The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull
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Beginning of 1908 Ronald and Hilary move to 37 Duchess Road, Edgbaston, the home of Louis Faulkner, a wine merchant; his wife, Mrs Faulkner, holds musical evenings which some of the Fathers from the nearby Oratory attend. The boys’ room is on the second floor; in the room beneath them is another lodger, Edith Bratt. The three young people become friends, and deeper feelings develop between Ronald and Edith. She conspires with the Faulkners’ maid, *Annie Gollins, to smuggle extra food from the kitchen to the hungry boys upstairs, by means of a basket lowered from their window.
Spring and summer terms 1908 Ronald continues in Class I, Section A5 at King Edward’s School; there are twenty-one pupils in the First Class. He will end the term ranked sixteenth in his Mathematics section. Hilary Tolkien is now in Transitus, Section C5.
25 and 27 June 1908 Athletic Sports are held at the King Edward’s School Grounds.
30 July 1908 Speech Day and prize-giving at King Edward’s School. Ronald is awarded a prize for achievement in English.
Autumn term 1908 Christopher Wiseman has now joined Ronald and seventeen others in the First Class at King Edward’s School. Rob Gilson and Vincent Trought are in the Second Class. Hilary Tolkien is now in Class VI, Section B6. Ronald is now a King Edward’s Scholar, a distinction which will continue until he leaves the School in 1911. He will end the term ranked thirteenth in Mathematics Section A4, under Assistant Master the Rev. F.O. Lane. During this term he also takes a voluntary class in Practical Chemistry, taught by Assistant Master T.J. Baker. – During the 1908–9 school year Ronald will present to the School library two books by *G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908) and Heretics (1905).
1908 or 1909 One of Ronald’s school-friends buys A Primer of the Gothic Language by *Joseph Wright at a missionary sale, thinking it a Bible Society product. When he realizes his error he sells the book to Ronald, who upon opening it is ‘at least as full of delight as first looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (quoted in Biography, p. 37). The surviving fragments of Gothic (*Languages) give him aesthetic pleasure. He is fascinated by Gothic in itself, ‘a beautiful language’, and learns from the primer how to convert words of other Germanic languages into Gothic script. ‘I often put “Gothic” inscriptions in books, sometimes Gothicizing my Norse name and German surname as Ruginwaldus Dwalakōnis’ (letter to Zillah Sherring, 20 July 1965, Letters, p. 357). He inscribes ‘Ermanaþiudiska Razda eþþau Gautiska tungō’ (‘Language of the Great People, or Gautish [Gothic] tongue’) inside a notebook to be used for work dealing with Gothic, but only uses a few pages (the notebook will be used later for a Quenya phonology and lexicon). – He now abandons the Latin- and Spanish-influenced Naffarin and begins to develop an imaginary ‘lost’ Germanic language, trying to fit it into the historical development of the Germanic tongues.
1909 During this year Ronald is supposed to be working hard, as he is to sit for an *Oxford Scholarship at year’s end, but he is distracted by linguistic interests and he begins to take an active part in school activities. One of these is rugby football, in which Ronald’s slight form is a handicap. One day, however, ‘I decided to make up for weight by (legitimate) ferocity, and I ended up a house-captain at end of that season, & got my colours the next’ (letter to Michael Tolkien, 3 October 1937, Letters, p. 22). He will be described in the King Edward’s School Chronicle as ‘a light but hard-working forward who makes up for his lightness by his determined dash. Tackles well but his kicking is weak’ (‘Football Characters’, n.s. 25, no. 180 (April 1910), p. 35). During one game his tongue will be badly damaged, an accident he will sometimes blame when people complain that they find his speech difficult to understand. On another occasion he will damage his nose. – His relationship with Edith now becomes more serious. They begin to meet in Birmingham tea-shops; they go on cycle-rides together; they have a private whistle-call by which one can summon the other to the window at Duchess Road. Ronald will later recall to Edith their first kisses and ‘absurd long window talks’ (quoted in Biography, p. 40). By summer 1909 they will decide that they are in love.
Spring and summer terms 1909 Ronald continues in the First Class, one of eighteen pupils. He will end this period ranked thirteenth in his Mathematics section, A4, again under F.O. Lane, and second in his German class, which is taught by A.L. Rothe. Hilary Tolkien continues in Class VI, Section B6.
26 March 1909 Ronald takes part in one of the traditional Latin debates at King Edward’s School, in the role of ‘Spurius Vectigalius Acer, Haruspex’. (Haruspex = ‘soothsayer, prophet’. The names of Tolkien’s Latin debate personae always contain plays on his surname, here vectigal ‘toll’ and acer ‘keen’.)
Spring 1909 According to the ‘Parish Magazine’, the magazine of the Birmingham Oratory parish, for May 1909, ‘three patrols of Scouts under the Brothers Tolkien, have been started, and they marched smartly in the wake of the Boys Brigade on Easter Monday [11 April]. When they have done a little more drill, we shall ask some of our friends to help towards providing them with shirts, haversacks, etc.’
11 May 1909 Edwin Neave dies of bronchial pneumonia. He will be buried in All Hallows’ churchyard, Gedling, east of Nottingham.
Summer term 1909 The King Edward’s School Officers Training Corps (formerly the Cadet Corps) participates in field exercises, including one in the Clent Hills near Birmingham. As reported in the King Edward’s School Chronicle, ‘the corps went out five times with the 5th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and took part in the training of a Battalion under the instruction of Lieut.-Col. [John] Barnsley’ (‘Officers’ Training Corps’, n.s. 24, no. 177 (November 1909), p. 80).
10 June 1909 Ronald writes this day’s date (Corpus Christi 1909) on the title-page of a small notebook he calls The Book of Foxrook (*Writing systems). This
contains the key to a secret code consisting of a rune-like phonetic alphabet and a sizable number of ideographic symbols called ‘monographs’ … each monograph representing an entire word…. The code in Foxrook is not only the earliest known example of an invented alphabet devised by Tolkien, it is also the only one of his writing systems that is primarily ideographic. The majority of Foxrook is in English, including most of the messages written in code and the glosses of the monographs, but one page is almost entirely in Esperanto. [Arden R. Smith and Patrick Wynne, ‘Tolkien and Esperanto’, Seven 17 (2000), pp. 29–30]
1 and 3 July 1909 Athletic Sports are held at the King Edward’s School Grounds.
7 July 1909 King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra visit Birmingham. After a reception and luncheon at the Council House they drive to Edgbaston to open the New Buildings of the University of Birmingham. The cadets of the King Edward’s School Officers Training Corps parade in the playground behind the School and then, preceded by a fife and drum band, march some distance by way of Bristol Road to the University to contribute to a Guard of Honour for the royal visitors.
26 July 1909 Speech Day and prize-giving at King Edward’s School. Ronald is runner-up for the German prize.
27 July–4 August 1909 Ronald participates with seventy-one other cadets in the King Edward’s School Officers Training Corps at the Public Schools’ Camp, *Tidworth Pennings on Salisbury Plain. They travel there by special train on 27 July. Although it rains that day, the remaining days at camp have fine weather. The King Edward’s School contingent are in one of four battalions given thorough training, culminating in ‘a grand field day, known officially as the Battle of Silk Hill, wherein nearly 20,000 troops of all arms, Regulars and Territorials, took part’ (‘Officers’ Training Corps’, King Edward’s School Chronicle n.s. 24, no. 177 (November 1909), p. 81). One of Ronald’s contemporaries at King Edward’s School will later recall that ‘he and I and six others occupied one bell tent. One evening Tolkien came charging in, leapt