Tolkien's Will

So, having recently coming across the Wills of C. S. Lewis, Warnie Lewis, and Owen Barfield* made me want to go back and look at J. R. R. Tolkien's will again. I'd seen this about ten years ago but not been able to make a copy, so the details had become faded in my mind aside from the single most striking passage, and I wanted to get the exact wording of that.

I soon learned that it was available through the excellent Tolkien Shop (TolkienWinkle) in Holland**, who as usual have available the most amazing selection of out-of-the-way Tolkien items (it's not for nothing that their owner combines his Leiden shop with The Tolkien Museum). But since I don't do Paypal, payment turned out to be unexpectedly difficult. When combined with the shipping costs (which was more than the cost of the item itself) and an unfavorable exchange rate (grr), it turned out to be far more than I wanted to pay for a four-page photocopy.

Fall back to Plan B. I asked a friend in England if he could get it and then forward it to me, since it'd both be cheaper and less fuss that way. Turned out he had a much better idea (Plan C): why not just get it from the probate office? So he did -- one for himself and another for me, at a v. reasonable rate. And so a nice clean copy, beautifully embossed by the 'Seal of the Family Division of the High Court of Justice', arrived safely a little before Thanksgiving. [Thanks Charles!]

The Will itself is fairly simple and straightforward. Having been signed on the twenty-third of July 1973, only a few weeks before Tolkien's death (on Sept. 2nd), it would have replaced an earlier will.*** Aside from appointing his executors (his solicitor F. R. Williamson and sons Michael and Christopher, the latter of whom is also designated his Literary Executor) and stating his desire to be buried, the first part of the will is devoted to specific bequests:

--a thousand pounds to the Birmingham Oratory in memory of Fr. Francis (and the Fathers' kindness to JRRT after he was orphaned)

--five hundred pounds to Trinity College, which he hopes wd be used to help out a hard-up undergraduate****

--three hundred pounds to Exeter College

--two hundred pounds to Pembroke College

--two hundred pounds to David Havard, his godson

--a thousand pounds to Joan Baker, his granddaughter

He suggests the bequests to Exeter and Pembroke be used to buy some article of silver for their senior common rooms (which reminded me of the rings Shakespeare asked his friends to buy to remember him by). Exeter was of course his own college as an undergraduate, while Pembroke gave him his first Oxford professorship. I was a bit surprised to find Merton unmentioned, but assume he'd already made other arrangements there before his death.

According to the cover letter from the Probate Registry accompanying the will, his estate was valued at 190,577.60 pounds (gross), or 144,159.29 (net), and the tax bill came to 42,019.50 pounds. After asking that his personal effect be distributed among his family as his executors see fit, he sets up a trust with the remainder of his estate, to be shared equally among his children and their children after them. He also (wisely) urges the executors to keep his copyrights in the family if at all possible.

The one great exception to this are his 'literary assets' ("my library and all my manuscripts typescripts notes and all other articles connected with my work as an author"), which he entrusts (literally) to Christopher as Literary Executor, granting him the right to

"publish edit alter rewrite or complete any work of mine

which may be unpublished at my death or to destroy the whole

or any part or parts of any such unpublished works as he

in his absolute discretion may think fit and subject thereto"

Wow. That's quite a vote of confidence, saying Christopher could publish it, in whole or in part, or destroy it, in whole or in part. His father trusted his judgment, explicitly granting him permission to do whatever he thought right with the mass of manuscripts left in his keeping.

I'm glad he decided not to have one big bonfire, and that he devoted the next third of a century to sorting, transcribing, analyzing, and publishing so much of those papers. The world would be a poorer place if CT had followed the Mary Renault example.*****

--John R.

*http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2009/10/warnies-will.html

**http://www.tolkienshop.com/index1.html

*** (cf. the Note to Letter #315 [January 1970], which mentions the trust he had set up for his children; there is also mention in an unpublished letter from the 1950s about his having willed his papers to the Bodleian)

****this concern for hard-up students was typical of Tolkien; cf. Jn Lawlor's account.

*****Renault had long-standing instructions to her partner that if she died leaving a work unfinished, her partner was to destroy it -- which she loyally did, despite the anguish it caused her and her personal opinion that the Arthurian novel Renault had half-finished was her best work.

Crows Ate My Pecan Pie

So, being a Southerner, love of pecan pie is part of my heritage. It's one of the things I really miss from before the low-carb Atkins days, and when I'm back home in Arkansas I try to go by the Magnolia Bake Shop and pick up at least one of their little (tart-sized) pecan pies. There are plenty of high-carb recipes that can be re-created in low (or at least lower) carb versions, but the corn syrup (=liquid sugar) plus the high-carb crust that make up two of the three essential ingredients of pecan pie had me stymied.

So, when Janice suggested I try it with Tupelo honey instead of corn syrup, I thought that had real possibilities. I made a low-carb (ground nut) crust, replaced the corn syrup that makes up the bulk of the pie with diabetic-friendly honey, and laid on the pecans on top with a generous hand. Since I wasn't sure how well the honey mixture would set compared with the corn syrup, I made them in tart form in little clear bowls rather than a whole pie (less messy to eat if it came out runny).

The results? Golden Honey Pecan Pie. Pretty good for a first effort: looked and tasted pretty much like pecan pie, but with a distinct dark yellow rather than brown coloration and an aftertaste of honey. So, discovery number one: it's possible to pull this off, though the recipe needs refining. Discovery number two: wow, these things are filling. Next time I should use smaller bowls (maybe the ramekins) so each individual serving is about half this size.

Unfortunately, having made them before Thanksgiving and then shortly afterwards being strickened with flu (which in my case mainly hit the stomach and, shall we say, digestion), I realized today that the two remaining ones have been sitting out on the counter for a week and a half. Having just recovered from stomach distress I didn't want to risk their having started to go bad, but just throwing them out seemed a pity. So, seeing how eager the birds have been the past few days for edibles in these first cold days of hard frost in the morning,* I decided to give them to our fine feathered friends (thinking that scavengers like crows wd have stomaches better suited to deal with any potential problems). First I pulled out all the pecans, washed them off, and chopped them up, thinking that these at least would be welcome. Then I scooped out the gooey center and crumbled ground-nut crust and decided why not? Put them on the other side of a little plate from the nuts and placed it on the ground out back beneath the suet feeder.

An hour later it was all gone. First came the chickadees and the juncos, but I also saw a flicker hanging round and, not long afterwards, a crow flying away from the empty dish. So I did the same with the second tart-pie. And sure enough, when I next checked back the little plate was bare once again.

And that's not even taking into account the goldfinches, juncos, chickadees, and red wing blackbirds (and yesterday a pigeon!) visiting the balcony itself. My work here is done.

For now.

--John R.

*just yesterday morning I'd been horrified to find little drops of frozen blood in the frost atop the balcony railing by our finch feeder. I assume the sudden frost of the night before had damaged one or more little bird's feet, though it seemed clear that whatever had been hurt had been able to move around a good deal. Also the two hummingbird feeders had been frozen, so I microwaved one a bit and cleaned out the other and filled it with fresh hummingbird juice (and was rewarded by seeing a hummingbird at it within a few minutes).

One good thing to come of this, though, was that I put out more finch food than usual to give them a little extra energy against the cold. Which meant I no longer had enough to make it all the way to the weekend. Which meant I had to drive over to Wild Birds Unlimited in Burien and buy some more Finch Mix, during which I got to pet their resident cat, Miss Millie.

On the way back, saw a hungry-looking hawk in a bare tree not too far from here, which made me wonder if on second thought the blood-drops might not have been from a raptor-strike at our feeder. No feathers though.

ALL HAIL THE MONKEY KING!

So, friend Jeff today pointed out on GrubbStreet* that friend Wolf is the GEEK OF THE WEEK, according to the (late, lamented) Seattle P-I. Congratulations, Wolfgang.

All Hail the Monkey King!

--though I do wonder what that genetically altered algae might be up to now

Here's the link:

http://www.seattlepi.com/tech/geekoftheweek/index.asp?geekID=65

--JDR

current reading: IMPEACHED: THE TRIAL OF ANDREW JOHNSON by David O. Stewart [2009]

*( http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2009/12/monkey-king-is-geek.html )

second fan-film released

So, nothing like the flu to make you down tools for a few days.

Better now, but still in the process of un-mushing my brain. In the absence of any more trenchant post, thought I'd pass along the news that they've just released the second fan-film by the folks behind THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM. This one, BORN OF HOPE, tells the story of Aragorn's parents. It's an hour long (though at some points it seems longer) and, simply judged as a piece of fan-fiction, is pretty impressive. The goal is clearly to look exactly like Peter Jackson's LotR films: introductory voiceover, makeup, soundtrack, and general look-and-feel are as much like Jackson's film trilogy as possible (if I read the credits right* they even got their armor from Weta Workshop). The plot of course comes from Appendix A, with the screenplay an impressive piece of pastiche -- most fan fiction doesn't really sound anything like the author being imitated, and most fan films (e.g., all but one of the Lovecraft adaptations I've seen) take over motifs from the original but fail to capture its style. Here they have the style down pat -- but it's not Tolkien's style but Jackson/Boyens/Walsh.

So, if you like this sort of thing, you'll like this example of it v. much. Production values are as high as I've ever seen in an amateur film, much of the photography is beautiful, and it might help tide film-trilogy fans over until the next dose of the real thing is available, still roughly two years off at this point.**

And for Tolkien scholars? Not much here, I'm afraid. The best character by far, and I'd also say the best performance, is the female ranger (and yes, her very presence tells you how far this is from anything Tolkien himself would have written) who in the closing credits turns out rather improbably to be named Elgarain. The story they've chosen to tell here is one Tolkien decided wasn't worth telling in full, but only in synopsis, so their challenge is to prove him wrong. That's a tall order, and I don't think they succeed. It's rather like when the great Kenneth Morris decided to tell, not the great myth of Quetzalcoatl but a story about his parents (THE CHALCHIUHITE DRAGON [circa 1930]). If not even a talent like Morris cd pull it off, I think the deck was pretty much stacked against these folks from the get-go. But it's a pretty impressive effort and, aside from the main character's death by stupidity (while acting entirely out of character, in order for things required by the plot to take place) I'd say it succeeds on its own terms.

If you're interested, here's the website and link to watch the film here:

http://www.bornofhope.com/

At the v. least, I'm glad to have learned about 'West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village' near Bury St. Edmunds, a little re-creation of an Old English settlement the filmmakers used as the Dunedain's main town.

--JDR

*hard to tell, since it kept quitting on me towards the end of the film.

**just today came some news that they've putting off the start of filming a bit while wrestling with the script for the second part, though they still hope to make the December 2011 release date for part one:

http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/film/802540-peter-jacksons-hobbit-on-hold

A Good Way to Spend Forty Thousand Pounds

So, thanks to Mike Foster (thanks Mike), I learned today that an original Tolkien drawing, of his Aunt Jane's farm where he wrote the first poem in his legendarium (about Earendil, in 1914), is currently being auctioned off by Sotheby's on behalf of his brother Hilary's heirs.

Here's the link:

http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=159566775

Quite a nice piece, but given the current state of the exchange rate (the average estimated going price of 40k pounds equals about 67k dollars right about now), and the general rotten state of the economy, I don't think they'll get too many bidders from over here, where most of the Tolkien collectors are. On the other hand, I just read today that England's the one industrialized country whose recovery from the Depression is even slower than ours, so who knows?

Seeing this does give rise to fantasies though of entering into a Tolkien Tontine, where the picture gets passed around every month and the last surviving member gives it to one of the major Tolkien collections, either Marquette or the Wade.

--John R.

Before There Was WorldNetDaily . . .

So, Jeff Grubb at recently posted a disturbing reminder that there's nothing new about anti-government crazies, and he provides a vivid example from the Kennedy years.*

http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2009/11/artifact.html

In a way, it's a tradition as old as Jefferson's paranoia about Hamilton (or, later, Burr). It never really goes away, and every once in a while it surfaces into the mainstream.** And it's never pretty.

The latest manifestation, the 'Tea Party'/deathers/birthers/whatever, while ugly, is pretty much par for the course. But there are signs that we may be passing into new territory ("new" for our lifetimes, that is --things have gotten this bad, and worse, in what we naively think of as the good old days***).

First, and most recently, there's the "Psalm 108.9" movement, in which faux-Xians pray for the president's death.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/21/cafe-press-pray-obama/

This reminds me very much of a saying of Janice's, that "Anytime an American tells you 'this is a Christian nation', it's a sure sign they're about to go all Old Testament on you".

And second, there's the serious suggestion, about two months back I think, that this country desperately needs a military coup to overthrow the government.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/09/full_text_of_newsmax_column_suggesting_military_co.php?ref=fpblg

As if losing an election were reason enough to call for an act that would permanently damage our constitutional system. As if that system didn't have its own corrective (impeachment). As if we've had a general since Jackson who rose above mediocrity as president. As if you could dismiss democracy itself -- letting people vote to choose their leaders-- as "gambl[ing] the national survival on . . . political whims".

GAH!

.........................

*I must admit the 'secret wife' bit was a new one on me.

**Heinlein got involved in one iteration, a brief anti-Eisenhower eruption calling themselves 'the true heirs of Patrick Henry'.

***For example, Ambrose Bierce was deeply embarrassed by McKinley's assassination, since he'd been calling for McKinley's death in his newspaper column.

Pratchett's Quite Large Brain

So, the October 31st issue of NewScientist includes a two-page spread about Terry Pratchett (complete with a great photo) which ranges from where Sir Terry gets his hats (James Lock & Co of St James, Pall Mall, London --"Ask for a Borsalino.") and how the Discworld gets back its water that spills over the Rim ("It goes over the edge and comes back as rain. I'm not quite certain how . . .") to the progress of his Alzheimer's (he's lost the ability to type and so dictated his latest book). He's now working with a speech-to-text dictation program on his computer that has mastered his accent but not punctuation.

His particular form of Alzheimer's turns out to be Posterior Cortical Atrophy ('PCA', aka Benson's Syndrome), which causes the back of the brain to shrivel. It's his goal to keep active as long as possible, but he's adamant about two points. First, that he wants no part of being a test subject where scientists carefully monitor his decay ("I like vultures . . . at least they have the decency to wait until the donkey has died"). And second, he insists that he shd "be allowed to die how and when he wants", preferring the term 'assisted death' to 'assisted suicide'. That will be a sad day indeed. In the meantime, let's be glad he's still among us, still writing, and still enjoying life:

"I intend to go on living for as long as possible, and no one really knows how long that is, because PCA is rather odd, and also I'm rather odd. I have quite a large brain -- although my teachers would line up to tell you I never used any of it very much -- and so I'll keep going"

And, in case you missed it earlier, the new THE COLOUR OF MAGIC movie (which features Tim Curry as a villain -- ah, it's been too long -- and Sean Astin as an Innocent Abroad) ends with a wonderful Pratchett cameo in which they give him the last word.

--JDR

favorite quotes from the article:

--"self-made ghettos are hard to get out of"

--"We don't run into too many brick walls" (re. his amazement "at how the universe has opened to our inquiries")

--". . . at least [vultures] have the decency to wait until the donkey has died."