The War of the Ring (36 page)

The plot outlined in the brief text just given is not very clear; but at this same time, perhaps on the same day, my father wrote the fuller note, together with a plan of the tunnels, that is reproduced on p. 201. This also is in the Bodleian Library (see p. 193). The title Plan of Shelob's Lair was written onto the page subsequently, since the name of the Spider in the text is Ungoliant(e); cf. note 15.

This text reads:

Must be Stair - Stair - Tunnel. Tunnel is Ungoliante's Lair.

This tunnel is of orc-make (?) and has the usual branching passages. One goes right up into the dungeons of the Tower -

but orcs don't use it much because of Ungoliante.(23) Ungoliante has made a hole and a trap in the middle of the floor of the main path.

Gollum's plan was to get Frodo into trap. He hoped to get Ring, and leave the rest to Ungoliant. Plan failed because Ungoliant was suspicious of him - ? he had come nosing up as far as the tunnel the day before? - and she had put a web on near (west) side of hole. When Frodo held up the phial she was daunted for [a] moment and retreated to her lair. But when the hobbits issued from tunnel she came out by side paths and crept round them.

Phial prevents F. and S. falling into the hole; but a horrible stench comes out of it. Gollum disappears and they fear he has fallen in the hole. But they do not go back - (a) they see tower with a light on cliffs at head of pass and (b) while they are wondering about this and suspect betrayal the attack is made: Ungoliant going for Frodo, while Gollum grapples Sam from behind. Ungol[iant] specially wants the star-glass? (Frodo had hidden it again when he came out of tunnel).

Web at end of tunnel?

The plan of the tunnel was mostly drawn in pencil and then overdrawn in black ink. The word pencilled against the minor tunnel to the north of the main passage seems to read 'Bypas[s]'. The pencilled circle in the main passage is marked 'Trap', and the large black circle 'Ungoliant's lair'. Of the two northward tunnels that leave the main one near its eastern end, the westerly one is marked

'Underground way to Tower', and the broad tunnel (drawn with several lines) that leaves this one eastwards will be the way by which Ungoliant emerged to the attack. The last tunnel branching northwards from the main one was added in blue ball-point pen, and is marked 'orc-path'.(24)

Since my father is seen in these notes actually setting down his decision that the second stair preceded the tunnel, it was presumably at this juncture that (leaving aside the question of how far the further story had progressed at this time) he turned back to the point where the faulty conception entered the narrative (see p. 192); and indeed on the back of the first of these notes is found drafting for the new version of the story dependent on the decision (cf. TT p. 317): Following him they came to the climbing ledge. Not daring to look down to their right they passed along it. At last it came to a rounded angle where the mountain-side swelled out again before them. There the path suddenly entered into a dark opening in the rock, and there before them was the first stair that Gollum had spoken of.

Then follows the description of the first stair. Thus the 'opening in the rock' was neatly transformed from the mouth of the tunnel into the beginning of the stair (p. 192).

Continuous drafting is found for the revised narrative ('Version 2'), and the story as told in TT was very largely achieved already in the draft as far as the events in the tunnel: the climbs up the Straight Stair and the Winding Stair, the hobbits' rest beside the path, their talk of the need to find water (25) leading to the conversation about tales (written down ab initio in a form closely similar to that in TT), their

[Plan of Shelob's Lair (1)]

[(The compass-points N. and S. on this plan are reversed)]

realisation that Gollum had disappeared, his return, finding them asleep (with the description of his 'interior debate', looking back up towards the pass and shaking his head, his appearance as of 'an old weary hobbit who had lived beyond his time and lost all his friends and kin: a starved old thing sad and pitiable'), and Sam's unhappy mistaking of his gesture towards Frodo (TT pp. 317-25, where the chapter 'The Stairs of Cirith Ungol' ends). A few passages in TT are lacking in the draft, but they are not of importance to the narrative and in any case they appear in the fair copy manuscript.

A little pencilled sketch appears on the page of the draft where they first see the tower (TT p. 319) - just as there was a picture of the earlier conception of Kirith Ungol at this point in Version 1 (where they had already passed through the tunnel). In the foreground of this sketch is seen the path from the head of the Second Stair, where (in the words of the draft text) the hobbits 'saw jagged pinnacles of stone on either side: columns and spikes torn and carven in the biting years and forgotten winters, and between them great crevices and fissures showed black even in the heavy gloom of that unfriendly place.' The place where they rested ('in a dark crevice between two great piers of rock') is marked by a spot on the right hand side of the track. Beyond is seen the 'great grey wall, a last huge upthrusting mass of mountain-stone' (TT p. 326, at the beginning of 'Shelob's Lair'), in which is the mouth of the tunnel, and beyond it, high above, the 'cleft ... in the topmost ridge, narrow, deep-cloven between two black shoulders; and on either shoulder was a horn of stone' (TT p. 319). A developed form of this sketch is found at the same place in the fair copy manuscript; this is reproduced on p. 204.(26)

The draft continues on into 'Shelob's Lair' without break. Of the narrative constituting the opening of the later chapter there is little to say. In the draft the Elvish name of the tunnel is Terch Ungol 'the Spider's Lair'; and the description of the stench from the tunnel is retained from Version 1 (pp. 192-3): 'Out of it came an odour which they could not place: not the sickly odour of decay by the meads of Morghul, but a repellent noisome stuffy smell: a repellent evil taint on the air.' In the fair copy my father first put Te, changing it as he wrote to Torech Ungol 'the Spider's Hole', and changing this as he wrote to

'Shelob's Lair' (the name Shelob having been already devised when he wrote this manuscript). Here he first described the reek from the tunnel in these words: 'Out of it came a stench: not the sickly odour of decay from the meads of Morghul, but a choking rankness, noisome, a reek as of piled and hoarded filth beyond reckoning, tainting even the open air with evil.' But he queried in the margin whether this description was not too strong: if the stench had been so unendurably horrible even from outside 'would they ever have gone in?'; and replaced it immediately with the description in TT (p. 326). He hesitated too about the width of the tunnel.

The new story in the draft version reaches the final form in their realisation that there were side tunnels, and in the things that brushed against them as they walked, until they passed the wide opening on the left from which the stench and the intense feeling of evil came. From this point the draft text reads:

... a sense of evil so strong that for a moment he grew faint.

Sam also lurched. 'There's something in there,' he says. 'It smells like a death-house. Pooh.' Putting out their remaining strength and resolution they went on. Presently they came to what almost seemed a fork in the tunnel: at least in the absolute gloom they were in doubt.

'Which way's Gollum gone,' said Sam, 'I wonder.*

'Smeagol!' said Frodo. 'Smeagol!' But his voice fell back dead from his lips. There was no answer, not even an echo. 'He's really gone this time, I fancy.'

'Now we are just exactly where he wanted to bring us, I fancy. But just what he means to do in this black hole I can't guess.' He had not to wait long for the answer.

'What about that star-glass?' said Sam. 'Did not the Lady say it would be a light in dark places? And we need some to be sure now.'

'I have not used it,' said Frodo, 'because of Gollum. I think it would have driven him away, and also because it would be so bright. But here we seem to have come to a desperate pass.'

Slowly he drew his hand from his bosom and held aloft the phial of Galadriel. For a moment it flickered like a star struggling through the mists of Earth, then as fear left them it began to burn into a dazzling brilliant silver light, as if Earendel himself had come down from the sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow. The darkness receded from it and it shone in a globe of space enclosed with utter blackness. But before them within the radius of its light were two openings. Now their doubt was resolved, for the one to the left turned quickly away, while the one to the right went straight on only a little narrower than the tunnel behind.

At that moment some prescience of malice or of some evil regard made them both turn. Their hearts stood still. [There was a shrill whistling cry of Gollum?] Not far behind, .... by the noisome opening perhaps, were eyes: two great clusters of eyes.

Whether they shone of their own light or whether the radiance of the star-glass was reflected in their thousand facets .....

Monstrous and abominable and fell they were: bestial yet filled (Kirith Ungol.)

with a malice and purpose and even with a hideous glee and delight such as no beast's eyes can show. An evil mind gloated behind that baleful light.

At this point my father stopped, and noted that the eyes must come first, and then the star-glass (necessarily implying that the eyes of the Spider shone with their own light). An outline follows: The creature backs away. They retreat up the tunnel. Frodo holds glass aloft and ..... (27) and each time the eyes halt.

Then filled with a sudden resolve he drew Sting. It sparkled, and calling to Sam he strode back towards the eyes. They ...

[?turned] retreated and disappeared. Sam full of admiration.

'Now let's run for it!' he said. They ran, and suddenly [?crashed]

into [?greyness] which 0rebounded and turned them back. Sam cannot break the threads. Frodo gives him Sting. And Sam hews while Frodo stands guard.

The web gives way. They rush out and find web was over the mouth of the tunnel. They are in the last gully and the horn-pass ... before them.

'That's the top,' said Sam. 'And we've come out of it. Our luck's in still. On we go now, and take the last bit while the luck lasts.'

Frodo ran forward placing his star-glass in his bosom, no thought for anything but escape. Sam follows with Sting drawn

- constantly turning to watch the mouth of the tunnel -

thinking too little of the craft of Ungoliant. She had many exits from her lair.

Frodo was gaining on him. He tried to run, and then some way ahead he saw issuing out of a shadow in the wall of the ravine the most monstrous and loathsome shape. Beyond the imagination of his worst dreams.

This account agrees well with the plan reproduced on p. 201: they had passed the wide opening on the left which led to the lair of Ungoliant, and the fork in the tunnel, where 'the one to the left turned quickly away, while the one to the right went straight on only a little narrower than the tunnel behind', can be readily identified. But the story has shifted radically from the outline accompanying the plan (pp. 199-200), which apparently never received narrative form, where the story ran thus:

Ungoliant had stretched a web on the west side of the trap (hole) in the main tunnel. The stench arose from the hole.

- Frodo held up the phial (cutting of the webs is not mentioned) and Ungoliant retreated to her lair.

- By the light of the phial they avoided the hole. Gollum disappeared, and they feared he had fallen into it.

They left the tunnel, whereupon Ungoliant, having come round ahead of them by a side path, attacked Frodo, and Gollum grappled Sam from behind.

In the very similar short version of this plot (p. 199) it is said in addition that 'They cut their way out of web at far end.'

The story in the present draft has moved much nearer to the final form: they passed the opening to the lair, whence the stench came, and there is no mention of the 'trap' or 'hole' in the floor of the main passage,- and they came to the fork in the tunnel.(28) But in this version the phial of Galadriel is used at this juncture, in order to show them which tunnel to take; and turning round on account of a sense of approaching evil the light of the phial is reflected in the eyes of the Spider. My father's direction at this point that the eyes must come before the star-glass clearly means that the eyes, shining with their own light, appeared in the tunnel, and that only then did the thought of the star-glass arise. The remainder of the episode is now essentially as in the final form - except that as they run from the tunnel Sam has Sting and Frodo has the phial of Galadriel.

The fair copy manuscript when it reached this point still did not attain the final story in all respects, and this section of it was subsequently rejected and replaced. In the first stage, the idea in the draft that the phial was used simply to illuminate the tunnel (with Frodo's explanation that he had not used it before for fear it would drive Gollum away) was abandoned, and as in TT it was the sound only of the Spider's approach, the 'gurgling, bubbling noise' and the