The Master of Brandy Hall: Meriadoc the Magnificent

Imagine the charms of being a guest at Brandy Hall under Buck Hill. It's 1440 in the Shire Reckoning, nearly twenty years after Frodo's departure, and Meriadoc Brandybuck has been the Master of Brandy Hall and of Buckland for eight years. He is 58, and he and his wife, Estella Bolger (in the blue headscarf) have invited their cousins to come over from the Tookland for a summer visit. Pippin is 50, and we see him here with his wife Diamond (in the mustard-colored banyan) and their small, dark-haired son, Faramir, who will one day grow up and marry Goldilocks Gamgee. The older boy filling his plate with scrumptious things from the first-breakfast sideboard is the Brandybucks' son, whose name we do not know.

Bag End is a wonderful gentlehobbit's residence, but in Brandy Hall, I think we see the apex of hobbit gentility. The Brandybucks are the clan to whom Tolkien gave names reminiscent of Celtic heroes. They are rich and respected, dashing and daring, living on the edge of the Old Forest into which they adventure at times. I dearly love them.

Brandy Hall is so populous that its Masters built separate guesthouses for occasional escapes from the fray, and I have supposed here that the head of the estate might have had a private breakfast room within the Hall to which he could retire for a bit of family time. Because hobbits don't sleep upstairs, my guess is that bedrooms would have filled the first floor of the hall, and that other rooms like this one would have been upstairs, commanding a lovely view of early-rising locals boating on the Brandywine River. As Merry and Pippin reminisce over breakfast, tea, and pipes, there is so much to see in this handsome apartment.

Things to notice in this painting

The riparian location of the Hall is reflected in the water plants and trout woven into the luxurious carpet by the fire, designs on the pottery, the silver wading bird candelabra, and the arrangement of dried rushes. The great clay vessel holding the rushes is a memento of Merry's role in the War of the Ring. It bears a horse head motif and I imagined it as one of the many gifts sent to Merry from Rohan at the time he became the Master, as we read about in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings. On the foreground table is a token of Merry's maturity as an author. The hand-bound book is his Herblore of the Shire, with an illustration of pipe-weed on the cover.

But one of the main stories I am telling in this new painting is with the tapestry Merry has commissioned as Master of Buckland. It is my answer to whether he paid attention to Treebeard's commandment to:

"Learn now the lore of Living Creatures!"

I think Merry learned much when he was in Fangorn forest, and the wall hanging here shows many of the animals and plants who share a stake in the well-being of Middle-earth. My rendering of the tapestry was inspired by a mural created in a mountain lodge by the artist Robert Boardman Howard around the time that J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit. I took cues from its styling because I felt they fit well with the luxury and elegance of Brandy Hall.

Depicting post-war hobbit life

We have a handful of priceless details about what happened to hobbits like Merry, Pippin, and Sam after they sacrificed so much during the War of the Ring. For the Shire and for Frodo, they walked away from home comforts so that ways of life, including the one shown here, could continue for their family and friends. I enjoy depicting these scenes because they celebrate the rewards that resulted from their courage. This scene of a leisurely summer morning, with all at peace, was hard-won by this pair of hobbit heroes.

I could spend a lifetime depicting rooms at Brandy Hall, with its hundred windows and three great front doors, but I hope getting to see even one is a pleasure. As you enjoy breakfast with the Brandybucks and Tooks, perhaps you can imagine what Merry and Pippin are talking about. News from the Golden Hall and Minas Tirith? A chuckle over how little Faramir is staring in wonder up at all the animals? A tally of how many children Sam and Rose now have at Bag End? War stories? Or memories of Frodo, whom they will never forget?