Pearls Before Hobbits by Kathryn Ramage

Story notes: This story takes place in June of 1426 (S.R.).

July 2010
The one-hundred-and-first birthday of Miss Dora Baggins was to be celebrated with a party of special magnificence--not, perhaps, as magnificent as her long-missing cousin Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday had been, but Miss Baggins was still ten years away from that auspicious anniversary herself. She was nevertheless one of the most prominent residents of Hobbiton and her birthday was considered an event worthy of local celebration. If a maiden-lady could be said to be a matriarch, then Dora was matriarch of the Baggins family. She was certainly and incontestably the head of the Bagginses, for they'd all been recipients of her generosity at one time or another, and they all listened politely to her advice even if they didn't always heed it.

On the day before Miss Baggins's birthday, great canopied tents were raised and spread between the trees in the meadow next to the Old Baggins Place. Long tables and benches were set out beneath this temporary shelter so that the party guests could sit and eat in comfort and the older folk could rest out of the sun. A great many old folk, Dora's contemporaries, had been invited. Kitchens for miles around were busy helping to prepare the vast amounts of food required to feed all of the lady's guests. Dora's kitchen was busier than any other, but on the evening before the party, she invited a few special guests, her favorite relatives, to a private dinner: her nephew Frodo, Ponto and Porto Baggins and their wives, Ponto's daughter Angelica Whitfoot and her husband Lad. Ponto's and Porto's sister Peony Burrows and her husband Milo, who lived with Dora, were also there with their four children.

After dinner, the children went to have a look around the field prepared for the party and Milo took the other gentlemen outdoors to smoke. Dora gathered her niece, nieces-by-marriage, and great-niece into the best parlor to give them their birthday gifts. "I've decided that it's time to give away my jewelry to all of you," the elderly lady announced as she sat down with an elaborately carved box in her lap.

"Frodo too?" asked Porto's wife, Gilliflora, and regarded the young male hobbit with curiosity. Dora had specially requested that her nephew forego his after-dinner pipe this once to receive some presents as well.

"Frodo wears jewelry," said Peony, teasing. "Haven't you noticed that lovely little gemstone in the odd setting that's always around his neck? You can see it whenever he wears an open-collared shirt."

"I've noticed. It's Elvish, isn't it?" Angelica asked Frodo.

Frodo nodded. He wasn't wearing an open-collared shirt tonight, but his fingers went to the stock at his throat and carefully drew out the gem on its chain for the ladies to see. "It's a gift from Queen Arwen," he told them amid their exclamations of curiosity and appreciation. That was as much as he could explain. They knew nothing of the Elessar's fabulous history among the Elves as a gem of great healing powers; that this gem was also a token of his passage to the Undying Lands when he grew too ill to continue living on Middle-Earth would be too upsetting for them to learn, not to mention difficult to understand.

"Well, I don't have anything as pretty as that for you, Frodo dear, though I'd once hoped that most of my precious things would go to you to give to your wife and pass on to your daughters one day," Dora said briskly after a moment. Unlike the younger hobbits, she had little interest in Elves or the world beyond the Shire. As much as she loved Frodo, she was also piqued at no longer being the focus of attention during what was meant to be her own special occasion. "Everyone tells me you won't ever marry. I can't say I understand why. You're such a handsome boy, and you have such a lovely home. I'm sure any reasonable girl would be happy to accept you." Dora cast a wry glance at Angelica; she'd once hoped that her great-niece would become Frodo's wife so that she could happily bestow her jewelry, her home, and other possessions on them both. She opened her jewelry box. "But I want to give you something for yourself."

From her jewelry box, Dora brought out several small velvet bags and carefully untied the ancient ribbons that held each shut. She opened and peeked into each until she found what she was looking for: a delicate silver brooch with a spray of amethysts fashioned to look like a sprig of lilac. This, she gave to Frodo. "There you are, my dear. A gentleman might wear that on his coat lapel."

"Thank you, Auntie," Frodo said, and pinned this gift to his lapel exactly as Dora had suggested.

His aunt resumed her sorting through the velvet bags. "And I must give you a trinket or two to set by for the little Gamgee girls." The Gamgee children had stayed at the Old Place for awhile after Rosie's death, and Dora had become very fond of them. "They aren't family, of course, but I see that you mean to do all you can for them, Frodo. Such sweet, pretty darlings they are--but such a fuss poor baby Rosemary made when we had her here! Teething, you know, but we soon put that right with a remedy my own mother passed down to me. I made sure Golda used it when Angelica was a baby, and Angelica had it when her own children's teeth were coming in." From one of the bags, Dora brought out a necklace and pair of bracelets made of polished moonstones, which she also gave to Frodo. "You must have Sam Gamgee put them away someplace safe until his daughters are old enough to wear them. I daresay they won't remember me when they're grown, but you'll tell them all about me, won't you?"

Frodo promised that he would.

"Pretty things, moonstones," his aunt went on as she sorted out the rest of her jewelry to bestow gifts on the others: gold earrings and garnet combs for Angelica, an emerald brooch and pendant for Peony, smaller trinkets to be set aside for their own daughters, and necklaces for Golda and Gilliflora. "Not as pretty as pearls, I think, but not so rare either. Pearls are such a strange sort of stone. I must say, I've always wondered how they contrive to make them all so perfectly round and shining. It must take a great deal of polishing."

"Pearls aren't stones," Frodo told her. "They grow inside a kind of shell-fish that lives in sandy beds on the shores of the Sea and look rather like lumpy little rocks themselves. I've seen them at Minas Tirith--the King's city. They're considered a great delicacy there. They say if you find a pearl in your dinner, it's good luck."

"The things you've seen on your travels, Frodo!" Golda laughed.

Dora seemed rather doubtful of this story, as if she suspected her nephew of making up tall tales to tease her. "Prisca must be the luckiest of hobbits, then," she said.

"Aunt Prisca...?" Frodo took a moment to puzzle out how she had come into the conversation. Prisca Baggins was Dora's cousin, the sister of Ponto's, Porto's, and Peony's late father. She was within a year or two of Dora's own age and from the stories he'd heard, Frodo surmised that the two had been rivals since girlhood. Prisca, however, had become an invalid in recent years, afflicted with rheumatics which kept her at home much of the time and prevented her from joining the social activities that Dora still enjoyed. He recalled that Prisca owned a string of pearls that Dora envied.

"They were a gift from a suitor of hers," Dora said when Frodo spoke of Prisca's pearls. "I've no idea where he got them from. Bought from dwarves, I thought at the time, but if they come from the Sea as you say they do, then I don't really know. It's hard to imagine dwarves diving into the Sea to fetch lumpy little fish that look like rocks, isn't it?" She smiled at her nephew to let him know that she was in on his joke.

"Is Aunt Prisca coming to the party tomorrow?" Angelica asked.

"I extended an invitation personally when I called on her earlier this week," Dora responded. "She said she hoped to attend if it wasn't a wet day. The damp makes her legs ache terribly, you know."

The older ladies made sympathetic noises. "Ponto told me yesterday that if the weather is fine, she intends to hire someone to bring her out in a chair," said Golda. "That'll be a remarkable sight!"

"Do you suppose she'll wear her pearls on such a grand occasion?" Peony said.

Dora shook her head. "No, I don't think so, my dear. She never wears them, and hardly ever brings them out to show. She keeps them locked up in a special box--she opened it to show them to me once ages ago--it must be twenty or thirty years past. I'll wager it's been that long since they've seen the light of day."

"She showed them to me when I was visiting at Yuletide," said Angelica. "I'd heard so much about them when I was a little girl, but I'd never seen them before. They were lovely. I don't think I've seen gemstones, or whatever they are, more beautiful."

"I suppose she intends to leave them to you, Angelica dear?" Gilliflora asked her.

"She didn't say," Angelica answered. "She might leave them to Mother to leave to me later on, or else she might leave them to Aunt Peony."

Hobbit ladies traditionally handed down their jewelry to their daughters, the best pieces to the eldest. If they had no daughters of their own, then their treasures went to granddaughters, nieces, or other female relatives. Peony was Prisca's only niece, but Angelica was the only daughter of her eldest nephew. Which relationship took precedence was therefore a rather difficult question; however, speculation favored Angelica, for Prisca doted on her great-niece and she did not approve of Peony's husband Milo.

"It doesn't matter so much to me," Peony said generously. "I only think that they ought to be worn sometime by somebody. It seems such a shame to have anything so rare and precious go to waste."

"I ought to call on Aunt Prisca before the party. If it's not too late, I'll go this evening." When little group broke up later that evening and the guests rose to leave, Angelica bent to give her great-aunt a peck on the cheek. "Thank you for the earrings, Auntie," she said. "Will you walk over with me, Mother, Aunt Gilly?"
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