Why Does Bilbo Have Such A Large Kitchen Table?

Q: Why Does Bilbo Have Such A Large Kitchen Table?

ANSWER: In The Hobbit we learn that Bag End (Bilbo Baggins’ home) has enough space to accommodate a party of 13 dwarves, including seating them all at three tables (in the book — in the movie they all sit at one table). Since Bilbo never married, why (some people ask) does he have so much furniture?

I think the answer to this question is provided in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, where J.R.R. Tolkien writes:

As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk. They dressed in bright colours, being notably fond of yellow and green; but they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough leathery soles and were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads, which was commonly brown. Thus, the only craft little practised among them was shoe-making; but they had long and skilful fingers and could make many other useful and comely things. Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them). They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and eagerly accepted.

So Hobbits (of the Shire) enjoyed parties. Apparently Bilbo had the means to dine with and entertain friends and relatives. In fact, the narrative of The Lord of the Rings says as much in “A Long-expected Party”:

Twelve more years passed. Each year the Bagginses had given very lively combined birthday-parties at Bag End; but now it was understood that something quite exceptional was being planned for that autumn. Bilbo was going to be eleventy-one, 111, a rather curious number and a very respectable age for a hobbit (the Old Took himself had only reached 130); and Frodo was going to be thirty-three, 33, an important number: the date of his ‘coming of age’.

Hobbits were a sociable folk and they loved to entertain guests. In fact, the Tooks and the Brandybucks were famous for keeping large families in their main smials and Bag End must have seemed rather small and quaint to those Took and Brandybuck relatives.

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