by Miguel
Corboduc (> Otfando) Grubb of the first draft, recipient of a gold fountain-pen, becomes Orfando Burrowes;
Mungo Took, lnigo Grubb-Took, and Angelica Baggins remain; and two new beneficiaries are named before Mrs Sackville-Baggins at the end of the list:
For the collection of Hugo Bracegirdle, from contributor: on an (empty) bookcase. Hugo was a great borrower of books, but a small returner.
For Cosimo Chubb, treat it as your own, Bingo: on the barometer. Cosimo used to bang it with a large fat finger whenever he came to call. He was afraid of getting wet, and wore a scarf and macintosh all the year round.
For Grimalda [> Lobelia] Sackville-Baggins, as a present: on a case of silver spoons. It was believed by Bilbo Baggins that she had acquired a good many of his spoons while he was away - ninety odd years before. Bingo inherited the belief, and Grimalda [) Lobelia] knew it.
It is also mentioned that 'Bingo had very carefully disposed of his treasures: books, pictures, and a collection of toys. For his wines he found a very good (if temporary) home. Most of them went to Marmaduke Brandybuck' (predecessor of Meriadoc). The original draft is closely followed in the absence of any money or jewelry, and in the legal notice disposing of Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses (but Bilbo's cousin now becomes Otho, and their occupancy is to start from September 24th)- 'and they got Bag-end after all, though they had to wait 93 years longer for it than they had once expected': 111 less 51 plus 33, see pp. 31-2.(8) Sancho Proudfoot appears, excavating in the pantry where he thought there was an echo (as in FR, p. 48); physically attacked by Otho Sackville-Baggins, he was only finally ejected by the lawyers, first called 'Grubbs and Burrowes', as in The Hobbit, then changed to 'Messrs. lago Grubb and Folco Burrowes (Bingo's lawyers)'.
The conclusion of the third version I give in full.
The fact is Bingo's money had become a legend, and everybody was puzzled and anxious - though still hopeful. How he would have laughed. Indeed he was as near laughing as he dared at that very moment, for he was inside a large cupboard outside the dining-room door, and heard most of the racket. He was inside, of course, not for concealment, but to avoid being bumped into, being totally invisible. He had to laugh rather privately and silently, but all the same he was enjoying his joke: it was turning out so much like his expectation.
I suppose it is now becoming all too plain to everyone but the anxious and grabsome hobbits. The fact is that (in spite of certain things in his after-dinner speech) Bingo had grown suddenly tired of them all. A violent fit of Tookishness had come over him - not of course that all Tooks had much of this wayward quality, their mothers being Chubbs, Hornblowers, Bolgers, Bracegirdles, Grubbs and what not; but Tooks were on the whole the most jocular and unexpected of Hobbits. Also I can tell you something more, in case you have not guessed: Bingo had no money or jewelry left! Practically none, that is. Nothing worth digging up a nice hobbit-hole for. Money went a prodigious way in those days, and one could get quite a lot of things without it; but he had blown his last 500 ducats on the birthday party. That was Brandybuck- some of him. After that he had nothing left but the buttons on his waistcoat, a small bag-purse of silver, and his ring. In the course of 33 years he had contrived to spend all the rest - what was left, that is, by his father, who had done a bit of spending in fifty years (9) (and had required some travelling-expenses).
Well, there it is. All things come to an end. Evening came on. Bag-end was left empty and gloomy. People went away - haggling and arguing, most of them. You could hear their voices coming up the Hill in the dusk. Very few gave a thought to Bingo. They decided he had gone mad, and run off, and that was one Baggins the less, and that was that. They were annoyed about the legendary money, of course, but meanwhile there was tea waiting for them. There were some, of course, who regretted his sudden disappearance - a few of his younger friends were really distressed. But not all of them had said good-bye to him. That is easily explained, and soon will be.
Bingo stepped out of the cupboard. It was getting dim. His watch said six. The door was open, as he had kept the key in his pocket. He went out, locked the door (leaving the key), and looked at the sky. Stars were coming out.
'It is going to be a fine night,' he said. 'What a lark! Well, I must not keep them waiting. Now we're off. Goodbye!' He trotted down the garden, jumped the fence, and took to the fields, and passed like an invisible rustle in the grasses.
NOTES.
1. I find it difficult to believe this, yet if it is not so the coincidence is strange. If Bingo Baggins did get his name from this source, I can only suppose that the demonic character (composed of monomaniac religious despotism and a lust for destruction through high explosive) of the chief Bingo (not to mention that of his appalling wife), by which my sister and I now remember them, developed somewhat later.
2. The substitution was not made in the first draft, but in pencilled corrections to the end of the second version (p. 27).
3. The change of 'fifty-fifth' to 'seventy-second' was made at the same time as the 16 years during which Bingo lived at Bag End after his parents' departure were changed to 33 (note 6). These changes were made before the chapter was finished, since later in it, in Bingo's farewell speech, the revised figures are present from the first writing. When at the outset he wrote 'fifty-fifth birthday' and '16 years' my father was presumably intending to get rid of the idea, appearing in rewriting of the second version (see p. 27), that the number of 144 guests was chosen for an inner reason, since on Bingo's 55th birthday his father Bilbo would have been 127 (having left the Shire 16 years before at the age of x x i, when Bingo was 39).
4. Primula was first written Amalda. In the first version (p. 16) Amalda was the name of Mrs Sackville-Baggins. In the fourth version of 'A long-expected party', when Bilbo had returned to his bachelor state, Primula Brandybuck, no longer his wife, remained Bingo's mother.
5. My father first wrote here: the Brandybucks of Wood Eaton on the other side of the shire, on the edge of Buckwood - a dubious region.' He first changed (certainly at the time of writing) the name of the Brandybuck stronghold from Wood Eaton (a village in the Cherwell valley near Oxford) to Bury Underwood (where 'Bury' is the very common English place-name element derived from Old English byrig, the dative of burg 'fortified place, town'); then he introduced the name of the river, replaced Bury Underwood by Buckland, and replaced Buckwood by the Old Forest.
6. This change was made at the same time as '55' to '72' for Bingo's years at the time of the birthday party; see.note 3.
7. This is the first appearance of Gaffer Gamgee, living in Bagshot Row (first mentioned in the second version, p. ax).
8. As mentioned in note 3, the later figure of 72 for 55 as Bingo's age on this birthday, and 33 for 16 as the number of years in which he lived on alone at Bag End after Bilbo's departure, which appear as emendations in the early part of the text, are in the later part of the chapter present from the first writing.
9. One would expect 'sixty' (III less 51): see pp. 3 I, 252.
Note on Hobbit-names.
It will be seen that delight in the names and relations of the hobbit- families of the Shire from which the ramifying genealogies would spring was present from the start. In no respect did my father chop and change more copiously. Already we have met, apart from Bilbo and Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took who appeared. in The Hobbit:
Baggins: Angelica; Inigo; Semolina
Bolger: Caramella (replacing Caramella Took)
Bracegirdle: Hugo
Brandybuck: Amalda > Primula; Marmaduke; Orlando > Prospero; Rory
Burrowes: Folco; Orlando (replacing Orlando Grubb)
Chubb: Cosimo
Grubb: Gorboduc > Orlando; Iago
Crubb-Took: Inigo
Proudfoot: Sancho
Sackville-Baggins: Amalda > Lonicera or Griselda > Grimalda > Lobelia; Sago > Cosmo > Otho
Took: Caramella; Melba > Arabella > Amanda; Mungo
Took-Took: Obo > Rollo
*
The Fourth Version.
Two further changes, embodying an important shift, were made to the manuscript of the third version. They were carefully made, in red ink, but concomitant changes later in the text were not made. In the first sentence of the chapter (p. 28) 'Bingo, son of Bilbo' was altered to 'Bingo Bolger-Baggins'; and in the third sentence 'Bingo's father' was altered to 'Bingo's uncle (and guardian), Bilbo Baggins.'
We come now therefore to a further stage, where the 'long-expected party' is still Bingo's, not Bilbo's, but Bingo is his nephew, not his son, and Bilbo's marriage (as was inevitable, I think) has been rejected.
The fourth version is a typescript, made by my father. It was emended very heavily later on, but these changes belong to the second phase of the writing of The Fellowship of the Ring, and here I ignore them. The alterations to the third version just referred to were now incorporated into the text (which therefore now begins: 'When Bingo Bolger-Baggins of the well-known Baggins family prepared to celebrate his seventy- second birthday...'), but otherwise it proceeds as an exact copy of the third version as far as 'he was on visiting terms with all his neighbours and relatives (except, of course, the Sackville-Bagginses)'(p. 29). Here it diverges.
But folk did not bother him much. He was frequently out. And if he was in, you never knew who you would find with him: hobbits of quite poor families, or folk from distant villages, dwarves, and even sometimes elves.
He did two more things that caused tongues to wag. At the age of ninety-nine he adopted his nephew - or to be accurate (Bilbo scattered the titles nephew and niece about rather recklessly) his first cousin once removed, Bingo Bolger, a lad of twenty-seven. They had heard very little about him, and that not too good (they said). As a matter of fact Bingo was the son of Primula Brandybuck (and Rollo Bolger, who was quite unimportant); and she was the daughter of Mirabella Took (and Gorboduc Brandybuck, who was rather important); and she was one of three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, for long the head of the hobbits who lived across The Water. And so the Tooks come in again- always a disturbing element, especially when mixed with Brandybuck. For Primula was a Brandybuck of Buckland, across the Brandywine River, on the other side of the Shire and at the edge of the Old Forest - a dubious region. Folk in Hobbiton did not know much about it, or about the Brandybucks either; though some had heard it said that they were rich, and would have been richer, if they bad not been reckless. What had happened to Primula and her husband was not known for certain in Hobbiton. There was rumour of a boating accident on the Brandywine River - the sort of thing that Brandybucks would go in for. Some said that Rollo Bolger had died young of overeating; others mid that it was his weight that had sunk the boat.
Anyway, Bilbo Baggins adopted Master Bolger, announced that he would make him his heir, changed his name to Bolger- Baggins, and still further offended the Sackville-Bagginses. Then shortly before his hundred-and-eleventh birthday Bilbo disappeared finally and was never seen in Hobbiton again. His relatives and neighbours lost the chance of a funeral, and they had a good deal to say. But it made no difference: Bilbo's residence, his wealth, his position (and the dubious regard of the more influential hobbits), were inherited by Bingo Bolger-Baggins.
Bingo was a mere youngster of thirty-nine and had hardly cut his wisdom-teeth; but he at once began to carry on his uncle's reputation for oddity. He refused to go into mourning, and within a week gave a birthday-party - for himself and his uncle (their birthdays happened to be on the same day). At first people were shocked, but he kept up the custom year after year, until they got used to it. He said he did not think Bilbo Baggins was dead. When they asked the obvious question: 'Where is he then?' he merely winked. He lived alone, and was often away from home. He went about a good deal with the least well-behaved members of the Took family (his grandmother's people); and he was also fond of the Brandybucks {his mother's relatives).
Anyway, Bingo Bolger-Baggins had been the master of Bag-end Underhill now for thirty-three years without doing anything outrageous. His parties were sometimes a bit noisy...
With Gorboduc Brandybuck and Mirabella Took (one of 'the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took' who had been mentioned in?he Hobbit) the genealogy now becomes that of LR, except that Primula Brandybuck's husband (Bilbo in the third version) is Rollo Bolger, not Drogo Baggins; and the boating accident reappears (see p. 25, note a).
From here to the end the typescript follows the third version (as emended) very closely, and there is little further to add. Bilbo becomes Bingo's 'uncle' throughout, of course; Bingo was liable to allude to 'the absurd adventures of his "gallant and famous" uncle' (see p. 32). But, with this change, Bingo's remarks in his speech on the ages of himself and his uncle and the number of guests at the party remain exactly the same, and 'The ring was his uncle's parting gift' (ibid.).
Small changes of wording move the text towards the final form in FR; for example, where in the third version Rory Brandybuck is described as 'well-filled but still brighter than many', it is now said of him that his 'wits neither old age, nor surprise, nor an enormous dinner, had quite clouded'. But to set out even a portion of such developments in expression between closely related versions would obviously be quite impracticable. There are however a few minor narrative shifts which I collect in the following notes, with page-references indicating where the relevant passages in earlier versions are to be found.
(30) Gaffer Gamgee had a little more to say:
'... A very nice well-spoken gentlehobbit is Mr Bolger-Baggins, as I've always said.' And that was perfectly true; for Bingo had always been very polite to Gaffer Gamgee, calling him Mr Gamgee, and discussing potatoes with him over the hedge.
(21, 31) The day of the party now becomes Thursday (not Saturday) 22 September (a change made to the typescript, but carefully over an erasure and clearly belonging to the time of typing).
(31) There is no further reference to Gandalf in the chapter, after the fireworks.
(24, 32) The young hobbits who danced on the table are Prospero Took and Melissa Brandybuck.
(32 - 3) Several names are changed among the recipients of gifts from Bag End, Caramella (Took )) Bolger becomes Caramella Chubb; the comatose Rollo Took- Took becomes Fosco Bolger (and is Bingo's uncle); Inigo Grubb-Took the glutton, who had survived from the first draft, is now Inigo Grubb; and Cosimo Chubb the barometer- tapper becomes Cosimo Hornblower.
(33) It is now added that 'The poorer hobbits did very well, especially old Gaffer Gamgee, who got about half a ton of potatoes', that Bingo had a collection of magical toys; and that he and his friends drank nearly all the wine, the remainder still going to Marmaduke Brandybuck.
(16, 33) The legal notice in the hall at Bag End is extended, and followed by a new passage:
Bingo Bolger-Baggins Esqre. departing hereby devises delivers and makes over by free gift the desirable property and messuage or dwelling-hole known as Bag-end Underhill with all lands thereto belonging and annexed to Otho Sackville-Baggins Esqre. and his wife Lobelia for them jointly to have hold possess occupy let on lease or otherwise dispose of at their pleasure as from September the twenty fourth in the seventy second year of the aforesaid Bingo Bolger-Baggins and the one hundred and forty fourth year of Bilbo Baggins who as former rightful mvners hereby relinquish all claims to the abovesaid property as from the date aforesaid.
The notice was signed Bingo Bolger-Baggins for self and uncle. Bingo was not a lawyer, and he mereIy put things that way to please Otho Sackville-Baggins, who was a lawyer. Otho certainly was pleased, but whether by the language or the property is difficult to say. Anyway, as soon m he had read the notice he shouted: 'Ours at last!' So I suppose it was all right, at least according to the legal notions of hobbits. And that is how the Sackville-Bagginses got Bag- end in the end, though they had to wait ninety-three years longer for it than they had once expected.
(33) The lawyers who ejected Sancho Proudfoot do not appear. An addition is made to the passage describin
g the character of the Tooks: 'and since they had inherited both enormous wealth and no little courage from the Old Took, they carried things off with a pretty high hand at times.'
(34) The reference to Bilbo's having 'done a bit of spending in fifty years' was changed; the text now reads: '- what was left him by his Uncle, that is; for Bilbo had done a bit of spending in his time.'
'A few were distressed at his sudden disappearance; one or two were not distressed, because they were in the know - but they were not at Bag-end.'
Thus it is never explained why Bingo (or Bilbo in the first version), for whom money was now a severe problem (and one of the reasons for his departure), simply handed over 'the desirable property known as Bag- end' to the Sackville-Bagginses 'by free gift'.
There were further twists still to come in this amazingly sinuous evolution before the final structure was reached, but this was how the opening chapter stood for some time, and Bingo Bolger-Baggins, 'nephew' or more properly first cousin once removed of Bilbo Baggins, is present throughout the original form of Book I of The Fellowship of the King. I set out briefly here the major shifts and stages encountered thus far.
A Long-expected party.