“There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

September 21, 2017 is the eightieth anniversary of the publication of a favorite book from my childhood and beyond, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s The Hobbit. (It’s also the day before September 22, and so a premature “Happy Hobbit Day” to you all!)

At the time, Tolkien was a 45-year-old South African expatriate who’d lived in England since he was three, ever since he, his mother, and his brother went there on a family visit, only to find that his father died in South Africa while the rest of the family was away. He spent much of his youth in my old stomping grounds of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, Birmingham, Edgbaston, and the Malvern Hills, and I can see this in some of his descriptions of the “Shire.” He was an alumnus of King Edward’s School in Birmingham, as was my Uncle Arthur, who was about 10 younger than Tolkien, but met up with the great man, on occasion, at “Old Boy” reunions.

The young, newly married, Tolkien was posted to war in France as a signals officer in June of 1916. Four months later, he was invalided home with trench fever, in the first of many such instances. Although he survived the war (at one point, he wrote “Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute”), many of his childhood friends did not. The way in which his war experiences changed him, or informed his worldview, is a matter that has been speculated on and written about for decades, but Tolkien did not say very much about it himself.

After the war, Lt. Tolkien worked on the Oxford English Dictionary, and then began his academic career, during which he famously joined an informal literary discussion group known as The Inklings. Other well-known members of the group included, at one time or another, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Lord David Cecil, and Owen Barfield. Tolkien’s contributions to scholarship, particularly in the fields of linguistics and medieval literature are legion, and took place at the same time he was writing the work that would make his a household name.

As a child, Tolkien and his friends formed secret societies, invented worlds, and created secret languages. (Fittingly, his work during the Second World War was as a cryptographer.) So it seems quite appropriate that his first popular book, which was largely written for his own children, involved a fellowship (lower case “F”), a magical world of wizards, dwarves, elves, and trolls, and secret writings. When the book was first published, it became popular with adults as well as children, and literary history was assured when Tolkien was asked to produce a sequel.

So much has been written about Tolkien that is far beyond the scope of this post — his scholarship, his Catholicism, his worldview — have at it in the comments, please.

J.R.R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. He is buried beside his beloved wife, Edith, under a marker that refers to them as Beren and Luthien, characters in a poem that tells of the love between the mortal man Beren, and the immortal elf-maiden Luthien. (Tolkien often referred to himself and his wife by these names.)

So, why this particular Quote of the Day?

Because I think we occasionally need a reminder that it might be the smallest, and least likely among us, who sometimes lead the way. We should be mindful of that.

Not to go all political on you (God forbid), but I’ve always thought it was one the dumber things that came out of Senator John McCain’s mouth, when he insulted the “tea party hobbits.” You might say (I know I would) that it was a deplorable moment for him.

Clearly, Senator McCain is not a Tolkien afficionado. His loss, believe me.

But Tolkien knew. On March 28, 1958, he spoke at a celebratory “Hobbit Dinner” in Rotterdam, and concluded his remarks with this toast: “To the Hobbits! And may they outlast all the Wizards!”

Amen to that.