INTRODUCTION
Tolkien hid many things inside his works, in riddles, an acrostic, and anagrams. Clyde Kilby, who spent time with Tolkien preparing the publication of The Silmarillion (Sil.), relates to us that he came away with the impression that Tolkien was very secretive and played riddle games with his audience and friends for private amusement. In the first part of this essay I gather together some of the significant questions that scholars have raised in response to Tolkien’s opaqueness and imperviousness to literary criticism. In the second part I’d like to point out some very interesting hidden imagery in his works and offer some possible insights into what they mean and his potential motivations for including them.
Tolkien kept his personal family life very private. He even remarked “I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family” (Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien [Letters] 510, #281). In the essay A Secret Vice (ASV) delivered in public in 1931 Tolkien tells us about his “secret vice” (ASV 6), his childhood inventions of secret languages and codes. In his later school years he created a Book of the Foxrook (Foxrook), part of his study, his “private lang” (Carpenter 58).
“the ‘Book of the Foxrook’.* In this notebook the seventeen-year-old Tolkien outlined a secret code consisting of a ‘rune-like phonetic alphabet’ and ‘a sizeable number of ideographic symbols’, which Tolkien called ‘monographs’, each of which represented an entire word (Smith and Wynne, 2000, p. 30). This ‘Private Scout Code’ (as Tolkien called it)” (ASV xliv).
The words “fox” and “rook” have meanings pertaining to deception. A “scout” is a spy who observes and listens and presumably tries to avoid detection and therefore is deceptive, but the verb “scout” also means one who taunts, ““a wretch, rascal, rogue”“.[1]
Tolkien incorporated mirrors into his works in many guises, for e.g. in On Fairy-Stories (OFS) his words on “Mooreefoc” (68) spring to mind. Given the etymological, literal meaning of “anagram” is “backwards letter” (“from ana “back, backwards” […] + gramma […] “letter”“), and the mirror reversals of his monogram on the front and reverse covers of his The Book of Ishness (Ishness), the existence of Mirrormere, and the mirror of Galadriel, the cracked mirror at the beginning of The Notion Club Papers (NCP), etc, it should not surprise us that Priya Seth in Breaking the Tolkien Code found at least four anagrams (Seth 5.78) hidden in The Lord of the Rings (LotR) and a further one defining the nature of Bombadil (Seth 217). Tolkien appeared in 1911 in Aristophanes’s play The Peace at King Edward’s school in which he played Hermes, (Carpenter 74) the giver of “secret letters”, an Odinic figure.
Later in his life his area of expertise involved interest in the riddles that existed in for e.g., Norse mythology, and Old English manuscripts and codices such as the Exeter Book. Tolkien’s most celebrated character is a wizard, one who has esoteric knowledge. Tolkien talks about witchcraft, occultic “goeteia” (Letters 295, #155). Gollum is addicted to the One Ring which keeps his exploits in the world secret through invisibility, a ring which he hides in the very darkest places.
Charles Williams, fellow Inkling was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. It has been speculated that Tolkien might have been a member of an occult society, or was influenced by Williams. J.R.R. Tolkien: Codemaker, Spy-master, Hero presents evidence that Tolkien was involved with British Intelligence in espionage. He was approached by the British government during World War II to work at Bletchley Park on the breaking of the code of the German Enigma machine.[2] In 1954 he referred to his own most famous riddle of Bombadil as an intentional “enigma” (Letters 263, #144), (“Greek ainigma […] “a dark saying, riddle”“).
Bombadil himself speaks in riddles, almost nursery-rhyme nonsense and yet has inexplicable, secret power even extending to the One Ring.
[1] All words that appear underlined are my emphasis and for the purpose of explanation. All (edited) etymological definitions appear in bold and are courtesy of Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionary and elsewhere.
[2] Gchq. JRR Tolkien was keen to become a cryptanalyst. https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/jrr-tolkien-was-keen-become-cryptanalyst.
