The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  11 The fact that Tolkien himself had adopted Broceliand into his own mythology helps explain in part his rejection of Charles Williams’ notably eccentric use of it in the latter’s Arthurian cycle. It also casts an interesting light on Tolkien’s comment in ‘On Fairy-Stories’ on the diminishment (both physically and imaginatively) of fairies in stories of the late sixteenth century: ‘. . . the great voyages had begun to make the world seem too narrow to hold both men and elves . . . the magic land of Hy Breasail in the West had become the mere Brazils, the land of red-dye-wood’ (OFS.11) – ‘Breasail’ being an Irish variant on the Breton ‘Broceliand’.

  Within Tolkien’s myth, an echo of the name survived even after its displacement by Beleriand as the name of the Great Lands, in the name ‘Ossiriand’, assigned to the extreme eastern portion of the former Broseliand; see also HME III.160, where Christopher Tolkien notes that ‘Ossiriand’ is twice pencilled alongside lines in ‘The Lay of Leithian’ as a suggested replacement for ‘Broseliand’.

  12 Dr Judith Priestman, author of the Bodleian catalogue, notes that the proper name of this picture (item #209 in the exhibition) is ‘Halls of Manwe on the Mountains of the World above Faerie’ and dates it to July 1928 (Priestman p. 74). Since as we have seen Tolkien probably began The Hobbit in the summer of 1930 (cf. ‘The Chronology of Composition’, p. xiii), this image would still have been quite fresh in his mind at the time he wrote the Pryftan Fragment and drew this first map.

  13 For more on the relationship between Gnomish (i.e., the language of the Gnomes or Noldor), Noldorin (the slightly later form of the same language), and Sindarin (the final form of that language, now conceived not as the tongue brought back to Middle-earth by the Noldor but that of the Sindar who were already there), see p. 562 & ff. Technically the language was known as ‘Noldorin’ at the time Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, but in order to avoid confusing the nonphilological I have generally used ‘Gnomish’ to mean the early (BLT-era) form of the language, as attested in The Book of Lost Tales and The Gnomish Lexicon, ‘Noldorin’ to mean the same language as reflected in the manuscript of The Hobbit from the early 1930s, and ‘Sindarin’ to mean the ‘classical’ form of the same language as it is reflected in the published Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings.

  For more on this ever-evolving language, see The Gnomish Lexicon (Parma Eldalamberon vol. XI [1995]) [Gnomish]; The Lhammas or ‘Account of Tongues’ (HME V.167–98 [1987]) and Early Noldorin Fragments (Parma Eldalamberon vol. XIII [2001]) [Noldorin]; A Gateway to Sindarin by David Salo [2004] [Sindarin], and the essay ‘Gnomish Is Sindarin’ by Christopher Gilson (Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth [2000], pages 95–104), which testifies to the continuity of the language despite shifting conceptions about its speakers.

  Chapter I(b) The Bladorthin Typescript

  1 The hobbit point of view regarding food is masterfully summed up on the first page of the first draft for the ‘New Hobbit’ (the sequel that eventually turned into The Lord of the Rings), where Tolkien notes that Bilbo was famous among his fellow hobbits for having ‘disappeared after breakfast one April 30th and not reappeared until lunchtime on June 22nd in the following year’ (HME VI.13). The opening paragraphs of the Bladorthin Typescript establish that Bilbo is a thoroughly typical hobbit in his concern for steady meals and his frequent laments, as the story progresses, over short rations.

  2 That Swift’s bitingly satiric invention had come to be considered appropriate children’s fare (albeit usually in carefully bowdlerized versions), a shift that seems to have occurred during the Victorian era, is also attested to by T. H. White’s modern-day sequel, Mistress Masham’s Repose [1946].

  3 Tolkien was of course well acquainted with Grahame’s work; in ‘On Fairy-Stories’ he cites the opening sentence of The Wind in the Willows (‘this excellent book’) approvingly and castigates A. A. Milne’s adaptation, Toad of Toad Hall [1929] (‘some children that I took to see [it] brought away as their chief memory nausea at the opening . . .’) – OFS, Note A (pages 66–7). Nor was this a passing enthusiasm; when the letters from which Grahame composed the book were published by Grahame’s widow in 1944 as First Whispers of ‘The Wind in the Willows’, long after Tolkien’s children had grown up, Tolkien wrote telling his son Christopher about reading the reviews and notes ‘I must get hold of a copy, if poss.’ (JRRT to CT, letter of 31 July and 1 August 1944; Letters p. 90). Finally, when a sharp-eyed proofreader queried the use of ‘learn’ instead of ‘teach’ in the scene at Bree (‘Bob ought to learn his cat the fiddle . . .’), Tolkien rejected the proposed correction and scribbled in the margin: ‘no indeed! Mr Badger in the Wind in the Willows would learn you better!’ (Ms. annotation to Marq. 3/2/14 page 51).

  It is perhaps also worthwhile to note that when Tolkien’s fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis wanted to make a point about The Hobbit, he could find no better way to do so than by a comparison with The Wind in the Willows:

  The Hobbit escapes the danger of degenerating into mere plot and excitement by a very curious shift of tone. As the humour and homeliness of the early chapters, the sheer ‘Hobbitry’, dies away we pass insensibly into the world of epic. It is as if the battle of Toad Hall had become a serious heimsókn and Badger had begun to talk like Njal†

  —Essays Presented to Charles Williams [1947], ‘On Stories’, p. 104.

  † the titular character of The Saga of Burnt Njal.

  4 At first sight, fairies would seem, like the stone-giants, to be a race peculiar to The Hobbit, not found in The Lord of the Rings. But this is not the case: the usage in The Book of Lost Tales establishes ‘fairy’ as a synonym for ‘elf’. Fairy should not, by the way, be confused with ‘fay’, the term applied in The Book of Lost Tales to beings created before the world – i.e., the angels, spirits, and elementals later grouped together under the general rubric of ‘Maiar’. Thus Melian is a ‘fay’ (as, in all probability, are Goldberry and Bombadil; the one a nymph, the other a genius loci), while the elves of Rivendell are ‘fairies’.

  5 This late shift from the original ‘married into a fairy family’ to the more specific ‘taken a fairy wife’ is interesting, adding as it does yet another example to the long list of faerie brides in Tolkien’s works. In every case of such marriages in Tolkien, it is the wife who belongs to the older, more powerful, and nobler race: Melian the Maia and Thingol the elf-king, Aredhel the elf-princess and Eöl the dark elf, Lúthien and Beren, Idril and Tuor, Mithrellas (Nimrodel’s handmaiden) and Imrazôr the Númenórean (parents of the first Lord of Dol Amroth; Unfinished Tales p. 248), Arwen and Aragorn, and even the belle dame sans merci of ‘Ides Ælfscýne’ (Songs for the Philologists, pages 10–11 [1936]). In terms of folklore analogues, Tolkien clearly prefers the Thomas Rymer theme to Tam Lin.

  6 In a 1968 interview with Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, Tolkien compared his hero to Babbitt, the main character in Sinclair Lewis’s 1922 novel of the same name, and suggested that Lewis’s character might have been a subconscious influence: ‘Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place’ (‘The Man Who Understands Hobbits’, Daily Telegraph Magazine, 22nd March 1968, p. 32); see p. xxxvii, Note 2.

  7 Lalia Took’s story is told in a letter to A. C. Nunn, c. 1958–9 (Letters p. 294–5).

  8 The Tolkien children’s fondness for The Marvellous Land of Snergs, and the probability that this work influenced The Hobbit in some details (primarily the characterization of the hobbits themselves), is discussed in the Introduction to Douglas Anderson’s The Annotated Hobbit (DAA 6–7). Tolkien’s own high regard for this now-forgotten story is recorded in Unwin’s memorandum of October 1937, reproduced in Note 9 on pp. xxxix–xl.

  9 This tale appears in the same collection as what seems to be Tolkien’s favorite Dunsany tale, ‘Chu-bu and Sheemish’ (cf. Letters pp. 375 & 418), as well as ‘The Hoard of the Gibbelins’, the story that probably inspired his poem ‘The Mewlips’ (see pp. 370 & 376).

  10 Wod
ehouse’s breezy style, perfected just before World War I, remained unchanged throughout his long career: the Bertie and Jeeves stories are said to be the longest running series by a single author writing about the same characters, with very little evolution from the first story [published 1914] to the last [written in 1974]; see Kristin Thompson’s Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes [1992]. Other notable nicknames among Bertie (Bertram) Wooster’s friends include Gussie (Augustus) Fink-Nottle, Barmy (Cyril) Fotheringay-Phipps, Boko (George Herbert) Fittleworth, Tuppy (Hildebrand) Glossop, and Catsmeat (Claude) Potter-Pirbright, as well as others more along the lines of The Lord of the Rings’ Merry (Meriadoc) Brandybuck and Pippin (Peregrin) Took, such as Chuffy (Marmaduke† ) Chuffnell and Biffy (Charles Edward) Biffen.

  † Marmaduke was in fact the original name in the early Lord of the Rings drafts for the character who eventually became Merry; cf. HME VI.98–104.

  11 Geographical locations such as Bilbo Cemetery in Lake Charles, Louisiana; Lake Bilbo near Warren, Arkansas; and Bilbo Island on the Tombigbee River in Alabama all seem, so far as I have been able to discern, to have drawn their names not from the literary character but from the family name; I have been able to trace a ‘Bilboe’s Landing’ on the Tombigbee as far back as 1809.

  12 Replicas of a variant of this game are still sold in museum shops and at colonial reconstructions; see www.historylives.com/toysandgames.htm.

  13 The reference is to the following passage from the published book: ‘. . . Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat’ (DAA. 32).

  14 These comments come from an essay Tolkien wrote circa 1970 in response to seeing Pauline Baynes’ art for a poster-map of Middle-earth. In addition to ten vignettes on the map itself, Baynes added a headpiece at top showing all nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring (plus Bill the pony) and a tailpiece at bottom showing the Black Riders, Gollum, Shelob, and a horde of orcs. Although Tolkien greatly admired Baynes’ work on the whole, he disliked this particular piece so much that, in addition to writing this essay he had the top and bottom cropped off the original painting when he had it framed for presentation to his longtime secretary, Joy Hill (personal communication, May 1987). The original essay is now in the Bodleian Library (Tolkien Papers A61 a, fol. 1–31).

  15 In a 1958 letter to Forrest J. Ackerman commenting on Morton Grady Zimmerman’s script for a proposed film of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien emphasized this point: ‘Gandalf, please, should not “splutter”. Though he may seem testy at times, has a sense of humour, and adopts a somewhat avuncular attitude to hobbits, he is a person of high and noble authority, and great dignity. The description on 1 p. 239† should never be forgotten’ (Letters p. 271).

  † ‘Gandalf was shorter in stature than [Elrond and Glorfindel]; but his long white hair, his sweeping silver beard, and his broad shoulders, made him look like some wise king of ancient legend. In his aged face under great snowy brows his dark eyes were set like coals that could leap suddenly into fire.’ (LotR, 1st edition, vol. 1 page 239)

  16 One distinctive feature of English fairy tales, as opposed to German (Grimm) or French (Mother Goose), is their fascination with giants, a motif going back at least as far as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Arthur’s battle with the giant of Mont St. Michel. The two most popular of all English fairy tales were ‘Jack the Giant Killer’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.

  17 Although Bilbo does not recognize him, the wizard and hobbit are already acquainted, as indicated by Bilbo’s memories of Bladorthin’s behavior and by Bladorthin’s comment on the day of the Unexpected Party: ‘This is not like you Bilbo’ (p. 34) – obviously he could not comment that the hobbit was acting out of character unless he knew him well enough to predict his normal behavior.

  Many years later, Tolkien returned to this scene and rewrote it (very much to Bilbo’s disadvantage) from the wizard’s and dwarves’ point of view; see ‘The Quest of Erebor’ in Unfinished Tales pp. 321–36, DAA Appendix A pp. [367]–77, and HME XII pages 282–9.

  18 We hear little more of these other beneficiaries (or victims, depending on one’s point of view) of Bladorthin’s attention, but Tolkien probably had this passage in mind when he finalized the Took family tree at the very end of the LotR period (i.e., c. 1952–4). The wizard was a close friend of Bilbo’s grandfather, The Old Took (‘the title Old was bestowed on him . . . not so much for his age as for his oddity’, according to one draft passage in The Lord of the Rings; HME VI.245), and at least two of Bilbo’s Took uncles had adventures that sound suspiciously like something Bladorthin/Gandalf had a hand in: Hildifons ‘went off on a journey and never returned’ – a ‘there’ without a ‘back again’, so to speak – and Isengar is ‘said to have “gone to sea” in his youth’. In addition, a third brother, Hildigard, is laconically said to have ‘died young’, although no details are forthcoming (LotR.1137). Nor was Bilbo the only one of the Old Took’s grandchildren to go adventuring; one of Bilbo’s cousins – described in the published book as ‘a great traveller’ (DAA.145) – fared far enough afield to have ‘visited the forests in the north of Bilbo’s country’ (p. 203), an area wild enough to be frequented by wolves. In retrospect, we can speculate that the wizard had already used up the more adventurous members of the preceding generation and was forced to rely upon Mr. Baggins to round out the party.

  We should perhaps also note the phrase ‘lads and lasses’, suggesting as it does that Bladorthin was an equal-opportunity enchanter, responsible for young hobbits of both sexes going off on adventures; the all-male cast of The Hobbit might thus be due largely to chance rather than design.

  19 It will be observed that the motif of hobbits’ fear of water in The Lord of the Rings is another later accretion totally absent from this book: a hydrophobe would hardly propose barrelling down an underground river, and Bilbo shows no qualms about riding by boat from Lake Town across Long Lake and up the River Running (or indeed to staying in Lake Town, a city suspended above deep water).

  20 The idea of hobbit stowaways on ships sailing to Valinor remained in the text until the third edition of 1966, when the passage was altered to read ‘. . . anything from climbing trees to visiting elves – or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores!’

  21 Indeed, it is likely that here we see the first spark of an idea to which Tolkien later returned – that The Silmarillion would be a collection made by Bilbo at Rivendell from stories told to him there, just as Eriol the Wanderer and later Ælfwine of England had heard the ‘lost tales’ in the Cottage of Lost Play. A hint of this can be found in the ‘three large volumes’ of Bilbo’s Translations from the Elvish described in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings – ‘a work of great skill and learning’ ‘almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days’ ‘in which . . . he had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written’ (LotR.26–7; see also LotR.1023).

  22 The suffix -wen elsewhere means maiden, girl, daughter, in names such as Morwen (‘daughter of night’, a name for the planet Jupiter) and Urwen/Urwendi, the sun-maiden who guards the last fruit of the Golden Tree (and in the much later Arwen, Elrond’s daughter); originally Qenya (the language that later evolved into High-Elven, or Quenya) rather than Gnomish (the language that eventually became Sindarin), the suffix was gradually adopted into the latter, where it displaced the earlier -win or -gwen. Thus Túrin’s mother’s name underwent a transformation from Mavwin in ‘Turambar and the Foalóke’, one of the Lost Tales (BLT II) to Morwin and then Morwen in ‘The Lay of the Children of Húrin’ (HME III).

  Similarly, -dor, one of the most stable of Tolkien’s linguistic inventions, meant ‘land’ or ‘country’ in the sense of an inhabited land, as far back as the Gnomish Lexicon (Parma Eldalamberon XI.30), a meaning that persisted right through to the ‘classical’ period of the published Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion in names such as Dor Lómin, Dorwinion, Dor-na-Fauglith, Mordor, and Gondor.

  Finally, it is po
ssible that -or, an early suffix meaning ‘fay’ in the Gnomish Lexicon, is present here; cf. tavor ‘a wood fay’ from taur wood + -or fay (Parma Eldalamberon XI.69). A similar but apparently unrelated suffix has the rough meaning ‘one who is the master of X’ – e.g., Gnomish ind (‘house’) > indor (‘master of house’) and Qenya nand (‘field, acre’) > nandor (‘farmer’) (ibid., pp. 51 & 59).

  23 I have learned since writing this section that Tolkien linguist Chris Gilson has examined the possible meaning of the name Bladorthin in an early issue of Vinyar Tengwar (issue 17, pages 1–2 [May 1991]), arriving at similar conclusions regarding the name’s appropriateness to Gandalf the Grey through somewhat different channels.

  24 Bombur is not Tolkien’s only obese character; other examples of his rather cruel sense of humor on this point (of a piece with the period) are Fatty Bolger in The Lord of the Rings and especially Fattie Dorkins in Mr. Bliss. We should note, however, that at least two of Tolkien’s heroes – Farmer Giles and Bilbo himself – are distinctly on the tubby side.

  25 Much, much later Tolkien jotted down as a note to himself two questions:

  What happened to the musical instruments used by the Dwarves at Bag-end?

  Why did they bring them to B-End?

  Even thirty years later, he was unable to come up with a satisfactory answer; see p. 811.

  26 This quarrel is discussed in more detail in ‘The King of Wood and Stone’; see pages 411–13 following Chapter IX.