The History of Middle Earth: Volume 8 - The War of the Ring

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  In this outline there is nothing to suggest that the 'dark globe' was the means of communication between Orthanc and Barad-dûr - indeed, rather the reverse, since when Gandalf looks into it somewhere near the Fords of Isen the range of its sight does not extend beyond Osgiliath (although his words 'It shows little by night. That is a comfort' suggest that he had feared that it might make them visible to a hostile eye). On the other hand, in the preceding narrative draft Gandalf is seen to be much concerned with that question of communication: 'There was a bond between Isengard and Mordor. Of what sort... I have not discovered.' It seems hard to believe that even though Gandalf had not yet put two and two together my father had failed to do so. A possible explanation is that when he wrote this outline he did indeed already know the significance of the Dark Crystal, but that Gandalf had not yet fathomed the full extent of its range and powers, or did not yet know how to make use of them. Or it may be truer to say simply that in these notes we see the formative moment in which the significance of the Seeing Stone was at the point of emergence: the fateful 'device' - devised long before - which in the final story would prove to have been of vast though hidden importance in the War of the Ring.(9)

  A little scribbled note in isolation may be cited here:

  The black-red ball shows movements. They see the lines of war advancing. [? Ships are seen] and Théoden's men in Helm's Deep and assembling in Rohan.

  The context of this is altogether obscure: for who is seeing these things?

  Another text - a brief and tantalising set of notes scrawled down very rapidly in faint soft pencil, vestiges of fugitive thoughts - shows further debate on the meaning of the Orthanc-stone. I cannot see any clear indication of where it would be placed in the narrative, or even of where it stands in the sequence of these preliminary papers;(10) but from various points it seems to have preceded the text that follows it here.

  I said that Isengard was overthrown, and the Stone was going on a journey, said Gandalf. And that I would [look o] speak to it again later when I could, but [?at the] moment I was in a hurry.

  auctor (No I think the dark globe to be in contact with Mordor is too like the rings)

  Gandalf discovers that the Orthanc-stone is a far-seer. But he could not make out [how] to use it. It seemed capricious. It seems still to be looking in the directions in which it was last used, he said.

  Hence, vision of the [added: 7] Nazgûl above the battlements. He was looking towards Mordor.

  Can one see back. Possibly said Gandalf. It is perilous but I have a mind to use it.

  He stands back. He has been seen [? bending over it].?

  No, he said, this is an ancient stone set in an upper chamber of the tower long long ago before the Dark Tower was strong. It was used by the [?wardens] of Gondor. One also must have been in the Hornburg, and in Minas Tirith, and in Minas Morghul, and in Osgiliath. (Five).

  They saw the Hornburg. They saw Minas Tirith. They saw Nazgûl above the battlements of Osgiliath. So Saruman learned some of his news he said.

  The bracketing of the words 'No I think the dark globe to be in contact with Mordor is too like the rings' and the marginal auctor (meaning that this was my father's thought, not Gandalf's) were added in ink. The implication of these words must be that Gandalf, in the opening sentences of this text, was speaking to a person in Mordor: and if that person was none other than Sauron himself, there is a delightful glimpse of Gandalf telling the Dark Lord that he was busy. - That here only five of the Seeing Stones are named (given a habitation) does not mean of course that at this stage there were only five, but that these were the five Stones of the southern kingdom (Gondor). In subsequent enumerations there were five Stones in Gondor, where in LR there were four.

  Lastly, there is a brief outline, ending in a ragged scrawl, that seems to have preceded the first continuous drafting of the chapter in formed narrative.

  Conversation with Saruman begins about 3.15 and ends about 4.30 (that is about sunset). Dark comes about 5.30. Gandalf leads them south in the dark - because now they must be more secret than ever. (Wonders what the connexion was between Saruman and Sauron.)

  They pass out of Nan Gurunir at about 9 p.m. Camp under shadow of the last western hill. Dolbaran. They will ride fast on morrow. Two men are sent ahead to warn men that king is returning to Helm's Deep and that a strong force should be ready to ride with him. No men more than two or three are to ride openly on the plain. The king will go by mountain paths to Dunharrow.

  Then episode of Pippin and Stone.

  Gandalf says this is how Saruman fell; He studied such matters. The old far-seers of the Men of Númenor who made Amon Hen and Amon Lhaw One in Hornburg, Osgiliath, Minas Tirith, Minas Morghul, Isengard [Angrenost >] Angost.(11) That is how Saruman got news - though Hornburg and Minas Tirith were 'dark', their balls lost or destroyed. But he tried to peep at Barad-dûr and got caught.

  Nazgûl.

  Feb. 4 They ride to Fords mid-morning (11 a.m.), rest an hour, and reach Deeping Coomb road-fork at 3 p.m. Helm's Deep at about 4. They rest, gather men, and ride by hill-paths lost to sight. Hobbits are given ponies - and Gimli!

  Feb. 5, 6 Journey.

  Feb. 7 Dunharrow. Joy of people. Éowyn comes forth. The King rides down the mountain valley with Éowyn and Éomund [read Eomer] on either side, Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn beside them. The hobbits and Gimli ...

  [?Regency.) Feast. Tobacco. Messenger.

  In the previous text (p. 71) it is not actually stated that the Seeing Stones of Gondor 'answered' or corresponded one to another, but the idea was at the moment of emergence, as is seen from my father's passing doubt whether 'the dark globe to be in contact with Mordor is too like the rings', while 'Can one see back' seems clearly to refer to reciprocal vision between one Stone and another rather than to vision of past time. In the present outline this conception is fully present and accepted, and with it the central idea that it was through his knowledge of these matters that Saruman was corrupted, being snared by his use of the Stone of Orthanc to look towards Barad-dûr. The 'episode of Pippin and the Stone' has arisen (though so far as the evidence goes it had not yet been committed to paper in any form); and the various elements were now coming to interlock in a beautifully articulated conception. The original idea (p. 69) that when Gandalf looked into the dark globe he saw 'small batlike shapes wheeling' will be retained but become Pippin's vision, and the explanation of why it should be that vision and no other (cf. 'It seems still to be looking in the directions in which it was last used', p. 71) will be found in the constant intercourse of Saruman and Sauron by means of the Seeing Stones (itself answering the question of the method of communication between Isengard and the Dark Tower), so that 'the Orthanc-stone [became] so bent towards Barad-dûr that, if any save a will of adamant now looks into it, it will bear his mind and sight swiftly thither' (TT p. 204).

  The final time-scheme had now entered (see p. 6, $ IV): Théoden and Gandalf and their company came to Isengard on 3 February and left that evening, two nights after the Battle of the Hornburg. It is remarkable that even when the plot had advanced to this stage, with the 'episode of Pippin and the Stone', and the first appearance of a Nazgûl west of Anduin, blacking out the stars (already present in the outline on p. 69), Gandalf was not impelled to ride on ahead in haste to Minas Tirith, but is present at the feast in Eodoras - that feast, often foreseen, which would never in the event take place. For the significance of the reference to tobacco here see p. 37 and note 33. But pencilled notes added to this outline later show the story of Gandalf's sudden departure: 'Feb. 4 Gandalf and Pippin reach Deeping Coomb before dawn', and 'Feb. 4 - 5 Gandalf rides all night and all day Feb. 5 reaching Minas Tirith at sunset on Feb. 5'.

  There are no other writings extant before we come to a first draft of the chapter - which extends however only so far as the conclusion of Gandalf's words with Pippin after his vision in the Seeing Stone (TT p. 199).(12) This was written very fast and apparently set down without any preliminary w
orkings, but the final text of the chapter to this point was achieved at once in all essentials - there are of course countless differences in the expression and a few in very small points of narrative detail, and many of these differences survived into the first completed manuscript of the chapter.(13) The chief difference from the final text comes as Gandalf knelt by Pippin's body (TT p. 198): 'He removed the ball and wrapped it in a cloth again. "Take this and guard it, Aragorn," he said. "And do not uncover it or handle it yourself, I beg." Then he took Pippin's hand and bent over his face ...' Thus Gandalf hands the globe to Aragorn simply as a bearer whom he can trust, in contrast to the story in TT (pp. 199 - 200), where the charging of Aragorn with the Orthanc-stone takes place at a different point and is given much greater significance through Aragorn's claiming it by right. But Pippin's account of what happened to him when he looked into the globe and 'he came' was achieved at once in this draft.

  From this point there is very little further preliminary drafting, and for almost all the rest of the chapter the earliest available text is that of the first completed manuscript, much of which is written over erased pencil. This manuscript was later given the chapter-number XXXI, and the title 'The Orthanc-stone The Palantír', this being written over an erased title of which only 'The' can be read.

  As this manuscript was first written Gandalf in his concluding, words to Pippin said a good deal more than he does in TT (p. 199). Some of this was moved to his conversation with Théoden and Aragorn after he had carried Pippin back to his bed: that Pippin had saved him from the dangerous blunder of using the Stone himself, and of Sauron's delusion that the Stone, and the hobbit, were in Orthanc.

  But here Gandalf goes on:

  'Very odd, very odd how things work out! But I begin now to wonder a little.' He stroked his beard. 'Was this ball really thrown to slay me after all? Or to slay me if it might, and do something else if it missed? Was it thrown without Saruman's knowledge? Hm! Things may have been meant to go much as they have gone - except that you looked in, not me! Hm! Well.

  They have gone so, and not otherwise; and it is so that we have to deal with.

  'But come! This must change our plans. We are being careless and leisurely.

  Against the paragraph beginning 'Very odd, very odd how things work out!' my father wrote in the margin: 'No! because if Saruman had wished to warn Mordor of the ruin of Isengard and the presence of Gandalf and hobbits he had only to use Glass in normal fashion and inform Sauron direct.? But he may have wished (a) to kill Gandalf, (b) to get rid of the link. Sauron may have been pressing him to come to the stone?' He evidently decided that these were unprofitable speculations, and abandoning the direction Gandalf's words had taken returned to an earlier point in his final address to Pippin.

  The text in this first manuscript then (with rewriting of some passages, obviously belonging to the same time) all but reaches that of TT (pp. 199 - 203) as far as Gandalf's opening remarks to Pippin about the Seeing Stones as they rode towards the Deeping Coomb. Only two matters need be noted. When Gandalf gives the Stone to Aragorn (cf. p. 74) he says here: 'It is a dangerous charge, but I can trust you even against yourself', and Aragorn replies only: 'I know the danger. I will not uncover it, or handle it.' Secondly, there is a curious series of shifts in the precise wording of Gandalf's remarks about his failure to understand immediately the nature of the ball thrown down from Orthanc. At first he said: 'I said nothing, because I knew nothing. I guessed only. I know now.' In the first rewriting of this passage he said: 'I ought to have been quicker, but my mind was bent on Saruman. And I did not guess the full nature of the stone - not until now. But now I know the link between Isengard and Mordor, which has long puzzled me.' This was again rewritten at this stage to read: 'And I did not guess the nature of the stone, till I saw it in his [Pippin's] hands. Not until now was I sure.' In further revision of the passage carried out much later it became: 'I did not guess the nature of the stone, until it was too late. Only now am I sure of it.' In the final form (TT p. 200) this was changed once more: 'I did not at once guess the nature of the stone. Then I was weary, and as I lay pondering it, sleep overcame me. Now I know!' There is, to be sure, among all these formulations no great difference in the actual meaning, but it was evidently a detail that concerned my father: just how much did Gandalf surmise about the Palantír before Pippin's experience brought certainty, and how soon?

  An element of ambiguity does in fact remain in LR. Already in the first manuscript of 'The Voice of Saruman' Gandalf had said: 'I fancy that, if we could have come in, we should have found few treasures in Orthanc more precious than the thing which the fool Wormtongue tossed down to us!' The nature of Wormtongue's missile cannot have been fully apparent to my father himself at that stage: it was in that manuscript, only a few lines above, that he changed, as he wrote, the initial story of the globe's having smashed into fragments on the rock (p. 65). But even when he had fully established the nature of the Palantír he retained those words of Gandalf (TT p. 190) at the moment when it bursts upon the story - although, as Gandalf said at Dol Baran, 'I did not at once guess the nature of the Stone'. But then why was he so emphatic, as he stood beneath the tower, that 'we could have found few treasures in Orthanc more precious' - even before Wormtongue's shriek gave reinforcement to his opinion? Perhaps we should suppose simply that this much at least was immediately clear to him, that a great ball of dark crystal in Orthanc was most unlikely to have been nothing but an elegant adornment of Saruman's study.

  At the words 'Hobbits, I suppose, have forgotten them' (the Rhymes of Lore), following Gandalf's recital of the words of the Rhyme Tall ships and tall kings/Three times three (TT p. 202), a brief passage of original drafting, written out separately in ink and so not lost in erasure of pencil as elsewhere, takes up: the first framing of Gandalf's declaration of the history of the Seeing Stones, here called Palantírs, a word that so far as record goes now first appears.

  They [the Rhymes of Lore] are all treasured in Rivendell. Treebeard remembers most/some of them: Long [Rolls >] Lists and that sort of thing. But hobbits I suppose have forgotten nearly all, even those that they ever knew.

  And what is that one about: the seven stones and seven stars?

  About the Palantírs of the Men of Old, said Gandalf. I was thinking of them.

  Why, what are they?

  The Orthanc stone was one, said Gandalf.

  Then it was not made, Pippin hesitated, by the Enemy, he asked [? at a rush].

  No, said Gandalf. Nor by Saruman; it is beyond his art, and beyond Sauron's too maybe. No, there was no evil in it. It has been corrupted, as have so many of the things that remain. Alas poor Saruman, it was his downfall, so I now perceive. Dangerous to us all are devices made by a knowledge and art deeper than we possess ourselves. I did not know that any Palantír had survived the decay of Gondor and the Elendilions until now.

  Seven they set up. At Minas Anor that is now Minas Tirith there was one, and one at Minas Ithil, and others at Aglarond the Caves of Splendour which men call Helm's Deep, and at Orthanc. Others were far away, I know not where, maybe at Fornost, and at Mithlond [struck out: where Cirdan harboured the ... ships ...] (in) the Gulf of Lune where the grey ships lie. But the chief and master .... [?of (the) stones] was at Osgiliath before it was ruined.

  In this passage are the first occurrences of Aglarond (see p. 28) and of Fornost, which on the First Map was named Fornobel, and still so on my map made in 1943, VII.304. Here also is the first appearance of Cirdan in the manuscripts of The Lord of the Rings.

  In the first complete manuscript this was developed towards the form in TT. Gandalf now tells that 'The Palantírs came from beyond Westernesse, from Eldamar. The Noldor made them: Fëanor himself maybe wrought them, in days so long ago that the time cannot be measured in years.' He speaks of Saruman as he does in the final text; but here he ends: No word did he ever speak of it to any of the

  Council. It was not known that any of the Palantírs had escaped the ruin o
f Gondor. Their very existence was preserved only in a Rhyme of Lore among Aragorn's people.' This was changed to: 'It was not known to us that any of the Palantírs had escaped the ruin of Gondor. Outside the Council it was not among elves and men even remembered that such things had ever been, save only in a Rhyme of Lore preserved among Aragorn's people.'(14)

  The remainder of the chapter in the first manuscript reaches the final form in all but a few respects. There were still five Palantírs anciently in Gondor, one being still that of Aglarond (translated, as in the draft, 'Caves of Splendour', but changed to 'Glittering Caves'),(15) Of the other two, Gandalf still says that they were far away, 'I do not know where, for no rhyme says. Maybe they were at Fornost, and with Kirdan at Mith[l]ond (16) in the Gulf of Lune where the grey ships lie.' In answer to Pippin's question concerning the coming of the Nazgûl (TT p. 204) Gandalf here says only: 'It could have taken you away to the Dark Tower', and goes on at once: 'But now Saruman is come to the last pinch of the vice that he has put his hand in.' He says that 'It may be that he [Sauron] will learn that I was there and stood upon the stairs of Orthanc - with hobbits at my tail. That is what I fear.'(17) And at the end of the chapter he tells Pippin: 'You may see the first glimmer of dawn upon the golden roof of the house of Eorl. At sunset on the day after you shall see the shadow of Mount Tor-dilluin fall upon the white walls of the tower of Denethor.'(18)

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