Hobbit Pantries as Keys to Plenty
- Miriam Ellis
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Within the first few words of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, we are charmed (and appetized!) by the notion that the hole in the ground has "lots of pantries". Does your mouth water if you stop to think of these cozy storerooms filled to bursting with the best the Shire can offer in the way of fresh, local food, scrumptious baked goods, and perhaps a few imported luxuries?
Delicious Decisions
Every attempt to illustrate Tolkien's enchanting tales involves making a series of minute decisions. What would be in Bilbo's best pantry, based on descriptions of meals in the texts, and on seasonality and ancient preservation techniques? Bilbo has crystal tableware, but would glass jars have been common in this Third Age culture, or would relishes, condiments, and preserves more likely have been stored in earthenware? Bilbo is very fond of flowers, but how much of his garden was devoted to produce, and how much might he have procured from neighbors like the Gamgees or from nearby farmers? Every detail in a painting like this is the result of such questions, right down to the decorative salt box (rock salt from a mine at Standelf or Quarry? Sea salt from Blue Mountain dwarves?) So often, there are no official answers, but the daydreaming is worth much.
On the one hand, I simply wanted to paint Mr. Baggins in all his cheerful glory in a well-stocked pantry. Imagine having such a beautiful larder, filled with a bounty of excellent, organic provender. An early viewer of the picture asked if this looked like rather too much food, but given that hobbits eat six times a day when possible, I reckon this up to 42 meals per week. Throw in a few guests and tea parties, and the need for several pantries becomes quite clear. It explains how the hobbit was able to feast Gandalf and 13 unexpected dwarves at the drop of a hat. I have a hobbit-like love of nice food, making it a great pleasure for me to offer friends this glimpse into a Bag End pantry.
Digging Deeper in Hobbit Gardens
But the painting is more than this. It is a meditation on plenty. Being close to the green world and devoted to gardening and farming, Third Age hobbits would have known a fact of life that has become alarmingly invisible in modern times. Bilbo would have known that if he planted a single sunflower seed on The Hill, a towering plant would emerge, and the one starter seed would yield him back a thousand or more. The Gaffer would have known that he could pop just one piece of a tater into the ground, wait a few weeks, and then dig up a whole nest of them to feed his large family. Sam would have learnt as a lad that if he pushed a bean into the soil, a vigorous vine would come swirling up to meet the sun and rain down hundreds more beans on Number 3 Bagshot Row.
Every sown seed, every buried nut, would have taught the Shire-folk that the model of nature is abundance. This is a phenomenon as observable as the law of gravity to anyone who has the chance to plant, tend, and harvest, or to go berrying and nutting along country lanes.
Instead, in my land and times, some have chosen Thorin's model of hoarded gold over food and cheer. We have come to such a thin end of the Thorin model that the gold is being Smauged away by just a handful of folks, while millions have empty pantries or no roofs over their heads at all. The best Gamgee word I can think of for this situation is "unnatural".
Professor Tolkien's world-building can awaken us to the fact that there are other choices. Meanwhile, brilliant ecological researchers like Indigenous author Robin Wall Kimmerer are pointing the way with books like The Serviceberry, which invite us to adopt the model of biomimicry - imitating the abundant way in which plants give to all.
I've never quite mended the break in my heart over a study I read some years ago filled with statistics about the number of American children who have never held a piece of whole fruit in their hands. Like Legolas, we are surrounded by merry young folk in need of rescue from the darkness that binds us to the strange games of the powerful few.
Tolkien continues to teach us good things today
Sam learned his letters from Bilbo. What might our societies learn by studying at the elbows of hobbits?
Tolkien taught that recovery, escape, and consolation are the three great gifts of Faërie. When I study and paint the hobbits, I temporarily escape from a place in which things look all wrong to me because lads and lasses are hungry, and gaffers and gammers are homeless, and much food comes from machines invented to separate Men from the generous plant kingdom. In the Shire, I recover the vision of what looks right to me: peace and plenty. I step away from a canvas like my newest one showing a hobbit pantry, hungry for consolation in the primary world.
Then, I remember that efforts are being made across many lands by good folk whose names I'll never know. Like Treebeard, they use their legs and hands to walk amongst the plants and care for them. Like Tom Bombadil, they're growing runner beans in their neck of the woods and they are eager to share their table with others. Like the Cottons, they are feeding neighbors, and like plants, themselves, these unknown people have generous hearts made for giving, not hoarding. I am so grateful for Tolkien's Faërie helping me to think about all these things.
What will you see if you spend a moment in Mr. Baggins' pantry via this video short? You'll get to hear Bilbo humming a bit of something I've come to associate with The Road song. Perhaps you'll try fitting one of the poems about The Road to it! What do you believe about plenty?
Enjoyed this post? Please come read about my book, The Art of Mercy in Middle-earth!