The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

regions – Old Forest on way to Rivendell. South of River. They turn aside to call up Frodo Br[andybuck] [written above: Marmaduke], get lost and caught by Willowman and by Barrow-wights. T. Bombadil comes in.

      ‘South’ was changed from ‘North’, and ‘East’ is written in the margin.

      On a separate page (in fact on the back of my father’s earliest surviving map of the Shire) is a brief ‘scheme’ that is closely associated with these last notes; at the head of it my father afterwards wrote Genesis of Lord of the Rings’.

B.B. sets out with 2 nephews. They turn S[outh]ward to collect Frodo Brandybuck. Get lost in Old Forest. Adventure with Willowman and Barrow-wights. T. Bombadil.

      Reach Rivendell and find Bilbo. Bilbo had had a sudden desire to visit the Wild again. But meets Gandalf at Rivendell. Learns about [sic; here presumably the narrative idea changes] Gandalf had turned up at Bag-end. Bilbo tells him of desire for Wild and gold. Dragon curse working. He goes to Rivendell between the worlds and settles down.

      Ring must eventually go back to Maker, or draw you towards it. Rather a dirty trick handing it on?

It is interesting to see the idea already present that Bingo and his companions would turn aside to ‘collect’ or ‘call up’ another hobbit, at first named Frodo Brandybuck, but changed to Marmaduke (Brandybuck). Frodo Brandybuck also appears in initial drafting for the second chapter (p. 45) as one of Bingo’s three companions on his departure from Hobbiton. There are various ways of combining all these references to the three (or two) nephews, so as to present a series of successive formulations, but names and rôles were still entirely fluid and ephemeral and no certainty is possible. Only in the first full text of the second chapter does the story become clear (for a time): Bingo set out with two companions, Odo Took and Frodo Took.

      It is to be noted that Tom Bombadil, the Willow-man, and the Barrow-wights were already in existence years before my father began The Lord of the Rings; see p. 115.

On 11 February 1938 Stanley Unwin reported to my father that his son Rayner had read the first chapter and was delighted with it. On 17 February my father wrote to Charles Furth at Allen and Unwin:

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‘first chapters’. I have indeed written many. The Hobbit sequel is still where it was, and I have only the vaguest notions of how to proceed. Not ever intending any sequel, I fear I squandered all my favourite ‘motifs’ and characters on the original ‘Hobbit’.

      And on the following day he replied to Stanley Unwin:

      I am most grateful to your son Rayner; and am encouraged. At the same time I find it only too easy to write opening chapters – and for the moment the story is not unfolding. I have unfortunately very little time, made shorter by a rather disastrous Christmas vacation. I squandered so much on the original ‘Hobbit’ (which was not meant to have a sequel) that it is difficult to find anything new in that world.

But on 4 March 1938, in the course of a long letter to Stanley Unwin on another subject, he said:

The sequel to The Hobbit has now progressed as far as the end of the third chapter. But stories tend to get out of hand, and this has taken an unpremeditated turn. Mr Lewis and my youngest boy are reading it in bits as a serial. I hesitate to bother your son, though I should value his criticisms. At any rate if he would like to read it in serial form he can.

      The ‘unpremeditated turn’, beyond any doubt, was the appearance of the Black Riders.

       II

       FROM HOBBITON TO THE WOODY END

The original manuscript drafts for the second chapter of The Lord of the Rings do not constitute a completed narrative, however rough, but rather, disconnected parts of the narrative, in places in more than one version, as the story expanded and changed in the writing. The fact that my father had typed out the first chapter by 1 February 1938 (p. 40), but on 17 February wrote (p. 43) that while first chapters came easily to him ‘the Hobbit sequel is still where it was,’ suggests strongly that the original drafting of this second chapter followed the typing of the fourth version of ‘A Long-expected Party’.

      There followed a typescript text, with a title ‘Three’s Company and Four’s More’; this will be given in full, but before doing so earlier stages of the story (one of them of the utmost interest) must be looked at.

The first rough manuscript begins with Odo and Frodo Took (but Frodo at once changed to Drogo) sitting on a gate at night and talking about the events at Bag End that afternoon, while ‘Frodo Brandybuck was sitting on a pile of haversacks and packs and looking at the stars.’ Frodo Brandybuck, it seems, was brought in here from the rôle prepared for him in the notes given on pp. 42–3, in one of which he was replaced by Marmaduke (Brandybuck). Bingo, coming up behind silently and invisibly, pushed Odo and Drogo off the gate; and after the ensuing raillery the draft continues:

      ‘Have you three any idea where we are going to?’ said Bingo.

      ‘None whatever,’ said Frodo, ‘– if you mean, where we are going to land finally. With such a captain it would be quite impossible to guess that. But we all know where we are making for first.’

      ‘What we don’t know,’ put in Drogo, ‘is how long it is going to take us on foot. Do you? You have usually taken a pony.’

      ‘That is not much faster, though it is less tiring. Let me see – I have never done the journey in a hurry before, and have usually taken five and a half weeks (with plenty of rests). Actually I have always had some adventure, milder or less so, every time I have taken the road to Rivendell.’

      ‘Very well,’ said Frodo, ‘let’s put a bit of the way behind us tonight. It is jolly under the stars, and cool.’

      ‘Better turn in soon and make an early start,’ said Odo (who was fond of bed). ‘We shall do more tomorrow if we begin fresh.’

‘I back councillor Frodo,’ said Bingo. So they started, shouldering packs, and gripping long sticks. They went very quietly over fields and along hedgerows and the fringes of small coppices until night fell, and in their dark [?green] cloaks they were quite invisible without any rings. And of course being Hobbits they could not be heard – not even by Hobbits. At last Hobbiton was far behind, and the lights in the windows of the last farmhouse were twinkling on a hilltop a long way away. Bingo turned and waved a hand in farewell.

      At the bottom of a slight hill they struck the main road East – rolling away pale grey into the darkness, between high hedges and dark wind-stirred trees. Now they marched along two by two; talking a little, occasionally humming, often tramping in time for a mile or so without saying anything. The stars swung