The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

married and went off without an address for a week or two (or even longer). When Bilbo had disappeared this is what at first his neighbours thought. ‘He has gone and got married. Now who can it be? – no one else has disappeared, as far as we know.’ Even after a year they would have been less surprised if he had come back with a wife. For a long while some folk thought he was keeping one in hiding, and quite a legend about the poor Mrs Bilbo who was too ugly to be seen grew up for a while.

So now Bilbo said before he disappeared: ‘I am going to get married.’ He thought that that – together with all the fuss about the house (or hole) and furniture – would keep them all busy and satisfied for a long while, so that no one would bother to hunt for him for a bit. And he was right – or nearly right. For no one ever bothered to hunt for him at all. They decided he had gone mad, and run off till he met a pool or a river or a steep fall, and there was one Baggins the less. Most of them, that is. He was deeply regretted by a few of his younger friends of course (… Angelica and Sar ......). But he had not said good-bye to all of them – O no. That is easily explained.

      NOTES

1 The title was written in subsequently, but no doubt before the chapter was finished, since my father referred to it by this title in his letter of 19 December 1937 (p. 11).

       2 After ‘Burroweses’ followed ‘and Ogdens’, but this was struck out – almost certainly at the time of writing. ‘Proudfoots’ was first written ‘Proudfeet’, as earlier in the chapter, but as the next sentence shows it was changed in the act of writing.

       3 The reference is to the conclusion of The Hobbit, when Gandalf and Balin called at Bag End ‘some years afterwards’.

       4 At this point a present to Inigo Baggins of a case of hairbrushes was mentioned, but struck out, evidently at the time of writing, since the present to another Inigo (Grubb-Took) immediately follows.

5 Various changes were made to the names and other details in this passage, not all of which were taken up in the third version (the second ends before this point). Mungo Took’s gift (an umbrella) was specified; and Caramella Took was changed from niece to cousin. Gorboduc Grubb became Orlando Grubb. Pencilled proposals for the name of Mrs Sackville-Baggins, replacing Amalda, are Lonicera (Honeysuckle) and Griselda, and her husband Sago (named in the next paragraph of the text) became Cosmo.

       6 Cf. the end of The Hobbit: ‘His gold and silver was mostly [afterwards changed to largely] spent in presents, both useful and extravagant’. The illegible word here might possibly be arms, but it does not look like it, and cf. the same passage in The Hobbit: ‘His coat of mail was arranged on a stand in the hall (until he lent it to a Museum).’

      Writing of this draft in his Biography, Humphrey Carpenter says (p. 185):

      The reason for his disappearance, as given in this first draft, is that Bilbo ‘had not got any money or jewels left’ and was going off in search of more dragon-gold. At this point the first version of the opening chapter breaks off, unfinished.

But it may be argued that it was in fact finished: for the next completed draft of the chapter (the third – the second seems certainly unfinished, and breaks off at a much earlier point) ends only a very little further on in the narrative (p. 34), and shortly before the end has:

      But not all of them had said good-bye to him. That is easily explained, and soon will be.

      And the explanation is not given, but reserved for the next chapter. Nor is it made so explicit in the first draft that Bilbo was ‘going off in search of more dragon-gold’. That lack of money was a reason for leaving his home is certainly the case, but a sudden Tookish disgust with hobbit dulness and conventionality is also emphasized; and in fact there is not so much as a hint of what Bilbo was planning to do. It may well be that on 19 December 1937 my father had no idea. The rapidly-written conclusion of the text strongly suggests uncertain direction (and indeed he had said earlier in the chapter that the story was going to be about one of Bilbo’s descendants).

But while there is no sign of Gandalf, most of the essentials and many of the details of the actual party as it is described in The Fellowship of the Ring (FR) emerge right at the beginning, and even some phrases remained. The Chubbs (or Chubbses, p. 13), the Boffinses, and the Proudfoots now appear – the families named Burrowes (Burrows in FR) and Grubb had been mentioned at the end of The Hobbit, in the names of the auctioneers at the sale of Bag End; and the hobbits’ land is for the first time called ‘the shire’ (see, however, p. 31). But the first names of the hobbits were only at the beginning of their protean variations – such names as Sago and Semolina would be rejected as unsuitable, others (Amalda, Inigo, Obo) would have no place in the final genealogies, and yet others (Mungo, Gorboduc) would be given to different persons; only the vain Angelica Baggins survived.

      (ii)

       The Second Version

      The next manuscript, while closely based on the first, introduced much new material – most notably the arrival of Gandalf, and the fireworks. This version breaks off at the words ‘Morning went on’ (FR p. 45).

The manuscript was much emended, and it is very difficult to distinguish those changes made at the time of composition from those made subsequently: in any case the third version no doubt followed hard upon the second, superseding it before it was completed. I give this second text also in full, so far as it goes, but in this case I include virtually all the emendations made to it (in some cases the original reading is given in the notes which follow the text on p. 25).

      Chapter 1

       A long-expected party

      When Bilbo, son of Bungo, of the respectable family of Baggins prepared to celebrate his seventy-first¹ birthday there was some little talk in the neighbourhood, and people polished up their memories.² Bilbo had once had some brief notoriety among the hobbits of Hobbiton and Bywater – he had disappeared after breakfast one April 30th and had not reappeared until lunch-time on June 22nd in the following year. A very odd proceeding, and one for which he had never accounted satisfactorily. He wrote a book about it, of course: but even those who had read it never took that seriously. It is no good talking to hobbits about dragons: they either disbelieve you, or feel uncomfortable; and in either case tend to avoid you afterwards. Mr Baggins, however, had soon returned to more or less normal ways; and though the shaken confidence of the countryside was never quite restored, in time the hobbits agreed to pardon the past, and Bilbo was on calling-terms again with all his relatives and neighbours, except of course the Sackville-Bagginses. For one thing Bilbo seemed by some unexplained method to have become more than comfortably off, in fact positively wealthy. Indeed it was the magnificence of the preparations for his birthday-party far more than his brief and distant fame that caused the talk. After all that other odd business had happened some twenty years ago and was all but forgotten; the party was going to happen that very month of September. The weather was fine, and there was talk of a display of fireworks such as had not been seen since the days of Old Took.

Time drew nearer. Odd-looking carts with odd-looking packages began to toil up the Hill to Bag-end (the residence of Mr Bilbo Baggins). They arrived by night, and startled folk peered out of their doors to gape at them. Some were driven by outlandish