The War of the Ring (25 page)

10. re-entrant: see note 2.

11. The brief remainder of this outline is illegible because my father wrote across it notes in ink on another subject (see p. 145).

12. It is not clear that it was first conceived as an ambush, which perhaps only arose when the story came to be written - and it was then that my father added to the manuscript at an earlier point 'They had come to the end of a long cutting, deep, and sheer-sided in the middle, by which the road clove its way through a stony ridge' (TT p. 258).

13. In a pencilled draft so faint and rapid as to be largely illegible another name is found instead of Mablung, and several names preceded Damrod, but I cannot certainly interpret any of them.

14. Rivendell is still Imladrist and the Halflings are still the Halfhigh (see VII.146). Boromir is called 'Highwarden of the White Tower, and our captain general', as in TT (p. 266).

15. Damrod in TT; the speeches of Damrod and Mablung were shifted about between the two.

16. Cf. the Etymologies, V.372, stem MBUD 'project': * andambunda

'long-snouted', Quenya andamunda 'elephant', Noldorin anda-bon, annabon.

17. Sarn Gebir: an interesting instance of the former name reappearing mistakenly - unless my father used Sarn Gebir deliberately, remembering that I had not read any of Book IV, in which the name Emyn Muil was first used. Cf. however p. 165

note 7.

18. It is clear that in the manuscript the chapter halted at Sam's words (TT p. 270) 'Well, if that's over, I'll have a bit of sleep.' The following brief dialogue between Sam and Mablung (with the hint that the hobbits will not be allowed to continue their journey unhindered: 'I do not think the Captain will leave you here, Master Samwise') was written in the manuscript as the beginning of the next chapter ('Faramir'), and only subsequently joined to the preceding one and made its conclusion; and by then Falborn had become Faramir.

Note on the Chronology.

The brief time-scheme B has the following chronology (see pp. 118, 135):

(Day 3) Feb. 4 Frodo, Sam and Gollum come to the Barren Lands and Slag-mounds. Stay there during day and sleep. At night they go en 12 miles and come before the Morannon on Feb. 5.

(Day 4) Feb. 5 Frodo, Sam and Gollum remain hidden all day. Pass southward to Ithilien at dusk.

(Day 5) Feb. 6 Full Moon. Stewed rabbit. Frodo and Sam taken by Faramir. Spend night at Henneth Annun.

There are two other schemes ('C' and 'D'), the one obviously written shortly after the other, both of which begin at February 4. As originally written, both maintain the chronology of B, but both give some information about other events as well, and in this they differ.

Scheme C reads thus:

(Day 3) Feb. 4 Gandalf and Pippin pass Fords and reach mouth of Coomb about 2.30 a.m. [Added: and rides on till daybreak and then rests in hiding. Rides again at night.]

Theoden sets out from Dolbaran and reaches Helm's Deep soon after dawn.

Frodo comes to the Barren Lands and Slag-mounds and stays there during day.

(Day 4) Feb. 5 Theoden leaves Helm's Deep on return journey.

Aragorn rides on ahead with Gimli and Legolas.

Gandalf abandons secrecy and after short rest rides all day to Minas Tirith. He and Pippin reach Minas Tirith at sunset.

At dawn on Feb. 5 Frodo comes before the Morannon.

Frodo, Sam and Gollum lie hid all day and go south towards Ithilien at nightfall.

(Day 5) Feb. 6 Frodo and Sam in Ithilien. They are taken by Faramir. Battle with the Southrons. Frodo spends night at Henneth Annun.

Scheme D, certainly following C, runs as follows (as originally written):

(Day 3) Feb. 4 Gandalf and Pippin begin their ride to Minas Tirith (pass Fords and reach mouth of Deeping Coomb about 2 ]

a.m.). At dawn come to Edoras (7.30). Gandalf fearing Nazgul rests all day. Orders assembly to go to Dunharrow. Nazgul passes over Rohan again.

(Day 4) Feb. 5 Gandalf rides all night of 4 - 5 and passes into Anorien. Pippin sees the beacons blaze up on the mountains. They see messengers riding West.

Aragorn (with Legolas and Gimli) rides fast by night (4-5) to Dunharrow via Edoras, reaches Edoras at morning and passes up Harrowdale. Theoden with Eomer and many men goes by mountain-roads through south [sic]

skirts of mountains to Dunharrow, riding slowly.

Frodo at dawn comes before the Morannon. At nightfall Frodo with Sam and Gollum turns south to Ithilien.

(Day 5) Feb. 6 Full Moon (rises about 9.20 p.m. and sets about 6.30 a.m. on Feb. 7). Gandalf rides all night of 5 - 6 and sights Minas Tirith at dawn on 6th.

Theoden comes out of west into Harrowdale some miles above Dunharrow, and comes to Dunharrow before nightfall. Finds the muster already beginning.

Frodo and Sam in Ithilien; taken by Faramir; battle with Southrons; night at Henneth Annun.

On the statement in scheme D that Theoden came down into Harrowdale some miles above Dunharrow see p. 259. The full moon of February 6 is the full moon of February 1, 1942, as explained in VII.369.

It will be seen that in their dating these time-schemes proceed from the schemes A and B (see p. 118}, in which the day passed by Frodo among the slag-mounds was February 4, and in which he came before the Morannon at dawn on February 5. While these schemes obviously belong to 1944, and were made when Book IV was largely or entirely written (pp. 182, 226), it seems clear that they preceded the chronological problems that my father referred to in his letters of 12 and 16 October 1944 (see p. 100): for in the second of these he mentioned that he had made a small alteration in Frodo's journey, 'two days from Morannon to Ithilien', and this change is not present in these schemes, C and D.

Scheme D was revised at that time to provide the extra day in the journey from the Morannon to Ithilien, and this was done by revising the dates backwards: thus Frodo now comes before the Morannon on February 4, and on February 5 'lies in heather on the borders of Ithilien' (see p. 135 and TT p. 257); thus the episode of the stewed rabbit still takes place on February 6. Since this scheme only begins on February 4 it is not shown how the earlier arrival before the Morannon was achieved.

It is clear therefore that scheme S was devised following the chronological modifications of 12-16 October 1944; for in S the extra day in the journey from the Morannon was present from its making, and the date of the extra day was February 5 (as in Scheme D revised), because in this scheme the date of the Breaking of the Fellowship was put back from January 26 to January 25 (see pp. 101, 119). The chronology in S I take therefore to represent the structure when my father wrote on 16 October 'I think I have solved it all at last': (Day 3) Feb. 3 Frodo etc. reach slag-mounds at dawn, and stay in a hole all day, going on at nightfall. Nazgul passes high up on way to Isengard about 5 p.m. Another one hour after midnight.

Gandalf and company leave Isengard and camp at Dolbaran. Episode of the Orthanc-stone. Nazgul passes over about 11 p.m.

(Day 4) Feb. 4 Frodo etc. reach dell in sight of Morannon at daybreak, and lie hid there all day. See the Harad-men march in. At dusk they start southward journey.

Gandalf and Pippin ride east. Sight Edoras at dawn.

Nazgul passes over Edoras about 8 a.m.

(Day 5) Feb. 5 Frodo etc. reach borderlands and lie in heather sleeping all day. At night go on into Ithilien.

Gandalf passes into Anorien.

(Day 6) Feb. 6 Frodo etc. camp in Ithilien. Episode of Stewed Rabbit. Frodo captured by Faramir and taken to Henneth Annun.

[Gandalf and Pippin reach Minas Tirith.]

The original entries concerning Gandalf on February 5 and 6 in this scheme cannot be read after the words 'Gandalf passes into Anorien', because they were afterwards overwritten, but it is clear that as in scheme D he reached Minas Tirith at dawn on February 6.

In this chapter relation to the movements of other members of the original Company arises in the rejected passage given on p. 133, interrupted in the manuscript but concluded as shown in note 8. In this passage, written before the episode of the stewed rabbit and the coming of the men of Gondor had entered the story, Frodo was walking southward through Ithilien, and in the late night of February 6 - 7 (the second of this journey) he saw the full moon sinking in the West. In its light he glimpsed from far off the snows on Mount Mindolluin; and at that same time Gandalf was walking 'deep in thought' below that mountain in Minas Tirith. When the story was entirely changed by the entry of Faramir it was from Henneth Annun, that night, and in the original draft of 'The Forbidden pool' appears his sad speculation on the fate of his former companions 'in the vastness of the nightlands' (TT p. 293). When that was written the story was still that Gandalf and Pippin had already reached Minas Tirith.

In the final chronology the relations were altered. Pippin riding with Gandalf on Shadowfax caught as he fell asleep on the night of March 7 - S 'a glimpse of high white peaks, glimmering like floating isles above the clouds as they caught the light of the westering moon. He wondered where Frodo was, and if he was already in Mordor, or if he was dead; and he did not know that Frodo from far away looked on that same moon as it set beyond Gondor ere the coming of the day'

(The Return of the King p. 20). That was still the night that Frodo passed in Henneth Annun; but now Gandalf did not ride up to the wall of the Pelennor until dawn of the ninth of March.

V.

FARAMIR.

On the 26th of April 1944 my father said (Letters no. 63) that he needed to know how to stew a rabbit; on the 30th (no. 64) he wrote that 'A large elephant of prehistoric size, a war-elephant of the Swertings, is loose' (but made no mention of anything further); on the 4th of May (no. 65), having read a chapter to C. S. Lewis on the 1st, he was 'busy now with the next'; and on the 11th (no. 67) he said that he had read his 'fourth new chapter ("Faramir")' to Lewis and Williams three days before.(1) It seems, then, that what was afterwards called 'The Window on the West' was achieved in not much more than a week. That must have been a time of intense and concentrated work, for the volume of writing that went into this chapter, the redrafting and reshaping, is remarkable. It is also very complex, and it has taken me a lot longer than a week to determine how the chapter evolved and to try to describe it here. In what follows I trace the development fairly closely, since in 'Faramir' there are bearings on other parts of The Lord of the Rings and much of special interest in Faramir's discourse on ancient history, most notably in his remarks on the languages of Gondor and the Common Speech (entirely lost in The Two Towers).

The various draft-sequences that constitute the history of the chapter are so confusing that I shall try to make my account clearer by using letters to distinguish them when it seems helpful. There was only one manuscript made, titled 'XXXVI. Faramir':(2) this is a good clear text, not extensively emended later, and in it the final form was achieved, with however certain important exceptions. It must have been from this text (referred to in this chapter as 'the completed manuscript', or simply 'the manuscript') that my father read 'Faramir'

to Lewis and Williams on 8 May 1944. At this time the chapter began at Sleep while you may,> said Mablung: see p. 139 note 18.

The original draft for the end of what became 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit', which I will call 'A', continued on from Sam's 'If that's over I'll have a bit o' sleep' (TT p. 270) thus:

He turned and spoke in Frodo's ear. 'I could almost sleep on my legs, Mr Frodo,' he said. 'And you've not had much yourself. But these men are friends, it seems: they seem to come from Boromir's country all right. Though they don't quite trust us, I can't see any cause to doubt them. And we're done anyway if they turn nasty, so we'd best rest.'

'Sleep if thou wilt,' said Mablung. 'We will guard thee and thy master until Falborn comes. Falborn will return hither, if he has saved his life. But when he cometh we must move swiftly.

All this tumult will not go unmarked, and ere night is old we shall have many pursuers. We shall need all speed to gain the river first.'

It seemed to Sam only a few minutes before he woke and found that Falborn had returned and several men with him.

They were talking nearby. Frodo was awake and among them.

They were debating what to do about the hobbits.

Sam sat up and listened and he understood that Frodo had failed to satisfy the leader of the men of Gondor on some points: which part he had to play in the company sent from Rivendell, why they had left Boromir, and where he was now going. To the meaning of Isildur's Bane he kept on returning, but Frodo would not tell the story of the Ring.