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Оглавление?1900 Late in life Tolkien will recall that when he was ‘about 8 years old’ he ‘read in a small book (professedly for the young) that nothing of the language of primitive peoples (before the Celts or Germanic invaders) is now known, except perhaps ond – ‘stone’ (+ one other now forgotten)’ (letter to Graham Tayar, 4–5 June 1971, Letters, p. 410). See note.
Spring 1900 Mabel and her sister May, having decided to convert to Roman Catholicism, begin to receive instruction at St Anne’s.
16 May 1900 Mafeking is relieved after seven months of resistance. In England there will be widespread celebrations on 18–19 May.
June 1900 Mabel is received into the Catholic Church. The Suffield family, especially Mabel’s Unitarian father, and the Tolkiens who are mainly Baptists, are shocked. Mabel is now faced with hostility and the loss of financial help. Walter Incledon refuses to continue his support and forces his wife May to recant her decision to join the Church of Rome. Undeterred, Mabel begins to instruct her sons in the Roman Catholic faith.
26–28 June 1900 During this period Ronald sits the entrance examination for King Edward’s School a second time and obtains a place.
Autumn term 1900 Ronald begins to attend King Edward’s School. His fee of £12 per year is paid by a Tolkien uncle. He is placed in the the Eleventh Class under Assistant Master W.H. Kirkby, and in Section D7 (i.e. group D7 for the study of Mathematics and Arithmetic). The Thirteenth Class is the lowest at King Edward’s School and the First Class the highest, but after the Eighth Class there are three unnumbered classes: Lower Remove, Upper Remove, and Transitus. Above Transitus the School is divided into a Classical Side and a Modern Side, with more classes on the latter (the Classical Side did not include a Seventh Class). Pupils do not necessarily pass through all classes, but might skip ahead; nor do they spend a set amount of time in each class. According to the School curriculum published in 1906,
the nine Classes from the 13th upwards to the Transitus, inclusive, receive instruction in the ordinary elementary subjects of a liberal education, viz, Arithmetic and Elementary Mathematics, Scripture, English, History, Geography, French, Latin and Drawing. The boys are also (as far up as class 8) instructed in Botany, with the intention of training their powers of observation and evoking an interest in the objects and phenomena of nature…. All boys throughout the School are required to take physical exercises in the Gymnasium, unless forbidden to do so by a medical man.
– For a while, Ronald walks most of the way to school, which is in the centre of Birmingham four miles from home, because Mabel cannot afford train fares, and the cheaper trams do not run as far as Sarehole. But before the end of September 1900 Mabel and her sons will move to 214 Alcester Road, Moseley, closer to King Edward’s School and on a tram route. Ronald will find being in the city ‘dreadful’ after the peace and green of Sarehole (quoted in Biography, p. 25). During his first term, ill health will keep Ronald away from school on several occasions; the December 1900 class list, compiled following the autumn term, will record him as ‘absent’. – Hilary continues to be taught at home by his mother.
Late 1900 or early 1901 Mabel Tolkien and her sons move to a terrace house, 86 Westfield Road in Kings Heath, close to the new Roman Catholic church of St Dunstan’s but backing onto a noisy railway line. On the far side of the line, however, are green fields, and flowers and other plants grow on the banks of the cutting. Ronald is not at all attracted by the trains themselves, but becomes fascinated by the strange Welsh names on the coal trucks they pull: the Welsh language will come to play an important part in his writings. He tries to learn more about it, but the only books available are still too advanced for him. See note.
