Hope Daffadowndilly Grubb was born into an affluent and rigidly respectable family of Grubbs located in Long Cleeve in the North of the Shire. She is remotely connected to the North Tooks and the Bagginses but her closest family ties are with the Grubbs, Chubbs, Hornblowers, and the Sandheavers. In fact, her family deigned not to acknowledge the connection to the Bagginses or the Tooks as they were nowhere near as respectable as the Grubbs were and are and the Brandybucks and the horrible Gardners weren't spoken of at all. The very idea.
She had a strict but happy childhood full of books, art and parties with the 'right' and proper' people of North Cleeve. Her perfect, sheltered life was horribly interrupted at the age of fifteen when her smial caved in, crushing her family. Hope and her younger sister, four year old Del, the only girls in the large family, had a bedroom towards the front of the smial, further away from the cave-in, and were able to dig themselves out. They were the only survivors. Their parents had not left a will and the girls, and all of the Grubb possessions, were snapped up by their evil Aunt Emeralde Boring, their father's least favorite sister. They were taken out of the North Farthing, away from family and friends, to the town of Scary in the East Farthing where they became little more than slaves to their Aunt Emeralde. Cut off from everyone they knew, in shock and in a strange land, they felt they had no one to turn to and suffered abuse for over three years until Hope found employment as an archivist with the Shire network of libraries at the age of 18. She escaped Scary with Del in the middle of the night. They were threatened, by letter, with broken necks if they dared to return. In a bit of cosmic justice Emeralde Boring met her end when she fell head first into the Brockenborings Quarry and broke her own neck. Good Riddance. (Gossip has it that her son pushed her.)
Hope and Del did not go back to the North Farthing but wandered throughout the Shire, and even as far as Bree, from library to library, eking out a sparse living. Their trust in others, even in their own kin that they loved, had taken a severe blow and they preferred to remain self-sufficient. They developed entertaining and cheerful, but false, personas that ensured their acceptance into a variety of families, up to and including the dreaded Tooks and the Brandybucks. Hope could imagine the ghosts of her parents wailing at the horror of it all as she was polite to all the 'wrong' sort of people. Also, as Hope was very pretty, some of her hosts would try to take advantage of her or would outright proposition her. Even Thain Paladin of Tuckborough had a habit of chasing her around and around the dinner table but that was more out of a sense of fun than anything else. She remained a very prim and proper young lady but she had no family to defend her. Despite her best efforts, her most gracious behavior, the Grubb Girls' reputation was in dispute and it weighed heavily on her. She felt horribly alone.
One day she came upon Master Meriadoc Brandybuck and Master Peregrin Took swimming in a stream in the Buckland. She saw the scars that orc whips had made on their skin and realized that she owed her life and her freedom to them, the very people her parents vilified. She realized that reputation and respectability didn't really count for much. She became friends with Boromir Brandybuck, Master Meriadoc's son, but rejected his advances as she still trusted no one but herself and, occasionally, Delphinium. The sisters had several adventures and saw a great many strange things on their travels and Hope realized she greatly enjoyed her freedom.
They eventually came to Bag End, when Del was 10 years old and Hope was 21, to gather information on the Great War and laughed at how scandalized their parents would have been at that. Not the GARDNERS! Not FRODO BAGGINS! Hope developed something of a crush on Frodo and delighted in his knowledge and calm humor. She didn't mind his occasional lunatic outbursts and she couldn't help but notice that her little sister was flourishing under the eye and care of the Mayor and his wife, the Mistress Rose. However, Hope was determined not to be trapped by any family and kept her visits as short as she could.
One day Del became seriously ill with a life-endangering fever and the sisters were trapped at last. Frodo convinced Hope that their itinerant life needed to end and she became his servant (to the absolute shock and disgust of most of their Grubb kin) providing herself and Del, at last, with a stable home at Bag End. Bag End, and Frodo himself, was her window to the glorious outside world, kings and queens and elves and dwarves and trees that talked, and she delighted in living and serving there. Elanor the Fair became her best friend and Borry Brandybuck was a constant visitor. The two held a tumultuous courtship that lasted, on and off, for fourteen years until Hope managed to tear herself away from Frodo at the age of 34 to become Hope Brandybuck, the future Mistress of Brandy Hall. Her parents turned in their graves. She became the invaluable keeper of Brandy Hall's enormous library and her life was joyous and fulfilling until Del's disappearance two years later.
Borry helped her to realize that Del was no longer her responsibility and Hope was eventually able to let go of her panic and delighted in the gifts and letters her sister sent home. Nine months later Hope gave birth to her first child and named her Delanor.
Her marriage to Borry is a good one and she loves the constant whirl of people in Brandy Hall. She's not alone any more.
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