A Long-expected Party.

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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.

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"A party of special magnificence" - Thanks to everyone.

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That month was September, and as fine as you could ask.

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"Eleventy-one", Sixty? Seventy? I'm not telling!

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Inside Bag End, Bilbo and Gandalf were sitting at an open window of a small room looking out west on to the garden. The late afternoon was bright and peaceful. The flowers glowed red and golden.

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“How bright your garden looks!” said Gandalf.

“Yes,” said Bilbo. “I am very fond indeed of it, and of all the dear old Shire; but I think I need a holiday.”

“You mean to go on with your plan then?”

“I do. I made up my mind months ago, and I haven’t changed it.”

“I feel I need a holiday, a very long holiday, as I have told you before. Probably a permanent holiday; I don’t expect I shall return. In fact I don’t mean to, and I have made all arrangements.”

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Old Uncle B (aged ?) - Photo by Catriona (aged 8)

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“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. 

Well-preserved indeed!” he snorted. 

“Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.”

“Well, I’ve made up my mind, anyway. I want to see mountains again, Gandalf - mountains; and then find somewhere where I can rest.”

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Tolkien himself was also well aware of the similarity between himself and hobbits.

He once wrote, ‘I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, 

trees and un-mechanised farmlands.‘ 

He said that he liked good plain food, detested French cooking (garlic?), 

loved mushrooms and did not go in for travelling far. 

He also spent much of his childhood, like me on the Warwickshire/Worcestershire borders.

I was in fact born just up the very same road,
where he and his family had lived way back in 1896.

Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was first published in three parts way back in 1954/5.

I was twelve then, and how I ever managed without them prior to this, I shall never know!

I loved it then, and still do and to this day never tire of reading, 

and nowadays listening to, the works of Tolkien. 

Complete escapism. 

The first books, of course, had no illustrations and all that was available to guide us on Frodo’s journey was a delicate map of Middle Earth folded up in the back of the books. After many unfolding for references, these soon became a bit fragile.

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A fragile map at the back of one of my early books.

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I therefore set myself a task of plotting the journey on a larger scale and maybe doing a few sketches as I imagined the landscapes and locations in Middle Earth. 

I hadn’t thought of colour paintings at that stage 

but I did try my hand at a few years later. 

The header on this blog is my first early vision of Rivendell as I imagined it then.

My word! How events can overtake you. 

It was only a matter of time before all my efforts were ‘history’.

As the popularity of Tolkien’s masterpiece took off, it wasn’t long before an Atlas of Middle Earth was to appear along with all the very best book illustrators also getting involved. These were professional artists and my efforts were soon abandoned and archived to the attic.

Some of these superb pictures are shown on the right hand side along with a few of Tokien’s original drawings. 

As a Tolkien admirer, I was eagerly buying these books, maps, posters and even sound recordings of Tolkien himself on old vinyl records. All this was some fifty years ago, way before this recent revival, following the making of the spectacular (but in many ways inaccurate) versions on film. 

Not being one to throw things out, I have recently rediscovered all this ’mathom’ tucked away in the attic. At the first reading, I thought of hobbit’s ’mathom’ as weapons stored in the Mathom-house museum at Michel Delving, but not necessarily. 

For anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that were passed from hand to hand were of that sort. 
(LotR - Prologue.)

Unfortunately, I did throw out loads of old paintings some twenty years ago during my last house move, and all of those Middle Earth pictures went with them as I was not very pleased with the quality and all seemed so ‘out-of-date’. What I did do though, was to take photographs of the better ones before scrapping the originals. That header is actually a photo of a photo!  

Not a patch on the excellent illustrations now to be found all over the web,
but still, a bit of my past which I am glad I kept.

Now! Let's see what other dusty 'mathoms' I can dig out.

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