at this time to your hypothetical.

I would, however, caution against too thoroughly applying the name of children's literature to either Carroll's work or TH, although there are valid points which can be made under that rubric. I remember a very erudite Tolkien fan on another site once engaging in the activity of crossing out all the "children's lines' in TH to discover a more serious vein running through the story.

Also, the Victorians did not, as we do, have a hard and fast division between them and some Victorian (and Edwardian) writing for children likely strikes us these days as shocking--Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market being one example. Another is Beatrice Potter's tales, which incorporate logic puzzles and conundrums for adults--or so I've been told by a colleague who teaches children's literature. And then there is J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

Perhaps only under the relentless pressure of a culture and literature which prioritised logic and rationality and empiricism would writers turn to find the value of fantasy and fairie in children's psyches.

[Boromir88]

lmp, a nice find, you might want to check out this thread , it discusses a lot of other Tolkien influences.

[Child of the 7th Age]

What an interesting idea! I have not read Sylvie and Bruno but am wondering if this is the story you are referring to..... Click here for text. Here is the same book for sale (new and used) on Amazon.

I assume this book is out of copyright since it was first published in 1893, just a year or so after Tolkien was born.

I do have some general thoughts on hobbits and where they came from in terms of JRRT’s mind, but will try to post later on that.

[littlemanpoet]

Yes, that's the one, Child.

Thanks for the link, Boromir88. Pretty deep stuff! I'll have to put on my snorkle suit for that one!

Thanks for the high compliment, Bethberry! I'm humbled!

By the way, Estelyn, the illustrator of Sylvie and Bruno is Harry Furniss, whereas John Tenniel illustrated Alice.

In the preface to the second half, Carroll writes his rationale for the story.. in part:

It may interest some of my readers to know the theory on which this sotry is constructed. It is an attempt to show what might possibly happen, supposing that Fairies really existed; and that they were sometimes visible to us, and we to them; and that they were sometimes able to assume human form: and supposing, also, that human beings might sometimes become conscious of what goes on in the Fairy-world -- by actual transference of their immaterial essence, such as we meet with in "Esoteric Buddhism". [reminds me of astral projection]

I have supposed a Human being to be capable of various physical states, with varying degrees of consciousness, as follows:

(a) the ordinary state, wiht no consciousness of the presence of Fairies;
(b) the "eerie" state, in which, while conscious of actual surroundings, he is also conscious of the presence of Fairies;
(c) a form of trance, in which, while unconscious of actual surroundings, and apparently asleep, he (i.e. his immaterial essence) migrates to other scenes, in the actual world, or in Fairyland, and is conscious of the persence of Fairies.

I have also supposed a Fairy to be capable of migrating from Fairyland into the actual world, and of assuming, at pleasure, a Human form; and also to be capable of various psychical states, viz.

(a) the ordinary state, with no consciousness of the presence of Human beings;
(b) a sort of "eerie" state, in which he is conscious, if in the actual world, of the presence of actual Human beings; if in Fairyland, of the presence of the immaterial essences of Human beings.

He proceeds to tabulate the passages as to what is which.

I found it rather interesting, and thought I'd share it, especially since it might not make it into an online version of the story.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Imp –

Fascinating stuff!

How likely to do think it is that Tolkien got his ideas for half-yard-high Hobbits from reading Sylvie and Bruno

Since I haven’t read this source, I can’t speak directly to your point. But I do have some general thoughts on hobbit origins and how JRRT’s mind worked.

As with most of the Legendarium, I don’t think we’ll ever nail the Professor down to a single source on the origin of Hobbits. His mind was too eclectic. Consciously or subconsciously, he likely drew ideas from a dozen different sources. And these sources, whatever their original form, were reshaped into something totally new. All we can do is identify interesting references, as you’ve done here, and speculate what the tie might be.

There are so many tales of ‘little folk’, but these are always faerie creatures. Michael Denham, a British folklorist in the mid-19th century, even included the word “Hobbit” amid a long list of brownies, fays, hobgoblins, boggarts and such. But, unlike Tolkien’s Hobbits, all of these were faerie folk. What makes your reference from Carroll interesting is that, like Tolkien, he was describing short manlike beings.

Imp - Hope you won’t mind if I mention another literary work that probably played a part in the origin of Hobbits: The Marvellous Land of Snergs by E. A. Wyke-Smith . Have you read it? With some difficulty, I managed to track down a copy and will likely add a review to Helen's thread. Douglas Anderson and other scholars have mentioned the tie-in before, but I don’t think we’ve ever discussed it on the Downs. (A search under ‘snergs’ and the author’s name only turned up a one-sentence reference from a post that Squatter did. ) Squatter's post on Snergs....

Wyke-Smith’s book was published in 1927, about three years before Tolkien began work on the The Hobbit. In his Letters, Tolkien acknowledges that this book may have had an influence on his concept of Hobbits. He had read it aloud to his children night after night. His son Michael even wrote stories with snerg-inspired characters (Wow, a fanfiction writer in the Tolkien family!).

In “On Fairy Stories” originally given as a lecture in 1939, a great deal of the material included in the notes never got into the version that was actually published in 1947. The omitted material included the following sentence:

I should like to record my own love and my children’s love of E.A. Wyke Smiths’s [The] Marvellous Land of Snergs, at any rate of the snerg element in that tale, and of Gorbo, the gem of dunderheads, jewel of a companion in an escapade.

Interestingly, the last sentence echoes the very same language Tolkien later used in letter #76 written to his own son Christopher in 1944 where he describes Samwise as a “jewel among the hobbits.”

Despite the fact snergs were said to be distant offspring of the pixies, they don’t have a magical bone in their bodies. And like Carroll’s little folk, they don’t dwell in faerie or a dream realm; they live in a “real” place in the human world that is “set apart” (shades of the Shire!) and difficult to reach because of quirks of weather and navigation.

A snerg is a practical and prosaic creature who stands as tall as a table-top. His greatest joy in life is giving and attending feasts. The hero of Wyke’s book is a snerg named “Gorbo”. Some of this sounds familiar to me!

So I’m sure Tolkien had a lot of ideas percolating in his head when he sat down and told his children bedtimes stories. And some of these ideas eventually found their way into the printed manuscript of the Hobbit.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I've been reading Sylvie and Bruno, curious to see what their charm could have been for Tolkien. I must say, though I am not finished with the second book yet, I have yet to discover it. There are humorous moments and cute ideas, but I do not see the connection between Tolkien's noble and awe-inspiring Elves and the elfin children of Carroll. The latter seem much more conventional and their realm has little to do with Faery as shown to us in Smith of Wootton Major. I find that the back and forth between real life and fairy world feels too pieced, and some of the real life moralizing conversations detract from the imaginative parts. Carroll explains that he jotted down many things and combined them to a story, and it doesn't feel coherent to me.

As to the passage LMP quoted, I doubt that it has much to do with Hobbits - the context seems to be too different to me. However, it's possible, I suppose...

In addition to the online version, to which Child linked above, I found new stanzas for the Gardener's Song - anyone can add to that page - fun!

[Morquesse]

Child, I also thought of the Snergs as a main influence for Tolkien's Hobbits. I managed to find a publisher who recently started puting Snergs in print. Here's the location: oldearthbooks.com. I'm getting a copy at the end of the month, so we'll need to start a thread on that.

lmp, your posts indicate to me that Tolkien liked Silvie and Bruno and not Alice. I read Humphrey Carpenter's biography and the book indicates that Tolkien liked Alice as a child (or somewhere I read). Are you saying that Tolkien didn't think of Alice as fantasy nor faerie-story, and simply that? Or that Tolkien really didn't like the book? Just trying to clearify.

~M

[littlemanpoet]

I've been reading Sylvie and Bruno, curious to see what their charm could have been for Tolkien. I must say, though I am not finished with the second book yet, I have yet to discover it. ... [Carroll's works] seem much more conventional and their realm has little to do with Faery as shown to us in Smith of Wootton Major.- Estelyn Telcontar

I agree with you, Esty. I hope I didn't suggest that they were as good as Tolkien! Sorry if I led you to expect that! Consider Tolkien's position as a reader, rarely finding anything that was up to his standard. Carroll probably did as well as he could considering what he had to work with.

Are you saying that Tolkien didn't think of Alice as fantasy nor faerie-story, and simply that? Or that Tolkien really didn't like the book? - Morquesse

Good to see you around again, Morquesse! My comment was based on my reading of On Fairy Stories. I also noticed the mention in Carpenter's biography, and that was my basis for my own comment, which it turns out, was incorrect:

He was amused by Alice in Wonderland, though he had no desire to have adventures like Alice.

On the face of it, this comment is not as helpful as I had originally thought, since he also said that he greatly desired dragons, but certainly didn't want to meet one! Still, I think his lack of desire in each case is different. With Alice, it's distaste, whereas with dragons, it's self-preservation!

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I added something to that Gardener's Song link above, and yes - it is Tolkien-related. Here's my little poem:

He thought he saw an Oxford don
who wrote a children's book.
He looked again, and found it was
the grandson of a Took.
"If Alice had the Ring", he said,
"Where would the Eye then look?"