The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  Several Beorns are found in English history and legend; cf. R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England [1952, 2nd edition 1970], pp. 34–8). The most prominent of these is probably the son of Ragnar Lodbrok who, with his brothers Hælfdene and Ivarr the Boneless, led the Danish invasions that almost overwhelmed Alfred the Great in the ninth century, establishing a Danish kingdom in England (the Danelaw) that endured for generations. Significantly, his name is alternately given as Bjorn, Baerin (shades of Beren, perhaps?), or Beorn, depending on the nationality of the source.

  11 The two elder brothers’ part-monstrous forms is the result of the evil stepmother, Queen White, having forced their pregnant mother to eat two bits of bear-meat taken from the slaughtered prince. Despite being warned by her lover before his death, Bera ate the first mouthful, resulting in Elgfrothi’s half-human form. She spat out all but a morsel of the second mouthful, resulting in Thorir’s almost-human form. Bera refused the third mouthful outright, resulting in Bothvar’s being fully human to the eye despite his father’s curse, the only heritage from which seems to be the bear-manifestation of his final battle.

  12 Note that Frothi (Froði) can also be transliterated Frodi; it is the same name that Tolkien anglicized as Frodo, his hero of The Lord of the Rings. Frodo Baggins’ name, however, probably comes not from Elgfrothi but from King Froði, in Icelandic tradition a legendary king of Denmark (grandson of the same Shield Sheafing about whom Tolkien wrote the poem referred to in Note 9 above), who reigned at the time of Christ’s birth and established a reign of peace: ‘Norsemen called it the Peace of Froði. No man injured another, even although he was confronted with the slayer of his father or brother, free or in bonds. Neither were there any thieves or robbers, so that a gold ring lay untouched for a long time on the Heath of Jelling’ (Prose Edda, p. 118).

  13 Note that this sunny future prophesied at the time of The Hobbit did not exactly come to pass in the actual future as revealed by LotR – 80 years later, the goblins seem worse than ever – unless we take it as applying to the period immediately after the end of the Third Age, when they have been scattered and decimated following Sauron’s downfall.

  14 To learn otherwise, we must go outside the book itself to Tolkien’s letters, where in a letter of 24th April 1954 to Naomi Mitchison, answering a number of questions that arose out of her reading one of the review copies, he devotes a paragraph to the subject:

  Beorn is dead; see vol. I p. 241.† He appeared in The Hobbit. It was then the year Third Age 2940 (Shire-reckoning 1340). We are now in the years 3018–19 (1418–19). Though a skin-changer and no doubt a bit of a magician, Beorn was a Man.

  —Letters, p. 178.

  † [Editor’s note: this is the passage regarding Grimbeorn the Old alluded to above.]

  It is only fair to note, however, that many of Tolkien’s conceptions shifted between the time he wrote The Hobbit and when he put the finishing touches on The Lord of the Rings some twenty years later; his emphatic pronouncement on Beorn’s fate may well be an afterthought rather than a deliberate linkage back to Scyld Scefing’s arrival, establishment of an eponymous people, and departure back into mystery.

  15 Stanley Unwin’s The Truth About Publishing, an insider’s look at the book publishing industry first published in 1926 and regularly updated over the next forty years, provides much insight into this and many other cost-conscious decisions made by Allen & Unwin when producing the book.

  16 J. S. Ryan, ‘Two Oxford Scholars’ Perceptions of the Traditional Germanic Hall’, Minas Tirith Evening Star, Spring 1990 issue, pages 8–11. I have since learned that this discovery was made independently by Wm H. Green as far back as 1969: in his dissertation, Green notes

  Beorn’s ‘wide hall’ seems to suggest the great halls in ancient Northern literature, Heorot in Beowulf and Thorhall’s house in The Saga of Grettir the Strong: except for the absence of weapons on the wall, Tolkien’s drawing of the hall in the hardback edition of The Hobbit (p. 131) very strongly resembles the illustration of ‘the interior of a Norse hall’ in E. V. Gordon’s Introduction to Old Norse (p. 27), a book which Tolkien helped to prepare for the press (p. ix).

  — Green, ‘The Hobbit’ and Other Fiction of J. R R. Tolkien: Their Roots in Medieval Heroic Literature and Language (dissertation, Louisiana State University, 1969), pages 131–2.

  Green’s discovery failed to make its way into the general pool of Tolkien scholarship, but he deserves credit for having recognized the connection even without the benefit of ever seeing the unpublished version of Tolkien’s illustration, which more strongly resembles the one in Gordon’s book.

  17 Eric Gordon (1896–1938) was first a student and then a colleague of Tolkien’s at Leeds, collaborating with him on an edition of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight [1925, revised edition 1930] that for years stood as the definitive edition of that great Arthurian poem. Gordon also contributed to Tolkien’s Songs for the Philologists [1936], a light-hearted collection of drinking songs in Old English, Old Norse, and Gothic set to nursery rhyme tunes. The two men planned several more collaborations and did a good deal of work on three more editions, of Pearl (a moving elegy in which a man meets his dead infant daughter in a dream-vision, believed to have been written by the same man who wrote Sir Gawain & the Green Knight), and two important Old English poems: The Wanderer (parts of which in time worked their way into The Lord of the Rings) and The Seafarer. After Gordon’s untimely death, two of these three projects (Pearl and Seafarer) were eventually completed by his widow, Ida Gordon.

  Hammond & Scull (Artist & Illustrator, pp. 122 & 124) attribute the illustration in Gordon’s book to EVG himself, but this is merely an educated guess; the actual artist is unknown.

  18 Since the publication of Ryan’s original article, it has come to light that Gordon’s drawing is based on an older one that had appeared in a number of academic works in the decades preceding it. Carl Hostetter discovered this earlier drawing, under the title ‘Nordische Halle’ [Norse Hall], in Die Altgermanische Dichtung [‘Old Germanic Poetry’] by Dr. Andreas Heusler (Berlin, 1923), page 109. But Heusler in turn credits the drawing to a German translation (1908) of Axel Olrik’s Nordisk Aandsliv i Vikingetid og tidlig Middelalder [‘Norse Intellectual Life during the Viking Era’, 1907], and when Arden Smith located Olrik’s book he discovered that Olrik in turn had taken the illustration from Den islandske Bolig i Fristatstiden [‘The Icelandic Dwelling in the Time of the Republic’] by Valtyr Gudmundsson (Copenhaven, 1894). Alerted by the linguists, Douglas Anderson managed to find a copy of Gudmundsson’s little book (an offprint from a piece published in the journal Folkelaesning the year before), which not only reproduces the drawing (page 12) but identifies the artist (page 26): E. Rondahl, who based it on a recently commissioned model in the National Museum of Copenhaven:

  . . . drawn by the painter E. Rondahl after a model which is found in the National Museum in Copenhagen and which shows a fully furnished Icelandic room from the time around the year 1000. This model was made in the year 1892 at the behest and expense of the Ministry of Culture under my [Gudmundsson’s] direction and with assistance from architect Erik Schiodte and the directors of the National Museum in exact agreement with the information that is found in old writings about Icelandic rooms from the aforementioned time. The model was then exhibited at the Columbian Exposition in Spain.† .

  † [I.e., the 1892 Columbian Historical Exposition in Madrid, not to be confused with the 1893 Columbian Exposition, better known as the Chicago World’s Fair.]

  For a concise account, see DAA.171. I am grateful to Carl Hostetter and Arden Smith for sharing their discovery with me and to Arden Smith for the preceding quote, both text and translation.

  19 The self-taught Joseph Wright rose from being a mill hand to Professor of Comparative Philology; see Carpenter pages 55–6. Tolkien studied under Wright at Oxford, and the older man was instrumental in convincing Tolkien to switch his focus from classical languages such as Latin and Greek
to Old English, Old Norse, and Gothic. Indeed, it had been Tolkien’s discovery of Wright’s Gothic grammar that had set him on the road to becoming a philologist himself (see Carpenter p. 37 and Letters p. 357). For more on Wright, see The Life of Joseph Wright by E. M. Wright [1932], which contains a letter from Tolkien (Vol. II p. 651), and also Virginia Woolf’s novel The Years [1937], which contains a lively fictional portrait of Wright and his family.

  20 That this is a field that interested Tolkien greatly is shown by Christopher Tolkien’s passing reference to ‘my father’s large collection of books on English place-names (including field-names, wood-names, stream-names, and their endlessly varying forms)’, from which he drew when selecting place-names in the Shire (Christopher Tolkien, letter to Hammond & Scull, cited in LotR: A Reader’s Companion [2005] page lvi).

  21 See, for example, ‘The Shores of Faëry’ [1915], part of Tolkien’s planned volume of poetry submitted to Sidgwick & Jackson in 1916, The Trumpets of Faery:

  East of the Moon, west of the Sun

  There stands a lonely hill;

  Its feet are in the pale green sea,

  Its towers are white and still . . .

  —BLT II.271.

  22 Tolkien also discusses ‘the oldest and deepest desire’, which he identifies as the Great Escape or Escape from Death – or, for immortals, Escape from Deathlessness (OFS.61). Hence, no doubt, the traditional ending for any number of classic fairy tales: ‘. . . and they lived happily ever after.’

  23 The Diamond Jubilee was an elaborate celebration held in 1897 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria’s coming to the throne – and, incidentally, to recognize her as the longest-reigning English monarch by passing the previous record set by George III (reigned 1760–1820).

  24 This passage was removed either when the books were re-written and expurgated by the American publisher in 1966 or shortly thereafter, or when it was further censored for the revised edition of 1988. The current text of the same chapter omits the entire paragraph (1988 Yearling edition p. 34).

  While ostensively an attempt to remove any offensive stereotypes (for example, virtually all pictures of Dolittle’s African friend Prince Bumpo were deleted),† the book was also changed in more subtle ways – for example, a comparison of Long Arrow, the world’s greatest naturalist, to ‘this young fellow Charles Darwin that people are talking about so much now’ (1922 edition page 71) was silently dropped, so that no reference to Darwin appears in the current edition (1988 Yearling edition, page 57). For an account of the 1966 stealth censorship, which was made without any public announcement (or, so far as I have been able to discover, notice on the copyright page), see Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn [2003]. For an attempted justification of the 1988 rewriting, see the short afterword by Christopher Lofting, Hugh’s youngest son, to the 1988 Yearling edition (pages 312–14).

  I am grateful to Gary Hunnewell’s presentation at the 1993 Mythcon for first making me aware of the changes between the original and later editions of the Dolittle books.

  † Compare 1922 edition pages 175 & 353 with 1988 Yearling edition pages 149 & 302.

  25 ‘Yes, the Doctor Dolittle books were central and deeply loved in our childhood, and we had the whole series, each new book as it appeared.’ – personal communication, Christopher Tolkien to John D. Rateliff, 23rd February 1993.

  26 For instance, Dolittle returns from the first of his famous journeys rich and settles down in his Puddleby home as the local eccentric bachelor at the end of the first book (Story, pp. 177–9) and the second book ends with another homecoming and a mention of arriving in time for four o’clock tea (Voyages, p. 364). Then too there is the possibly accidental but suggestive resemblance of little Stubbins and Baggins, the point-of-view character who is initially the least important member of the party. Ironically, the most Tolkienesque of all the Dolittle books, Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake, did not appear until 1948, the year after Lofting’s death, although a version of it had been serialized as early as 1923. Much of the similarities between Tolkien’s and Lofting’s works comes from shared experience of ordinary small-town or village English life,† a similar understated comic sensibility, an appreciation of the heroic potential of those who are decidedly unheroic in appearance and manner, and an unabashed fondness for an earlier, now-lost era just passing out of living memory. While not as direct an influence on Tolkien’s work as Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, there seems no doubt that Lofting’s series contributed its share to the ‘leaf-mould’ from which The Hobbit sprang.

  † Lofting was only six years older than Tolkien and, while he spent much of his adult life in America, also served in the Somme and like Tolkien not only was invalided home from the Western Front but began what would turn out to be his life’s work during that period; the first Dolittle book originated as letters written home to his children from the front.

  27 It does still appear in early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, but was removed before publication; see HME VII.131 & 149.

  It seems probable that Tolkien would have removed or altered this reference from The Hobbit as well had the 1960 ‘Fifth Phase’ of his work on that book reached this far into the text, but we can never know for sure.

  28 The original text simply notes that Radagast lives ‘near the borders of Mirkwood’; changes in black ink to the First Typescript (Marq. 1/1/57:4) add the detail that this is the southern border (i.e., nearer the Necromancer than Bladorthin advises Bilbo is safe to travel). This change was made before the Second Typescript, which incorporates it (1/1/38:5).

  Further changes bring Medwed/Beorn’s comment on Radagast closer into line with the published text, but interestingly enough here the first and second typescripts were revised differently, and some of the revisions that now appear on them were added after Tolkien had received the page proofs. Since this offers valuable proof that Tolkien sometimes went back and entered revisions onto earlier drafts (no doubt as safety copies, and to prevent proliferation of variant texts that could occur if he failed to remember a later change), I give the whole sequence here:

  Ms.: ‘Yes yes: not a bad fellow [added: I know him well].’

  Both Tss. as originally typed: ‘Yes, yes; not a bad fellow. I know him well.’

  1st Ts. (1/1/57:4), as revised in black ink: ‘Yes, yes; not a bad fellow, I know him well. [added: as wizards go. I see him now and again’, said Beorn]†

  Tolkien’s failure to cancel any of the existing text in the first typescript resulted in the following reading in the page proofs (Marq. 1/2/2: page 226): ‘Yes, yes; not a bad fellow, I know him well as wizards go. I see him now and again,’ said Beorn.

  This was changed by black ink corrections to the page proofs to read ‘Yes; not a bad fellow as wizards go, I believe. I used to see him now and again’ said Beorn, thus achieving the text of the published book (DAA.167). At this same point, ‘know him well’ was replaced in pencil by ‘believe’ in the First Typescript.

  † A pencilled addition is made at the same point in the Second Typescript (1/1/38:6), but it was later overwritten and cannot now be read. Later ‘I know him well’ was cancelled there in black ink and replaced by the same additional text as in the First Typescript, but the words ‘I believe’ do not appear.

  29 In Tolkien’s hierarchy of colours, Radagast’s humble ‘earthen brown’ signifies that he is a being of less manifested power than Saruman the White or Gandalf the Grey, or even the two Blue Wizards Tolkien later added to round out the Five, Alatar and Pallando.

  30 Here Tolkien seems to be thinking of the battle of the Last Alliance as a current event taking place as part of the War of the Ring.

  31 Note that Saruman, for example, uses the correct form ‘the Shire’ (‘What brings you now from your lurking-place in the Shire?’), although we later learn that he had the advantage of prior knowledge of the area through his spies. Interestingly enough, in the original draft of this encounter Rad
agast had correctly named the hobbits’ country ‘the Shire’ (HME VII.131), but Tolkien changed this for the published version.

  Also curious is the fact that Tolkien later made Radagast’s usage seem more reasonable in one of the texts for ‘The Hunt for the Ring’ [circa 1954–5], where we are told that Sauron’s torturers could get only two names out of Gollum: ‘That is why the Black Riders seem to have had two main pieces of information only to go on: Shire and Baggins’ (UT.342). Thus, when Radagast says ‘wherever they go the Riders ask for news of a land called Shire’ (LotR.274) he is being precisely accurate.

  32 In all versions of Gandalf’s story, Radagast’s importance as a faithful messenger is juxtaposed with Butterbur’s failure to keep his promise to deliver Gandalf’s message to Frodo telling him to leave the Shire at once. The negligence of the unreliable messenger almost brings about Sauron’s victory and is at least partly responsible for Frodo’s incurable wound suffered on Weathertop, whereas Radagast’s faithfulness as a messenger makes possible Gandalf’s escape, a crucial factor in the victory of the West in the war against Sauron.

  33 Tolkien does state that their one failure was ‘to search out [Sauron’s] hiding [place]’ after his fall (whether in the destruction of Númenor or at the end of the Second Age is unclear). We could choose to see this paralleled by Radagast’s establishing his home near Dol Guldur as an attempt to keep watch on that sinister site, believed by the White Council to be occupied by one of Sauron’s minions if not Sauron himself (Tale of Years entry for S.A.1100, LotR.1122). There seems to be an unstated agreement among the Istari that each will make a particular region his special concern – Radagast in Wilderland (Rhovanion), Gandalf in Eriador, Saruman in the Southlands once ruled by Gondor, and the other two either together or severally in the East (Rhûn), which in real-world analogy would encompass all of Asia.