Sauron Defeated (20 page)

'....... only Cosimo....... What happened to Otho?' In 'Three is Company' (The Fellowship of the Ring p. 75) it is said that Otho Sackville-Baggins 'had died some years before, at the ripe but disappointed age of 102', and this goes back to an early stage.

9. See the note given on p. 77 ('Gandalf should stay at Bree...').

10. In RK Farmer Cotton is named Tom.

11. Sting had been given to Sam by Frodo in 'The Land of Shadow'

(p. 32; RK p. 204); but Frodo wields Sting in his combat at Bag End with the chief of the orc-men (p. 92). In a passage that was introduced in the Second Edition Frodo was induced to receive it back at the Field of Cormallen (see p. 50).

12. the Road Bend: the westward turn in the road to Hobbiton at Bywater Pool. On the large-scale map of the Shire that I made in 1943 (VI.107) the bend is more marked and more nearly a right angle than it is on the small map in The Fellowship of the Ring.

13. October is a slip for November: see note 3.

14. By 'There's no way from the West' Farmer Cotton meant, I suppose, that there was no other way back from Michel Delving but by taking the East Road, since the ruffians could not or would not pass through the Tookland.

15. There are a couple of pages of roughly pencilled text which repeat, with minor alterations and extensions, this section of the chapter in A, made perhaps because my father recognised the near-illegibility of the original, and these pages have provided help in elucidating it here and there (characteristically, the words or phrases that defy elucidation in the original text are expressed differently in the second). At this point the pencilled text has:

'They've caught a ruffian or two and thrashed 'em in the Tookus'

(Tookus < Took-house, as workhouse became workus).

16. I do not know whether the Long Smial is to be equated with the Took-house. - This is the first appearance of the word smial, which seems clearly to be written thus, although in the second text of 'The Scouring of the Shire' it is written Smiles (see p. 99

and note 28). Since Pippin was born in the Long Smial, it must be the forerunner of the Great Smials. These were at Tuckborough (Pippin speaks in Fangorn Forest of 'the Great Place of the Tooks away back in the Smials at Tuckborough', TT p. 64), but the name as written here is not in fact Tuckborough: it looks more like Tuckbery (not Tuckbury). However, there are many words wrongly written in this manuscript (in the next line of the text, for instance, the word I have given as '[?stout]' can really only be interpreted as 'stood').

17. The text could conceivably be interpreted as 'he had the block on the East [Road] strengthened', although no road-block on the East Road has been mentioned. The second, pencilled text of this part of the chapter (see note 15) has here: 'He had a block made on the Road at the waymeet.' This text gives out a few lines beyond this point.

18. It is interesting to look back at early references to the destruction in the Shire. In a note probably belonging to the time of the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Moria' (VII.216) my father wrote: 'Cosimo has industrialised it. Factories and smoke. The Sandymans have a biscuit factory. Iron is found'; and in the earliest reference to the Mirror in Lothlorien Frodo was to see

'Trees being felled and a tall building being made where the old mill was. Gaffer Gamgee turned out. Open trouble, almost war, between Marish and Buckland on one hand - and 'the West.

Cosimo Sackville-Baggins very rich, buying up land' (VII.249; cf.

also VII.253, where there is a reference to the tall chimney being built on the site of the old mill).

In 'The old farm on the right' one should possibly read 'left' for

'right'; cf. my father's painting of Hobbiton, and the words of the final text of 'The Scouring of the Shire' (RK p. 296): 'The Old Grange on the west side had been knocked down, and its place taken by rows of tarred sheds.'

19. Later in this manuscript (p. 108) the Tree in the Party Field had been cut down and burned.

20. The reference is to 'The Shadow of the Past' (FR p. 71): 'I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.'

21. I am told you sleep sound: cf. the words of the orc-man at Bywater, speaking of Cosimo (an addition to the text, p. 83): 'He sleeps sound, and I shouldn't try and wake him now.'

22. Earlier in this narrative Sam wielded Sting: p. 86 and note 11.

23. At the top of the page on which Frodo's words appear my father wrote: 'Ah, and you said in Mordor you'd never strike another blow,' said Sam. 'Just shows you never know.' See p. 80.

24. Waymoot: Waymeet in RK. My original large-scale map of the Shire made in 1943 (VI.107) has Waymoot, as also that published in The Fellowship of the Ring; but the second manuscript of 'The Scouring of the Shire' has Waymeet. Presumably my father changed his mind about the form but neglected the map.

25. It is not explained how Frodo knew that this person, when he met him at Bag End, was called 'Sharkey'.

26. Cf. Saruman's words at the end of the chapter (p. 102): 'I believe all my men used to call me that in the better times. They were so devoted' (RK: 'All my people used to call me that in Isengard, I believe. A sign of affection, possibly'). The footnote to the text in RK p. 298 'It was probably Orkish in origin: Sharku [Second Edition Sharku], "old man" ' was not added until the book was in page proof.

27. A rewritten account of the arrest at Frogmorton and Sam's conversation with Robin Smallburrow was inserted into manuscript B. This is almost as in RK, but as first written Robin's reply to Sam's question 'So that's how the news of us reached you, was it?' was different:

'Not directly. A message came down from the Chief at Bag End, about two hours ago, that you were to be arrested. I reckon someone must have slipped down from the Bridge to Stock, where there's a small gang of his Men. Someone went through Frogmorton on a big horse last night.'

This was changed at once to the text of RK (p. 282), but with

'One [runner] came in from Bamfurlong last night'. Bamfurlong was the reading of the First Edition here. In the Second Edition it was changed to Whitfurrows (which though shown on the map of the Shire was never mentioned in the text of the First Edition), and the name Bamfurlong was given to Maggot's farm in 'A Short Cut to Mushrooms' (FR p. 100): 'We are on old Farmer Maggot's land' of the First Edition became 'This is Bamfurlong; old Farmer Maggot's land.'

28. Cf. the Long Smial in A (note 16). A draft for the present passage has: 'those deep places the Old Smiles in the Green Hills'. I would guess that my father introduced Smiles as being the most natural spelling if the old word had survived into Modern English, but then abandoned it (it was changed to Smials on the B text) as being capable of an absurd interpretation. Cf. Appendix F (II,

'On Translation'): 'smial (or smile) "burrow" is a likely form for a descendant of smygel'.

29. This rider was inserted at a late stage, for as in RK Merry interrupts Farmer Cotton with a question ('Who is this Sharkey?'); thus he was no longer away in Tuckborough with Pippin, but had assumed his role as commander of the operations at Bywater.

30. The only differences worth noting are that the trees had been felled along the Bywater Road 'for fuel for the engine'; and that a few men were still present in the huts at Hobbiton, who 'when they saw the force that approached fled away over the fields.'

31. It is said in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings that 'before this story opens' 'the only [battle] that had ever been fought within the borders of the Shire was beyond living memory: the Battle of Greenfields, S.R.1147, in which Bandobras Took routed an invasion of Orcs.' The date 1137 was corrected to 1147 on the text C. - See p. 119.

32. In the First Edition the meeting with Saruman took place after the company had left Dunland: see p. 69.

X.

THE GREY HAVENS.

The original writing down of the last chapter of The Lord of the Rings was the continuation of the long uninterrupted draft text ('A') that extends back through 'The Scouring of the Shire' and 'Homeward Bound' (see pp. 75, 79), and which I left at the end of the Battle of Bywater on p. 93. That text continues:

And so the year drew to its end. Even Sam could find no fault with Frodo's fame and honour in his own country. The Tooks were too secure in their traditional position - and after all their folkland was the only one that had never given in to the ruffians

- and also too generous to be really jealous; yet it was plain that the name of Baggins would become the most famous in Hobbit-history.

From this point the text of A, rough but now fully legible, differs chiefly from the final form of the chapter not in what is actually told nor in how it is told but in the absence of several significant features and a good deal of detail that were added in later. For example, while the rescue of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins from the Lockholes in Michel Delving and the disposition of her property is told much as in RK, there is no mention of Fredegar Bolger; and nothing is said of the hunting out of the gangs of men in the south of the Shire by Merry and Pippin. Frodo became the Mayor, not the Deputy Mayor, although the difference was only one of title, since he made it a condition of his acceptance that Will Whitfoot should become Mayor again 'as soon as the mess is cleared up'; and his inactivity in the office is not mentioned.

As my father first set it down the account in RK (pp. 302 - 4) of the work of restoration and repair, of Sam's planting of young trees, of the fruitfulness of the year 1420,(1) and of Sam's marriage to Rose Cotton was very largely reached. In this text there is no reference to 'Sharkey's Men', and the jocular name given in Bywater to the restored Bagshot Row was 'Ruffians' End'. The seed in Galadriel's box is described as

'like a nut or a dried berry', its colour golden-yellow; Sam planted it in the Party Field 'where the tree had been burned' (see p. 90).

There is in A no reference to Frodo's first illness in March of 1420, when in Sam's absence Farmer Cotton found him on his bed 'clutching a white gem that hung on a chain about his neck' (the gift of Arwen recorded in 'Many Partings'). The passage in RK (p. 305) describing the finery and magnificence of Merry and Pippin, in contrast to the

'ordinary attire' of Frodo and Sam, is lacking, and so the further reference to the white jewel that Frodo always wore is also absent.

Since my father had written a couple of pages earlier that 'Even Sam could find no fault with Frodo's fame and honour in his own country', the sharply contrasting picture in RK is of course lacking: 'Frodo dropped quietly out of all the doings of the Shire, and Sam was pained to notice how little honour he had in his own country. Few people knew or wanted to know about his deeds and adventures...'

Frodo's illness on the sixth of October 1420, the date of the attack of the Ringwraiths at Weathertop two years before, is recorded, but not that in March 1421. The naming of Sam's eldest daughter Elanor ('born on 25 March as Sam duly noted') on Frodo's suggestion is told, and the big book with red leather covers is described, without however any mention of the title page and the sequence of Bilbo's rejected titles; the writing in the book ended at Chapter 77 (the number being marked with a query).(2)

The last part of the chapter was set down with great sureness, though not all elements in the final story were immediately present. At the meeting of Frodo and Sam with the Elves in the Woody End there is no mention of the Great Rings of Elrond and Galadriel;(3) at Mithlond Cirdan the Shipwright does not appear (but enters in a later marginal addition), nor is Gandalf said to bear the Third Ring; and Frodo's sight of the 'far green country under a swift sunrise' is absent (though this also is roughed in marginally; the linking of Frodo's passage over the Sea 'with the vision he had of a far green country in the house of Tom Bombadil' had been referred to in my father's letter of November 1944, see p. 53). I give here the text of A from the coming of the company to Mithlond:

And when they had passed the Shire by the south skirts of the White Downs they came to the Far Downs and the Towers and looked on the Sea; and rode down at last to Mithlond the Grey Havens in the long firth of Lune. And there was a ship lying at the haven, and upon the quays stood one robed also in white. It was Gandalf, and he welcomed them; and they were glad for then they knew that he also would take ship with them.

But Sam was now sad at heart, and it seemed to him that if the parting would be bitter, even worse would be the lonely ride home. But even as they stood there and were ready to go aboard, up rode Merry and Pippin in great haste. And amid his tears Pippin laughed. 'You tried to give us the slip once before and failed, Frodo, and this time you have nearly done it, but you've failed again.' 'It was not Sam this time who gave you away,' said Merry, 'but Gandalf himself.'