They had brought with them a great store of supplies; for the dwarves can carry very heavy burdens, and nearly all of Dain’s folk, in spite of their rapid march, bore huge packs on their backs in addition to their weapons.
—DAA.337.
Fonstad observed that doubling the scale on the Wilderland map found in The Hobbit would resolve many difficulties (Atlas of Middle-earth, page 97), and it is clear that Tolkien himself had arrived at the same realization long before from the note he added at the top of this manuscript page. That would not however have fixed the problem of the speed of Dain’s travel versus the slowness of Thorin’s journey; only by redrawing the map to make Mirkwood much, much wider could he have resolved the problem of how long it took Bilbo and his companions to travel though the forest. Here then we come to an example – not the last – of a solution (doubling the map scale to make Thorin & Company’s travel time more credible) that would in turn create a new problem (doubling the distance Dain’s five hundred dwarves travel in much less time), something that proved endemic in the 1960 Hobbit (see below) and no doubt played a part in the project’s abandonment: a story written without a specific timetable simply could not in the end be fitted within a fairly narrow time frame without radical alteration of either the existing maps or the time-references and description of scenes within the published text.
TEXT NOTES
1 Actually, a large (8½ by 5½ inch) fragment of such a page, with ‘Prifysgol Cymru’ (i.e., University of Wales) in the upper left corner and the header ‘DEGREE EXA[mination]’. Tolkien worked for many years as an external examiner for other universities, and one of the side benefits was the opportunity to accumulate a supply of scrap paper from unfilled booklets.
2 This line is written in pencil at the top of the page.
3 Above ‘haymaking’, Tolkien has written harvest in red ball-point pen. This is a reference to Bilbo’s gloomy prediction regarding their slow rate of travel: ‘down below . . . haymaking is going on and picnics. They will be harvesting and blackberrying, before we even begin to go down the other side at this rate’ (first edition, page 66; DAA.101).
4 The original numbers in this passage are overwritten in darker ink, but seem to have originally read
Say 10 days to Enchanted River. 120 miles. July 26th.
12 days to adventure with Spiders.
144 miles. August <5th>
The final date is largely obscured by the overwriting but seems to be ‘5th’, where one would have expected to see instead ‘August 7th’.
5 Note that here an imprisonment that had once been meant to last for months (from fall to spring – cf. Plot Notes A) has now shrunk to a mere three weeks – just enough time, one would think, for the dwarves and Bilbo to recover from their privations before becoming restless to press on with the next stage of their journey, and the same amount of time he now intended for them to spend in Lake Town.
6 The rule across the bottom of the page preceding this sentence indicates that Tolkien had reached a decision and that what followed stood apart from and would modify what came before (in this case, supplanting their dates).
7 The number for the day of the month has been overwritten in ink, obscuring whatever date originally stood here.
8 The illegible word here might be presents; it is certainly not ‘birthday’.
9 This final instruction added to the page is written with a green ball point pen and thus dates from relatively late in Tolkien’s life (post-LotR), probably added when he revisited this material as part of his work on the Fifth Phase/1960 Hobbit. It would also soon involve Tolkien in difficulties over the story’s chronology; see section (iii) below, specifically Text Note I on page 828.
10 Here I use the map appearing as the back endpaper of the second edition (thirteenth printing, 1961), the earliest printing of the map available to me, since my reference copy of the first edition (3rd printing, wartime edition of 1942) lacks the maps. The proportions, however, hold true to any copy of the book including the map; cf. DAA.[399], which is reduced by about one-third, so that from Rivendell to the Mountain is about one inch, the distance across Mirkwood roughly two inches, and so forth.
11 Here I use the fold-out map in the first edition, first printing The Fellowship of the Rings as my standard for reference.
12 We know Dain’s trip was very rapid, since less than a month passed between Durin’s Day (the beginning of the last moon of autumn) and Bilbo’s arrival at Beorn’s Hall on the far side of Mirkwood in time for Yule.
(iii)
The Timeline Revisited (moons taken into consideration)
These two sheets [Ad.Ms.H.19–20] contain three pages of text, the second sheet having been rotated ninety degrees and folded in half to divide it into two side-by-side half-pages: .20a (left) and .20b (right); the writing comes to an end about halfway through the last half-page. The text is written in ink and legible for the most part but a few lines have faded into illegibility; I indicate illegible words and passages with ellipses (. . .). Several sentences in this text are bracketed by Tolkien, but here I think it was not because of dissatisfaction with the bracketed material but rather for emphasis, to highlight those passages and make those points stand out for when he came back to put this material to use in the intended continuation of the Fifth Phase Hobbit. In order to avoid confusion with brackets added editorially, I have substituted double parentheses ((thus)) for authorial brackets in this section. Also, to improve readability, I have replaced some marks Tolkien used as shorthand: thus ... has been replaced by ‘therefore’, > by ‘to’ and in some places a slash (/) separating two numbers by ‘to’ where I thought the results might otherwise be mistaken for a fraction (e.g., ‘3/4 days’ is here printed as ‘3 to 4 days’ where that was Tolkien’s intent). I have left the following of Tolkien’s abbreviations in place: ‘H’ for The Hobbit, ‘L.R.’ or ‘LR’ for The Lord of the Rings, ‘SC’ for Shire Calendar (for the month, day, and day of the week), and ‘SR’ for Shire Reckoning (for the year).
This text clearly postdates the ‘Distances and Itinerary’ document given as section (i), since it refers to it and to the rewritten version of Chapter II (New Chapter II), but it was probably written at about the same time.
The Hobbit
The times and distances of the journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell are in great confusion, and it is difficult to make sense of them. But it is important to do so, if possible, owing to the L.R., which covers same ground in more detail. The ‘moons’ too are out of order – but this cannot be tolerated, since Durin’s Day and the incidence of New Moon is integral to the plot.
Something, of course, could be done by attributing inaccuracy to Bilbo’s memory. ((This would need a note in some future edition.))
The calendar used must evidently be the Shire Calendar ((though that is not and need not be alluded to)).
Fixed points that cannot be altered are the following
1. By calculation from H p. 35 [added: 21 April] ‘100 years ago last Thursday’ – since weekday-date relation did not change in SC. – The Unexpected Party occurred on Wed. 27 April SC, 1341 SR Start of journey therefore 28 April (morning) SC.TN1
2. By L.R. Map distance from Hobbiton to Rivendell by road was approx 412 miles. From Troll-place to Ford of Bruinen [50 >] 60 miles; ((from Ford to head of path down into Rivendell 20 miles: 80 miles from Trolls to Rivendell)).
3. Company left Rivendell on Midsummer Day (= in SC. June 30 + 2) The Moon on the previous day (Lithe: June 30 + 1) was a broad silver crescent: therefore 3 to 4 days old. NM must have been June 27/28.
NB This fits tolerably well with later narrative. For if NM occurred on June 28 it would next occur on July 23 [29, 30, Lithe, Mid Year, Lithe] = 5 days + 23 = 28.TN2
______________________________________________
_____________
It is said (p. 62) that the Dwarves &c. stayed at least 14 days in Rivendell. As they departed on Midsummer’s Day, they must therefore have arrived on June 17th
Question is (1) how did they take April 3 days, May 30 [days], June 15/17 [days] = 48/50 days in journey of 412 miles = an average rate (on ponies mostly) of only 8 1/2 miles (or a little more or less) per diem?
At any rate on day before the Troll-adventure (it being 80 miles only from that point to Rivendell) it cannot have been only May 30th. ((Bilbo says ‘tomorrow it will be June 1st’)).
The itinerary worked out in ‘revision’ of The HobbitTN4 is well enough in itself but it brings the company to Rivendell in 27 days on May 24 without regard to Moons!
? Something must be said about halts etc. esp. Bree, Last Inn ((later The Forsaken Inn)).
The Bridge of <?Mitheithel> is broken . . . It was here . . . Ponies had be led . . .TN5
As for moons: if the moon was new on June 28 it would be New on June 1st, approx. but is said to be waning p. 42 and yet get . . .
? Say young and thin or *wandering ((because of the
If, however, they arrived in Rivendell
The journey from Trolls to Bruinen needs lengthening in some way.TN7
Here we see problems introduced in the work Tolkien had already accomplished in the Fifth Phase begin to complicate the revision process, something that no doubt helped contribute to the Fifth Phase’s abandonment. Here the specific problem is that by bringing Bilbo to Rivendell two weeks earlier than had been the case in the original Hobbit, he has taken a problem already present in the text and made it worse. Specifically, if the moon is a thin crescent in the evening sky on Midsummer Eve – that is, just a few days after the New Moon – and if they spent two weeks in Rivendell (DAA.93), then it would have been a gibbous moon – that is, a moon a few days past fullTN8 but more than half – at the time of their arrival. Bilbo sees just such a moon on the night of the troll-adventure, but that takes place several days before their arrival, when the moon should actually have been Full or rapidly approaching Full (and hence not ‘waning’). And while Tolkien had at one point considered having time pass differently or not at all within elven enclaves (cf. HME VII.353–5, 363–5, and ‘Note on Time in Lórien’ in HME VII.367–9), he had firmly rejected this idea by the time of the published Lord of the Rings. It was an important part of Tolkien’s legendarium that the story took place in the imagined past of the real world – as he wrote to Forrie Ackerman, ‘The Lord of the Rings . . . takes place in the Northern hemisphere of this earth: miles are miles, days are days, and weather is weather’ (JRRT to Ackerman, June 1958; Letters p. 272). And, one might add, moons are moons; cf. Tolkien’s modest boast, in his interview with Denys Gueroult that ‘I don’t think the moons rise or are in the wrong place at any point in [The Lord of the Rings]’ (1965 BBC radio interview), a feat he only achieved during the book’s revision by drawing up many-columned sheets listing where each character was on each day of the story.TN9 No such charts exist for The Hobbit, since its narrative never split into multiple storylines following different sets of characters, but in the Fifth Phase Tolkien decided to treat its text with the same rigour, and the materials given below in sections (iv) and (v) probably represent the rough notes from which he could have generated such a chart correlating date, moon-phase, and action.
TEXT NOTES
1 That is, since the story is purportedly set down by Bilbo, it must use the Shire Calendar. Unfortunately, Tolkien failed to notice that Thursday, 21st of April is a date that cannot occur in the Shire Calendar, where the 21st always falls on a Friday (see Appendix D of The Lord of the Rings). It is probably for this reason that Fonstad silently shifts the Unexpected Party from Wed. 27th April and their departure on Th. 28th April to 26th April (= Wednesday) and 27th April (= Thursday), respectively in The Atlas of Middle-earth (page 98). Thus preservation of the ‘comic precision’ (see page 750) of ‘a hundred years ago last Thursday’ and ‘Gandalf Tea Wednesday’ on the one hand and the much later decision to adapt the story to the Shire Calendar on the other set up a paradox: either Bilbo’s adventure began on Thursday the 28th or the story was using the Shire Calendar, but both could not be true.
2 All these dates were shifted by one day, the passage having originally read:
. . . if NM occurred on June 27/28 it would next occur on July 22/23 [28, 29, 30, Lithe, Mid Year, Lithe] July 1 = 7 days + 21 = 28.
More importantly, here and elsewhere in this material (see pages 826, 827, 832 & 834) Tolkien is treating the moon’s cycle as if it lasted exactly twenty-eight days, rather than the actual twenty-nine-and-a-half of the real world’s lunar cycle. My thanks to Tolkienian astronomer Kristine Larsen for drawing this to my attention.
3 Below this sentence Tolkien drew a line across the page, as if marking the beginning of a new section – i.e., shifting from the timetable after their departure from Rivendell back to their arrival and the events preceding it.
Note that the reference to a new moon on 19th October and the statement that ‘There is probably time’ between Bilbo’s birthday (three days after the previous New Moon, which fell on 19th September just before the start of autumn) and ‘the discovery of the Key-hole’ suggest that Tolkien here is thinking of Durin’s Day as falling on the first new moon of autumn, as in the original manuscript, rather than on the last new moon before the start of winter as in the published book. This would have solved the problem of Dain’s too-rapid relief expedition and Bilbo’s amazing rate of progress on the first stage of the return journey, but it would also have required the re-writing of several descriptive passages vividly conveying the rapid onset of winter; see Text Note 2 following section (iv) below.
4 This is a reference to section (i) above [Ad.Ms.H.21–4], which therefore already existed when Tolkien drafted these further notes (cf. also the specific reference a few lines earlier to ‘412 miles’, the exact tally given in the Distances document (page 817).
Tolkien is pointing out here that by bringing Thorin & Company to Rivendell two weeks earlier than in the published book he has replaced one anomaly in the phases of the moon with another, so that the waning moon glimpsed on the night of the troll-adventure could not be at the right time of its cycle on Midsummer Eve to be a crescent moon, as required by the scene in which Elrond reads the moon-letters. See Text Note 6 below.
5 This passage of five lines (the last three on Ad.Ms.H.20a and the first two of Ad.Ms.H.20b) is very faint, but taken with the preceding paragraph the general sense is clear. Tolkien is searching for reasons to make their journey slower and delay their arrival in Rivendell to something closer to the original book (that is, about three weeks after the date given in New Chapter II and the Itinerary), and here suggests longer stays at Bree and the Last Inn, and the distress of their ponies in the wild, which in turn would lead to a slower rate of progress on the road after leaving Bree-land.
6 Tolkien’s point is that if the moon were a few days past new on Midsummer’s Eve, then the time specified for the troll-encounter (whether May 19th or the day before June 1st) cannot have a waning moon – that is, one past full. In addition, such a moon would not rise until well after dark (since the full moon rises at the same time that the sun sets), and the published book specifies that ‘it was nearly dark’ (i.e., the sun had not yet set) when ‘a waning moon appeared’ – characteristic of a waxing, not a waning, moon. His proposed solution, given in the next line, is to convert the moon Bilbo glimpsed that
night into a waxing moon (‘young and thin’) or else evade the problem by simply describing it as ‘a wandering moon’ and avoid specifying its phase at all. The former would require the troll encounter to take place about thirty days before Elrond’s discovery of the moon-runes the night the moon had just passed the same phase at Midsummer. The latter is the solution he adopted in the 1966 Hobbit (DAA.66).
7 Actually, it is the journey from the Hoarwell to the trolls that needs lengthening, if The Hobbit is to agree with The Lord of the Rings; cf. Fonstad, The Atlas of Middle-earth page 97 and the tailnote to section (iv) below.
8 Technically a gibbous moon can be either waxing (between First Quarter and Full Moon) or waning (between Full Moon and Last Quarter), but the text is specific here that it was the latter, a waning moon.
9 These charts are now (since 1997) part of the Tolkien collection at Marquette (Additional Tolkien Manuscripts, Fourth Installment, Envelope 6, items 2, 3, & 4).
(iv)
Waxing and Waning
This single page of notes [Ad.Ms.H.17] shows Tolkien looking not backwards from Rivendell to the troll-encounter but ahead to the other crucial moon-scene, that of the new moon on Durin’s Day. Once again, as with section (iii) above, Tolkien seems to be treating Durin’s Day as if it fell in the first month of autumn rather than the last; whether this is inadvertence or a deliberate decision which he nowhere expressed in writing cannot now be determined.
The ‘broad crescent’ moon on Midsummer eve in Elrond’s house fits very well with Durin’s Day in Chapter XI (2nd edn p. 221) – acc. to Shire Calendar Midsummer even was the June Lithe = June 30 + 1
The History of the Hobbit Page 102