The War of the Ring (19 page)

'recent chapter' ('The Taming of Smeagol') to C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, and that he had begun another. On the 18th April (Letters no. 61) he wrote: I hope to see C.S.L. and Charles W. tomorrow morning and read my next chapter - on the passage of the Dead Marshes and the approach to the Gates of Mordor, which I have now practically finished.'(1) And on the 23rd of April (Letters no. 62) he wrote: 'I read my second chapter, Passage of the Dead Marshes, to: Lewis and Williams on Wed. morning [19 April). It was approved. I have now nearly done a third: Gates of the Land of Shadow. But this story takes me in charge, and I have already taken three chapters over what was meant to be one!' The completed manuscript of 'The Passage of the Marshes' was indeed first entitled 'Kirith Ungol' (that being still the name of the main pass into Mordor) - for he began writing the manuscript before he had by any means finished the initial drafting of the chapter.

Essential ideas for this part of the narrative had in fact emerged a long time before, in the outline The Story Foreseen from Lorien (VII.329 - 30) - when he estimated that the chapter would be numbered XXV, eight less than the event had proved. In that outline he wrote:

Gollum pleads for forgiveness, and promises help, and having nowhere else to turn Frodo accepts. Gollum says he will lead them over the Dead Marshes to Kirith Ungol. (Chuckling to himself to think that that is just the way he would wish them to go.) ...

They sleep in pairs, so that one is always awake with Gollum.

Gollum all the while is scheming to betray Frodo. He leads them cleverly over the Dead Marshes. There are dead green faces in the stagnant pools; and the dry reeds hiss like snakes. Frodo feels the strength of the searching eye as they proceed.

At night Sam keeps watch, only pretending to be asleep. He hears Gollum muttering to himself, words of hatred for Frodo and lust for the Ring.

The three companions now approach Kirith Ungol, the dreadful ravine which leads into Gorgoroth. Kirith Ungol means Spider Glen: there dwelt great spiders ...

A single page of notes shows my father's thoughts as he embarked at last on the writing of this story. These notes were not written as a continuous outline and not all were written at the same time, but I give them in the sequence in which they stand on the page.

Food problem. Gollum chokes at lembas (but it does him good?). Goes off and comes back with grimy fingers [?and face].

Once he heard him crunching in dark.

Next chapter.

Gollum takes them down into the water gully and then turns away eastward. It leads to a hard point in the midst of the Marshes. Over Dead Marshes. Dead faces. In some of the pools if you looked in you saw your own face all green and dead and corrupted. To Kirith Ungol.

Change in Gollum as they draw near

Gollum sleeps quite unconcerned - quietly at first; but as they draw near to Mordor he seems to get nightmares. Sam hears him beginning to hold colloquies with himself. It is a sort of good Smeagol angry with a bad Gollum. The latter [?grows] -

filled with hatred of the Ring-bearer, in longing to be Ring-master himself.

Laid up [?in] rock near gates see great movements in and out.

Explanation of why they had escaped the war-movement.

They lie up in day in beds of reeds

Feeling of weight. Ring feels heavier and heavier on Frodo's neck as Mordor approaches. He feels the Eye.

Another page, written at any rate before 'The Passage of the Marshes'

had proceeded very far, outlines the story thus: They come to a point where the gully falls into the marshes.

Brief description of these (which take about 3 to 4 days to cross). Pools where there are faces some horrible, some fair -

but all corrupted. Gollum says it is said that they are memories (?) of those who fell in ages past in the Battle before Ennyn Dur the Gates of Mordor in the Great Battle. In the moon if you looked in some pools you saw your own face fouled and corrupt and dead. Describe the pools as they get nearer to Mordor as like green pools and rivers fouled by modern chemical works.

They lie up in foothills and see armed men and orcs passing in. Soon all is clear. Sauron is gathering his power and hiding it in Mordor in readiness. (Swart men, and wild men with long braided hair out of East; Orcs of the Eye etc.) On the far (East) Horn of the Gates is a tall white tower.

Minas Ithil now Minas Morghul which guards the pass. It was originally built by the men of Gondor to prevent Sauron breaking out and was manned by the guards of Minas Ithil,(2) but it fell soon into his hands. It now prevented any coming in. It was manned by orcs and evil spirits. It had been called [Neleg Thilim >] Neleglos [the Gleaming >] the White Tooth.(3) This last passage is accompanied by a little sketch, reproduced on p. 108 (no. I). Until now, the pass and chief entry into Mordor had been named Kirith Ungol (cf. the citation from 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' on p. 104). When contemplating the story ahead as he drafted

'The Passage of the Marshes' my father saw that this was not so: Kirith Ungol was a distinct way through the mountains - and (plainly enough) it is this path that Sam and Frodo are going to take.

Concomitantly with this, he was proposing to change the site of Minas Morgul as he had long conceived it, and as it appears on the First Map (see Map III, VII.309).(4) There, the pass of Kirith Ungol was guarded by two towers, one on either side (see VII.349, note 41), and Minas Morgul was away to the west, on the other side of the mountains (i.e.

on the western side of the northern extremity of the Duath, the Mountains of Shadow); whereas now Minas Morgul is to be the tower that guards the pass.(5) A virtually identical sketch to this, in faint pencil, is found on a page of drafting for 'The Black Gate is Closed'. It clearly does not belong with that, however (the later text is written across it), but with the present passage; and accompanying this pencilled version of the sketch is this note:

It is better for the later story that Minas Ithil (Morghul) should be actually at the Gates of Mordor on its East side.

The scene is thus depicted from the North.

On a page used also for drafting of 'The Passage of the Marshes'

there is another sketch of the tower and the pass (also reproduced on p. 108, no. II), very similar except in one important respect: whereas in Sketch I the cleft of Kirith Ungol is placed immediately below Minas Morgul (which thus stands on a high ridge or 'horn' between the 'cleft'

and the 'pass'), in Sketch II Kirith Ungol lies on the far side of the pass from the tower. The scene is again depicted from the North, for the accompanying text reads: 'Kirith Ungol is not the main entrance but a narrow cleft to [S(outh) >] West.' I think it almost certain that Sketch II represents a further stage in the development of the conception, not its first appearance.

Most of 'The Passage of the Marshes' is extant in preliminary drafting (and most of it in excruciatingly difficult handwriting); in this chapter my father made no use of his method of writing a text in pencil and then setting down a more finished version in ink on top of it. The narrative in the draft is not perfectly continuous, and it is clear that (as commonly) he built up the completed manuscript - the only one made of this chapter - in stages. The initial drafting is mostly extremely rough, written at great speed, and in places the completed manuscript (while perfectly legible - it was the text from which my father read the chapter to Lewis and Williams on April the 19th) is itself really the primary composition, constantly corrected and changed in the act of writing. Nonetheless the story of the passage of the Dead Marshes as it appears in The Two Towers seems to have been achieved almost to the form of every sentence (apart from certain substantial alterations made very much later) in that week of April 1944.

Only in one respect did the initial drafting differ significantly from the story as it appears in the manuscript. This was primarily a matter of the narrative structure, but I give most of the passage in question, so well as I can make it out, as exemplification. It takes up from Gollum's words 'Snakes, worms in pools. Lots of things in the pools. No birds'

(TT p. 234).

So passed the third day of their travelling with Gollum.(6) All the night they went on with brief halts. Now it was really perilous at least for the hobbits. They went slowly keeping close in line and following every move of Gollum's attentively. The pools grew larger and more ominous and the places where feet could tread without sinking into [?chilly] gurgling mires more and more difficult to find. There were no more reeds and grasses.

Later in the night, after midnight, there came a change. A light breeze got up and grew to a cold wind: it came from the North and though it had a bitter tang it seemed kindly to them, for it bore at last a hint of untainted airs and drove the reeking mists into banks with dark channels in between. The cloudy sky was torn and tattered and the moon nearly full rode among the

[? wrack]. Gollum cowered and muttered but the hobbits looked up hopefully. A great dark shadow came out of Mordor like a huge bird crossed the moon and went away west. Just the same feeling came on them as at the..... they cast themselves down in the mire. But the shadow passed quickly. Gollum lay like one stunned and they had to rouse him. He would say only Wraiths wraiths [?under] the moon. The precious the precious is their master. They see everything everywhere. He sees. After that

[?even] Frodo sensed a change in Gollum once more. He was

[?even] more fawning [and] friendly but he talked more often in (Two early sketches of Kirith Ungol.)

[his] old manner. They had great difficulty in making him go on while the moon

The last passage was then rewritten ('After that Sam thought he sensed a change in Gollum again' ...) and the draft continues with a description of Frodo's weariness and slowness and the weight of the Ring that approaches the text in TT (p. 238). Then follows: He now really felt it as a weight: and he was getting conscious of the Eye: it was that as much as the weight that made him cower and stoop as he walked. He felt like someone hidden in a room (?garden) when his deadly enemy comes in: knowing that he is there though he cannot yet see him the enemy stands at gaze to espy all comers with his deadly eye. Any movement is fraught with peril.(7) Gollum probably felt something of the same sort. After the passing of the shadow of the Nazgul that flew to Isengard it was difficult to get him to move if there was light. As long as the moon lasted he would only creep forwards on his hands cowering and whimpering. He was not much use as a guide and Sam took to trying to find a path for himself. In doing so he stumbled forward and came down on his hands in sticky mire with his face bending over a dark pool that seemed like some glazed but grimed window in the moonlight. Wrench-ing his hands out of the bog he sprang back with a cry. There are dead faces ..... dead faces in the pool he cried, dead faces!

Gollum laughed. The Dead Marshes, yes, yess. That is their name. Should not look in when the White Eye is up.(8) What are they, who are they, asked Sam shuddering and turning to Frodo who came up behind him. I don't know said Frodo. No don't master said Sam, they're horrible. Nonetheless Frodo crawled cautiously to the edge and looked. He saw pale faces - deep under water they looked: some grim some hideous, some noble and fair: but all horrible, corrupted, sickly, rotting ..........

Frodo crawled back and hid his eyes. I don't know who they are but I thought I saw Men and Elves and Orcs, all dead and rotten. Yes yes, said Gollum cackling. All dead and rotten. The Dead Marshes. Men and Elves and Orcs. There was a great Battle here long long ago, precious, yes, when Smeagol was young and happy long ago:(9) before the precious came, yes, yes.

They fought on the plain over there. The Dead Marshes have grown greater.

But are they really there? Smeagol doesn't know, said Gollum. You can't reach them. I we tried, yes we tried, precious, once: but you can't touch them. Only shapes to see perhaps, not to touch, no precious! Sam looked darkly at him and shuddered, thinking he guessed why Smeagol had tried to reach them.

The moon was now sinking west into cloud that lay above far Rohan beyond Anduin. They went on and Gollum again took the lead by [read but] Sam and Frodo found that he [read they]

could not keep their [?fascinated] eyes from straying whenever they passed some pool of black water. If they did so they caught glimpses of the pallid dead faces. At last they came to a place where Gollum halted, a wide pool ...... barred their way.

The pools lit by will o' the wisp fire reveal dead faces. The moon shows their own.(10)

............ The moon came out of its cloud. They looked in. But they saw no faces out of the vanished past. They saw their own...... Sam Gollum and Frodo looking up with dead eyes and livid rotting flesh at them.

Let's get out of this foul place!

Long way to go yet said Gollum. Must get to somewhere to lie up before day.

This section of drafting peters out here. In the manuscript the text becomes that of TT at almost all points: the sequence of the story has been reconstructed, so that the change in the weather and the flight of the Nazgul follows the passage of the pools of the dead faces; and there is no further hint of the idea (going back to the preliminary notes, p. 105) that the beholder's own face was mirrored as dead when the moonlight shone on the pools.