The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull
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as the source of first reference for biographical data on the man’ (‘The Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies 2006’, Tolkien Studies 9 (2009), p. 315).
In the present century numerous books and videos have been produced which purport to be accounts of Tolkien’s life. Some, as seen here, are genuine in their aims and have value. Others – to put it charitably – are less careful in reporting facts, indeed are largely (if not entirely) products of their author’s imagination. See further, our 2015–16 blog posts at wayneandchristina.wordpress.com titled ‘Tolkien Biographies Continued’ (i.e. since our 2006 edition).
‘Bird and Baby’ (Eagle and Child) see Oxford and environs
Birmingham and environs. Both of Tolkien’s parents came from this major manufacturing centre in the English *West Midlands, and he himself spent sixteen of his early years in or near the city. His father (*Arthur Tolkien) and paternal grandparents (see *Tolkien family) lived at ‘Beechwood’ in Church Road in the southern suburb of Moseley, while his mother *Mabel and her family (see *Suffield family) were from Kings Heath still further south. Mabel’s grandfather, John Suffield the elder, had once been a prosperous draper and hosier in Old Lamb House, Bull Street, Birmingham (demolished 1886), and other members of the family were employed in the business.
Tolkien himself came to Birmingham from *South Africa with his mother and brother at the end of April 1895; until summer 1896 they stayed at 9 Ash-field Road, Kings Heath with Mabel Tolkien’s parents and siblings. It was there in December 1895 that young Ronald Tolkien experienced his first wintry Christmas. In February 1896 his father died in Bloemfontein, and his mother decided that she and her sons should live independent of her parents’ crowded home, in the countryside where the boys could have fresh air. In summer 1896 Mabel rented a semi-detached cottage at 5 Gracewell Road (today 264a Wake Green Road) in the hamlet of *Sarehole not far to the east of Kings Heath, now part of the suburb of Hall Green. It was an idyllic setting, or became so in Tolkien’s memory, a rural paradise of fields, trees, and flowers and a working mill. But the interlude there was brief.
In September 1900 Tolkien began to attend classes at *King Edward’s School in New Street in the centre of Birmingham, some four miles distant, and at first walked most of the way between home and school since trams did not run as far as Sarehole, and Mabel could not afford train fare. It was a long walk for the family also to Sunday services at St Anne’s, the Roman Catholic church in Alcester Street, Moseley, in which Mabel had been received into the faith the previous June. In consequence, Mabel Tolkien later that September rented a small house at 214 Alcester Road, Moseley, near a tram route into the city. According to Humphrey Carpenter, however, ‘no sooner had [the family] settled than they had to move: the house was to be demolished to make room for a fire-station’ (Biography, p. 25). At the end of 1900 or the beginning of 1901 Mabel, Ronald, and his brother *Hilary moved once again, to 86 West-field Road, Kings Heath. Mabel chose their new home because it was close to the Roman Catholic church of St Dunstan, then a building of wood and corrugated iron on the corner of Westfield Road and Station Road. Tolkien now first came into contact with the Welsh *language, in names on passing coal-trucks.
Readers of Carpenter’s Biography, or of later *biographies which closely follow Carpenter, will have a mental picture of the Birmingham of Tolkien’s youth as purely an industrial city. Writing of Tolkien’s brief time in Moseley, Carpenter says:
Home life was very different [in the second half of 1900] from what [Ronald] had known at Sarehole. His mother had rented a small house on the main road in the suburb of Moseley, and the view from the windows was a sad contrast to the Warwickshire countryside: trams struggling up the hill, the drab faces of passers-by, and in the distance the smoking factory chimneys of Sparkbrook and Small Heath. To Ronald the Moseley house remained in memory as ‘dreadful’. [p. 25]
It is true to say that Birmingham was a centre of the Industrial Revolution, known for its metal-working, and that it was a focus of the railways. A contemporary observer called it ‘a metropolis of machinery … exceedingly interesting as a consistently developed exemplification of the nineteenth-century spirit’ (Harry Quilter, What’s What (1902), p. 236). Inevitably there was pollution and traffic, and substantial development was underway. But in residential suburbs such as Moseley factory smoke was less pronounced, and local industry supported the city’s excellent schools and museums, including an art gallery with works by the Pre-Raphaelites (see *Art). As Maggie Burns has pointed out (‘“… A Local Habitation and a Name …”’, Mallorn 50 (Autumn 2010)),
maps of the time [of Tolkien’s youth], in addition to contemporary descriptions by people living in Birmingham suburbs, give a different picture. The parts of Birmingham where Tolkien lived had parks, streams, gardens and trees. Birmingham was and is a city of trees. …
The Birmingham described as wasteland by Carpenter in the 1970s was not the Birmingham that Tolkien knew around 1900. Much of the town had been rebuilt during the 20 years before Tolkien arrived there as a three-year-old in 1985. There were many new and imposing buildings. …
The countryside was not distant from the city as implied in some Tolkien biographies. Sarehole was [only] four miles from the centre of Birmingham. … Horses were in the city as well as in the country.
In 1900 trams were still drawn by horses and cars were a rarity. [pp. 26–7]
Moseley in fact, situated on high ground, was relatively free from factory smoke – as a contemporary guidebook description put it, even more so than Edgbaston, which was considered the most fashionable suburb of Birmingham – and it was on the edge of the countryside, not far distant from Sarehole. In his poem *The Battle of the Eastern Field (1911, a parody of Macaulay) Tolkien writes of ‘Mosli’s [Moseley’s] emerald sward’ (and of ‘Edgbastonia’s [Edgbaston’s] ancient homes’). Kings Heath was to the south of Moseley, and although the Tolkiens’ home there was in a noisy and undoubtedly smoky location, near the railway with its coal-powered engines, the slopes of the cutting behind the house were covered with grass and flowers, and (as today) there were fields on the other side of the line.
Dissatisfied with St Dunstan’s, Mabel looked for a new place of worship and found the *Birmingham Oratory in the suburb of Edgbaston. In early 1902 she and her sons moved to 26 Oliver Road, Edgbaston (the house no longer exists), conveniently near the Oratory church and its attached grammar school, St Philip’s. There they stayed until April 1904, when Mabel was taken into hospital suffering from diabetes. Her boys lived for a while apart from their mother, until they were reunited in the hamlet of *Rednal, a few miles from the centre of Birmingham to the south-west, and were together until Mabel’s death on 14 November 1904.
Immediately after the loss of their mother Ronald and Hilary stayed with Laurence Tolkien, one of their father’s brothers, at Dunkeld, Middleton Hall Road, Kings Norton. By January 1905 *Father Francis Morgan, the priest whom Mabel had named her sons’ guardian, placed them instead with their Aunt Beatrice Suffield at 25 Stirling Road, Edgbaston, not far from the Oratory. Their room was on the top floor.
Early in 1908, life with Aunt Beatrice having proved unhappy for the boys, Father Francis moved them to 37 Duchess Road, Edgbaston, the home of the Faulkner family. Ronald and Hilary had a rented room on the second floor; on the first floor was another lodger, Edith Bratt (*Edith Tolkien), with whom they became friends. Edith played the piano and accompanied soloists at musical evenings given by Mrs Faulkner, but was discouraged from practising. Gradually Ronald and Edith fell in love. When their clandestine relationship came to the attention of Father Francis late in 1909 he took steps to end it. Ronald and Hilary were now removed to new lodgings with Thomas and Julia MacSherry at 4 Highfield Road, Edgbaston, at which address Tolkien lived until going up to Exeter College, *Oxford in October 1911.
During his years at King Edward’s School Tolkien became familiar with central Birmingham and with some of its merchants. Among these were Cornish’s bookshop in New Street, which Tolkien