Before Gandalf came along and stirred up those Tookish longings, the biggest trouble that Bilbo had ever experienced was his cousins Otho and Lobelia Sackville Baggins, who would constantly pester him to get possession of his house, Bag End. This started even before his quest, after which point the halls of Bag End were said to be full of hidden gold from the dragon hoard, which only made Lobelia’s greed even more covetous.
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Lobelia is absolutely thrilled then, at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo Baggins finally signs over the deed to Bag-End to her so that he can go on his own quest to destroy the ring of power in the fires of Mount Doom before the evil Sauron can get his hands on it. When she arrives at the house to claim it, she professes ‘“Ours at last!” It was not polite, nor strictly true, for the sale of Bag End did not take effect until midnight. But perhaps Lobelia can be forgiven: she had been obliged to wait about seventy-seven years longer for Bag End than she had once hoped, and she was now a hundred years old.’ The greedy old hobbit and her son Lotho have finally received the place that they have badgered so hard to get for all those years. Why then, would Lobelia Baggins sign the hobbit-hole back over to Frodo willingly, at the end of the War of the Ring?
The simple answer is that, by the time Frodo returns to The Shire, Lobelia has been through some terrible things, and it has made her into a better person, and given her a change of heart. Whilst the hobbits are off fighting in the great battles on the borders of Mordor (the young and innocent Pippin in the service of Theoden of Rohan, the avid and mischievous Merry in the service of Denethor of Gondor, and Frodo and Sam being guided by the tricksy Gollum to the volcano edge).
The Shire is under siege by Saruman and his band of thugs. He wants to get revenge for the ents revoking his possession of Isengard, by instead possessing and destroying Hobbiton. But some of the hobbits, despite being peaceful creatures at heart, are not willing to lay down and obey him, and instead decide to put up a resistance to defy the ruffians overtaking their homes. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is one of them.
When they try to invade Bag-End, the place she has worked so hard for, she ‘ups with her umbrella and goes for the leader, twice her size. So they took her. Dragged her off to the Lockholes, at her age too.’ She is feisty, and she has a lot of spirit, despite her many flaws. But after spending months in the dungeon, with very little food or rest, she comes out a very different person. Especially when she learns that her own son Lotho was instrumental in helping Saruman enter The Shire. There is a great source of shame in this, and all of the havoc that was wrought on her son’s behalf, and worse than this, she soon finds out that Lotho is dead, and that he has been eaten by Grima Wormtongue on the orders of Saruman. This is a little too much for the old hobbit to bear, and she probably wants to get as far away from these awful memories as possible.
‘She was crushed by the news of Lothos murder, and she would not return to Bag End. She gave it back to Frodo and went to live with her own people, the Bracegirdles of Harbottle. When the poor creature died next spring - she was after all, more than a hundred years old- Frodo was surprised, and much moved: she had left all that remained of her money, and of Lothos, to him, to use in helping hobbits made homeless by the troubles. So that feud was ended.’ She clearly softened in her old age, and wanted to spend the last of her days repairing some of the damage her family had caused, and deep down at the heart of things, she wasn’t such an old battle-axe after all.
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