The History of the Hobbit
Page 80
] You can easily see that the Master had not earned his position for nothing. For the moment the people quite forgot their idea of a new king, and turned their angry thoughts towards Thorin and his company. Hate flared up against them, and wild and bitter words were shouted. Some of those who had sung the old songs loudest were now heard as loudly crying that the dwarves had sent the dragon down upon them deliberately!
‘Fools!’ said Bard. ‘Why waste words or hate on those unhappy creatures. Doubtless they have perished in fire before Smaug came to us.’ Yet even as he spoke, the thought of the fabled treasure of the mountain came into his heart, and he fell suddenly silent; and he thought of the Master’s words, and of Dale rebuilt and filled with golden bells, if he could but find the men.
At last he spoke again. ‘This is no time, Master, he said for [
This passage marks the point at which the detail of Dale’s ‘golden bells’ enter the story, although the destroyed city had been linked with bells as far back as the first poem (Bladorthin Typescript, page 37; DAA.45), all accounts of Smaug’s attack (page 72; DAA.56), and Balin’s sad memories upon seeing the ruins (where the mention of bells first appears in the typescript, contrast page 472 with DAA.258). The contrast between alarm bells and these golden bells recalls Edgar Poe’s poem ‘The Bells’ [1849], which successively contrasts the sounds and associations of silver, golden, brass, and iron bells (delight, happiness, alarm, and melancholy, respectively); the juxtaposition of golden bells ringing on happy occasions immediately followed by brazen alarm bells sounding warning at times of sudden danger/disaster is particularly suggestive.
4 A cancelled page (1/1/16:10) survives that represents an earlier draft of the Third Phase text that originally followed this passage. Originally the third page in the Third Phase text, as with the text given in Text Note 3 above it survives because its blank verso was used shortly thereafter (in this case, to become page 9 [= 1/1/16:6]).
as will follow me.’ Then he strode off to help in the ordering of the camps, and in the helping of the injured; [added, then cancelled: but first he sent messengers as swift as
But now the talk ran ever among the people of the fabled hoard of the mountain that lay now without a guardian. And men spoke of [the] recompense and to spare for all their harm that they should get from it; and it cheered them much in their plight. And that was fortunate, for their night was bitter and miserable. Shelters could be contrived for few, and there was little food. Many took ill then and afterwards died, who had escaped unhurt from the town. In the days that followed there was much sickness and hunger, and even Bard would have had a hard task to order the people, for now he took the lead [> . . . and hunger. Bard now took the lead] and ordered things as he wished, though always in the Master’s name. But he had a hard task to govern the people and direct the preparations for [the] rebuilding of their town. Probably the most of them would have perished in the winter, if other help had not been to hand
The spies of the wood elves [> Their spies] had sent news of the dwarves’ northward journey to their King; and he was as astonished as the Master of the town had been to learn of it, but he expected no other ending than their death in the jaws of the dragon.
5 The image of rich, warm lands to the South, the source of unimagined luxuries, that underlies The Hobbit (and to a lesser extent some passages in the early legendarium) is very much in keeping with the Old English, Gothic, and Scandinavian view of the Mediterranean. Cf. my commentary on the trade in the wine of Dorwinion (Chapter IX) and also the reference in Chapter X to ‘the trade that came up the great river from the south’.
6 ‘the winter that now hurried after autumn’: This reference, which survives into the published book (DAA.311), shows that this scene is set in the days immediately before the onset of winter, in keeping with the shift of Durin’s Day to the last full moon of autumn. For the problems this creates in the story’s chronology, see Text Note 13 following Chapter XI.
7 Again the text that follows was preceded by a cancelled page (1/1/16:11), now the verso of new page 8 [= 1/1/16:5]; this earlier draft was once the fourth page of the Third Phase text, following immediately the text given in Text Note 4 above.
When news reached him of the rousing of the dragon and of fire upon the mountain-top, he became alarmed, and fear for his woods fell on him; but he thought at least he had heard the last of Thorin Oakenshield.
But soon other messengers came in rowing madly up the Forest River, and they told of the fall of Esgaroth and the death of Smaug. Then he thought the time had come to move. ‘It is an ill wind that blows no one any good’ he said; for he too had not forgotten the legend of the wealth of Thror.
So now he led forth all the host he could muster, or that would follow him beyond the eaves of their beloved forest. It was a great army of bowmen and spearmen, and they were robed in green and brown, and their going was exceedingly swift. Some were sent with speed North towards the Mountain; some he led bearing great store of goods down the river towards the lake. These had a long march for they were not used to the marshes and the lands beyond the forest, and they had not boats or rafts enough to carry them. Yet elves are quick and light-footed, and [in] but four days from the fall of Smaug he reached the lake-shores, and the unhappy men were glad indeed to welcome him; and ready (as he had expected) to make any bargain for the future in return for his help.
[So >] This is how it came about that while many, both men and skilful elves, were left behind upon the [<?lake> >] shores, with the women and children, busily felling trees [and gathering >] for the making of huts against the winter, and beginning under the direction of the Master to re-plan and re-fashion a town like the one destroyed, yet in a place removed further north, and planned [> designed] even more fairly and more large
While this corresponds in general to the more polished text that replaced it, some interesting details are worth noting. The inelegant detail of elves frantically rowing up-river was dropped, replaced by swift-footed messengers and, more significantly, birds ‘that loved his folk’, a parallel to the ravens and thrush who are shortly thereafter telling Thorin & Company the same news, and more. The statement that he brings ‘all . . . that would follow him beyond the eaves of their beloved forest’ suggests for the first and only time that he is not an absolute monarch; there are commands he could give that at least some of his people would not obey. This assumes, of course, that all the elves who march under his banner belong to his kingdom: the description that ‘they were robed in green and brown’ recalls the ‘elfin folk all clad in green and brown’ (BLT II.234) that Beren summoned to lead against the dwarven host in ‘The Nauglafring’, ambushing them and taking away all the treasure those dwarves had just claimed. It seems possible, even likely, that ‘the brown Elves and the green’, a phrase used three times in ‘The Nauglafring’ (BLT II.237, 240, & 242), distinguishes between the elves who dwelt in the caves of Artanor (Doriath) with King Tinwelint/Thingol (= the brown elves or wood-elves) and those wanderers who live in the woods (later in revisions to the 1930 Quenta specifically identified as the Green Elves of Ossiriand, wandering the woods in the southeast corner of Beleriand just as the wood-elves of The Hobbit live in the northeast corner of the area shown on the Wilderland map). The dichotomy is maintained in the 1926 ‘Sketch’ (‘the brown and green Elves of the wood’, HME IV.33) but vanishes thereafter. Finally, the
mercenary aspect of the elvenking’s charity, explicit in this draft, was still present but de-emphasized in the main Third Phase manuscript that replaced it and in the published book (DAA.312–13). Indeed, the replacement text goes out of its way to stress that he diverted his host from marching straight to the mountain to instead helping the lake-men ‘because he was a lord of good and kindly race’ – a statement not in harmony with his role as projected in the Plot Notes associated with the end of the Second Phase and the first indicator that Tolkien has shifted the book’s attitude towards the wood-elves to something much more favorable than their depiction in the Second Phase texts.
8 This passage initially read ‘Now the king divided his forces because of his old friendship with the men of the lake; some he sent westward to skirt the marshes and come more direct upon the Mountain and because he was a lord of good and kindly race turned his march and went so[uth]’.
9 Although this more nearly approaches the text of the published book (DAA.313), that familiar text is not achieved until the continuation of the First Typescript (compiled when Tolkien was preparing the book for submission to Allen & Unwin in summer-autumn 1936), where it appears as first typed exactly as in the printed book (1/1/64:6, revised typescript pagination page ‘140’).
10 The following was written neatly in the left margin in black ink, but it was neither completed nor was the specific point at which it was to be inserted indicated; presumably it would have replaced part of the paragraph just given, probably the second sentence: ‘Three nights and days they dwelt in the watch-chamber, and did not dare to go far afield. Ever they grew more puzzled, and though they debated ever the matter of’.
11 Compare the equivocation of the Parson in Farmer Giles of Ham, when faced with an inscription on a sword he cannot make out: the reader is told ‘he could not make head or tail of them’, but rather than admit this, ‘to gain time’ he tells the sword’s owner that ‘[t]he characters are archaic and the language barbaric . . . [a] little closer inspection will be required’ (FGH 32). In the Second Phase version of this passage (page 618), there was no hint of Bilbo’s deliberate evasiveness on this point.
The idea that different animals all have their own individual languages harkens back to the Dr. Dolittle books, which were favorites of the Tolkien children; see page 266ff.
12 This variant spelling of the more usual Carc appears only this once. The first typescript, which also gives this line as a later (ink) addition, has the more usual ‘old Carc and his wife’ (1/1/65:1). The second typescript (1/1/46:1) includes ‘old Carc and his wife’ (who never receives a name in any version of the tale) as first typed.
13 This sentence marks the first mention of Dain Ironfoot; for more on this remarkable figure, see page 702ff.
The statement that Thorin has kin in the mountains of the north first appears here, and remains unchanged into the published text (cf. DAA.318). The later account in The Lord of the Rings, however, seems to contradict this by stating that after the great cold-drake killed Thror’s father and brother ‘most of Durin’s Folk abandoned the Grey Mountains’ for the Lonely Mountain and Iron Hills, an event that the Tale of Years states took place some one hundred and eighty years before Smaug overthrew the Kingdom Under the Mountain, or some three hundred and fifty years before Thorin’s return (LotR.1124–26).
14 Tolkien inserted an end-bracket in the text at this point; the only significance I can see for this is that this marks the end of later typescript page ‘142’ (1/1/65:2) and was, of course, very near the point at which the Second Phase manuscript had broken off. It thus presumably marks a pause in the creation of the later typescript in summer-autumn 1936.
15 There is no mention of this bridge in their first view of the ruined valley in Chapter XI (page 472), but Thorin mentions it near the end of (original) Chapter XIV and they ford the spot where it once stood on their way to Ravenhill; see page 583. The support-stones for this bridge are also visible in several pictures Tolkien drew of the Lonely Mountain, such as ‘The Front Door’ (plate X [top]), but not in the black and white drawing ‘The Front Gate’ which appeared in the published book (this picture’s point of view being from the valley floor, where the bridge would be behind the viewer).
16 This phrase, reminiscent of the ‘mortal men, doomed to die’ in the Ring-verse of the sequel, suggests that the dwarves are not mortal in the same sense. This agrees with what is said of the dwarves in The Book of Lost Tales (‘. . . a strange race and none know surely whence they be . . . Old are they, and never comes a child among them’ – BLT II.223–4). See ‘The Halls of Waiting’ starting on page 720.
17 Changed by later ink to ‘Some of the younger dwarves also were moved, & muttered that they would things had fallen out otherwise . . .’
18 ‘The heart is bold that looks on gold’: cf. Text Note 14 following Chapter XIV on page 588.
19 Tolkien wrote only the first and last (rhyming) word on this line, leaving the space between them blank. Similarly, the next two lines were left incomplete.
20 These two half-lines were replaced by
No more the dwarves
shall suffer wrong.
21 I.e., ‘friend and k[in]’.
In the right margin above this point, Tolkien has jotted down several rhyming words as an aid to composition: bar, car, <?char>, far, jar, shar, scar, tar. He was apparently unable to come up with a suitable third line with this rhyme (to match with afar and are) and so dropped both of the earlier lines from the final poem.
22 Tolkien underlined the words same question in pencil and wrote ‘repeat’ above them, indicating that Thorin’s actual words were to be given here, as indeed they are in the typescript that followed (1/1/65:5), although not phrased exactly the same as on the previous day; compare DAA.320 and 322.
23 As the reference to ‘dwarvish hearts’ shows, Tolkien has now reversed his original idea about dwarves and dragon-gold; instead of being at least partially immune to the dragon-sickness, he now sees dwarves as particularly susceptible to it. See the commentary (‘Dragon-sickness’) following Chapter XIV, starting on page 595.
24 This passage was slightly revised to read ‘he had an eye for many another thing . . . and about each were wound . . .’. Tolkien also added at the end of the paragraph ‘Also he remembered the Elvenking with small kindness and was little pleased to see the elves among’ but cancelled this, no doubt when he incorporated it into the discussion that followed. Finally, Tolkien seems to have originally begun to write ‘the sorrows of his people’ before changing this to ‘of his race’.
25 Thorin’s rejection of charity, which should be a legitimate concern whatever the legitimacy or otherwise of all the other claims, is a warning sign of just how deeply sunk in dragon-sickness he has fallen. The Elvenking’s delaying his expedition to seize the treasure in order to help the victims of the disaster at Lake-town gives him the high moral ground in the Third Phase text over Thorin, who will not even repay the charity he received a few weeks earlier when he was similarly cold, hungry, destitute, and homeless. Note also that in contrast to the final Second Phase Plot Notes, here the Elvenking makes no claim but merely supports the claims of Bard and the lake-men.
26 This sentence was revised several times, probably to eliminate the problematic concept of ‘Smaug’s heirs’:
To the treasure of my people no one has a claim because Smaug who stole it from us also robbed him of life or home. The treasure is not Smaug’s that from it his evil deeds should be paid for
This second sentence was then cancelled in its entirety and replaced with the following in the left margin:
The treasure [is not >] was never [Smaug’s >] his that his evil deeds should be amended with [> his evil deeds should be atoned for with] a share of it.
27 Tolkien later answered this question for us with the story of Scatha the Worm, which can be found in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings. After Fram of the Éothéod [Horse-folk], one of the ancestors of Eorl the Young, kills ‘the gr
eat dragon of Ered Mithrin’ [Grey Mountains], the dwarves claim his hoard, which had been stolen from them by the dragon (as evidence of which, note that Merry’s horn, which came from that hoard, ‘was made by the Dwarves’; LotR.1014). Fram ‘would not yield them a penny, and sent to them instead the teeth of Scatha made into a necklace, saying “Jewels such as these you will not match in your treasuries, for they are hard to come by.” Some say that the Dwarves slew Fram for this insult. There was no great love between Éothéod and the Dwarves’ – LotR.1102. Note that this incident probably did not involve Durin’s folk, since these events took place more than a century before Thorin I removed from Erebor to the Grey Mountains.
28 Thorin’s rejection of the appeal to pity, especially on those in desperate need who had aided him when his folk were in similar straits, is a second warning sign of his moral corruption.
29 This paragraph replaced Bard’s original, much simpler, response:
‘We will give you time to repent your words’ said Bard and then he departed.
This type of expansion in the course of writing is typical of the Third Phase manuscript.
30 Added in the bottom margin, and marked for insertion at this point: ‘We speak unto Thorin Thrain’s son calling himself King under the Mountain.’
31 Changed to ‘but if you would have friendship and honour in the lands about you, as your sires had of old, then you will give also somewhat of your own beside.’ The detail that Bard and his allies requested one-twelfth of the treasure remained constant through the typescripts and various editions of the published book, but there is no indication how they determined that this figure would represent the proportion of Girion’s wealth to Thror’s hoard.
32 Attacking a herald, even symbolically like this, was of course a gross violation of the heroic code and hence significant. It shows that even if Thorin is within his rights to withhold charity and not to negotiate under threat, and quite justified in his resentment of the Elvenking, he is still, in Gandalf’s words, ‘not making a very splendid figure as King under the Mountain’ (see page 668).