Second Column
Ox Mag: The Oxford Magazine, a local university-focused journal which published Tolkien’s article ‘The Oxford English School’ in 1930 and no less than seven of his poems in the following years: ‘Progress in Bimble Town’ [1931], ‘Errantry’ [1933], ‘Looney’ (= ‘The Sea Bell’) and ‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil’ [both 1934], and ‘The Dragon’s Visit’, ‘Knocking at the Door’ (= ‘The Mewlips’), and ‘Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden’ (= ‘The Hoard’) [on 4th February, 18th February, & 4th March 1937, respectively]. On 28th May 1937 in a letter to Charles Furth regarding publicity and the release date for the forthcoming book, Tolkien writes of getting ‘my friend the editor of the O.U. Magazine, who has been giving it a good dose of my dragon-lore recently, to . . . get a review at the beginning of the autumn term’. On 1st June, Furth writes that they are sending advance copies to both C. S. Lewis (see above) and ‘the Editor of “The Oxford University Magazine”’; on 8th July he elaborates that these are ‘unbound advance copies for their convenience . . . They will of course both receive proper review copies as well in due course’. In his reply, Tolkien provided the editor’s name (R[ussell] Meiggs) and address (Keble College), and an annotation in the margin on this letter by someone at Allen & Unwin indicates that Meigg’s copy was ‘Sent 14/7’ (i.e., 14th July). Meiggs’ undated letter in response, so enthusiastic that Tolkien passed it along to Furth (cf. Letters, page 20), was a self-described ‘uninvited testimonial’, declaring that the book should be ‘pushed to save children from the sentimental saccharine that is so often foisted on them’ and declaring that ‘it solves the Christmas problem for a large number of god-children and it will increase my prestige with my sister’s youngest, who is a discriminating . . . public.’ (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 24).
Russell Meiggs, 1902–1989, was a Classicist; a ‘Greats’ tutor apparently at Keble at the time of The Hobbit’s publication, who in 1939 became Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Balliol (1939–1970), adding to this the post of Prefect of Holywell Manor (a residence hall at Balliol) from 1945 to 1969. He is mainly known for his work on the ancient port of Rome, Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber (Roman Ostia [1960]), though he also published on The Athenian Empire [1972], Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean [1982], and updated J. B. Bury’s A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great [1900; rev. ed. 1978].
Book Soc.: possibly the group more formally known as the Society of Bookmen, a club founded by the novelist Hugh Walpole in 1921 (and still thriving today), drawing its membership from literary and publishing folk. Its stated purpose was to encourage ‘authors, printers, publishers, binders, or salesmen to get together in the interests of their trade’. Membership is by personal invitation, for life, and was originally limited to seventy-five. It has been said that ‘nearly every important book trade issue in the last half century had its first airing at a meeting of the Society’ (The Society of Bookmen: An Informal History, 1921–1984); Stanley Unwin called it ‘a small but representative body whose one and only object is the advancement of the knowledge and appreciation of good literature’ (The Truth About Publishing [6th edition, 1950], page 260).
Tolkien wrote to Charles Furth on 13th August 1937 that ‘The Book Society enquiry was due to the kindness of George Gordon (P[resident] of Magdalen), who acted with great promptness’ and asked that they send Gordon a personal copy, since Tolkien’s own spare copy he had loaned to Gordon ‘has been carried off by some member of the party’; this suggests that Gordon had been championing The Hobbit at the group’s most recent meeting. Furth replied on 16th August 1937 that they were not only replacing Tolkien’s lost copy but sending Dr. Gordon an advance copy as well and not counting either against Tolkien’s author’s copies (A&U archive). Hence Tolkien’s cancellation of both this and the next entry on the list, and his reminder to himself: ‘have’.
GSG: George S. Gordon, 1881–1942, who as head of the English School at Leeds had been instrumental in getting Tolkien his appointment there in 1920. In 1922 he became Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, from which post he played a decisive role in getting JRRT elected to the Rawlinson and Bosworth professorship at Oxford in 1925. In 1928 he was elected President of Magdalen College, and at the time of The Hobbit’s publication had added to this the Professorship of Poetry (a five-year appointment, from 1933–38); after this (1938) he became Vice-Chancellor of the University as well. More a ‘man of letters’ in the mode of earlier figures, like Leslie Stephen and Edmund Gosse, than a scholar in the modern academic sense, Gordon’s essays (collected into such volumes as Companionable Books [1925] and The Discipline of Letters [1946]) cover a wide range of topics, from Pepys to Sterne to Shelley to ‘The Trojans in Britain’ ([1924], a paean to invented mythic history). His greatest gifts, however, lay in administration: in his memoir of Gordon (Letters, pages 56–8) Tolkien called him ‘the very master of men’ and stated that ‘my. . . first thoughts of him are always of personal gratitude, of a friend rather than of an academic figure’ who always showed kindness and thoughtfulness towards his subordinates. Gordon was a member of the Kolbítars (‘Coal-biters’), a group Tolkien founded in 1926 to read all the major sagas in the original Old Icelandic; he also collaborated with Tolkien on an unfinished edition of Chaucer (Selections from Chaucer’s Poetry and Prose, a.k.a. ‘the Clarendon Chaucer’; cf. Scull & Hammond, Companion & Guide Vol. II, pages 153–6). His enthusiasm for The Hobbit was well known: cf. Tolkien’s letter to Charles Furth on 31st August 1937, where Tolkien notes that ‘Professor Gordon has actually read the book (supposed to be a rare event); and assures me that he will recommend it generally and to the Book Society’ (Letters, page 20).
Hilary: Hilary Tolkien, 1894–1976, Tolkien’s brother. Unlike his academically-minded older brother, Hilary was a fruit farmer, with ‘a small orchard and market garden’ (Companion & Guide, Vol. II, page 1017) near Evesham (home, incidently, of a famous Green Dragon pub), about forty miles northwest of Oxford, roughly mid-way between Gloucester and Stratford-upon-Avon. His letter of thanks to ‘Dear R’, dated 24th September 1937, is now in the Bodleian; in it he invites his brother’s family for a visit and thanks JRRT for ‘the most delightful present of the Hobbit. . . I should have written before but I have been simply devouring your book. . . my great sorrow is that there seems no picture of Bilbo Baggins or the Gollum. . . when the fame of your Hobbit has spread I feel sure others will want to see what he was like . . . I wish your book every success . . . as soon as I have read it all I shall read it to Gabriel [Hilary’s oldest son, then aged six] who is always to be found peeping into it in the early morning’ (MS. Tolkien 21, folios 127–8). For more on Hilary, see Carpenter’s Tolkien: A Biography, the Family Album, Scull & Hammond’s Companion & Guide, Vol. II, pages 1016–1017, Andrew H. Morton’s Tolkien’s Gedling–1914, and the brief biography in the back of Black & White Ogre Country, ed. Angela Gardner [2009].
From the surviving evidence we can say that Tolkien presented the book to colleagues, former students, and collaborators (three categories with considerable overlap in his case), as well as relatives and family friends. This of course is not a complete listing of everyone to whom Tolkien gave copies of The Hobbit – for example, he sent a copy to Mrs. Ruth Smith (Companion & Guide Vol. II, page 942), the mother of Tolkien’s childhood friend and fellow TCBS member G. B. Smith [died 1916], whose poems Tolkien had edited as A Spring Harvest [1918], although so far as we know he did not do so to his former headmaster R. C. Gilson [died 1939], father of Rob Gilson [died 1916], Tolkien’s other close friend and fellow TCBS member killed in the War; nor to Christopher Wiseman, the sole other survivor with Tolkien of the TCBS; nor to his former teacher R. W. ‘Dickie’ Reynolds [died 1948], for whom Tolkien had written ‘The Sketch of the Mythology’ in 1926. Father Francis would undoubtedly have been included had he not died about a year and a half before, in 1935. Nor, aside from Lewis and Wrenn (both fellow medievalists), did any other member of the Inklings
make the list, although we know The Hobbit was read to the group (probably upon completion of the typescript in the early autumn of 1936) and they would figure prominently in the creation of its sequel.
We should also note that this listing does not include those who were given copies of the Houghton Mifflin edition when it came out early the following year, which seem to have gone mainly to fellow academics and medievalists in America and Canada such as Francis Magoun of Harvard and Kemp Malone of Johns Hopkins. Magoun’s letter of thanks, dated 6th June 1938, is now in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folios 83–4); in it he mentions having seen the illustrations in Oxford the summer of the year before, suggesting that Tolkien showed them to him during a visit. After praising the book as a mix of Kipling and Carroll, he goes on to say ‘I hope you will do another or others before the children get too old or not old enough. The youngest daughter is just a year, so you have time!’
Addendum
The Seventh Phase
The following material, found by Christopher Tolkien tucked into one of his father’s copies of the second edition of The Hobbit (the sixth printing of 1954), was discovered too late to be incorporated into the original edition of this book. But because of its great interest in demonstrating how vividly Tolkien visualized each scene, because it provides details nowhere else available, and because most of it seems to belong to a ‘Seventh Phase’ and thus represents Tolkien’s last bout of work on the book, I have added it here.
The material in question consists of eighteen pages, written at various times but mostly dating from circa 1965–66, to which I have given the designator Ad.Ms.H.S.xx—that is, Additional Manuscripts Hobbit Supplemental, page xx. The bulk of this material is concerned with the runes used in The Hobbit: Tolkien provides several charts that would enable readers to decipher the various writing systems found on the book’s maps and in the illustration of Smaug on his hoard (‘Conversation with Smaug’; see Plate XI), as well as several more drafts of Bilbo’s Contract in different styles and notes on dwarven modes of writing, punctuation, the representation of numbers in tengwar, and so forth. Only some of this material is included below, since its full presentation and analysis belongs rather to a study of the evolution of Tolkien’s writing systems such as that being carried out by Arden Smith in the ongoing periodic journal Parma Eldalamberon. Also included in these miscellaneous draftings, and presented in full below, are a timeline of events from the opening of the Secret Door to Thorin and Bard’s parley, a detailed description of the terrain immediately outside the Lonely Mountain’s Front Gate, Tolkien’s responses to two queries regarding proposed changes to the text, and a descriptive list of all the dwarves with their characteristic colours. Taken all together, these represent Tolkien’s final sustained work on the book.
(i)
Timeline of Events
This timeline fills the bottom half, top margin, and long left margin of a single page [Ad.Ms.H.S.8]. Immediately following upon Tolkien’s detailed description of the area around the Lonely Mountain’s Front Gate (see Part ii: Notes on a Parley, below), it gives a day-by-day account of the events during the busy fortnight following Thorin & Company’s discovery of the Secret Door.
As before, doubtful words are indicated by french brackets < > while illegible passages are represented by open elipses (. . .).
Day Event TN1
1 Discovery of door,TN2 day 1. sunset. B’s [added: first] converseTN3 with Smaug [> steals cup] evening/night. Smaug comes out. Company take refuge inside tunnel. S. hunts ponies.
2 Noon. Bilbo visits Smaug, returns late afternoon. Evening
2 night. Smaug destroys Lake Town, but is slain by Bard. Night spent in tunnel.
3 Bard sends messages to Elvenking. [cancelled: But he has already
4 Dwarves come out Front Gate near noon. The[y] proceed towards Ravenhill “5 hrs march” p. 254TN6 They sleep in guardsroom on Ravenhill. They see gathering of birds.TN7
5 Bard’s messengers meet the Elvenking already on the move with his host towards the L. Mountain. The EK. turns <?south> towards Lake-town. Dwarves
6
7 Elfhost reaches Lake Town.
8 ?Fili & Kili sent out to bring back stores.
9
10
11 of the
[Note: The entries for the following days are written in the left margin.]
[12]
[13] “Then came a night”TN9 pm day 13 when the Dwarves saw the lights of the host away
14
15 Bard and Thorin parley. . . .TN11
This brief timeline is self-explanatory; in it, Tolkien details the events of the fifteen days between the discovery of the Secret Door and the beginning of the Siege of the Mountain. Had Tolkien continued it, it would no doubt have extended to include the Battle of Five Armies, the death of Thorin, Bilbo’s departure, and perhaps even some highlights from his return journey. Combined with the 1960 Hobbit material given in ‘Timelines and Itinerary’, especially parts ii, iii, and iv, we see how, although in fragmentary form and never finalized, a reasonably complete timeline of Bilbo’s journey could be constructed. For how this timeline relates to those previous efforts, see in particular Text Note 3 on page 828, which if accepted would equate ‘Day 1’ above with 19th October.
Text Notes
TN1. I have provided these headers for the sake of clarity.
TN2. The word ‘door’ here is underlined, and written above it is a D-rune , as on Thror’s map.
TN3. The word appears to be ‘converse’ (i.e., ‘Bilbo converse with Smaug’), but may be intended for ‘conversa[tion]’ instead (i.e., ‘Bilbo’s first conversation with Smaug’).
TN4. Of the two illegible words represented here by the ellipses, the first ends in ‘-ts’ and the second might be either ‘open’ or ‘again’.
TN5. This cancelled sentence was recast into the entry for the fifth day; see below. The ‘5’ seems to have been written over another letter, which cannot now be read.
TN6. The reference is to Balin’s comment near the end of Chapter XIII: ‘Not at Home’ in the second edition, where he mentions
‘. . . the old look-out post at the South-West corner of the Mountain.’
‘How far is that?’ asked the hobbit.
‘Five hours march, I should think. It will be rough going . . .’
—second edition, page 254; cf. DAA.299
TN7. The sequence of these last two sentences is reversed, so as to read ‘They see gathering of birds. They sleep in guardsroom on Ravenhill’, which more accurately represents the sequence of events in the story.
TN8. The allusion is to the last line of Chapter XIV: ‘Fire and Water’ in the published book: ‘It was thus that in eleven days from the ruin of the town the head of their host passed the rock-gates at the end of the lake and came into the desolate lands.’ See DAA.313.
TN9. The reference is to a passage in the middle of Chapter XV: ‘The Gathering of Clouds’:
“There came a night when suddenly there were many lights as of fires and torches away south in Dale before them.
“ ‘They have come!’ called Balin. ‘And their camp is very great . . .’ ” (DAA.320).
TN10. The illegible passage here consists of roughly three words, the last of which has been replaced by an equally illegible word. In any case, the allusion is to the human a
nd elven host taking up siege quarters in the valley outside the Front Gate. In the original published book the relevant passage read ‘That day the camp was moved and was brought right between the arms of the Mountain’; in the 1966 Longmans/Unwin edition – the edition with which this ‘Seventh Phase’ is associated – that line was changed to read ‘That day the camp was moved to the east side of the river, right between the arms of the Mountain’ (DAA.320; emphasis mine).
TN11. The second half of this entry, consisting of four or five words, is unfortunately illegible to me. The second word is perhaps days, and the final word seems to begin with st- and ends in an ascender followed by a descender, but I cannot make out the sense of the passage. The relevant section of the text is the account of Thorin’s parley with Bard at the end of Chapter XV: ‘The Gathering of Clouds’, ending in his total rejection of Bard’s terms and the beginning of the Siege; cf. DAA.322–4.
(ii)
Notes on a Parley
The following account [Ad.Ms.H.S.6–8], to which I have given the name ‘Notes on a Parley’, provides an example of Tolkien’s endless creativity, his ability to expand upon practically any point in his legendarium—in this case, turning his attention to the exact lay-out of the area immediately below the siege-wall Thorin & Company constructed blocking the Front Gate.
At the top of the first of these three pages (numbered ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ by Tolkien in the margin of each page) Tolkien has scrawled
Hobbit
Arrangement at the Lonely Mt. dwarfroads
and
from discovery of secret door
Immediately below this come two lines of runes:
The History of the Hobbit Page 109