Bag End [Homely House #1]

From Chapter 2 of Finding Home in Lord of the Rings

When anyone enters Disneyland for the first time they see a shining castle looming in the distance. It’s been noted that this castle is not a replica of any particular European castle instead it’s a distillation of Disney’s idea of the perfect castle. Creating these composite archetypes was one of Disney’s geniuses.

One has a similar experience when first entering Middle Earth and encountering Bag End. This Hobbit Hole is not a replica of any particular 19th-century English village home but it’s the English village house in a kind of concentrated form to accentuate all of its features.

Did the English ever live in holes in the ground? This was never a common practice to my knowledge, especially building the kind of comfortable holes like the multigenerational homestead of the Baggins clan. But placing Bag End in a hole better allows us to feel what the ideal, archetypal English village home of the early 19th century would feel like, the coziness, the rootedness, the sense of how it just melted into the surrounding landscape.

So let’s explore this first of the seven homely homes Tolkien created and look for clues in Bag End for how to make our homes more homely. We’re given a lot of detail about Bag End in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and so we’ll pick these six elements to explore its characteristics: The garden, the smoking bench, the pantry, the books, the hearth, and Bilbo’s writing desk.

The Garden

Have you noticed that when Americans refer to the front area in front of their house they call it “the front yard” but in England, they often call it “the garden”? The American yard is like a buffer zone, a no-man’s land to create a comfortable distance between the residents and the passersby. 

In contrast, Bilbo employed a gardener to make beautiful the area in front of his hole. It was a place to take in the air. It was his contribution to the beautification of the village. The effect of this practice all around Hobbiton turned the entire countryside into a kind of garden park that people still flock to New Zealand to see today.

What would happen if we put this kind of care into our front yards? I think the primary reason this is so rare in American neighborhoods is that the area in the front is built primarily for cars instead of humans.

We’ve made the decision to move our family to a city built before the car where there are at least hints of this kind of design built for this ancient creature: the walking human. We’ve also put our garden in the very front of our house right on the sidewalk. I long to have a Bilbo kind of experience where I’m enjoying the garden in the twilight and encounter Ted Sandyman or the Gaffer strolling by where we can have a bit of a chat. But this kind of spontaneous encounter is fueled by another feature within Bilbo’s front garden.

The Smoking Bench

Smoking causes cancer. There I said it right at the beginning. With that out of the way let’s talk about the reason for its prominence in Tolkien’s world.

As an occasional pipe smoker, I can tell you that the main reason for this kind of smoking for me is how it forces me to slow down, stay put and be present. This is really hard to do. There are so many times I want to be present in nature, be present in a conversation, or be present in prayer but I feel the constant urge to move on to the next thing. When you arrive at the top of a mountain after a day of hiking and gaze at the beautiful vista how long can you just stay and enjoy that hard-won moment? I can guess Tolkien’s answer: as long as it takes to smoke a pipe’s bowl of Old Toby.

So placing a smoking bench in front of Bag End said, “I’m available for conversation. I have nothing better to do than say hello, how are you, how’s the family.” It’s a statement of being present in the neighborhood. How can we replicate this kind of presence in our neighborhoods? In our overscheduled lives we tend to undervalue the chance encounter. Maybe if we took the time to just be available in the cool of the evening a wizard might happen by to inquire about our interest in going on an adventure.

The Pantry

Hobbits love to eat. Their passion for food seems to come from their value for comfort and for hospitality. This is why a basic responsibility Bilbo embraced was to ensure his pantry was always full. A full pantry means you can make constant, spontaneous open invitations. When Bilbo leaves the dwarves at the end of the Hobbit he announces, “If ever you are passing my way, don't wait to knock! Tea is at four; but any of you are welcome at any time”. In fact, it was the impulsive invitation Bilbo offered to Gandalf and the subsequent unexpected party that opened the door for his grand adventure.

How many unexpected parties have we missed because our pantries are empty?

One place I’ve encountered this kind of spontaneous hospitality is in the Middle East. Multiple times I’ve been invited by a Jewish father I had just met to his home that evening for Shabbat and I can’t count the number of times an Arab has invited me in and offered me a comfortable seat and something cold to drink. As I tried to understand why this kind of hospitality is so automatic in that part of the world I learned that both Jews and Muslims found their passion in hospitality from an unexpected party that is described in both the Torah and the Koran when, on one dusty afternoon, Abraham and Sarah served a feast to a group of three strangers. For some reason, this example of radical hospitality has failed to take root in the same way in Christian culture despite also being in the Christian Old Testament followed by a command to follow Abraham’s example by the author of Hebrews “Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!” (Hebrews 13:2)

So how can we become hosts like Bilbo at Bag End? Be prepared with a full pantry. What to put in the pantry will depend on your culture but we work to keep a special refrigerator stocked with special hosting beverages along with various cheeses and crackers to pull out in case of an unexpected hosting opportunity. 

Bilbo also had a time in his schedule set aside for hosting. Imagine if every day at 4pm you were so wanting someone to stop by that you set out tea and snacks just in case. In past generations, Sunday afternoons were considered a special visiting time when family, friends, and neighbors would drop by one another’s homes. We have to bring something like this back! Our family hosts open meals on Thursday evenings with the goal of hoping people we don’t expect will just show up. Our pantry is filled with food just in case we’re blessed with a number of visitors beyond our expectations.