![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
~*~
Hi! I'm back both from the two-week trip to my mother's and from my recent overnighter to see the Trilogy (no symphony, just the films). I'm trying to catch up on mail and house stuff, still have loads to do for Christmas , and have not even touched the Frodo project I started last month, something to go with a jan-u-wine poem. Still, I thought I'd say "Merry Christmas" before the day slipped by.
To celebrate, here are some scans from a book I bought recently, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. I knew Tolkien could paint and draw, but I didn't realise how good he was. His human figures lack finesse, but he was very good at rendering structures and natural settings. If I have time, I will post some scans of his work in honour of his birthday coming up. Maybe this sort of "eye" is what makes his descriptive passages so strong.
In this post are a few images of the sort of things Tolkien made for his own children. For several years, he sent them illustrated letters, purportedly from Father Christmas (or his staff: Karhu the Polar Bear or Ilbereth the secretary elf), full of details of life--hum-drum, comical or alarming--at the North Pole. What fun it had to have been for him to write the letters and illustrate them each year, and what fun for his children to receive them. I'm sure the Tolkien household had its hard times, its unhappy times, but it had to be a delight, too, living with such an imaginative parent who took such pleasure in providing entertainment for his children.
1. Father Christmas (top) and his house (bottom), as if painted by Father Christmas, sent to John in 1920. This is from the first letter Tolkien made. It shows a very cold Father Christmas (blowing beard and coat, red cheeks and nose, ice-crusted boots) tramping through the snow with a bundle, with a second picture underneath showing Father Christmas' igloo-like snowy round house, hushed and radiant under a night sky lit by stars and a full moon. Pencil, black ink, watercolour and silver powder.
2. Envelope, addressed as if by Father Christmas, to John, 1924, with hand-done North Pole stamp and stamp cancel lines. Tolkien developed characteristic handwritings for his letter-writers. Father Christmas has a shaky, but, here, decorative hand.
3. Self-portrait by N.P.B.(North Polar Bear) Karhu, one of Father Christmas' valued associate. The shaky writing at the bottom was written by Father Christmas. Karhu wrote in "fat paw" but later, more proficient, began to write in "Arktik", with angular, rune-like characters. Note the sort of dots-and-dash style, seen again in illustrations for The Hobbit. Additional note: "Paksu" and Valkotukka" are nephews of Karhu. Pencil, black, red and green ink, 1931.
A very happy holiday to you all!
~ MechtildETA:
Here are links to editions of Letters From Father Christmas Amazon has for sale:http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Father-Christmas-Revised-Tolkien/dp/061800937XHere's the cover of the 1st edition (1976):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618512659/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=061800937X&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1B01X9BVGFB99JAPGEGVhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FatherChristmasLetters.JPG
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
The Letters from Father Christmas were my son's favourite Christmas reading when he was a little boy, and I like them very much, too. We used to read them together... *nostalgic sigh* Thank you for posting about them and bringing back lovely memories.:)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
The Father Christmas letters and drawings are new to me, and I'm very happy you shared them.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Love and hugs,
Julchen
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Happy holidays to you!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Oops, forgot to say - Happy Christmas to you! :))
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I've never actually read The Father Christmas Letters. Or Roverandom.
!!!!!!!!!!
But the pictures you've posted here are wonderfully charming. The Prof was quite talented, wasn't he? :p
From:
no subject
That's the one I got these scans from (see above). Isn't it a great collection? And not even expensive in paperback.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Thank you for this lovely post. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, dearest Mech!
*hugs you*
From:
no subject
Yes, to that! He really was an amazingly creative, gifted person, wasn't he? How lucky for us and for hundreds of thousands (millions?) that he had this passion for his secondary world. His contributions to his field as a scholar and don were not negligible, but the world would be a far poorer place if he had not expressed himself in written and graphic art.
From:
no subject
I hope your daughter will be with you for the holidays and that your mum is doing reasonably OK.
We've had lots and lots of snow here - I actually was thinking of the photos I've seen from your neighbourhood and wondering whether that is just as snowy there now. Do keep warm and snug! :-)
From:
no subject
No, our daughter on her ship patrolling the waters off Alaska (from the photos, it has a breathtakingly beautiful coast) and won't be home. I think they'll all have a good time, though, opening their presents from home and having a big Christmas party hosted by the galley. She seems to be really liking her life in the Coast Guard.
Here there is very little snow cover, maybe an inch or two, very sparse. But a storm is due to hit tomorrow, Christmas Eve. While we all want a white Christmas, so many of us, and/or our families and friends will be travelling tomorrow, no one is praying for it to be a huge dump.
My mom is not doing too badly in health, but is in a lot of pain and quite debilitated from her arthritis, much more so than when I was there in May. She is still hemming and hawing about coming here, it's such a wrenching transition to contemplate, but when I was there in November she seemed to be accepting it as an inevitability. She still would rather just die there, in her home, but I don't think she's going to get her wish. Except for her disability from pain, and increasing difficulty finding the words she wants (resulting from her small stroke a few years ago), she does not seem to be at death's door. But as the Rolling Stones sang decades ago, even if they were too young to understand it fully, "What a drag it is, getting old."
Speaking of health, I hope you are feeling pretty well, Maeglian. I know you've been through some rough patches, even scary ones, but I hope you are doing well now.
Happy Christmas, and a better coming year!
~ Mechtild
From:
no subject
Thank you for posting those wonderful Tolkien illustrations, I didn't know them. I just love his style, simple, yet tremendously attentive to the details. Lovely!
From:
no subject
Happy Christmas, Whiteling, and I hope you are feeling up to snuff, not wearing yourself out.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Oh yes! I love Tolkien's little message on the last card: 'This is all drawn by NPB. Don't you think he's getting better? But the green ink is mine - and he didn't ask for it.' Just charming.
Thanks for sharing these, Mechtild.
Have a Joyful Christmas, and I hope you and your family enjoy a healthy, happy and prosperous 2010.
~ Blossom.
From:
no subject
I ordered a copy of "The Father Christmas Letters" from our library. The copies they have are out, of course, since they are Christmas books. "Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator" has a lot of plates from the letters, but I'd love to see the rest. I'd especially like to see how the illustrations fit what Tolkien wrote.
From:
no subject
I love Tolkien's illustrations.
--Estë
P.s. How are Angelo, Elsa and Charles doing?
From:
no subject
The cats are fine, even though they all have their health issues. We've come round to seeing the truth of the accusation that the Siamese is a weak breed, health-wise. But they are so fun, and funny, so people-oriented and playful and quirky, we're gluttons for punishment. None of them have anything life threatening, we hope, just things that need daily attention from me and periodic trips to the vet's (ka-ching: $$$).
I hope you and your husband are doing well, Este. I still think of you often, every time I walk by my copy of Whiteling's drawing of Este, framed on my wall.
~ Mechtild
From:
no subject
I'm sorry Elsa and Charles are still having health issues. I hope you're all snuggly together today though. Merry Christmas! *hugs*
From:
no subject
Elsa and Charles aren't sick in the sense of suffering. It appears their colds when they were kittens that went on for months and months, in the opinion of my new, talented vet, were caused be a feline herpes infection. Like human herpes (as in cold sores, etc.), it's viral (which is why the colds never responded to antibiotics except for secondary infections). It never goes away, it's always in their blood streams, even if it's mostly dormant, coming to the fore when very young or old, or in stressful circumstances or other illness. But a side effect of it, the vet thinks, has been their ongoing gingivitis. Elsa's was terrible at six months and I got it under control with enzymatic rinses, toothpaste and gels. Nevertheless, she'd built up so much reactive plaque and tartar on her teeth I had to have them cleaned, to give her a fresh start, and she was only 15 months old! Her teeth are actually fine; it's the gums. As if she's allergic to her own tartar and mouth acids, which the vet thinks is a result of the herpes, which can interfere with the body's immune functions. Otherwise she seems absolutely fine. Charles finally got over his crusty nose, but he still sneezes a lot, Elsa, too, but not nearly as much. And now Charles has began to develop gingivitis, too, but nothing as bad as Elsa so far. But he now he gets rinses and gels. This is an everyday thing. Angelo, too, developed bad gums last year. His teeth and gums had always been fine. Now I wonder if he didn't get their herpes infection (it's contagious), and that's why his gums are acting up. He's also on watch for kidney disease. His brother died five years ago from kidney cancer. Angelo's levels have been elevated this year, more so at his last check-up. He's having fluids once a week to see if the levels come down. He doesn't act sick, so we wouldn't have known but for a routine blood panel for his teeth-cleaning in August.
From:
no subject
I'll be taking Saki in once the holidays are over to check her thyroid levels again and see if they're still elevated. If so, I'm hoping we can put off doing the radiation treatment a couple of months until spring, since it's easier to recover from things in spring and summer.
From:
no subject
After I wrote my comment to you I thought about the dates of Angelo's first tooth cleaning and extraction; it was before the kitten's arrived. So, no, I can't blame the kittens for that. As for the kittens' health, I took the cats from the breeder sick, knowing they were sick. She didn't want to let them go, since her contract specifies the animals are guaranteed healthy or you get a new kitten or a refund. But I told her I wanted them anyway, because I'd already fallen in love with them, having visited them at 8 weeks and 12 weeks, taken their pictures, named them, fantasized about them. So she let me have them at last, still with their colds, at past 5 months, but for a lot less money and no contract. I felt that if she kept them a) she'd probably have them put down, since they were getting kind of old to place if they got well, and would be unsellable if they had a chronic condition. I also wanted them because b) they were still living in a little kennel. That is no life for a kitten, and almost any pet animal. I wanted them to be able to have a normal life, and I thought their best chance of recovering would be to get out of the kennel setting. And they did recover, and they are both dolls. But they do have chronic health issues that I simply will have to deal with. I'm not sorry I insisted on taking them and neither is my husband, once he got to meet them. He fell for them like a ton of bricks. It's like having an infant born with health issues. If you've been waiting for your child to be born, a child that didn't have anything wrong with it during its first intrauterine tests, that you'd seen kicking and turning and sucking its thumb on the monitor in the five-month ultra-sound, that you'd been talking to and already loved for months, if it's born with some problems, you're likely to continue loving it, even if you wished the baby were 100% healthy. Naturally, I wish Elsa and Charles didn't have things wrong with them, but once they got sick at the breeder's, it was too late to say, "I don't want them anymore"; I already loved them. :)
From:
no subject
No, it's probably hyperthyroidism. The doctor suggested doing radiation instead of daily medication, because the radiation, though rough, can completely reset the thyroid to normal. The less radical medication method, maintains the condition, rather than cures it, and if she develops other conditions when she ages she could have problems with multiple conditions and comflicting medications. And the stress on both of us with daily medicating a willful Saki. So the doc thinks it's better to try to cure it while she's otherwise healthy. The doc is a minimalist, so I trust her judgement on this. But it's still rough, and there's always a chance it could wreck her health, so it's playing odds that seem to favor it.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I really enjoyed seeing these pics and your post reminded me that I once had a Christmas card from someone with a drawing of polar bear by Tolkien on the front. Oddly enough, the person who sent it knew nothing about my love for LOTR - a pure coincidence!! I'm not sure where it is now but if I do manage to find it I'll try scanning/posting it.
I will take this opportunity to wish you a very Happy New Year:)
From:
no subject