The Meaning of Everything

by Simon Winchester

  Sons of gardeners and college servants, daughters of chemists and boat-builders, ministers in all churches known to Christian (including that of Pitsligo, Banffshire) and to infidel, criminal and company and constitutional lawyers, schoolmasters from Holland and Birmingham and California and from all points between, doctors responsible for every part of body, mind, and animal, scholars of Welsh and Greek, Aramaic and Chaldean, Icelandic, Persian, Slavonic, and English place names, elderly divines, young and muscular civil engineers, theatre critics, one ophthalmic surgeon (James Dixon, author of Diseases ofthe Eye, 1855), mathematicians, men who were antiquarians, naturalists, surgeons (and one man—Joseph Fowler of Durham—who was all three), businessmen, novelists (including Beatrice Harraden, who wrote the breathless Ships that Pass in the Night, became a suffragette, and went on to write The Scholar's Daughter, involving much derringdo among a cast of lexicographers), phoneticians, bibliographers, an iron merchant-cum-antiquarian named Richard Heslop who gave Murray advice on mining and iron-forging terms, botanists, aldermen, naval historians, geologists and geophysicists, jurists, palaeographers, Orientalists, diplomats, museumkeepers, surgeons, soldiers (W. C. Minor was both, of course), climbers ( John Mitchell was killed while climbing, to Murray's `unspeakable grief'), zoologists, grammarians, patent officers, organists, runic archaeologists, fantasists, anthropologists, men of letters, bankers, medievalists, and Indian administrators—these and a thousand more professions and pastimes occupied those men and women who otherwise devoted hours, weeks, perhaps even years of their time to read for Murray and Bradley, and later for Craigie and Onions. The range of interests of these hundreds was prodigious; their knowledge was extraordinary; their determination was unequalled; and yet their legacy—aside from the book itself— remains essentially unwritten. Only their names, in long lists in the volumes, the parts, and the sections, exist to make some readers stop and wonder for a moment—just who were these people?

  One last half-answer to the question comes from a clue that is to be found in every single part of the great book, from that which begins with A right through to that which finishes with zyxt. The clue is the existence in each one of the Prefaces of one recurring name: Thompson.

  `The following readers have contributed most largely to the materials,' it says in the Appendix to the Preface of Volume I, its first part published in 1884, `Miss E. Thompson and Miss E. P. Thompson, Wavertree, Liverpool, 15,000.' `In the revision and improvement of the work in the proof stage [of the letter O] continuous and indefatigable help has been rendered by the Misses E. P. and Edith Thompson of Landsdown, Bath.' `During the editorial progress of the letter W, which began in 1919, outside help has been given in the reading of proofs by the Misses Edith and E. P. Thompson.' `The material for X, Y, Z passed through the hands of a voluntary sub-editor, the Rev. J. Smallpeice, in 1882-4,' says the Preface to the final volume, published in 1928. `The first proofs have been read by the Misses Edith and E. P. Thompson.'

  We know where these two ladies settled over the years— Liverpool, Reigate, and Bath. We know from other references that the (usually only initialled) younger sister was in fact called Elizabeth Perronet Thompson. We know that Edith Thompson was obsessively secretive and determined to remain as anonymous as possible. She seemed to shiver with excitement on occasion during her correspondence with James Murray—and when she ventured, as she very seldom did, some personal opinion, she hoped that Murray would not regard it as remiss. `If it is, treat it as confidential.' We know that there was an interesting correspondence involving either the word pace or the word gait, with charming diagrams to illustrate the way in which horses of different breeds arrange their legs when moving. We know that the ladies were found to be so competent that they were asked to sub-edit, and did so for all the letters following C. We also know that Edith wrote a highly popular, well-regarded and long-in-print History ofEngland in 1873, 15 and that young Elizabeth wrote an exquisitely tame bodice-ripper of a novel set in the seventeenth century and entitled A Dragoon's Wife.

  We know these things, but we do not really know why so many people gave so much of their time for so little apparent reward. And this is the abiding and most marvellous mystery of the enormously democratic process that was the Dictionary—that hundreds upon hundreds of people, for motives known and unknown, for reasons both stated and left unsaid, helped to chronicle the immense complexities of the language that was their own, and that they dedicated in many cases—such as the Thompson sisters did—years upon years of labour to a project of which they all, buoyed by some set of unfathomable and optimistic notions, insisted on becoming a part. The Thompson sisters of Liverpool, Reigate, and Bath, living an otherwise blameless and unremarkable (though moneyed) suburban life in three most ordinary English towns, left no greater memorial than the work they performed for the greatest literary enterprise of history. They became footnotes in eight-point Clarendon type in a preface to a volume of that enterprise. That was truly their only reward—and yet in all likelihood they, and scores of others like them, surely wanted no other.

  [6] This is an educated conjecture. The handwriting on the slips looks very much like Sweatman's, and he was certainly in the right place at the right time for the entry to be written. But there is no absolute proof that the work is his. Some evidence suggests it might also have been an assistant named Henry Bayliss. However, the general point— that the definition of radium illustrates the kind of mind that was possessed by workers on the project—remains true, no matter who was the author of this particular entry.

  William Craigie, who was senior editor at the time of the triumphant completion of the first edition in 1928, edited the final volumes from the University of Chicago, where he had been appointed Professor of English.Back

  [11] Not quite all, in fact: the editors did practise some quite harsh selectivity in deciding whom to list and whom to omit. Bradley, for example, seems not to have listed one James Bartlett, of Bramley, near Guildford, who worked on G, M, O, R, and S. Perhaps this is because of his exasperation with the man, recorded in exchanges of correspondence which still exist. Most notable among them is a discussion over the word shake, where Bartlett writes: `I feel quite incompetent to tackle the formidable early forms of the word, and so leave them alone. Also the numbering off.' Bradley, with an irritable harrumph!, replies curtly: `I move to delete all after “incompetent”.' Back

  8

  From Take to Turn-down—and then, Triumphal Valediction

  Clear Turtle Soup

  Turbot with Lobster Sauce

  Haunch of Mutton

  Sweetbreads after the mode of Villeroi

  Grenadines of Veal

  Roast Partridge

  Queen Mab Pudding

  Strawberry Ice

  Amontillado 1858

  Champagne Pfungst, 1889

  Adriatic maraschino liqueur

  Chateau d'Yquem

  (From the menu of the Dictionary Dinner,The Queen's College, Oxford, 12 October 1897)

  On New Year's Day of 1895, a Tuesday, a customer with half a crown in his pocket could find, at the better kind of bookshops in London and Oxford and Edinburgh and beyond—and even in Manhattan (where the cost was a dollar)—the very latest part, the twelfth, of the new Dictionary. For his money he would receive a slender, 64-page paperbacked volume—new, slimmed down, promised to be more frequently produced, a welcome change from the 352-page and endlessly awaited monsters of before—that in this case contained all the known words that lay in the lexicon between Deceit and Deject (and which naturally included long entries for the words define, defining, and definition, which some might say the entire Dictionary exercise was all about).

  This volume had a signal difference about it, however, something that made it stand apart from the eleven predecessor parts and volumes that had been offered for sale or subscription. It was a change in appearance which many would say was a sign that augured well for the eventual completion of the project, which had been in more than a little
doubt. It lent a new tone to the volume, gave it a certain style, and heft, and a feeling of permanence and immutability.

  For printed on the outer cover—not on the inside title page, but only on the slip cover—were, for the first time, the words Oxford English Dictionary. The formal realization had at long last come: that while to the philologists in London this might have been begun as the New English Dictionary, it had for eighteen years been firmly and formally part of the majestic engine-work of Oxford—and Oxford wanted the world and his wife to know that this was so. Hence the birth, late in the day but still some cause for joy, of what we know today as the OED, by which initials all—including this account—would henceforward invariably refer to it.

  That was the first indication of a new energy, a new mood. Before long there were others, less formal but nonetheless indicative. By the mid-1890s the Dictionary was becoming well known, its name and uncommon scope fast entering the common culture. Newspapers wrote about it. Cartoons in Punch featured it. Lawyers quoted it—the OED definition of something was frequently used as evidence presented in court, accepted by juries and judges alike as an impeccable source of lexical infallibility. On 5 December 1893, Gladstone cited the OED in Parliament for the meaning of the thieves' slang phrase put-up job; four years later Joseph Chamberlain, the great Colonial Secretary, consulted Murray over the meaning of the word patriotism, which he said he intended to use in his installation speech as Chancellor of Glasgow University. 1 And in 1912 the then Home Secretary, accused in the House of Commons of using un-parliamentary language by calling someone `impertinent', opened a volume of the OED and displayed it to MPs to show that in early days impertinent meant not what the members ignorantly imagined, but `not pertaining to the subject or matter in hand, irrelevant'. `And I used the word', the minister said, smugly, `in its older sense.'

  The fact that the Dictionary was still incomplete, but that what had already been made was so superbly authoritative, led to some interesting complications. It was noted by an in-house Press magazine in early 1900, for example, that `A Chinaman in Singapore, on opening up a school for his countrymen, announces that he is prepared, among other things, to teach English “up to the letter G”.' And yet at the same time the book's incompleteness was, it was at long last being acknowledged, only a temporary phenomenon.

  The culminating event of this long climb to assured completion came in August 1897, a time when the nation was still reverberating with the self-satisfied pleasure taken from the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The great ceremony itself had taken place two months earlier, on 22 June—the tiny and still much beloved monarch had pressed an electric button at eleven, to send a message from the Palace—`From my heart I thank my people. May God bless them'—to every corner of her immense Empire.

  A fortnight later the University, at Murray's urging, and with the editor choosing with the greatest care every letter and syllable and courteous and courtly phrase, wrote to the Palace: `Might Her Majesty perhaps see fit', Oxford enquired, `to accept the Dedication of the Oxford English Dictionary to her most August Personage, by way of a mark of respect for her Sixty Glorious Years on the Throne?'

  In August a private secretary replied: yes indeed, after due consideration the Queen had seen fit to accept. Oxford was duly delighted. Murray was well pleased that what was, indeed, a ploy to ensure continuance had worked. A flyleaf was hurriedly inserted into the volume just finished—it was the first volume to embrace a pair of letters: D (edited by Murray) and E (by Bradley)—and the triumphal message announcing the dedication was inscribed in extra-large type: `To the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty this Historical Dictionary of the English language is by her gracious permission dutifully dedicated by the University of Oxford. A.D. MDCCCXCVII.'

  After that, it would have been quite unthinkable to stop. The Delegates ceased all their querulous complaints about the cost—it would, after all, have been lèse-majesté in the extreme to indulge in pettifogging arguments over money with the Dictionary a now royally connected enterprise. Murray was suddenly given to dreamily predicting when all would be gathered in: `1908 at soonest. 1910 at latest.' The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths—who would later give the celebratory dinner to mark the completion of the enterprise—contributed £5,000 in 1905 to help with the production of Volume VI, which held Bradley's edit of the letters L and M, and Craigie's of the letter N. The Goldsmiths' crest adorns an opening title page: `This Sixth Volume is a Memorial of the Munificence of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths who have generously Contributed Five Thousand Pounds towards its Production'—and Oxford expressed, in private, its profoundest thanks as well. 2

  At the same time Murray also began to notice something else of a physical significance: for the first time since he had started work back in Mill Hill nearly twenty years before, the number of quotation slips that were waiting in the pigeon-holes to present themselves for selection and inclusion was diminishing. He reported to the Philological Society (which, though it had been sidelined as the principal producer of the Dictionary, was still sympathetically interested) on the change:

  … when we reached the end of A and had emptied all the A pigeon-holes, & packed up all the A slips used and unused in strong boxes, the additions to the later material were so great that we had more slips in the Scriptorium than when we begun … the same thing happened at the end of B; and even at the end of C when one fifth of the material was used up, the what that remained occupied more space than the original whole. Now, however … it begins to be apparent that the material in the Scriptorium has undergone considerable diminution, and we shall now be able to use the vacant pigeon holes … for the materials for the letters after T which have hitherto … had to be stowed away in rather inaccessible positions.

  Oxford, now fully aware that it was on the verge—still a very wide verge maybe, but a verge nonetheless—of creating a publishing epic, of making a national asset of truly historic proportions, decided to celebrate. They decided to do what Oxford was very good at: to give Murray and his now rather discreetly merry men a full-dress, all-stops-out, no-holds-barred formal dinner.

  It was all the happy idea of the new Vice-Chancellor, John Magrath—a man who had first become interested in the Dictionary the year before, when during the row about the `Webster ratio' he had been impressed by Murray's staunch refusal to bow to Gell's insistence on trimming. He was described as being `picturesque', with a flowing beard and a kindly smile (and a fondness for swimming naked in that stretch of the River Cherwell known as Parson's Pleasure). He was also intellectually and socially a quite remarkable figure, having decided as an undergraduate to take degrees in classics and mathematics at the same time, 3 then to take holy orders and become an ordained deacon, to become President of the Union, and to row and swim for his college. He had a fellowship at—and in due course became Provost of—the Queen's College, and it was here that he decided to honour Murray. The dinner—where by tradition all are summoned by a scholar sounding a fanfare on an ancient silver trumpet—was a very grand affair indeed.

  James Murray at first pooh-poohed the idea—three days' worth of carousing (for some guests planned to stay awhile) and letter-writing would take him away from work. Magrath pulled out all the stops to persuade him: `I trust that the gathering will give you an indication that more people sympathise with you in your self-denying labours than perhaps in moments of depression, disappointment or annoyance you have been fully able to realise.' It worked. The editor in time came around, and in the event, enjoyed himself hugely.

  Everyone of note was there, dining by candlelight on what all remarked was a glorious late autumn evening. Massed along the immense tables that glittered and glistened with the finest china, crystal, and silver were Murray and Bradley and the newly appointed Charles Onions and William Craigie, all the more junior editors and sub-editors and assistants, as many of the immense Murray family as could attend, the entire colloquium of Delegates, an entire pie of new-suited printers under their eagle-eyed C
ontroller, most of the elderly stalwarts of the Philological Society from London, correspondents from newspapers at the better end of Fleet Street, schoolmasters from Mill Hill, the newly ennobled (as Lord Aldenham) Henry Hucks Gibbs, and a small army of the volunteer readers too—Miss Brown of Further Barton was there, a Reverend Smith of Putney too. And though W. C. Minor was unavoidably detained, and Fitzedward Hall was understandably absent also, it was whispered that the Thompson sisters might have made it from Reigate to Oxford High Street, and some say they were spied getting rather mischievously tipsy on their small glasses of amontillado.