J.R.R. Tolkien's Early Years

A Brief History of the Early Years of Tolkien & Events That Shaped Him

On January 3, 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in South Africa. The first the world heard of this was in a letter written by his father Arthur to his mother in Birmingham describing Tolkien one day later on January 4, 1892. He wrote:

“My Dear Mother,

I have good news for you this week. Mabel gave me a beautiful little son last night (3 January). It was rather before time, but the baby is strong and well and Mabel has come through wonderfully. 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. In general effect immensely like a very fair edition of its Aunt Mabel Mitton. When we first fetched Dr. Strollreither yesterday he said it was a false alarm and told the nurse to go home for a fortnight but he was mistaken and I fetched him again about eight and then he stayed till 12:40 when we had a whisky to drink luck to the boy. The boy’s first name will be John after its grandfather, probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel…”

They did stick with all the names, Reuel being Arthur’s own middle name and Ronald, because his mom Mabel liked it (this was also the name family called him by, including his future wife Edith). His younger brother Hilary would arrive two years later in February 1894.

1895 photo of Hilary and J.R.R. Tolkien. © Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth by Catherine McIlwaine

Growing up in South Africa had plenty of adventure. One such story took place during the days Tolkien was beginning to walk and he stumbled upon a tarantula. Humphrey’s Carpenter’s biography (J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography) doesn’t specify the size of it, but it ended up biting him and as his biography reads “He ran in terror across the garden until the nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison.” First off, nope, no ma'am, no sir. Second, Tolkien later claimed that the incident didn’t leave him with a special dislike of spiders. I don’t know about that one, because the creation of Shelob and Ungoliant might say otherwise.

As a young toddler, Tolkien had health issues and the heat made things worse, so to help, his mom Mabel took the brothers to Cape Town in November 1894. After the holiday there, they made the decision to go back to England, but Arthur decided to stay in South Africa a little bit longer, especially since being away meant half pay. Before they left, Tolkien watched his dad paint the letters A.R. Tolkien on their trunk. This would be the only memory he would be able to recall clearly of his father.

In February of 1896, Tolkien had a letter prepared for his Dad. It read:

“My dear Daddy, I am so glad I am coming back to see you it is such a long time since we came away from you I hope the ship will bring us all back to you Mamie and Baby and me. I know you will be so glad to have a letter from your little Ronald it is such a long time since I wrote you I am go such a big man now because I have got a man’s coat and a man’s bodice Mamie says you will not know Baby or me we have got such big men we have got such a lot of Christmas presents to show you Auntie Gracie has been to see us I walk every day and only ride in my mailcart a little bit. Hilary sends lots of love and kisses and so does your loving Ronald.”

This sweet letter was never sent because Mabel received a telegram that same day, saying that Arthur suffered from a severe hemorrhage. He died the next day on Feb 15, 1896.

The Tolkiens stayed in Birmingham for a time and Tolkien grew close to his mother’s side. As Carpenter notes:

“He came to feel far closer to them than to the family of his dead father. His Tolkien grandfather lived only a little way up the road, and sometimes Ronald was taken to see him; but John Benjamin was eighty-nine and had been badly shaken by his son’s death. Six months after Arthur died, the old man was in his own grave, and another of the boy’s links with the Tolkiens was severed.”

Imagination and future inspiration came in abundance though when, in the summer of 1896 Mabel moved the boys out of Birmingham to the hamlet of Sarehole. The Sarehole Mill led to many adventures of Tolkien and Hilary, where they would roam the meadow to the mill and even venture close enough to see the two millers at work. As Carpenter described, “The old man has a black beard, but it was the son who frightened the boys with his white dusty clothes and sharp-eyed face. Ronald named him ‘The White Ogre.” When he yelled at them to clear off they would scamper away from the yard, and run round to a place behind the mill where there was a silent pool with swans swimming on it.”

Another funny story of Tolkien’s youth (and reminds me of certain scenes in The Lord of the Rings) was this: “An old farmer who once chased Ronald for picking mushrooms was given the nickname “the Black Ogre” by the boys. Such delicious terrors were the essence of those days at Sarehole.”

He also loved learning and could read by the time he was four.

Naturally.

Shortly thereafter he could also write proficiently. Tolkien could thank his mother for that, as Carpenter points out: “His mother’s own handwriting was delightfully unconventional. Having acquired the skill of penmanship from her father, she chose an upright and elaborate style….and Ronald soon began to practise a hand that was, though different from his mother’s, to become equally elegant and idiosyncratic.”

His early love of language amazes me.

Early on, his mom introduced him to the rudiments of Latin, and this became a delight. He quickly showed a special aptitude for this and so she began to teach him French. There wasn’t much success with piano though. Carpenter described it best, saying “It seemed rather as if words took the place of music for him, and that he enjoyed listening to them, reading them, and reciting them, almost regardless of what they meant.”

His love of trees also grew in this time (shout out to the Ents!) and after reading many classics (like the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially the Red Fairy Book), he developed an early love of dragons. Years later Tolkien would say “I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.” At seven he even began to write his own story about a dragon.

Another huge event in Tolkien’s early life was in the spring of 1900, when his mother became Catholic after having attended an Anglican church. Her family did not take this well and much of her financial help was cut off. In September 1900, Tolkien entered King Edward’s (his father’s old school), and they moved back to the city, as the commute was too far for young Tolkien. Of country life, he later reminisced “Four years, but the longest-seeming and most formative part of my life.”

Another key friendship came in 1902 with Father Francis Xavier Morgan. He became a dear friend to the family.

Ronald and Hilary and Father Francis Morgan © Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth by Catherine McIlwaine

Only two years later another blow would come to young Tolkien and his brother Hilary. In April 1904, Mabel was diagnosed with diabetes and a few months later, she collapsed and went into a diabetic coma. Six days later, on Nov 14th, she passed away.

As you can imagine, this deeply impacted the boys.

Years after her death, Tolkien shared about this impact. She represented many things and Carpenter notes this interesting observation: “Indeed it might be said that after she died his religion took the place in his affections that she had previously occupied.”

Another major impact of her death, as Carpenter suggests, was a profound effect on his personality. “He was by nature a cheerful, almost irrepressible person with a great zest for life. He loved good talks and physical activity. He had a deep sense of humour and a great capacity for making friends. But from now onwards there was to be a second side, more private but predominantly in his diaries and letters. This side of him was capable of bouts of profound despair.”

They went to live with an aunt by marriage, Beatrice Suffield. While she provided the physical needs, there was much to be desired, so soon the Oratory became their real home.

Tolkien’s love for languages continued to grow more and more. He not only wanted to learn them, but to understand why they were there. He also came across two poems that would fire up his imagination. They were two he would later translate; Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. As his love for the look and sound of words continued, he started to invent his own.

At the age of 16, Tolkien would meet someone who would greatly change his life – a Miss Edith Bratt. This story deserves a whole post of its own, but they were together for two years and because of different factors (including Father Francis), they separated.

Between seeing Edith, the debate club and playing Rugby, Tollers found it hard to concentrate, as he was supposed to be working towards an Oxford Scholarship. He missed his first attempt at getting an Oxford Scholarship (this was the only way he could have afforded to attend Oxford), but he succeeded a year later in 1910.

Once he was officially separated from Edith, he became involved in several activities – much in hopes of forgetting all things Edith. Since the library was a key and important part of King Edward’s, Tolkien earned one of the “librarian” titles that were granted to senior boys by the assistant master. In 1911 the librarians were Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Quilter Gilson (son of the headmaster), among others. They soon formed an unofficial group called the Tea Club. Later Geoffrey Bache Smith joined the group and were all solid friends.

Outside of Rugby, he was also part of the debate team. Debates had a tradition to be given in Latin, but for Tollers that was much too simplistic. No, no. That wouldn’t do. So instead he gave one in Greek, Gothic and Anglo Saxon.

Tolkien in 1911. © Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth by Catherine McIlwaine

It wouldn’t be long until the Great War disrupted Tolkien and millions of others’ lives, but I’ll end his early years here and I’ll leave you all with this reminder of a certain wizard who is never late.

“Before setting off on the return journey to England [after a trip to Switzerland], Tolkien bought some picture postcards. Among them was a reproduction of a painting by a German artist, J. Madlener. It is called Der Berggeist, the mountain spirit, and it shows an old man sitting on a rock under a pine tree. He has a white beard and wears a wide-brimmed round hat and a long cloak. He is talking to a white fawn that is nuzzling his upturned hands, and he has a humorous but compassionate expression; there is a glimpse of rocky mountains in the distance. Tolkien preserved this postcard carefully, and long afterwards he wrote on the paper cover in which he kept it: ‘Origin of Gandalf’.”

Resources:

• Amazing and Extraordinary Facts: J.R.R. Tolkien by Colin Duriez

• J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

• Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings by Diana Pavlac Glyer

• Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth by Catherine McIlwaine

(Adapted from the original post for Inklings Week 2020. © 2023 Jamie Lapeyrolerie)