The Treason of Isengard (74 page)

The word Ents added in ink to the note on the difference between

'trolls' and 'tree-folk' (with its striking definition of 'trolls') was perhaps the first use of it in the new and very particular sense; for its former use in Entish Lands, Entish Dales see p. 16 note 14 and p. 65

note 32, and cf. also Letters no. 157, 27 November 1954: As usually with me they [the Ents] grew rather out of their name, than the other way about. I always felt that something ought to be done about the peculiar Anglo-Saxon word ent for a 'giant' or mighty person of long ago - to whom all old works were ascribed.

The textual situation in this chapter is essentially very similar to that in the last, in that there is initial drafting for part of the chapter, but in the rest of it the draft text was erased and the 'fair copy' written over it; and here again, and even more so, the first draft is for the most part extraordinarily close to the final form. My father's words in the letter cited on p. 411, 'just as it now is', must be modified, however, in respect of certain passages where the narrative leaves the immediate experience of Merry and Pippin and touches on wider themes.

The separation of 'Treebeard' as 'Chapter XXV' from XXIV ('The Uruk-hai') was carried out in the course of the writing of the fair copy.

Taking first the part of the chapter for which the original setting down of the story is available, this runs from the beginning of the chapter in TT to 'they were twisted round, gently but irresistibly' (p.

66), and then from ' "There is quite a lot going on," said Merry' (p.

69) to Treebeard's denunciation of Saruman (p. 77). The draft, written so fast as to touch on total illegibility if the later text did not generally provide sufficient clues, remained in all essentials of description into TT, and for long stretches the vocabulary and phrasing underwent only the most minor forms of change. As in the last chapter I give a single brief passage to exemplify this (TT p. 73):

No trees grew there. Treebeard strode up with scarcely any slackening of his pace. Then they saw a wide opening. On either side two trees grew like living gate-posts, but there was no gate save their crossing and interwoven branches; and as the Ent approached the trees raised up their boughs and all their leaves rustled and whispered. For they were evergreen trees, and their leaves were dark and polished like the leaves of the holm-oak.

Beyond the trees there was a wide level space, as though the floor of a great hall had been hewn out of the side of the hill. On either side the walls sloped upward until they were fifty feet in height or more and at their feet grew trees: two long lines of trees increasing in size. At the far end the rock wall was sheer, but in it was cut a shallow bay with an arched roof: the only roof save the branches of the trees which overshadowed all the ground save for a broad aisle/path in the middle. A little stream that escaped from the Entwash spring high above and left the main water fell tinkling down the sheer face of the rear wall, pouring like a clear curtain of silver drops in front of the arched bay. It was gathered again in [a] green rock basin, and thence flowed out down the open aisle/path and on to rejoin the Entwash in its journey through the Forest.

All the tiny meticulous changes of word and rhythm that differentiate this from the text of TT were introduced in the writing of the fair copy manuscript.

There are some small particular points worthy of mention in this first part of the chapter. In the fair copy corresponding to TT pp. 66 - 7

(the passage is lacking in independent draft) Treebeard's height was changed from ten feet to twelve, and then to fourteen; he says that if he had not seen the hobbits before he heard them 'I should have just batted you with my club'; and his ejaculation 'Root and twig! '

replaced 'Crack my timbers!'(2)

When Merry (Pippin in the draft) suggested that Treebeard must be getting tired of holding them up (TT p. 69), he replied, both in draft and fair copy: 'Hm, tired? Tired? What is that. Ah yes, I remember.

No, I am not tired ., and later he says when they come to the Ent-house that perhaps they are 'what you call "tired" '.

The first major development from the original text comes with Treebeard's long brooding discourse on Lorien and Fangorn, as he carried Merry and Pippin through the woods (TT pp. 70 - 2). At first he said:

'...Neither this country nor anything else outside the Golden Wood is what it was when Keleborn was young. Tauretavarea tansbalemorna Tumbaletaurea landatavare.(3) That is what they used to say. But we have changed many things.' (He means they have weeded out rotten-hearted trees such as are in the Old Forest.)

This was changed immediately to:

'... Things have changed, but it is still true in places.'

'What do you mean? What is true?' said Pippin.

'I am not sure I know, and I am sure I could not explain to you. But there are no longer any evil trees here (none that are evil according to their kind and light)....'

Treebeard's remarks about trees awakening, 'getting Entish', and then showing in some cases that they have 'bad hearts', are very much as in TT; but to Pippin's question 'Like the Old Forest, do you mean?'

he replies:

'Aye, aye, something like, but not as bad as that. That was already a very bad region even in the days when there was all one wood from here to Lune, and we were called the East End.

But something was queer (went wrong) away there: some old sorcery in the Dark Days, I expect. Ah, no: the first woods were more like Lorien, only thicker, stronger, younger. Those were days! Time was when one could walk and sing all day and hear no more than the echo of his own voice in the mountains. And the scent. I used to spend weeks [? months] just breathing.'

In the fair copy this was greatly expanded, but by no means to the text of TT. Here Treebeard begins as in the original draft (with Mountains of Lune for Lune) as far as 'this was just the East End', but then continues:

'... Things went wrong there in the Dark [> Elder] Days; some old sorcery, I expect [) some old shadow of the Great Dark lay there]. They say that even the Men that came out of the Sea were caught in it, and some of them fell into the Shadow. But that is only a rumour to me. Anyway they have no treeherds there, no one to care for them: it is a long, long time since the Ents walked away from the banks of the Baranduin.'

'What about Tom Bombadil, though?' asked Pippin. 'He lives on the Downs close by. He seems to understand trees.'

'What about whom?' said Treebeard. 'Tombombadil? Tombombadil? So that is what you call him. Oh, he has got a very long name. He understands trees, right enough; but he is not an Ent. He is no herdsman. He laughs and does not interfere. He never made anything go wrong, but he never cured anything, either. Why, why, it is all the difference between walking in the fields and trying to keep a garden; between, between passing the time of a day to a sheep on the hillside, or even maybe sitting down and studying sheep till you know what they feel about grass, and being a shepherd. Sheep get like shepherd, and shepherd like sheep, it is said, very slowly. But it is quicker and closer with Ents and trees. Like some Men and their horses and dogs, only quicker and closer even than that. For Ents are more like Elves: less interested in themselves than Men are, better at getting inside; and Ents are more like Men, more changeable than Elves are, quicker at catching the outside; only they do both things better than either: they are steadier, and keep at it.

[Added: Elves began it of course: waking trees up and teaching them to talk. They always wished to talk to everything. But then the Darkness came, and they passed away over the Sea, or fled into far valleys and hid themselves. The Ents have gone on tree-herding.] Some of my trees can walk, many can talk to me.

'But it was not so, of course, in the beginning. We were like your Tombombadil when we were young. The first woods were more like the woods of Lorien....'

Most of this passage, including all reference to Bombadil, was bracketed for omission,(4) and my father then struck it all out and substituted a new version on a separate page. It is clear that all this revision belongs to the time of the writing of the fair copy manuscript.(5) In this new version the text of TT is all but reached; but Treebeard says this of the Old Forest:

'..I do not doubt that there is some shadow of the Great Darkness lying there still away North; and bad memories are handed down; for that Forest is old, though none of the trees are really old there, not what I call old. But there are hollow dales in this land where [the shadow >] the Darkness has never been lifted....'

Treebeard's song (In the willow-meads of Tasarinan) was set down in the draft manuscript in a faint scribble that nonetheless reached without hesitation almost the final form.(6)

When in the draft Treebeard reaches the Ent-house (TT p. 73) he makes no remark about the distance they have come, and in the fair copy he says: 'I have brought you three times twelve leagues or thereabouts, if measurements of that kind hold good in the country of Fangorn', where 'three' was changed to 'seven' before the words were rejected and replaced by his computation in 'Ent-strides'. In the draft he says that the place is named Fonthill, changed to Funtial, then back to Fonthill,(7) and finally 'Part of the name of this place could be called Wellandhouse in your language' (Wellinghall in the fair copy).

Treebeard stooped and lifted the two great vessels onto the table (this my father wrote in the fair copy also before at once striking it out); and he said before he lowered himself onto the bed ('with only the slightest bend at the waist') 'I think better flat'.

The next major development in the evolution of the text comes at this point, when Merry and Pippin tell Treebeard their story. Here the draft reads:

They followed no order for Treebeard would often stop them, and go back again or jump forward. He was only interested in parts of the tale: in their account of the Old Forest, in Rivendell, in Lothlorien, and especially in anything to do with Gandalf, most of all in Saruman. The hobbits were sorry that they could not remember more clearly Gandalf's account of that wizard.

Treebeard kept reverting to him.

'Saruman has been here some time, a long time you would call it. Too long I should now say. Very quiet he was to begin with: no trouble to any of us. I used to talk to him. Very eager to listen he was in those days, ready to learn about old days. Many a thing I have told him that he would never have known or guessed otherwise. Never. He never repaid me - never told me anything. And he got more like that: his face more like windows in a stone wall, windows with blinds (shutters inside).

'But now I understand. So he's thinking of becoming a Power, is he. I have not troubled myself with the great wars, Elves are not my business, nor Men; and it is with them that wizards are mostly concerned. They are always worrying about the future.

I don't like worrying about the future. But I shall have to begin, I see. Mordor seemed a long way, but these orcs! And if Saruman has started taking them up, I have got trouble right on my borders. Cutting down trees. Machines, great fires. I won't stand it. Trees that were my friends. Trees I had known from nut and acorn. Cut down and left sometimes. Orc-work.

'I have been thinking I should have to do something. But I see it will be better sooner than later. Men are better than orcs, especially if the Dark Lord doesn't get at them. But the Rohiroth and the folk of Ondor if Saruman attacks at the back will soon be in a [?lonely].... We shall have [?hordes] from the East and

... [? swarm] of orcs all over us. I shall be [? eaten] up - and there will be nowhere to go. The flood will rise into the pines in the mountains. I don't think the Elves would find room for me in a, ship. I could not go over sea. I should wither away from my own soil.

'If you'll come with me we'll go to Isengard! You'll be helping your own friends.'

With the further words '[?Of] the Ents and Entwives' the initial draft peters out here; but in these last hastily jotted lines we see the emergence of a major new idea and new direction. The role that Treebeard was to play in the raising of the siege of Minas Tirith (pp.

211, 330, and cf. p. 412) is gone, and all is suddenly clear: Treebeard's part is to attack Saruman, who dwells on his very borders.

There is very little further initial drafting for this chapter extant; almost all is lost erased beneath the fair copy text. Rough workings for the Song of the Ent and the Entwife are found (see p. 421); and there is also a little scrap which shows my father's first thoughts for the march on Isengard:

Ents excited. To Isengard!

Hobbits see trees behind. Is Forest moving?

Orc woodcutters come on the Ents. Horrible surprise to find wood alive. They are destroyed. Ents take shields. They go on to Isengard End of Ch. XXV.

But it seems to me most unlikely that those parts of the original drafting that are lost were any less close to the fair copy than are those that survive.(8) The text of the fair copy manuscript in the latter part of the chapter was retained in TT (pp. 75 - 90) without the smallest deviation of expression almost throughout its length: Treebeard's thoughts of Saruman and his becoming 'hot', his story of the Entwives, the Entmoot, the time spent with Bregalad, the march of the Ents and Pippin's awareness of the moving groves of trees behind them, to the last words: ' "Night lies over Isengard," said Treebeard.