The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 ‘call 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 rôles 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 Lord 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 СКАЧАТЬ