Once present in the story, the ravens may also have inspired Tolkien’s re-introduction of the eagles in the final chapters as the Siege of the Mountain evolved into the Battle of Five Armies, but since this development belongs rather to the Third Phase I postpone discussion of it for now; see page 715.
The Siege of the Mountain
I now give the ‘little bird’ outline, or Plot Notes E, the final piece of text unambiguously associated with the Second Phase storyline. In these hasty jottings we see how the events of the next chapter would have unfurled had the Second Phase text not been abandoned.
Plot Notes E
‘Little Bird’
Raven tells of 2 or 3 ponies still alive. Offers also to
Fili and Kili go off to catch ponies: Others go into Mountain. Great
The birds bring news of approach of the men of lake and the Elvenking and the
The dwarves gather weapons and a store of arrows to the G.D.TN2 which is now blocked with stones
Three days later Kili [rides up >] comes to the G.D. & begs for admitance. Their horses were shot under them but they have laid all the stores they could carry near the foot of the great spur, but as they climbed the hillside Fili was wounded & captured.TN4 The host is already at the foot of the mountain.
Each of the ravens fly bringing meat and bread. But that night the dwarves steal out and recover the
The parley at the Gates. Thorin’s scornful words. He will give nothing to demand. What got they out of the last K.u.M?TN5 The Elvenking on behalf of the Lake men demands payment
There seems little doubt that these hastily scribbled words comprise Tolkien’s final work on the Second Phase, differing greatly as they do from the events as they would appear in the actual written texts of the chapters that followed. At this point, he probably thought that no more than two or three chapters would be needed to complete the story: one to resolve events at the Mountain, a second to cover the Battle of Anduin Vale (see page 713) on the return journey, and a third to see Bilbo safely home afterwards. And it must be stressed that in one sense he was right. Even with the folding together of the projected ‘Battle of the Anduin Vale’ with the Siege of the Mountain and the greater complexity and added complications that Bard’s legitimate claim on the treasure and Thorin’s succumbing to dragon-sickness would bring in the Third Phase text, Tolkien here has come within forty-five pages of the end,TN6 and nearly half of the book’s earlier chapters had reached twenty pages or more.TN7 In the final book the remaining material would be divided into five chapters (out of the book’s total of nineteen), making it seem at first glance that Tolkien abandoned the book less than three-quarters of the way through. But this does not take into account the extreme brevity of these closing chapters, three of which are among the shortest in the book. If we go by page count, then, Tolkien was more than five-sixths of the way through the story when he broke off, not abandoning the book as Carpenter claimed but instead going back to the beginning and embarking on the creation of the First Typescript.
TEXT NOTES
1 By offering to assemble their folk, Roäc does not mean the dwarves but ravens; neither Plot Notes B/C/D nor E contain any reference to Dain, who had not yet been invented, and no dwarven army was to march to their relief.
2 That is, the Great Door, usually referred to as the ‘Front Gate’.
3 Since it seems unlikely that any dwarves would be posted where they would be cut off from their fellows once the valley was occupied, the idea of a tunnel leading from within the guard-post back into the dwarven city behind the Front Gate, suggested in Chapter XIV, must still be present.
4 The first seven words of this sentence were cancelled.
5 Here Thorin seems to be referring to Smaug, not Thror; cf. the surly watchman’s words in Chapter XIII (pp. 547–8). This is surprising, both for the threat implied and for its recognition of Smaug’s suzerainty – not to mention unwise, since he is speaking to survivors of Smaug’s attack who have all too much reason to blame him for their sufferings. Thorin’s refusal to hand over his family treasures to an angry mob or to negotiate at swords-point is in itself an admirable display of courage. Even though with hindsight provided by Third Phase developments we might see his ‘scornful’ reply to the massed army outside his gate as the first signs of dragon-sickness, within the context of the Second Phase story it is entirely in keeping with the heroic saga tradition.
6 That is, near the bottom of page 265 of the first edition, which had 310 pages.
7 In order to better see just how variable the chapter lengths are in the book, and how the longer chapters tend to cluster in the earlier half, the following chart lists all the chapters in order from longest to shortest, given the pagination of the first edition. I have used a copy of the third (wartime) printing from 1942 [cf. Hammond, Descriptive Bibliography, page 16] to determine these figures, which lacks the ‘Mirkwood’ halftone and colour plates (none of which were included in the original pagination in any case).
i. Chapter VIII. Flies and Spiders (30 pages)
ii. Chapter VII. Queer Lodgings (27 pages plus one illustration)
iii. Chapter I. An Unexpected Party (27 pages)
iv. Chapter XII. Inside Information (22 pages)
v. Chapter VI. Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire (21 pages)
vi. Chapter IX. Barrels Out of Bond (18 pages plus one illustration)
vii. Chapter V. Riddles in the Dark (17 pages)
viii. Chapter II. Roast Mutton (17 pages plus one illustration)
ix. Chapter IV. Over Hill and Under Hill (13 pages plus one illustration)
x. Chapter XVII. The Clouds Burst (12 pages plus one illustration)
xi. Chapter XIII. Not at Home (12 pages) [= manuscript chapter XIV]
xii. Chapter X. A Warm Welcome (12 pages plus one illustration)
xiii. Chapter XV. The Gathering of the Clouds (11 pages)
xiv. Chapter XIV. Fire and Water (10 pages) [= manuscript chapter XIII]
xv. Chapter III. A Short Rest (10 pages)
xvi. Chapter XI. On the Doorstep (9 pages plus one illustration)
xvii. Chapter XVIII. The Return Journey (9 pages)
xviii. Chapter XIX. The Last Stage (9 pages plus one illustration)
xix. Chapter XVI. A Thief in the Night (7 pages)
Plot Notes F
This brief outline (Marq. 1/1/23:3), scribbled on a torn sheet of good paper (in fact, the back of an unsent letterTN1), is little more than a collection of notes in now-faint pencil on miscellaneous points that Tolkien jotted down as a reminder to himself of loose plot-points that would need to be addressed in the wrapping-up. Unlike Plot Notes E, which represent the final work on the Second Phase, these notes seem to belong to the beginning of the Third Phase.
Bilbo’s treasure all lost on the way home – except his kettle & a pair of studs.
And were the dwarves forever at his service?
Send message back by Thrush to Lake Town – it arrives too late but reaches Bard before his last shot.
Bring him <?word> in last
Wood-elf king gives back orcrist
How troll-key fitted – Gandalf explains.
Trolls had <?even>
Bilbo hangs his sword over mantlepiece & has his mail put on a stand
Prophecy came true for the Dale became rich, and the Dwarves of Thror for long were good till their race faded, and gold flowed down
the river &
Battle of Five armies and disenchantment of Beorn
Written in the left margin:
1
2
3
4
5
woodelves,
dwarves, TN3
eagles,
men,
bears,
goblins
wolves
6
7
But
Written in the right margin:
Lost his
Digs up <?trolls’> treasure,
The most notable feature of Plot Notes F is that the inclusion of dwarves among the participants in ‘The Battle of Five Armies’ (which is finally and for the first time given that name) suggests this event might have now shifted from taking place not far to the west as part of Bilbo’s return journey, but as the culmination of the events at the Lonely Mountain. Even so, Tolkien remained in difficulties deciding just which of the forces present counted as one of the ‘Five’; cf. the commentary on page 714 following the Third Phase text. Beorn’s bear army is still present, as in the final page of Plot Notes B. One significant and intriguing new element here is the brief mention of the ‘disenchantment of Beorn’; see the commentary on Bothvar Bjarki following Chapter VII for more on this unrealized motif. Otherwise, these notes closely correspond to what Tolkien actually came to set down once he began writing the Third Phase text; the two significant departures are the absence of Beorn’s bear-army (his prowess being upgraded until followers would have been superfluous),TN4 and of the loss of Bilbo’s treasure (a scene which Tolkien began to write but then crossed out; see page 690 & Text Note 11 on page 698).
TEXT NOTES
1 The unsent letter (1/1/23:4), written in Tolkien’s neatest script, is undated; Tolkien tore the page in half and only the top half survives (because of its blank verso’s reuse for plot-notes). It represents Tolkien’s reader’s report for some unidentified publisher on a book he had been sent to evaluate for possible publication. Despite the letter’s lack of context, Tolkien’s opinion is clear, as he definitely advises against publication: ‘. . . published without a competent revision it would receive ungentle handling from any reviewer in this country who knew anything about Old English. I hardly like to think of what I should say about it, if I was a reviewer myself, and not your adviser.’ Possibly this letter was not sent because it was superseded by a more circumspect replacement.
2 This illegible word seems to begin with p- and end with -d, but it is clearly not plundered, the reading of the Third Phase text (see page 688), because it lacks the ascender for the -l- and has an ascender immediately followed by a descender in the middle; possibly it is two short words run together, the first of which ends in -ly. The doubtful word preceding this word or phrase might be been rather than even.
3 This word is circled, but the significance of this is unclear: possibly Tolkien hesitated between the old idea of the Battle of Anduin Vale (without the dwarves’ presence) and the new idea that seems to be emerging of bringing the battle to the Lonely Mountain (where he could segue between the Siege of the Mountain directly into the battle). For more on the Battle of Five Armies, see the commentary on page 713ff following the Third Phase text.
4 See the North Polar Bear’s similar immunity to goblins (‘for of course goblins can’t hurt him’) and similar tactic of wading into battle with a sea (‘more like 1000’) of goblins in the Father Christmas Letters for 1932 and 1933: ‘squeezing, squashing, trampling, boxing, and kicking Goblins sky-high’; see Letters from Father Christmas pages 74 and 87 and the commentary following Chapter VII.
The Third Phase
‘A Thief Indeed’
Perhaps the most important misconception about the writing of The Hobbit, even more significant than its alleged lack of connection to the earlier legendarium (which is self-evidently false from the various allusions within the original manuscript, not to mention explicitly refuted by Tolkien himself in his first statement in print about the book after The Hobbit was published),1 is the claim that Tolkien abandoned the story unfinished in the early 1930s, only resuming work on it sometime in the summer or fall of 1936 at the prodding of a publisher. This claim was first advanced by Humphrey Carpenter in his authorized biography, and since all subsequent accounts derive from Carpenter’s, it seems best to examine his argument and assertions in some detail:
The writing of the story progressed fluently until the passage not far from the end where the dragon Smaug is about to die. Here Tolkien hesitated, and tried out the narrative in rough notes – something he was often to do in The Lord of the Rings but seems to have done only rarely in The Hobbit. These notes suggest that Bilbo Baggins might creep into the dragon’s lair and stab him . . . But this idea, which scarcely suited the character of the hobbit or provided a grand enough death for Smaug, was rejected in favour of the published version where the dragon is slain by the archer Bard. And then, shortly after he had described the death of the dragon, Tolkien abandoned the story. Or to be more accurate, he did not write any more of it down. For the benefit of his children he had narrated an impromptu conclusion to the story, but, as Christopher Tolkien expressed it, ‘the ending chapters were rather roughly done, and not typed out at all’. Indeed they were not even written in manuscript. The typescript of the nearly finished story . . . was occasionally shown to favoured friends, together with its accompanying maps (and perhaps already a few illustrations). But it did not often leave Tolkien’s study, where it sat, incomplete and now likely to remain so. The boys were growing up and no longer asked for ‘Winter Reads’, so there was no reason why The Hobbit should ever be finished.
—Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien: A Biography, pages 179–80.
In addition to a great deal of information conveyed succinctly and clearly, this account unfortunately also includes a good deal of misinformation, details that Carpenter, who has to cover a great deal of territory in very little space, all of it without any prior scholarship on the point to guide him, got wrong, misinterpreted, or oversimplified. For example, while he clearly alludes to Plot Notes B & C, he takes no account of the first outline (page 229), the extensive Plot Notes A, the ‘little bird’ outline (Plot Notes E), Plot Notes F, nor the complicated evolution that produced the composite, multilayered document that is Plot Notes B/C/D/B. His account ignores one of the three major breaks in the book’s composition, discussing the ones at the end of Chapter I (that is, at the end of the First Phase) and early in Chapter XV (although failing to convey exactly where this break takes place) but not the break at the beginning of Chapter IX (at their capture by wood-elves, which like the other two is marked by a change of paper). Carpenter’s account is also unintentionally misleading to readers who do not know that Chapters XIII and XIV were later switched, so that in the manuscript the story continued for about another chapter and a half beyond Smaug’s death.
Similarly, there is no evidence known to me of these impromptu oral conclusions; certainly Tolkien never mentions them in any of his later recollections, nor are they alluded to in any of the memoirs by his sons that I have seen. Carpenter may be relying here on information he received directly from John and Michael Tolkien (whose evidence, while valuable, is demonstrably wrong on some points). It is more probable that, given his stage background2 and not having the benefit of the History of Middle-earth series before him with its many examples of Tolkien working out difficulties foreseen in upcoming sections through plot-notes before undertaking the actual writing of those chapters, Carpenter mistook the plot-notes as cues for an oral performance.
More importantly, there is no evidence to support Carpenter’s assertion that the concluding chapters ‘were not even written in manuscript’; indeed, such evidence as there is, is to the contrary. For my argument that we should take young Christopher’s words literally as an accurate description of the T
hird Phase text (129 pages of typescript completed by a 13-page ‘fair copy’ interpolation and the 45 pages of Third Phase manuscript) as it stood between January 1933 and summer 1936 (see page xx). As a refutation of the claim that the story was abandoned because the ‘Winter Reads’ ceased, see Note 16 to the commentary following Chapter XII for evidence that Tolkien’s sessions of reading aloud to his children were still ongoing at the time Tolkien was preparing The Hobbit for publication in the summer of 1936.
Tolkien himself contradicts Carpenter’s claim that the manuscript ‘did not often leave Tolkien’s study’ when he noted that ‘the MS. certainly wandered about’ (Letters p. 21); over the course of some three and a half years he loaned it not only to C. S. Lewis but at least three other people that we know of: Rev. Mother St. Teresa Gale (the Mother Superior at Cherwell Edge), his graduate student Elaine Griffiths, and a twelve-to-thirteen-year-old girl (possibly Aileen Jennings, daughter of a family friend who attended the same church; Aileen and her younger sister Elizabeth [later a moderately well-known poet] both received presentation copies from Tolkien as soon as the book was published),3 and there might of course have been others. The Inklings might count among their number: Tolkien noted that the story had been read to the group but did not specify when this occurred;4 certainly before publication, and it seems likely that it would have been during the period when Tolkien was preparing the book for publication in 1936 – that is, after Dagnall had returned the ‘home manuscript’ to him but before he sent the completed typescript to Allen & Unwin for official submission in early October 1936. And of course he proved quite willing to loan it to Dagnall herself, who clearly borrowed it in an informal capacity, whatever hope she might have been able to hold out to him of putting in a good word regarding the book with her employers.
The History of the Hobbit Page 77
