I see my mother in my face, but only when I travel

[sovay]

I still have a fever. I had to cancel hanging out with eredien. Observe me continuing unthrilled. And it's beautiful out, too.

In an effort to distract myself from annoyance and malaise, I am re-reading The Hobbit for the first time since high school or college. It turns out that the hardcover we have downstairs is the first revision from 1951, not the third edition from 1966, meaning that I've never read the author's final preferred text, but I am nonetheless enjoying it very much (and may spam your friendlists with random thoughts on the book, since I'm not sure my brain is good for much else at the moment). I do have, however, one serious complaint:

As I was saying, the mother of this hobbit—of Bilbo Baggins, that is—was the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of the hobbits who lived across The Water, the small river that ran at the foot of The Hill. It had been said that long ago one or other of the Took family had married into a fairy family (the less friendly said a goblin family); certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures.¹ They discreetly disappeared, and the family hushed it up; but the fact remained that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though they were undoubtedly richer.

Not that Belladonna Took ever had any adventures after she became Mrs. Bungo Baggins . . .

With all your Unfinished Tales and Lost Tales and Had Them Here A Moment Ago, Must Have Left Them In My Other Jacket Tales, Mr. Tolkien, could you not have given us some of her adventures from before that point? I have always liked that Bilbo's unconventional, tricksterish streak comes down through his mother's side (as with Odysseus). I like even more that Belladonna had stories in her own right, because you don't pick up either of those adjectives by marrying a man who sounds like the hobbit's answer to the Drones Club. It's confirmed that she knew Gandalf well—"To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!"—and perhaps when Bilbo speaks of the wizard's responsibility for "so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures," who knows but that he's not speaking unwittingly of his own mother? But that's all we ever hear. And this from an author whose supplemental materials include family trees and histories of characters who never rated even a mention in the text itself? In short, Tolkien, I respect the invention of more than fifty thousand years of recorded history: but you could totally have spared some for the Old Took's remarkable daughters. I haven't even a clue what her sisters got up to. And I am not, even with the excuse of a fever, writing fanfic to find out.

1. And here, actually, is one of the sentences Tolkien revised for the edition I've never read, thank you, Google Books: "It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them . . ." I am definitely going to need the correct edition; I have no idea what other small stray changes I've missed. I was going to write that a library is next on my to-do list, but it will probably be simpler just to raid Eric's shelves.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I have never in my life so badly wanted to read fanfic as I do right now.

Feel better! Soon!

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I've just read a very good book: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. It's like what would happen if the Pevensies and Rhoda, the Bad Seed suddenly became the protagonists in a Wimsey novel (in a good way.)

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

And I am not, even with the excuse of a fever, writing fanfic to find out.

And here I was, grinning, waiting until the end of the post where you would declare that to be your intention! You've made ME want to do so. Or perhaps a poem from Belladonna's perspective.

1. And here, actually, is one of the sentences Tolkien revised for the edition I've never read, thank you, Google Books: "It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them . . ." I am definitely going to need the correct edition; I have no idea what other small stray changes I've missed. I was going to write that a library is next on my to-do list, but it will probably be simpler just to raid Eric's shelves.

And here I come to understand the depth of my obsession with this book; when I read what you quoted further up, I blinked and thought it was misquoted, because I distinctly remembered the construction being "taken a fairy wife." And then you said you had an older revision, and then wrote this, and I am such a Tolkien fangirl I'm a little pink in the cheeks right now. I really want to read your edition!

I hope you feel better soon!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

How fascinating to see exactly how he revised it! Took out goblin and made it a for-sure fairy wife whose existence is then dismissed.

Why oh why would Belladonna willingly settle down and have her adventures quieted away?

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Sorry you're still fevered.

I would love to read the fanfic whereof you speak. If you ever should decide to write it, or find it written by somebody worth reading, I'd be grateful for a link.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Fanfic, nuthin. Convince one of your editor friends to sponsor an anthology.

[ericmvan.livejournal.com]

If you love the book that much, you should absolutely read, nea, devour, both The History of the Hobbit in two volumes, edited by John D. Rateliff, and The Annotated Hobbit edited by Douglas A. Anderson (which is in fact the edition of the original book that Rateliff uses as his basic finished text).

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

YES, omg. I did read the preferred edition in high school, and Belladonna's brevity irritated me no end.

Hope your fever subsides soon.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Fever sucks, man. I'm downloading those songs you left now...thanks so much. Much find suitable music to exchange.;)

[ericmvan.livejournal.com]

Tolkien's abandoned 1960 revision, which he misplaced and did not have before him when he did the 1966 one. Brackets in the original.

The chief family in the Shire were the Tooks, whose lands lay across the Water, the small river that lay at the foot of the Hill. Now [that is important, for] the mother of the hobbit of this Tale, Bilbo Baggins, was Belladonna Took, eldest of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of all the Tooks, and famous for having lived to the age of one hundred and thirty. It was often said (in other families) that the Tooks must have some elvish blood in them; which was of course absurd, but there was undoubtedly something queer about them, something not quite hobbitlike, according to the manners of the Shire: an outlandish strain maybe from long ago. Every now and again Tooks would go off on adventures. They disappeared, and the family hushed it up.

Not that Belladonna Took ever had any adventures after she married Bungo Baggins. Bungo, that was Bilbo's father, built for her the most commodious hobbit-hole that was to be found in that part of the Shire, always excepting the vast and many-tunneled dwellings of the Tooks. It was meant, of course, to house a large family. But Bilbo was their only son, and they both died young--for hobbits--being still in their early eighties. And there now was Bilbo, in the commodious hole, looking and behaving like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father. But maybe there was something a little peculiar in his make-up coming from the Took side, hidden, but waiting for a chance to come out. The chance never arrived, until Bibo Baggins was grown up, indeed about fifty years old, and had apparently settled down immovably.

Most of Toklien's aborted 1960 rewrite goes way too far removing the humor, but I actually prefer the rewrite of Bilbo's monologue remembering who Gandalf was (except for the needless removal of the second person in the crack about Bilbo being prosy):

'Gandalf, Gandalf! Not the old wizard who used to visit the Tooks? Good gracious me! He used to make marvellous fireworks for the Old Took's parties on Midsummer's Eve. I remember them! Splendid! They used to go up like great roses and lilies and snapdragons of fire, and hang in the sky like flowers of golden-rain in the twilight!' Mr. Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, and any way he delighted in flowers. 'Bless me!' he went on. 'Not the Gandalf who used tell such wonderful tales about dragons, and goblins, and giants, and mountains in far countries--and the Sea. They used to send many quiet lads and lasses, off on adventures, it is said; any mad thing from climbing tall trees to visiting Elves, and even trying to sail in ships.' Bilbo's voice fell almost to a whisper. "To sail, sail away to the Other Shore. Dear me!' he sighed. Life used to be quite interest--I mean, you used to upset things badly in the Shire, once upon a time.'

When Tolkien did revise the paragraph in 1966, he changed "anything from climbing trees to stowing away aboard the ships that sail to the Other Shore" to "Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves--or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores!" The original text was written before he decided that mortals were ordinarily not allowed to sail to Valinor, while the 1960 revision included a foreshadowing of Bilbo's exceptional fate which the 1966 version avoids. And in 1960, instead of saying "You seem to remember my fireworks kindly, at any rate, and that is not without hope," Gandalf says "You do remember something about me; and what you say is very promising."

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If she lived to be 130 ("he comes of a longlived family on his mother's side") and Bilbo was 50 at the start of tH, he must have been born when she was older than 80, or she'd still be alive and we know she isn't because otherwise she'd have got the silver spoons and not Lobelia.

Living 60 or 70 years before settling down and becoming Mrs Bungo Baggins leaves a lot of time for adventures. It also might explain why Bilbo, unusually for hobbits, is an only child.

I was going to say that she can't have gone as far as Rohan and Gondor because people there don't know what hobbits are, but actually it would have been 200 years before, so she could have gone anywhere.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

And I am not, even with the excuse of a fever, writing fanfic to find out.

Alas! Though I agree that most LOtR fic is terrible. (Though the ones that haven't been were hobbit-exclusive...

...you could write a poem about it...

Also, feh and sympathy of the fever! I wish you speedy recovery!

[ericmvan.livejournal.com]

We don't know the date of the wedding, but Bilbo was born in S.R. 1290, when Belladonna was 38. She died at the age of 82, just seven years before the events of The Hobbit.

I think it likelier that the remarkable and adventurous Belladonna procreated soon after marrying and decided that one child was enough, rather than marrying early and having fertility problems. So she had her entire youth and the first few years after "coming of age" at 33 for adventures.

The two known Tooks to have had adventures were her siblings: older brother Hildifons (born 1244, eight years before Belladonna) "went off on a journey and never returned," while the youngest of the Old Took's dozen children, Isengar, is "said to have 'gone to sea' in his youth." Since he was born in 1262, his youth ended when Bilbo was 5, so he is clearly the big influence on Bilbo's fascination with the sea.

There's a pretty good unwritten story about Hildifon's disappearance, his relationship to Belladonna and Isengar, and Isengar's sea adventure which presumably happened at precisely the time the staid and respectable Bungo Baggins was courting his older sister. (It is, in fact, precisely the sort of story Allen and Unwin were expecting as part of a series of modest-length sequels to the original book, in the style of the Dr. Doolittle books.)

Incidentally, the youngest remarkable daughter, Mirabella, was Frodo's grandmother; she married Gorbadoc 'Broadbelt' Brandybuck (Master of Buckland and Merry's great-grand-father) and their daughter Primula, who was 21 at the time of The Hobbit, later married Bilbo's second cousin Drogo.

(The relationships among the hobbit characters are wonderfully complicated, due to the frequent marriages among the Tooks, Brandybucks, Baggins, and Bolgers and amplified by the fact that Merry's parents, Saradoc Brandybuck and Esmeralda Took, were second cousins. Saradoc was Frodo's first cousin (being the son of Frodo's maternal uncle Rorimac) and Esmeralda was Frodo's second cousin, being the granddaughter of Hildigrim Took, one of Belladonna and Mirabella's older brothers. But wait, there's more! Hildigrim's wife was Rosa Baggins, who, like Frodo's grandfather Fosco, was Bungo Baggin's first cousin. So Esmeralda was also Frodo's third cousin, on the Baggins side. But we're not done yet, because, Frodo's grandmother (Fosco's wife), Ruby Bolger, was Gorbadoc Brandybuck's first cousin, his father Marmadoc having married Adaldrida Bolger. So Saradoc was also Frodo's third cousin via the Bolgers. So Merry was Frodo's first, second, third, and third cousin, all of them once removed.)

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Alas! Though I agree that most LOtR fic is terrible.

"The better the canon, the worse the fanfic" does seem to be a rule, sometimes, doesn't it?

Although now that I've said that I have to admit that I've never read bad Vorkosiverse fic. Oh well. ;-)
And, of course, if sovay were to write fanfic, it would be good fanfic. (Please don't mock and taunt me by writing Ron Weasley/Eragon/Darth Vader/Marie Antoinette crossover mpreg incest fic, Sonya? Even though I'm sure it would be the one readable specimen of the above in all of space-time. :-)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Oh, OK, he didn't just cut "famous for having lived to be 130", he changed his mind about it.

Thank you for all this, especially the last paragraph. It reminds me of sitting in the bar of the Green Dragon on a rainy evening with my feet on the fender.

[ericmvan.livejournal.com]

Actually, he didn't change his mind about 130 years -- that was a dangling clause that in fact referred to Belladonna's father The Old Took, although on first reading I also took it momentarily to refer to the daughter. Realize that the 1960 version was essentially a first draft that was never copy-edited for the occasional stylistic error like this one.

I love the little bit in the LOTR movie where Pippin is explaining his relationship to Frodo to random strangers at The Prancing Pony, because it reads like the filmmakers' own shout-out to their fondness for the geneologies. I didn't realize that Frodo and Merry were related a fourth way (through the Bolgers, whose family tree was cut at the last moment from Appendix C for space reasons and really ought to be restored) until I was rereading Volume XII of The History of Middle-Earth last night, and it makes me very happy. And of course Merry's relationship to Frodo is an expansion on Frodo's to Bilbo (in both cases, both first and second cousins once removed).

[eredien]

But we are meeting tomorrow at noon, right?

Mmm, the Hobbit. Comfort reading at some of its finest.

[sovay]

But we are meeting tomorrow at noon, right?

No, because I have completely screwed up and I'm supposed to be spending tomorrow with my brother. I shouldn't try to schedule myself when I'm running a fever. I'm really, really sorry. Can we try for next week?