When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he
would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with
a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and
excitement in Hobbiton.
Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the
wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable
disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had
brought back from his travels had now become a local legend,
and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might
say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with
treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also
his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it
seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was
much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call
him well-preserved; but unchanged would have been nearer the
mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought
this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that
anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well
as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.
‘It will have to be paid for,’ they said. ‘It isn’t natural, and
trouble will come of it!’
But so far trouble had not come; and as Mr. Baggins was
generous with his money, most people were willing to forgive him his oddities and his good fortune. He remained
on visiting terms with his relatives (except, of course, the
Sackville-Bagginses), and he had many devoted admirers
among the hobbits of poor and unimportant families. But he
had no close friends, until some of his younger cousins began
to grow up.
The eldest of these, and Bilbo’s favourite, was young Frodo
Baggins. When Bilbo was ninety-nine he adopted Frodo as
his heir, and brought him to live at Bag End; and the hopes of
the Sackville-Bagginses were finally dashed. Bilbo and Frodo
happened to have the same birthday, September 22nd. ‘You
had better come and live here, Frodo my lad,’ said Bilbo
one day; ‘and then we can celebrate our birthday-parties
comfortably together.’ At that time Frodo was still in his
tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties
between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.
Twelve more years passed. Each year the Bagginses had
given very lively combined birthday-parties at Bag End; but
now it was understood that something quite exceptional
was being planned for that autumn. Bilbo was going to be
eleventy-one, 111, a rather curious number, and a very respectable age for a hobbit (the Old Took himself had only
reached 130); and Frodo was going to be thirty-three, 33, an
important number: the date of his ‘coming of age’.
Tongues began to wag in Hobbiton and Bywater; and
rumour of the coming event travelled all over the Shire. The
history and character of Mr. Bilbo Baggins became once
again the chief topic of conversation; and the older folk
suddenly found their reminiscences in welcome demand.
No one had a more attentive audience than old Ham
Gamgee, commonly known as the Gaffer. He held forth at
The Ivy Bush, a small inn on the Bywater road; and he spoke
with some authority, for he had tended the garden at Bag
End for forty years, and had helped old Holman in the same
job before that. Now that he was himself growing old and
stiff in the joints, the job was mainly carried on by his youngest son, Sam Gamgee. Both father and son were on very
friendly terms with Bilbo and Frodo. They lived on the Hill
itself, in Number 3 Bagshot Row just below Bag End.
‘A very nice well-spoken gentlehobbit is Mr. Bilbo, as I’ve
always said,’ the Gaffer declared. With perfect truth: for Bilbo
was very polite to him, calling him ‘Master Hamfast’, and
consulting him constantly upon the growing of vegetables –
in the matter of ‘roots’, especially potatoes, the Gaffer was
recognized as the leading authority by all in the neighbourhood (including himself ).
‘But what about this Frodo that lives with him?’ asked Old
Noakes of Bywater. ‘Baggins is his name, but he’s more than
half a Brandybuck, they say. It beats me why any Baggins
of Hobbiton should go looking for a wife away there in
Buckland, where folks are so queer.’
‘And no wonder they’re queer,’ put in Daddy Twofoot
(the Gaffer’s next-door neighbour), ‘if they live on the wrong
side of the Brandywine River, and right agin the Old Forest.
That’s a dark bad place, if half the tales be true.’
‘You’re right, Dad!’ said the Gaffer. ‘Not that the Brandybucks of Buckland live in the Old Forest; but they’re a queer
breed, seemingly. They fool about with boats on that big
river – and that isn’t natural. Small wonder that trouble came
of it, I say. But be that as it may, Mr. Frodo is as nice a
young hobbit as you could wish to meet. Very much like
Mr. Bilbo, and in more than looks. After all his father was
a Baggins. A decent respectable hobbit was Mr. Drogo
Baggins; there was never much to tell of him, till he was
drownded.’
‘Drownded?’ said several voices. They had heard this and
other darker rumours before, of course; but hobbits have a
passion for family history, and they were ready to hear it
again.
‘Well, so they say,’ said the Gaffer. ‘You see: Mr. Drogo,
he married poor Miss Primula Brandybuck. She was our Mr.
Bilbo’s first cousin on the mother’s side (her mother being
the youngest of the Old Took’s daughters); and Mr. Drogo
was his second cousin. So Mr. Frodo is his first and second
cousin, once removed either way, as the saying is, if you
follow me. And Mr. Drogo was staying at Brandy Hall with
his father-in-law, old Master Gorbadoc, as he often did
after his marriage (him being partial to his vittles, and old
Gorbadoc keeping a mighty generous table)
and he went out
30 the fellowship of the ring
boating on the Brandywine River; and he and his wife were
drownded, and poor Mr. Frodo only a child and all.’
‘I’ve heard they went on the water after dinner in the
moonlight,’ said Old Noakes; ‘and it was Drogo’s weight as
sunk the boat.’
‘And I heard she pushed him in, and he pulled her in after
him,’ said Sandyman, the Hobbiton miller.
‘You shouldn’t listen to all you hear, Sandyman,’ said the
Gaffer, who did not much like the miller. ‘There isn’t no call
to go talking of pushing and pulling. Boats are quite tricky
enough for those that sit still without looking further for the
cause of trouble. Anyway: there was this Mr. Frodo left an
orphan and stranded, as you might say, among those queer
Bucklanders, being brought up anyhow in Brandy Hall. A
regular warren, by all accounts. Old Master Gorbadoc never
had fewer than a couple of hundred relations in the place.
Mr. Bilbo never did a kinder deed than when he brought the
lad back to live among decent folk.
‘But I reckon it was a nasty knock for those SackvilleBagginses. They thought they were going to get Bag End,
that time when he went off and was thought to be dead. And
then he comes back and orders them off; and he goes on
living and living, and never looking a day older, bless him!
And suddenly he produces an heir, and has all the papers
made out proper. The Sackville-Bagginses won’t never see
the inside of Bag End now, or it is to be hoped not.’
‘There’s a tidy bit of money tucked away up there, I hear
tell,’ said a stranger, a visitor on business from Michel
Delving in the Westfarthing. ‘All the top of your hill is full of
tunnels packed with chests of gold and silver, and jools, by
what I’ve heard.’
‘Then you’ve heard more than I can speak to,’ answered
the Gaffer. ‘I know nothing about jools. Mr. Bilbo is free with
his money, and there seems no lack of it; but I know of no
tunnel-making. I saw Mr. Bilbo when he came back, a matter
of sixty years ago, when I was a lad. I’d not long come
prentice to old Holman (him being my dad’s cousin), but he
had