On Hobbits & Hobbit-Holes

One of my favorite coffee mugs was a gift from my sister, covered all over with “famous first lines” of novels. I have a degree in English literature, and I still had to look a few of them up—I guess they can’t all be “Call me Ishmael.” But I do think there’s one first line missing from what is otherwise a stellar lineup.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.”

I love that first line. Apparently Tolkien whimsically tossed it off on the back of a napkin, or a paper he was grading, or some such. I’m going to go on to the second line, too, which I love just as much. This won’t be exact, because I’m [mis?]quoting from memory, but in essence: “Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with worms and oozy smells; nor a bare, sandy hole with nowhere to sit and nothing to eat—it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

I’ve always had an affinity, I suppose, for the idea of the cozy, comfortable Hobbit Hole. I’d like to think I have my adventurous Tookish side, but in this, I am very Baggins. (If you’re unfamiliar with the paradigm: Bilbo Baggins is a homebody-Hobbit, but he’s descended from the more adventurous Took clan on his mother’s side…)

I am fully aware of how my mood is affected by my surroundings—which is why my rooms are painted in the palette of seas, and hung about with decor evoking sails & whales.

It’s why I took such pleasure in fitting out our sailboat in those same colors and themes, and (following our recent decision to sell the boat) it’s why I’ve taken pleasure all over again in reintegrating those items of decor back into the walls and shelves of our land-home.

I realize, actually, that I’ve been somewhat schizophrenically emotionally divided between those two “homes”—the house we live in now, and the boat we’d intended to make our home after a few years’ time. There are things I have loved about each, and right now I’m pleasantly absorbed in appreciating (all the more so for no longer planning to give them up) those things I enjoy about the house. (Chief among them: being able to visit the “head” in the middle of the night without having to climb over my husband’s body to get out of the bunk!)

When it comes to the comforts of land-home (not to mention the lovely little town we live in), the prevailing mood is: “well yay, there’s not a timeline for that being gone.”

(I’ve also realized I can cease the endless math-capades I’ve been practicing in the back of my mind, constantly thinking about how much toothpaste we should stock before sailing off into the blue, or how many pairs of sandals, or how much coffee, or how much cat litter…)

And as I’m renewingly appreciating my home, it’s a “nesting” time of year in any case. The outside palette slides daily further from greens to golds, the windows stay dark for longer, the nights are getting down to the 30s even after Tshirt-temperature days. It’s time for pumpkin-spice-everything, and actual pumpkins in our garden, and reacquainting ourselves with our sweaters—and my Inner Baggins revels in the nightly luxury of cozying up together under the fluffiest quilt, draped all about with heavy cat-bodies while the mercury drops outdoors. It’s a Hobbit-Hole, and that means comfort.

When my son was very small he answered to “Hobbit“—a moniker I laid on him with the first appearance of his sandy curls. He had the vocabulary and the thinkery of the Big People from a very early age, just in a Hobbit-sized, curly-topped package. I’ve just been re-reading a journal from the year he was three (or rather, “fwee-and-a-HAF”!), when he first discovered there was a book about Hobbits. Nothing would do but he had to read the book, despite it being a “grownup book” with no pictures. “Well you can read it to me,” he insisted, reasonably, and with assurance.

So I began, expecting him to last for only a few pages, but we’re in the final chapters—Smaug just got killed before I left for class this evening. He’s following the story, too, though surely a great deal of the language is going over his head. I have overheard him relating plot-points and descriptions (most notably the hobbit-hole) to his dad, and he discusses character motivation as we read.

When Bilbo converses with the dragon, is Smaug only PRETENDING to be polite? Or is he really a nice dragon, and the dwarves were mistaken? Do you suppose Smaug is flying off to Lake Town to attack the people, or to get a drink? (He was quite willing to consider the dragon “not wild”— which is [his imaginary friend] Dragon’s influence, perhaps… at least, that is, right up until Smaug began to burn Lake Town. Then: “They’d better kill him, FAST!”)

I only wish I’d recorded what he had to say about the Hobbit-Hole.