"GL1" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

it, the fireworks, the feast - had already reached the form it retains in FR
(pp. 34-9), save in a few and quite minor features of the narrative (and
here and there in tone). This is the more striking when we realize that at
this stage my father still had very little idea of where he was going: it was
a beginning without a destination (but see pp. 42-3).
Certain changes made to the manuscript towards its end have not been
taken up in the text given above. In Bilbo's speech, his words 'Secondly,
to celebrate my birthday, and the twentieth anniversary of my return'

and the comment 'No cheers; there was some uncomfortable rustling'
were removed, and the following expanded passage substituted:

Secondly, to celebrate OUR birthdays: mine and my honourable and
gallant father's. Uncomfortable and apprehensive silence. I am only
half the man that he is: I am 72, he is 144. Your numbers are chosen to
do honour to each of his honourable years. This was really dreadful -
a regular braintwister, and some of them felt insulted, like leap-days
shoved in to fill up a calendar.

This change gives every appearance of belonging closely with the writing
of the manuscript: it is clearly written in ink, and seems distinct from
various scattered scribbles in pencil. But the appearance is misleading.
Why should Bilbo thus refer to old Bungo Baggins, underground these
many years? Bungo was pure Baggins, 'solid and comfortable' (as he is
described in The Hobbit), and surely died solidly in his bed at Bag End.
To call him 'gallant' seems odd, and for Bilbo to say 'I am half the man
that he is' and 'he is 144' rather tastelessly whimsical.
The explanation is in fact simple: it was not Bilbo who said it, but his
son, Bingo Baggins, who enters in the third version of 'A Long-expected
Party'. The textual point would not be worth mentioning here were it not
so striking an example of my father's way of using one manuscript as the
matrix of the next version, but not correcting it coherently throughout:
so in this case, he made no structural alterations to the earlier part of the
story, but pencilled in the name 'Bingo' against 'Bilbo' on the last pages of
the manuscript, and (to the severe initial confusion of the editor)
carefully rewrote a passage of Bilbo's speech to make it seem that Bilbo
had taken leave of his senses. It is clear, I think, that it was the sudden
emergence of this radical new idea that caused him to abandon this
version.
Other hasty changes altered 'seventy-first' to 'seventy-second' and '71'
to '72' at each occurrence, and these belong also with the new story that
was emerging. In this text, Bilbo's age in the opening sentence was 70, as
in the first version, but it was changed to 71 in the course of the chapter
(note z above). The number of guests at the dinner-party was already 144
in the text as first written, but nothing is made of this figure; that it was
chosen for a particular reason only appears from the expanded passage of
the speech given above: 'I am 72, he is 144. Your numbers are chosen to
do honour to each of his honourable years.' It seems clear that the change
of 71 to 72 was made because 72 is half of 144. The number of guests
came first, when the story was still told of Bilbo, and at first had no