The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

Bilbo won the contest, Gollum held to his promise, and went back in his boat to his island in the lake to find his treasure, the ring which was to be his present to Bilbo. He could not find it, for Bilbo had it in his pocket, and coming back to Bilbo he begged his pardon many times: ‘He kept on saying: “We are ssorry: we didn’t mean to cheat, we meant to give it our only present, if it won the competition”.’ “‘Never mind!” he [Bilbo] said. “The ring would have been mine now, if you had found it; so you would have lost it anyway. And I will let you off on one condition.” “Yes, what iss it? What does it wish us to do, my precious?” “Help me to get out of these places”, said Bilbo.’ And Gollum did so; and Bilbo ‘said good-bye to the nasty miserable creature.’ On the way up through the tunnels Bilbo slipped on the ring, and Gollum at once missed him, so that Bilbo perceived that the ring was as Gollum had told him – it made you invisible.

      This is why, in the present text, Gandalf says ‘I think it certain that Gollum knew in the end that Bilbo had got the ring’; and why my father had Gandalf develop a theory that Gollum was actually ready to give the ring away: ‘he wanted … to hand it on to someone else … I suppose he might have put it in [the goblins’] path in the end … but for the unexpected arrival of Bilbo … as soon as the riddles started a plan formed in his mind.’ This is all carefully conceived in relation to the text of The Hobbit as it then was, to meet the formidable difficulty: if the Ring were of such a nature as my father now conceived it, how could Gollum have really intended to give it away to a stranger who won a riddle contest? – and the original text of The Hobbit left no doubt that that was indeed his serious intention. But it is interesting to observe that Gandalf’s remarks about the affinity of mind between Gollum and Bilbo, which survived into FR (pp. 63–4), originally arose in this context, of explaining how it was that Gollum was willing to let his treasure go.

Turning to what is told of the Rings in this text, the original idea (p. 75) that the Elves had many Rings, and that there were many ‘Elfwraiths’ in the world, is still present, but the phrase ‘the Ring-lord cannot rule them’ is not. The Dwarves, on the other hand, at first said not to have had any, now had seven, each the foundation of one of ‘the seven hoards of the Dwarves’, and their distinctive response to the corruptive power of the Rings enters (though this was already foreshadowed in the first rough draft on the subject: ‘some say the rings don’t work on them: they are too solid.’) Men, at first said to have had ‘few’, now had three – but ‘others they found in secret places cast away by the elf-wraiths’ (thus allowing for more than three Black Riders). But the central conception of the Ruling Ring is not yet present, though it was, so to say, waiting in the wings: for it is said that Gollum’s Ring was not only the only one that had not returned to the Dark Lord (other than those lost by the Dwarves) – it was the ‘most precious and potent of his Rings’ (p. 81). But in what its peculiar potency lay we are not told; nor indeed do we learn more here of the relation between the invisibility conferred by the Rings, the tormenting longevity (which now first appears), and the decline of their bearers into ‘wraiths’.

The element of moral will required in one possessed of a Ring to resist its power is strongly asserted. This is seen in Gandalf’s advice to Bilbo in the original draft (p. 74): ‘don’t use it for harm, or for finding out other people’s secrets, and of course not for theft or worse things. Because it may get the better of you’; and still more expressly in his rebuke to Bingo, who said that it was a pity that Bilbo did not kill Gollum: ‘He could not do so, without doing wrong. It was against the rules. If he had done so he would not have had the ring, the ring would have had him at once’ (p. 81). This element remains in FR (pp. 68–9), but is more guardedly expressed: ‘Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so.’

      The end of the chapter – with Gandalf actually himself proposing the Birthday Party and Bingo’s ‘resounding jest’ – was to be quickly rejected, and is never heard of again.

       IV

       TO MAGGOT’S FARM AND BUCKLAND

      The third of the original consecutive chapters exists in complete form only in a typescript, where it bears the number ‘III’ but has no title; there are also however incomplete and very rough manuscript drafts, which were filled out and improved in the typescript but in all essentials left unchanged. Near the end the typescript ceases (note 16), not at the foot of a page, and the remainder of the chapter is in manuscript; for this part also rough drafting exists.

      I again give the text in full, since in this chapter the original narrative was far removed from what finally went into print. Subsequent emendation was here very slight. I take up into the text a few manuscript changes that seem to me to be in all probability contemporary with the making of the typescript.

      The end of the chapter corresponds to FR Chapter 5 ‘A Conspiracy Unmasked’; at this stage there was no conspiracy.

      III

      In the morning Bingo woke refreshed. He was lying in a bower made by a living tree with branches laced and drooping to the ground; his bed was of fern and grass, deep and soft and strangely fragrant. The sun was shining through the fluttering leaves, which were still green upon the tree. He jumped up and went out.

      Odo and Frodo were sitting on the grass near the edge of the wood; there was no sign of any elves.

      ‘They have left us fruit and drink, and bread,’ said Odo. ‘Come and have breakfast! The bread tastes almost as good as last night.’

      Bingo sat down beside them. ‘Well?’ said Odo. ‘Did you find anything out?’

      ‘No, nothing,’ said Bingo. ‘Only hints and riddles. But as far as I could make them out, it seems to me that Gildor thinks there are several Riders; that they are after me; that they are now ahead and behind and on both sides of us; that it is no use going back (at least not for me); that we ought to make for Rivendell as quickly as possible, and if we find Gandalf there so much the better; and that we shall have an exciting and dangerous time getting there.’

      ‘I call that a lot more than nothing,’ said Odo. ‘But what about the sniffing?’

      ‘We did not discuss it,’ said Bingo with his mouth full.

      ‘You should have,’ said Odo. ‘I am sure it is very important.’

      ‘In that case I am sure Gildor would have told me nothing about it. But he did say that he thought you might as well come with me. I gathered that the riders are not after you, and that you rather bother them.’

      ‘Splendid! Odo and Frodo are to take care of Uncle Bingo. They won’t let him be sniffed at.’

      ‘All right!’ said Bingo. ‘That’s settled. What about the method of advance?’

      ‘What do you mean?’ said Odo. ‘Shall we hop, skip, run, crawl on our stomachs, or just walk singing along?’

      ‘Exactly. And shall we follow the road, or risk a cross-country cut? There is no choice in the matter of time; we must go in daylight, because Marmaduke is expecting us to-night. In fact we must get off as soon as possible; we have slept late, and there are still quite eighteen miles to go.’

      ‘You have slept late, you mean,’ said Odo. ‘We have been up a long time.’

So far Frodo had said nothing. He was looking out over the treetops eastward. He now turned towards them. ‘I vote for striking across country,’ he said. ‘The land is not so wild between here and the River. It ought not to be difficult to mark our direction