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Frodo was now safe in the Last Homely House east of the Sea. That house was, as bilbo had long ago reported, 'a perfect house, whether you like food, or sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting & thinkking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all'. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, & sadness
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So, is Rivendell Tolkien's own ideal place, the place he wished had existed in this world, where he could go & 'finish his book'?
It seems to me that it was the place he wanted most to exist out of all the places he invented - all the realms & palaces. Its really Mar Vanwa Tyalieva, the Cottage of Lost Play from the Lost Tales in another form. But what does it tell us about him? I can easily see Tolkien, like Bilbo, more at home in Rivendell, than in Oxford or Bag End, & certainly more than in Gondolin or even Rivendell. Actually I could see myself being more at home there than any other place, real or fictional. It seems a place where learning is dominant, where in some sense history is alive, & those who had lived through the great events of history were stilll around to speak to was Tolkien's 'Earthly Paradise'.
Its the 'Last Homely House
east of the Sea, ie this side of Death, & we know that in an early draft it was intended that Bilbo should die there, & not make the Journey into the West. I think its significant that that its in many ways the ultimate 'home' - the
heimat, even more so than the Shire in many ways - at least for Tolkien.
I have to say that my image of it is not at all like the movie version - I always think of it as being like one of the Swiss houses he would have seen on his trip to Switzerland, white walled, timbered, shutters on the windows, much simpler than the 'elven palace' the movie gives us - which hardly what I'd call 'homely'. I see roaring fires, wooden bowls, a very 'rustic' place all together (& I'm not sure cuckoo clocks would be out of place!).
I can't think of a more Middle-earthly place (apart from the view from the summit of Weathertop!).