At Aunt Dora’s

S.R. 20 Blotmath, 1388

Bag End had a certain milieu of bachelor-ness about it.  Neither austere nor plush, it was decorated comfortably in woods and earth-tones and accented with handsome carpets, books, and memorabilia from Bilbo’s great adventure.  Its appointments hinted at the financial status of its occupier without drawing attention to it.  Aunt Dora’s hole, on the other extreme, bespoke spinster from the very first step through the doorway.  It smelled of rose oil and everything in it was flowery with lace, beading and other fine needlework – if it wasn’t a pretty little bauble made of blown glass. 

“And this is the closest I come to a drawing room,” Dora was telling Frodo as she showed him into a very large room for such a modest-sized hole. “It’s more of an all-purpose room.”  Past the table, tea cart, and tea set filled curio, Frodo noticed that there was a curved settee tucked against one wall, something the ladies in Brandy Hall had always called a fainting couch.  It was tapestried in a design depicting bouquets of roses and upon it sat a collection of ruffled needlepoint pillows.  Atop it was a tatted lace throw.  

The rest of the room was filled with materials, yarns, a spinning wheel, loom and sizable quilting frame; along with multitudes of pillows, quilts, doilies and other crafts of very high quality.  Blown glass birds and pressed flowers hung on strings in front of the windows, casting their colors across the room.   A large chest painted with flowers was covered with plush rag dolls.  “I make things to sell at the Free Fair,” Dora explained when she noticed him staring at everything.  “This room is quite on the verge of overflowing, I know.” She laughed, “It’s a mighty good thing we’re having the Fair this summer.”

“My parents and I went to a Free Fair once, about fourteen years ago,” Frodo said.  “Why did I not meet you there?”

Dora frowned momentarily.  She would have been set up in the same first-row end spot in the vendors' exhibits as always.  Drogo would have known the place, for he used to sell things he made alongside her.  Had he brought his family to the Fair and deliberately not come by her booth to introduce his son to her?  Had things really gone so bad between them as that, all because of a comment from her impressionable sister-in-law’s Tookish mother about Bagginses being stodgy?  It was an unsettling thought.  She let it go and smiled lovingly at her nephew.  “I must have been away when you came by,” she answered.

“Did my father share your interest in art?” Frodo asked as they were setting the table for the ladies who would be coming that afternoon.

“Fleetingly, I suppose, when he was very young.  As he grew up he became far more interested in tinkering.  Of course by then Mamma had steered me into needlework, sewing and other crafts.  She said the neighbor ladies had told her they thought craftwork was more lady-like than chiseling stone and getting all dusty.”

“I think it’s mean for people to criticize like that,”  Frodo said.  “Your craftwork is lovely, Aunt Dora, please don’t think I’m suggesting otherwise, but that’s because you clearly have artistic ability.  Had someone given you encouragement, just think what you might have been able to do with it.”

Dora thanked him for the compliment, but she didn’t dwell on her own abilities.  She knew what Frodo was clearly interested in knowing.  “As for your father’s skills, dear boy, he spent more time daydreaming than anyone I ever heard tell of, but when he thought of something ingenious he could make it work.  For instance,  he made a foot pedal that he called a treadle and used it for all kinds of things, such this marvelous sewing device that he made for me.  It makes a much more even stitch than I ever possibly could achieve by hand…

“… and in the kitchen I have a little tool he made that I can use to easily take the pits out of cherries.  Out back I have something he built to separate cotton from its stems and seeds.  We’ll have to see if you’ve inherited the tinkering knack.”

Frodo grimaced.  “Dad was known throughout Buckland for being a dreamer.  The Brandybucks didn’t hold well to it.  They told me that he had designed and built the ‘contraption’ that he and Mamma took out on the river and he had obviously not considered in Mamma’s abundant pregnancy weight because it sank.”  Overcome, Dora hugged him to her hard as tears drenched both their faces.  She didn’t even correct him when he wiped his face with his sleeve.  She, of course, dabbed hers with her embroidered lace-edged handkerchief.   

“I can draw well and I’m good with building things out of wood,” Frodo finally added as his aunt gave him a nice, not-too-fancy handkerchief to take home with him.  “Old Rory has determined to apprentice me to a carpenter, if he can find one willing to take me.  I’m known to drift off into thought, myself, and some consider me cursed because of it.”

*

Frodo learned a great deal that morning besides the proper sides from which plates are to be served and collected, how to place one’s knife and fork to signify that one is finished with a course, and how (of all horrors) one should never continue to eat after everyone else at the table has finished.  He learned about his roots.

“The Bagginses were one of the leading patrician families that purchased large tracts of land early in the history of the Shire,” Dora explained.  “They divided up their lands into farmlands and estates that they leased to others.  The Baggins family officially owns a fair portion of land between The Water and the Midbrook that is within the West Farthing.  Earnings are distributed annually.  That reminds me, Drogo had directed his earnings be put into a savings account for later use.  I’ll write a letter to Bilbo to make sure he transfers that account balance to your name for when you come of age.  You’re also heir to future earnings that would have come to him.

“Now, where was I?  Oh, yes.  Because the leasings made us so well known, the Bagginses were for many generations the shoo-in for Mayor.  Of course there is hardly any government in the Shire.  Families for the most part manage their own affairs and the only duties the Mayor has is to manage the Messenger Service and the Watch, and to preside at holiday banquets.  After a while, we Bagginses lost interest in running for the office.

“The last Baggins mayor was Balbo, who was elected by a show of hands at the Free Fair on the White Downs at the Lithe of 1264.  Balbo was my great-grandfather and your great-great-grandfather, Frodo….” 

“So Bilbo’s the Baggins family patriarch,” Dora went on to finish.  “Sadly he has no son to inherit control of the shared properties.” 

A thought immediately pushed its way forefront in Frodo’s mind just as adamantly as if were Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and her umbrella.  “That’s why Otho’s so adamant that he’s Bilbo’s heir, isn’t it, Aunt Dora?  There’s a lot more at stake than Bag End and whatever’s there.”

“Yes – and that’s precisely why no one in the family wants him as the heir, Frodo.  Imagine how he’d treat the hobbits who live on those lands.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the very first thing he’d do is to raise the rents on everything.”

“Why don’t you sell the lands to those who farm them?”

“Few could afford to buy them.  The lands are worth a lot more than the rent that we charge – ten times more, at least.  We can charge what we want for rent without interference, but we couldn’t give away property or sell it for an inappropriately low price without every landowner in the Shire voting in favor of it first, and that’s unlikely because it would lower the value of everyone’s property.  Bilbo needs an heir who will be satisfied to leave things as they are.”

Frodo was glad he was out of the running.  He thought he’d much prefer to go on adventures when he grew up than to keep track of rents.

*

Lacy Hornblower was so eager to get to Dora Baggins’ that afternoon that she arrived unfashionably early.  She had heard so much about young Frodo Baggins.  Her husband was beside himself with excitement at having found a new protégé whose voice perfectly complemented Warren’s.  He was already writing duets for them.  And Glimmer… well, the very Glimmer who had never before shown interest in a lad had been blushing with every word she said about Frodo.  Gilda was taking great delight in teasing her little sister over every one of Frodo’s features, from his unusually fair skin to the little cleft in his chin.   

Dora welcomed her – and the copies of the Hornblower and Chubb family trees – warmly.

*

TBC