returnoftheshadow72

by Miguel

  In this version the story of Bingo's walking a little way from Bag End, and so hearing Gaffer Gamgee talking to the Black Rider, was not yet present; and when he has sent Sam off with the key to his father, he leaves by himself. There is no mention of Odo Bolger and Frodo Toot before the variant text ends, with Bingo going down the garden path, jumping the fence at the bottom, and passing into the twilight. I cannot say for certain whether this is significant or not. It seems unlikely to be a mere casual oversight; but if it is not, it means presumably that my father was contemplating a wholly new course for the story: Bingo and Sam journeying through the Shire alone. He had certainly contemplated something of the sort earlier. However this may be, nothing came of it; and he passed on at once to the second version of this part of the narrative (the form in FR), where Bingo after listening to Gaffer Gamgee talking to the stranger returns to Bag End and finds Odo and Frodo (Pippin in FR) sitting on their packs in the porch.

  Effectively, then, the third chapter of FR, as far as the departure of Bingo (Frodo) from Bag End, was now achieved. My father here, as I have said, turned back to the original typescript, and used it as the physical basis for his new text until near the end of the chapter. He emended it in different inks, and added this note on the typescript: Corrections in black are for any version. Those in red are for the revised version (with Bilbo as party-giver and including Sam).(6) In the new material, corrections and additions, he distinguished very carefully between the two types of change: in one case he wrote 'red emendation' against the first part of a new passage, and 'black emendation' against the next part, continuous with the first (the passage is given in note 11, and the reason for the distinction is very clear). It is hard to see why he should have gone to all this trouble, unless at this stage he was still (remarkably enough) uncertain about the new story, with 'Bilbo as party-giver and including Sam', and saw the possibility of returning to the old.

  As I have said, the presentation of the results of this procedure here is impossible,(7) and unnecessary even if possible. The effect of all the emendations is to bring the original version very close indeed to the form in FR (pp. 80 ff.). In places the new version is a halfway house between the two, and in the latter part the corrections are less thoroughgoing, but only here and there is there anything of narrative importance to note; and in what follows it can be assumed unless the contrary is said that the FR text was already present in all particulars other than the choice of phrasing. But the hobbits are now four: Bingo, Frodo Toot, Odo Bolger, and Sam Gamgee, so that there is in this respect also an intervening stage here between the original story (where there are three, Bingo, Frodo Took, and Odo Took) and FR (where there are again only three, but a different three, Frodo Baggins, Peregrin Took, and Sam Gamgee), and some variation between the versions in the attribution of remarks to different characters (on this matter see p. 70). But things said by Sam in FR are said by him in this text also.(8)

  At the beginning of this part of the chapter, where the old text (p. 50) had: 'They were now in Tookland; and they began to climb into the Green Hill Country south of Hobbiton', the new reads: 'They were now in Tookland and going southwards; but a mile or two further on they crossed the main road from Much Hemlock (in the Hornblower country) to Bywater and Brandywine Bridge. Then they struck eastward and began to climb...' (9) Beside this my father wrote: '? Michel Delving (the chief town of the Shire back west on the White Downs).' This is the first appearance of Michel Delving, and of the White Downs (see p. 295). 'Much Hemlock' echoes the name Much Wenlock in Shropshire (Much 'Great', as Michel).

  The Woody End is not called 'a wild corner of the Eastfarthing' - the 'Farthings' had not yet been devised - but it is added that 'Not many of them [hobbits] lived in that part.'

  The verse The Road goes ever on and on, now ascribed to Bingo and not to Frodo Took, is still as in the original version (p. 53).(10)

  A slight difference from FR is present at the first appearance of the Black Rider on the road (old version p. 54):

  Odo and Frodo ran quickly to the left, and down into a little hollow not far from the road. There they lay flat. Bingo hesitated for a second: curiosity or some other impulse was struggling with his desire to hide. Sam waited for his master to move. The sound of hoofs drew nearer. 'Get down, Sam!' said Bingo, just in time. They threw themselves flat in a patch of long grass behind a tree that overshadowed the road.(11)

  In the discussion that followed the departure of the first Black Rider my father retained at this time the old version (p. 54), in which Frodo Took told of his encounter with a Black Rider in the north of the Shire:

  ... I haven't seen one of that Kind in our Shire for years.'

  'There are Men about, all the same,' said Bingo; 'and I haveheard many reports of strange folk on our borders, and within them, of late. Down in the south Shire they have had some trouble with Big People, I am told. But I have heard of nothing like this

  rider.'

  'I have though,' said Frodo, who had listened intently to Bingo's description of the Black Rider. 'I remember now something I had quite forgotten. I was walking away up in the North Moor - you know, right up on the northern borders of the Shire - this very summer, when a tall black-cloaked rider met me. He was riding south, and he stopped and spoke, though he did not seem able to speak our language very well; he asked me if I knew whether there were any folk called Baggins in those parts. I thought it very queer at the time; and I had a queer uncomfortable feeling, too. I could not see any face under his hood. I said no, not liking the look of him. As far as I heard, he never found his way to Hobbiton and the Baggins country.'

  'Begging your pardon,' put in Sam suddenly, 'but he found his way to Hobbiton all right, him or another like him. Anyway it's from Hobbiton as this here Black Rider comes - and I know where he's going to.'

  'What do you mean?' said Bingo, turning sharply. 'Why didn't you speak up before?'

  Sam's report of the Gaffer's account to him of the Rider who came to Hobbiton is exactly as in FR, p. 85. Then follows:

  'Your father can't be blamed anyway,' said Bingo. 'But I should have taken more care on the road, if you had told me this before. I wish I had waited for Gandalf,' he muttered; 'but perhaps that would have only made matters worse.'

  'Then you know or guess something about the rider?' said Frodo, who had caught the muttered words. 'What is he?'

  'I don't know, and I would rather not guess,' said Bingo. 'But I don't believe either this rider (or yours, or Sam's - if they are all different) was really one of the Big People, not an ordinary Man, I mean. I wish Gandalf was here; but now the most we can hope is that he will come quick to Bucklebury. Whoever would have expected a quiet walk from Hobbiton to Buckland to turn out so queer. I had no idea that I was letting you folk in for anything dangerous.'

  'Dangerous?' said Frodo. 'So you think it is dangerous, do you? You are rather close, aren't you, Uncle Bingo? Never mind - we shall get your secret out of you some time. But if it is dangerous, then I am glad we are with you.'

  'Hear, hear!' said Odo. 'But what is the next thing to do? Shall we go on at once, or stay here and have some food?...

  My father still retained the development (see pp. 55 - 6 and note 11) that a Black Rider came past, and briefly stopped beside, the great hollow tree in which the hobbits sat, and only changed this story at its end:

  ... We are probably making a fuss about nothing [said Odo]. This second rider, at any rate, was very likely only a wandering stranger who has got lost; and if he met us, he would just ask us the way to Buckland or Brandywine Bridge, and ride on.'

  'What if he stops us and asks if we know where Mr Baggins of Bag-end is?' said Frodo.

  'Give him a true answer,' said Bingo. 'Either say: Back in Hobbiton, where there are hundreds; or say Nowhere. For Mr Bingo Baggins has left Bag-end, and not yet found any other home. Indeed I think he has vanished; here and now I become Mr Hill of Faraway.'

  An alternative version is provided:

  'What i
f he stops us and asks if we know where Mr Baggins of Bag-end is? ' said Frodo.

  'Tell him that he has vanished! ' said Odo. 'After all one Baggins of Bag-end has vanished, and how should we know that it is not old Bilbo that he wants to pay a belated call on? Bilbo made some queer friends in his travels, by his own account.'

  Bingo looked quickly at Odo. 'That is an idea,' he said. 'But I hope we shall not be asked that question; and if we are, I have a feeling that silence will be the best answer. Now let us get on. I am glad the road is winding.'

  This entire element was removed in FR (p. 86).

  When the singing of the Elves is heard (old version p. 58) Bingo still attributes to Bilbo his knowledge that there were sometimes Elves in the Woody End (cf. the passage in 'Ancient History', p. 253), and he says that they wander into the Shire in spring and autumn 'out of their own lands far beyond the river', in FR (p. 88) Frodo knows independently of Bilbo that Elves may be met with in the Woody End, and says that they come 'out of their own lands away beyond the Tower Hills.' The conception of Elvish lands west of the Shire was of course fully present at this time: cf. Sam's words about Elves 'going to the harbours, out away West, away beyond the Towers' (p. 254). The hymn to Elbereth has the last emendation needed to bring it to the final form (see p. 59): cold to bright in the second line of the second verse. It is still said to be sung 'in the secret elf-tongue'. At its end, Bingo speaks of the High Elves as Frodo does in FR (p. 89), though without saying 'They spoke the name of Elbereth! ' - thus it is not explained how he knows they are High Elves.(12) Odo's unfortunate remark ('I suppose we shall get a really good bed and supper?') is retained, and Bingo's greeting that Bilbo had taught him, 'The stars shine on the hour of our meeting', remains only in translation. Gildor in his reply refers to Bingo's being 'a scholar in the elf- tongue', changed from 'the elf-latin' (p. 60), where FR has 'the Ancient

  Tongue'. It is still the Moon, and not the autumn stars, that is seen in the sky; and the different recollections by the hobbits of the meal eaten with the Elves are retained from the old text, with the addition of the passage about Sam (FR p. 90).

  From this point my father abandoned the old typescript, and though returning to it just at the end continued the text in manuscript. The beginning of Bingo's conversation with Gildor is extant in three forms. All three begin as in FR, p. 92 ('They spoke of many things, old and new'), but in the first Gildor goes on from 'The secret will not reach the Enemy from us' with 'But why did you not go before?' - the first thing that he says to Bingo in the original version ('Why did you choose this moment to set out?', p. 62). Bingo replies with a very brief reference to his divided mind about leaving the Shire, and then Gildor explains him to himself:

  'That I can understand,' said Gildor. 'Half your heart wished to go, but the other half held you back; for its home was in the Shire, and its delight in bed and board and the voices of friends, and in the changing of the gentle seasons among the fields and trees. But since you are a hobbit that half is the stronger, as it was even in Bilbo. What has made it surrender?'

  'Yes, I am an ordinary hobbit, and so I always shall be, I imagine,' said Bingo. 'But a most un-hobbitlike fate has been laid upon me.'

  'Then you are not an ordinary hobbit,' said Gildor, 'for otherwise that could not be so. But the half that is plain hobbit will suffer much I fear from being forced to follow the other half which is worthy of the strange fate, until it too becomes worthy (and yet remains hobbit). For that must be the purpose of your fate, or the purpose of that part of your fate which concerns you yourself. The hobbit half that loves the Shire is not to be despised but it has to be trained, and to rediscover the changing seasons and voices of friends when they have been lost.'

  Here the text ends. The second of these abandoned versions is nearer to FR, but has Gildor speak severely about Bingo's lateness on the road:

  'Has Gandalf told you nothing?'

  'Nothing about such creatures.'

  'Is it not by his advice, then, that you have left your home? Did he not even urge you to make haste? '

  'Yes. He wished me to go sooner in the year. He said that delay might prove dangerous; and I begin to fear that it has.'

  'Why did you not go before?'

  Bingo then speaks about his two 'halves', though without comment, moves into an explanation of why he lingered till autumn, and speaks of his dismay at the danger that is already threatening.

  The third text is very close to and quite largely word for word the same as the final form until near the end of the conversation, where the matter though essentially the same is somewhat differently arranged. Gildor's advice about taking companions is more explicit than in FR ('Take such friends as are trusty and willing', p. 94): here he says 'If there are any whom you can wholly trust, and who are willing to share your peril, take them with you.' He is referring to Bingo's present companions; for he goes on (much as in the old version, p. 64): 'They will protect you. I think it likely that your three companions have already helped you to escape: the Riders did not know that they were with you, and their presence has for the time being confused the scent.' But at the very end there occurs this passage:

  ... In this meeting there may be more than chance; but the purpose is not clear to me, and I fear to say too much. But' - and he paused and looked intently at Bingo - 'have you perhaps Bilbo's ring with you?'

  'Yes, I have,' said Bingo, taken aback.

  'Then I will add this last word. If a Rider approaches or pursues you hard - do not use the ring to escape from his search. I guess that the ring will help him more than you.'

  'More mysteries!' said Bingo. 'How can a ring that makes me invisible help a Black Rider to find me?'

  'I will answer only this,' said Gildor: 'the ring came in the beginning from the Enemy, and was not made to delude his servants.'

  'But Bilbo used his ring to escape from goblins, and evil creatures,' said Bingo.

  'Black Riders are not goblins,' said the Elf. 'Ask no more of me. But my heart forebodes that ere all is ended you Bingo son of Drogo will know more of these fell things than Gildor Inglorion. May Elbereth protect you! '

  'You are far worse than Gandalf,' cried Bingo; 'and I am now more completely terrified than I have ever been in my life. But I am deeply grateful to you.'

  The end of the chapter is virtually the same in the old version, the present text, and FR; but now Gildor adds the salutation: 'and may the stars shine upon the end of your road.'

  NOTES.

  1. The different arrangement of the opening of the chapter introduces Bingo's intention to go and live in Buckland before it actually arose as a result of his conversation with Gandalf. It may be that my father afterwards reversed the order of these narrative elements in order to avoid this.

  2. This passage, from 'and actually did ask his Brandybuck cousins', was struck out in pencil and replaced by the following:

  With the help of his Brandybuck cousin Merry he chose and bought a little house [added subsequently: at Crickhollow] in the country behind Bucklebury, and began to make preparations for a removal.

  3. Gandalf's words were changed in pencil thus:

  'I shall want to see you before you set out, Bingo,' he said, as he took his leave one wet dark evening in May. 'I may have news, and useful information about the Road.' Bingo was not clear whether Gandalf intended to go with him to Rivendell or not.

  4. There is no new list of presents in this variant: my father contented himself with a reference to the latest version of 'A Long-expected party', which was to be 'suitably emended' (p. 247, note 21).

  5. The Sackville-Bagginses' son now first appears. It is said in both variants that Lobelia 'and her pimply son Cosimo (and his overshadowed wife Miranda) lived at Bag-end for a long while afterwards / for many a year after.' Lobelia was in both versions 92 years old at this time, and had had to wait seventy-seven years (as in FR) for Bag-end, which makes her a grasping fifteen year old when Bilbo came back at the end of The Hobbit to find her measu
ring his rooms; in FR she was a hundred years old, and in the second of these variant versions '92' is changed to '102'. In FR her son is 'sandy-haired Lotho', and no wife is named.

  6. The corrections are in fact in blue, black, and red inks. I have said earlier (p. 48 and note 1) that those in black ink belong to a very early stage of revision. Those in blue and red were made at the present stage; but in his note on the subject my father no doubt meant by 'corrections in black' to include all those that were not in red.

  7. I give an example, however, to show the nature of the procedure (original version p. 51):

  'The wind's in the West,' said Odo. 'If we go down the other side of this hill we are climbing, we ought to find a spot fairly dry and sheltered.'

  The red ink corrections are given here in italics; other changes from the original text are in black (actually blue, see note 6) ink.