Frodo Hill: Table of Contents and Introduction

Frodo Hill;
or, Memoirs of a Hobbit of Pleasure

Being the Adventures of a young Hobbit of the Shire, in the City of Osgiliath, in the Days of that great Conflict among Nations, now styl'd, the War of the Ring. Containing a full Account of his Captivity in a House of ill Fame, and his daring Rescue from the Same. With the secret Histories of several Persons of that Time, including Captain Faramir of Gondor, and some surprising Explanations of that Gentleman's mysterious Behaviour, never before made Publick. By Mrs. Maria-Susannah Cleland

Edited, with notes and an introduction by Teasel

Table of Letters

The History is at last complete; no additional Letters will be forthcoming.

WARNING: The Tale concerns Passions uniting Gentlemen with other Gentlemen, with Ladies, and in a single unfortunate Instance, with a Goat of indeterminate Gender. Those squick'd by a Love between Gentlemen of different Species may be displeased by some short Episodes in the earlier part of the Tale; while those dismay'd by Loves between Hobbits will be greatly disappointed by the Tale's affecting Conclusion.

Those Readers, who find the Language of this Warning in itself displeasing, will not find that it improves in the Tale itself, and are earnestly advis'd, to seek elsewhere for their reading Pleasure.

DISCLAIMER: The Characters in this History have, alas! long been the Property of Others; no base material Gains have been obtain'd by the humble Authoress, who writes solely for Love of the Persons describ'd therein.

Editor's Introduction

Like other great turning points in the history of scholarship, the discovery of this manuscript was the product of both diligence and happy chance. While Westron studies have been a passion of mine for many years, they could not have been further from my mind when this manuscript first came to my attention. It was instead in the course of my research on quite another matter -- eighteenth-century British whey production -- that I discovered the manuscript in the rare book room of a major American university.

Little did I know what scholarly delights lay before me when a bundle of old papers fell out of the long-unopened thirteenth volume of Haywood's British Dairywoman and Miscellany. Upon examination the contents of the packet proved mostly to be what one might expect: random bits of eighteenth-century ephemera, of little interest to any but the most obsessive collector -- laundry bills, pawn-shop receipts, torn pages from old almanacs, and the birth certificate of one Richard Savage. But the collection did contain one gem: seven hundred or so loose sheets of paper, closely written on both sides in cramped, tiny handwriting. At the top of the first sheet was inscribed a title so amazing that I could hardly believe my eyes:

Elegant Extracts from the Red-Book of the Westmarch, for the special Use of the Ladies. Translated from the Westron, with Notes and Divers Reflections upon Moral and Critical Subjects, by Mrs. Maria-Susannah Cleland.

I was of course immediately aware of the significance of my find and was eager to investigate it further. As it happened, the entire manuscript somehow fell into my handbag when I left the rare book room through a little-known emergency exit in the back. Thus I have been able to examine the manuscript in the comfort of my home over a period of several months.

As I'd originally suspected, the manuscript represents the earliest known English translation from the Red Book. Although the scholarly world owes an immense debt of gratitude to Professor Tolkien for his labour in the field of Westron studies, one can only lament the decision of the Tolkien estate to seal his copy of the Red Book in a safe at the bottom of the North Sea. This somewhat intemperate course of action has left later scholars with few, if any opportunities to extend his work, or even to check its accuracy, as his copy was the last extant in Europe (apart from the possibly apocryphal Fredonian manuscript, which has been missing since the Second World War).

Yet here, now, in 2003, we have at last what looks to be an extremely competent translation from a scholar who had full access to the Duke of Norfolk's copy of the Red Book. This copy was destroyed by the fire at Worksop Manor in 1761, but in Maria-Susannah Cleland's translation of it we now have a hitherto unimagined scholarly resource that will, I am confident, turn the world of Westron studies upside down.

Many aspects of Cleland's translation will be extremely surprising to students of Professor Tolkien's work, most notably the ending to the long section of the Red Book that Tolkien published as The Lord of the Rings. Cleland's ending differs from Professor Tolkien's in several key respects. Indeed, my work with her text has made me suspect that Tolkien's ending has no genuine source in the Red Book at all, but is a fabrication of his own.

But since a fuller treatment of this matter will shortly be published elsewhere, I shall refer interested readers to my forthcoming article in the June 2004 issue of Palpitations: British Women's Writing in Eighteenth-Century Europe. For the present, I offer as an example of Cleland's work a short episode that Professor Tolkien chose not to include at all. The reasons for Tolkien's omission are unknown. It is notable, however, that this episode treats a key moment in the romance between two of the main characters, a romance that he largely ignored or suppressed.

One can only speculate on the motives that led a scholar of Tolkien's sterling qualities to distort his source material to this extent. Quite possibly Tolkien believed that conservative readers in mid-twentieth century Britain would be shocked by a literary work that concluded with blissful unions among no fewer than four pairs of male characters, one pair of female characters, and a threesome consisting of an Ent, a giant spider, and a goat.

Cleland had fewer such qualms, as the narrative reproduced below will begin to show. A few words about Maria-Susannah Cleland will serve to conclude this introduction. She is of course the older sister of the famous John Cleland, whose Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (also known as "Fanny Hill") has long been considered one of the classics of erotic literature.

While Maria-Susannah's work is considerably less graphic than her brother's, in keeping with the tastes of her genteel female audience, it is also much less judgmental on the subject of diverse sexual practices. John Cleland's work condemns outright even something so widespread as homosexuality, and it is difficult to imagine how shocked he would have been by, for example, the role of the goat in his sister's translations, or by the mess-hall scene in Minas Tirith (not reproduced here) in which young Pippin is used as a condiments tray.

The manuscript reproduced below will, I trust, prove to be of interest both to lovers of Tolkien and to scholars of eighteenth-century literature. I must admit, however, that casual Tolkien enthusiasts may find the text somewhat heavy going, since I have done nothing to modernise Cleland's language, sentence structure, capitalization, or punctuation. I would advise readers unfamiliar with such language to consult her brother John's work Fanny Hill. This book -- quite apart from being one of the hottest stories ever written -- can provide twentieth-century readers with a crash course in the glories of eighteenth-century prose, a part of our linguistic heritage that Tolkien despised, but that had its own strange beauty nonetheless.

-- Teasel

April 1, 2003

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Letter the First