The Return of the Shadow Read online

  NOTES

  1seventy-first emended from seventieth; but seventy-first in the text of Bilbo’s farewell speech as first written.

  2At this point my father wrote at first:

  Twice before this he had been a matter of local news: a rare achievement for a Baggins. The first time was when he was left an orphan, when barely forty years old, by the untimely death of his father and mother (in a boating accident). The second time was more remarkable.

  Such a fate in store for Bungo Baggins and his wife seems most improbable in the light of the words of the first chapter of The Hobbit:

  Not that Belladonna Took ever had any adventures after she became Mrs Bungo Baggins. Bungo, that was Bilbo’s father, built the most luxurious hobbit-hole for her … and there they remained to the end of their days.

  They seem an unlikely couple to have gone ‘fooling about with boats’, in Gaffer Gamgee’s phrase, and his recognition of this was no doubt the reason why my father immediately struck the passage out; but the boating accident was not forgotten, and it became the fate of (Rollo Bolger >) Drogo Baggins and his Brandybuck wife, Primula, for whom it was a less improbable end (see p. 37).

  3At this stage only 20 years separated Bilbo’s adventure in The Hobbit and his farewell party, and my father clearly intended the B on the waggon to stand for Bard, King of Dale. Later, when the years had been greatly lengthened out, it would be Bain son of Bard who ruled in Dale at this time.

  4In the original Hobbit Gandalf at his first appearance was described as ‘a little old man’, but afterwards the word ‘little’ was removed. See p. 315.

  5The single tree in the field below Bag End was already in the illustration of Hobbiton that appeared as the frontispiece to The Hobbit, as also were Bilbo’s kitchen-garden and the hobbit-holes of Bagshot Row (though that name first appears here).

  6September 20th was the date of Bilbo’s birthday in the first version (p. 16).

  7Prospero Brandybuck was first written Orlando Brandybuck, the second bearer of the name: in the list of Bilbo’s gifts in the first version (p. 17 note 5) Gorboduc Grubb had been changed to Orlando Grubb.

  8A very similar passage, indicating the outraged comments of the guests, was added to the manuscript of the original draft at this point, but it was Inigo Grubb-Took who shouted ‘Where is he now, anyway?’ It was the greedy Inigo Grubb-Took who received the dinner-service (p. 15), and in this respect he survived into the third version of the chapter.

  9a small ring: emended from his famous ring.

  I have given this text in full, since taken together with the first it provides a basis of reference in describing those that follow, from which only extracts are given; but it will be seen that the Party – the preparations for it, the fireworks, the feast – had already reached the form it retains in FR (pp. 34–9), save in a few and quite minor features of the narrative (and here and there in tone). This is the more striking when we realize that at this stage my father still had very little idea of where he was going: it was a beginning without a destination (but see pp. 42–3).

  Certain changes made to the manuscript towards its end have not been taken up in the text given above. In Bilbo’s speech, his words ‘Secondly, to celebrate my birthday, and the twentieth anniversary of my return’ and the comment ‘No cheers; there was some uncomfortable rustling’ were removed, and the following expanded passage substituted:

  Secondly, to celebrate OUR birthdays: mine and my honourable and gallant father’s. Uncomfortable and apprehensive silence. I am only half the man that he is: I am 72, he is 144. Your numbers are chosen to do honour to each of his honourable years. This was really dreadful – a regular braintwister, and some of them felt insulted, like leap-days shoved in to fill up a calendar.

  This change gives every appearance of belonging closely with the writing of the manuscript: it is clearly written in ink, and seems distinct from various scattered scribbles in pencil. But the appearance is misleading. Why should Bilbo thus refer to old Bungo Baggins, underground these many years? Bungo was pure Baggins, ‘solid and comfortable’ (as he is described in The Hobbit), and surely died solidly in his bed at Bag End. To call him ‘gallant’ seems odd, and for Bilbo to say ‘I am half the man that he is’ and ‘he is 144’ rather tastelessly whimsical.

  The explanation is in fact simple: it was not Bilbo who said it, but his son, Bingo Baggins, who enters in the third version of ‘A Long-expected Party’. The textual point would not be worth mentioning here were it not so striking an example of my father’s way of using one manuscript as the matrix of the next version, but not correcting it coherently throughout: so in this case, he made no structural alterations to the earlier part of the story, but pencilled in the name ‘Bingo’ against ‘Bilbo’ on the last pages of the manuscript, and (to the severe initial confusion of the editor) carefully rewrote a passage of Bilbo’s speech to make it seem that Bilbo had taken leave of his senses. It is clear, I think, that it was the sudden emergence of this radical new idea that caused him to abandon this version.

  Other hasty changes altered ‘seventy-first’ to ‘seventy-second’ and ‘71’ to ‘72’ at each occurrence, and these belong also with the new story that was emerging. In this text, Bilbo’s age in the opening sentence was 70, as in the first version, but it was changed to 71 in the course of the chapter (note 1 above). The number of guests at the dinner-party was already 144 in the text as first written, but nothing is made of this figure; that it was chosen for a particular reason only appears from the expanded passage of the speech given above: ‘I am 72, he is 144. Your numbers are chosen to do honour to each of his honourable years.’ It seems clear that the change of 71 to 72 was made because 72 is half of 144. The number of guests came first, when the story was still told of Bilbo, and at first had no significance beyond its being a dozen dozens, a gross.

  A few other points may be noticed. Gandalf was present at the dinner-party; Gaffer Gamgee had not yet emerged, but ‘old Rory Brandybuck’ makes his appearance (in place of Inigo Grubb-Took, note 8 above); and Bilbo does not disappear with a blinding flash. At each stage the number of hobbit clans named is increased: so here the Brandybucks emerge, and the Bracegirdles were pencilled in, to appear in the third version as written.

  (iii)

  The Third Version

  The third draft of ‘A Long-expected Party’ is complete, and is a good clear manuscript with relatively little later correction. In this section numbered notes again appear at the end (p. 34).

  Discussion of the change made to Bilbo’s speech in the second version has already indicated the central new feature of the third: the story is now told not of Bilbo, but of his son. On this substitution Humphrey Carpenter remarked (Biography p. 185):

  Tolkien had as yet no clear idea of what the new story was going to be about. At the end of The Hobbit he had stated that Bilbo ‘remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.’ So how could the hobbit have any new adventures worth the name without this being contradicted? And had he not explored most of the possibilities in Bilbo’s character? He decided to introduce a new hobbit, Bilbo’s son – and to give him the name of a family of toy koala bears owned by his children, ‘The Bingos’.1 So he crossed out ‘Bilbo’ in the first draft and above it wrote ‘Bingo’.2

  This explanation is plausible. In the first draft, however, my father wrote that the story of the birthday party ‘merely serves to explain that Bilbo Baggins got married and had many children, because I am going to tell you a story about one of his descendants’ (in the second version we are given no indication at all of what was going to happen after the party – though there is possibly a suggestion of something similar in the words (p. 22) ‘Now really we must hurry on, for all this is not as important as it seemed’). On the other hand, there are explicit statements in early notes (p. 41) that for a time it was indeed going to be Bilbo who had the new ‘adventure’.

  The first part of the third version is almost wholly
different from the two preceding, and I give it here in full, with a few early changes incorporated.

  A long-expected party

  When Bingo, son of Bilbo, of the well-known Baggins family, prepared to celebrate his [fifty-fifth >] seventy-second3 birthday there was some talk in the neighbourhood, and people polished up their memories. The Bagginses were fairly numerous in those parts, and generally respected; but Bingo belonged to a branch of the family that was a bit peculiar, and there were some odd stories about them. Bingo’s father, as some still remembered, had once made quite a stir in Hobbiton and Bywater – he had disappeared one April 30th after breakfast, and had not reappeared until lunch-time on June 22nd in the following year. A very odd proceeding, and one for which he had never accounted satisfactorily. He wrote a book about it, of course; but even those who had read it never took that seriously. It is no good telling hobbits about dragons: they either disbelieve you, or feel uncomfortable; and in either case tend to avoid you afterwards.

  Bilbo Baggins, it is true, had soon returned to normal ways (more or less), and though his reputation was never quite restored, he became an accepted figure in the neighbourhood. He was never perhaps again regarded as a ‘safe hobbit’, but he was undoubtedly a ‘warm’ one. In some mysterious way he appeared to have become more than comfortably off, in fact positively wealthy; so naturally, he was on visiting terms with all his neighbours and relatives (except, of course, the Sackville-Bagginses). He did two more things that caused tongues to wag: he got married when seventy-one (a little but not too late for a hobbit), choosing a bride from the other side of the Shire, and giving a wedding-feast of memorable splendour; he disappeared (together with his wife) shortly before his hundred-and-eleventh birthday, and was never seen again. The folk of Hobbiton and Bywater were cheated of a funeral (not that they had expected his for many a year yet), so they had a good deal to say. His residence, his wealth, his position (and the dubious regard of the neighbourhood) were inherited by his son Bingo, just before his own birthday (which happened to be the same as his father’s). Bingo was, of course, a mere youngster of 39, who had hardly cut his wisdom-teeth; but he at once began to carry on his father’s reputation for oddity: he never went into mourning for his parents, and said he did not think they were dead. To the obvious question: ‘Where are they then?’ he merely winked. He lived alone, and was often away from home. He went about a lot with the least well-behaved members of the Took family (his grandmother’s people and his father’s friends), and he was also fond of some of the Brandybucks. They were his mother’s relatives. She was Primula Brandybuck4 of the Brandybucks of Buckland, across Brandywine River on the other side of the Shire and on the edge of the Old Forest – a dubious region.5 Folk in Hobbiton did not know much about it, or about the Brandybucks either; though some had heard it said that they were rich, and would have been richer, but for a certain ‘recklessness’ – generosity, that is, if any came your way.

  Anyway, Bingo had lived at Bag-end Underhill now for some [16 >] 33 years6 without giving any scandal. His parties were sometimes a bit noisy, perhaps, but hobbits don’t mind that kind of noise now and again. He spent his money freely and mostly locally. Now the neighbourhood understood that he was planning something quite unusual in the way of parties. Naturally their memories awoke and their tongues wagged, and Bingo’s wealth was again guessed and re-calculated at every fireside. Indeed the magnificence of the preparations quite overshadowed the tales of the old folk about his father’s vanishments.

  ‘After all,’ as old Gaffer Gamgee of Bagshot Row7 remarked, ‘them goings-on are old affairs and over; this here party is going to happen this very month as is.’ It was early September and as fine as you could wish. Somebody started a rumour about fireworks. Very soon it was accepted that there were going to be fireworks such as had not been seen for over a century, not since the Old Took died.

  It is interesting to see the figures 111 and 33 emerging, though afterwards they would be differently achieved: here, Bilbo was 111 when he left the Shire, and Bingo lived on at Bag End for 33 years before his farewell party; afterwards, 111 was Bilbo’s age at the time of the party – when it had become his party again – and 33 Bingo’s (Frodo’s) age at the same time.

  In this passage we also see the emergence of a very important piece of topography and toponymy: Buckland, the Brandywine, and the Old Forest. For the names first written here see note 5.

  For the account in this version of the preparations for the Party, the Party itself, and its immediate aftermath, my father followed the emended second version (pp. 19–25) extremely closely, adding a detail here and there, but for the most part doing little more than copy it out (and of course changing ‘Bilbo’ to ‘Bingo’ where necessary). I give here a list of interesting – though mostly extremely minor – shifts in the new narrative. The page references are to those of the second version.

  (20–1)‘B under a crown’ on the waggon driven by Men becomes ‘B painted in yellow’, and ‘B’ was emended on the text to ‘D’ (i.e. ‘Dale’).

  When the Men came down the Hill again, it is added that ‘the elves and dwarves did not return’; and ‘the draught of cooks’ who arrived were ‘to supplement the elves and dwarves (who seemed to be staying at Bag-end and doing a lot of mysterious work)’.

  The notice refusing admittance on the door of Bag End now appears, and ‘a special entrance was cut in the bank leading to the road; wide steps and a large white gate were built’ (as in FR). Gaffer Gamgee comes in again: ‘he stopped even pretending to garden.’

  The day of the party was still a Saturday (September 22nd).

  Many of the toys (‘some obviously magical’) that had come from Dale were ‘genuinely dwarf-made’.

  (22)It is Bingo, not Gandalf, who at the end of the fireworks says ‘That is the signal for supper!’; and though it was said at first, as in the second version, that the total of 144 guests did not include the host and Gandalf, this was struck out (see p. 106, note 12).

  A new Hobbit family-name enters in the list of guests: ‘and various Burroweses, Slocums, Bracegirdles, Boffinses and Proudfoots’; but ‘Slocums’ was then changed to ‘Hornblowers’, which was also added in to the text at subsequent points in the chapter. The Bolgers appear in pencilled additions, and are present from the start in the fourth version. In his letter to the Observer newspaper published on 20 February 1938 (Letters no. 25) my father said: ‘The full list of their wealthier families is: Baggins, Boffin, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Brandybuck, Burrowes, Chubb, Grubb, Hornblower, Proudfoot, Sackville, and Took.’ – The Grubbs, connexions of Bingo’s grandfather, became by a pencilled change connexions of his grandmother; and the Chubbs, in a reverse change, were first said to be connexions of his grandmother and then of his grandfather.

  Where in the first and second versions it is said that some of the hobbits at the party came from ‘the other side of the shire’, it is now said that some of them ‘did not even live in that county’, changed to ‘in that Shire’; and ‘in that Shire’ was retained in the fourth version. The use of ‘that’ rather than ‘the’ suggests that the later use (cf. the Prologue to LR, p. 14: ‘The Hobbits named it the Shire, as the region of the authority of their Thain’) was only in the process of emergence.

  The coldness between the Bagginses of Bag End and the Sackville-Bagginses had now lasted, not 20 years as in the first two versions, but ‘some seventy-five years and more’: this figure depends on 111 (Bilbo’s age when he finally disappeared) less 51 (he was ‘about fifty years old or so’ at the time of his great adventure, according to The Hobbit), plus the 16 years of Bingo’s solitary residence at Bag End. ‘Seventy-five’ was emended to ‘ninety’ (a round figure), which belongs with the change of 16 to 33 (p. 30).

  (23)Bingo was liable to allude to ‘the absurd adventures of his “gallant and famous” father’.

  (24)The two young hobbits who got on the table and danced are still Prospero Brandybuck and Melba Took, but Melba was changed in pencil
first to Arabella and then to Amanda.

  Bingo now said, as did Bilbo in FR (p. 38), ‘I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.’

  Bingo’s ‘second purpose’ is expressed in exactly the words written into the second version (see p. 27): ‘to celebrate OUR birthdays: mine and my honourable and gallant father’s. I am only half the man he is: I am 72, and he is 144’, &c.

  Bingo’s last words, ‘I am leaving after dinner’ were corrected on the manuscript to ‘I am leaving now.’

  (25)The collected comments after Bingo’s concluding remarks now begin: ‘The hobbit’s mad. Always said so. And his father. He’s been dead 33 years, I know. 144, all rubbish.’ And Rory Brandybuck shouts: ‘Where is Bilbo – confound it, Bingo I mean. Where is he?’

  After ‘he was never seen in Hobbiton again’ is added: ‘The ring was his father’s parting gift.’

  From the point where the second version ends at the words ‘Morning went on’ the third goes back to the original draft (p. 15) and follows it closely until near the end, using pretty well the same phrases, and largely retaining the original list (as emended, p. 17 note 5) of names and labels for the recipients of presents from Bag End – these being now, of course, presents from Bilbo’s son Bingo.

  Semolina Baggins is called ‘an aunt, or first cousin once removed’;

  Caramella Took (changed later to Bolger) ‘had been favoured among [Bingo’s] junior and remoter cousins’;