Beauties

I've been reading through Tolkien's letters (my copy arrived yesterday!), and the list of things he despised surprises me. I knew he didn't care for machines and "progress," but I had been blissfully ignorant of his contempt for the works of Walt Disney (he'd object more heartily now, if he only knew), airplanes ("engines of Morgoth"), and Sayers' character Harriet Vane!

I should like to have Professor Tolkien to visit my hometown sometime. I should take him on a drive, and come down the mesa just at blue dusk, when the mountain across the way fades into the sky beyond and only the snowcap reminds you of the separation between earth and heaven. I would show him the long single line of rush-hour traffic winding in and around the clefts of the mountain, jewel-like, all going home to their house-lights snuggled in the valley. We could drive along the gray asphalt skimming between hill and cliff-face, seeing the Caja and knowing the River is just out of sight a thousand feet below, through a land all dusky from the red sun and cooled by rising moonglow. I would let him see silver planes coming in to land like the evening star, sun glinting down to us below. And then, when it got darker still, perhaps I should take him up the truck route, where only our own headlights lit up the road, going through a timeless endless movement of trees and stripes on the road, in which we could almost be sitting still and the scenery instead is moving around us. Even machines have their beauty, and make other beauties clearer, especially in this new town in an old land.

Tolkien's hates are nearly always stemmed straight from his loves, and the things he loves are good. I love them too.