Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit of means. He has a fine house, a full pantry and no job anyone can see. J.R.R. Tolkien never explains where the money came from. D.J. Taylor noticed. His new book, ‘The King Under the Mountain,’ asks the question out loud. James Campbell reviews it in the weekend Journal.
Taylor's book isn't a biography. He calls it fan's notes, trips into corners of Tolkien's world that critics skip. Campbell finds it engaging and a pleasure to read. Tolkien taught English at Leeds and then, from 1925, at Oxford, where he became Merton Professor. He was 63 when ‘The Lord of the Rings’ came out in full. He was already out of step with the younger writers around him. When the poet Robert Graves introduced him to Ava Gardner in 1964, Tolkien had no idea who she was.
The money Tolkien never explained
The best chapter, says Campbell, is Taylor's survey of the Shire. He treats it like a real place and looks for the plumbing. Bilbo is quite wealthy. Taylor wonders whether he inherited it from his parents or rents out the hobbit-holes on Bagshot Row. His answer is short. "Tolkien never says." The Shire has a clear social ladder, too, with Bilbo near the top and Sam Gamgee tugging his forelock below. Campbell says it looks a lot like prewar Oxford.
One thing Tolkien did write down. Bilbo leaves a will. It names his nephew Frodo as heir. Tolkien calls it "very clear and correct" under the legal customs of hobbits. Campbell notes there must be hobbit lawyers somewhere, though none ever appear on the page. Frodo got the house, and the will held. Tolkien himself died in 1973. He spent his last years on ‘The Silmarillion’ and on fame he never wanted. He denied the books were allegory in his 1966 foreword.
Our read
This is Estate, and the Shire gets it right. We never learn Bilbo's income. We do learn that his will named one person, in plain words, in the proper form. That's why the handoff worked. In the real world, most estates don't stall because of the money. They stall because the paperwork is vague, old or missing. A will that says exactly who gets what, signed the way your state requires, can save a family months of waiting and a lawyer's fee or two. Tolkien didn't bother to invent hobbit banking. He did bother to get the will right.
So here's the hobbit check for your own plan. Your retirement accounts and life insurance don't follow your will. They follow the beneficiary form on file. Log in to your 401(k) and your IRA this week and read the names on those forms. If a nephew, a child or a spouse belongs there and isn't, fix it before the week is out. We'd rather help you tidy that paperwork now than watch relatives argue over it later.