Description:[continued]
Rather than cards, Tolkien started to create letters from Father Christmas to his children when they were very young. Most of these are reproduced in ‘Letters from Father Christmas’. The first dates from 1920. They became more elaborate as the years went on, with beautiful and varied calligraphy, and illustrations. In the 1923 Christmas letter Father Christmas speaks of John Suffield: ‘It is very cold today and my hand is very shaky – I am nineteen hundred and twenty-four, no! seven! years old on Christmas day, - lots older than your great-grandfather, so I can’t stop the pen wobbling…’ [3]
John Suffield had stayed with the Tolkiens in Leeds in May 1923, he was then aged eighty-nine. J.R.R.T. was in bed with pneumonia; he remembered his grandfather: ‘… standing by my bedside, a tall thin black-clad figure, and looking at me and speaking to me in contempt … There was I gasping for breath, but he must now say goodbye, as he was off to catch a boat to go a trip by sea around the British Isles!’ [4] John Suffield may have talked to his great-grandsons John and Michael Tolkien about how old he was. They would also have known his age from the Christmas cards he sent every year.
Another great-grandson, Oliver Suffield, kept a collection of John Suffield Christmas cards (a). The collection included cards from 1916, 1922, 1923, 1925, 1926 and 1927. All cards had a reminder of John Suffield’s age. The earlier cards included John Suffield’s date of birth and his age, given simply in a numerical sequence:
90 10-9-23
(i.e. John had his ninetieth birthday on the 10th September 1923).
In 1926 and 1927 he did not do this, but managed to incorporate his age into the rhyme:
1926: “Last year I sent you “Just one more”
I thought t’would surely be my last
And now another year has passed
I’m Ninety-three, and if I score
Another, t’will make Ninety-four…
So! All good wishes, Christmas dishes,
Moderate Riches in the New Year.
With money to earn and coal to burn,
So says jocosely John Suffield. Moseley (b)
At Christmas 1926”
In 1927 he even managed to include his address in the rhyme – no-one in the family would have any excuse for forgetting to send him a birthday-card.
“Christmas finds me here once more I though I should be gone before
He came again
Friends Children even GtGrandsons Nephews Nieces lovely ones
Make it plain
If I’m still here they’ll take it hard If Postman brings no Christmas card
From Cotton Lane
So All Good Wishes
Come once more
Fro’ me John Suffield
Ninety-four!
Moseley Xmas 1927” (b)
There were other features common to the cards, in addition to John Suffield’s reminder of his age! All cards included the Lord’s Prayer written in a small circle; the size of an old sixpence or an old silver threepenny bit. A couple also had the first verse of the National Anthem: ‘God Save the King’ treated in the same way; and in 1925 a further verse – with a further reminder: ‘Being too old to have a meeting I send by Post [this?] Christmas greeting.’ All had several short verses, some by John Suffield, some probably traditional rhymes. It is not great poetry, but the effect is pleasing.
[Image Reference:John Suffield's 1927 Christmas card.From the Suffield collection, by kind permission of Oliver Suffield]