The History of the Hobbit
Page 92
These notes are written on a page bearing the letterhead of the Oxford Circle of The Catenian Association, listing ‘Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien’ as the group’s Vice-President and giving his address as 20 Northmoor Road (a house the Tolkiens occupied from 1930 to 1947). According to a history of this brotherhood for Catholic laymen, Tolkien was one of the founders of the group’s Oxford Circle in 1944 and served as that branch’s first Vice-President. Accordingly, it seems likely that these notes date from 1944, although of course they could have been written later, anytime up to 1947 when he sent the typescript version of this material to Allen & Unwin.
44 This paragraph ends with a cancelled incomplete sentence: ‘With a sudden
In the original (first edition) version of this scene, Bilbo was not wearing the ring when he parted on neutral if not friendly terms from Gollum and so naturally it was not on his finger when he stumbled upon the goblins. The new version of the scene has to account for the facts that (a) Bilbo had to have had the ring on when he escaped from Gollum, and (b) he could not be wearing it when he encountered the goblins (or else they would not have seen him and the encounter would have been far less dramatic), yet (c) he had no reason to take it off in the meantime. Tolkien’s solution, to have the ring simply vanish from Bilbo’s finger, is the only time it seems to vanish from one place under its own power and reappear in another, unless we assume that it forced Bilbo to unconsciously slip it in his pocket without being aware of the act. It could not have come off accidentally, since someone feeling his way in total darkness with one hand on the wall would hold the other hand out in front, not put it in his pocket.
In any case, its attempt to get Bilbo killed by the goblins and itself into the hands of an orc (cf. Frodo’s glib words, ‘What . . . Wouldn’t an Orc have suited it better?’ – LotR.69), and hence eventually to the Necromancer (Sauron), is foiled by Bilbo’s luck (he is, after all, Mr. Lucky Number, has just been saved three times by luck during the riddle-game, and later admits ‘I have begun to trust my luck’ – cf. page 504) or presence of mind. The episode does, no doubt deliberately, call up echoes of its betrayal of Isildur (LotR.66 & UT.275) and, of course, its purposeful abandonment of Gollum: cf. Gandalf’s words to Frodo in ‘The Shadow of the Past’: ‘A Ring of Power looks after itself . . . It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it . . . The Ring was trying to get back to its master.† It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him . . . it caught poor Déagol . . . it had devoured [Gollum] . . . So now, when its master was awake once more . . . it abandoned Gollum’ (LotR.68–69).
† Note here Gandalf’s use of the term master, the same as that used within The Hobbit for Sauron as the Ring-lord: ‘even the Master who ruled them’. See also Text Note 12 above.
45 The typescript elaborates this slightly: ‘like an echo of Gollum’s misery’. This is the only time within The Hobbit, even the second edition text, where Bilbo’s being in danger of succumbing to the ‘Ring-sickness’, if we may so call it, is hinted at; everywhere else within the story it remains just a magic ring with no sinister connotations.
46 The text being replaced here read, in the first edition, ‘And he couldn’t guess in three goes. So I asked for my present, and he went to look for it, and couldn’t find it. So I said, “very well, help me to get out of this nasty place!” and he showed me the passage to the door. “Good-bye” I said, and I went on down.’
This entry and the two that follow it are crowded on the bottom of the last manuscript page (page 10, Ad.Ms.H.51); all are ink over pencil underwriting and probably slightly later than the fair copy text of the rest of the manuscript. The pencil has not been erased, and enough of it can be read under or around the ink to make it clear that it was simply drafting for the text that overwrote it, somewhat different in phrasing but close to it:
. . . me the way out. But he came at me . . . in the dark . . . it. And he sat down in the passage, and I could not get by so I jumped over him and escaped, and ran on down to the doorway . . . the goblins called the lower
The first of these three entries seems to have given Tolkien a good deal of trouble – not so much in finding what he wanted to say but in getting it to fit in as small a space as possible (even so, its inclusion wound up adding lines to this page; see Text Note 47 below). In addition to the ink-over-pencil text at the end of the last of these ten manuscript pages, two pencilled versions take up the bottom half of the last typescript sheet as well, along with pencilled notations as Tolkien added up letters, adjusting his totals with each change or deletion.
The first of the pencilled drafts reads
[what’s in my pocket >] So I [asked >] said ‘what about your promise?’ But he came at me [and I ran >] to kill me and I [cancelled: ran. But he missed me and I] dodged him. Then I followed him to the passage to the back-gate. and I jumped over . . .
before trailing off into illegibility. The next pencil draft, written below it, reads
So I said ‘what about your promise?’ But he came at me, to kill me, and [I ran >] I dodged him. Then I followed him [cancelled: to the passage] till he came [cancelled: to the passage] the way out, and I jumped over him, and ran down to the back-gate.
By contrast, although the typed final version in the typescript above this drafting has an ‘X’ beside it in the margin, it represents the second edition text exactly as it appears in the page proof and subsequently published book. The only difference between the ink-over-pencil text (page 739) and the typescript is the latter’s omission of ‘on’ from the last sentence, so that ‘jumped over him and escaped, and ran on down to the gate’ becomes ‘. . . and ran down to the gate’.
47 The usually vigilant typesetters at Unwin Brothers dropped the phrase ‘dodging guards’ when they inserted ‘jumping over Gollum’. Tolkien wrote in the missing words on the proof page but, although the printers did subsequently enter it, they did so in the wrong place, reversing the order of the phrases from what Tolkien intended, and this transposition persists into the published book, so that instead of ‘when he talked about jumping over Gollum, dodging guards, and squeezing through’ – that is, the events in their chronological sequence – we get ‘when he talked about dodging guards, jumping over Gollum, and squeezing through’ (second edition page 105; cf. DAA.140). The original first edition text had simply read ‘when he talked about dodging guards, and squeezing through’ (first edition page 100; cf. page 200).
It should be noted that the changes discussed in Text Notes 46 & 47 were the only ones that created an overrun, since the first expanded its paragraph from seven lines to ten and the second from three lines to four. Once they finally implemented both changes, the typesetters compensated for the expanded page 100/105 by moving one line to the bottom of the preceding page (new page 104, corresponding to old page 99) and two lines to the top of the following page (new page 106, corresponding to old page 101); by the time the second edition text reaches page 107, the second edition text once again corresponds page-by-page to the first edition text (in this case, to old page 102).
(ii)
Errors in ‘The Hobbit’. Misprints, or uncorrected verbal errors in the Ms.
[added in pencil: previously sent in]
In addition to a list of purely typographical errors (e.g., then > than, nay > any, find > fine, above stream > above the stream), most of which are noted by Hammond (Descriptive Bibliography, pages 4, 7, 16, & 22), Tolkien also wanted to take advantage of the opportunity offered by a new printing to address some issues arising from problems within The Hobbit itself. After listing seventeen misprints, Tolkien himself notes:
These are not important, except for precision. Though back p. 104 for black is unfortunate; while when [p.64] is required to match the runes on the map.TN1
Most of the various corrections Tolkien requests are includ
ed in short excerpts on the proofs sent back to him (Ad.Ms.H.59–61) so that the author could check them in context. This list of typos is then followed on the same sheet by the more significant category, with a new header written in ink:
(iii)
Other corrections.
On page 30, ll. 26,27 by inadvertence (that has annoyed some of the ‘fans’ who have solved all the runes) the text: five feet high is the door and three abreast may enter it does not correspond with the actual runes, and should read: five feet high the door and three may walk abreast. I think the map-maker did not read his text properly,TN2 but since his map cannot be altered, and his version is better, I hope the text can be adjusted.
The Map-maker has also placed on his map the words HERE OF OLD WAS THRAIN KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN, in defiance of the fact that his father [> Thrain’s father] Thror was still alive and dwarf-kings do not abdicate. I am afraid that nothing can here be done, except to point out in the Sequel that the Thrain referred to was a yet more ancient king.TN3
On pages 27 (l. 28) man; and 294 (l. 11) men. Arthur RansomeTN4 and others pointed out the desirability of not using man, men as ‘person, people’ in a story in which other rational creatures than Men appear. On p. 27 read ‘fellow’; and on p. 294 read ‘of us’.TN5
More annoying to me is the carelessness on p. 35 And your father went away on the third of March, a hundred years ago last Thursday. Now the Unexpected Party occurred on a Wednesday (as is stated). If this remark is true, then the Party must have occurred on March 9th. But that is impossible. Not only does it make the time far too long before the travellers reach the trolls on the night of May 31st (p. 41); but also they are supposed to start off the next morning, and that is ‘just before May’. For ‘third of March’ we must read ‘twenty-first of April’ – or regretfully abandon the comic precision of ‘last Thursday’. For since Bilbo’s birthday was the 22nd of September and fell that year on a Thursday, a party held on a Wednesday near the end of April must have occurred on the 20th [> 27th]. Read therefore either ‘on the third of March, a hundred years ago last month’ or ‘on the twenty first of April, a hundred years ago last Thursday’. [added in ?pencil: The latter is better.]
In the event, the printers adopted ‘the twenty-first of April, a hundred years ago last Thursday’ (Ad.Ms.H.60), although this did not end Tolkien’s attempts to reconcile the dates and moons of Bilbo’s story to the twin constraints imposed by the reduction of the original journey to a single year and also new complications introduced in The Lord of the Rings (e.g., the specific date of Bilbo’s birthday, which occurred while they were in Lake Town, and the time required to journey from Bilbo’s home to Rivendell). To this was later added the additional constraint of trying to adjust events written by the modern Gregorian calendar to fit the Shire-calendar instead; see ‘Timeline and Itinerary’ in the 1960 Hobbit, starting on page 815.
TEXT NOTES
1 That is, the text that currently read ‘Already the shadows were deepening about them, though far away through the trees and over the back tops of those growing lower down’ (first edition page 104 line 16) should instead have read ‘. . . over the black tops . . .’ Similarly, in Rivendell Elrond states that the moon-letters read ‘Stand by the grey stone where the thrush knocks’, whereas the runes on the actual map provided with the book say instead ‘. . . when the thrush knocks’. Since he could not change the printed map without great trouble and expense and did not wish to have a loremaster like Master Elrond appear careless or in error, the latter error was more significant than the former (which at worst would merely puzzle some readers). Both of these corrections appear in the proofs Tolkien was sent in 1950 (Ad.Ms.H.61) and in subsequent editions of the book from the fifth printing onward.
2 The ‘map-maker’ whose work Tolkien disparages here is, of course, himself, not the production departments at Unwin Brothers and Allen & Unwin. Compare his similar humorous self-deprecatory remarks in lectures at Oxford about his definitive edition of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, still in print more than eighty years after its first publication: ‘Tolkien and Gordon were quite wrong, quite wrong when they said that! Can’t imagine what they were thinking of!’ (Carpenter, Tolkien: A Biography, page 105).
The correction requested was indeed made, bringing the story’s text into agreement with the map’s runes: five feet high the door and three may walk abreast (Ad.Ms.H.60; DAA.52).
3 This paragraph was bracketed, usually a sign that the material so treated needs further attention, either cancellation or replacement. In this case, the point was addressed in the brief prefatory note Tolkien added to the book, starting with the second edition; see part (iv) below.
The matter was further developed in The Lord of the Rings, where ‘Thráin I’ became the dwarf-king who led his people away from Moria after the Balrog killed his father (Náin I) and grandfather (Durin VI), founding the Kingdom under the Mountain at the Lonely Mountain, and discovering the Arkenstone (thus explaining its hitherto puzzling title as ‘the Arkenstone of Thrain’ and explaining away the remnants in the text of the Thror-Thrain-Thorin/Thrain-Thror-Thorin confusion); see LotR.1109 & 1117. For the original drafts of this material, see HME XII.275–7 and Note 5 on HME XII.286.
4 For Ransome’s letter, and Tolkien’s reply, see Appendix IV.
5 The specific passages in question are Gandalf’s description of Bilbo as an ‘Excitable little man’ (changed in the page proofs to ‘Excitable little fellow’; Ad.Ms.H.60) and Thorin’s dying words ‘If more men valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold’ (changed to ‘If more of us valued . . .’; Ad.Ms.H.59).
Tolkien had suggested these two changes as far back as December 1937 (see Letters, p. 28), only three months after the book was first published; they finally appeared in the fifth printing (i.e., the second edition) of 1951.
(iv)
Prefatory Note
One additional significant piece of new writing associated with the second edition is the prefatory note Tolkien wrote to explain why this printing differed from those that had gone before. This note, which first appeared in the fifth printing (i.e., the second edition) of 1951, exists in two states, a long and a short version, each of which is preserved in fair copy manuscript and single-spaced typescript. I give first the fair-copy manuscript text of the long version (A) [Ad.Ms.H.87–8]. The typescript (B) [Ad.Ms.H.89] based upon this has a number of variations in phrasing, the more significant of which are given in the Text Notes that follow.
This reprint has been revised. Some small inaccuracies have been corrected: such as the failure of the text on pages 30 and 64 to translate precisely the runes on Thror’s Map; and the date twenty first of April, previously on page 35 given wrongly as the third of March. The last error was due to a misreading of the difficult hand and language of the original diary [cancelled: or memoir].TN1
More important is the matter of Chapter Five. I have thought it desirable to give now the true story of the ending of the Riddle Game, in place of the somewhat ‘altered’ account of it that Bilbo gave to his friends (and put down in his diary). This weighed on his conscience, as notes in his private papers show, and he was uneasily aware that Gandalf did not believe it.TN2 His story – that Gollum had promised to give the Ring to him as a gift, if he won the game – seemed of course to the wizard most unlikely from the first, and in the light of later developments [cancelled: was] simply incredible. But it was not until many years after Bilbo’s journey that he pressed the old hobbit to tell him the truth; for the truth about the Ring had become desperately important.
If ever it proves possible to arrange extracts from the Red Book and present them in English to students of hobbit-lore,TN3 it will be made clear how it was that Bilbo, as honest a hobbit by nature as could be found, came to put out a false tale; and how by that game at the dark roots of the Misty Mountains the history of the Western world and the end of the Third Age was changed. For the Red Book of Westmarch, not long ago rediscovered and deciphered, contains
a chronicle (of great length and by many hands) of that perilous time,TN4 as it was seen by hobbits; and its earlier parts are largely made up of extracts from Bilbo’s writings, including the various secret or private papers that he [handed >] gave to his heir.
However, in the meanwhile none of this need trouble those who in this edition make their first acquaintance with hobbit-lore.TN5 It has little bearing on the tale of the dragon-hoard. Yet I felt that some immediate explanation was due to those who may possess older copies, and might suspect me of wilfully [rewriting >] altering the story, in one version or the other. I have not. The older version is the account in Bilbo’s diary;TN6 the later is the truth as told to Gandalf and revealed in the Red Book. And there for the present I will leave the matter.
I will end with one further note, on a point that several readers have raised. Thorin Oakenshield was the son of Thráin, and Thráin was son of Thrór King under the Mountain. But upon the Map is written here of old was Thrain King under the Mountain Yet dwarf-kings do not abdicate, and Thror was still alive when Smaug put an end to the kingdom for that time. Nonetheless the Map is not at fault. Names [added: often] repeat themselves in dwarvish dynasties, and the genealogies of the Red Book show that the Thráin referred to was Thráin I, a distant ancestor of Thrór, who had long before ruled the same realm, before his people passed on to the remoter mountains of the North. Thrór and his son were thus in fact re-entering old [cancelled: incomplete] delvings of their kin when, driven out of the North again, they returned to the Lonely Mountain of Erebor.TN7 Dwarves had been long in the world and known much troublous history before the days of Thrór,TN8 and when he wrote of old he meant it: in the ancient past remembered still in those deep throatedTN9 songs of lore that the dwarf-kin sang in their secret tongue at feasts to which none but dwarves were bidden. Some say that they sing still.