The War of the Ring (39 page)

'What's that?'

The remainder of this text is very rough working for what follows from this point in TT (pp. 348 - 50). In a following draft Yagool (as he is spelt) says of Frodo: 'What is it, d'you think? Elvish I thought by his nasty smooth peaky face. But undersized.' Here the conversation moves closer to the form in TT, and the long discussion between Yagool and Shagrat about the messages is greatly reduced, though the messages are still given, in very much the same form; but that from Minas Morghul begins Nazgul of Dushgoi to Lugburz. In another brief passage of drafting this dialogue occurs:

'I tell you, nearly two days ago the Night Watcher smelt something, but will you believe me it was nearly another day before they started to send a message to Lugburz.'

'How do they do that?' said Shagrat. 'I've often wondered.'

'I don't know and I don't want to ...'

The manuscript of 'The Choices of Master Samwise'(49) was in almost all respects very close to the chapter in The Two Towers.

Various points in which it differed as first written have been noticed, but there remain a few others. The following account of Shelob was rejected as soon as written and replaced by that in TT (p. 337): Shelob was not as dragons are, no softer spot had she save only in her eyes; not as the lesser breeds of Mirkwood was their dam, and her age-old hide, knobbed and pitted with corruption but ever thickened with layer on layer within, could not be pierced by any blade of Middle-earth, not though elf or dwarf should make it and all runes were written upon it, not though the hand of [struck out: Fingon wielded it whose] Beren or of Turin wielded it.

Shagrat's reply to Yagul's opening sally ('Tired of lurking up there, thinking of coming down to fight?') took this form:

'Tired! You've said it. Waiting for nothing, except to be made into Shelob's meat. But we've got orders, too. Old Shagram's in a fine taking. Your lot's to blame. These Dushgoi bogey-men: sending messages to Lugburz.'

This was rejected as soon as written, replaced by 'Orders to you. I'm in command of this Pass. So speak civil', and with it went the last appearance of the name Dushgoi of Minas Morghul. Who 'old Shagram' was is not clear, but he is evidently 'old Nuzu' of the original draft (p. 212), also reported to be 'in a taking', apparently because the garrison of the Tower of Kirith Ungol had been depleted. Possibly he was the actual captain of the Tower, until this point, when Shagrat asserts that he himself is the commander of the pass; but Shagrat's words in the draft cited on p. 216, 'They trust me in Lugburz, He knows a good orc when he sees one' suggest that he was so already.

Lastly, the words of Sam's Elvish invocation (TT p. 339) in his fight with the Spider take in a draft for this passage the same form as they did in the original verse chanted in Rivendell (VI.394), and this form was retained in the manuscript as written, the only difference being lir for dir in the third line:(50)

O Elbereth Gilthoniel

sir evrin pennar oriel

lir avos-eithen miriel

This was changed on the manuscript to give this text: O Elbereth Gilthoniel

silevrin pennar oriel

hir avas-eithen miriel

a tiro'men Gilthoniel!

*

It was a long time before my father returned to Frodo and Sam. In October 1944 he briefly took up again the stories 'west of Anduin'

from where he had left them nearly two years earlier, but soon abandoned them (see pp. 233 - 5).

On 29 November 1944 (Letters no. 91), when he was sending me the typescripts of 'Shelob's Lair' and 'The Choices of Master Samwise', he said that he had 'got the hero into such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty.' He had by this time conceived the structure of The Lord of the Rings as five 'Books', of which four were written (cf. also his letter to Stanley Unwin of March 1945, Letters no. 98); and in this same letter of November 1944 he forecast what was still to come: Book Five and Last opens with the ride of Gandalf to Minas Tirith, with which The Palantir, last chapter of Book Three closed. Some of this is written or sketched.(51) Then should follow the raising of the siege of Minas Tirith by the onset of the Riders of Rohan, in which King Theoden falls; the driving back of the enemy, by Gandalf and Aragorn, to the Black Gate; the parley in which Sauron shows various tokens (such as the mithril coat) to prove that he has captured Frodo, but Gandalf refuses to treat (a horrible dilemma, all the same, even for a wizard). Then we shift back to Frodo, and his rescue by Sam. From a high place they see all Sauron's vast reserves loosed through the Black Gate, and then hurry on to Mount Doom through a deserted Mordor. With the destruction of the Ring, the exact manner of which is not certain - all these last bits were written ages ago, but no longer fit in detail, nor in elevation (for the whole thing has become much larger and loftier) - Baraddur crashes, and the forces of Gandalf sweep into Mordor. Frodo and Sam, fighting with the last Nazgul on an island of rock surrounded by the fire of the erupting Mount Doom, are rescued by Gandalf's eagle; and then the clearing up of all loose threads, down even to Bill Ferny's pony,(52) must take place. A lot of this work will be done in a final chapter where Sam is found reading out of an enormous book to his children, and answering all their questions about what happened to everybody (that will link up with his discourse on the nature of stories in the Stairs of Kirith Ungol). But the final scene will be the passage of Bilbo and Elrond and Galadriel through the woods of the Shire on their way to the Grey Havens. Frodo will join them and pass over the Sea (linking with the vision he had of a far green country in the house of Tom Bombadil). So ends the Middle Age and the Dominion of Men begins, and Aragorn far away on the throne of Gondor labours to bring some order and to preserve some memory of old among the welter of men that Sauron has poured into the West. But Elrond has gone, and all the High Elves. What happens to the Ents I don't yet know. It will probably work out very differently from this plan when it really gets written, as the thing seems to write itself once I get going, as if the truth comes out then, only imperfectly glimpsed in the preliminary sketch.

From a letter to Stanley Unwin written on 21 July 1946 (Letters no.

105), now more than two years since the doors of the underground entrance to the Tower of Kirith Ungol were slammed in Sam's face, and getting on for two since 'the beacons flared in Anorien and Theoden came to Harrowdale', it is dear that he had done no more.

He was then hopeful that he would soon be able to begin writing again; and in another letter to Stanley Unwin of 7 December 1946

(Letters no. 107) he was 'on the last chapters'.

NOTES.

1. This text went back in turn to an earlier outline, 'The Story Foreseen from Moria', VII.209.

2. At that time Kirith Ungol was the name of the main pass into Mordor.

3. The first mention of the Tower of Kirith Ungol.

4. As I have noted in VII.260, Sam's visions in the Mirror of Galadriel were already in the fair copy manuscript of 'Galadriel'

almost exactly as in FR (p. 377); the actual words used in the manuscript of this vision were: 'and now he thought he saw Frodo lying fast asleep under a great dark cliff: his face was pale.'

When my father wrote this the words of the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Moria' (VII.209) had already been written: 'Gollum gets spiders to put spell of sleep on Frodo. Sam drives them off. But cannot wake him.'

5. The illegible word might possibly be 'grin'.

6. The fair copy manuscript, with some correction and addition from the time of composition, reaches the text of TT, pp.

312-17, in all respects save one: the passage describing Frodo's dash towards the bridge is still absent. The manuscript reads here:

... Frodo felt his senses reeling and his limbs weakening.

Sam took his master's arm. 'Hold up, Mr Frodo!' he whispered, but his breath seemed to tear the air like a whistle.

'Not that way! Gollum says not that way - thank goodness! I agree with him for once.'

Frodo took a grip on himself and wrenched his eyes away.

The reading of TT, introduced later, thus in part returns to the outline given on p. 186.

7. In general I do not go into the detail of textual problems, but this is a very unusual case, and the reconstruction of the evolution of the story to some degree depends on the view taken of it; I therefore give here some account of it.

Page 4 of the manuscript, on which the pencilled draft though overwritten can mostly be read, ends with the words: 'Then he saw that a faint light was welling through his fingers and he thrust it in his bosom.' Page 5 was likewise originally a page of rough, continuous, pencil drafting. The top of this page, some 14

lines or so, was erased, and the later narrative was written in this space (ending at 'and there it suddenly entered a narrow opening in the rock. They had come to the first stair that Gollum had spoken of', TT p. 317). Towards the end of this short section, however, the erasure was not complete, and the following can be read: 'not the odour of decay in the valley below ..... that the hobbits could recognize, a'. Thus the original narrative was here entirely different, for within a short space they are already at the mouth of the tunnel.

The strange thing is that from this point the original pencilled draft (continuing with 'repellent evil taint on the air'), not erased any further but overwritten, was overwritten with the earlier narrative ('Version 1'). Thus as the text in ink stands on this page it reads:

... and there it suddenly entered a narrow opening in the rock.

They had come to the first stair that Gollum had spoken of [TT

p. 317].

repellent evil taint on the air.

The text following on from 'that Gollum had spoken of' is found on another sheet. The only explanation that I can see is that my father for some reason left the first (approximately) fourteen lines in pencil, and only began to overwrite it in ink at an arbitrary point ('repellent evil taint on the air'). The first part of the page thus fell victim to erasure and re-use when the later story had come into being, but from the point where it had been overwritten in ink the earlier story (Version 1) could not be so used, and was merely struck out.

8. This version of the sentence is found in isolation on a slip, slightly different from and beginning slightly earlier than the form of it that can be read in the pencilled draft (see note 7).

9. With 'then as fear left him it began to burn' cf. the derived passage in 'Shelob's Lair', TT p. 329: 'then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo's mind, it began to burn'; cf. also 'As if his indomitable spirit had set its potency in motion, the glass blazed suddenly' (TT p. 339).

10. This much of 'Version 1' (struck through) was preserved in the manuscript because the page carried a portion of the later story also, as explained in note 7.

11. The Bodleian page '617', like page '5', is written in ink over the underlying pencilled draft. At this point there is an adjective, describing the webs and ending in -ing, which my father could not read; he therefore merely let the pencilled word stand, without writing anything on top of it.

12. The words hold my star-glass behind me are underlined in the original - possibly because my father was emphasising to himself that Frodo had actually given the phial to Sam, though whereas in TT (p. 334) Sam did not give it back to Frodo, later in this version (p. 198) he takes it from Frodo's hand during his fight with Ungoliant.

Frodo drew Sting: on the previous page '5' of the manuscript Frodo had already drawn Sting (p. 193), but this, I feel certain, is no more than an oversight, and does not call into question the succession of the two pages.

13. In the margin is written here: 'Dis. into a side hole?', where 'Dis.'

obviously stands for 'Disappears'. This was added later, when my father was pondering the idea that Gollum in fact disappeared while they were still in the tunnel.

14. At the foot of the page is written in pencil: 'Make Gollum come reluctantly back.' This clearly belongs with the underlying pencilled draft; when over-writing the draft in ink my father put a query against these words.

15. The caption of the picture, Shelob's Lair, was added afterwards; at this time the name of the Great Spider was Ungoliant (p. 196).

16. At the time of writing, page 415 of 'Version 1' is in the United States, page 617 in England, and page 819 in France.

17. This is the first appearance of the one Great Spider (as opposed to many spiders).

18. On the name Ungoliant(e), derived from The Silmarillion, see the Etymologies, V.396.

19. When Sam twisted round as Gollum seized him from behind, in TT Gollum's hold on Sam's mouth slipped, whereas in Version 1

it was his hold with his left hand on Sam's neck that slipped (down to his waist). Thus it is not said in Version 1 that 'all the while Gollum's other hand was tightening on Sam's throat'. When Sam hurled himself backwards and landed on Gollum 'a sharp hiss came out of him, and for a breathless second his left arm that was about Sam's waist relaxed' (in TT 'for a second his hand upon Sam's throat loosened'). Sam's second blow, falling across Gollum's back, did not break the staff, and the third blow aimed by Sam was with the staff, not with his sword.