The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

huge creaking wain with great lumbering tow-haired Men on it that caused quite a commotion. It bore a large B under a crown.³ It could not get across the bridge by the mill, and the Men carried the goods on their backs up the hill – stumping on the hobbit road like elephants. All the beer at the inn vanished as if down a drain when they came downhill again. Later in the week a cart came trotting in in broad daylight. An old man was driving it all alone. He wore a tall pointed blue hat and a long grey cloak. Hobbit boys and girls ran after the cart all the way up the hill. It had a cargo of fireworks, that they could see when it began to unload: great bundles of them, labelled with a red G.

      ‘G for grand,’ they shouted; and that was as good a guess as they could make at its meaning. Not many of their elders guessed better: hobbits have rather short memories as a rule. As for the little old man,⁴ he vanished inside Bilbo’s front door and never reappeared.

      There might have been some grumbling about ‘dealing locally’; but suddenly orders began to pour out from Bag-end, and into every shop in the neighbourhood (even widely measured). Then people stopped being merely curious, and became enthusiastic. They began to tick off the days on the calendar till Bilbo’s birthday, and they began to watch for the postman, hoping for invitations.

      Then the invitations began pouring out, and the post-office of Hobbiton was blocked, and Bywater post-office was snowed under, and voluntary postmen were called for. There was a constant stream of them going up The Hill to Bag-end carrying letters containing hundreds of polite variations on ‘thank-you, I shall certainly come.’ During all this time, for days and days, indeed since September [10th >] 8th, Bilbo had not been seen out or about by anyone. He either did not answer the bell, or came to the door and cried ‘Sorry – Busy!’ round the edge of it. They thought he was only writing invitation cards, but they were not quite right.

Finally the field to the south of his front door – it was bordered by his kitchen garden on one side and the Hill road on the other – began to be covered with tents and pavilions. The three hobbit-families of Bagshot Row just below it were immensely excited. There was one specially large pavilion, so large that the tree that stood in the field was inside it, standing growing in the middle.⁵ It was hung all over with lanterns. Even more promising was the erection of a huge kitchen in a corner of the field. A draught of cooks arrived. Excitement rose to its height. Then the weather clouded over. That was on Friday, the eve of the party. Anxiety grew intense. Then Saturday September [20th >] 22nd⁶ actually dawned. The sun got up, the clouds vanished, flags were unfurled, and the fun began.

      Mr Baggins called it a party – but it was several rolled into one and mixed up. Practically everybody near at hand was invited to something or other – very few were forgotten (by accident), and as they turned up anyhow it did not matter. Bilbo met the guests (and additions) at the gate in person. He gave away presents to all and sundry – the latter were those that went out again by the back way and came in again by the front for a second helping. He began with the youngest and smallest, and came back again quickly to the smallest and youngest. Hobbits give presents to other people on their birthdays: not very expensive ones, of course. But it was not a bad system. Actually in Hobbiton and Bywater, since every day in the year was somebody’s birthday, it meant that every hobbit got a present (and sometimes more) almost every day of his life. But they did not get tired of them. On this occasion the hobbit-fry were wildly excited – there were toys the like of which they had never seen before. As you have guessed, they came from Dale.

      When they got inside the grounds the guests had songs, dances, games – and of course food and drink. There were three official meals: lunch, tea, and dinner (or supper); but lunch and tea were marked chiefly by the fact that at those times everybody was sitting down and eating at the same time. Drinking never stopped. Eating went on pretty continuously from elevenses to six o’clock, when the fireworks started.

      The fireworks of course (as you at any rate have guessed) were by Gandalf, and brought by him in person, and let off by him – the main ones: there was generous distribution of squibs, crackers, sparklers, torches, dwarf-candles, elf-fountains, goblin-barkers and thunderclaps. They were of course superb. The art of Gandalf naturally got the older the better. There were rockets like a flight of scintillating birds singing with sweet voices; there were green trees with trunks of twisted smoke: their leaves opened like a whole spring unfolding in a few minutes, and their shining branches dropped glowing flowers down upon the astonished hobbits – only to disappear in a sweet scent before they touched head hat or bonnet. There were fountains of butterflies that flew into the trees; there were pillars of coloured fires that turned into hovering eagles, or sailing ships, or a flight of swans; there were red thunderstorms and showers of yellow rain; there was a forest of silver spears that went suddenly up into the air with a yell like a charging army and came down into The Water with a hiss like a hundred hot snakes. And there was also one last thing in which Gandalf rather overdid it – after all, he knew a great deal about hobbits and their beliefs. The lights went out, a great smoke went up, it shaped itself like a mountain, it began to glow at the top, it burst into flames of scarlet and green, out flew a red-golden dragon (not life-size, of course, but terribly life-like): fire came out of its mouth, its eyes glared down, there was a roar and it whizzed three times round the crowd. Everyone ducked and some fell flat. The dragon passed like an express train and burst over Bywater with a deafening explosion.

‘That means it is dinner-time,’ said Gandalf. A fortunate remark, for the pain and alarm vanished like magic. Now really we must hurry on, for all this is not as important as it seemed. There was a supper for all the guests. But there was also a very special dinner-party in the great pavilion with the tree. To that party invitations had been limited to twelve dozen, or one gross (in addition to Gandalf and the host), made up of all the chief hobbits, and their elder children, to whom Bilbo was related or with whom he was connected, or by whom he had been well-treated at any time, or for whom he felt some special affection. Nearly all the living Baggins[es] had been invited; a quantity of Tooks (his relations on his mother’s side); a number of Grubbs (connections of his grandfather’s), dozens of Brandybucks (connections of his grandmother’s), and various Chubbs and Burrowses and Boffins and Proudfeet – some of whom were not connected with Bilbo at all, within the memory of the local historians; some even lived right on the other side of the Shire; but they were all, of course, hobbits. Even the Sackville-Bagginses, his first cousins on his father’s side, were not omitted. There had been some coolness between them and Mr Baggins, as you may remember, dating from some 20 years back. But so splendid was the invitation card, written all in gold, that they felt it was impossible to refuse. Besides, their cousin had been specializing in food for a good many years, and his tables had a high reputation even in that time and country, when food was still all that it ought to be, and abundant enough for all folk to practise both discrimination and satisfaction.

All the 144 special guests expected a pleasant feast; though they rather dreaded the after-dinner speech of their host. He was liable to drag in bits of what he called ‘poetry’; and sometimes, after a glass or two, would allude to the absurd adventures he said he had had long ago – during his ridiculous vanishment. Not one of the 144 were disappointed: they had a very pleasant feast, indeed an engrossing entertainment: rich, abundant, varied, and prolonged. The purchase of provisions fell almost to zero throughout the district during the ensuing week; but as Mr Baggins’ catering had depleted most of the stores, cellars, and warehouses for miles around, that did not matter much.

      After the feast (more or less) came the Speech. Most of the assembled hobbits were now in a tolerant mood – at that delicious stage which they called filling up the ‘corners’ (with sips of their favourite drinks and nips of their favourite sweetmeats): their former fears were forgotten. They were prepared to listen