a dining-room, a bedroom each, a room for Tolkien to use as a study, a veranda where he and Edith could sit, and a large garden; and since it was a bungalow, there were no stairs for its aged owners to negotiate. The building was plain and modern, but a private gate led to the wooded Branksome Chine, where Lord Snowdon photographed Tolkien leaning against the roots of a great tree, and down to the sea. As at Sandfield Road in Oxford, a double garage was converted into a library and office. *Joy Hill of George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) often came to help Tolkien with his fan mail and other correspondence. His new address and telephone number were kept secret to avoid unwelcome intrusions by fans such as he had suffered in Oxford.
Tolkien lived in Poole until Edith’s death on 29 November 1971. In March 1972 he returned to Oxford. The bungalow was demolished in 2008.
Possessiveness. In Tolkien’s writings possessiveness is a major sin, and usually leads to the loss of the desired object and evil consequences.
This is a recurring motif particularly in *‘The Silmarillion’. Fëanor is possessive about the Silmarils, ignoring the fact that, although he has made them, much of their glory is due to the light of the Two Trees created by Yavanna and Nienna, which has been captured in the jewels. He wears the Silmarils at great feasts, but ‘at other times they were guarded close, locked in the deep chambers of his hoard in Tirion. For Fëanor began to love the Silmarils with a greedy love, and grudged the sight of them to all save to his father and his seven sons; he seldom remembered now that the light within them was not his own’ (*The Silmarillion, p. 69). When he is summoned by the Valar to a reconciliation with his brother, ‘he denied the sight of the Silmarils to the Valar and the Eldar, and left them locked in Formenos in their chamber of iron’ (p. 75). But Melkor is able to seize them when he attacks Formenos after destroying the Two Trees. Fëanor refuses Yavanna’s request for the Silmarils to try to revive the Two Trees with their light, neither knowing that the jewels have already been seized by Melkor. The writer of The Silmarillion comments that ‘all one it may seem whether Fëanor had said yea or nay to Yavanna; yet had he said yea at the first … it may be that his after deeds would have been other than they were’ (p. 79). Fëanor and his sons then swear ‘a terrible oath …to pursue with vengeance and hatred to the ends of the World’ any being ‘whoso should hold or take or keep a Silmaril from their possession’ (p. 83). From this follows war and treachery, so that at the end of the First Age Eönwe, the herald of Manwë, refuses to give two Silmarils to the two surviving sons, telling them ‘that the right to the work of their father … had now perished, because of their many and merciless deeds, being blinded by their oath …’ (p. 253).
In the story of the mortal Beren and the Elf Lúthien Tinúviel (*‘Of Beren and Lúthien) Thingol, King of Doriath, is so possessive of his daughter Lúthien that to send her lover, Beren, to his death and yet keep the promise he has made to Lúthien not to harm Beren, he demands as the price of his daughter’s hand that Beren bring him a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown. Beren comments: ‘For little price do Elven-kings sell their daughters: for gems, and things made by craft’ (The Silmarillion, p. 168), implying that Thingol is treating his daughter like a possession. Later, when he has the Silmaril, ‘Thingol’s thought turned unceasingly to the jewel of Fëanor, and became bound to it, and he liked not to let it rest even behind the doors of his inmost treasury; and he was minded now to bear it with him always, waking and sleeping’ (p. 232). His resulting commission to the Dwarves to place it in a necklace, the Nauglamír, leads to the ruin of his realm.
In the story *‘Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin’ the message that Tuor brings from the Vala Ulmo to Turgon, King of Gondolin, is ‘that the Curse of Mandos now hastened to its fulfilment, when all the works of the Noldor should perish; and he bade him depart, and abandon the fair and mighty city that he had built ….’ Turgon remembers words spoken to him long before by Ulmo: ‘Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart; and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West, and cometh from the Sea’ (The Silmarillion, p. 240). But out of love for the city he has built, and trust in its strength, Turgon does not heed the message, and Gondolin is destroyed.
In *The Hobbit Tolkien describes the dragon Smaug’s reactions when he discovers that one cup from his hoard had been stolen. ‘His rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted’ (ch. 12). Later the dwarf Thorin is unwilling to share any of the treasure of the dragon’s hoard, even though he knows that not all of it originally had been the property of his people. The Dwarves were particularly prone to the sin of possessiveness, and ‘used their rings only for the getting of wealth; but wrath and an overmastering greed of gold were kindled in their hearts, of which evil enough after came …’ (The Silmarillion, pp. 288–9).
Tolkien’s cautionary poem *The Hoard relates how doom fell upon the Elves; the treasure they had made is hoarded in a dark cave by an old dwarf; he is killed by a dragon who lies on the hoard, only to be killed in turn by a young warrior. And although the warrior becomes a king, as he grows old he can think only ‘of his huge chest … / where pale gems and gold lay hid’. An enemy invades, his kingdom is lost, and the hoard lies hidden under a mound ‘while earth waits and the Elves sleep’ (*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, p. 54).
In *Smith of Wootton Major Smith receives a star which gives him entry to Faery. After many years he meets the Queen of Faery face to face: she says farewell and lays her hand on his head, ‘and a great stillness came on upon him; and he seemed to be both in the World and in Faery, and also outside them and surveying them, so that he was at once in bereavement, and in ownership, and in peace’ (p. 38). He leaves sadly, and meets Alf the Prentice, actually the King of Faery, who tells him that it is time to give up the star. At first Smith is unwilling: ‘Isn’t it mine? It came to me, and may a man not keep things that come to him so, at least as a remembrance?’ Alf replies: ‘Some things. Those that are free gifts and given for remembrance. But others are not so given. They cannot belong to a man for ever, nor be treasured as heirlooms. They are lent. You have not thought, perhaps, that someone else may need this thing. But it is so’ (pp. 41, 44). Because Smith then gives up the star freely, he is allowed to choose who shall be the next bearer of the star.
In his letter to *Milton Waldman of ?late 1951 Tolkien found fault with the Elves who chose to stay in Middle-earth at the end of the First Age:
In [*Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age] we see a sort of second fall or at least ‘error’ of the Elves. There was nothing wrong essentially in their lingering against counsel …. But they wanted to have their cake without eating it. They wanted the peace and bliss and perfect memory of ‘The West’, and yet to remain on the ordinary earth where their prestige as the highest people … was greater than at the bottom of the hierarchy in Valinor. They thus became obsessed with ‘fading’, the mode in which the changes of time (the law of the world under the sun) was perceived by them ….With the aid of Sauron’s lore they made Rings of Power ….
The chief power (of all the rings alike) was the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. ‘change’ viewed as a regrettable thing), the preservation of what is desired or loved, or its semblance – this is more or less an Elvish motive. But also they enhanced the natural powers of a possessor – thus approaching ‘magic’, a motive easily corruptible into evil, a lust for domination. [Letters, pp. 151–2]
In *The Lord of the Rings, at the end of the Third Age Elrond and Galadriel accept that the power of their rings must pass, and therefore aid the Ringbearer in his quest to destroy the One Ring (which, however, is also their only hope of preventing Sauron from regaining the ruling ring). Elrond never seems to consider the possibility of using the One Ring, and Galadriel refuses it when it is offered to her.
The possessive attitude of the various owners of the One Ring – Isildur, Gollum,
