Now that I've finished reading the first chapter of TRotS, I find that Tolkien himself answered some of the questions I asked after reading his first version. In the third version, Bilbo marries a Hobbit woman, but from a far end of the Shire - Primula Brandybuck! He does choose a person who is more adventurous and livelier than most Hobbits, apparently. And she leaves Hobbiton with him, both disappearing together. Primula survives into the next version, but no longer as Bilbo's wife - she becomes Bingo's mother when Bingo is changed, no longer Bilbo's son, but his nephew/cousin.
What I find very interesting in Christopher Tolkien's introduction to the fourth version is this statement:
Quote:
|
Bilbo's marriage (as was inevitable, I think) has been rejected.
|
Why would he consider it "
inevitable"?! Unfortunately, he doesn't explain that remark.
Another thing I find highly interesting is the fact that Tolkien gives his heroes mothers who have an adventurous influence on them. Bingo's grandmother is, like Bilbo's mother, one of the remarkable, fabulous Took daughters; by contrast, his father is described as 'quite unimportant'.
Quote:
|
And so the Tooks come in again - always a disturbing element, especially when mixed with Brandybuck.
|
Later it is said of Bingo:
Quote:
|
He went about a good deal with the least well-behaved members of the Took family (his grandmother's people); and he was also fond of the Brandybucks (his mother's relatives).
|
I can't help but wonder - why the mothers?!
One more minor observation that I find amusing - Otho Sackville-Baggins is a lawyer by profession in the fourth version. Does that reflect Tolkien's own attitude toward lawyers, I wonder? I don't remember his profession being mentioned in LotR.