Bombadil, early drafts

[Chrysophylax Dives]

halfir's monumental Peeling the Onion made Bombadil a star of old plaza Lore, and Priya's meticulous and extensive research on Goldberry and Tom are two primary stars of new plaza Lore. And the house of Bombadil is not so far from the center of my own research, which charts the making of The Lord of the Rings. This thread sets out the chronology of composition of the Bombadil material in relation to the wider story, as read in Return of the Shadow, Christopher Tolkien's edition of the earliest drafts of The Lord of the Rings.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Background

This post is subjective. Priya and others do not read the 1932 essay on the name Nodens in relation to Bombadil as do I. This background is distinct from the chronology of composition of Bombadil and Goldberry into the new Hobbit story that is The Lord of the Rings, which I turn to below. So this post may be skipped. (It is what I bring to my reading of the chronology below.)

halfir early on discusses (in minute detail) two (or is it more?) Bombadil poems of the early 1930s, of which the only one that I see as relevant is 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil', published in The Oxford Magazine in 1934, and sent to Stanley Unwin in late 1937 with the suggestion that a new story about Bombadil might do in place of a new Hobbit story.

'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil' is a meditation on catching and being caught. Willowman, a family of badgers, and a Barrow-wight fail to catch Tom Bombadil; or rather, each catch Tom, who escapes by use of his voice. At the beginning of the poem, Goldberry catches Tom by his beard and pulls him into the water and at the end Tom returns and marries Goldberry by capture - the final scene has the two man and wife in Tom's house, heeding not the nightly noises.

In this letter to Unwin, Tolkien calls Bombadil the spirit of the vanishing Oxford and Berkshire countryside; and if you situate Bombadil on a map of the United Kingdom you see that Bombadil is thereby a neighbour of Sul of the Holy Water in the place that the Romans will call Bath and over the Estuary from the unsavoury godling named Nodens, whose home is the hilltop fort of Lydney Park in Wales. In late Roman days a temple to Nodens was built (long after the Romans had turned Bath into a cosmopolitan center), and the report of an archeological excavation of Lydney Park, published in 1932, contained an etymological appendix by Tolkien: the name Nodens was once a title, which comparison with Gothic suggested meant 'The Catcher'.

R. Collingwood stands in the background. He was both philosopher and archeologist of Roman Britain, almost certainly the man who introduced his colleague from Pembroke, J.R.R. Tolkien, to the Wheelers, who were running the Lydney Park excavation. In his great 1936 Oxford history of Roman Britain, Collingwood thanks Professor Tolkien for the etymology of Sul and other Celtic etymologies (Sul = the Eye, and possibly the Sun). Collingwood in 1938 was working on a book about fairy-stories - never finished but published posthumously as The Philosophy of Enchantment. So actually, if you are reading this, Priya, one can discern a concrete project of thinking about fairy-stories that is intimately bound up with and predates the composition of Tom and Goldberry in LotR, only it is not Tolkien that has a project on fairy-stories, but Collingwood.

(Actually, the invitation to deliver the Andrew Lang lecture came from R. Knox, with whom Tolkien stayed when he went to St Andrews. Knox had been a student of Collingwood, and was later his literary executor. By October 1938, Collingwood was already very ill and out of action. My guess is that Collingwood prompted Knox to invite Tolkien and prodded Tolkien to tackle fairy-stories.)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil' (1934): Willowman, a family of badgers, and a Barrow-wight catch Tom, who escapes by use of his voice.

With this in mind one catches the moment in the text when Tom is said to be telling an aburd story about badgers and their ways as (I think it is) Frodo slips on the Ring; and we see that the Hobbits have stepped in to replace the badgers.

In his 'Beowulf Criticism' lectures in Oxford at just this time (1934-1936) Tolkien compares the heathen heroes of the ancient lays as about as intelligible - and intelligent as - a badger in a trap. In the context of Beowulf criticism, this points to the way that the hero in this poem has become almost a Christian knight. What is going on in the west country, over the Hills and over the Water, is a more modern imagination of these baited badgers, not as Christian knights but as Hobbits.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Composition I

A first version of 'A long-expected party' is penned in the week before Christmas 1937, and three more versions appear to have been composed in fairly quick succession. By the third version, the party is hosted by Bingo, son of Bilbo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck.

Primula Brandybuck of the Brandybucks of Buckland, across Brandywine River on the other side of the Shire and on the edge of the Old Forest - a dubious region.

We do not know if the Old Forest is already envisaged as the domain of the Willow Man of the 1934 poem, but if not before composition of this sentence then surely in the wake of it. The idea of a sequel to the 1934 poem is evidently (letter to Unwin) floating around in Tolkien's imagination just before he starts writing. Here we seem to see the moment of connection as it were within the writing, a note, but not the very first - the first notes see rather a close inspection of The Hobbit and the first appearance of the Necromancer's magic ring.

Make dubious regions — Old Forest on way to Rivendell. North South East 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.

Another note of this time (we may still be in 1937, the very first flush of writing around Christmas):

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.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

What happens next, biographically, is that with a fourth version of the long-expected party and Bingo Bolger-Baggins vanished from his own birthday party, Tolkien put the Hobbits aside for most ofJanuary and returned to the 'Quenta Silmarillion', picked up the Hobbits again in February and, one night out walking from Bag-end, encountered Ringwraiths.

Ringwraiths in the shape of sniffing Black Riders was rather a shock and generated a whole flurry of writing, which only served, however, to get the Hobbits to the house in Crickhollow, ready to enter the Old Forest - by early March 1938, after maybe a fortnight on the opening adventure in the Shire, our author put his story aside until August.

But note that of the night in Crickhollow, as read in this first draft of early 1938, it is said that this is the last night in proper beds that the Hobbits would spend for a long time. Hence, when he put the story aside Tolkien did not envisage that the Hobbits would sleep even one night in the house of Tom Bombadil.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

In the letter of 31 August 1938 quoted at the end of the last chapter my father said that ‘in the last two or three days’ he had turned again to the book, that it was ‘flowing along, and getting quite out of hand’, and that it had reached ‘about Chapter VII’. It is clear that in those few days the hobbits had passed through the Old Forest by way of the Withywindle valley, stayed in the house of Tom Bombadil, escaped from the Barrow- wight, and reached Bree.

Christopher Tolkien, Return of the Shadow, p. 110

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Some preliminary sketching and notes has Willowman sing the Hobbits to sleep and catch them and then release them at the sound of singing in the distance; they reach the Downs, are caught by a Barrow-wight, and are rescued by Tom Bombadil, who answers their song. The Hobbits go to Tom's house for the night. (Return of Shadow, pp.111-112)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

It is of course possible that other preliminary drafting has been lost, but the earliest extant text of the original fourth chapter (numbered ‘IV’ but with no title) looks like composition ab initio, with many words and sentences and even whole pages rejected and replaced at the time of writing. For most of its length, however, this is an orderly and legible manuscript, though rapidly written, and increasingly so as it proceeds. It is then remarkable that this text reaches at a stroke the narrative as published in Fellowship of the Ring (Chapter 6, ‘The Old Forest’), with only the most minor differences - other than the different cast of characters (largely a matter of names) and different attribution of ‘parts’, and often and for substantial stretches with almost exactly the wording of the final form. (p. 112)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

'The House of Tom Bombadil'

Some preliminary drafting, after which CT reports:

The first actual narrative (incomplete) of this chapter is a very rough and difficult manuscript in ink, becoming very rough indeed before it peters out on the first morning at Bombadil’s house. It has no title, but is rather oddly numbered ‘V or VI’. Here, even more than in the last chapter, the final form — until just at the end - is already present in all but detail of expression. Return of the Shadow, p. 120

However, Bingo/Frodo's dream is different. In the published story he dreams of Gandalf rescued from Orthanc but on this first night he dreams of Black Riders riding around the house.

Only on starting the next day does Tolkien decide that it is rainy and have the Hobbits stay a second day, in which they are enchanted by Bombadil's tale of years all the way back to when the world was wider and the sun and the moon appeared and off into the ancient starlight.

Christopher Tolkien says of this second day: "The remainder of the second version of the chapter generally approaches extraordinarily closely to the final form, but there are not a few interesting differences", e.g. description of Old Man Willow, Tom's self-description as an aborigine, declaration of kinship with Farmer Maggot, and a few minor details.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

'The Barrow-wight'

As with the previous two chapters, the final form of FR Chapter 8 (‘Fog on the Barrow-downs’) is very largely present: for most of its length only very minor alterations were made afterwards.
CT, Return of the Shadow, p. 127

CT lists various differences with the published chapter, of which I give one. As with the published chapter, this opens with a dream, but in the original it is told of all the Hobbits (this is my reconstructed version from p. 127):

That night they heard no noises. But either in their dreams or out of them, they could not tell which, the Hobbits heard a sweet singing running in their minds: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before them under a swift sunrise.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Eventually, I should keep sweeping through Return of the Shadow as Tolkien returns to this part of the story and touches it up. The riddle 'Who are you, yourself, alone, and nameless?' awaits in 1939, for example. Other elements are even later - as, for example, the dagger from the Barrow is sown into the story of Angmar and its Witch-king who is the king of the Ringwraiths, and Angmar is imagined only in 1946.

And there is much comment I would like to make about what we see in this story of August 1938. For example, much that is - and remains - Bombadil makes sense in relation to Bingo Bolger-Baggins, the prankster Hobbit who vanishes in October 1938. In this first narrative of the journey to Rivendell, Bingo uses his magic ring to play practical jokes; because he is using the Necromancer's ring for a non-serious purpose, Gandalf explains, it does not catch him. Bombadil is a real fairy-tale ideal of not taking life too seriously and - as one who is not caught by and sees through the Necromancer's ring - Bombadil shows up the limitations of Bingo's jokes. Poor Bingo does not really survive Weathertop - he does get to Rivendell but Tolkien starts again at Bag-end and introduces Sam Gamgee, gets to the Old Forest and returns to Bag-end, where Bingo vanishes and in his place stands Frodo Baggins. Yet Bombadil as a mirror to Bingo remains, though Bingo has vansihed.

But what I want to highlight here and now is the relationship between the introduction of a second day, Tom's temporal talk on that day, and the new dream that results from a second night in the house of Tom Bombadil.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Only in the Spring/Summer of 1938 did Tolkien decide to integrate his 1936 myth of Númenor into his mythology (originally the myth served an independent project). This decision was taken because the juxtaposition of visible history and invisible myth given by the myth served nicely to explain the invisibility bestowed by the magic ring.

The first thing that Tolkien writes after making this decision is the adventures in the realm of Bombadil. After telling of Willowman and Tom's rescue and a first night in his house, Tolkien on reaching the morning decides to make it a rain day so that the Hobbits remain one more day and night under the roof of Bombadil. Only now does a vision of all of time bubble up into this new Hobbit story:

When they caught his words again they found that he had now wandered into strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider, and the seas flowed straight to the western Shore; and still further Tom went singing back before the Sun and before the Moon, out into the old starlight, when only the Elf-sires were awake. Then suddenly he stopped, and they saw that he nodded as if he was falling asleep. The hobbits sat still before him, enchanted; and it seemed as if, under the spell of his words, the wind had gone, and the clouds had dried up, and the day had been withdrawn, and darkness had come from East and West, and all the sky was filled with the light of white stars.

A moment before Tom had been telling the ancient history of the Barrow-Downs; in the first line of this quotation he steps beyond history and into myth on the other side - out of our round world and into a wider flat world - beyond memory and beyond waking thought, conjuring an enchantment like to a dream. It seems to me that the dream of Valinor that is dreamed that night by all the Hobbits is but a continuation of this same passage.

That night they heard no noises. But either in their dreams or out of them, they could not tell which, the Hobbits heard a sweet singing running in their minds: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before them under a swift sunrise.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

I am enjoying these posts.
It’s refreshing to read some commentary on RoTS other than Christopher Tolkien’s.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Thank you very much, Priya.

Return of the Shadow is in a sense my late adult Lord of the Rings. Nearly a decade ago I reached a point where I could no longer read Lord of the Rings with the same pleasure because I had by now read it too many times. (That is not to say that even today when I do read it but that I always discover something new, which I had never noticed before.) Return of the Shadow began as a way of reading once again with fresh eyes the journey from a hobbit-hole to Rivendell. But I soon enough discovered the hidden depths of these early drafts, which make difficult but peculiarly rewarding demands. These drafts reveal a master of the art setting down on paper The Lord of the Rings, and simply watching this happen is a treat in itself. But conceptualizing, that is, articulating what is happening, how and why, I have found a rare challenge. In a nutshell, it seems to me that we have to think our way into the story that Tolkien thought he was telling when he wrote this or that draft, which of all the material in Return of the Shadow it can be said that it was not the story of the War of the Ring that The Lord of the Rings became.

So for example, everything surveyed above, the story from the long-expected party all the way to arrival at Rivendell in the early autumn of 1938, belongs to the story of Bingo Bolger-Baggins, Hobbit prankster who makes use of the magic ring to play practical jokes, and indeed begins his story by vanishing from his own birthday party (Bingo is the host of the long-expected party). Bombadil who is not caught by the magic ring was originally showing up Bingo's limitations. But on Weathertop Bingo is overcome by temptation - the call to put on the magic ring proves too strong, and at Rivendell Tolkien makes a note that each encounter with the Black Riders should prompt a desire to put on the ring, which demands that from the start Bingo does not make use of the magic ring, even for jokes. In any case, Weathertop reveals the untenability of a Hobbit prankster in the face of the king of the Ringwraiths; Tolkien is about to start over at Bag-end, twice before October 1938, on the first start Bingo is joined by Samwise Gamgee (pulled out of the garden by his ear just as in the published story today) and on the second Bingo vanishes and Sam is the servant of Frodo Baggins.

By this story-criteria, the very first imagination of Bingo Bolger-Baggins as the heir of Bilbo Baggins itself vanishes with the first return to Bag-end, around September 1938. The second imagination is the story that Tolkien imagines himself to be writing from September 1938 to the close of 1939, which I call the Ghost Sequel to The Hobbit.

In this second story-imagination we have nearly all the key elements of The Lord of the Rings, if very little of the geography of the South and only rudimentary ancient history as background. After Rivendell the Hobbits will follow the great river down into the South, where awaits Ondor and the City of Stone and of Boromir, who has come to Rivendell, and also Mordor, the Fiery Mountain, and the Dark Tower that already in 1939 is associated with an Eye.

This phase of writing comes to a close at the close of 1939 at the tomb of Balin in Moria. Seven stand by the tomb: Boromir, Gandalf, and five Hobbits. Tolkien writes to Stanley Unwin, his publisher, that his new Hobbit story is 3/4 written. This 3/4 written story is where we end up at the end of Return of the Shadow and is what I call the Ghost Sequel. Tom Bombadil is a far more central presence in such a story.

The Ghost Sequel vanishes and Tolkien imagines himself writing a Hobbit perspective on the Great War of the Ring that ended the Third Age of Middle-earth in summer 1940. This happens in Moria when Trotter, who the Hobbits met in Bree, turns out not to be Peregrin Boffin (who ran away into the blue after listening to too many of Bilbo's tales) but Aragorn the heir of Elendil. With this discovery that a Hobbit is actually the king who is returning the imagination of the kind of story that Tolkien is telling is transformed and the door is open to the story of the Doom of the World that he now tells over five more 'books' of a narrative completed in 1948 plus appendices brought to completion in the early 1950s.

Bombadil's adventures with the Hobbits are touched up over the years. For example, the vision of Aragorn in the memories of the Barrow in Tom's words of the men who go wandering. But what is truly striking is the endurance of this material, which essentially remains as first set down in the passage of Bingo the prankster Hobbit. Somewhere along the way Bombadil became impossible. I mean, my intuition is that he became an enigma because of these reimaginations of the story and so the story-world enacted around him.

I'm dubious, though, that this goes far enough in illuminating what is referenced in this letter, which you drew my attention to.

That is why I left Tom Bombadil in and did not 'tinker' with him though much tempted to do so in the 'Council of Elrond', to bring him into the historical pattern.

He could have been 'called to order' by cutting out or altering the passage on I 144; but I could not do that. I know he behaved like that, and to deny it, for the sake of consistency, would be wrong, and the 'consistency' less real than the mystery.

Letter to Mroczkowski,1964

[The passage I 144: Tom puts on ring and does not vanish; Frodo puts on ring and Tom sees Frodo.]

[Chrysophylax Dives]

The other Tolkien stuff that I talk about are spin-offs from this long-standing attempt to read Return of the Shadow. My first thought was that one could not make sense of a sequel to The Hobbit without returning to the original - first edition - Hobbit. When I did so, I discovered a whole other story, with Tolkien reading the Arabian Nights, but also the philosophers on the Arabian Nights. And for more than a couple of years I've been utterly distracted with all this, as has escaped into some of my threads. But fascinating as it may be, I've also concluded that it does not have much to offer a reading of Return of the Shadow. It is a striking fact that the second edition revision of the riddle-game surprised Tolkien and appeared in 1951, only when all the sequel was completed, but this has little to do with Ringwraiths and Rivendell. This in contrast to 'The Fall of Númenor' and 'The Lost Road' project of 1936, which my reading connected with 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' (at first by way of the towers with sea-view that feature in both texts of the same year).

To tell a long story short, from 'The Fall of Númenor' and 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' of 1936 derive an idea of the (lost) 'straight road', and (my current hypothesis) just this idea may be discerned behind the scenes of Return of the Shadow, essentially discovering the meaning of Ringwraiths by way of a Númenórean straight-road.

On this hypothesis, the straight-road is discovered on the adventure of Bingo, but only conceptualized from the first as the road of the Hobbit heroes with the first re-start at Bag-end; and given far vaster significance after 1940 once this was recognized as not only the road to death and necromancy but also to the Doom of an entire Age of the World. This last development is discovered in Treason of Isengard.