1899 or early 1900 Mabel Tolkien begins to take her boys on Sunday to St Anne’s, a Roman Catholic church in Alcester Street, Birmingham.
?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.
22 January 1901 Queen Victoria dies. Edward VII succeeds to the throne.
Spring and summer terms 1901 Ronald continues in Class XI under W.H. Kirkby, and in Section D7. He will be ranked thirteenth among twenty-two boys in the School class list dated July 1901.
Autumn term 1901 By now, Ronald has advanced to the Eighth Class, under Assistant Master A.W. Adams, and to Section D5 for Mathematics and Arithmetic. He will be ranked twenty-first among twenty-three boys in the School class list dated December 1901.
Early 1902 Dissatisfied with the house in Kings Heath and with St Dunstan’s, Mabel looks elsewhere. She finds the *Birmingham Oratory more to her taste, and is able to find a house to rent nearby, at 26 Oliver Road in Edgbaston. Ronald and Hilary now will be able to attend St Philip’s, a Catholic grammar school attached to the Oratory. See note. Ronald will not have to make the long journey into the centre of Birmingham, and the fees are lower than at King Edward’s School. One of the Oratory Fathers, *Francis Xavier Morgan, who acts as parish priest soon becomes a close and sympathetic friend of the family.
31 May 1902 The Boer War ends with the Peace Treaty of Vereeniging. The Boers accept British sovereignty.
?Summer 1902 Ronald having outpaced his classmates, Mabel removes him and Hilary from St Philip’s School and once again teaches the boys at home.
9 August 1902 Coronation of King Edward VII.
November 1902 Ronald sits the entrance examination at King Edward’s School and is awarded a Foundation Scholarship; therefore no fees will have to be paid for his education. The Scholarship will be renewed in 1904, 1906, and 1908.
14 April 1903 Frances Bratt dies. In her will she has named her brother, Ernest William Bratt, and her solicitor, Stephen Gateley, as executors, and has set up a trust on behalf of her mother, Jane Bratt, ‘for and during the term of her natural life she thereout maintaining educating and bringing up my Child Edith Bratt by Alfred Frederick Warrillow until she marries’, and with monies held in trust for Edith until she is twenty-one, or marries at a younger age, ‘for her sole and separate use and free from marital control’. She further allowed that if, at the time of Jane Bratt’s death, Edith should be living, under the age of twenty-one, and unmarried, then the monies held in trust should be paid to her guardian ‘to and for the maintenance and education of my said Child until she shall attain the age of twenty one years or marry under that age and any unapplied income shall be accumulated at interest and added to the said capital monies’. The net value of Frances’ estate is £3,797 2s 11d.
With the death of Jane Bratt in 1904 (as it seems), Stephen Gateley will become Edith’s guardian, and will send her to Dresden House School, a boarding school run by two sisters named Watts who place a particular emphasis on music. There Edith will develop her talent for playing the piano.
Spring term 1903 Ronald re-enters King Edward’s School in January 1903. He is placed in the Lower Remove Class under Assistant Master R.H. Hume, and in Section D5.
July 1903 In the School class list of this date, Ronald is placed eleventh out of twenty-four in the Lower Remove.
Autumn term 1903 Ronald advances from the Lower Remove. After leaving one of the Removes or Transitus, pupils have a choice. The School Curriculum of 1906 states that
above Transitus, the average age of which is about 14, though an able boy will usually pass through it quite a year earlier than that, the School is divided into a Classical or Literary,