The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ href="#ulink_f3fa1990-3c2e-519c-9444-71e7ab068649">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 owners hereby relinquish all claims to the above said property as from the date aforesaid.

      The notice was signed Bingo Bolger-Baggins for self and uncle. Bingo was not a lawyer, and he merely 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 as 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 describing 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 Ring. I set out briefly here the major shifts and stages encountered thus far.

       A Long-expected party

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 care 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).

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