The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull
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Side learn Science. The amount of time given to Mathematics on both sides is the same, and Modern Languages are also studied on both Sides. Boys who have any prospect of proceeding to Oxford or Cambridge should take the Classical Side, and it is especially desirable that boys who show mathematical promise should do so. All who contemplate a Degree in Arts at any University will naturally take this Side.
Ronald is on the Classical Side, and since there is no Seventh Class on that Side, he moves into the Sixth Class, under Assistant Master *George Brewerton. There he will begin to study Greek, he will be introduced also to *Shakespeare and *Chaucer (and encouraged to read the latter in the original), and with the aid of a primer lent him by Brewerton, he will begin to learn Old English (*Languages). During this term he is in Section B6 for Mathematics and Arithmetic. He will be ranked eighteenth among twenty-three boys in the School class list dated December 1903.
Christmas 1903 Mabel Tolkien sends drawings made by Ronald and Hilary to the boys’ Tolkien grandmother, and comments on how hard Ronald has worked on them since school broke up on 16 December:
Ronald can match silk lining or any art shade like a true ‘Parisian Modiste’. – Is it his Artist or Draper Ancestry coming out? – He is going along at a great rate at school – he knows far more Greek than I do Latin – he says he is going to do German with me these holidays – though at present [with a lingering illness] I feel more like Bed. One of the clergy, a young, merry one, is teaching Ronald to play chess – he says he has read too much, everything fit for a boy under fifteen, and he doesn’t know any single classical thing to recommend him. Ronald is making his First Communion this Christmas – so it is a very great feast indeed to us this year. [quoted in Biography, p. 28]
At his confirmation Ronald takes the additional name ‘Philip’ but will rarely use it. – At about this time, Ronald buys a copy of Chambers’s Etymological Dictionary, ‘the beginning of my interest in German Philology (& Philol[ogy]. in general)’ (note by Tolkien, dated 1973, in his copy of the book, quoted in Life & Legend, p. 16).
January 1904 Ronald and Hilary have measles followed by whooping cough. Hilary also develops pneumonia. The strain of nursing the boys proves too much for Mabel’s health. – From 1 January, motor-cars in Britain have to be licensed and fitted with number plates; 23,000 cars are registered. The speed limit is 20 miles per hour. Tolkien will later remark on the spread of the motor-car with consequent noise and fumes (see *Environment; *Progress in Bimble Town).
Spring and summer terms 1904 The King Edward’s School class list dated July 1904, concerning the first half of the year, will list Ronald as ‘absent’.
April 1904 By now, Mabel is in hospital in Birmingham, diagnosed with diabetes and in the care of Dr Robert Saundby, noted in medical literature for his treatment of diabetics with controlled diet (insulin will not be discovered until 1921). Hilary is sent to his Suffield grandparents, and Ronald to Hove on the south coast of England near Brighton, to stay with Edwin Neave, a former lodger in the Suffield home and future husband of Mabel’s sister, Jane. Ronald will be absent from King Edward’s School for the summer term.
27 April 1904 Ronald sends his mother a drawing on the back of a card posted in Brighton: inscribed They Slept in Beauty Side by Side (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 4), it shows Ronald and Edwin Neave in bed. This is one of at least four drawings Ronald makes for his mother at this time. Another, inscribed Working Over Time S.P.Q.R., is of Edwin Neave, an insurance clerk, sitting at a tall desk with a Guardian Fire Insurance calendar on the wall, while a third, inscribed ‘For Men Must Work’ as Seen Daily at 9 am, depicts Ronald and Edwin striding along a promenade to the Guardian Assurance Company office. In yet another, What Is Home without a Mother (or a Wife) (Life and Legend, p. 14), on which is written ‘Show Aunt Jane’, Edwin Neave is darning a sock while Ronald is mending trousers. See note.
Late June 1904 Mabel has recovered sufficiently to leave hospital and must now undergo a lengthy convalescence. Father Francis Morgan arranges for her and the boys to stay at Woodside Cottage, *Rednal, Worcestershire, near the Oratory retreat and cemetery. They lodge with the local postman and his wife, Mr and Mrs Till. They have the freedom of the Oratory’s grounds and can explore the adjoining Lickey Hills. Mabel writes to her mother-in-law: ‘Boys look ridiculously well compared to the weak white ghosts that met me on train 4 weeks ago!!! Hilary has got tweed suit and his first Etons today! and looks immense. – We’ve had perfect weather. Boys will write first wet day but what with Bilberry-gathering – Tea in Hay – Kite-flying with Fr. Francis – sketching – Tree Climbing – they’ve never enjoyed a holiday so much’ (quoted in Biography, pp. 29–30.). Father Francis visits many times. Mabel and the boys attend Mass on Sundays at the Oratory retreat, if a priest is in residence, or they are driven to St Peter’s Catholic church in nearby Bromsgrove with Mr and Mrs Church, the gardener and caretaker for the Oratory fathers.
8 August 1904 Ronald writes a three-page pictorial code letter to Father Francis, which ends in plain text with a limerick about the priest ‘to pay you out for not coming!’
September 1904 Even when autumn term begins at King Edward’s School, Mabel decides not to leave Woodside Cottage. Therefore Ronald has to rise early and walk over a mile from Rednal to the nearest station to catch a train into Birmingham; by the time he comes home at the end of the day it is growing dark, and Hilary sometimes meets him with a lamp.
Autumn term 1904 Ronald continues in Class VI under George Brewerton, and in Section B6.
8 November 1904 Mabel sinks into a diabetic coma.
14 November 1904 Mabel Tolkien dies in Woodside Cottage, with Father Francis Morgan and May Incledon at her bedside.
17 November 1904 Mabel Tolkien is buried in the churchyard of St Peter’s, Bromsgrove, and her grave marked with a cross of the same design as that used for the graves of the Oratory fathers. In her will she has appointed Father Francis as Ronald and Hilary’s guardian. The net value of her estate is £1,261 16s 10d.
December 1904 In the School class list of this date, Ronald is listed eleventh out of fifteen in the Sixth Class at King Edward’s School.
Late 1904 Since Ronald and Hilary cannot live with him in the Oratory, Father Francis has to find them suitable lodgings, but he knows that both the Suffield and the Tolkien families had opposed Mabel’s conversion and might contest her will to gain control of the boys. King Edward’s School records list Ronald’s address, immediately following his mother’s death, as care of Laurence Tolkien (one of Arthur’s brothers, an insurance manager) at Dunkeld, Middleton Hall Road, Kings Norton. By January 1905, however, Father Francis will arrange for Ronald and Hilary to live with Beatrice Suffield, the widow of Mabel’s youngest brother, William. This seems a good compromise, as Aunt Beatrice has no strong religious views, she is family, and she lives near the Oratory at 25 Stirling Road in Edgbaston. The boys are given a large room at the top of her house from which they have a view of the countryside in the distance. – During school holidays Ronald and Hilary often stay with other relatives. Among these are two of their father’s sisters (see *Tolkien family), Aunt Grace who lives in Newcastle with her husband William Mountain and their children Kenneth and Dorothy, and Aunt Mabel who lives at Abbotsford, 69 Wake Green Road, Moseley, Birmingham with her husband Tom Mitton and their children (*Mitton family). But most often they stay with the Incledons, who now live at *Barnt Green, Worcestershire, near Rednal. (A second daughter, Friede Mary, had been born to May and Walter Incledon in 1895.) On one of his early visits to the Incledons Ronald discovers that Marjorie and Mary Incledon have constructed a language, ‘Animalic’, almost entirely out of English animal, bird, and fish names, and are able to converse in it fluently. He learns a little of Animalic and is amused by it. He does not admit to his cousins that he himself had already indulged a ‘secret vice’ of creating languages: