A Long Belated Party

S.R. 14 Blotmath, 1388

“How many will be coming?” Frodo asked as he and Bilbo prepared for the party of introduction.  Cold, rainy weather was forcing the party to be indoors, and the kitchen, sitting room and parlor were becoming quite crammed with all the tables and chairs they were fetching from the recesses of Bag End. 

Bilbo put down his end of the table they were carrying and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  “That’s a fair question for you to be asking, my lad.  Your Aunt Dora would know the count better than I would.  I’m the head of the Baggins family, but as the eldest lady in the family she’s the one who keeps the genealogy complete.  My copy of the Baggins of Hobbiton family tree is rather sparse.  It has maybe twenty names of living hobbits on it, but I know there are quite a few more than that.  I’m expecting it to get quite busy in here this afternoon.”

“It will be just like Brandy Hall,” Frodo said with a huge grin.

Bilbo grimaced.  It would be quite a bit tighter than at Brandy Hall.  On the other hand, he loved having guests and it had been entirely too long since he had opened his hole to extended family. 

“Are there any Bagginses my age?” Frodo asked, eager to make friends while in Hobbiton. 

Bilbo frowned, wishing he had a better answer than he did.  “There’s Lotho Sackville-Baggins.  He’s about four years older than you are.”  What he thought but didn’t say was ‘Right in the thick of his tweens, Lotho is, and he acts it.’ 

*

“All right, my boy, let’s get you properly turned out to meet the family,” he said as he looked through his own clothes.  He pulled out a simple blue shirt.  Frodo slipped it over his head and fastened all but the button at the collar.  Bilbo laughed.  “I guess the size of that shirt doesn’t matter one bit.  The color brings out your eyes so well that no one will even notice the fit.  Now I’d better neaten up those curls.” He took a pair of scissors from his desk and concentrated on his subject.  “Don’t move, Frodo,” he warned.  “I’m not an expert at haircuts. You wouldn’t want to lose an ear, now would you?”

Frodo pulled out of his reach and looked back at his uncle in alarm.  Bilbo laughed, then began to trim.  Frodo tried to stand still but, regrettably, didn’t altogether manage.

“Stickle-bats, Frodo, I meant it – hold still,” Bilbo ordered.  “I’ve just cut a chunk of hair off that I oughtn’t to have.  Now I’ll have to even things out.”

Frodo stifled a giggle as he circled around to check the damage in a nearby looking glass.  “I’d better do as you say, or I’ll have no hair left.”

Bilbo set back to finishing the job.  “I’s a good thing we didn’t pay money for that cut,” he assessed when done.  Poor Frodo’s hair was as short as a babe’s, with curls springing tightly to his head.

There was a knock on the door.  Bilbo had Frodo answer it.  As Frodo bowed to the family at the door, Bilbo announced.  “Ponto and Heather Baggins, and little Angelica, I would like to introduce to you my ‘nephew’ Frodo Baggins.”

“Welcome to the Bagginses, lad,” Ponto said with a grin as he reached out to Frodo for a hug, then passed him along to his wife.  “It’s about time that you settled down to family, Bilbo.”

“Here, Frodo,” Angelica, Ponto’s comely little seven-year-old, said as she sweetly handed him a green top.  “Now we’re friends as well as cousins.”  Frodo bowed in thanks.  His pockets were soon full of trinkets.  He just wished names and faces were not jumbling together in his mind – those of all the various Goodbodies, for instance.

“Everyone is very nice,” he commented to his uncle, several introductions later, after handing baby Mosco Burrows back to his mother, Ponto’s sister Peony.

“Yes, Frodo, they are,” Bilbo answered.  He was still a little miffed, however, at Milo Burrows’ apology of never having written Bilbo concerning Frodo.  Milo’s mother, Asphodel Brandybuck, was Primula’s sister.  She had told her son about the drowning back when he visited his parents in Stock to introduce them to his then bride-to-be.   Not knowing how to write herself, Asphodel had asked Milo to relay the message to the Bagginses before wedding plans chased all other thoughts from her head.  Milo had just shame-facedly admitted to Bilbo that in his eagerness to wed he had himself plumb forgotten his promise to write – until just days before, when he and Peony had received Dora’s letter.

Bilbo’s scowl had no time to lift.  “Otho, Lobelia, and Lotho Sackville-Baggins,” he introduced to Frodo.  “Otho is my closest relation, and as such is expected to inherit.”  Frodo bowed. 

Several seconds of silence passed with no response from the Sackville-Bagginses.  Frodo could hear his own heart beating in his throat and it was almost enough to choke him in his inverted position.

“Frodo,” Otho said finally.  “Yes, Bilbo, we recognize the bloodline, but do not expect that we will ever accept this child into our fold.  You can be assured that he and you will remain under our scrutiny.”  Upon rising, Frodo noted that Lotho offered him no trinket.

“Well, that went better than I expected,” Bilbo whispered pithily as the Sackville-Bagginses headed toward the punchbowl.  “After that, the rest of the family should be no problem.”

*

“I understand that you are the nephew of the Master of Buckland, Frodo,” Porto Baggins said, obviously impressed to have someone of such great worth in the family.

Frodo reddened.  “I may be closely related to Master Rory and consider his grandson Merry as my brother, sir, but I have no position at all in the Brandybuck family.  My friend Folco Boffin, who’s a nephew of Mistress Menegilda through her younger sister, says that that’s because I’m the very last of the Late Master Gorbadoc’s grandchildren, and the offspring of a female Brandybuck on top of that.  I can assure you that I sit on quite an obscure branch of the Brandybuck family tree.  Folco’s older brother, Griffo, jokes that the Brandybucks could prune me right off without anyone missing me.”

“That’s rather a mean thing to say, even in jest,” Daisy said.  "I don't think I would very much like this Griffo Boffin."

*

“Would you like a tour?” 

Frodo’s suggestion met with unanimous eagerness on behalf of the visiting children and tweens.  None but Lotho remembered ever having been inside Hobbiton’s finest residence.  They all lined up like ducklings. 

“This is the library,” Frodo explained with an elaborate sweep of the arms.  That met with revered murmurs from his Hobbiton relatives for except for the very young children - and Frodo - all of the other Baggineses knew how to read and write.  Frodo soon learned from his cousins that Bagginses in general were quick at figuring things out and in planning and organizing and sticking to a schedule and being altogether dependable.  These had been the skills that had earned the family its reputation and wealth.

They were surprised when they came to Frodo’s room.  “Is that all you’ve got?” Angelica asked, as she looked in Frodo’s toy chest, for it was much less grand than she had expected.  The wardrobe was far emptier than she had expected as well.  She had more clothes and toys than Frodo did.

“He hasn’t been here that long, Angelica,” Lotho said in the ensuing silence.  “You have to have time to accumulate stuff.”

But it was the wizard’s room that excited everyone the most.  Gandalf had stayed at Bag End frequently enough over the last 30 odd years that Bilbo had set aside a room for him. The room had once been a pantry – which, being in a hobbit hole, meant that it was one of the larger rooms in the dwelling.  Having been a pantry meant, too, that it was set deep within Bag End, with no windows or fireplace.  The earth of the Hill made it a comfortable constant temperature.  It was furnished with a huge mattress atop a high frame and an enormous armchair brought from Bree.

“Is the room enchanted?” Angelica whispered, peering inside with eyes wide.

“It may be,” Frodo answered, wondering himself.  He invited them all to climb atop the bed to see.  Nothing happened, so they all sat down and shared stories about themselves.

“…Over the years the timekeeper at Brandy Hall had tweaked and tweaked the one-hundred-plus clocks in the complex until they were all in near-perfect synchronization with his own timepieces,” Frodo relayed when it was his turn to talk, “so I haphazardly shortened or lengthened the pendulum of each clock so as to significantly alter its movement with respect to the other clocks.  Everyone agreed that it was the best New Year’s Eve prank ever played at The Hall.

“The timekeeper told the Master that it’ll take the rest of his years to recalibrate all of the clocks to his satisfaction,” Frodo concluded with a sense of pride.  “He gripes about ‘that mischievous young Baggins’ every chance he gets, but I don’t think he really minds it all that much.  He says I gave him something to fiddle with again.”

“You are an uncouth little urchin, aren’t you?” A tween-aged Goodbody lass said through the others’ laughter.  It gave Frodo pause.  Perhaps here in Hobbiton New Year pranks weren’t a tradition.  Perhaps around here it wasn’t an honor to be considered a rascal.

Or maybe it was. “I think I like you, Cousin,” Lotho said with an expression on his face that reminded Frodo to a great extent of the ones Folco Boffin wore whenever he was about to be at his most irresponsible.

*

“…So I propose our entire family come together in support of young Frodo in his need,” Bilbo stated as he passed around a plate of Dora’s renowned mince tarts.  “The Brandybucks are very good to him, but I intend to see that he is also raised as a proper Baggins.  Each of us knows what that means.”

“It does not mean learning twaddle from you,” Otho stated point-blank.  “Admit it, Bilbo.  You don’t want to make a proper Baggins out of him.  You want to make him an aberration in your own image.”

“The Baggins name would be better off if he were simply erased from its rolls,” Lobelia contended.  “Send him back to those river dwellers now.  He’s naught but one of them.  Simple and dirty.  You do nothing but cheapen Bag End by even letting him in the door.”

“This is not about Bag End, Lobelia,” Bilbo countered angrily, knowing full well that in her mind it was.  

“It is,” she avowed.  “Drogo Baggins had no claim to Bag End and that …that… that orphan… has even less.” 

Bilbo turned red, his ears quivering.  This conversation was going nowhere.  He turned and took the empty platter to the kitchen.  He did not bring in additional confections when he returned to the parlor, which was the rudest of gestures there was in hobbit etiquette.  Otho and Lobelia took the cue.  No civilities were exchanged upon their departure. 

*

TBC