January 1870 Mabel Suffield (*Mabel Tolkien) is born in Yardley, Warwickshire, to John and Emily Jane Suffield (see *Suffield family).
1888 Arthur Tolkien and Mabel Suffield become engaged, but because of her youth Mabel’s father forbids a formal betrothal for two years. Arthur and Mabel will see each other only at family parties and, with the help of Mabel’s younger sister Emily Jane (*Emily Jane Neave), exchange letters in secret.
1889 Arthur emigrates to *South Africa to work for the Bank of Africa in the Cape colony.
21 January 1889 Edith Mary Bratt (*Edith Tolkien) is born in Gloucester, England to Frances (‘Fannie’) Bratt of Wolverhampton and Alfred Frederick Warrillow of Handsworth. She will be brought up in that Birmingham suburb together with her cousin *Mary Jane (‘Jennie’) Grove.
13 February 1889 Edith Bratt is baptized in the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Gloucester. The register records her surname as Bratt, her mother’s name as Fanny, and her father’s name as Frederick.
1890 Arthur is appointed manager of the Bloemfontein (Orange Free State) branch of the Bank of Africa.
March 1891 Only a few weeks after her twenty-first birthday, Mabel Suffield travels to South Africa on the ship Roslin Castle. See note.
12 March 1891 Alfred Frederick Warrilow dies. In his will he has named Frances Bratt, ‘Spinster’ and his ‘friend & Housekeeper’, sole executrix as well as his principal beneficiary, leaving her the bulk of his estate ‘including my trade or business of a Paper Dealer’, with a net value of £5,837 4s 8d.
16 April 1891 Arthur Tolkien and Mabel Suffield are married in Cape Town Cathedral.
3 January 1892 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is born to Arthur and Mabel Tolkien at Bank House, Maitland Street, in Bloemfontein.
4 January 1892 Arthur Tolkien writes to his mother that ‘the baby is (of course) lovely. It has beautiful hands and ears (very long fingers) very light hair, “Tolkien” eyes and very distinctly a “Suffield” mouth…. The boy’s first name will be “John” after its grandfather [John Benjamin Tolkien], probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel …’ (quoted in Biography, p. 12). It was the custom in the Tolkien family for the eldest son of the eldest son to be called ‘John’; ‘Reuel’ apparently was taken from the surname of a family friend (see Letters, pp. 397– 8, and *Names).
31 January 1892 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is baptized in the Anglican Cathedral, Bloemfontein. See note. His godparents are Mabel’s elder sister, Edith Mary ‘May’ Incledon (see *Incledon family); George Edward Jelf, Assistant Master in St Andrew’s College (diocesan high school for boys), Bloemfontein; and Tom Hadley, the husband of Arthur’s sister Florence.
15 November 1892 Arthur, Mabel, baby Ronald in the arms of his nurse, and two native household servants pose in the garden of Bank House for a photograph, which the Tolkiens send with Christmas greetings to friends and relatives. At some time in 1892 or 1893 the houseboy Isaak, shown in the picture, steals baby Ronald for a time, to show off a white baby at his kraal. Despite the turmoil this causes, Isaak is not dismissed. See note.
Autumn (southern hemisphere) 1893 Mabel’s elder sister May and her husband, Walter Incledon, a Birmingham merchant, with their daughter Marjorie, come to Bloemfontein. May and Marjorie stay at Bank House through the southern winter while Walter travels on business.
Summer (southern hemisphere) 1893–1894 Ronald spends the cooler parts of the day in the garden and often watches his father planting vines or trees. One day Ronald is bitten by a tarantula and runs away in terror; his nurse snatches him up and sucks out the poison. In later life he will recall running through the grass, but not the spider itself. – Ronald now shows an interest in drawing, often scribbling with pencil and paper when he visits his father’s offices downstairs in Bank House. But his health suffers in the heat, and he is bothered by teething.
17 February 1894 Ronald’s younger brother, *Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, is born.
November 1894 Mabel takes her sons on a long train journey to the coast near Cape Town so that Ronald can be in cooler air. He will retain a faint memory of running from the sea to a bathing hut across the sands. On their return to Bloemfontein preparations are made for the family to visit England. Although Arthur is happy in South Africa, Mabel is irritated with Bloemfontein life and dislikes the hot climate, which also poses a risk to Ronald’s health.
Christmas 1894 ‘My first Christmas memory is of blazing sun, drawn curtains and a drooping eucalyptus’ (Tolkien, letter to W.H. Auden, 7 June 1955, Letters, p. 213).
1895 The heat of South Africa having affected Mabel and Ronald so badly, she and Arthur decide that, rather than wait until they can travel together to England on home-leave, she should go on ahead with the boys, and Arthur will join them later, when he feels able to leave the bank.
Late March or early April 1895 Ronald watches his father paint ‘A.R. Tolkien’ on the lid of a cabin trunk.
Beginning of April 1895 Mabel Tolkien, Ronald and Hilary, and the boys’ nurse embark on the steamer Guelph at Cape Town. A comparatively new vessel on the Union Steamship Company’s Southampton-to-South Africa ‘intermediate service’ (that is, designed to transport cargo at an economical speed, as well as passengers), it has a boat deck above the bridge-house
where passengers are allowed to promenade. The ladies’ music saloon is forward, while under it is the first-class dining saloon, arranged for 45 passengers. On the upper deck, ranged along either side of the ship, are the first-class cabins, the smoking-room being aft. The second-class passengers are housed in the poop [raised section at the stern] on the upper deck, with dining saloon and drawing-room, while the steerage passengers are below on the main deck. A special feature is a large dormitory right forward, occupying the full width of the ship, where 64 men can be accommodated, the fare being 10 guineas. [‘Passengers v. Freight Steamships’, Engineering, 12 October 1894, p. 495]
Much later in life, according to The Tolkien Family Album, Tolkien will remember from the long voyage to England ‘two brilliantly sharp images: the first of looking down from the deck of the ship into the clear waters of the Indian Ocean far below, which was full of lithe brown and black bodies diving for coins thrown by the passengers; the second was of pulling into a harbour at sunrise and seeing a great city set on the hillside above, which he realised much later in life must have been Lisbon’ (p. 18). When the family arrive in Southampton three weeks later they are met by Mabel’s sister Jane,