[Lalaith]

Precis Part two

Adda was very fond of the children. She took them fishing in a nearby canal, put them in the bath every night and put them to bed, they loved to hear Icelandic folk tales about trolls and such, and often Tolkien would come and listen too. “He took lots of ideas from Icelandic folk stories...and he really believed that all of nature was alive. He lived in a kind of adventure/fantasy world.”
Adda still loves reading the Hobbit (which he started writing at the time she was working for him).
Tolkien always wore a tweed jacket and pale grey trousers, but loved to wear colourful waistcoats. And he always wore white tie (tails) at the Oxford dinners. He always wanted to go to Iceland but thought he couldn’t afford it.

Adda eventually left because of the restrictive life she was forced to lead.
She got friendly with a girl called Betty, one of Tolkien’s students, who invited her to go punting but Edith never found it convenient to let her go, even on a Sunday.
Edith once showed Adda her wardrobe upstairs, it ran along an entire wall and was completely full of clothes. But she never went anywhere at all, except perhaps to the library.
She sometimes did go with me and the older boys to a matinee (afternoon theatre performance). The Tolkiens thought the theatre an acceptable leisure activity but hated the cinema, and they really hated the Morris car factory that had been recently opened south of Oxford.
John, at 14, was most like his father. Edith stopped Adda from bathing him. (editor’s note – I should hope so too!) Michael, the next son, was such a beautiful child, that people would stop his mother in the street to admire him. His mother wanted him to be a priest. Christopher was often squabbled over by his parents. He was a rather whiny child, fussy with food. But his father adored him and realised that he needed different handling than the others. Tolkien had started writing the Hobbit while I was there but was really writing it for Christopher, reading him out chapters.

She then says that she had close contact through letters with the family until the war disrupted the correspondence.


Right, that's basically it. Hope you find it interesting...