So -- is a double drabble a droubble?

[rabidsamfan]

All That I Have, or Might Have Had

Will Whitfoot had come to him with Frodo’s will when he’d returned from the Grey Havens, all signed and correct, but his tears had made nonsense of the words. It wasn’t until Quarterday that he realized how much had changed. That was when the rents came due.

All morning they came, small farmers, with their silver and copper, waiting patiently as he wrote the amounts in the ledger, and touching their caps to him when he gave them the receipts. Rosie gave them tea and sweet rolls; they touched their caps to her, too.

A messenger from the Southfarthing, with twenty gold as his share of the pipeweed crop; Ted Sandyman, scowling, with a long tale about how the cost of building the new mill prevented him from paying his due.

All the property Lobelia had left to Frodo, and that Lotho had left to her, bought with Saruman’s money. All the income from the properties that Frodo had got from Bilbo, and from his parents long ago. All of that and Bag End too.

And Sam remembered the glorious lies of the Ring, and the one small garden in a free land that he had chosen instead and wept.



Timeline (fiction only, most recent version, includes AU) first previous next last

Comments

[allisona.livejournal.com]

Sigh, that last line made me weep...

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*offers kleenex*

Thanks

[danachan.livejournal.com]

That last line? Kills me. (It isn't a bad sort of killing, though.)

(Also: Droubble? Heh, what a cool word.)

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Thanks... I wasn't expecting the end to go that way, but it did.

And I figure it goes like this:

A drabblet couldn't come up with a hundred words
A drabble is 100 exactly -- or at least according to Word.
A drouble is 200 exactly --
A fibble is anything longer than a drabble but too short to be a ficlet.
A ficlet has aspirations but no plot and is still less than 1000 words
A vignette is a ficlet with enough pages to require more than a two minute read.
A novella is a category for those who can remember the definition from Lit classes.
A fic has got chapters
A fan novel has got lots of chapters
And an epfic has got you totally entangled in spite of swearing never to read a WIP again...

[danachan.livejournal.com]

Your brain is fully of shiny things and shiny words.

I have an epfic-writing ban. Let's see if that one holds!

[ancalime8301]

Oh.... how perfect.... that's wonderful. :) That last line... guh!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad it worked.

[illyria-novia.livejournal.com]

Don't.Do.This.Too.Often. *gulps* Just.Don't.

You made me weep. You made me miss Frodo and all the would-have-beens. You made me miss him so much because of this blatant show of what his generosity ultimately entails. You help me understand something and I can't thank you enough for it. ...*groans* This is lousy review. Sorry. But this is an eye-opener and no mistake.

Forget the first line, OK?

*runs off and weeps*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

It's a wonderful review. *hands out kleenex*

Isn't it odd to think that Sam is suddenly one of the richest hobbits in the Shire?

[rosiegardener.livejournal.com]

I imagine Sam looking just like he looked in the movie at the "you bow to no one" scene: He can't believe it. Very interesting, never thought about that, everybody seems to assume Sam was happy about the change !

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

He didn't want to be a wizard or a warrior, either. It's funny, in a way, that the Ring offered him the chance to make an entire countryside bloom and have the command of others, which, when you think of it, is what he did for the Shire and ended up doing as Mayor of Hobbiton.

But I think it was hard on Sam, nonetheless.

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

And now I'm weeping, too.

Thank you, ma'am.

*starts the next drabble-collection*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Go for it.

I may get to the Ringbearer and the Rose in the next week, while I am out in Colorado, but I can't be sure. Last time I was there I barely got on the computer at all.

[cpsings4him.livejournal.com]

How do you always manage to do that?

All that wealth - and yet. He would gladly hand it all back to his benefactor if only...

I am totally taking this out of context, as well as out of the true meaning of the words, but I couldn't help thinking of the bible verse, Mark 8:36 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" I think Sam must have (in that moment) have been feeling that way...that he had gained the whole world, yet lost his own soul (Frodo).

Sigh.

Thanks for the yummy story!

Blessings!
cp

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose that writing in a state of exhaustion right before falling into bed does give you some odd insights...

Yes, I think Sam would have given it all to have Frodo walk in the door again. In a heartbeat. And at the same time, I think he knew that Frodo had truly chosen to go and be healed, and would never haver traded Frodo's chance to find rest for anything.

It's not an entirely inapt quotation...

[elanor1013.livejournal.com]

I guess I hadn't thought much about how Sam's material world changed so quickly and drastically in addition to the other aspects of his world. Thanks for making me think. The last line in particular is amazing.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

And the worst of it, in some ways, is that Sam is pretty much incapable of refusing the responsibility. If Frodo left him the task of managing all that property, then he's going to have to do it, whether he wanted the job or no.

Re: All that I have or might have had

[eykar.livejournal.com]

Very effective, however I have my doubts about anything "bought with Saruman's money" coming to Sam, since any such would probably have been sold under coercion by either force or poverty. Since hobbits greatly value social harmony, and are ruled by hobbit-sense more than law, transactions conducted under the rule of The Chief or Sharkey would probably have been annulled one way or the other and equity restored pretty quickly. Nor would it be consistent with everything we know of Frodo for him to keep posession of anything unfairly taken from its original owner. Legitimate Baggins property would be just as much of an emotional burden to Sam at first without also being a moral burden.

Re: All that I have or might have had

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

ah, but Lotho had been buying property long before he came to Bag End. It would only be in the year that he was "chief" that he would have been able to coerce someone into a sale. I think a good many of the transactions he made in the early days were mutually agreed upon in the normal way -- it was only the source of the money which made him able to buy that was iffy.

Lobelia left her estate to Frodo to help hobbits displaced by the troubles, but after spring came there was such an abundance in the Shire, I'm not sure how much help he had to provide. (Or how much attention he could spare to it from the task of writing the Red Book before he left -- by midsummer he's already retreating in on himself.) I'm willing to bet a good bit of the property did come intact to Sam.

But isn't it fun debating?

Re: All that I have or might have had

[eykar.livejournal.com]

I think that it would the winter of 1419 - 1420, when things were being restored, and the future was still uncertain, that people would want their property back, at least those that regarded themselves as being cheated out of it. The quickest way to help those displaced would be to return to them the land or homes they were displaced from, which ought to have been done before Lobelia died, as the estate that she left was money, not land. I hope she died in time for spring planting, when farmers always need to borrow. Any land left to Frodo by then probably would be legitimate Baggins property.

I always imagine that as Frodo withdrew more, Sam ended up acting in his place with the tenants, so that the transition would not have been as abrupt as you depicted, but it would still have been painful for the first months.

Figuring out all the picky details of Tolkien's world is about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on, because he really did create a world.

Re: All that I have or might have had

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Lotho had been selling pipeweed to Saruman for at least two years -- and he'd bought Sandyman's mill before he came to Bag End, and other properties as well. I don't think anyone was displaced in a blatantly unfair manner until after the ruffians came in, and even then they were displaced to shoddy housing like the Gaffer. Yes, Frodo probably restored folks to better homes, but a hobbit who'd been renting before the trouble was probably renting still. Bilbo is, in the Hobbit, quite a well-to-do hobbit, without much occupation except collecting clothes, poetry, and entertaining friends, and that means income from property in that kind of economy.

Sam may have been Frodo's factotum in other ways, but I doubt he handled the books much. He would have shied off from that task as being too much a job for a "head" instead of a heart. And Frodo, while not socializing much, was not so withdrawn that Sam had any real anxiety about the proposed trip to Rivendell.

(And of course, it's fanfic -- where I can take it in the direction I please!)

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I am having fun!

Re: All that I have or might have had

[eykar.livejournal.com]

I think we are in agreement as far a which lands would still be rented out and which restored. By the way, did you notice the irony in Lobelia leaving her estate to Frodo to help those displaced, when he was the only one permanently displaced. JRR never missed a trick.

You're right that Sam would have been reluctant to take on any of Frodo's landlord responsiblities, but that would be all the more reason for Frodo to insist that he learn, precisely to minimize the trauma of taking them all over at once. I can imagine Frodo imagining exactly what you imagined, and taking some steps to avoid it. (Is this getting infinitely reflective? Probably.)

Re: All that I have or might have had

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Frodo had Sam go over his papers with him when he was preparing for the "trip to Rivendell", but the emotional impact of collecting money for other folks, and collecting it for yourself is very different. And I don't think Sam thought about it much until he had the money sort of "rubbed in his face".

And Frodo wasn't exactly in considerate mode that year. I mean, he didn't even leave bequests to Merry and Pippin that we know about! He wasn't in good enough shape. It was all he could do to concentrate on finishing the Red Book and hold together long enough to get away. He knows Sam will take care of things when he has to. Sam spent the whole quest proving that he could handle more than anyone would have asked him to in Hobbiton.

Re: All that I have or might have had

[eykar.livejournal.com]

The emotional impact would have differed, and I imagine poor Sam would have been devestated either way. However in the few interactions recorded for that year, which seem to be between Frodo and Rose, mediated by Sam, Frodo is very careful of the feelings of all involved. (So is Rose, who deserves more credit than she generally gets.) I think that hobbit good manners are so inbred that it takes more than being totally and eternally cut off from the Shire to make them go dormant.

Bequests to his other friends would be expected, wouldn't they? The failure is most un-hobbitlike. So maybe Frodo's manners are suffering, at least as far as people who aren't in his daily life. Or maybe he figures that Sam will take care of letting Merry and Pippin pick out keepsakes should they want any. I wonder whether the lack of bequests was yet another way that JRR differentiated Frodo from Bilbo, the one who left so many when he disappeared. It may have been another way to stress Frodo's isolation, a theme that shows up even more clearly if you read the part of the Silmarillion about Beren, who Frodo is designed to echo.

I think that by (#1) providing a home for Sam and Rose and (#2) leaving everything to Sam, Frodo effectively made himself into Sam's father, and to me that implies training him for his future adult role. However that's my stretch in one direction, while you're stretching in another.

This may be old news to you, but I just found it out: In the first draft of A Long-Expected Party, Bilbo himself is setting out on more adventures, with the expectation of finding and winning his true love. In the second draft, the one setting out is his son Bingo. Thus JRR began with the goals of love and children for Bilbo, and ended up displacing them not only by a generation but to another family and class, fulfilled after all the upheavals only for Sam. Further, the goals that ought in a proper fairy-tale to be complimentary he made contradictory, not to be fulfilled at the same time, in the same place, through the same person. The transformation of that intention really impressed me.

If Sam came to regard Frodo as a father-figure, that would make taking over his responsbilities hard in yet another way. Parents are the context of one's life, and Frodo had certainly always been the context of Sam's (as well as the eventual goal.) Losing a parent is losing a whole layer of the universe. Is this another reason that Sam had to be a parent himself before Frodo could leave?

You are a very inspirational writer, you know that?

Re: All that I have or might have had

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Not many folks think of Frodo as a father figure to Sam -- although I think you're right, there's an element of that there. Certainly from Frodo's side (he call Sam "lad" when he rescues him from drowning.)

I haven't read the section of HoME that deals with Bilbo's party yet -- I'll get there! But I think it would be fun to see you take your direction into a story. Might not suit everyone, but that's now why we write, is it?


Losing a parent is losing a whole layer of the universe. Too true. And at the moment, entirely too apt.

Re: All that I have or might have had

[eykar.livejournal.com]

>I think it would be fun to see you take your direction into a story.
If I ever disentangle the draft that's been growing by bits and pieces in my computer for the last two months, that story may be somewhere in it. Right now it's a sort of primeval algal mat. Should I find the story and put it into coherent shape, I will let you know.

>>Losing a parent is losing a whole layer of the universe.
>Too true. And at the moment, entirely too apt.
There is never anything that anyone can say to that. Consider yourself hugged and cried for long distance.

Re: All that I have or might have had

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I am very late to this party but had to comment.

And Frodo wasn't exactly in considerate mode that year. I mean, he didn't even leave bequests to Merry and Pippin that we know about!

I thought he signed Crickhollow over to them? And I always imagine that in the process of cleaning out Bag End, he redistributed a lot of keepsakes. Merry and Pippin wouldn't have needed any money, as heirs in wealthy families.

Thanks for sharing your wonderful writing!

- rrappelle

Re: All that I have or might have had

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, I think he distributed a lot before he ever left the Shire for the Quest, but he couldn't do as much as he would have liked, or people would have been suspicious. There's no direct evidence that he gave Crickhollow to Merry and Pippin, although they stayed there for a while certainly. And he had a chance to tell them at the harbor if he had left it to them, so, in the absence of positive data...

I love late comments, btw. Makes me feel like people are still enjoying stuff.

[elycia.livejournal.com]

I just read this for the first time, and though my heart is broken, I think this is my favorite thing you've written. I am, simply, in awe.

THANK YOU for adding all these to your memories, where we laggards can find them!

[belleferret.livejournal.com]

So short but so powerful. Yes, it made me weep too. Poor Sam--he gave up all the Ring promised him because of his love for Frodo. Now he has all the Ring promised, but no Frodo. Thank you for the lovely story.