Sauron Defeated (21 page)

'Yes,' said Gandalf. 'It will be better to ride back three together than one alone. Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes an end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace; and I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.'

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin and last of all Sam, and went aboard, and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship sailed away down the [?pale] Gulf of Lune.

And it was night again; and Sam looked on the grey sea and saw a shadow on the waters that was lost in the West. And he stood a while hearing the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of it remained in his heart for ever, though he never spoke of it. And Merry and Pippin stood silent beside him.

The long ride back to the Shire is told in almost the same words as in The Return of the King. And thus the Third Age was brought to its final end, in this most memorable of partings, without hesitation and with assured simplicity; the unmistakeable voices of Merry and Pippin, the still more unmistakeable voice of Gandalf in his last words on Middle-earth, and the beginning of the voyage that was bearing away into the True West the hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, leaving Sam behind.

A manuscript of the chapter as a separate entity ('B') followed, subsequently numbered 'LX' and entitled 'The Grey Havens'. It was written before the changed view of Frodo's reputation in the Shire had entered, but with emendations and additions it reached the final form in almost all the features in which A differed from it. My father did not yet realise, however, that Fredegar Bolger languished in the Lockholes along with Will Whitfoot and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins; and of Lobelia it was said in a first draft of the passage concerning her that

'She never got over the news of poor Cosimo's murder, and she said that it was not his fault; he was led astray by that wicked Sharkey and never meant any harm.'

Frodo's first illness was still absent as B was originally written, and when it was introduced it was in these words:

Sam was away on his forestry work in March, and Frodo was glad, for he had been feeling ill, and it would have been difficult to conceal from Sam. On the twelfth of March (4) he was in pain and weighed down with a great sense of darkness, and could do little more than walk about clasping the jewel of Queen Arwen.

But after a while the fit passed.

An idea that was never carried further appears in a hastily scribbled passage on this manuscript, apparently intended for inclusion before

'Little Elanor was nearly six months old, and 1421 had passed to its autumn' (RK p. 306):

At midsummer Gandalf appeared suddenly, and his visit was long remembered for the astonishing things that happened to all the bonfires (which hobbit [?children] light on midsummer's eve). The whole Shire was lit with lights of many colours until the dawn came, and it seemed that the fire [??ran wild for him]

over all the land so that the grass was kindled with glittering jewels, and the trees were hung with red and gold blossom all through the night, and the Shire was full of light and song until the dawn came.

No other trace of this idea is found. Perhaps my father felt that when Gandalf declared that his time was over he meant no less.(5) The title page of the Red Book of Westmarch first appears in B, with Bilbo's titles written one above the other and all struck through (which was the meaning of the word 'so' in 'crossed out one after another, so.', RK p. 307):

Memoirs of An Amateur Burglar

My Unexpected Journey

There and Back Again and What Happened After

Adventures of Five Hobbits

The Case of the Great Ring (compiled from the records and notes of B. Baggins and others)

What the Bagginses Did in the War of the Ring

(here Bilbo's hand ended and Frodo had written:)

The

Downfall

of

The Lord of the Rings

and

The Return of the King

(as seen by B. and F. Baggins, S. Gamgee, M. Brandybuck, P. Took, supplemented by information provided by the Wise)

In the typescript that followed B the following was added: Together with certain excerpts from Books of Lore

translated by B. Baggins in Rivendell (6)

In B appeared the Three Rings of the Elves on the fingers of their bearers, but they were not yet named. It was not until the book was in galley proof that 'Vilya, mightiest of the Three' was added to the description of Elrond's Ring, Gandalf's Ring was named 'Narya the Great', and that of Galadriel became 'Nenya, the ring wrought of mithril'.

Lastly, both in A and in B my father set within square brackets, his usual sign of doubt, certain of Frodo's words to Sam in the Woody End, thus: 'No, Sam. Not yet anyway, not further than the Havens.

[Though you too were a Ringbearer, if only for a little while: your time may come.]'

NOTES.

1. Absent from the account of the year 1420 is the sentence in RK, p. 303: 'All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among hobbits.' This entered in the first typescript text. See p. 134, note 12.

2. In the following text the last, unfinished chapter in the Red Book was numbered '72', and on the first typescript this was changed to

'80', as in RK.

3. The chant to Elbereth began thus:

O Elbereth Gilthoniel

Silivren pennar oriel!

Gilthoniel O Elbereth...

Cf. VI.394. This was repeated in the second text of the chapter, but oriel was emended to iriel. This in turn was repeated on the first typescript, and then the opening was changed to its form in RK: A! Elbereth Gilthoniel

silivren penna miriel

o menel aglar elenath...

To Bilbo's question (RK p. 309) 'Are you coming?' Frodo replies here: 'Yes, I am coming, before the wound returns. And the Ringbearers should go together.' Frodo was speaking of the sickness that had come on him on October the sixth, the date of his wounding at Weathertop, in each of the following years. It was now 22 September (Bilbo's birthday); on the twenty-ninth of the month the ship sailed from the Grey Havens. On the third anniversary of the attack at Weathertop The Lord of. the Rings ends, for it was on that day, according to The Tale of Years, that Sam returned to Bag End.

4. The date was corrected to the thirteenth of March on the following typescript text. This in the final chronology was the anniversary of the poisoning of Frodo by Shelob, as noted in The Tale of Years.

Frodo's third illness, in the following year, also fell on March 13, according to The Tale of Years.

5. But he had perhaps intended that a final visit by Gandalf to the Shire should be recorded; as Gandalf said when he parted from the hobbits in the note on the draft manuscript of 'Homeward Bound'

(p. 77): 'I'll be along some time.'

6. In the two typescript texts of the chapter the crossings-out were omitted, and Bilbo's first title 'Memoirs of an Amateur Burglar'

was replaced by 'My Diary'. 'What Happened After' was still shown as an addition, and the words 'and friends' were added after 'Bagginses' in Bilbo's final title; in the margins of both typescripts my father noted that the corrections were to be printed as such, representing the original title-page. The final form of the page was introduced on the galley proof.

XI.

THE EPILOGUE.

The words that end The Lord of the Rings, '"Well, I'm back," he said', were not intended to do so when my father wrote them in the long draft manuscript A which has been followed in the previous chapters. It is obvious from the manuscript that the text continued on without break;(1) and there is in fact no indication that my father thought of what he was writing as markedly separate from what preceded. I' give now this last part of A: very rough, but legible throughout. The ages of Sam's children were added, almost certainly at the time of writing: Elanor 15, Frodo 13, Rose 11, Merry 9, Pippin 7.

And one evening in March [added: 1436](2) Master Samwise.

Gamgee was taking his ease by a fire in his study, and the children were all gathered about him, as was not at all unusual, though it was always supposed to be a special treat.

He had been reading aloud (as was usual) from a big Red Book on a stand, and on a stool beside him sat Elanor, and she was a beautiful child more fair-skinned than most hobbit-maids and more slender, and she was now running up into her 'teens; and there was Frodo-lad on the heathrug, in spite of his name as good a copy of Sam as you could wish, and Rose, Merry, and Pippin were sitting in chairs much too big for them. Goldilocks had gone to bed, for in this Frodo's foretelling had made a slight error and she came after Pippin, and was still only five and the Red Book rather too much for her yet. But she was not the last of the line, for Sam and Rose seemed likely to rival old Gerontius Took in the number of their children as successfully as Bilbo had passed his age. There was little Ham, and there was Daisie in her cradle.

'Well dear,' said Sam, 'it grew there once, because I saw it with my own eyes.'

'Does it grow there still, daddy?'

'I don't see why it shouldn't, Ellie. I've never been on my travels again, as you know, having all you young folk to mind -

regular ragtag and bobtail old Saruman would have called it.

But Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, they've been south more than once, for they sort of belong there too now.'

'And haven't they grown big?' said Merry. 'I wish I could grow big like Mr. Meriadoc of Buckland. He's the biggest hobbit that ever was: bigger than Bandobras.'

'Not bigger than Mr. Peregrin of Tuckborough,' said Pippin,

'and he's got hair that's almost golden. Is he Prince Peregrin away down in the Stone City, dad?'

'Well, he's never said so,' said Sam, 'but he's highly thought of, that I know. But now where were [we] getting to?'

'Nowhere,' said Frodo-lad. 'I want to hear about the Spider again. I like the parts best where you come in, dad.'

'But dad, you were talking about Lorien,' said Elanor, 'and whether my flower still grows there.'

'I expect it does, Ellie dear. For as I was saying, Mr. Merry, he says that though the Lady has gone the Elves still live there.'

'When can I go and see? I want to see Elves, dad, and I want to see my own flower.'

'If you look in a glass you'll see one that is sweeter,' said Sam,

'though I should not be telling you, for you'll find it out soon enough for yourself.'

'But that isn't the same. I want to see the green hill and the white flowers and the golden and hear the Elves sing.'

'Then maybe you will one day,' said Sam. 'I said the same when I was your age, and long after, and there didn't seem no hope, and yet it came true.'

'But the Elves are sailing away still, aren't they, and soon there'll be none, will there, dad?' said Rose; 'and then all will be just places, and very nice, but, but...'

'But what, Rosie-lass?'

'But not like in stories.'

'Well, it would be so if they all was to sail,' said Sam. 'But I am told they aren't sailing any more. The Ring has left the Havens, and those that made up their mind to stay when Master Elrond left are staying. And so there'll be Elves still for many and many a day.'

'Still I think it was very sad when Master Elrond left Rivendell and the Lady left Lorien,' said Elanor. 'What happened to Celeborn? Is he very sad?'

'I expect so, dear. Elves are sad; and that's what makes them so beautiful, and why we can't see much of them. He lives in his own land as he always has done,' said Sam. 'Lorien is his land, and he loves trees.'

'No one else in the world hasn't got a Mallorn like we have, have they? said Merry. Only us and Lord Keleborn.'(3)

'So I believe,' said Sam. Secretly it was one of the greatest prides of his life. 'Well, Keleborn lives among the Trees, and he is happy in his Elvish way, I don't doubt. They can afford to wait, Elves can. His time is not come yet. The Lady came to his land and now she is gone;(4) and he has the land still. When he tires of it he can leave it. So with Legolas, he came with his people and they live in the land across the River, Ithilien, if you can say that, and they've made it very lovely, according to Mr.

Pippin. But he'll go to Sea one day, I don't doubt. But not while Gimli's still alive.'

'What's happened to Gimli?' said Frodo-lad. 'I liked him.

Please can I have an axe soon, dad? Are there any orcs left?'

'I daresay there are if you know where to look,' said Sam.

'But not in the Shire, and you won't have an axe for chopping off heads, Frodo-lad. We don't make them. But Gimli, he came down to work for the King in the City, and he and his folk worked so long they got used to it and proud of their work, and in the end they settled up in the mountains up away west behind the City, and there they are still. And Gimli goes once every other year to see the Glittering Caves.'

'And does Legolas go to see Treebeard?' asked Elanor.