‘He Wouldn’t Have Fancied My Gran’: Tolkien Letters Reveal Friendship With Fan

Books, letters and notes documenting the “unlikely” friendship between writer JRR Tolkien and his profoundly deaf fan are going under the hammer.

Eileen Elgar, who died in 1980, used to live very close to Hotel Miramar in Bournemouth, Dorset, where Tolkien and his wife holidayed every year.

Elgar wrote to him and they began a friendship. Her granddaughter, Helen Dutfield, said the the author would often be “coming to chat” and play with her dog.

Will Passey, a specialist in the books and manuscripts department at Sotheby’s, said a “moving” letter in the upcoming auction, which mentioned the death of C.S. Lewis, served as “a testament to the strength” of their friendship.

Passey said he was “very excited” about the works as he grew up in Headington – “a stone throw away from where Tolkien himself lived for much of his adult life”.

Dating from 1961 to 1964, they are spread across five lots and Passey said he found the signed Lord of the Rings set most interesting because of a note tucked into the volume.

“It describes in quite sort of nerdy detail the creation of the race of the dwarves.

“It’s interesting for someone who’s a Tolkien scholar because it anticipates material that was later found in print in The Silmarillion, but also it really tells the story of the relationship between Tolkien and Eileen Elgar.”

Dutfield described her grandmother as “quite an isolated figure”.

“She had a very strange upbringing, she came from a very wealthy family and she was a much younger daughter following three older brothers.

“She went deaf when she was 12 and I think she was an embarrassment to them.”

But Elgar also developed “a very rich imagination” and was “fascinated by the ancient civilizations”.

“She kept talking to my mother about these amazing books that she was reading and she had lots of questions,” Dutfield said.

“My mother, who wasn’t interested in them at all, said ‘Why don’t you write to the author?’ – so that’s how that started.”

As Elgar never learned to lip read, she and Tolkien communicated with notes during his visits.

“Evidently, the conversation they had was quite involved because within those notes… is this remarkable detail about the mythology of Middle-earth,” Passey said.

Dutfield never met Tolkien herself and said none of the notebooks they had used had survived.

“Tolkien would come and sit on the floor and play with my grandmother’s dog.

“My mum left them alone to chat because that’s what they wanted.”

Dutfield added the author had asked her mother if she would invite his wife to tea.

“His wife was quite jealous and she was curious about who this woman was that he was going to talk to.

“We laugh about that because my grandmother was old before her time, she was terribly intense – not the sort of person you could imagine he would have fancied.

“Mrs Tolkien met my grandmother and I don’t think she was worried after that.”

Passey said another highlight in the sale was a letter, tucked into a first edition of Tom Bombadil, mentioning the death of Tolkien’s fellow inkling C.S. Lewis.

“It’s actually quite a moving document and is a testament to the strength of the friendship between Tolkien and Eileen.”

He added the provenance of works also made them special “because these have been with Eileen’s family ever since they were first composed”.

“Although we have quite a lot of published letters of Tolkien’s, these have been hitherto overlooked.”

Dutfield said she had “mixed feelings” about parting with the memorabilia.

“I am sad but on the other hand, I found it quite frightening owning a piece of paper that could fade to disappear – our house is a very old damp cottage.”

She added she and her husband Glenn, who was a member of the Tolkien Society in the 1970s, were now “just fans from afar”.

“Hopefully, somebody who buys them will let more of the world see them.”

The auction takes place on 9 July at Sotheby’s London sale rooms and online.

The works in total are estimated around £39,000 to £55,000.