The War of the Ring (31 page)

"juvenile" level.'

This part of the story unfolded, once my father began to write it, virtually without any hestitation between rival courses; there is however a little sketch that he wrote for it, exceedingly hard to make out, when all was not yet plain.

They are roused late at night. Moonset over Mindolluin. Sam grumbles at being waked only to see moonlight.

They see Gollum fishing below the pool. J

Faramir says he must shoot to kill, or Frodo must help to I capture him.

Frodo and some men go out. Frodo calls Gollum and Gollum is caught still clutching a fish.

Faramir warns Frodo against Gollum.

[Struck out: Frodo tells him] No it is Gollum.

Frodo begs for his life. It is granted if Frodo will induce Gollum to come and .....(3)

Gollum is caught by guards and brought in.

He [? feigns) great delight at Frodo. Nice fish. Begs him not to delay but start in morning.

They go back to sleep till morning.

They go on through woods by day. No orcs. Farewell. They are out of reckoning, and take long[? er than) Here these notes end. The sentences 'Frodo and some men go out.

Frodo calls Gollum and Gollum is caught still clutching a fish' are marked with a line in the margin, which probably implies that this is j the version to be followed, rather than 'Gollum is caught by guards ]

and brought in. He feigns great delight at Frodo.' I cannot explain the rejected words 'Frodo tells him', followed by 'No it is Gollum'.

Drafting for the chapter (much of it in handwriting so difficult that were it not generally already close to the final form parts of it would be virtually uninterpretable) suggests extremely fluent composition, and there is very little to say of it. New elements entered in successive pages of drafting, but the fair copy manuscript, from which the chapter was read to C. S. Lewis on 15 May, reached the text of The Two Towers in all but a few minor points.

Minor in itself, but very notable, is what Faramir says of the Moon.

In TT (p. 293) he says: 'Fair Ithil, as he goes from Middle-earth, glances upon the white locks of old Mindolluin'; but in the original draft of the passage he said: 'Fair Ithil touches with her fingers the white locks of old Mindolluin', and still in the manuscript, where the text is otherwise that of TT, he said: 'as she goes from Middle-earth ...'(4)

In the original draft of Frodo's reply to Far" mir's question concerning Gollum ('Why does he so?', TT p. 294) he says, in support of his suggestion that Gollum does not realise that men are concealed there, that 'He has night-eyes, but he is nearsighted and I doubt if he could see us up here.' In a second draft of the passage the last phrase became

'... and sees to no great distance clearly'; in the manuscript, '... and distant things are dim to him.' Against this, in the second of these drafts, my father wrote (at the same time): 'Make it not Gollum who looked out at Morannon - or make it 100 yards' (with '200 yards'

written above). But the reference to Gollum's nearsightedness was struck from the typescripts and does not appear in TT, and Gollum remained the one who looked out from the hollow before the Black Gate and saw the 'very cruel wicked Men' coming up the road from the south. My father hesitated much over the distance from the hollow to the road, and this was clearly one of the reasons for it; see p. 128

note 9. - The 'froglike figure' that climbed out of the water as Frodo and Faramir looked down on the pool was a subsequent change from

'spidery figure'.

In very rough and rapid initial drafting for the concluding part of the chapter in TT (pp. 300-2) Frodo says no more of the way past Minas Morghul than that Gollum had said that there was such a way,

'up in a high pass in the mountains'. Then follows Faramir's declaration of the name Kirith Ungol, as in TT. In the fair copy manuscript my father first wrote here:

'I do not know clearly,' said Frodo, 'but it climbs, I think, up into the mountains on the southern side of that vale in the mountains on the northern side of which the old city stands. It goes up to a high cleft and so down to - that which is beyond.'

This was subsequently changed to the text of TT. On the earlier idea that Kirith Ungol was on the south side of the valley see p. 113.

At the end of this initial draft my father briefly outlined the further course of the story: the blindfolding of the hobbits and Gollum, the report of the scouts on the strange silence and emptiness in the land, Faramir's advice to go by day through the woods 'skirting the last fall of the land before the river vale', and his farewell. At the foot of this page is a pencilled note only a part of which can I make out: K[irith] U[ngol] must not be mentioned before Frodo ... to tell Faramir of Gollum.

Yes he found the ring many many years ago, said Frodo. He is the means by which all this great matter has been set going.

Two sentences follow in which I can make out nothing at all, except perhaps 'where the ring had been'. But in any case this was evidently a very short-lived idea.

NOTES.

1. The original draft of the passage in 'The Forbidden Pool' was almost as in TT: 'If ever you return to the lands of the living ...'

2. A subsequent tentative arrangement was to put 'The Forbidden Pool' with 'Faramir', calling the first part 'Faramir (1): The Window of the West' (not 'on the West'), and the second 'Faramir (2): The Forbidden Pool'.

3. The illegible end of this sentence looks in fact more like 'visit them'

than anything else. If so, the meaning is presumably 'if Frodo can induce Gollum to leave the pool and come up with him to Faramir's presence'; the word is oddly chosen, but these notes were written at great speed.

4. she was corrected to he on the first typescript. Cf. the Quenta Silmarillion in The Lost Road, p. 241 $78: 'Varda commanded the Moon to rise only after the Sun had left heaven, but he travels with uncertain pace, and still pursueth her ...'

Another matter concerning the Moon may be mentioned. At the beginning of the chapter, when Faramir waking Frodo says 'the full moon is setting', my father changed this on the manuscript to

'rising'; when they came out from the stairway in the rock the words 'Far off in the West the full moon was sinking' were changed to 'Behind him the round moon, full and majestic, rose out of the shadow of the East'; and Faramir's 'Moonset over Gondor' was changed to 'Moonrise over Gondor'. This would of course make it very much earlier in the night. But all these alterations were returned to the original readings, presumably at once, since subsequently 'It was now dark and the falls were pale and grey, reflecting only the lingering moonlight of the western sky' (TT p. 295) was not changed.

VII.

JOURNEY TO THE CROSS-ROADS.

I have recounted the original relationship of 'The Forbidden Pool' and

'Journey to the Cross-roads'(1) at the beginning of the last chapter.

Preliminary drafting for this second part of the original single chapter runs continuously, in excruciatingly difficult handwriting, as far as the coming of Frodo and his companions to the ridge covered with whortleberry and gorse-bushes so tall that they could walk upright beneath them (TT p. 307).(2) The story to this point differed from that in The Two Towers. The journey took a day less: they came to the road from Osgiliath at dusk of the day on which they left Henneth Annun in the morning; and their taking refuge in the great holm-oak was described at much greater length (cf. TT pp. 306 - 7, from 'Gollum reluctantly agreed to this'):

Gollum agreed to this, and the travellers turned back from the road, but Gollum would not rest on the ground in the open woodland. After some search he chose a large dark ilex with great branches springing together high up from a great bole like a [?giant] pillar. It grew at the foot of a small bank [?leaning] a little westward. From the bank Gollum leaped with ease upon the trunk, climbing like a cat and scrambling up into the branches. The hobbits climbed only with the help of Sam's rope and in that task Gollum would not help, he would not lay a finger on the elven rope. The great branches springing almost from the same point made a wide bowl and here they [?managed] to find some sort of comfort. It grew deep dark under the great canopy of the tree. They could not see the sky or any star.

'We could sleep snug and safe here, if it wasn't for this dratted Gollum,' thought Sam. Whether he was really as forgiving as he claimed or not, Gollum at least had no fear of his companions, and curled up like some tree-animal and soon went to sleep, or seemed to. But the hobbits did not trust it - neither of them (certainly not Sam) were likely to forget Faramir's warning.

They took [it] in turn to watch and had about 3 hours' sleep each. All the while Gollum did not stir. Whether the 'nice fish'

had given him strength to last for a bit or whatnot else, he did not go out to hunt.

Shortly before midnight he woke up suddenly and they saw his pale eyes unlidded staring in the darkness.

At the point where this opening draft ended my father wrote Thunder. But at this stage there is no suggestion in the text of any change in the weather or in the feeling of the air. Other points worth mentioning are that the staves given to Frodo and Sam by Faramir had

'carven heads like a shepherd's crook'; that the tree of which they were made was first named melinon (the last two letters are not perfectly clear), then lebendron, and finally lebethras, all these changes being made in the act of writing;(3) and that though Faramir warns them against drinking of any water that flows from the valley of Morghul he does not name it Imlad Morghul (but the name occurs soon after: p. 223, note 25).

A second draft takes up at the beginning of the passage just given ('Gollum agreed to this'), and the episode of the oak-tree was rewritten. In this text appears the first reference to an approaching change in the weather.

They were steadily climbing. Looking back they could see now the roof of the forests they had left, lying like a huge dense shadow spread under the sky. The air seemed heavy, no longer fresh and clear, and the stars were blurred, and when towards the end of the night the moon climbed slowly above Ephel Duath (4) it was ringed about with a sickly yellow glare. They went on until the sky above the approaching mountains began to grow pale. Gollum seemed to know well enough where he was. He stood for a moment nose upward sniffing. Then beckoning to them he hurried forward. Following him wearily they began to climb a great hogback of land....

After the description of the great gorse-bushes and their hiding in a brake of tangled thorns and briars there follows (cf. TT p. 308): There they lay glad to be at rest, too tired as yet to eat, and watched the slow growth of day. As the light grew the mountains of Ephel-duath seemed to frown and lower at them across the tumbled lands between. They looked even nearer than they were, black below where night lingered, with jagged tips and edges lined in threatening shapes against the opening sky.

Away a little northward of where the hobbits lay they seemed to recede eastwards and fall back in a great re-entrant, the nearer shoulder of which thrusting forward hid the view in that direction. Below out of the great shadow they could see the road from the River for a short stretch as it bent away north-east to join the southward road that still lay further off [?buried] in the crumpled land.

'Which way do we go from here?' said Frodo.

'Must we think of it yet?' said Sam. 'Surely we're not going to move for hours and hours?'

'No surely not,' said Gollum. 'But we must move sometime.

..... back to the Cross-roads that we told the hobbits about.'

'When shall we get there?'

'We doesn't know,' said Gollum. 'Before night is over perhaps, perhaps not.'

At this point the second draft breaks down into an outline of the story to come, and the handwriting becomes in places altogether inscrut-able.

Gollum away a large part of the day. Reach Cross-roads in fact owing to difficult country not until evening. Start at dusk about 5.30 and do not reach Cross-roads and headless statue until morning [sic]. Gollum in a great state of fright. Weather changed. Sky above Ephel Duath absolute black. Clouds or smoke? drifting on an East wind. Rumbles? Sun hidden. In this darkness they get out of the wood and see Minas Morghul. It shines amid a deep gloom as if by an evil moon - though there is no moon.

Horror of hobbits. Weight of Ring........ vale of Morghul.

Where road went away to the north shoulder and bases of the fortress they turned aside and climbed away southward to other side of V [i.e. Vale of Morghul]. Frodo and Sam ....... see a track. They are already some way up and the gates of Minas Morghul frown at them when there is a great roll and rumble.

Blast of Thunder .... rain. Out of gates comes host led by B[lack] R[ider].