The War of the Ring (17 page)

Perhaps my father was at just about this point when he wrote on 5 April 1944, in the letter cited on p. 78, that'at the moment they are just meeting Gollum on a precipice'. - From here to the end of the draft there are so many 'bad places' and even sheer drops that I shall not attempt to represent the text as it stands. There follows an account of Frodo's descent: how he slipped again, and slithered down the cliff-face clinging with his fingers till he came up with a jolt, nearly losing his balance, on a wide ledge - 'and after that he was soon down.' There came then the great storm of wind and thunder, with a torrent of rain lashing down; and looking up 'they could see two tiny points of light at the cliff edge before the curtain of rain blotted them out. "Thank goodness you've done it," said Sam. "I near swallowed my heart when you slipped. Did you see him? I thought so, when you started to climb so quick." "I did," said Frodo. "But I think we've set þ him a bit of a puzzle for those [?soft padding] feet of his. But let's look about here. Is there no shelter from the storm?" '

They looked for shelter, and found some fallen rocks lying against the foot of the cliff, but the ground was wet and soggy; they themselves were not drenched through apparently on account of the elven-cloaks (this passage is very largely illegible). The storm passed on over the Emyn Muil and stars came out; 'far away the sun had set behind Isengard'. The draft ends with Sam's saying: 'It's no good going that way [i.e. towards the marshes] in the dark and at night.

Even on this trip we've had better camping-places: but here we'd best stay.'

There was very evidently great need for a better text: my father himself would have had difficulty with this, when the precise thought behind the words had dimmed. He began again therefore at the beginning of the chapter, giving it now its title and number (XXXII) and the completed manuscript ('D') that evolved from this new start was the only one that he made (i.e., subsequent texts are typescripts).

The opening of the chapter (text B), which went hack to the time before the long break during 1943 - 4 (p. 86), was written out again, and effectively reached the form in TT (but when the story opens it was still 'the fifth evening' since they had fled from the Company, not as in TT the third: see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter).

When my father came to the point where his new draft (C) took up the tale ('The sun was caught into clouds and night came suddenly', p. 86), beyond rounding out the expression and making it less staccato he did not at first change any feature of the story until the beginning of the attempt to climb down - apart from introducing the point that on the last day in the Emyn Muil Sam and Frodo had been making their way along at some distance from the outer precipice, perhaps to explain why it was that they had not observed that the cliff was now less high and no longer sheer; but the long gully or ravine by which in TT they made their way to the precipice when their way forward was blocked was not yet present. The fir-trees in the gully would have a narrative function in the final form of the story, in that 'old broken stumps straggled on almost to the cliff's brink' (TT p. 212): for Sam would brace his foot against one of those stumps, and tie the rope to it (TT pp. 215 - 16), in contrast to text C, p. 89 ('Is there nothing to make an end fast to up here?' ... 'I am going down with the rope on, and you're going to hold on to the end up here').

My father at first retained the story in C (p. 88) that Frodo followed Sam over the edge and that they both stood splayed against the rock-face together, until Frodo climbed back up again. But as he wrote he changed this: before Frodo had time to say anything to Sam, The next moment he gave a sharp cry and slithered downwards. He came up with a jolt to his toes on a broader ledge a few feet lower down. Fortunately the rockface leant well forwards, and he did not lose his balance. He could just reach the ledge he had left with his fingers.

'Well, that's another step down,' he said. 'But what next?'

'I don't know,' said Frodo peering over. 'The light's getting so dim. You started off a bit too quick, before we'd had a good look. But the ledge you're on gets much broader to the right. If you could edge along that way, you'd have room enough, I think, to stoop and get your hands down and try for the next ledge below.'

Sam shuffled a little, and then stood still, breathing hard. 'No, I can't do it,' he panted. 'I'm going giddy. Can't I get back? My toes are hurting cruelly already.'

Frodo leaned over as far as he dared, but he could not help.

Sam's fingers were well out of his reach.

'What's to be done?' said Sam, and his voice quavered. 'Here am I stuck like a fly on a fly-paper, only flies can't fall off, and I can.' The eastern sky was growing black as night, and the thunder rolled nearer.

'Hold on, Sam! ' said Frodo. 'Half a moment, till I get my belt off.'

Having thus got rid of the unnecessary incident of Frodo's going down to the first ledge with Sam and then climbing back again, the new text then follows the former (C) - the failure of the experiment with the belt, Sam's sudden recollection of the rope, and his telling Frodo that they are wearing each other's packs - as far as 'He sat down well away from the edge and rubbed his feet' (p. 89; he felt 'as if he had been rescued from deep waters or a fathomless mine').

'Numbpate and Ninnyhammer!' he muttered.

'Well, now you're back,' said Frodo, laughing with relief,

'you can explain this business about the packs.'

'Easy,' said Sam. 'We got up in the dim light this morning and you just picked mine up. I noticed it and was going to speak up, when I noticed that yours was a tidier sight heavier than mine. I reckoned you'd been carrying more than your share of tackle and what not ever since I set off in such a hurry, so I thought I'd take a turn. And I thought less said less argument.'

'Well meant cheek,' said Frodo; 'but you've been rewarded for the well meaning anyway.' They sat for a while and the gloom grew greater.

'Numbpate,' said Sam suddenly, slapping his forehead. 'How long's that rope, I wonder.'

Here my father abandoned this story, feeling perhaps that it was all becoming too complicated, and rejecting these new pages he returned again, not to the beginning of the chapter, but to the beginning of the draft C, that is to say to the point where Frodo and Sam awoke on their last morning in the Emyn Muil (p. 86), with Frodo now saying, in answer to Sam's question 'Did you see them again, Mr Frodo?', 'No, I have heard nothing for three nights now.' From this point the final story was built up in the completed manuscript D. Some of it was written out first on independent draft pages,(14) but some of the pencilled drafting was overwritten in ink and included in the manuscript. It is plain, however, that the final story now evolved confidently and clearly, and since there is very little of significant difference to the narrative to be observed in those parts of the initial drafting that I have been able to read, I doubt that there is any more in those that I have not.

My father now saw at last how Sam and Frodo did manage the descent from the Emyn Muil, and he resolved their difficulty about leaving the rope hanging from the cliff-top for Gollum to use by simply not introducing the question into their calculations until they had both reached the bottom. In this text the further course of the storm was described thus:

The skirts of the storm were lifting, ragged and wet, and the main battle had passed - hastening with wind and thunder over the Emyn Muil, over Anduin, over the fields of Rohan, on to the Hornburg where the King Theoden stood at bay that night, and the Tindtorras now stood dark against the last lurid glow.

At a later stage (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter) the following was substituted:

The skirts of the storm were lifting, ragged and wet, and the main battle had passed to spread its great wings over the Emyn Muil, upon which the dark thought of Sauron brooded for a while. Thence it turned, smiting the vale of Anduin with hail and lightning, and rolled on slowly through the night, mile by mile over Gondor and the fields of Rohan, until far away the Riders on the plain saw its black shadow moving behind the sun, as they rode with war into the West.

Sam's uncle, the Gaffer's eldest brother, owner of the rope-walk

'over by Tighfield', now appears (cf. VII.235), but he was at first called Obadiah Gamgee, not Andy.

The earlier drafts did not reach the point of Gollum's descent of the diff-face, and it may be that my father had foreseen it long since. On the manuscript of the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' he struck out his first ideas for the encounter of Frodo and Sam with Gollum, and wrote: 'Steep place where Frodo has to climb a precipice.

Sam goes first so that if Frodo falls he will knock Sam down first. They see Gollum come down by moonlight like a fly' (see VII.329 and note 15). But there is no way of knowing when he wrote this, whether when he first began writing 'The Taming of Smeagol', or when he took it up again in April 1944.

In initial drafting the discussion between Sam and Frodo after Gollum's capture, in which Frodo heard 'a voice out of the past', went like this:

'No,' said Frodo. 'We must kill him right out, Sam, if we do anything. But we can't do that, not as things are. It's against the rules. He's done us no harm.'

'But he means to / meant to, I'll take my word,' said Sam.

'I daresay,' said Frodo. 'But that's another matter.' Then he seemed to hear a voice out of the past saying to him: Even Gollum I fancy may have his uses before all's over. 'Yes, yes, may be,' he answered. 'But anyway I can't touch the creature. I wish he could be cured. He's so horribly wretched.'

Sam stared at his master, who seemed to be talking to someone ..

else not there.

At this stage in the evolution of the chapter 'Ancient History', at the point in his conversation with Gandalf at Bag End which Frodo was remembering, the text of the 'second phase' version (given in VI.264-5) had been little changed. The actual reading of the 'current'

('fourth phase') text of 'Ancient History' (cf. VII.28) is:

'... What a pity Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, before he left him!'

'What nonsense you do talk sometimes, Frodo! ' said Gandalf.

'Pity! Pity would have prevented him, if he had thought of it. But he could not kill him anyway. It was against the Rules....'

'Of course, of course! What a thing to say. Bilbo could not do anything of the kind, then. But I am frightened. And I cannot feel any pity for Gollum. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is worse than a goblin, and just an enemy.'

'Yes, he deserved to die,' said Gandalf, 'and I don't think he can be cured before he dies. Yet even Gollum might prove useful for, good before the end. Anyway we did not kill him: he was very old and very wretched. The Wood-elves have him in prison ...'

It is not often that the precise moment at which my father returned to and changed a passage much earlier in The Lord of the Rings can be determined, but it can be done here. When he came to write the passage in the manuscript (D) of 'The Taming of Smeagol', Frodo's recollection of his conversation with Gandalf began at an earlier point than it had in the draft cited above:

It seemed to Frodo then that he heard quite plainly but far off voices out of the past.

What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, before he left him!

Pity! Pity would have prevented him. He could not kill him. It was against the Rules.

I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.

It was at this point that my father perceived that Gandalf had said rather more to Frodo, and on another page of drafting for 'The Taming of Smeagol' he wrote:

Deserved it! I daresay he did I does, said Gandalf. Many that live do deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not eager to deal out death even in the name of justice. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I do not much hope that Gollum can be cured

This was then (as I judge) written into the manuscript of 'The Taming of Smeagol', in a slightly different form:

Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death.

And some that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. Maybe the Enemy will get him. Maybe not. Even Gollum may do some good, willy nilly, before the end.

It was certainly at this time that my father changed the passage in

'Ancient History'. Omitting the words 'fearing for your own safety', he joined the new passage into that given on p. 96: '... Even the wise cannot see all ends. I do not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies. Yet even Gollum might prove useful for good before the end.' The two passages, that in 'The Shadow of the Past' (FR p. 69) and that in 'The Taming of Smeagol' (TT. p. 221), remain different in detail of wording, perhaps not intentionally at all points.

Lastly, there is an interesting difference between the passage in which Gollum makes his promise to Frodo as it was at this time and as it stands in TT. When Gollum said 'Smeagol will swear on the precious', there followed both in initial drafting and in the manuscript: