Coffee!

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Jumping in feet first here, I apologize.

Some how I can't see the insular hobbits finding out about foreign coffee. But I did a bit of Googling and found that New South Wales, Australia is a coffee growing area. Now New South Wales has a highest maximum temperature of 50.0C (122.0F), Wilcannia, 11 January 1939 and lowest minimum temperature of -23.0C (-9.4F), Charlotte Pass, 29 June 1994. It would seem that if they could grow the stuff there, the Shire might also have a bit of it as well, perhaps as delicacy growing in a sheltered spot and defended against frost and snow with fire pots and tarps. In anycase, I imagine that it would have to be replanted frequently.

Roasting the stuff would not be an amazing discovery, as many spices are roasted to facilitate grinding them. And then again, did Tolkien actually mention that the concoction produced was as good as the stuff we have from now warmer climes? It might have and entirely different character. Or different base. Besides chicory, toasted beets, acorns, rye, field peas and okra seed have all been used as coffee substitutes.

[JennyHallu]

Climate is as much a matter of humidity and precipitation as it is temperature, Hilde, and the fact remains that the Shire is fairly clearly painted as a temperate zone. While a greenhouse would be adequate, I simply do not see any way for coffee to be grown out of doors.

[Bêthberry]

I think a question we all need to consider at this point is what need would the Hobbits have for coffee? I mean, if The Shire is an idyllic community, if things are peaceable, if everyone is happy with his place and all's right with the world, why would they need a caffeine jolt?

Was Tolkien suggesting something to us about this idyllic community?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I think a question we all need to consider at this point is what need would the Hobbits have for coffee? I mean, if The Shire is an idyllic community, if things are peaceable, if everyone is happy with his place and all's right with the world, why would they need a caffeine jolt?

Because they had mornings.

Thanks Aiwendil for the intelligent summation of the problem and three possible solutions. What I find interesting about this debate is that a reader's response to which of your three scenarios seems to depend more on their sense of what the Shire is like -- or how they want it to be -- than anything in the text.

I, for example, see the Shire as a little pocket of the 'real' world smack in the centre of Middle-Earth: so for me, coffee, tea and sugar are the same there as here. When Bilbo consumes any of these products he is doing so just as I would, bringing us into close, almost visceral contact.

Jenny, on the other hand, you seem to see the Shire as a bit more removed from our world than do I. That is, when Bilbo or the other hobbits go about their daily lives in the Shire it doesn't seem to break the enchantment for you if you have to perform a bit of imaginative sleight of hand, quickly and silently substituting something like SASSAFRAS tea for 'real' tea when you read it.

Squatter and Hilde, you both offer yet another interesting variation of readers' response in that you would appear to want, like me, to close the gap between the Shire and the 'real' world -- when Bilbo drinks coffee, he drinks coffee -- but you are a bit more willing, like Jenny, to contemplate a Shire that is not exactly like our world (I don't care how good the hothouse or how dedicated the gardener, you ain't gonna get real coffee to grow in the Shire!). Wheras Jenny performs sleight of hand, you both seem to prefer elegant gymnastics.

I'm not suggesting that any one approach is right or better than the others -- only observing that as is so often the case, when we try to figure out this story we end up revealing a lot more about ourselves!

[JennyHallu]

Originally Posted by Fordim

Jenny, on the other hand, you seem to see the Shire as a bit more removed from our world than do I. That is, when Bilbo or the other hobbits go about their daily lives in the Shire it doesn't seem to break the enchantment for you if you have to perform a bit of imaginative sleight of hand, quickly and silently substituting something like SASSAFRAS tea for 'real' tea when you read it.

Ah, Fordim, I find your elegant summation of my stance delightful, and yet I would like to take a moment to elaborate.

To me, when Tolkien described hobbits as essentially English, that means that an Englishman, one of Tolkien's fellows, could walk into Hobbiton and feel a sense of homieness, of comfort and recognition. Little people, with little goals and near horizons, who live a life essentially alike to that of every man, worried about his own family and lands, with little regard to the larger things that happen around him as long as his comfort is secure.

Therefore, the little everyday habits which mark the life of our traveler have their mirrored correlaries in the lives of the hobbits. He smokes a pipe; so do they. The esoteric question of whether his tobacco and theirs are quite identical genetically is mostly moot: that isn't the point. The point is that our traveler, seeing Bilbo contentedly smoking outside his door, can immediately sense and understand the thoughts, emotions, lifestyle, economic state...everything worth knowing about Bilbo can be observed or inferred from his attitude outside his door, idle on a sunny morning, blowing smoke-rings. And the only reason our traveler understands this is because he has the same habit.

That said:

I am the sort of person who never finishes a story. In fact, rarely do I even get to the all-important step of beginning the actual narrative. Those who play in RPs with me (especially if you've completed a joint post with me) know that I have an annoying habit of writing long narrative posts, beginning to end, in a few minutes, so the ability to write in narrative isn't the problem. When the story is my own entirely, I get so bogged down in details that I can never get around to starting the story. I am fascinated by the how of the worlds I create. I care less about what happens to my characters than how their peers make their living, what rituals and holidays inspire and motivate them, when they celebrate and why...

I once derailed a science fiction story with an elaborate plot because my calculus wasn't up to the task of defining the orbit of the planet the tale was to be set on. Why was this so terribly important? Because without that I couldn't understand the turn of seasons, and without that the cycle of agriculture, and in the end the entire economic system of this planet rested on one fact I didn't have the knowledge to create.

By this long tangent I mean to say only that I am obsessed with details. It's fine with me if sugar doesn't mean sugar as I know it, or if pipe-weed or tea aren't the same plants as I'm familiar with, but I have a pathological need to know what they are...

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by JennyHallu

It's fine with me if sugar doesn't mean sugar as I know it, or if pipe-weed or tea aren't the same plants as I'm familiar with

Well that's all I'm saying -- you're a "close enough" kind of reader for the Shire. Me, close only counts in horse shoes and hand-grenades. If I read the Bilbo is have a smoke and drinking a coffee, by gar that's what he's doing!

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

A few more thoughts.

Coffee could conceivably been brought up to Bree, the Shire hobbits obtaining it through that market.

Or a traveler, addicted to coffee, could have visited north and made his/her own substitution for the drink, dubbing that ‘coffee’. Neither readers, narrators nor hobbits would be the wiser.

[JennyHallu]

*quietly climbs off soapbox* Sorry.


I do disagree with Lal though...I think there are other considerations here than she's looking at.

[Lalwendë]

"Arrrwwwrrraaaaughhhhhhhh!"

That's the sound of a torturous explanation. Or possibly Bilbo as he spits out a mouthful of foul acorn coffee outside the new Hobbiton branch of Starbucks and vows never to go there again (good taste...).

Seriously, surely the only consideration is whether something could conceivably be grown in The Shire, considering its latitude and climate. Comparing time frames to our own world doesn't really work, as LotR isn't set in a time we could possibly compare to anyway. If it was set in Medieval times then the Fourth to Sixth ages must have been ruddy short. And anyway, doesn't Tolkien say they could all be measured in thousands of years? So, LotR is set when? Some six thousand years ago minimum? Well if it is then just about everything (steel swords, armour, horsemanship, etc) would be an anachronism, surely?

[Aiwendil]

If I'm not very much mistaken, both sassafrass and sarsaparilla are used in root beer. Now if only the Hobbits had discovered that, the Shire might be the perfect place to live.

Regarding the New World anachronisms found in the Shire: while these anachronisms undeniably still exist in LotR and the third edition of The Hobbit, there is some evidence that Tolkien was troubled by them. There has been much talk of tomatoes on this thread, but if I'm not mistaken, the only instance of the word in either work is from the first edition of The Hobbit:

And just bring out the cold chicken and tomatoes.

But in the revision Tolkien changed this to:

And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles.

It seems quite probable that his reason for making the change was that tomatoes would indeed be an anachronism in ancient Europe. At any rate, I can't think of much other reason to change tomatoes to pickles, unless his ideas about Gandalf's appetite had changed.

It's also worth noting that, whereas he uses the word "tobacco" throughout the Hobbit, he uses the term "pipe-weed" almost exclusively in LotR. "Tobacco" is only used once in that work, and it is used by the narrator, not by any of the characters. "Potato" is also rarely used in LotR, "tater" being the preferred term. So it certainly seems to me that as the world of The Hobbit was drawn into the larger Legendarium, Tolkien made an effort to reduce the instances and obtrusiveness of the Shire's anachronisms. The terms "pipe-weed" and "taters" are at least good English words, unlike the obviously Native American-derived "potato" and "tobacco".

The later terms also allow a little bit of room for the speculation that the articles found in LotR are not actually to be equated with the tobacco and potatoes of the New World. As others have suggested, the Hobbits' pipe-weed need not have been of the Nicotiana genus from which modern tobacco is derived. "Taters", we may suppose, could have been some variety of tuberous root native to ancient Europe - and perhaps now extinct. The Hobbits' coffee may also have been a different kind of seed from that which is called coffee today. We might also suppose that the use of the words "coffee", "potato", and "tobacco" simply represent the modern translator's attempt to render the names of unfamiliar plants from the original Westron, the translations being based on their apparent function.

If, contrary to the above, we are to suppose that the Hobbits' coffee was indeed something very much like our own and that it derived from somewhere in Far Harad, we might explain its presence in the Shire by supposing that only Hobbits had at that time developed a taste for it. It's conceivable that it was traded through Gondor, but that it was in low demand there, and was thus obtained only as a commodity to be exchanged in the north. I admit that this seems unlikely. Another possibility is that coffee was in fact used in Gondor - we have no explicit evidence against this. Perhaps it was used but not as a drink - it might have been used as a spice in food, for instance. A third possibility is that which has already been mentioned - that it did in fact originate far away, but that once discovered by the Hobbits it was grown locally.