"GL4" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol12)

PART FOUR.

UNFINISHED TALES.

XVI.

THE NEW SHADOW.

This story, or fragment of a story, is now published for the first time,
though its existence has long been known.(1) The textual history is not
complicated, but there is a surprising amount of it.
There is, first, a collection of material in manuscript, beginning with
two sides of a page carrying the original opening of the story: this goes
no further than the recollection of the young man (here called Egal-
moth)(2) of the rebuke and lecture that he received from Borlas (3) when
caught by him stealing apples from his orchard as a boy. There is then
a text, which I will call 'A', written in rapid but clear script, and this
extends as far as the story ever went (here also the young man's
name is Egalmoth). This was followed by a typescript in top copy and
carbon 'B', which follows A pretty closely and ends at the same point:
there are a great many small changes in expression, but nothing that
alters the narrative in even minor ways (the young man, however, now
bears the name Arthael). There is also an amanuensis typescript
derived from B, without independent value.(4)
Finally, there is another typescript, 'C', also with carbon copy,
which extends only to the point in the story where the young man -
here named Saelon (5) - leaves Borlas in his garden 'searching back in his
mind to discover how this strange and alarming conversation had
begun' (p. 416). This text C treats B much as B treats A: altering the
expression (fairly radically in places), but in no way altering the story,
or giving to it new bearings.
It seems strange that my father should have made no less than three
versions, each showing very careful attention to improvement of the
text in detail, when the story had proceeded for so short a distance.
The evidence of the typewriters used suggests, however, that C was
made very substantially later. The machine on which B was typed was
the one he used in the 1950s before the acquisition of that referred to
in X.300, while the italic script of A could with some probability be
ascribed to that time; but the typewriter used for C was his last.(6)
In his Biography (p. 228) Humphrey Carpenter stated that in 1965
my father 'found a typescript of "The New Shadow", a sequel to
The Lord of the Rings which he had begun a long time ago but
had abandoned after a few pages.... He sat up till four a.m. read-
ing it and thinking about it.' I do not know the source of this state-
ment; but further evidence is provided by a used envelope, postmarked

8 January 1968, on the back of which my father scribbled a passage
concerning Borlas, developing further the account of his circum-
stances at the time of the opening of the story (see note 14). This is
certain evidence that he was still concerned with The New Shadow as