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Version I. Bilbo gives the party, aged 70. ('I am going to tell you a story about one of his descendants')
Version II. Bilbo gives the party, aged 71.
Version III. Bilbo married, and disappeared from Hobbiton with his wife (Primula Brandybuck) when he was 111. His son Bingo Baggins gives the party, aged 72.
Version IV. Bilbo, unmarried, adopted his young cousin Bingo Bolger (son of Primula Brandybuck), changed his name to Bingo Bolger-Baggins, and disappeared from Hobbiton when he was 111. His adopted cousin Bingo Bolger-Baggins gives the party, aged 72.
*
(v)
'The Tale that is Brewing'.
It was to the fourth version (writing on the typescript shows that it went to Allen and Unwin) that my father referred in a letter to Charles Furth on 1 February 1938, six weeks after he began the new book:
Would you ask Mr Unwin whether his son [Rayner Unwin, then twelve years old], a very reliable critic, would rare to read the first chapter of the sequel to The Hobbit? I have typed it. I have no confidence in it, but if he thought it a promising beginning, could add to it the tale that is brewing.
What was 'the tale that is brewing'? The texts of 'A Long-expected Party' provide no clues, except that the end of the third version (p. 34) makes it clear that when Bingo left Bag End he was going to meet, and go off with, some of his younger friends - and this is hinted at already at the end of the first draft (p. 17); in the fourth version this is repeated, and 'one or two' of his friends were 'in the know' - and 'they were not at Bag-end' (p. 39). Of course it is clear, too, that Bilbo is not dead; and (with knowledge of what was in fact to come) we may count the references to Buckland and the Old Forest (pp. 29, 37) as further hints.
But there are some jottings from this time, written on two sides of a single sheet of paper, that do give some inkling of what was 'brewing'. The first of these reads:
Bilbo goes off with 3 Took nephews: Odo, Frodo, and Drogo [changed to Odo, Drogo, and Frodo]. He has only a small bag of money. They walk all night - East. Adventures: troll-like: witch- house on way to Rivendell. Elrond again [added: (by advice of Gandalf?)]. A tale in Elrond's house.
Where is G[andalf] asks Odo - said I was old and foolish enough now to take care of myself said B. But I dare say he will turn up, he is apt to.
There follows a note to the effect that while Odo believed no more than a quarter of 'B.'s stories', Drogo was less sceptical, and Frodo believed them 'almost completely'. The character of this last nephew was early established, though he was destined to disappear (see p. 70): he is not the forerunner of Frodo in LR. All this seems to have been written at one time. On the face of it, it must belong with the second (unfinished) version of 'A Long-expected Party', since it is Bilbo who 'goes off' (afterwards my father bracketed the words 'Bilbo goes off with 3 Took nephews' and wrote 'Bingo' above). The implication is presumably that when Bilbo set out with his nephews Gandalf was no longer present.
Then follows, in pencil: 'Make return of ring a motive.' This no doubt refers to the statement in the third version that 'The ring was his [Bingo's] father's parting gift' (p. 32).
After a note suggesting the coming of a dragon to Hobbiton and a more heroic role for hobbits, a suggestion rejected with a pencilled 'No', there follows, apparently all written at one time (but with a later pencilled heading 'Conversation of Bingo and Bilbo'):
'No one,' said B., 'can escape quite unscathed from dragons. The only thing is to shun them (if you can) like the Hobbitonians, though not nec[essarily] to disbelieve in them (or refuse to remember them) like the H[obbitonians]. Now I have spent all my money which seemed once to me too much and my own has gone after it [sic]. And I don't like being without after [?having] - in fact I am being lured. Well, well, twice one is not always two, as my father used to say. But at any rate I think I would rather wander as a poor man than sit and shiver. And Hobbiton rather grows on you in 20 years, don't you think; grows too heavy to bear, I mean. Anyway, we are off - and it's autumn. I enjoy autumn wandering.'
Asks Elrond what he can do to heal his money-wish and unsettlement. Elrond tells him of an island. Britain? Far west where the Elves still reign. Journey to perilous isle.
I want to look again on a live dragon.
This is certainly Bilbo, and the passage (though not of course the pencilled heading) precedes the third version, as the reference to '20 years' shows (see pp. 22, 31). - At the foot of the page are these faint pencilled scrawls:
Bingo goes to find his father.
You said you.... end your days in contentment - so I hope to.
The illegible word might possibly be 'want'. - On the reverse of the page is the following coherent passage in ink:
The Ring: whence its origin. Necromancer? Not very dangerous, when used for good purpose. But it exacts its penalty. You must either lose it, or yourself. Bilbo could not bring himself to lose it. He starts on a holiday [struck out: with his wife] handing over ring to Bingo. But he vanishes. Bingo worried. Resists desire to go and find him - though he does travel round a lot looking for news. Won't lose ring as he feels it will ultimately bring him to his father.
At last he meets Gandalf. Gandalf's advice. You must stage a disappearance, and the ring may then be cheated into letting you follow a similar path. But you have got to really disappear and give up the past. Hence the 'party'.
Bingo confides in his friends. Odo, Frodo, and Vigo (?) insist on coming too. Gandalf rather dubious. You will share the same fate as Bingo, he said, if you dare the ring. Look what happened to Primula.
A couple of pencilled changes were made to this: above 'Vigo(?)' my father wrote 'Marmaduke'; and he bracketed the last sentence. - Since Bingo is here Bilbo's son this note belongs with the third version. But the watery death of Primula Brandybuck (no longer Bilbo's wife, but still Bingo's mother) is first recorded in the fourth version (p. 37), and the Ring could not possibly be associated with that event; so that the reference to 'Primula' here must refer to something else of which there is no other trace.
Particularly noteworthy is the suggestion that the idea of the Party arose from Gandalf's advice to Bingo concerning the Ring. It is indeed remarkable that already at this stage, when my father was still working on the opening chapter, so much of the Ring's nature was already present in embryo. - The final two notes are in pencil. The first reads:
Bilbo goes to Elrond to cure dragon-longing, and settles down in Rivendell. Hence Bingo's frequent absences from home. The dragon-longing comes on Bingo. Also ring-lure.
With Bingo's 'frequent absences from home' cf. 'he was often away from home' in the third version (p. 29), and 'Resists desire to go and find him - though he does travel round a lot looking for news' in the note on the Ring given above. And the last:
Make dubious regions - Old Forest on way to Rivendell. South of River. They turn aside to call up Frodo Br[andybuck] [written above: Marmaduke], get lost and caught by Willowman and by Barrow- wights. T. Bombadil comes in.
'South' was changed from 'North', and 'East' is written in the margin.
On a separate page (in fact on the back of my father's earliest surviving map of the Shire) is a brief 'scheme' that is closely associated with these last notes; at the head of it my father afterwards wrote Genesis of 'Lord of the Rings'.
B.B. sets out with 2 nephews. They turn S[outh] ward to collect Frodo Brandybuck. Get lost in Old Forest. Adventure with Willowman and Barrow-wights. T. Bombadil.
Reach Rivendell and find Bilbo. Bilbo had had a sudden desire to visit the Wild again. But meets Gandalf at Rivendell. Learns about [sic; here presumably the narrative idea changes] Gandalf had turned up at Bag-end. Bilbo tells him of desire for Wild and gold. Dragon curse working. He goes to Rivendell between the worlds and settles down.
Ring must eventually go back to Maker, or draw you towards it. Rather a dirty trick handing it on?
It is interesting to see the idea already present that Bingo and his companions would turn aside to 'collect' or 'ca
ll up' another hobbit, at first named Frodo Brandybuck, but changed to Marmaduke (Brandybuck). Frodo Brandybuck also appears in initial drafting for the second chapter (p. 45) as one of Bingo's three companions on his departure from Hobbiton. There are various ways of combining all these references to the three (or two) nephews, so as to present a series of successive formulations, but names and roles were still entirely fluid and ephemeral and no certainty is possible. Only in the first full text of the second chapter does the story become clear (for a time): Bingo set out with two companions, Odo Took and Frodo Took.
It is to be noted that Tom Bombadil, the Willow-man, and the Barrow-wights were already in existence years before my father began The turd of the Rings; see p. 115.
*
On 11 February 1938 Stanley Unwin reported to my father that his son Rayner had read the first chapter and was delighted with it. On 17 February my father wrote to Charles Furth at Allen and Unwin:
They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited 'first chapters'. I have indeed written many. The Hobbit sequel is still where it was, and I have only the vaguest notions of how to proceed. Not ever intending any sequel, I fear I squandered all my favourite 'motifs' and characters on the original 'Hobbit'.
And on the following day he replied to Stanley Unwin:
I am most grateful to your son Rayner: and am encouraged. At the same time I find it only too easy to write opening chapters - and for the moment the story is not unfolding. I have unfortunately very little time, made shorter by a rather disastrous Christmas vacation. I squandered so much on the original 'Hobbit' (which was not meant to have a sequel) that it is difficult to find anything new in that world.
But on 4 March 1938, in the course of a long letter to Stanley Unwin on another subject, he said:
The sequel to The Hobbit has now progressed as far as the end of the third chapter. But stories tend to get out of hand, and this has taken an unpremeditated turn. Mr Lewis and my youngest boy are reading it in bits as a serial. I hesitate to bother your son, though I should value his criticism. At any rate if he would like to read it in serial form he can.
The 'unpremeditated turn', beyond any doubt, was the appearance of the Black Riders.
II. FROM HOBBITON TO THE WOODY END.
The original manuscript drafts for the second chapter of The Lord of the Rings do not constitute a completed narrative, however rough, but rather, disconnected parts of the narrative, in places in more than one version, as the story expanded and changed in the writing. The fact that my father had typed out the first chapter by r February 1938 (p. 40), but on 17 February wrote (p. 43) that while first chapters came easily to him 'the Hobbit sequel is still where it was,' suggests strongly that the original drafting of this second chapter followed the typing of the fourth version of 'A Long-expected Party'.
There followed a typescript text, with a title 'Three's Company and Four's More'; this will be given in full, but before doing so earlier stages of the story (one of them of the utmost interest) must be looked at.
The first rough manuscript begins with Odo and Frodo Took (but Frodo at once changed to Drogo) sitting on a gate at night and talking about the events at Bag End that afternoon, while 'Frodo Brandybuck was sitting on a pile of haversacks and packs and looking at the stars.' Frodo Brandybuck, it seems, was brought in here from the role prepared for him in the notes given on pp. 42-3, in one of which he was replaced by Marmaduke (Brandybuck). Bingo, coming up behind silently and invisibly, pushed Odo and Drogo off the gate; and after the ensuing raillery the draft continues:
'Have you three any idea where we are going to?' said Bingo.
'None whatever,' said Frodo, ' - if you mean, where we are going to land finally. With such a captain it would be quite impossible to guess that. But we all know where we are making for first.'
'What we don't know,' put in Drogo, 'is how long it is going to take us on foot. Do you? You have usually taken a pony.'
'That is not much faster, though it is less tiring. Let me see - I have never done the journey in a hurry before, and have usually taken five and a half weeks (with plenty of rests). Actually I have always had some adventure, milder or less so, every time I have taken the road to Rivendell.'
'Very well,' said Frodo, 'let's put a bit of the way behind us tonight. It is jolly under the stars, and cool.'
'Better turn in soon and make an early start,'said Odo (who was fond of bed). 'We shall do more tomorrow if we begin fresh.'
'I back councillor Frodo,' said Bingo. So they started, shouldering packs, and gripping long sticks. They went very quietly over fields and along hedgerows and the fringes of small coppices until night fell, and in their dark [?green) cloaks they were quite invisible without any rings. And of course being Hobbits they could not be heard - not even by Hobbits. At last Hobbiton was far behind, and the lights in the windows of the last farmhouse were twinkling on a hilltop a long way away. Bingo turned and waved a hand in farewell.
At the bottom of a slight hill they struck the main road East - rolling away pale grey into the darkness, between high hedges and dark wind-stirred trees. Now they marched along two by two; talking a little., occasionally humming, often tramping in time for a mile or so without saying anything. The stars swung overhead, and the night got late.
Odo gave a big yawn and slowed down. 'I am so sleepy,' he said, 'that I shall fall down on the road. What about a place for the night?'
Here the original opening draft ends. Notably, the hobbits are setting out expressly for Rivendell, and Bingo has been there several times before; cf. the note given on p. 42: 'Bilbo... settles down in Rivendell. Hence Bingo's frequent absences from home.' But there is no indication, nor has there been any, why they should be in any particular hurry.
It is clear that when the hobbits struck the East Road they took to it and walked eastward along it. At this stage there is no suggestion of a side road to Buckland, nor indeed that Buckland played any part in their plans.
A revised beginning followed. Drogo Took was dropped, leaving Odo and Frodo as Bingo's companions (Frodo now in all probability a Took). The passage concerning Rivendell has gone, and instead the plan to go first 'to pick up Marmaduke' appears. The description of the walk from Hobbiton is now much fuller, and largely reaches the form in the typescript text (p. 50); it is interesting to observe here the point of emergence of the road to Buckland:
After a rest on a bank under some thinly clad birches they went on again, until they struck a narrow road. It went rolling away, pale grey in the dark, up and down - but all the time gently climbing southward. It was the road to Buckland, climbing away from the main East Road in the Water Valley, and winding away past the skirts of the Green Hills towards the south-east corner of the Shire, the Wood-end as the Hobbits called it. They marched along it, until it plunged between high hedges and dark trees rustling their dry leaves gently in the night airs.
Comparison of this with the description of the East Road in the first draft ('rolling away pale grey into the darkness, between high hedges and dark wind-stirred trees') shows that the one was derived from the other. Perhaps as a result, the crossing of the East Road is omitted; it is merely said that the Buckland road diverged from it (contrast FR p. 80). After Odo's words (typescript text p. 50) 'Or are you fellows going to sleep on your legs?' there follows:
The Road goes ever on and on
down from the Door where it began:
before us far the Road has gone,
and we come after it, who can;
pursuing it with weary feet,
until it joins some larger way,
where many paths and errands meet,
and whither then? - we cannot say.
There is no indication, in the manuscript as written, who spoke the verse (for which there is also a good deal of rough working); in the typescript text (pp. 52 - 3) it is given to Frodo and displaced to a later point in the story. The second draft then jumps to the foll
owing day, and takes up in the middle of a sentence:
.. on the flat among tall trees growing in scattered fashion in the grasslands, when Frodo said: 'I can hear a horse coming along the road behind! '
They looked back, but the windings of the road hid the traveller.
'I think we had better get out of sight,' said Bingo; 'or you fellows at any rate. Of course it doesn't matter very much, but I would rather not be met by anyone we know.'
They [written above at the same time: Odo & F.] ran quickly to the left down into a little hollow beside the road, and lay flat. Bingo slipped on his ring and sat down a few yards from the track. The sound of hoofs drew nearer. Round a turn came a white horse, and on it sat a bundle - or that is what it looked like: a small man wrapped entirely in a great cloak and hood so that only his eyes peered out, and his boots in the stirrups below.
The horse stopped when it came level with Bingo. The figure uncovered its nose and sniffed; and then sat silent as if listening. Suddenly a laugh came from inside the hood.
'Bingo my boy!' said Gandalf, throwing aside his wrappings.