The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ Tolkien is now in Class XI, Section D5. At the end of the summer term Ronald is placed second in a class of nineteen boys (Christopher Wiseman is sixth) and is awarded a joint prize for Grammar.

      28 and 30 June 1906 Athletic Sports are held at the King Edward’s School Grounds.

      27 July 1906 Speech Day and prize-giving at King Edward’s School.

      Summer 1906 Father Francis takes Ronald and Hilary on holiday to Lyme Regis. They stay at the Three Cups Hotel in Broad Street. Ronald enjoys exploring the countryside and shore, sketching, and searching for fossils in the cliffs; on one of his visits to Lyme Regis he finds a prehistoric jawbone and pretends that it came from a dragon. He draws a view of the harbour from the window of the hotel (Lyme Regis Harbour from the Drawing Room Window of the Cups Hotel, see Artist and Illustrator, fig. 8).

      Autumn term 1906 Ronald enters the Third Class at King Edward’s School under Assistant Master A.E. Measures, and in Section A6 for Mathematics and Arithmetic under W. Sneath. At the end of term he is placed fourth out of twenty in the class (Christopher Wiseman is eighth). Hilary Tolkien is now in Class X, Section D5.

1907

      Spring term 1907 Ronald enters the Second Class at King Edward’s School, under both Robert Cary Gilson, the Head Master, and his assistant A.E. Measures, and in Section A5 for Mathematics and Arithmetic under Assistant Master P.M. Marples. Hilary Tolkien is now in Class IX, Section D4.

      4 April 1907 Field Marshal Earl Roberts visits King Edward’s School, as one of four public engagements in Birmingham. He inspects the newly formed Cadet Corps (*Societies and clubs), of which Tolkien is now a member. A photograph is taken of the assembled group of some 120 cadets. See note. After the inspection, Lord Roberts gives an address in the School hall, encouraging the boys to learn to shoot and to understand that it is not only his duty, but an honour and privilege, to defend his country.

      27 and 29 June 1907 Athletic Sports are held at the King Edward’s School Grounds.

      31 July 1907 Speech Day and prize-giving at King Edward’s School. Now at the end of the summer term, Ronald is placed fourth out of twenty in his general class, and eighth in Section A5.

      Summer 1907 Father Francis again takes Ronald and Hilary to Lyme Regis. He learns from them that they are not happy living with their Aunt Beatrice.

      Autumn term 1907 Ronald enters the First or Senior Class, under Robert Cary Gilson and A.E. Measures; he will remain in this uppermost class, under the same instructors, for the rest of his years at King Edward’s School. There are twenty-two boys in the class, listed by seniority rather than by term work or examination results; among these is *Wilfrid Hugh Payton (known as ‘Whiffy’), who will be one of the members of the *T.C.B.S. during Ronald’s last term at school. Gilson is an inspiring teacher who tries to interest his pupils in classical linguistics and philology, but also encourages them to branch out in their studies. Ronald will later recall that on many occasions the Head Master imposed on him the writing of lines, such as ‘punctuality is the soul of business’ and ‘brevity is the soul of wit’. During this term Ronald is in Section A5 for Mathematics and Arithmetic, again under P.M. Marples, in which he will end the term ranked third. Hilary Tolkien is now in the Upper Remove, Section D3. – Apart from his official studies, Ronald is already pursuing interests in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and Middle English. He feels a special sympathy and even a sense of recognition for Middle English works such as *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and *Pearl, written in the West Midlands dialect which he thinks was spoken by his mother’s West Midlands ancestors. He even begins to learn Old Norse in order to read the story of Sigurd in the original. He also reads books on philology and the history of language, and begins to buy books secondhand. He is learning a lot, developing an interest in philology and a deep appreciation of the look and sound of words. He also discovers Esperanto and learns enough of its grammar and structure to be able to read works written in it. Probably at about this time he begins to create for himself a language to suit his own aesthetic tastes: Naffarin, influenced by Latin and Spanish. – He is not alone at King Edward’s School in his unusual interests: Christopher Wiseman is studying Egyptian and its hieroglyphics, while *Geoffrey Bache Smith, who will later become a close friend, is interested in Welsh.

1908

      Beginning of 1908 Ronald and Hilary move to 37 Duchess Road, Edgbaston, the home of Louis Faulkner, a wine merchant; his wife, Mrs Faulkner, holds musical evenings which some of the Fathers from the nearby Oratory attend. The boys’ room is on the second floor; in the room beneath them is another lodger, Edith Bratt. The three young people become friends, and deeper feelings develop between Ronald and Edith. She conspires with the Faulkners’ maid, *Annie Gollins, to smuggle extra food from the kitchen to the hungry boys upstairs, by means of a basket lowered from their window.

      Spring and summer terms 1908 Ronald continues in Class I, Section A5 at King Edward’s School; there are twenty-one pupils in the First Class. He will end the term ranked sixteenth in his Mathematics section. Hilary Tolkien is now in Transitus, Section C5.

      25 and 27 June 1908 Athletic Sports are held at the King Edward’s School Grounds.

      30 July 1908 Speech Day and prize-giving at King Edward’s School. Ronald is awarded a prize for achievement in English.

      Autumn term 1908 Christopher Wiseman has now joined Ronald and seventeen others in the First Class at King Edward’s School. Rob Gilson and Vincent Trought are in the Second Class. Hilary Tolkien is now in Class VI, Section B6. Ronald is now a King Edward’s Scholar, a distinction which will continue until he leaves the School in 1911. He will end the term ranked thirteenth in Mathematics Section A4, under Assistant Master the Rev. F.O. Lane. During this term he also takes a voluntary class in Practical Chemistry, taught by Assistant Master T.J. Baker. – During the 1908–9 school year Ronald will present to the School library two books by *G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908) and Heretics (1905).

      1908 or 1909 One of Ronald’s school-friends buys A Primer of the Gothic Language by *Joseph Wright at a missionary sale, thinking it a Bible Society product. When he realizes his error he sells the book to Ronald, who upon opening it is ‘at least as full of delight as first looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (quoted in Biography, p. 37). The surviving fragments of Gothic (*Languages) give him aesthetic pleasure. He is fascinated by Gothic in itself, ‘a beautiful language’, and learns from the primer how to convert words of other Germanic languages into Gothic script. ‘I often put “Gothic” inscriptions in books, sometimes Gothicizing my Norse name and German surname as Ruginwaldus Dwalakōnis’ (letter to Zillah Sherring, 20 July 1965, Letters, p. 357). He inscribes ‘Ermanaþiudiska Razda eþþau Gautiska tungō’ (‘Language of the Great People, or Gautish [Gothic] tongue’) inside a notebook to be used for work dealing with Gothic, but only uses a few pages (the notebook will be used later for a Quenya phonology and lexicon). – He now abandons the Latin- and Spanish-influenced Naffarin and begins to develop an imaginary ‘lost’ Germanic language, trying to fit it into the historical development of the Germanic tongues.

1909

      1909 During this year Ronald is supposed to be working hard, as he is to sit for an *Oxford Scholarship at year’s end, but he is distracted by linguistic interests and he begins to take an active part in school activities. One of СКАЧАТЬ