Sauron Defeated (24 page)

'I never hoped at all, Sam,' she said, 'not until that very day; and then suddenly I did. About noon it was, and I felt so glad that I began singing. And mother said: "Quiet, lass! There's ruffians about." And I said: "Let them come! Their time will soon be over. Sam's coming back." And you came.'

'I did,' said Sam. 'To the most belovedest place in all the world. To my Rose and my garden.'

They went in, and Sam shut the door. But even as he did so, he heard suddenly, deep and unstilled, the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.

In this second Epilogue Sam does not read out the King's letter (since Elanor could read), but associated with it (as is seen from the name-forms Eirien, Perhael, Panthael) are three 'facsimiles' of the letter, written in tengwar in two columns.

The first of these ('I') is reproduced on p. 130. It is accompanied by a transliteration into 'plain letters' of both the English and the Sindarin. The transliteration of the English does not precisely correspond to the tengwar text, for the former omits Aratbornsson, and adds day where the tengwar text has 'the thirty-first of the Stirring'.

The words and Arnor, ar Arnor were added in to both the tengwar texts and are lacking in the transliterations. As my father wrote them they read as follows:

Aragorn Strider The Elfstone, King of Gondor and Lord of the Westlands, will approach the Bridge of Baranduin on the eighth day of Spring, or in the Shire-reckoning the second day of April. And he desires to greet there all his friends.

In especial he desires to see Master Samwise, Mayor of the Shire, and Rose his wife; and Elanor, Rose, Goldilocks, and Daisy his daughters; and Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Ham fast his sons.

To Samwise and Rose the King's greeting from Minas

Tirith, the thirty-first day of the Stirring, being

the twenty-third of February in their reckoning.

A þ E þ

Elessar Telcontar: Aragorn Arathornion Edhelharn, aran Gondor ar Hir i Mbair Annui, anglennatha i Varanduiniant erin dolothen Ethuil, egor ben genediad Drannail erin Gwirith edwen. Ar e anira ennas suilannad mhellyn in

phain: edregol e anira tirad i Cherdir Perhael (i sennui Panthael estathar aen) Condir i Drann, ar Meril bess din, ar Elanor, Meril, Glorfinniel, ar Eirien sellath din; ar Iorhael, Gelir, Cordof, ar Baravorn, ionnath din.

A Pherhael ar am Meril suilad uin aran o Minas

Tirith nelchaenen uin Echuir.

A þ E þ

The change of pen after ar Elanor was no doubt made in order to fit the Sindarin text onto the page.

The second 'facsimile' ('II'), not accompanied by a transliteration and not reproduced here, is very similar to I, but and Arnor, ar Arnor is part of the texts as written, there is no variation in the boldness of the lettering, and the texts end at the words his sons, ionnath din, followed by the initials A þ E, so that there is here no mention of the date and place of the letter.

The third of these pages ('III'), preserved with the typescript text of the second Epilogue and accompanied by a transliteration, is reproduced on p. 131. In this case the use of vowel-tehtar above conson-nants in the Sindarin text greatly reduced its length. The English text is the same as in I, but the note of the.date is different: 'From Minas Tirith, the twenty-third of February 6341' [= 1436]. The Sindarin text differs from that of I and II in the word order:

Aragorn Arathornion Edhelharn anglennatha iVaranduiniant erin dolothen Ethuil (egor ben genediad Drannail erin Gwirith edwen) ar ennas anira i aran Gondor ar Arnor ar Hir iMbair Annui [written Anui](20) suilannad mhellyn in phain...

The note of date at the end of the Sindarin text reads: a Pherhael ar am Meril suilad uin aran o Minas Tirith nelchaenen ned Echuir: 61.(21)

It emerges from the account of his works that my father wrote for Milton Waldman in 1951 that the second version of the Epilogue was written at a very late stage. In this account he included what he called

'a long and yet bald resume' of the story of The Lord of the Rings; this was omitted in Letters (no. 131), and I give here its closing passages.

The 'Scouring of the Shire' ending in the last battle ever fought there occupies a chapter. It is followed by a second spring, a marvellous restoration and enhancement of beauty, chiefly wrought by Sam (with the help of gifts given him in Lorien). But Frodo cannot be healed. For the preservation of the Shire he has sacrificed himself, even in health, and has no heart to enjoy it. Sam has to choose (First copy of the King's letter.)

(Third copy of the King's letter.)

between love of master and of wife. In the end he goes with Frodo on a last journey. At night in the woods, where Sam first met Elves on the outward journey, they meet the twilit cavalcade from Rivendell. The Elves and the Three Rings, and Gandalf (Guardian of the Third Age) are going to the Grey Havens, to set sail for the West, never to return. Bilbo is with them. To Bilbo and Frodo the special grace is granted to go with the Elves they loved - an Arthurian ending, in which it is, of course, not made explicit whether this is an 'allegory' of death, or a mode of healing and restoration leading to a return. They ride to the Grey Havens, and take ship: Gandalf with the Red Ring, Elrond (with the Blue) and the greater part of his household, and Galadriel of Lorien with the White Ring, and with them depart Bilbo and Frodo. It is hinted that they come to Eressea. But Sam standing stricken on the stone quay sees only the white ship slip down the grey estuary and fade into the darkling West. He stays long unmoving listening to the sound of the Sea on the shores of the world.

Then he rides home; his wife welcomes him to the firelight and his first child, and he says simply Well, I've come back.'(22) There is a brief epilogue in which we see Sam among his children, a glance at his love for Elanor (the Elvish name of a flower in Lorien) his eldest, who by a strange gift has the looks and beauty of an elven-maid; in her all his love and longing for Elves is resolved and satisfied. He is busy, contented, many times mayor of the Shire, and struggling to finish off the Red Book, begun by Bilbo and nearly completed by Frodo, in which all the events (told in The Hobbit and The Lord [of the Rings]) are recorded. The whole ends with Sam and his wife standing outside Bag-end, as the children are asleep, looking at the stars in the cool spring sky. Sam tells his wife of his bliss and content, and goes in, but as he closes the door he hears the sighing of the Sea on the shores of the world.

It is clear from the words 'we see Sam among his children' that my father was referring to the first version of the Epilogue.

He was persuaded by others to omit the Epilogue from The Lord of the Rings. In a letter to Naomi Mitchison of 25 April 1954 (Letters no.

144) he wrote:

Hobbit-children were delightful, but I am afraid that the only glimpses of them in this book are found at the beginning of vol. I.

An epilogue giving a further glimpse (though of a rather exceptional family) has been so universally condemned that I shall not insert it.

One must stop somewhere.

He seems both to have accepted and to have regretted that decision.

On 24 October 1955, a few days after the publication of The Return of the King, he wrote to Katherine Farrer (Letters no. 173): I still feel the picture incomplete without something on Samwise and Elanor, but I could not devise anything that would not have destroyed the ending, more than the hints (possibly sufficient) in the appendices.

NOTES.

1. The 'Epilogue' text begins at the head of a page, but this is merely because the words ' "Well, I'm back," he said' stand at the foot of the preceding one.

2. '1436' was pencilled in subsequently. Apparently my father first wrote 'And one evening Master Samwise...', but changed this at once to 'And one evening in March Master Samwise ...' This does not suggest the passage of many years since the sailing of the ship from Mithlond, but that such was the case is immediately plain in the same opening sentence ('and the children were all gathered about him'); the absence of a date in the text as first written must therefore be casual and without significance.

3. Keleborn: immediately above the name was spelt Celeborn; here, the K was changed from C in the act of writing the letter.

4. On the development of the legends of Galadriel and Celeborn see The History of Galadriel and Celeborn in Unfinished Tales, Part Two $IV.

5. March 18th [> 25th]: the King had declared in his letter that he would be coming to the Brandywine Bridge on March 25; Elanor had said that that was 'a week today'; and as my father wrote this concluding passage Sam said to Rose at the door of Bag End

'March 18th'. On the change to the 25th, apparently made immediately, see note 7.

6. The brackets are in the original.

7. The change in the King's letter from March 25 to April 2 was in fact, and at first sight very oddly, an emendation made on the B

text. This question of the dates is minor, complicated, and explicable. When my father wrote the text A the great day of the King's coming north to the Brandywine Bridge was to be the 25th of March, the date of the destruction of the Ring and the downfall of Sauron (see pp. 59 - 60); and Elanor said (p. 118) that that was 'a week today', so that the occasion of Sam's conversation with his children recorded in the Epilogue was March 18.

When Sam and Rose stood outside Bag End that night Sam said:

'March 18th. Seventeen years ago ...' (p. 118). My father changed '18' to '25' on the manuscript A (and probably at the same time added in the words 'This time (seventeen years ago)') because he decided, just at that point, that the end of The Lord of the Rings (in its Epilogue) should fall on that date (possibly also because he recalled that it was Elanor's birthday, which had of course been chosen for the same reason); but he failed to postpone the date in the King's letter earlier in A (p. 117).

Writing out the fair copy B, in which he followed A very closely, he momentarily forgot this decision, and repeated the date in A of the King's coming to the Bridge, March 25.

Subsequently, while writing B, he realised that this was now erroneous, and changed it to April 2; so at the end of B Sam says (as he had in A): 'March the twenty-fifth! This time seventeen years ago...'

Elanor's answer to Pippin's question 'When is the second of April?' was changed subsequently on B from 'a week today' to 'a week tomorrow', which is the reading in the typescript C. This, however, was erroneous, since it gives March thirty-one days;

'a week today' was restored in the second version of the Epilogue, p. 127.

8. Chapter-number 'LVIII': the basis of the revised numbering of the chapters of Book Six is not clear to me. The sequence ran from LII 'The Tower of Kirith Ungol' (p. 25) to LX 'The Grey Havens' (p. 110), but on some of the chapters these numbers were reduced by two; here the reduction is by three.

9. Elanor's birth on 25 March (1421) was mentioned in the original draft of 'The Grey Havens', p. 109.

10. In this second version Sam is making notes, which are cited and which are an essential part of the Epilogue, for the filling of the empty pages at the end of the Red Book; and it seems odd that the title 'The End of the Book', so suitable to the second version, should have been used, and rejected, on texts B and C of the first (pp. 119 - 20).

11. This emendation was made on the typescript only. In 'The Longfather-tree of Master Samwise' in Appendix C Daisy Gamgee was born in 1433 and Primrose in 1435; Bilbo Gamgee was born in the year of the Epilogue, 1436, and was followed by three further children, making thirteen in all.

12. A footnote to the record of the birth of Elanor in The Tale of Years states: 'She became known as "the Fair" because of her beauty; many said that she looked more like an elf-maid than a hobbit. She had golden hair, which had been very rare in the Shire; but two others of Samwise's daughters were also golden-haired, and so were many of the children born at this time.' Cf.

the reference in 'The Grey Havens' to the golden-haired children born in the Shire in the year 1420 (RK p. 303; see p. 112, note 1).

13. Sam-dad: this address to Sam by his children entered in text B of the first version.

14. In the manuscript 'said Sam' is followed by 'sucking his pen-holder'; this was probably omitted inadvertently, as were other phrases afterwards picked up and reinserted in the typescript.

15. Sam was no doubt thinking of the end of Gimli's song in Moria, by which he was greatly struck (FR p. 330):

There lies his crown in water deep,

Till Durin wakes again from sleep.

Or else of Gimli's words when Frodo and Sam looked with him into Mirrormere: 'O Kheled-zaram fair and wonderful! There lies the crown of Durin till he wakes.' '"What did you see?" said Pippin to Sam, but Sam was too deep in thought to answer' (FR

p. 348).

16. Elanor's words refer to RK p. 260 ('Many Partings'): 'But Celeborn said: "Kinsman, farewell! May your doom be other than mine, and your treasure remain with you to the end!"' For the original form of Celeborn's farewell to Aragorn see p. 64.