The Treason of Isengard (5 page)

There is of course no reference here to Bilbo's 'two stories' of how he came by the Ring; nor does Saruman appear. Yet Gandalf's mention of the discussion of Rings at the White Council, and his suggestion that there are wizards who, unlike himself, 'go in for such things', prepares the place that Saruman would fill when he had arisen

- although, characteristically, he did not arise in order to fill that place.

The new version introduced no changes into Gandalf s account of the Ruling Ring and its history (for the text as it had developed through the three preceding versions see VI.78, 258-61, 319-20): indeed almost all of this part of the chapter is constituted from pages taken out of the 'third phase' manuscript (see p. 18). Before the new version of the chapter was completed, however (see note 12), my father changed Gollum's original name from Digol (through Deagol) to Smeagol, and introduced a rider telling the story of Deagol and his murder:

He had a friend called Deagol, of similar short, sharper-eyed but not so quick and strong. They were roaming together, when in the mud of a river-bank, under the twisted roots of an ancient thorn-tree,(6) Deagol found the Ring. Smeagol came up behind him, just as he was washing the mud off, and the Ring gleamed yellow.

'Give us that, Deagol my love,' said Smeagol over his friend's shoulder.

'Why?' said Deagol.

'Because it's my birthday...

The remainder of the inserted text is virtually word for word as in FR

(p. 62). On this new story see pp. 27-8.

Very substantial rewriting begins again with Gandalf's discussion of Gollum's motives (FR pp. 63-6; for the previous versions see VI.79-80, 261-2, 320-2). Here there is more than one draft preceding the new manuscript B, and the relations between these texts are not entirely clear, though they differ chiefly only in the placing of certain elements. I give this passge in the form of B, with some variants from the drafts A recorded in the notes.

'Gollum!' said Frodo. 'Do you mean the very Gollum-creature that Bilbo met? Is that his history? How loathsome!'

'I think it is a sad story,' said the wizard, 'and it might have happened to others, even to some hobbits I have known.'

'I can't believe Gollum was connected with hobbits, however distantly,' said Frodo with some heat. 'What an abominable idea!'

'It is true all the same,' replied Gandalf. 'It is suggested even by Bilbo's own account; and partly explains the very curious events. There was a lot in the background of their minds and memories that was very similar: Bilbo and Gollum understood one another (if you think of it) better than hobbits have ever understood dwarves or goblins, or even elves. Think of the riddles they both knew, for one thing!'

'But why did Gollum start the Riddle-game, or think of giving up the Ring at all?' asked Frodo.(7)

'Because he was altogether miserable, and yet could not make up his wretched mind. Don't you realize that he had possessed the Ring for ages, and the torment was becoming unendurable?

He was so wretched that he knew he was wretched, and had at last understood what caused it. There was nothing more to find out, nothing left but darkness, nothing to do but furtive eating and regretful remembering. Half his mind wanted above all to be rid of the Ring, even if the loss killed him. But he hated parting with it as much as keeping it. He wanted to hand it on to someone else, and to make him wretched too.'

'Then why didn't he give it to the Goblins?'

'Gollum would not have found that amusing! The Goblins were already beastly and miserable. And anyway he was afraid of them: naturally he had no fancy for an invisible goblin in the tunnels. But when Bilbo turned up half his mind saw that he had a marvellous chance; and the other half was angry and frightened, and was thinking how to trap and eat Bilbo. So he tried the Riddle-game, which might serve either purpose: it would decide the question for him, like tossing up. Very hobbit-like, I call that. But of course, if it had really come to the point of handing the Ring over, he would have immediately desired it terribly, and have hated Bilbo fiercely. It was lucky for Bilbo that things were arranged otherwise.'

'But how was it that Gollum did not realize that he had got rid of it, if Bilbo had the Ring already?'

'Simply because he had only lost it for a few hours: not nearly long enough for him to feel any change in himself. And also he had not given it away of his own free will: that is an important point. All the same I have always thought that the strangest thing about Bilbo's whole adventure was his finding the Ring like that: just putting his hand on it in the dark. There was something mysterious in that; I think more than one power was at work. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had ruined Gollum, and could make no further use of him; he was too small and mean. It had already slipped from one owner's hand and betrayed him to death. It now left Gollum: and that would probably have proved Gollum's death, if the finder had not been the most unlikely creature imaginable: a Baggins all the way from the Shire! But behind all that there was something at work beyond any design of the Ringmaker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you were also meant to have it, and that may be an encouraging thought, or it may not.'

'It isn't,' said Frodo, 'though I am not sure that I understand you. But how have you learned all this about the Ring, and about Gollum? Do you really know it all, or are you guessing?'

'I have learned some things, and guessed others,' answered Gandalf. 'But I am not going to give you an account of the last few years just now. The story of Gilgalad and Isildur and the One Ring is well known to the learned in Lore. I knew it myself, of course, but I have consulted many other Lore-masters. Your ring is shown to be that One Ring by the fire-writing, quite apart from other evidence.'

'And when did you discover that?' asked Frodo interrupting.

'Just now in this room, of course,' answered Gandalf sharply.

'But I expected to find it. I have come back from many dark journeys to make that final test. It is the last proof, and all is now clear. Making out Gollum's part, and fitting it into the gap in the history, required some thought; but I guessed very near the truth. I know more of the minds and histories of the creatures of Middle-earth than you imagine, Frodo.'

'But your account does not quite agree with Bilbo's, as far as I can remember it.'

'Naturally. Bilbo had no idea of the nature of the Ring, and so could not guess what was behind Gollum's peculiar behaviour.

But though I started from hints and guesses, I no longer need them. I am no longer guessing about Gollum. I know. I know because I have seen him.'(9)

'You have seen Gollum!' exclaimed Frodo in amazement.

'The obvious thing to try and do, surely,' said Gandalf.

'Then what happened after Bilbo escaped from him?' asked Frodo. 'Do you know that?'

'Not so clearly. What I have told you is what Gollum was willing to tell - though not, of course, in the way I have reported it. Gollum is a liar, and you have to sift his words. For instance, you may remember that he told Bilbo that he had been given the Ring as a birthday present long ago when such rings were less uncommon.(10) Very unlikely on the face of it: no kind of magic ring was ever common in his part of the world. Quite incredible, when one suspects what ring this one really was.(11) It was a lie, though with a grain of truth. I fancy he had made up his mind what to say, if necessary, so that the stranger would accept the Ring without suspicion, and think the gift natural. And that is another hobbit-like thought! Birthday present! It would have worked well with any hobbit. There was no need to tell the lie, of course, when he found the Ring had gone; but he had told that lie to himself so many times in the darkness, trying to forget Deagol,(12) that it slipped out, whenever he spoke of the Ring. He repeated it to me, but I laughed at him. He then told me more or less the true story, but with a lot of snivelling and snarling. He thought he was misunderstood and ill-treated...

In the third version of this chapter Gandalf had said (VI.321): 'Very unlikely on the face of it: incredible when one suspects what kind of ring it really was. It was said merely to make Bilbo willing to accept it as a harmless kind of toy' (i.e., Gollum, speaking - according to Gandalf s elaborate theory - from that part of his mind that wished to get rid of the Ring, said off the top of his head that it had been a birthday present in order to get Bilbo to accept it more readily). While drafting a new version of this passage, my father was struck by a perturbing thought. He stopped, and across the manuscript he wrote:

'It must be [i.e. It must have been] a birthday present, as the birthday present is not mentioned by Gollum until after he finds the ring is lost'.(13) In other words, if the story of its being a birthday present was a fabrication pure and simple, why should Gollum only trot it out when there was no longer any use for it? Apparently in order to counter this, Gandalf s words were changed:

It was a lie, though with a grain of truth. But how hobbit-like, all that talk of birthday-presents! I fancy he had made up his mind what to say, if it came to the point of giving, so that Bilbo would accept the Ring without suspicion, and think it just a harmless toy. He repeated this nonsense to me, but I laughed at him.

The implication of this seems to be that Gollum brought out this story of the Ring having been a birthday present to him long ago only when he found that he had it no longer, because it had 'a grain of truth'; and it was because it had 'a grain of truth' that he had decided on this story. But there is no suggestion in the draft of what this grain of truth might be. Only with the fair copy B does it appear - and there only by implication: 'There was no need to tell the lie, of course, when he found the Ring had gone; but he had told that lie to himself so many times in the darkness, trying to forget Deagol, that it slipped out, whenever he spoke of the Ring.' This shows of course that the Deagol story (pp.23-4) had already entered; but my father made the point clearer by pencilling on the fair copy after the words 'though with a grain of truth': He murdered Deagol on his birthday.

He was being driven to more and more intricate shifts to get round what had been said in The Hobbit. But it seems to me very likely that it was precisely while he was pondering this problem that the story of the murder of Deagol (and incidentally the changing of Gollum's true name to Smeagol) arose. That Gollum had lied about its being a birthday present was an obvious necessity, from the story of the Ring that had come into being; but Gandalf's theory in the third version that Gollum told this lie to Bilbo in order to get him to accept the Ring had a serious weakness: why did Gollum only do so (as the story was told in The Hobbit) after he found that he had lost it? The answer to this was that it was an invention of Gollum's that he had come partly to believe, quite independently of Bilbo's arrival; but why was that?

And this story of the murder of Deagol on Smeagol's birthday, the ground of Smeagol's 'lie with a grain of truth', became a permanent element in the tale of Gollum; surviving when, years later, the story of

'Riddles in the Dark' was recast and the very difficulty that (if I am right) had brought it into being was eliminated.

From 'He thought he was misunderstood and ill-treated' (p. 26) this fourth version of 'Ancient History' scarcely differs for a long stretch from the third, whose pages were largely retained;(14) and since the third version closely followed the second, this part of the conversation of Gandalf and Frodo preserves, apart from detail of expression, the text given in VI.263-5. But from 'The Wood-elves have him in prison, if he is still alive, as I expect; but they treat him with such kindness as they can find in their wise hearts' the new version reaches the form in FR (p. 69) with almost no difference to the end of the chapter.

Gandalf's words about the fire that could melt and consume the Rings of Power (FR p. 70) remain however nearer to the earlier form: It has been said that only dragon-fire can melt any of the Twenty Rings of Power; but there is not now any Dragon left on earth in whom the old Fire is hot enough to harm the Ruling Ring. I can think of only one way: one would have to find the Cracks of Doom in the depths of Orodruin, the Fire-Mountain, and cast the Ring in there, if he really wished to destroy it, or put it beyond all reach until the End.

The name Orodruin is met here for the first time.(15) In another point also the former version is retained: Gandalf still says when he goes to the window and draws aside the curtain (VI.322):

'In any case it is now too late. You would come to hate me and call me a thief; and our friendship would cease. Such is the power of the Ring. Keep it, and together we will shoulder the burden that is laid on us.'

Lastly, Gandalf does not in this version give Frodo a 'travelling name'

('When you go, go as Mr. Underhill', FR p. 72).

The subsequent history of this chapter, traced in detail, would itself almost constitute a book, for apart from the marvellous intricacies of the route by which the story of Gollum and the 'birthday present' was ultimately resolved, Gandalf's conversation with Frodo became the vehicle for the developing history of the Rings of Power, afterwards removed from this place, and the chapter could not be treated separately from 'The Council of Elrond'. But the great mass of this work, and probably all of it, belongs to a later time than we have reached; and in any case the attempt to trace in 'linear' fashion the history of the writing of The Lord of the Rings cannot at the same time take full account of the great constructions that were rising behind the onward movement of the tale. So far as the story of Bilbo and Gollum is concerned it seems that this fourth version of 'Ancient History', in which my father was still constrained within the words of the original story told in The Hobbit, remained for some time as the accepted form.