33. Portraits

Autumn here’s been mostly mild. Today it’s raining, so I get a fire going and bring the rolled paintings from the study to the parlor. Since my arrival weeks ago, I’ve been too busy to look at them any further’n I did that first day. Today’s as good a time as any to fill up the empty frames. 

Frodo had enjoyed painting and had written about the ones he felt were especially fine. There are nearly sixty tubes here, labeled by room. It takes me most of the morning to look at them and decide which ones to hang. I keep changing my mind; they’re all so marvelous. There’s the ocean, woods, animals, portraits. Some are cheerful, others thoughtful, but none of them mournful. 

I get to the bedchamber last, with a dozen tubes for the three frames there. I pull them out and get quite a surprise. There’s Bag End and Hobbiton, the Hill and Water, Tuckborough, the Free Fair, Brandywine, Buckland. They’re done by memory and nostalgia, or so I assume until I get to the last three. I open them up and stare in amazement. There’s Peregrin hunting with his sons, Meriadoc and Estella holding wee Niphredil, and there’s Rose feeding wee Primrose, her belly swollen with Bilbo as Frodo-lad, Rose-lass and Merry study on the parlor floor.

I swallow the tears and stare in joy and wonder. No memory painted these. I go over the others: that’s me on stage as Mayor at the Fair; that’s Bag End with the trellises young Hamfast had installed for the kitchen garden; there’s Peregrin the Thain smoking a pipe at dusk at Great Smials. I put Rose and the children on the wall opposite the bed and resolve to speak with Gandalf as soon as I may.

GF 10/21/12

To be continued...