"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol07)

Dwarf. Gimli son of Gloin 8
Merry, Pippin. They insist on going. [Struck out:
Pippin only if Erestor does not go.] Elrond says there may be .
work in the Shire, and it may prove ill if they all go.
Shall Pippin return to the Shire?
Then come preparations, and the scene with Bilbo and Frodo and
giving of Sting &c.

Here the number of Nine members of the Company, expressly
corresponding to the Nine Ringwraiths, is reached;(3) but even so there
remains a doubt as to its composition where the hobbits are concerned
(see p. 115), and my father's lingering feeling that one at least should
return to the Shire at this stage was still a, factor, especially since the
inclusion of Erestor 'Half-elf'(4) took the number to eight. But this was
the last moment of indecision. A short draft, written hastily in ink on
the same paper, introduces t he final complement of the Company of
the Ring. On it my father pencilled: 'Sketch of reduction of the
choosing of the Company'.(5)

In the end after the matter had been much debated by Elrond and
Gandalf it was decided that the Nine of the Company of the Ring
should be the four hobbits, aided by Gandalf; and that Legolas
should represent the Elves, and Gimli son of Gloin the Dwarves. On
behalf of Men Aragorn should go, and Boromir. For they were
going to Minas Tirith, and Aragorn counselled that the Company
should go that way, and even maybe go first to that city. Elrond was
reluctant to send Merry and Pippin, but Gandalf [?supported].

My father now proceeded to a new text of 'The Ring Goes South';
and of preliminary work nothing survives, if any existed, apart from a
few passages in rough drafting from the beginning of the chapter. The
new version is a good clear manuscript in ink, using in part the
'August 1940' script that had been used for the drafting of major
developments in 'The Council of Elrond'. The story now advanced
confidently, and for long stretches scarcely differs from that in FR in
the actual wording of the narrative and the speeches of the characters.
There are a number of later emendations, a good many of which can
be shown to come from a little later in the same period of composition.
As written, the chapter had no title, various possibilities being
pencilled in afterwards: although in the original text, when the chapter
was continuous with 'The Council of Elrond', there was a sub-heading

'The Ring Goes South' (VI.415), my father now tried also 'The
Company of the Ring Departs' and 'The Ring Sets Out'.
Since the previous chapter now ended where it ends in FR, at
the conclusion of the Council, the ensuing conversation among the
hobbits, interrupted by Gandalf, was moved to the beginning of 'The
Ring Goes South'. My father now took up his direction to 'cut out
converse in garden' (see note 1), and the chapter begins exactly as in
FR, with the hobbits talking in Bilbo's room later on the same day,