Bingo of course was always thinking about him; and when Gandalf paid him a visit their talk usually came back to Bilbo. Gandalf had not been to Hobbiton for some time: since Bilbo disappeared his visits had become fewer and more secret. The people of Hobbiton had not in fact seen or at any rate noticed him for many years: he used to come quietly up to the door of Bag-end in the twilight and step in without knocking, and only Bingo (and one or two of his closest friends) knew he had been in the Shire. This evening he had slipped in in his usual way, and Bingo was more than usually glad to see him. For he was worried, and wanted explanations and advice.9 They were now talking of Bilbo, and his disappearance, and particularly about the Ring (which he had left behind with Bingo) – and about certain strange signs and portents of trouble brewing after a long time of peace and quiet.10
‘It is all very peculiar – and most disturbing and in fact terrifying,’ said Bingo. Gandalf was sitting smoking in a high chair, and Bingo near his feet was huddled on a stool warming his hands by a small wood-fire as if he felt chilly, though actually it was rather a warm evening for the time of the year [written above: at the end of August].11 Gandalf grunted – the sound might have meant ‘I quite agree, but it can’t be helped,’ or else possibly ‘What a silly thing to say.’ There was a long silence. ‘How long have you known all this?’ asked Bingo at length; ‘and did you ever talk about it to Bilbo?’
‘I guessed a good deal immediately,’ answered Gandalf slowly, as if searching back in memory. Already to him the days of the journey and the Dragon and the Battle of Five Armies began to seem far off – in an almost legendary past. Perhaps even he was at last getting to feel his age a little; and in any case many dark and curious adventures had befallen him since then. ‘I guessed much,’ he said, ‘but soon I learnt more, for I went, as Bilbo may have told you, to the land of the Necromancer.’12 For a moment his voice faded to a whisper. ‘But I knew that all was well with Bilbo,’ he went on. ‘Bilbo was safe, for that kind of power was powerless over him – or so I thought, and I was right in a way (if not quite right). I kept an eye on him and it, of course, but perhaps I was not careful enough.’
‘I am sure you did your best,’ said Bingo, meaning to console him. ‘O dearest and best friend of our house, may your beard never grow less! But it must have been rather a blow when Bilbo disappeared.’
‘Not at all,’ said Gandalf, with a sudden return to his ordinary tones. He sent out a great jet of smoke with an indignant poof and it coiled round his head like a cloud on a mountain. ‘That did not worry me. Bilbo is all right. It is you and all these other dear, silly, charming, idiotic, helpless hobbits that trouble me! It would be a mortal blow if the dark power should overcome the Shire, and all these jolly, greedy, stupid Bolgers, Bagginses, Brandybucks, Hornblowers, Proudfoots and whatnot became Wraiths.’
Bingo shuddered. ‘But why should we?’ he asked; ‘and why should the Lord want such servants, and what has all this to do with me and the Ring?’
‘It is the only Ring left,’ said Gandalf. ‘And hobbits are the only people of whom the Lord has not yet mastered any one.
‘In13 the ancient days the dark master made many Rings, and he dealt them out lavishly, so that they might be spread abroad to ensnare folk. The elves had many, and there are now many elfwraiths in the world; the goblins had some and their wraiths are very evil and wholly under the command of the Lord. The dwarves it is said had seven, but nothing could make them invisible. In them it only kindled to flames the fire of greed, and the foundation of each of the seven hoards of the Dwarves of old was a golden ring. In this way the master controlled them. But these hoards are destroyed, and the dragons have devoured them, and the rings are melted, or so some say.14 Men had three rings, and others they found in secret places cast away by the elf-wraiths: the men-wraiths are servants of the Lord, and they brought all their rings back to him; till at last he had gathered all into his hands again that had not been destroyed by fire – all save one.
‘It fell from the hand of an elf as he swam across a river; and it betrayed him, for he was flying from pursuit in the old wars, and he became visible to his enemies, and the goblins slew him.15 But a fish took the ring and was filled with madness, and swam upstream, leaping over rocks and up waterfalls until it cast itself on a bank and spat out the ring and died.
‘There was long ago living by the bank of the stream a wise, cleverhanded and quietfooted little family.16 I guess they were of hobbit-kind, or akin to the fathers of the fathers of the hobbits. The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Dígol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived in deep pools, he burrowed under trees and growing plants, he tunnelled into green mounds, and he ceased to look up at flowers, and hilltops, or the birds that are in the upper air: his head and eyes were downward. He found the ring in the mud of the river-bank under the roots of a thorn tree; and he put it on; and when he returned home none of his family saw him while he wore it. He was pleased with his discovery and concealed it, and he used it to discover secrets, and put his knowledge to malicious use, and became sharp-eyed and keen-eared for all that was unpleasant. It is not to be wondered at that he became very unpopular, and was shunned (when visible) by all his relatives. They kicked him, and he bit their feet. He took to muttering to himself and gurgling in his throat. So they called him Gollum, and cursed him, and told him to go far away. He wandered in loneliness up the stream and caught fish with his fingers in deep pools and ate them raw. One day it was very hot, and as he was bending over a pool he felt a burning on the back of his head, and a dazzling light from the water pained his eyes. He wondered, for he had almost forgotten about the sun; and for the last time he looked up and shook his fist at it; but as he lowered his eyes again he saw far ahead the tops of the Misty Mountains. And he thought suddenly: “It would be cool and shady under those mountains. The sun could never find me there. And the roots of those peaks must be roots indeed; there must be great secrets buried there which have not been discovered since the beginning.” So he journeyed by night towards the mountains, and found a hole out of which a stream issued; and he wormed his way in like a maggot in the heart of the hills, and disappeared from all knowledge. And the ring went into the shadows with him, and even the Master lost it. But whenever he counted his rings, besides the seven rings that the Dwarves had held and lost, there was also one missing.’
‘Gollum!’ said Bingo. ‘Do you mean that Gollum that Bilbo met? Is that his history? How very horrible and sad. I hate to think that he was connected with hobbits, however distantly.’
‘But that surely was plain from Bilbo’s own account,’ said Gandalf. ‘It is the only thing that explains the events – or partly explains them. There was a lot in the background of both their minds and memories that was very similar – they understood one another really (if you think of it) better than hobbits ever understood dwarves, elves, or goblins.’
‘Still, Gollum must have been, or be, very much older than the oldest hobbit that ever lived in field or burrow,’ said Bingo.
‘That was the Ring,’ said Gandalf. ‘Of course it is a poor sort of long life that the Ring gives, a kind of stretched life rather than a continued growing – a sort of thinning and thinning. Frightfully wearisome, Bingo, in fact finally tormenting. Even Gollum came at last to feel it, to feel he could not bear it, and to understand dimly the cause of the torment. He had even made up his mind to get rid of it. But he was too full of malice. If you want to know, I believe he had begun to make a plan that he had not the courage left to carry out. There was nothing new to find out; nothing left but darkness, nothing to do but cold eating, and regretful remembering. He wanted to slip out and leave the mountains, and smell the open air even if it killed him – as he thought it probably would. But that would have meant leaving the Ring. And that is not easy to do. The longer you have had one the harder it is. It was especially hard for Gollum, as he had had a Ring for ages, and it hurt him and he hated it, and he wanted, when he could no longer bear to keep it, to hand it on to someone else