340 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 11 July 1972

I have at last got busy about Mummy's grave. .... The inscription I should like is:
					EDITH MARY TOLKIEN
					    1889-1971
                                             Lúthien
: brief and jejune, except for Lúthien, which says for me more than a multitude of words: for
she was (and knew she was) my Lúthien.*
	July 13. Say what you feel, without reservation, about this addition. I began this under the stress
of great emotion & regret – and in any case I am afflicted from time to time (increasingly) with an
overwhelming sense of bereavement. I need advice. Yet I hope none of my children will feel that
the use of this name is a sentimental fancy. It is at any rate not comparable to the quoting of pet
names in obituaries. I never called Edith Lúthien – but she was the source of the story that in time
became the chief pan of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled
with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the
Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was
raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance.
But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos.
	I will say no more now. But I should like ere long to have a long talk with you. For if as seems
probable I shall never write any ordered biography – it is against my nature, which expresses itself
about things deepest felt in tales and myths — someone close in heart to me should know
something about things that records do not record: the dreadful sufferings of our childhoods, from
which we rescued one another, but could not wholly heal the wounds that later often proved
disabling; the sufferings that we endured after our love began – all of which (over and above our
personal weaknesses) might help to make pardonable, or understandable, the lapses and darknesses
which at times marred our lives — and to explain how these never touched our depths nor dimmed
our memories of our youthful love. For ever (especially when alone) we still met in the woodland
glade, and went hand in hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before our last
parting.
	15 July. I spent yesterday at Hemel Hempstead. A car was sent for me & I went to the great
new (grey and white) offices and book-stores of Allen & Unwin. To this I paid a kind of official
visitation, like a minor royalty, and was somewhat startled to discover the main business of all this
organization of many departments (from Accountancy to Despatch) was dealing with my works. I
was given a great welcome (& v.g. lunch) and interviewed them all from board-room downwards.
'Accountancy' told me that the sales of The Hobbit were now rocketing up to hitherto unreached
heights. Also a large single order for copies of The L.R. had just come in. When I did not show
quite the gratified surprise expected I was gently told that a single order of 100 copies used to be
pleasing (and still is for other books), but this one for The L.R. was for 6,000