Tolkien being what he was, he simply didn't worry about such grimy details. Just as today no one outside of adverts waxes rhapsodic over his household appliances, so the presence of domestic staff was simply taken as given. Certainly Bilbo Baggins had a housekeeper, even if she wasn't live-in, and just as certainly Merry's house in Brandybuck had domestic servants - but such were literally beneath notice at Tolkien's social level. Just so, we never see who makes all the pretty clothes and things the Elves possess automatically - like Wells' Eloi, and it might have been interesting (though it would have changed the whole story) to see what kind of Morlocks did for the Elves while they danced and sang in the starlight &c.
Meanwhile, we DO glimpse the farmers and villeins of Rohan, because they were churned to the surface by disaster and appear as refugees, but they're what might be called local color and don't affect the story.
It was not, I gather, at all uncommon for the paterfamilias of an English household to not even know the names of his servants: His wife hired 'em & fired 'em and didn't bother him with such trifles. You can glimpse this in A A Milne's other works, such as When We Were Very Young, where the child speaks of 'Nanny' and 'Cook' as occupation-names, much as 'Fletcher' and 'Cooper' and 'Baker' had become.
[In Barbara Hambly's excellent Those Who Hunt the Night, the main character is an Oxford don who is also a Government spy, and therefore not only keeps a knife in his boot but is fully familiar with his house and can navigate it blindfolded, including the kitchens and scullery, which in their own houses some of his colleagues had never even seen!]
no subject
Tolkien being what he was, he simply didn't worry about such grimy details. Just as today no one outside of adverts waxes rhapsodic over his household appliances, so the presence of domestic staff was simply taken as given. Certainly Bilbo Baggins had a housekeeper, even if she wasn't live-in, and just as certainly Merry's house in Brandybuck had domestic servants - but such were literally beneath notice at Tolkien's social level. Just so, we never see who makes all the pretty clothes and things the Elves possess automatically - like Wells' Eloi, and it might have been interesting (though it would have changed the whole story) to see what kind of Morlocks did for the Elves while they danced and sang in the starlight &c.
Meanwhile, we DO glimpse the farmers and villeins of Rohan, because they were churned to the surface by disaster and appear as refugees, but they're what might be called local color and don't affect the story.
It was not, I gather, at all uncommon for the paterfamilias of an English household to not even know the names of his servants: His wife hired 'em & fired 'em and didn't bother him with such trifles. You can glimpse this in A A Milne's other works, such as When We Were Very Young, where the child speaks of 'Nanny' and 'Cook' as occupation-names, much as 'Fletcher' and 'Cooper' and 'Baker' had become.
[In Barbara Hambly's excellent Those Who Hunt the Night, the main character is an Oxford don who is also a Government spy, and therefore not only keeps a knife in his boot but is fully familiar with his house and can navigate it blindfolded, including the kitchens and scullery, which in their own houses some of his colleagues had never even seen!]