What exactly was a "mathom house" to a hobbit.
 

I found it interesting that Bilbo stored his mithril chain mail that he acquired in his journeys, in a mathom house. From what I understand a mathom house is like a museum, but in our society a museum is somewhere precious artefacts from the past are displayed. As the hobbit society scoffed at Bilbo's tales, and were generally uncomfortable with the fact that he was well-travelled, I wonder what they thought of it being displayed in the mathom house, and did they consider it an item of significance. Did they look at it as the work of art it truly was? What compelled Bilbo to loan it to the mathom house, knowing the way the other hobbits viewed his travels? Also, considering the value of the item, why wasn't it stolen? Wouldn't word have got around that such a precious object was there? It leads me to wonder what was a mathom house, to a hobbit?

"Mathom" is a hobbit term for an object of any value for which a use could not be found, but the owner didn't want to discard of it yet. Therefore, the general hobbit attitude toward these items wouldn't lend itself toward stealing any of the unwanted treatures in the mathom-house. What would they do with it anyway...if they thought it had a use, it wouldn't be a "mathom"! This type of thinking seems strange to our materialistic world, doesn't it! Apparently, hobbits didn't keep odd collections in their own homes, not wanting to waste any precious hobbit-space for things that couldn't be used in a practical manner in their daily lives. They just stored their odd belongings or mathoms in a museum-type setting so that any hobbits who cared to visit the mathom-house would be able to gain from viewing the object.

A fascinating question, Melilot! I seriously doubt that Bilbo knew just how much the mithril vest was worth; in FotR ('A Journey in the Dark'), Gandalf says, So though he knew it was of mithril and valuable, he was apparently not aware that it was literally priceless, and neither the Dwarves nor Gandalf clued him in. It would be interesting to know why they did not tell him - did Gandalf want to keep him innocent, materialistically speaking?

Another thought that came to me was, that treasures are often best hidden in the open; they may then be thought of little worth if not locked away and guarded.

It seems to me that the Mathom House (I typoed 'Moth'em first - true, perhaps?!) was like a storage hall, but open to the public. luthien's comments on not keeping something of no practical worth sound very much like Hobbits - a good idea!


Edit: Oops! Selective reading can lead to misinformation. I happened to glance at the very next paragraph of the above-mentioned chapter, and found following words: So who was right? Gandalf or Frodo? Did Bilbo know?

I always think that the mathom house was a bit like the Pitt RIvers museum in Oxford - which is more like the semi-organized box room of a well travelled great -uncle on a grand scale. Lots of interesting but fairly random and eccentric.

My guess is that no matter how outlandish shirelings found Bilbo's tales, they also had small children that needed amusing on wet days, therefore the possessors of curiosities probable found it eaier to put them in a publlic place than to have endless streams of people pestering them for a look..

It seems appropriate to me that Hobbits would have Mathom Houses; after all, they seem to put great value on having large stores of food in their pantries so they must by nature be hoarders. And considering the custom of giving gifts on a birthday, rather than receiving them, those smials must have got quite cluttered after a while. I also like the idea that they simply could not throw anything away, and they wanted it not only stored but stored in a place where it might amuse or interest other Hobbits.

Does the custom make anyone else think of The Wombles, or is it my overactive imagination? :)

It makes me think of the Castle Museum in York. This place is immense, and alongside the serious attractions such as Dick Turpin's cell and so forth, it includes a couple of entire recreated streets which an eccentric gentleman 'collected', shop fronts, carriages and everything! They also have rooms stuffed with everyday items such as household appliances; you wander round going "ooh, my granny had one of those." That's what I imagine a Mathom House would be like, slightly eccentric, always interesting but never entirely serious (no Elgin marbles for example!).

EDIT: I've just seen this line, which says that mathoms were indeed passed around on birthdays, so no doubt this is why the Mathom House was needed! I know the feeling, I think I live in one... :)

Vic 20 for VIc"
 

Oh well, I did go to the Castle Museum in York, on my first trip north of Birmingham about 20 years ago ..and it had just been refurbished and the cobbled streets, the furnished rooms and the interactive exhibits (primitive by the standard of day but VCR and microwaves were expensive luxuries and the VIC 20) was at the cutting edge of home computer tecnology - in short we "still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea") seemed the height of sophistication to someone whose previous experience of museum had been dead animals or model ships in glass cases.

So it doesn't really fit in with my idea of the Mathom House - I am sure it was a lot more haphazard .... and given the Hobbit attitude to study, a lot more amateurish. I used to know a woman who was a curator at a county museum and they were given the collection of a small public (ie private) school which was either closing or just needed the space. This consisted of various artifacts that old boys had donated over the years, sent back from their travels or service in "the colonies". Now one of the items was a gilded piece of wood which had been labelled "part of an Egyptian head-dress". Now the curator looked at it and thought it was Egyptian, but although it looked familiar she couldn't immediately place it. She giggled for days once the light dawned - it was the beard of an Egyptian statue and for about 70 years it had been displayed upside down. Now I am sure it is that kind of enthusiastic ineptness that characterised the hobbit mathom house...

I guess it had something of the Old Curiosity Shop without the 'Shop' about it. Museums seem to have grown up from the private collections of the nobility in Europe at least. These collections could just as well comprise peculiar anatomical specemins, misunderstood tribal artefacts, religious relics or plain fakes as they could include pieces of great artistic or financial value. Much of present day technology, especially electricity, originated as entertaining after-dinner curiosities and conversation pieces of the well-to-do.

I wonder if originally the mathom house had served as the Arsenal of the Shire, where all the rarely-required warlike gear was stored between emergencies. One ancient near-Eastern king apparently pulled off this trick by appearing merely to be an eccentric collector of military memorabilia until his country went to war, whereupon he immediately equipped his entire army with high quality armour and weaponry, to the amazement of the opposition.

I think that the Mathom House could have been based on the older style of museum quite easily, as I remember from childhood that many seemed to be little more than haphazard collections of 'stuff'. A local museum's exhibits included in one room some stuffed geese, a petrified tree branch and a shrunken head (always surrounded by children). I went to the British Museum many years ago and was fascinated by the way it just seemed to be a collection of random antiquities. Today it is very different, it is properly organised in order to help us mere mortals better understand what we are looking at and I found it quite sterile. I don't know if it is better that museums now interpret things for us more thoroughly, as I quite liked the element of discovery under the older style.

This is a good idea, as many of our modern museums have evolved from arsenals, such as the Royal Armouries. These would have originally been within castles or residences of the monarch, but as The Shire does not have such a leader, it could be possible they would have needed a central or communal place to store weapons.

Though all in all, I like to think that Tolkien just liked the idea of a place filled with all kinds of interesting and dusty Hobbit junk.

That is why I think "Pitt Rivers" - with all it's weird and wonderful ethnographical artefacts ... has to be a mathom house...... and just around the corner for Tolkien... Have a look

http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/oxfordtour/pittrivers/map.html