The War of the Ring (32 page)

It was in this text that the idea of the great cloud spreading out of Mordor emerged. In a third section of drafting my father returned to the point where the second had become a sketch, following Gollum's words about the Cross-roads: 'The sun that had risen with a red glare behind the Ephel-duath passed into dark clouds moving slowly from the East. It was a gloomy morning. The hobbits took some food and settled to rest ...'

After Gollum's reappearance from his long absence that day this draft too turns to outline:

When he returns he says they ought to start. Hobbits think something has worried him (or ?). They are suspicious but have to agree. The [early evening >) afternoon is threatening and overcast. At evening they come to the Cross-roads in a wood. Sun goes down bloodred in the west over Osgiliath.

Terrible darkness begins.

The completed fair copy manuscript did not in this case reach the form of the story in The Two Towers, for Frodo and his companions still only took two days from Henneth Annun to the Cross-roads, and a major later change was the lengthening of their journey by a further day. This was achieved by the insertion of the following passage into a typescript of the chapter, following the words (TT p. 305) 'The birds seemed all to have flown away or to have fallen dumb': Darkness came early to the silent woods, and before the fall of night they halted, weary, for they had walked seven leagues or more from Henneth Annun. Frodo lay and slept away the night on the deep mould beneath an ancient tree. Sam beside him was more uneasy: he woke many times, but there was never a sign of Gollum, who had slipped off as soon as the others had settled to rest. Whether he had slept by himself in some hole nearby, or had wandered restlessly prowling through the night, he did not say; but he returned with the first glimmer of light, and roused his companions.

'Must get up, yes they must!' he said. 'Long ways to go still, south and east. Hobbits must make haste! '

That day passed much the same as the day before had done, except that the silence seemed deeper; the air grew heavy, and it began to be stifling under the trees. It felt as if thunder was brewing. Gollum often paused, sniffing the air, and then he would mutter to himself and urge them to greater speed.

(As the third stage of their day's march drew on ...) This was retained almost exactly in TT. In the manuscript the text passes at once from 'The birds seemed all to have flown away or to have fallen dumb' to 'As the third stage of their day's march drew on', and thus in this narrative (as in the original draft, p. 175) they came to the Cross-roads at sunset of the second day. They had come to Henneth Annun at sunset on 6 February (pp. 135, 141); they left on the morning of the 7th, and coming to the Osgiliath road at dusk of that day passed the first part of the night in the great oak-tree; they went on again 'a little before midnight', and passed most of the daylight hours of 8 February hiding in the thorn-brake before going on to the Cross-roads (see further the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter).

Thus the phrase 'As the third stage of their day's march drew on'

referred, when it was written, to the statement then immediately preceding: 'Twice that day they rested and took a little of the food provided by Faramir'; as it stands in TT its reference is less clear.

In this inserted passage occurs the first reference in TT to the heaviness in the air and the feeling of thunder. In the manuscript as in the draft (p. 176) the first reference to the change in the weather does not appear until they set out again and began to climb eastwards, after spending the first part of the night (the second night in TT) in the oak-tree; at this point in TT, by a later change, 'There seemed to be a great blackness looming slowly out of the East, eating up the faint blurred stars.' On the following morning, as they lay hidden under the thorns, the manuscript retained the story in the draft: the hobbits

'watched the slow growth of day', and saw the mountain-tops outlined against the sunrise; and here again this was afterwards changed to the reading of TT (p. 308): the hobbits 'watched for the slow growth of day. But no day came, only a dead brown twilight. In the East there was a dull red glare under the lowering cloud: it was not the red of dawn.' Where the manuscript, again following the draft (p- 177), has 'The sun that had risen with a red flare behind Ephel-duath passed soon into dark clouds moving slowly from the East. It was going to be a gloomy day, if no worse' TT has 'The red glare over Mordor died away. The twilight deepened as great vapours rose in the East and crawled above them.' On the other hand, the further references in this chapter to the darkness (and to the deep rumbling sounds) were already present in the original version, and at the end it is said, almost as in TT (p. 311): 'There, far away, the sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied sea.'(5) Comparing the text as it stands in the manuscript with that in TT

one might well suppose at first sight that all these careful alterations show my father at a later time (when he had reached Book V) developing the original idea of a great thunderstorm arising in the mountains into that of the 'Dawnless Day', an emanation of the power of Mordor that obliterated the sunrise and turned day into night, that stroke of Sauron's that preceded his great assault. But it is clear that this is not so. That conception was already present. In fact, the essential reason for these changes was chronological, and they are to be associated with the extra day of the journey from Henneth Annun.

The slow approach of the great cloud out of the East had to be advanced at each succeeding stage of the journey to the Cross-roads (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter). It is also true, however, that the rewriting of these passages intensified the Darkness and made it more potent and sinister.

Lastly, another later alteration to the text in the manuscript was the sentence (TT p. 306) 'and the sound of the water seemed cold and cruel: the voice of Morgulduin, the polluted stream that flowed from the Valley of the Wraiths.'

On p. 181 is reproduced a plan of the Cross-roads and Minas Morghul.(6)

NOTES.

1. My father wrote the word 'Cross-roads' very variously, but in this chapter I spell it thus throughout, as in TT.

2. Cf. Unfinished Tales, p. 99 and note 15.

3. In the fair copy manuscript it was still said that the heads of the staves were in the form of a shepherd's crook, though this was subsequently rejected (see p. 207), but the name of the tree was lebethron as first written.

4. In the first draft the form was still Hebel Duath. On this change see p. 137. - This reference to the moon climbing above Ephel Duath

'towards the end of night' is curious, in view of the opening of 'The Forbidden Pool', where towards the end of the previous night the full moon was setting in the West. The original draft here is even odder:

The moon rose at last out of [?high) shadows ahead of them. It hardly showed yet any ... of its full light, but already away behind the mountains and the hollow land and the empty wastes day was beginning to grow pale.

'There comes White Face,' said Gollum. 'We doesn't like it.

And Yellow Face is coming soon, sss. Two faces in sky together at once, not a good sign. And we've got some way to go.'

My father was certainly, as he wrote to me on 14 May 1944

(Letters no. 69), having 'trouble with the moon'.

In the manuscript the moon is still climbing above Ephel Duath late in the night; only by a later change does it become 'the sinking moon' that 'escaped from the pursuing cloud' (TT p. 307).

5. The words in TT 'beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade'

were a later addition.

6. At the head of the first stair there is evidently a track and not a tunnel, and therefore the later conception of the ascent to the pass is present (pp. 198-200).

Note on the Chronology.

The time-schemes referred to as Scheme C and Scheme D (pp. 140 - 1) both cover this part of the narrative. Scheme C reads as follows (for comparison with the citations from The Tale of Years that follow I have added 'Day 1' etc. in both cases).

(Minas Morghul and the Cross-roads)

[Day 1] Monday Feb. 6 Frodo and Sam in Ithilien. They are taken by Faramir. Battle with the Southrons. Frodo spends night at Henneth Annun.

[Day 2] Tuesday Feb. 7 Gollum captured in the Pool of Annun in the early hours (5.30-6). Frodo Sam R Gollum leave Faramir, and journey all day reaching Osgiliath road at dusk, and go east just before midnight.

Faramir leaves Henneth Annun for Minas Tirith.

[Day 3] Wednesday Feb. 8 Faramir rides to Minas Tirith late in day and brings news to Gandalf.

Frodo lies hid in thornbrake until late afternoon (Gollum disappears and returns about 4.30). Sound of drums or thunder. They reach the Cross-roads at sunset (5.5 p.m.). Pass Minas Morghul, and begin ascent of Kirith Ungol. The host of Minas Morghul goes out to war.

[Day 4] Thursday Feb. 9 Frodo etc. all day and night in the Mountains of Shadow.

Host of Minas Morghul reaches Osgiliath and crosses into realm of Gondor.

Here this scheme ends. Scheme D is precisely the same in dates and content, but continues further (see p. 226) and has some entries concerning Theoden's movements: Feb. 7 'Theoden prepares to ride to Gondor. Messengers from Minas Tirith arrive. Also tidings of the invasion of North Rohan and war in the North'; Feb. 8 'Theoden rides from Edoras'. The fully 'synoptic' scheme S also agrees, and in addition mentions the coming on of 'the Great Darkness' on Feb. 8.

It will be seen that this chronology precisely fits the narrative as it stands in the manuscript, i.e. before it was altered by the insertion of the extra day. When that was done, the (relative) chronology of The Tale of Years was reached:

[Day 1] March 7 Frodo taken by Faramir to Henneth Annun.

[Day 2] March S Frodo leaves Henneth Annun.

[Day 3] March 9 At dusk Frodo reaches the Morgul-road.

[Day 4] March 10 The Dawnless Day. Frodo passes the Cross Roads, and sees the Morgul-host set forth.

The synchronization of Frodo's story with that of the events west of Anduin required both that Frodo should take longer and that 'Day 4'

should be the Dawnless Day. Thus in the original story Frodo and Sam see the red sunrise from their hiding in the thornbrake on 'Day 3'; in the final form they are hiding in the thornbrake on 'Day 4', and there is no sunrise, but a red glare over Mordor that 'was not the red of dawn'.

VIII.

KIRITH UNGOL.

In this chapter I shall describe the writing of the three last chapters of The Two Towers: 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol', 'Shelob's Lair', and

'The Choices of Master Samwise'. As will be seen, this is dictated by the way in which my father developed the narrative.

This is the last part of The Lord of the Rings for which precise dating is possible, for when the doors of the Tower of Kirith Ungol slammed in Sam's face my father halted again for a long time, and when I returned to England in 1945 the constant correspondence between us naturally ceased. He wrote on 12 May 1944 (Letters no.

68) that 'we are now in sight of Minas Morghul'; and a good part of the work studied in this chapter must have been done during the following ten days, for on 21 May (Letters no. 70) he said: I have taken advantage of a bitter cold grey week ... to write: but struck a sticky patch. All that I had sketched or written before proved of little use, as times, motives, etc., have all changed.

However at last with v. great labour, and some neglect of other duties, I have now written or nearly written all the matter up to the capture of Frodo in the high pass on the very brink of Mordor. Now I must go back to the other folk and try and bring things to the final crash with some speed. Do you think Shelob is a good name for a monstrous spider creature? It is of course only 'she + lob' (=

spider), but written as one, it seems to be quite noisome.

Adding to this letter on the following day, Monday 22 May, he said: It was a wretched cold day yesterday (Sunday). I worked very hard at my chapter - it is most exhausting work; especially as the climax approaches and one has to keep the pitch up: no easy level will do; and there are all sorts of minor problems of plot and mechanism. I wrote and tore up and rewrote most of it a good many times; but I was rewarded this morning, as both C.S.L. and C.W. thought it an admirable performance, and the latest chapters the best so far.

Gollum continues to develop into a most intriguing character.

At first sight the references in this letter seem inconsistent: in the past week he had written all or nearly all the story up to the capture of Frodo; he had just spent a day working hard 'at my chapter' (in the singular); and that morning he had read 'it' to Lewis and Williams.

There are various ways of explaining this: my guess is that he had at this time got the whole story in draft, which he was still working on, and which he thought of as a 'chapter'; but what he read to Lewis and Williams was 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol'. That this last is certainly the case is seen from his letter of 31 May 1944 (Letters no. 72): The rest of my time ... has been occupied by the desperate attempt to bring 'The Ring' to a suitable pause, the capture of Frodo by the Orcs in the passes of Mordor, before I am obliged to break off by examining. By sitting up all hours, I managed it: and read the last 2 chapters (Shelob's Lair and The Choices of Master Samwise) to C.S.L. on Monday morning.