Gandalf Presents a Thief to Thorin

Gandalf, fresh after "visiting" Bilbo in the Shire, tracks down Thorin and seeks to persuade the prideful, lordly, angry Dwarf to regain his kingdom by stealth with the aid of an unlikely partner. What follows is a delightful conversation between the two, which I will most likely once again quote verbatim as my synopsis cannot fully convey the brilliance of Tolkien's writing. Sadly, this conversation will not appear in the Hobbit movies as it is only found in Unfinished Tales which Peter Jackson does not have the rights to it. Gandalf found Thorin along with some of his kin and several others including Balin and Gloin (father of Gimli) so here is the conversation as Gandalf recalled it for Frodo, Sam, Gimli, and others after the fact. Any added brackets [are my thoughts]:

"'Your own ideas are those of a king, Thorin Oakenshield; but your kingdom is gone. If it is to be restored, which I doubt, it must be from small beginnings. Far away from here, I wonder if you fully realize the strength of a great Dragon. But that is not all: there is a Shadow growing fast in the world far more terrible. They will help one another.' And they certainly would have done so, had I not attacked Dol Guldur at the same time. 'Open war would be quite useless; and anyway it is impossible for you to arrange it. You will have to try something simpler and yet bolder, indeed something desperate.'

'You are both vague and disquieting,' said Thorin. 'Speak more plainly!'

'Well for one thing,' I said, 'you will have to go on this quest yourself, and you will have to go secretly. No messengers, heralds, or challenges for you Thorin Oakenshield. At most you can take with you a few kinsmen or faithful followers. But you will need something more, something unexpected.'

'Name it!' said Thorn.

'One moment!' I said. [I love how Gandalf is never really plain in speech!] 'You hope to deal with a Dragon; and he is not only very great, but he is now also old and very cunning. From the beginning of your adventure you must allow for this: his memory and his sense of smell.'

'Naturally,' said Thorin. 'Dwarves have had more dealings with Dragons than most, and you are not instructing the ignorant.'

'Very good,' I answered; 'but your own plans did not seem to me to consider this point. My plan is one of stealth. Stealth. Smaug does not lie on his costly bed without dreams, Thorin Oakenshield. He dreams of Dwarves! You may be sure that he explores his hall day by day, night by night, until he is sure that no faintest air of a Dwarf is near, before he goes to sleep: his half-sleep, pricked-eared for the sound of - Dwarf-feet.' [It's clear that Gandalf is working the smell angle as a way to bring Bilbo since the Dragon wouldn't know that smell]

'You make stealth sound as difficult and hopeless as any open attack,' said Balin. 'Impossibly difficult!'

'Yes, it is difficult,' I answered. 'But not impossibly difficult, or I would not waste my time here. I would say absurdly difficult. [Now that made me laugh, way to calm them down Gandalf!] So I am going to suggest an absurd solution to the problem. Take a Hobbit with you! Smaug has probably never heard of Hobbits, and he has certainly never smelt them.'

'What!' cried Gloin. 'One of those simpletons down in the Shire? What use on earth, or under it, could he possibly be? Let him smell as he may, he would never dare to come within smelling distance of the nackedest dragonet new from the shell!'

"Now, now!' I said, 'that is quite unfair. You do not know much about the Shire-folk, Gloin. I suppose you think them simple, because they are generous and do not haggle; and think them timid because you never sell them any weapons. You are mistaken. Anyway, there is one that I have my eye on as a companion for you, Thorin. He is neat-handed and clever, though shrewd, and far from rash. And I think he has courage. Great courage, I guess, according to the way of his people. They are, you might say, 'brave at a pinch'. You have to put these Hobbits in a tight place before you found out what is in them.'

'The test cannot be made,' Thorin answered. 'As far as I have observed, they do all that they can to avoid tight places.' [Good point by Thorin]

'Quite true,' I said. 'They are very sensible people. But this Hobbit is rather unusual. I think he could be persuaded to go into a tight place. I believe that in his heart he really desire to - to have, as he would put it, an adventure.'

'Not at my expense!' said Thorin, rising and striding about angrily. 'This is not advice, it is foolery! I fail to see what any Hobbit, good or bad, could do that would repay me for a day's keep, even if he could be persuaded to start.'

'Fail to see! You would fail to hear it, more likely,' I answered. 'Hobbits move without effort more quietly than any Dwarf in the world could manage, though his life depended on it. They are, I suppose, the most soft-footed of all mortal kinds. You do not seem to have observed that, at any rate, Thorin Oakenshield, as you tramped through the Shire, making a noise (I may say) that the inhabitants could hear a mile away. When I said that you would need stealth, I meant it: professional stealth'

'Professional stealth?' cried Balin, taking up my words rather differently than I had meant them. 'Do you mean a trained treasure-seeker? Can they still be found?'

I hesitated. This was a new turn, and I was not sure how to take it. [Good thing Gandalf can think on his feet] 'I think so,' I said at last. 'For reward they will go in where you dare not, or at any rate cannot, and get what you desire.'

Thorin's eyes glistened at the memories of lost treasures moved in his mind; but 'A paid thief, you mean,' he said scornfully. 'That might be considered, if the reward was not too high. But what has all this to do with one of those villagers? They drink out of clay, and they cannot tell a gem form a bead of glass.'

'I wish that you would not speak so confidently without knowledge,' I said sharply. 'These villagers have lived in the Shire some fourteen hundred years, and they have learned many things in the time. They had dealings with the Elves, and with the Dwarves, a thousand years before Smaug came to Erebor. None of them are wealthy as your forefathers reckoned it, but you will find some of their dwellings have fairer things in them than you can boast here, Thorin. The Hobbit that I have in mind has ornaments of gold, and eats with silver tools, and drinks wine out of shapely crystal.'

'Ah! I see your drift at last,' said Balin. 'He is a thief, then? That is why you recommend him?'

At that I fear I lost my temper and my caution. This Dwarvish conceit that no one can have or make anything "of value" save themselves, and that all fine things in other hands must have been got, if not stolen, from the Dwarves at some time, was more than I could stand at that moment. 'A thief?' I said, laughing. 'Why yes, a professional thief, of course! How else would a Hobbit come by a silver spoon? I will put the thief's mark on his door, and then you will find it.' Then being angry I got up, and I said with a warmth that surprised myself: 'You must look for that door, Thorin Oakenshield! I am serious.' And suddenly I felt that I was indeed in hot earnest. This queer notion of mine was not a joke, it was right. It was desperately important that it should be carried out. The Dwarves must bend their stiff necks.

'Listen to me, Durin's Folk!' I cried. 'If you persuade this Hobbit to join you, you will succeed. If you do not, you will fail. If you refuse to even to try, then I have finished with you. You will get no more advice or help from me until the Shadow falls on you!'

Thorin turned and looked at me in astonishment, as well he might. 'Strong words!' he said. 'Very well, I will come. Some foresight is on you, if you are not merely crazed.'

'Good!' I said. 'But you must come with good will, not merely in the hope of proving me a fool. You must be patient and not easily put off, if neither the courage nor the desire for adventure that I speak of are plain to see at first sight. He will deny them. He will try to back out; but you must not let him.'

'Haggling will not help him, if that is what you mean,' said Thorin. 'I will offer him a fair reward for anything that he recovers, and no more.'

It was not what I meant but it seemed useless to say so. 'There is one other thing,' I went on; 'you must make all your plans and preparations beforehand. Get everything ready! Once persuaded he must have no time for second thoughts. You must go straight from the Shire, east on your quest.'

'He sounds a very strange creature, this thief of yours,' said a young Dwarf named Fili (Thorin's nephew, as I afterwords learned). 'What is his name, or the one that he uses?'

'Hobbits use their real names,' I said. 'The only one that he has is Bilbo Baggins.'

'What a name!' said Fili, and laughed.

"He thinks it very respectable,' I said. "And it fits well enough; for he is a middle-aged bachelor, and getting a bit flabby and fat. Food is perhaps at present his main interest. He keeps a very good larder, I am told, and maybe more than one. At least you will be well entertained.'

'That is enough,' said Thorin. 'If I had not given my word, I would not come now. [I love that saying, I gave my word--I'll keep it even if I don't like it] I am in no mood to be made a fool of. For I am serious also. Deadly serious, and my heart is hot within me.'

I took no notice of this. 'Look now, Thorin,' I said, 'April is passing and Spring is here. Make everything ready as soon as you can. I have some business to do, but I shall be back in a week. When I return, if all is in order, I will ride ahead to prepare the ground. Then we will all visit him together on the following day'" (p. 332-335, Unfinished Tales).

Apologies for the marathon quote. But I got such a kick out of the entire conversation and could not do it justice by paraphrase. Thorin's pride and desperation. Gandalf's brilliance and humor. You get the idea that there is much at stake for the Quest of Erebor; more than just reclaiming stolen treasure. And I believe this conversation sets the perfect context for the story of The Hobbit or as Bilbo named it "There and Back Again"; especially since as Gandalf said to his friends after the War of the Ring: "The rest of the story is well known to you - from Bilbo's point of view. If I had written the account, it would have sounded rather different" (p. 335, Unfinished Tales). Indeed, as we enter into The Hobbit the narration and detail is wholly different than any other story of Middle-earth.

Middle-earth timeline: Third Age, 2941 (between April 7th and 24th)

Today's reading comes from: Unfinished Tales, pages 332-335