Late Third Age traveling companions of the hobbits were wont to be surprised by their hardihood. Likewise, if readers only meet the Bagginses and their friends and relations in their Regency-like settled state full of tea parties, umbrellas, and pocket handkerchiefs, we may wonder over the information in the prologue to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings that the hobbits were,
"...curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill, and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things, not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces."
My most recently-published painting, "Marcho and Blanco Cross the Brandywine" can help us look further than those merry bellies and faces in search of clues to hobbit endurance. Here, we see Blanco on a white pony (a philological tribute to his name) and Marcho is mounted beside him, hailing a great host of hobbits to follow these famous Fallohide brothers over the Bridge of Stonebows into the western land that will become the Shire.
Doughty hobbits go before them, scything their way into the overgrown cornlands of King Argeleb II, at his leave, in an event so important to hobbit history that it will become Year One of the Shire Reckoning. All subsequent events will date to this migration from Bree, where some of the Little Folk had been living for nearly 600 years. But it is a small journey compared to the several migrations the hobbits had endured before...
Near the end of the Third Age, stout hobbits could manage a walking-party from Bag End to the Prancing Pony Inn, but it is quite another matter to consider them crossing over the perilous Misty Mountains in the earlier flight from their ancestral homes in the Vales of Anduin when Greenwood the Great became Mirkwood.
Scaling these fierce peaks nearly defeated the Fellowship, but somehow, the tough little hobbit ancestors were able to achieve the crossing in their Wandering Days.
In painting from Tolkien's legendarium, I've come to realize how incomplete our picture of the hobbits would be without the notes we encounter about their character and history in the prologue and appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and in small references in other works like Unfinished Tales. If we only know of Mister Baggins writing letters, consulting clocks, and strolling about his tended gardens like a Regency gentleman, our idea of him becomes wonderfully enriched in looking back at a Dark Ages-like scene (set some 1,340 years before the events of The Hobbit) in which his forefathers and foremothers were up to the task of cutting their way into the tangle of the overgrown new land amid the waning of the great North Kingdom.
On the edge of memory
The somewhat muted color palette of this painting is intentional, betokening fading recollection of this event by the time we readers first stand amid the lush, green gardens on The Hill. It is a memory no longer in full-color, but still full of meaning.
Once upon a time, as legend (and, I think, history) has it, Horsa and Hengest saw the potential of the land that would become England on the heels of the fall of Rome, and while I am very relieved that the hobbit settlement was notably peaceful and didn't include any type of conquering or colonization beyond the overlordship of the plant kingdom, hobbit fans will greatly enjoy Professor Tom Shippey's Beowulf and the North Before the Vikings for further details about these founders whose story bears some notable parallels to the legend of Marcho and Blanco. The story of the Finnsburg episode in Beowulf, and the clues it may contain as to why the poem was faithfully preserved in Old English despite it never mentioning England speaks to how humans hold onto things at the edge of our memories if they have something to do with our own history. The hobbits held onto the rough outline of their several migrations, at the edges of their memories.
Working on this painting has given me hours to think about hobbit strength. Their transformation of this corner of Eriador from ruin to plenty must've taken incredible vitality, especially when we consider their humble physical stature. Any gardener can quickly relate! It wasn't just Bilbo's mithril shirt that saved Frodo on his journey; it was the hearty root from which hobbits spring. Frodo's ancestors had survived so much: mass migration, plague, famine, invasion, battle, and all manner of hardships. And when we think about it - so have we all. No matter what our heritage, our people have weathered much.
I hoped that this painting might not only delight viewers in getting to glimpse this great scene of the founding of the Shire, but that it might also invite us all to dismiss any unkind notions about migratory folk which we encounter today. We can learn from the hobbits and yearn for wanderers' safe arrival in destinations that can be made green and good lands with a little vision and a goal of plenty for all. Here's a video short for inspiration and encouragement: