[Child of the 7th Age]

Thank you for your kind words, Gurthang and Petty Dwarf -

As Littlemanpoet has observed, the tightly-knit community of the Shire provides the kind of ties that make for healthy drinking rather than overindulgence. And good harvests mean good health and fewer untimely deaths. In the context of Tolkien's Shire, the omissions of alcoholism and child mortality make perfect sense. Yet, I feel impelled to voice a word of caution. I do think that Petty Dwarf has done us a service by pointing to the absence of alcoholism and high infant mortality as a simple reminder of the fact that the Shire has one foot in faerie and its omissions cannot be judged by normal "historical" or even literary standards.

Despite our temptation to think otherwise , Tolkien's Shire is not real--not even in its origins and roots. The author's memories of the West Midlands, on which he built the Shire of Middle-earth, were highly selective: the child remembered only what was near to his heart, not the larger picture. Accordingly, the Shire of Middle-earth was an idealized portrait that never existed except in the author's head and the hearts of folk like us who have fallen in love with it. In the real world of Edwardian England, there could be "close knit" communities in rural areas which could still have rampant alcoholism, crime, and abuse. See, for example, an overview of one study of crime in 19th century Herefordshire , which is part of the West Midlands. The chapter titles indicate the dimensions of these problems. Nor were such problems confined to the later period. There are a number of studies of 17th century England that suggest their widespread presence in this pre-industrial setting.

So, in one sense, Petty Dwarf is correct in saying that the Shire should have alcoholism and child mortality but does not. To those two items we could also add crime, child labor, grinding poverty, and a class system that would have prevented someone like Samwise Gamgee from ever becoming a mayor. It seems that, when Tolkien created the Shire, what he left out was even more critical than what he put in.

There is an obvious irony here. If we insist on adding all those negative things, we will end up with something that does not resemble the Shire in the slightest! Tolkien was certainly aware that the memories from his childhood were idealized, but he went ahead and built the kind of Shire that he wanted there to be. That does not mean it was perfect. We still have pettiness, greed for little things, parochialism and characters like Sandyman and the Sackville-Bagginses. Even in an idealized Shire, Tolkien wasn't about to forget that Men are fallen, and the Shire is fallen too. Yet, if I was given a choice between living in the Edwardian Midlands and in Tolkien's Shire, even leaving aside the rest of Middle-earth and its people, I would obviously choose the Shire as a much more optimistic and gentle place.

Tolkien was normally pretty pessimistic. His writings on the Legendarium through the mid-thirties were filled with examples of the "long defeat". Moments of eucatastrophe were rare. He did include 'bright' and victorious characters like Beren and Luthien, but only a few. There was the beauty of a place like Gondolin, but, like much else, that beauty was quickly brought to ruin. So why did he "leave out" so many bad things and create a place like the Shire, an essentially happy and thriving community even in the midst of a wider world that was falling under the shadow? And even more critically, how did he rise above the natural pessimism in his soul that had so dominated his earlier writings on Middle-earth?

I think there is one and only one way to explain this. He created it for his children, not on paper but from his head in bedtime stories. If Tolkien had initially sat down with pen to paper, I don't think The Shire would ever have seen the light of day. So thanks to the Tolkien little ones for giving their dad a "reason" to go beyond his normal pessimism. It's almost as if, until that point, Tolkien's writings had sprung out of the period in his life when he had attended college and gone to war. These writings in the Silm hold high tragedy and romanticism, tinged with tears. The Shire instead is tinged with laughter. It comes from his childhood, the period when his mother was still alive. The Shire is there because Tolkien reconnected with something from his early past, and he did that through his own children's lives.

Raising kids will do that for you. It will bring you down from the mountain peaks where you think you know everything and where you exalt in "naked emotion" or even art, and instead put you in the middle of everyday life where "small things" are the norm. So a tip of the hat to Tolkien's family and a tip of the hat to the master artist who not only knew what to put in his story, but also what to leave out.

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Littlemanpoet -

You once wisely pointed out the "animal like" characteristics of the hobbits. While you maintained that this was not the total sum of what Hobbits were, it was an important ingredient. I would say the same thing about the childlike nature of the Shire and its inhabitants.

When I read The Hobbit and the early chapters of LotR , I see and sense the impact that his own family had on the way the Shire developed. The Hobbit wasn't just a book written for any children: it was a story that was told to his own children. That is a critical difference. And I have a feeling that their responses and preferences had a great deal to do with the way he shaped the story. This is different than writing with pen and paper for an audience of unknown children. That's why the Shire rings so true to me. I also think it's an important reason why he could never write the "sequel" to the Shire that Unwin wanted him to. His children had grown to the point that he no longer had a ready made audience for storytelling. Writing with pen and paper, his writing inevitably took a darker turn, just as the rest of the Legendarium had. But, thank goodness, he never lost that tiny reflection of childhood--the Shire--that he had earlier developed in tandem with his children, and a spark of it went on to enliven the later chapters of LotR.