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Thank you very much for that link, Mithalwen! I had never heard of, much less seen the Snowdon portrait, and it does have something disturbing about it. I think the angle, taken upwards, has something to do with that - he looks like he is desperately holding on to keep from falling. That could well be metaphoric for his emotions at that time of his life. I am reminded of the feeling he describes in Smith of Wootton Major, the loss of the key to Faërie, written only a few years earlier.
The other impression I get from the portrait is a Treebeard-y feeling, only hopeless and desolate. A very moving photograph indeed!
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth.. .'
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