How Tolkien left the land of his birth 130 years ago today – registered as a girl

Capetown, 29 March. The Guelph, with mails from Delagoa Bay, has left for Southampton, via Teneriffe, Madeira, and Lisbon. —So said the shipping news, with perfect accuracy, of a seemingly inconsequential departure exactly 130 years ago today.

The passenger list, made on arrival in England 19 days later, is a bit less accurate. Among those on that steamer in 1895 was a four-year-old Miss Tolkin. In fact that passenger was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, aged 3.

The general story is well known. Born to English parents, young Ronald had suffered from the torrid, dry climate of the high African veldt. His mother Mabel determined to bring him and his younger brother Hilary on a long visit to England, both for health and to introduce the boys to their wider family. Their father Arthur stayed behind running a bank in Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State (now part of South Africa). When Arthur Tolkien died in February 1896, the stay in England became permanent.

The details of the S.S. Guelph’s voyage from Cape Town are less well known. I have outlined the dates and stopping points in The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien. In the current post I share my sources and a few further thoughts.

International shipping – and shipping news – were as vital then as internet connectivity is today. The Guelph would have carried not only people but also mail, with news, business correspondence, and personal letters. The 1 April report in the Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, quoted above, was not the only one in the newspapers. The Hampshire Advertiser reported: ‘The intermediate twin screw steamer Guelph, Capt. Morton, left Capetown on the 29th ultimo, at 5pm, for Teneriffe, Madeira, Lisbon, and Southampton.’[1] (Opens in a new window)

It was a very long voyage, and the ship was still traversing the length of Africa’s Atlantic seaboard when that snippet was published on 10 April.

The decision to travel at this time of year was surely determined by considerations of health and climate. It was autumn in the southern hemisphere. Any earlier, and the long train journey through the African summer would have been unbearable.

Conditions on board the Guelph as it crossed the tropics and the equator in April must have been very uncomfortable, even for first-class passengers like the Tolkiens. But that was unavoidable.

They must have put the worst behind them after about two weeks at sea. The ship left subtropical Tenerife in the Canary Islands at 9am on 14 May.[2] (Opens in a new window) The next day, it steamed out of Madeira, in the Atlantic west of the Straits of Gibraltar.[3] (Opens in a new window)

On the day the ship arrived in England, the Hampshire Advertiser gave more details, saying it ‘left Madeira at 1pm on the 15th instant, and Lisbon at 4pm on the 17th for Southampton, where she arrived on Saturday evening’.[4] (Opens in a new window)

You can read more about the Guelph here (Opens in a new window) and here (Opens in a new window). Though the shipping routes on world map I reproduce below are not specific to the Union Line, it suggests the distinct possibility that the Guelph, too, halted at St Helena and Ascension Island before crossing the equator.

How do we account for the ship’s passenger list getting Tolkien’s name, sex and age wrong? They can only have been sloppy errors – though the clothes Mabel dressed her sons in according to the habits of that era were androgynous to say the least. At any rate, although international travel may have been more challenging 130 years ago, its bureaucracy was clearly much less strict.

Britain had endured a harsh winter, with the Thames nearly blocked by ice in mid-February and, on 24 March, central and East England enduring one of the worst storms on record, with factory chimneys and church steeples demolished and 14 lives lost. The summer to come was very wet indeed. But that evidently suited young Ronald Tolkien as an escapee from drought and heat.

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[1] (Opens in a new window) ‘The Mail Steam Shipping’, Hampshire Advertiser, 10 April 1895, 2.

[2] (Opens in a new window) ‘The Mails’, the London Standard, 15 April 1895, 7.

[3] (Opens in a new window) The Guelph left Madeira at 10pm according to ‘The Mails’, the London Standard, 16 April 1895, 6; but at 1pm according to the Hampshire Advertiser (see next note). The discrepancy is probably a simple misprint, most likely the accidental omission of a zero by the Hampshire newspaper.

[4] (Opens in a new window) Hampshire Advertiser, 17 April 1895, 3.