Tom could also be seen as a kind of pure hermit; he doesn’t generally involve himself with the affairs of others, and maybe because of that the ring has no effect on him.
Good point, a Saint Anthony the Abbot, of sorts, or the Celtic equivalent. One can’t see St. Anthony giggling over nonsense rhymes. That’s what brought to mind Chesterton’s biography of St. Francis, because he placed St. Francis in a new heremitical class, with some important distinctions from the earlier penitential hermitage of the Desert Fathers.
Tolkien can be a little hard to place, culturally, for an American. We don’t have the natural sense of where he fits among British types.