Carta 206

In late March, Tolkien had attended a "Hobbit Dinner" organised by Voorhoeve en Dietrich, a Rotterdam bookseller. Tolkien first recounts his arrival in Rotterdam, where he was met by C. Ouboter, the representative of Voorhoeve en Dietrich, who waved a copy of The Lord of the Rings at the railway station.

Ouboter was embarrassed about the menus that had been printed for the dinner: these included “maggot-soup”! It was, of course mushroom soup, named after Farmer Maggot, not a soup of vermin. Tolkien met a representative of Het Spectrum, the publisher of Max Schuchart’s Dutch translation, with whom he went to see Rotterdam, ruined and half-rebuilt. Tolkien associated the Dutch people's love for Hobbits with this tragic event in Rotterdam: old, ancestral and natural buildings, replaced by gigantic and largely dehumanised buildings.

In the evening, he dined with 200 paying people. Both Tolkien and his Dutch friend professor Piet Harting were surprised about the attendance, and even more about the many that had been turned away. The dinner was long and abundant, and interwoven with speeches. He liked all but one of the speeches, by a psychologist. Tolkien himself also spoke, in a parody of Bilbo’s speech.

The Rotterdam tobacco company Van Rossem had put up posters over-printed with pipe-weed names: Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby and Southern Star. Later they sent Tolkien pipes and tobacco. Tolkien finished this fragment by thanking Rayner. Allen & Unwin had paid for Tolkien’s journey.

1. Esta ficha se ha importado inicialmente de TolkienGateway.net el día 27/05/2026.