The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ of the third: the story is now told not of Bilbo, but of his son. On this substitution Humphrey Carpenter remarked (Biography p. 185):

      Tolkien had as yet no clear idea of what the new story was going to be about. At the end of The Hobbit he had stated that Bilbo ‘remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.’ So how could the hobbit have any new adventures worth the name without this being contradicted? And had he not explored most of the possibilities in Bilbo’s character? He decided to introduce a new hobbit, Bilbo’s son – and to give him the name of a family of toy koala bears owned by his children, ‘The Bingos’.¹ So he crossed out ‘Bilbo’ in the first draft and above it wrote ‘Bingo’.²

This explanation is plausible. In the first draft, however, my father wrote that the story of the birthday party ‘merely serves to explain that Bilbo Baggins got married and had many children, because I am going to tell you a story about one of his descendants’ (in the second version we are given no indication at all of what was going to happen after the party – though there is possibly a suggestion of something similar in the words (p. 22) ‘Now really we must hurry on, for all this is not as important as it seemed’). On the other hand, there are explicit statements in early notes (p. 41) that for a time it was indeed going to be Bilbo who had the new ‘adventure’.

      The first part of the third version is almost wholly different from the two preceding, and I give it here in full, with a few early changes incorporated.

       A long-expected party

When Bingo, son of Bilbo, of the well-known Baggins family, prepared to celebrate his [fifty-fifth >] seventy-second³ birthday there was some talk in the neighbourhood, and people polished up their memories. The Bagginses were fairly numerous in those parts, and generally respected; but Bingo belonged to a branch of the family that was a bit peculiar, and there were some odd stories about them. Bingo’s father, as some still remembered, had once made quite a stir in Hobbiton and Bywater – he had disappeared one April 30th after breakfast, and had not reappeared until lunch-time on June 22nd in the following year. A very odd proceeding, and one for which he had never accounted satisfactorily. He wrote a book about it, of course; but even those who had read it never took that seriously. It is no good telling hobbits about dragons: they either disbelieve you, or feel uncomfortable; and in either case tend to avoid you afterwards.

Bilbo Baggins, it is true, had soon returned to normal ways (more or less), and though his reputation was never quite restored, he became an accepted figure in the neighbourhood. He was never perhaps again regarded as a ‘safe hobbit’, but he was undoubtedly a ‘warm’ one. In some mysterious way he appeared to have become more than comfortably off, in fact positively wealthy; so naturally, he was on visiting terms with all his neighbours and relatives (except, of course, the Sackville-Bagginses). He did two more things that caused tongues to wag: he got married when seventy-one (a little but not too late for a hobbit), choosing a bride from the other side of the Shire, and giving a wedding-feast of memorable splendour; he disappeared (together with his wife) shortly before his hundred-and-eleventh birthday, and was never seen again. The folk of Hobbiton and Bywater were cheated of a funeral (not that they had expected his for many a year yet), so they had a good deal to say. His residence, his wealth, his position (and the dubious regard of the neighbourhood) were inherited by his son Bingo, just before his own birthday (which happened to be the same as his father’s). Bingo was, of course, a mere youngster of 39, who had hardly cut his wisdom-teeth; but he at once began to carry on his father’s reputation for oddity: he never went into mourning for his parents, and said he did not think they were dead. To the obvious question: ‘Where are they then?’ he merely winked. He lived alone, and was often away from home. He went about a lot with the least well-behaved members of the Took family (his grandmother’s people and his father’s friends), and he was also fond of some of the Brandybucks. They were his mother’s relatives. She was Primula Brandybuck⁴ of the Brandybucks of Buckland, across Brandywine River on the other side of the Shire and on the edge of the Old Forest – a dubious region.⁵ 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, but for a certain ‘recklessness’ – generosity, that is, if any came your way.

Anyway, Bingo had lived at Bag-end Underhill now for some [16 >] 33 years⁶ without giving any scandal. His parties were sometimes a bit noisy, perhaps, but hobbits don’t mind that kind of noise now and again. He spent his money freely and mostly locally. Now the neighbourhood understood that he was planning something quite unusual in the way of parties. Naturally their memories awoke and their tongues wagged, and Bingo’s wealth was again guessed and re-calculated at every fireside. Indeed the magnificence of the preparations quite overshadowed the tales of the old folk about his father’s vanishments.

‘After all,’ as old Gaffer Gamgee of Bagshot Row⁷ remarked, ‘them goings-on are old affairs and over; this here party is going to happen this very month as is.’ It was early September and as fine as you could wish. Somebody started a rumour about fireworks. Very soon it was accepted that there were going to be fireworks such as had not been seen for over a century, not since the Old Took died.

      It is interesting to see the figures 111 and 33 emerging, though afterwards they would be differently achieved: here, Bilbo was 111 when he left the Shire, and Bingo lived on at Bag End for 33 years before his farewell party; afterwards, 111 was Bilbo’s age at the time of the party – when it had become his party again – and 33 Bingo’s (Frodo’s) age at the same time.

In this passage we also see the emergence of a very important piece of topography and toponymy: Buckland, the Brandywine, and the Old Forest. For the names first written here see note 5.

For the account in this version of the preparations for the Party, the Party itself, and its immediate aftermath, my father followed the emended second version (pp. 19–25) extremely closely, adding a detail here and there, but for the most part doing little more than copy it out (and of course changing ‘Bilbo’ to ‘Bingo’ where necessary). I give here a list of interesting – though mostly extremely minor – shifts in the new narrative. The page references are to those of the second version.

(20–1) ‘B under a crown’ on the waggon driven by Men becomes ‘B painted in yellow’, and ‘B’ was emended on the text to ‘D’ (i.e. ‘Dale’).

      When the Men came down the Hill again, it is added that ‘the elves and dwarves did not return’; and ‘the draught of cooks’ who arrived were ‘to supplement the elves and dwarves (who seemed to be staying at Bag-end and doing a lot of mysterious work)’.

      The notice refusing admittance on the door of Bag End now appears, and ‘a special entrance was cut in the bank leading to the road; wide steps and a large white gate were built’ (as in FR). Gaffer Gamgee comes in again: ‘he stopped even pretending to garden.’

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