What Did Bilbo and Gandalf Talk About?

Rachel Port

Well-Known Member
In the discussion of Bilbo's motivations for offering to take the Ring to the Fire, I couldn't help thinking about an earlier scene - when Frodo wakes up the morning of the Council (more than a year ago), he finds Gandalf and Bilbo talking together. I imagine in that conversation, Bilbo tells Gandalf about his experience the night before and what he has finally realized about the Ring and its effect on him after seeing it in Frodo's face. Gandalf may or may not have witnessed that dangerous moment, and also witnessed Bilbo's defusing the situation, so he may have introduced the subject in some way, or Bilbo might have brought up that final scene at Bag End and his new understanding, and perhaps a little accusation in a question of what Gandalf knew about the Ring at that time. But I think there was probably a better understanding of and affection for one another and a shared concern for Frodo when Frodo appears. I would love to have heard that conversation.

What do people think?
 
Hi Rachel,

I like your speculation that Bilbo and Gandalf were discussing Bilbo's own experience of the Ring. I can't find any evidence to support it however.

I have usually speculated that they were discussing Frodo. It may have been during this conversation that Bilbo deduced that Gandalf had the expectation that Frodo would continue to be the Ring-bearer. Bilbo, already alarmed by Frodo's peril from the Morgul-knife might not have been very enthusiastic about that idea? Was it this conversation which prepared him to volunteer to take the Ring to Mordor when Elrond gives him the opportunity? Of course, there is no evidence to support this speculation either.
 
Everything is in the context of talking about Frodo. I don't think the discussion was about Bilbo's experience of the Ring except in his describing what he saw in Frodo's face the night before, and what he at last understood. I think Bilbo is not only worried about the wound from the morgul blade, but about what he saw the night before in Frodo's face of the effect of the Ring, and what carrying it to Mordor would do to him - he senses the spiritual danger for the first time, as well as the physical danger. What he figured out last night came from his love of Frodo, and led to greater understanding of himself as well. (Frodo hasn't processed his experience the night before; he only begins to understand it when it happens with Sam in the Tower of Cirith Ungol.) But I think both he and Gandalf realize that it's Frodo's quest. I think what was said in class, about Bilbo volunteering to spare Frodo, but also to make clear to Elrond and Gandalf that that would most likely mean his death, is true.

Gandalf has never been able to talk openly with Bilbo about the Ring because of the effect it still had on him, and because of his lack of understanding of that effect. But now Bilbo wants to discuss Frodo's well-being with Gandalf, and to do that, he has to explain what has changed, and why he is so concerned in spite of Frodo's apparent recovery from his wound.
 
I'd suggest that the conversation went something along the lines of Bilbo expressing his concern for Frodo and suggesting that the Ring needed to become someone else's concern (Not necessarily Bilbo's). Gandalf then would likely prevaricate (as usual) and state that the Council would make the determination. This fits with Bilbo claiming that he was understanding Elrond's hints to take up the Ring again without also naming Gandalf in the hinting, nor saying the Gandalf had argued against Bilbo as the bearer.
 
I think Bilbo's offer to take the Ring was also motivated by Pity -- Pity for Frodo, Pity for everyone who has suffered because of the Ring (including Gollum) that he brought out of hiding. Perhaps for him, like Gandalf, the way of the Ring to his heart is by Pity.

I also think that Bilbo has known, or guessed, more about the Ring than we've been assuming. Before he asked Frodo for a peep at the Ring, he says "I heard about the Ring, of course. Gandalf has been here often. Not that he has told me a great deal, he has become closer than ever these last few years. The Dúnadan has told me more." Bilbo was also by Frodo's side -- with Sam -- while he recovered and surely would have learned much from Sam. It's in his reaction to Frodo's revulsion that we can see how much he has discerned: "‘I understand now,’ he said. ‘Put it away! I am sorry: sorry you have come in for this burden; sorry about everything. Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story. Well, it can’t be helped. I wonder if it’s any good trying to finish my book?'"

Interesting that when he offers to take the Ring to Mordor he again refers to his book.

There is also something in the phrasing of his offer that reminds me of this passage in The Hobbit:

I have got you out of two messes already, which were hardly in the original bargain, so that I am, I think, already owed some reward. But ‘third time pays for all’ as my father used to say, and somehow I don’t think I shall refuse. Perhaps I have begun to trust my luck more than I used to in the old days”—he meant last spring before he left his own house, but it seemed centuries ago—“but anyway I think I will go and have a peep at once and get it over. Now who is coming with me?”

Both times his flippant tone undercuts his serious -- and brave -- offer (and it might be this passage that Gloin remembers with a smile). At the Lonely Mountain he was embracing his Tookishness; I think that at the Council he is trying to make amends for having drawn Frodo into a story that he did not ask to be in.

[Very interesting to wonder what Bilbo and Gandalf might have been talking about -- remembering the first time Bilbo came to Rivendell? Was Bilbo asking Gandalf about Frodo -- if he has well and truly recovered from the morgul wound, if he had ever seemed too attached to the Ring? Had Gandalf ever said, as he said to Frodo, that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring? Or was Bilbo just trying to get more information about this dratted Council?]
 
That's interesting Kate. I think there is a kinship among the Ringbearers, which has a lot to do with their pity for and treatment of Gollum, with Gollum's ability to form a relationship with Frodo, and which ultimately makes the destruction of the Ring possible. It's a kinship based in suffering of a kind others may be able to see and pity but cannot truly understand.

I don't think Gandalf has ever been able openly to talk about the Ring with Bilbo other than keeping track of how he was recovering from his years possessing it; as he learned more, his talks were more warnings, which is what I see in his account of Gandalf's talking about it with him in recent years. I do think this is the first time Bilbo has enough insight to talk about Frodo and the Ring seriously, and Gandalf can answer him on a different level. And I think of Bilbo saying in the Council that the Ring has grown and he has not. This is new and comes from his observation of Frodo's revulsion as you call it, which has deepened his understanding so much.
 
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