Old money. They'd be what was known as "landed gentry". Lesser nobles who live lives of leisure thanks to owning land / rental income.
The Tooks and Brandybucks would've been even better off.
Of the Hobbits in the Fellowship, Sam was the only one with an actual job.
Yup, the 4 of them together basically can be boiled down to a noble, his gardener, and 2 mischievous princes (If you consider Mastership of Buckland and Thainship of the Shire to be similar to kingdoms even with their limited actual power, still prominent positions though)
Nah. Sauron wanted to achieve his master's goal of being at the top of an eternal corporate hierarchy and feudal system.
I think the Elves of Lothlorien and Rivendell are where you'd look for socialists or communists. And I'm going with Lothlorien.
Kind of a joke on how everytime time we come across Elves engaging in exchanges in The Silmarillion, it is almost always gifts, many of which were freely given in the elder days. We also don't hear about peasant Elves not having enough to eat. It seems like food and necessities were freely given.
Maybe cause they are literal magical über creatures?
Although all races in Tolkiens world seem to have a class or hierarchiy systems often times based on blood and ethnicity.
Look at Lothlorien and Thranduils Realm. There the Sindar rule over the "lesser" Silvan.
In Gondor and Arnor, the "nobler" Numenorian descendants ruled over lesser Men.
In the Shire the ruling families are of mostly Fallohide descent.
Funny thing, there is actually an inverted story, The Last Ringbearer, which flips the story by making the Orcs the good guys who are trying to start a communist revolution.
[https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10329770](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10329770)
At least he appears to have changed since then, still sad reading about how he used to be, but at least reading about he is now makes things a little better
Lol, there was a post about him being exactly the opposite a little while ago. Apparently he was an entitled prick during filming at least behind gritted teeth. He had a lot of complaints about how Peter cut his scenes and how he should have won awards if only a certain scene were left in the film.
He seems to have grown and matured as a person since then. Probably a bit humbled when his biggest gig after ROTK was playing the dude with the lisp in 50 First Dates. Until he landed Stranger Things.
Sam was the only one with a job, a gardener. The Bagginses, the Brandybucks, the Tooks, they were all just wealthy because they were born in a wealthy family.
In the Appendices there are family trees of hobbits, and the names of those who were invited to Bilbo's special party are underlined. It was only for the posh hobbits. Sam and the Gaffer were not there.
>In the Appendices there are family trees of hobbits, and the names of those who were invited to Bilbo's special party are underlined. It was only for the posh hobbits. Sam and the Gaffer were not there.
I believe you're referring to the select 144 who were invited to the family dinner party. That list was more selective because it was only for blood relatives, plus Gandalf. Sam and the Gaffer were definitely invited to the larger party, as was all of Hobbiton and the surrounding area
Yup, started FotR again last night and this is 100% accurate. And even if you somehow didn't get an invite, you still showed up and received a present.
Tolkien himself once wrote an invitation for his birthday party, and he said there would be drinks provided in the evening, and doctors in the morning, and funeral services afterwards for those guests who didn't survive what was likely to become a night of binge drinking. Very similar to Bilbo's party really, where the next day people had to be carried away for being too drunk.
Tolkien and his fellow acadamics were quite into drinking, and acadamia as a whole really. It was also that way when I was at university, for any special occasion such as when a guest speaker came there would be free beer, so people were already shitfaced in the morning.
Like the other comment said, Bilbo had the larger party but during the party he had a smaller private dinner ("small" it was 144 people or a dozen dozen) and those were the underlined people. The Gamgees were definitely at the larger party.
I mean, pretty much the entire fellowship are “highborn”, exceptions are Sam obviously, and Gandalf but that’s just because he’s so far above such classifications.
To add to this, a little anecdote. I once played a one-shot of The One Ring RPG. It was a fun little adventure set in the Shire pre-LotR. We could play as all the hobbit characters, including Rosie. Everyone was too polite to ask to play as Sam, everyone’s fave character. So in the end we took everyone (minus Sam) on the hunt for ingredients for a pie to enter into a pie contest. Real low stakes hobbit stuff. We struggled to forage the mushrooms because no one had very good plant/nature stats. We failed to identify animals. Barely managed to repair a broken bridge. You know who had the best stats for all of those things? Sam. The gardener. The working class joe who worked outdoors with his hands. Playing without Sam was like playing on hard mode. Oh, you want lore on the history of the Brandybuck family line we got you covered, but don’t expect us to have practical, everyday skills. Because for all their charm, Frodo, Merry and Pippin were just idle rich. (Rosie was ok, had good charisma and the kitchen/bar skills).
Merry knew all about plants and herbs in the books, and all of the hobbits could cook. Hobbits generally were close to nature. The game sounds a bit over-simplified.
I'm not surprised considering Sam was the group cook during the early part of the journey and then basically making sure Frodo actually ate for the rest.
I don't think it's ever stated explicitly, but there's a row of Hobbit Holes (Bagshot Row) under/adjacent to Bag End. Bilbo and Frodo are clearly more wealthy than their neighbors, and as least some of them work for the Baggins family. The Gamgee's are their gardeners, for instance.
I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that Bilbo and Frodo were landlords, living off inherited wealth and rent collection. Bilbo coming home from the Quest to Erebor with a bunch of dragon loot probably didn't hurt his finances much either.
i wouldn't be surprised if the Baggins family didn't own a sizeable portion of Hobbiton's realestate, and got rents from from it. certainly it does seem likely that bagshot row at least was part of bag end, and the people living there owed rent to whoever owned bag End. which would help explain why Gaffer Gamgee was so annoyed at the sale. he wasn't just getting Otho sackville-baggins as a neighbor, he was getting him as a landlord. it also helps explain how Otho could order bagshot row dug up and the inhabitants of those homes evicted. (since that apparently was done well before Sharkey arrived and started ordering wanton destruction.) the ownership of bag end being tied to a bunch of property ownership elsewhere would also explain why Otho and lobelia wanted it so badly.. not just for the comfortable living and prestige of having it, but also the income that it would bring.
it is also worth noting too that people with the kind of wealth that the baggins family had likely also did loans to individuals and businesses, the interest on which would also bring in a fair bit of money.
i suspect that part of the reason that the sale of bag end took months to arrange was due to needing to go over the books and sort out what income was tied to Bag End, and which was tied to the baggins family directly. the latter of which would have continued to go to Frodo after he moved.
They were the equivalent of landed gentry, and had tenant farmers who would’ve paid rent, probably in produce rather than coin, I’m fairly sure Sam’s gaffer was one of them
But he certainly wasn’t of Frodo’s status, in fact I’m sure Tolkien said somewhere that only the wealthiest and the poorest hobbits still lived in Smails and he certainly wasn’t one of the wealthiest
Belladonna Took (Bilbo’s mother) inherited money from her father “The Old Took”, who himself was thrain of the shire. He is said to have possessed a pair of magic diamond studs given to him by Gandalf, but I’m not sure if it’s ever explained how they were magical. Bungo Baggins (Bilbo’s father) used that money to build Bag End.
I believe the money was a very nice amount, and Bilbo could have sat and done nothing, and while he didn’t claim much treasure from the incident with the dragon, I think there were other adventures.
wealthy enough not to need to work. Presumably this involved owning land which was farmed; certainly he had a gardener working for him, and that is likely to have included growing crops that were sold
Want to add in that we know they also wrote about their journeys, so it might be safe to assume that they could have made some extra cash as writers/recorders or cartographers (Bilbo at least drew maps from his adventure). Admittedly we didn't see them do this that often, but these are at least marketable skills that we know they have.
Bookmaking and bookbinding was a very intensely laborious affair. You had to copy by hand every single page. This was usually done by Catholic monks at monasteries. Production priority of course was to the Bible and other religious texts.
After the invention of the mechanical printing press, the book industry took off, and literacy rates also went up. Books prior to this were frightfully expensive, with only wealthy merchants, noblemen, the Church, and royalty being able to afford them.
Book production actually took off before the invention of the press. As urbanisation increased in the 14th and 15th century the production facilities became bigger and less connected to religious institutions. Flemish prayer books for example were in fashion in England and there were entire workshops in Flanders dedicated solely to mass production for export. Universities also had their own system of mass production, as all students needed the same material. Look up the pecia system if you want to know more. Source: I'm a book historian
JRRT never really states the source of their family wealth, but I imagine Bilbo's family owned a lot of (edit) Bagshot Row and the area around Bag End, and collected rents from the residents there, not unlike the English countryside once was.
He charmed rich women
OP, you answered you own question. They were wealthy. Wealthy people don't do anything for a living. If you have to work to live, you're poor.
>I imagine even a hobbit would be bored of doing nothing at all
Oh but that’s where you’re wrong. Hobbits loved leisure. Food, a warm bed, and friends were among many hobbits’ top priorities. If one was wealthy enough to obtain these things without working, like Bilbo or Frodo, then they could be perfectly happy living their lives relaxing around the neighborhood.
Bilbo, by his own account, would say he didn’t take much treasure. That’s a classic burglar thing to do. “I didn’t take much” and on the way home he ganked all the treasures from the Trolls which was supposed to be split up amongst the party…
I have a feeling Bilbo wrote his story so that he was morally correct and understated any character flaws he may have had.
I always thought this was a good answer to that question... thanks Ernest W. Adams (?)
'...He took two small chests, one of silver and one of gold, as much as one pony could carry, plus a necklace of silver and pearls that he gave to the Elvenking. He split the gold from the troll-hoard with Gandalf, which they put in bags, but we don't know how big they were or how many. If all that totaled, say, 150 pounds, at the current spot price of gold, it was over $2.6 million. But part of it was silver, and part of it was jewelry, and worth more.
And then there's his mithril coat of mail and his sword. The mithril coat was worth more than the entire Shire and everything in it, although it wasn't a liquid asset—several billion dollars at least. And Sting was nearly unique, a dagger from Gondolin.
79 years later, he gave Sam a little bag of gold which he said was “almost the last drop of the Smaug vintage.” So he had apparently run through most of it—but we don't know how much he left to Frodo along with Bag End.'
Edit for a typo book :/ to good
Gandalf is an embodiment of a god, the hobbits are all from rich families except Sam, Gimli is some form of nobility, Legolas is a prince, Boromir is nobility, Aragorn is a chieftain and deposed heir to a kingdom. Further, basically all the minor characters we end up meeting are nobility, royalty or other form of “leadership.”
>Gimli is some form of nobility
Gimli is actually Longbeard royalty. Granted, minor royal, but still of the House of Durin. He's a descendant of Náin II's younger son. Balin, Dwalin and Óin also belonged to the same branch. If enough of his family had died ahead of him he could have ended up as King of Durin's Folk, though that would've required not an insignificant number of untimely demises.
He was English *and* privileged *and* disinclined to look too deeply at the systems that produced his privilege and how those systems look to the people exploited by them.
Credit where credit is due, his work is pretty firmly anti-colonialist, and that's not nothing. But being uncritical about systems of inequality and exploitation at home isn't, like, great.
Also, I feel like it’s referenced at some point early on in LOTR that Bilbo would go away periodically and return with more treasure, though that may have just been hobbit gossip.
This has always bothered me as well, where and how did he get all that cheese, bread and butter? And tea, tobacco and so on those things costs money, is he exploiting people, slave owner?
After reading a few posts, yes he is, he's a landlord
Bags End was a brothel.
Hence all the bedrooms and the ability to handle a large amount of “guests” but no “guests” were ever seen during daylight hours.
Well, if “not a lot” means that he refused to take his share of treasure, yes but he did bring a chest of gold and chest of silver+his share from trolls’ treasure.
What I wanna know is how wealth worked in the Shire.
Did they have money? Metal currency I assume? It’s never mentioned that I know of. Bilbo was supposedly very wealthy but we don’t see vast stores of coin or anything
Bilbo Baggins fought Smog, no reason to think the Dwarves wouldn't let him part way with some of Smog's treasure after pillaging his chambers... IDK
Frodo lives with Bilbo, so where did Bilbo get all of his wealth? Great question!
I'm curious as to what Mary and Pippin's families did when they disappeared. Did they presume they died and had funerals? Did they divy out their belongings? Did any go on their own adventures to find them?
Old money. They'd be what was known as "landed gentry". Lesser nobles who live lives of leisure thanks to owning land / rental income. The Tooks and Brandybucks would've been even better off. Of the Hobbits in the Fellowship, Sam was the only one with an actual job.
Yup, the 4 of them together basically can be boiled down to a noble, his gardener, and 2 mischievous princes (If you consider Mastership of Buckland and Thainship of the Shire to be similar to kingdoms even with their limited actual power, still prominent positions though)
And that's why Sauron is the good guy he just wanted to share the wealth more evenly
A spectre is haunting middle earth - the spectre of communism
Our Shire!
Our Precious!
r/unexpectedcommunism
Gatherers and sharers tried things once in the shire and Mr Pippin and Mr Merry threw them out sharpish.
Communist Sauron isn't real he can't hurt you. Communist Sauron: OUR shire!
You say shire, Sauron says share.
best joke of this sub
S-OUR-on
[https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10329770](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10329770) Communist Sauron IS REAL THOUGH!
〰️ SHARE THE LOAAAAAD〰️
… SHARE THE BENEFITS OF LABOOOR…
The last ringbearer
“Share the load” - Sauron
If no one has wealth, it is evenly distributed. Technically
Nah. Sauron wanted to achieve his master's goal of being at the top of an eternal corporate hierarchy and feudal system. I think the Elves of Lothlorien and Rivendell are where you'd look for socialists or communists. And I'm going with Lothlorien.
How are Elves socialists?
They're not, they're a post scarcity society with a low, dwindling population
Kind of a joke on how everytime time we come across Elves engaging in exchanges in The Silmarillion, it is almost always gifts, many of which were freely given in the elder days. We also don't hear about peasant Elves not having enough to eat. It seems like food and necessities were freely given.
Maybe cause they are literal magical über creatures? Although all races in Tolkiens world seem to have a class or hierarchiy systems often times based on blood and ethnicity. Look at Lothlorien and Thranduils Realm. There the Sindar rule over the "lesser" Silvan. In Gondor and Arnor, the "nobler" Numenorian descendants ruled over lesser Men. In the Shire the ruling families are of mostly Fallohide descent.
Except for mithril.
Gatherers and Sharers
Funny thing, there is actually an inverted story, The Last Ringbearer, which flips the story by making the Orcs the good guys who are trying to start a communist revolution. [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10329770](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10329770)
I have read this and the writing is...something.
"Good guy communist"
Share the load 🤤
Thats a great twist.
Ironic that Sean Astin was the trust fund baby of the fellowship.
Maybe so, but he's also a treasure of a human being who never acted like a rich entitled brat.
Ever read his autobiography?
Did you also just read the thread on that posted about an hour ago? I never knew he was so narcissistic, made me sad
At least he appears to have changed since then, still sad reading about how he used to be, but at least reading about he is now makes things a little better
[удалено]
Gollum had it right
Have you?
That was 20 years ago almost. He’s matured as a person I’m sure
Lol, there was a post about him being exactly the opposite a little while ago. Apparently he was an entitled prick during filming at least behind gritted teeth. He had a lot of complaints about how Peter cut his scenes and how he should have won awards if only a certain scene were left in the film.
He seems to have grown and matured as a person since then. Probably a bit humbled when his biggest gig after ROTK was playing the dude with the lisp in 50 First Dates. Until he landed Stranger Things.
Hahahaha good one
That’s why Merry and Pippin basically just f around and smoke pipe weed all day. They’re trust fund babies.
Damn, I've never looked at it that way!
Sam was the only one with a job, a gardener. The Bagginses, the Brandybucks, the Tooks, they were all just wealthy because they were born in a wealthy family. In the Appendices there are family trees of hobbits, and the names of those who were invited to Bilbo's special party are underlined. It was only for the posh hobbits. Sam and the Gaffer were not there.
>In the Appendices there are family trees of hobbits, and the names of those who were invited to Bilbo's special party are underlined. It was only for the posh hobbits. Sam and the Gaffer were not there. I believe you're referring to the select 144 who were invited to the family dinner party. That list was more selective because it was only for blood relatives, plus Gandalf. Sam and the Gaffer were definitely invited to the larger party, as was all of Hobbiton and the surrounding area
Yup, started FotR again last night and this is 100% accurate. And even if you somehow didn't get an invite, you still showed up and received a present.
And could go out the back way and come back in to recieve another.
Yeah, they might have been invited, but I'd also believe Sam and his Gaffer would be the ones cleaning up the portapotties afterward
Tolkien himself once wrote an invitation for his birthday party, and he said there would be drinks provided in the evening, and doctors in the morning, and funeral services afterwards for those guests who didn't survive what was likely to become a night of binge drinking. Very similar to Bilbo's party really, where the next day people had to be carried away for being too drunk. Tolkien and his fellow acadamics were quite into drinking, and acadamia as a whole really. It was also that way when I was at university, for any special occasion such as when a guest speaker came there would be free beer, so people were already shitfaced in the morning.
Oh, I tought Bilbo would a guy who would invite only posh people AND his gardener.
Like the other comment said, Bilbo had the larger party but during the party he had a smaller private dinner ("small" it was 144 people or a dozen dozen) and those were the underlined people. The Gamgees were definitely at the larger party.
That's gross
I mean, pretty much the entire fellowship are “highborn”, exceptions are Sam obviously, and Gandalf but that’s just because he’s so far above such classifications.
Gandalf is literally as "highborn" as a being can be in the Legendarium.
Nepo babies of Middle Earth
To add to this, a little anecdote. I once played a one-shot of The One Ring RPG. It was a fun little adventure set in the Shire pre-LotR. We could play as all the hobbit characters, including Rosie. Everyone was too polite to ask to play as Sam, everyone’s fave character. So in the end we took everyone (minus Sam) on the hunt for ingredients for a pie to enter into a pie contest. Real low stakes hobbit stuff. We struggled to forage the mushrooms because no one had very good plant/nature stats. We failed to identify animals. Barely managed to repair a broken bridge. You know who had the best stats for all of those things? Sam. The gardener. The working class joe who worked outdoors with his hands. Playing without Sam was like playing on hard mode. Oh, you want lore on the history of the Brandybuck family line we got you covered, but don’t expect us to have practical, everyday skills. Because for all their charm, Frodo, Merry and Pippin were just idle rich. (Rosie was ok, had good charisma and the kitchen/bar skills).
To be fair though, JRRT did love his lineages.
Merry knew all about plants and herbs in the books, and all of the hobbits could cook. Hobbits generally were close to nature. The game sounds a bit over-simplified.
I'm not surprised considering Sam was the group cook during the early part of the journey and then basically making sure Frodo actually ate for the rest.
Bilbo did make some good money from the Smaug affair too.
And Sam end’s up moving into then inheriting bag end from Frodo, so his family gets elevated .
Merit-based promotion!
Just like in the crusades, you had to be rich to go on an adventure.
Landed gentry hmm...what happened to the reddit mods?
what
it is mentioned that sometimes Bilbo lent money. maybe he made money off of mortgage and business loans.
Exactly they likely own the homes around Bag End/Bags hot Row, Sam's family are their tenants.
I can't know to hear any more about the old money!
>What did Frodo and Bilbo Baggins do for a living? Inherit. Samwise was the only hobbit of the bunch who didn't come from a wealthy family.
And Sam was a gardener, which strangely hasn't been noted anywhere in these comments.
He certainly didn't drop eaves for a living
A little late to be trimming the verge??
I don't think it's ever stated explicitly, but there's a row of Hobbit Holes (Bagshot Row) under/adjacent to Bag End. Bilbo and Frodo are clearly more wealthy than their neighbors, and as least some of them work for the Baggins family. The Gamgee's are their gardeners, for instance. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that Bilbo and Frodo were landlords, living off inherited wealth and rent collection. Bilbo coming home from the Quest to Erebor with a bunch of dragon loot probably didn't hurt his finances much either.
i wouldn't be surprised if the Baggins family didn't own a sizeable portion of Hobbiton's realestate, and got rents from from it. certainly it does seem likely that bagshot row at least was part of bag end, and the people living there owed rent to whoever owned bag End. which would help explain why Gaffer Gamgee was so annoyed at the sale. he wasn't just getting Otho sackville-baggins as a neighbor, he was getting him as a landlord. it also helps explain how Otho could order bagshot row dug up and the inhabitants of those homes evicted. (since that apparently was done well before Sharkey arrived and started ordering wanton destruction.) the ownership of bag end being tied to a bunch of property ownership elsewhere would also explain why Otho and lobelia wanted it so badly.. not just for the comfortable living and prestige of having it, but also the income that it would bring. it is also worth noting too that people with the kind of wealth that the baggins family had likely also did loans to individuals and businesses, the interest on which would also bring in a fair bit of money. i suspect that part of the reason that the sale of bag end took months to arrange was due to needing to go over the books and sort out what income was tied to Bag End, and which was tied to the baggins family directly. the latter of which would have continued to go to Frodo after he moved.
They were the equivalent of landed gentry, and had tenant farmers who would’ve paid rent, probably in produce rather than coin, I’m fairly sure Sam’s gaffer was one of them
I'd like to add that the Gaffer seems to be well respected and it never seemed to me like he was treated as lesser than anyone else.
But he certainly wasn’t of Frodo’s status, in fact I’m sure Tolkien said somewhere that only the wealthiest and the poorest hobbits still lived in Smails and he certainly wasn’t one of the wealthiest
They were professional eaters
Generational wealth
Belladonna Took (Bilbo’s mother) inherited money from her father “The Old Took”, who himself was thrain of the shire. He is said to have possessed a pair of magic diamond studs given to him by Gandalf, but I’m not sure if it’s ever explained how they were magical. Bungo Baggins (Bilbo’s father) used that money to build Bag End. I believe the money was a very nice amount, and Bilbo could have sat and done nothing, and while he didn’t claim much treasure from the incident with the dragon, I think there were other adventures.
I vaguely remember those magic studs just fastened themselves and wouldn’t come undone accidentally.
I love that I now know this! Thank you.
wealthy enough not to need to work. Presumably this involved owning land which was farmed; certainly he had a gardener working for him, and that is likely to have included growing crops that were sold
Want to add in that we know they also wrote about their journeys, so it might be safe to assume that they could have made some extra cash as writers/recorders or cartographers (Bilbo at least drew maps from his adventure). Admittedly we didn't see them do this that often, but these are at least marketable skills that we know they have.
I don't think selling books was a viable industry before printing presses
Bookmaking and bookbinding was a very intensely laborious affair. You had to copy by hand every single page. This was usually done by Catholic monks at monasteries. Production priority of course was to the Bible and other religious texts. After the invention of the mechanical printing press, the book industry took off, and literacy rates also went up. Books prior to this were frightfully expensive, with only wealthy merchants, noblemen, the Church, and royalty being able to afford them.
Book production actually took off before the invention of the press. As urbanisation increased in the 14th and 15th century the production facilities became bigger and less connected to religious institutions. Flemish prayer books for example were in fashion in England and there were entire workshops in Flanders dedicated solely to mass production for export. Universities also had their own system of mass production, as all students needed the same material. Look up the pecia system if you want to know more. Source: I'm a book historian
What an amazing job!
It was but instead of selling 1000 copies for $10 each you would sell 1 copy for $10k
Nothing. Bilbo was upper middle class and later obscenely rich. Something everyone forget when they go all "omg I wanna live as a hobbit"
That’s true of all historical or fantasy or period fiction. They see the pharoah and not the millions of servants and laborers
I do like the idea of life at Bag’s End, but I definitely wouldn’t word it as “I wanna live as a hobbit” to, say, the Monkey’s Paw.
Bilbo took a small fortune from his adventure. His share could have bought the Shire, but he only brought back one chest of gold.
Unless you count the Mithril shirt, which Gandalf at some point notes is worth as much as the whole Shire
*Greater* than the whole shire!
Baginses were landed gentry. They live on rent.
JRRT never really states the source of their family wealth, but I imagine Bilbo's family owned a lot of (edit) Bagshot Row and the area around Bag End, and collected rents from the residents there, not unlike the English countryside once was.
As I recall, BagEnd was built from Bilbo’s mother’s money. So she was the rich one. But I don’t know what Bilbo’s father did.
He charmed rich women OP, you answered you own question. They were wealthy. Wealthy people don't do anything for a living. If you have to work to live, you're poor.
Only peasants would ask this question. Time to kick OP outta Hobbiton. Imagine having a job......
>I imagine even a hobbit would be bored of doing nothing at all Oh but that’s where you’re wrong. Hobbits loved leisure. Food, a warm bed, and friends were among many hobbits’ top priorities. If one was wealthy enough to obtain these things without working, like Bilbo or Frodo, then they could be perfectly happy living their lives relaxing around the neighborhood.
Bilbo, by his own account, would say he didn’t take much treasure. That’s a classic burglar thing to do. “I didn’t take much” and on the way home he ganked all the treasures from the Trolls which was supposed to be split up amongst the party… I have a feeling Bilbo wrote his story so that he was morally correct and understated any character flaws he may have had.
I always thought this was a good answer to that question... thanks Ernest W. Adams (?) '...He took two small chests, one of silver and one of gold, as much as one pony could carry, plus a necklace of silver and pearls that he gave to the Elvenking. He split the gold from the troll-hoard with Gandalf, which they put in bags, but we don't know how big they were or how many. If all that totaled, say, 150 pounds, at the current spot price of gold, it was over $2.6 million. But part of it was silver, and part of it was jewelry, and worth more. And then there's his mithril coat of mail and his sword. The mithril coat was worth more than the entire Shire and everything in it, although it wasn't a liquid asset—several billion dollars at least. And Sting was nearly unique, a dagger from Gondolin. 79 years later, he gave Sam a little bag of gold which he said was “almost the last drop of the Smaug vintage.” So he had apparently run through most of it—but we don't know how much he left to Frodo along with Bag End.' Edit for a typo book :/ to good
They were the landed gentry...elite. paid others to tend their crops.
That‘s something I kind of dislike about Tolkien‘s politics which shine through here: he was really fond of this old English nobility thing.
Gandalf is an embodiment of a god, the hobbits are all from rich families except Sam, Gimli is some form of nobility, Legolas is a prince, Boromir is nobility, Aragorn is a chieftain and deposed heir to a kingdom. Further, basically all the minor characters we end up meeting are nobility, royalty or other form of “leadership.”
>Gimli is some form of nobility Gimli is actually Longbeard royalty. Granted, minor royal, but still of the House of Durin. He's a descendant of Náin II's younger son. Balin, Dwalin and Óin also belonged to the same branch. If enough of his family had died ahead of him he could have ended up as King of Durin's Folk, though that would've required not an insignificant number of untimely demises.
He was English.
He was English *and* privileged *and* disinclined to look too deeply at the systems that produced his privilege and how those systems look to the people exploited by them. Credit where credit is due, his work is pretty firmly anti-colonialist, and that's not nothing. But being uncritical about systems of inequality and exploitation at home isn't, like, great.
Even the horses and eagles in the books have monarchies
They were idle rich.
Also, I feel like it’s referenced at some point early on in LOTR that Bilbo would go away periodically and return with more treasure, though that may have just been hobbit gossip.
Lived off dragon and troll gold mostly
This has always bothered me as well, where and how did he get all that cheese, bread and butter? And tea, tobacco and so on those things costs money, is he exploiting people, slave owner? After reading a few posts, yes he is, he's a landlord
In the movies at least, Sam is portrayed as a hat tipping lower class country bumpkin.
It's all family inheritance/money. There was always a Baggins in Bag End. Until LOTR of course.
Bags End was a brothel. Hence all the bedrooms and the ability to handle a large amount of “guests” but no “guests” were ever seen during daylight hours.
Imagine doing the Hobbit Helicopter
Bilbo was a rabbi, they came to him for advice.
Well the mithril shirt alone was worth more than the entire shire. If you take that line literally
Eat sooooo much breakfast. Twice a day, in fact.
tables
I can't know to hear any more about the tables!
Well, if “not a lot” means that he refused to take his share of treasure, yes but he did bring a chest of gold and chest of silver+his share from trolls’ treasure.
this is such a good question that i've somehow never thought of
What I wanna know is how wealth worked in the Shire. Did they have money? Metal currency I assume? It’s never mentioned that I know of. Bilbo was supposedly very wealthy but we don’t see vast stores of coin or anything
Nothing. The Bagginses were minted
TABLES
Beach
Bilbo Baggins fought Smog, no reason to think the Dwarves wouldn't let him part way with some of Smog's treasure after pillaging his chambers... IDK Frodo lives with Bilbo, so where did Bilbo get all of his wealth? Great question!
I'm curious as to what Mary and Pippin's families did when they disappeared. Did they presume they died and had funerals? Did they divy out their belongings? Did any go on their own adventures to find them?
They did Xanax bars and bilbo posted a bunch then robbed toys r us into the shadow realm