Palacký University in Olomouc Philosophical

School Years

In the same year, Ronald was old enough to start school. He was sent to the King Edward’s School in the center of Birmingham, four miles away from Sarehole and at first Ronald had to walk most of the way every day. Of course Mabel saw this was not the best solution and sadly realized they will have to move again. This meant the end of their peaceful life in the countryside, of what Tolkien himself later described as “four years, but the longest-seeming and most formative part of my life”.³ The small family moved into Moseley, bustling noisy town which was closer to Ronald’s school, but they did not really felt it as home. And soon after that they had to move again – this time to a house on a street close to King’s Heath’s railway station, to place in which “young Ronald’s developing linguistic imagination was engaged by the sight of coal trucks going to and from South Wales bearing destinations like “Nantyglo”, “Penrhiwceiber” and “Senghenydd”.”⁴

Mabel was not satisfied neither by their new home nor the local Catholic church and continued with her effort to find a better place for her and her sons. This eventually led her to the finding of the Birmingham Oratory – a big church in the suburb of Edgbaston with its own school – St. Philip’s Grammar School – a Catholic school run by local priests, where tuition was cheaper and most importantly, there was a house for rent nearby. And so in 1902 the Tolkiens moved again. They found a dear friend in one of the priests, Father Francis Xavier Morgan. According to Michael Coren, Father Francis became a “father figure” to the Tolkien boys, told them stories, took them for trips and helped Mabel psychically.⁵ Soon it came to light that young Ronald was too talented for St. Philip’s School’s standards



³ Carpenter, A Biography, 32.
⁴ “Biography – Who was Tolkien?,“ The Tolkien Society, accessed August 15, 2016, http://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/.
⁵ Michael Coren, J.R.R. Tolkien The Man Who Created The Lord of the Rings (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Limited, 2001), 27.
so Mabel decided to teach him herself again and in the fall of 1903 Ronald received scholarship for talented students from King Edward’s School which suited his needs better.
Ronald was placed into the sixth grade and he was enjoying the study of languages again. He started to learn Greek but his teacher George Brewerton introduced him to Middle Ages, medieval English and literature. He despised Shakespeare for his lack of imagination, but he was amazed by Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales and decided to study the history of English more.
Year 1904 was a tough one for the Tolkien family – the boys got sick and Mabel was diagnosed with diabetes. After she was released from the hospital the Tolkiens spent the summer in the countryside again, in a small house in Rednal. For the boys it was like if they were back in Sarehole again and it was the best holiday in their lives. But the fall came, they had to go back to school and did not realize their mother’s health was getting worse. She died in November the same year, at the age of thirty four, leaving her two sons orphaned. Father Francis became their guardian, took care of the boys and found them a new place to live in – in Birmingham with their childless widowed aunt Beatrice Suffield. She made sure the boys were clothed, fed and visiting school, but that was all. The boys dearly missed their mother and the happy moments they spent in the countryside together. Because they lost all of this at once Ronald later always connected his memories of countryside with memories of his lost mother.
After his mother’s death, Ronald devoted his life mainly to his studies and school life as a whole. Ronald already excelled in Greek, Latin, French and German, but he felt he should not only learn the languages but also learn something about them - why are they what they are, what they come from – philology. He also started actively studying Anglo-Saxon, soon he was able to read Beowulf in original form and felt like it was the most remarkable poem of all times, a legend about a warrior who died fighting a dragon. He came back to medieval English again and read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – a poem about a knight looking for a giant. He even started to learn old Norwegian so he could read the story about Sigurd and the dragon Fafnir from The Red Fairy Book he loved as a child.
His love for languages, not surprisingly, lead him to creating his own languages, purely for fun. He took Spanish (even though he did not speak it) as a model and started creating “Naffarin”. And he would probably perfect it if a book
named Primer of the Gothic Language did not cross his way. He opened it and immediately fell in love with it. He learnt all that was left from the language and soon started to invent new “missing” words from the vocabulary and even a presumed etymology. Later, he even did this with his own languages.
Father Francis still oversaw the boys’ lives and successes and realized they were not happy living with their aunt, so in 1908, he found them a better accommodation – in Mrs. Faulkner’s boarding house near Oratory. This place was about to change Ronald’s life greatly – he met the love of his life – Edith Bratt – here. He was sixteen years old and she was three years older but they had a lot of in common, they were both orphans, they shared the same sense of humor and they both needed to love someone and to be loved by someone. Father Francis however did not approve their relationship and after Ronald failed his first attempt at gettting a scholarship to Oxford he forbade him to see or even write to her again until he is twenty-one and not under his guidance anymore. They both moved away from Mrs. Faulkner’s house and lived separately for some time.
Ronald put all his effort into his studies again. He was a captain of a rugby team and found three very close friends – Geoffrey Smith, Robert Gilson and Christopher Wiseman - they even established a discussion club together, known as the “T. C. B. S.” (Tea Club, Barrovian Society, named after their meeting place at the Barrow Stores). They met regularly after school and discussed everyone’s (quite different) interests. In the end of 1910 Ronald came back to Oxford for his second attempt to get the scholarship – and he succeeded.

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