The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 1 March 1944
Lewis is as energetic and jolly as ever, but getting too much publicity for his or any of our tastes. 'Peterborough', usually fairly reasonable, did him the doubtful honour of a peculiarly misrepresentative and asinine paragraph in the Daily Telegraph of Tuesday last. It began 'Ascetic Mr Lewis'----!!! I ask you! He put away three pints in a very short session we had this morning, and said he was 'going short for Lent'. I suppose all the stuff you see in print is about as accurate about Tom, Dick, or Harry.
From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 3 April 1944
I found myself in a carriage occupied by an R.A.F. officer (this war's wings, who had been to South Africa though he looked a bit elderly), and a very nice young American Officer, New-Englander. I stood the hot-air they let off as long as I could; but when I heard the Yank burbling about 'Feudalism' and its results on English class-distinctions and social behaviour, I opened a broadside. The poor book had not, of course, the very faintest notions about 'Feudalism', or history at all - being a chemical engineer. But you can't knock 'Feudalism' out of an American's head, any more than the 'Oxford Accent'. He was impressed I think when I said that an Englishman's relations with porters, butlers, and tradesmen had as much connexion with 'Feudalism' as skyscrapers had with Red Indian wigwams, or taking off one's hat to a lady has with the modern methods of collecting Income Tax; but I am certain he was not convinced. I did however get a dim notion into his head that the 'Oxford Accent' (by which he politely told me that he meant mine) was not 'forced' and 'put on', but a natural one learned in the nursery - and was moreover not feudal or aristocratic but a very middle-class bourgeois invention. After I told him that 'accent' sounded to me like English after being wiped over with a dirty sponge, and generally suggested (falsely) to an English observer that, together with American slouch, it indicated a slovenly and ill-disciplined people - well, we got quite friendly. We had some bad coffee in the refreshment room at Snow Hill, and parted.
Lewis is as energetic and jolly as ever, but getting too much publicity for his or any of our tastes. 'Peterborough', usually fairly reasonable, did him the doubtful honour of a peculiarly misrepresentative and asinine paragraph in the Daily Telegraph of Tuesday last. It began 'Ascetic Mr Lewis'----!!! I ask you! He put away three pints in a very short session we had this morning, and said he was 'going short for Lent'. I suppose all the stuff you see in print is about as accurate about Tom, Dick, or Harry.
From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 3 April 1944
I found myself in a carriage occupied by an R.A.F. officer (this war's wings, who had been to South Africa though he looked a bit elderly), and a very nice young American Officer, New-Englander. I stood the hot-air they let off as long as I could; but when I heard the Yank burbling about 'Feudalism' and its results on English class-distinctions and social behaviour, I opened a broadside. The poor book had not, of course, the very faintest notions about 'Feudalism', or history at all - being a chemical engineer. But you can't knock 'Feudalism' out of an American's head, any more than the 'Oxford Accent'. He was impressed I think when I said that an Englishman's relations with porters, butlers, and tradesmen had as much connexion with 'Feudalism' as skyscrapers had with Red Indian wigwams, or taking off one's hat to a lady has with the modern methods of collecting Income Tax; but I am certain he was not convinced. I did however get a dim notion into his head that the 'Oxford Accent' (by which he politely told me that he meant mine) was not 'forced' and 'put on', but a natural one learned in the nursery - and was moreover not feudal or aristocratic but a very middle-class bourgeois invention. After I told him that 'accent' sounded to me like English after being wiped over with a dirty sponge, and generally suggested (falsely) to an English observer that, together with American slouch, it indicated a slovenly and ill-disciplined people - well, we got quite friendly. We had some bad coffee in the refreshment room at Snow Hill, and parted.