Chapter XIX
The End of the Journey
As before, no break separated the paragraphs in the original manuscript (Third Phase manuscript page 38; Marq. 1/1/19:8), but Tolkien later inserted ‘Ch’ in pencil here to mark where he had decided that the final chapter should begin.
[So homesick was he that even the House of Elrond could not long delay him. He called there of course and spoke with the elves > It was already May and >] It was on May the 1st that he came back to that valley of the last homely house. Again it was evening and as he rode down beside the wizard the elves were still singing in the trees. As soon as Bilbo and Gandalf [came >] appeared they burst into song very much as before
Put in a song like the one on p 28.TN1
The page which follows, providing a very neat handwritten copy of the poem that ultimately appeared here, was interpolated later, since all the remaining pages of the Third Phase manuscript that follow (Third Phase manuscript pages 39–45; Marq. 1/1/20:2–8) were later renumbered to accommodate the addition of a new page ‘39’ bearing the poem (1/1/20:1).
O where are you going,
so late in returning?
The river is flowing,
the stars are all burning!
O whither so laden
so sad and so dreary?
Here elf and elf-maidenTN2
Now welcome the weary
Come, tra-la-la lally,
Come back to the valley
The stars are far brighter
than gems without measure,
The moon is far whiter
than silver in treasure;
The fire is more shining
on hearth in the gloaming
Than gold won in mining!
So cease from your roaming!
Come tra-la-lalley
come back to the valley!
The dragon is withered
His bones are now crumbled,
His armour is shivered,
his splendour is humbled.
Though swords shall be rusted,
and crown and throne perish,
with strength that men trusted
and wealth that they cherish
Here [grass] is yet growing
And leaves are yet swinging,
the white water flowing
and elves are all singing
Come tra la lally
come back to the valleyTN3
A warm welcome was made there in the house of Elrond. and [added:
Written following the next paragraph but marked for insertion here, following ‘quiet and drowsy’:
Most of the tale he knew, for he told much of it to the wizard himself on the homeward way. But
So he learned that Gandalf had been to a council of good wizards; and that the Necromancer had been driven from his hold in the south of Mirkwood, and had fled to other lands. ‘The North is freed from that horror for many an age’ said G. ‘yet I wish he were banished from the world’. [cancelled: Also one thing that had often puzzled him was explained – the trolls had been traced by Elrond. They had plundered > been
‘It would be well indeed’ he said [> said Elrond] ‘but I fear that will not be [> come about] in this age of the world, or for many after.’ After the tale of their journeys there were other tales, and yet more tales, tales of long ago, and tales of new things, and tales of no time at all: till Bilbo’s head fell on his chest, and he
He woke to find himself in bed, and the moon shining through an open window. Below the elves were still singing.TN6
[Song]
This instruction is written in pencil in the top margin of Third Phase manuscript page 40 [>41] (=1/1/20:3); the actual text of the poem appears on a separate sheet later inserted into the manuscript, as may be seen from its being given a sequence of page numbers (39 > 40 > 41):
Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together!
The wind’s in the tree-top the wind’s in the heather;
The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower,
Bright are the windows of night in her tower!
Dance all ye joyful, now dance all together!
Soft is the grass, and let foot be like feather!
The river is silver, the shadows are fleeting,
Merry is Maytime and merry our meeting.
Sing we now softly, and dreams let us weave him,
Wind him in slumber and there let us leave him!
The wanderer sleepeth, now soft be his pillow!
Lullaby, lullaby, alder and willow!
Hush, hush, oak ash and thorn!
Sigh no more pine till the wind [that >] of the morn;
Fall Moon, dark be the land,
Hushed be all water, till dawn is at hand!TN7
The original manuscript continued with Bilbo’s reaction to the elven singing:
‘Well merry people’ said Bilbo looking out. ‘What time under [> by] the moon is this? Your lullaby would wake a drunken goblin. Yet I thank you.’
‘And your snores would wake a stone dragon’ [they answered. ‘Yet for your >] ‘Yet we thank you’ they answered with laughter. ‘It is but midnight; and you have slept now since early evening. Tomorrow perhaps you will be cured of weariness.’
‘Maybe. A little sleep [goes >] does a great cure in the house of Elrond’ said he. ‘But I will take all I can get. Good night fair friends.’ And he went back to bed, and slept till late morning.
Weariness fell from him soon in that house and he had many a merry jest and danceTN8 with the elves of the valley. Yet even that place could not long delay him now. He thought ever of his home.TN9
In but [> After but] three days therefore he said farewell to Elrond and giving him many gifts of gold and receiving much he rode away on a fine morning with Gandalf.TN10 But even as they left the valley the sky darkened behind them [> in the west] and wind and rain came up to meet them.
‘Merry is may time’ said Bilbo as the rain beat on his face ‘but <?our> back is to legends and we are coming home. I suppose this is a first taste of home coming.’
‘There is a long road yet’ said Gandalf.
‘[But >] Yet it is the last road’ said Bilbo.
Soon they reached the ford in the river with the steep bank and down this they slithered.
Gandalf did not like the look of the river.
The river was somewhat swollen, and as they plunged in soon came above their feet as they sat their ponies. They were but halfway across when Bilbo’s pony slipped on a stone and floundered into the water.TN11
Soon they were over the ford and had left the wild behind. At each stage in the road Bilbo recalled the happenings of a year ago (which now seemed so [far >] long ago).TN12 It was not long before they came to where they had laid the troll-gold [added: they had hidden]. ‘I have enough to last me my time’ said Bilbo. ‘[This had better be >] You had better take this Gandalf.’
‘Share and share alike’ said Gandalf ‘You may have more needs than you expect.’ So they slung the bags [> gold in bags] upon the ponies and after that their going was slow, for most of the time they walked.
But the weather soon mended & as it drew near to June became warm and hot. The land was green and fair about them.
And as all things come at last to an end even this story a day came when they came to the mill by the river and passed the bridge and came right back to Bilbo’s own door.TN13
‘Bless me what is going on’ said he! For there was a great commotion and people were thick round the door and many were coming and going in & out – not even wiping their feet as Bilbo noticed with disgust.
If he was surprized they were more surprized still. He had arrived back in the middle of an auction! Nearly all his things had [added: alread
y] been sold for little money or old songs and his cousins the Allibone BagginsTN14 were busy measuring the rooms to see if their furniture would fit.
Bilbo in fact was ‘Presumed Dead’ and not everybody that said so was sorry to find the presumption wrong.
The return of Bilbo in fact created quite a [comm[otion] >] disturbance both under hill and across the water and was a great deal more than a nine days wonder.TN15 The legal bother indeed lasted for months [> years]. It was a long time indeed before Mr Baggins was admitted to be alive, and even then, to save time, he had to buy back a lot of his own furniture. The Allibone Baggins never fully admitted it [added in pencil: that he was genuine], and at any rate they were never on speaking terms with him again.
Indeed Bilbo found he had lost
[Nothing he > He was no longer res[pectable] >] It is true that for ever after he remained an elf-friend and had the honour of dwarves wizards and all such folk as ever passed his way; but he was no longer respectable.TN16
Indeed he was held by all the hobbits to be ‘queer’ – except his nephews & niecesTN17 on the Took-side and even they were not encouraged in the friendship by their elders.
I am sorry to say he did not mind very much. [His sw[ord] >] He was perfectly happy [> quite content]; and the sound of his own kettle on the hearth was ever after more musical than it had been in the quiet days before the unexpected party.TN18 His sword he hung on the mantlepiece. His armour was arranged on a stand in the hall [added in pencil in left margin: till he lent it to a museum]. His gold and silver was large[ly] [> mostly] spent in presents both useful and extravagant and his [added: invisible] ring was chiefly employed when unpleasant callers came.TN19
He took to writing poetry and visiting the elves and [
At this point a line was drawn across the page and the rest of this manuscript page (Third Phase manuscript page 43 [> 44]; Marq. 1/1/20:6) cancelled. I give the original text here:
One day [when >] long long after
put in visit of Gandalf
So the prophecy came true?
Yes of course – don’t disbelieve in them because you helped to bring them about.
To this is added in hasty pencil:
After all you don’t really suppose [that you contrived all your adventures and all your escape[s] >] that all your adventures and all your escapes were
Thank goodness said Bilbo.
All this material, forming as it does the rough draft for the brief epilogue, was cancelled and replaced by an additional sheet (Marq. 1/1/20:7–8) of fair copy text (Third Phase manuscript pages 45 and 45 [> 46]) written in a very neat hand:
One day [> autumn evening] long afterwards Bilbo was sitting in his study writing his memoirs – he thought of calling them ‘There and Back Again’TN20 – when there was a ring at the door.
It was Gandalf and a dwarf; and the dwarf was actually Balin.
‘Come in, come in!’ said Bilbo, and soon they were settled in chairs by his fire. If Balin noticed that Mr Baggins’ waistcoat was more extensive (and had real gold buttons) he [> Bilbo] also noticed that Balin’s beard was several inches longer, and his jewelled clothes [> belt] of great magnificence. They fell to talking of their times together of course, and Bilbo asked how things were going in the Lands of the Mountain. It seemed they were going very well.
Bard had rebuilt a town in Dale and men had gathered to him from the Lake and from South and West, and all the valley had become tilled again and rich, and the desolation was now filled with birds and blossom in spring and fruit and feasting in autumn. And Lake-town had been refounded more prosperous than ever, and much wealth went up and down the Running River; and there was friendship in those parts between elves and dwarves and men. The Master had come to a bad end; for Bard had sent much gold for the help of the lake-people, and being of the kind that [is >] easily catches such disease he fell under the dragon-sickness and took it [> the gold] and fled with it, and died of starvation in the waste. ‘The new Master was [> is] of [more >] wiser kind,’ said Balin ‘and very popular; for of course he gets most of the credit of the present prosperity. They say that in his day the river runs with gold.’
‘Then the prophecies of the old songs have [accidentally >] come all right by [added: happy] accident,’ said Bilbo.
‘Of course!’ said Gandalf. ‘How else would they come true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies because you had a share in bringing them about yourself? After all you don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and all your wonderful escapes were managed by you yourself, do you? You are a very fine person, Mr Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world, after all.’
‘Thank goodness!’ said Bilbo and pushed over the tobacco-jar.TN21
END
Roads go ever ever on
under [> over] rock and under tree
by caves where never sun has shone
by streams that never find the sea.
[R>] over grass and over stone
and under mountains in the moon
over snow by winter sown
and through the merry flowers of JuneTN22
Roads go ever ever on
under cloud and under sun [> star],
But [never >]
Beyond the seas to <?Gondobar>TN23
[Yet feet that wandering have gone]
[turn at last to home afar.]
Eyes that [have >] fire and sword have seen
and terror walking in the wildTN24
Look at last on meadows green
and trees and hills they long have known.TN25
* * * * *
This represents the end of the composite typescript/manuscript of the completed story (i.e., the Third Phase) which Tolkien reached in December 1932 or, more likely, January 1933, loaning it to C. S. Lewis by February. For more on its ‘wander[ing] about’ over the next three and a half years, see page 635. For the well-known story of how the book came to Allen & Unwin’s attention and the subsequent stages that led to its acceptance and publication, see Carpenter (Tolkien: A Biography, pages 180–1), Anderson (DAA.12–13, including a facsimile of ten-year-old Rayner Unwin’s reader’s report on DAA.14), Hammond (Descriptive Bibliography, pages 7–8), and especially Elaine Griffith’s account.TN26
It is probable, however, that this had not been Allen & Unwin’s first contact with Tolkien. The project which Dagnall travelled to Oxford to pick up from Griffiths on the day that she was persuaded by Griffiths, who had not actually yet done the promised work, to ask to borrow Professor Tolkien’s ‘frightfully good’ story rather than return to London empty-handed, was probably the Clark Hall Beowulf. This prose translationTN27 had originally been published in 1901 by Swan Sonnenschein, a firm that had later [1911] merged with George Allen & Sons, which in turn had been acquired [1914] by young Stanley Unwin and renamed George Allen & Unwin. Although reprinted in 1911 and popular among students who wanted to avoid actually reading Beowulf in the original (an attitude Tolkien deplored), it now badly needed updating, and Stanley Unwin or one of his staff (e.g., Charles Furth) seems to have approached Tolkien to see if he would undertake the job (see Hammond, Descriptive Bibliography, page 296, who dates this contact to ‘probably in early or mid-1936).TN28 Tolkien, who expresses a low opinion of Clark Hall’s translation in his own Prefatory Remarks to the eventual reprint (Clark Hall, page xv), declined the job (possibly because he had already translated Beowulf himself into both verse and prose) but with typical generosity seems to have recommended his former graduate student, El
aine Griffiths, for the job. Griffiths eventually proved unequal to the task (throughout her long career she published very little, concentrating her energies instead on teaching) and two years later the project reverted back to Tolkien, who passed it along to fellow Inkling Charles Wrenn; Wrenn completed the work within a year and the revised edition, with Tolkien’s essay on Old English prosody, appeared in 1940. An updated version followed in 1950 that was still being reprinted thirty years later (Hammond, page 299), though its longevity owes far more to the presence of Tolkien’s essay than the quality of Clark Hall’s translation or Wrenn’s notes.
The acceptance, publication, and success of The Hobbit quickly led to Allen & Unwin’s decision to publish more Tolkien: Mr. Bliss (with the proviso that he needed to redraw the pictures into a more easily, and cheaply, reproducible format), Farmer Giles of Ham (as soon as he could flesh out the volume with the addition of similar stories), and most of all a sequel to The Hobbit (as soon as he could write it). They probably envisioned the latter either as stories about Bilbo’s further adventures, rather like Lofting’s Dr. Dolittle books – to which Tolkien objected that ‘he remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long’ (DAA.361) left very little wiggle room for further exploits (cf. Letters p. 38) – or else as a series of stories each about a different hobbit, which is in fact what they eventually got. In the event all these projects were delayed in their publication for many years, but within three months of The Hobbit’s publication in September 1937 Tolkien had begun work on ‘The New Hobbit’, which at one point he thought of calling The Magic Ring (a handwritten title-page bearing this title survives among the papers at Marquette, Marq. 3/1/2:2). Eventually the sequel, far from being the thinner repetition of Bilbo’s adventure he had feared (‘For nearly all the “motives” [i.e., motifs] that I can use were packed into the original book’ – Letters p. 38) was such an engrossing project that it took him fourteen years to complete, and picked up on all the unanswered questions from the earlier book – Gollum, the ring, the Necromancer, Moria, et al. (the chief exception being no mention of Beorn’s earlier history), as well as elements from The Lost Road, the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion, Tolkien’s ‘fairy poetry’, his scholarly work, &c., until it became the definitive masterpiece of his subcreated world.
The History of the Hobbit Page 85
