J. R. R. Tolkien: a biography by Humphrey Carpenter

Author:Humphrey Carpenter [Carpenter, Humphrey]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical, Literary, Authors; English, Biography & Autobiography, Autobiography, Biography: general, English, 20th century, Biography, 1892-1973, Middle Earth (Imaginary place), Fantasy literature, English authors, Biography: Literary, Historical - British, (John Ronald Reuel);, Tolkien; J. R. R, Anglicists - Great Britain, Tolkien; J. R. R., Literature: History & Criticism, Literary companions, Authors; English - 20th century
ISBN: 9780618057023
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2000, c1987.
Published: 2010-03-06T19:30:00+00:00

Part Five

1925-194900: The Third Age

Enter Mr Baggins

Really that missing piece had been there all the time. It was the Suffield side of his own personality. His deep feeling that his real home was in the West Midland countryside of England had, since his undergraduate days, defined the nature of his scholarly work. The same motives that had led him to study Beowulf, Gawain, and the Ancrene Wisse now created a character that embodied everything he loved about the West Midlands: Mr Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit

We can see certain superficial precedents for this invention: the Snergs, the name Babbitt, and in Tolkien’s own stories the original four-foot Tom Bombadil and the tiny Timothy Titus. But this does not tell us very much. The personal element is far more revealing. In the story, Bilbo Baggins, son of the lively Belladonna Took, herself one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, descended also from the respectable and solid Bagginses, is middle aged and unadventurous, dresses in sensible clothes but likes bright colours, and has a taste for plain food; but there is something strange in his character that wakes up when the adventure begins. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, son of the enterprising Mabel Suffield, herself one of the three remarkable daughters of old John Suffield (who lived to be nearly a hundred), descended also from the respectable and solid Tolkiens, was middle aged and inclined to pessimism, dressed in sensible clothes but liked coloured waistcoats when he could afford them, and had a taste for plain food. But there was something unusual in his character that had already manifested itself in the creation of a mythology, and it now led him to begin this new story.

Tolkien himself was well aware of the similarity between creator and creation. ‘I am in fact a hobbit,’ he once wrote, ‘in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.’ And as if to emphasise the personal parallel, Tolkien chose for the hobbit’s house the name ‘Bag End’, which was what the local people called his Aunt Jane’s Worcestershire farm. Worcestershire, the county from which the Suffields had come, and in which his brother Hilary was at that time cultivating the land, is of all West Midland counties The Shire from which the hobbits come; Tolkien wrote of it: ‘Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way “home” to me, as no other part of the world is.’ But the village of Hobbiton itself with its mill and river is to be found not in Worcestershire but in Warwickshire, now half hidden

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