The Dictionary of Lost Words(18)

‘Should she be in here?’ Mr Crane’s voice cut through my thoughts.

I closed the volume in a hurry and turned around. I looked to Da, who was looking at Mr Crane.

‘I thought you’d gone for the night,’ Da said, sounding friendlier than he was.

‘This really is no place for children.’

I wasn’t a child anymore; everyone had told me that.

‘She’s no trouble,’ said Mr Sweatman.

‘She’s interfering with materials.’

I felt my heart pound and couldn’t stop myself from speaking. ‘Dr Murray said I should avail myself of the Dictionary volumes whenever I liked.’ I immediately regretted it when Da flashed me a cautionary look. But Mr Crane neither responded nor looked in my direction.

‘Will you be joining us, Crane?’ asked Mr Sweatman. ‘With three of us we should get through this work before dinnertime.’

‘I’ve just come back to get my coat,’ he said. Then he nodded to them both and left the Scriptorium.

I returned the great volume of C words to its shelf and told Da I would wait for him in the kitchen.

‘You are welcome to stay,’ he said.

But I was no longer sure. Over the next few months I spent more time in the kitchen than the Scriptorium.



Da read Ditte’s letter and shared none of it. When he finished, he folded it back into its envelope and put it in his trouser pocket instead of leaving it on the side table, where other letters from Ditte would sometimes sit for days.

‘Will she visit us soon?’ I asked.

‘She doesn’t say,’ said Da, as he picked up the newspaper.

‘Did she say anything about me?’

He let the paper drop so he could see me. ‘She asked how you were enjoying school,’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘It’s boring. But I’m allowed to help the younger ones when I’ve finished my work. I like that.’

He took a deep breath, and I thought he was going to tell me something. He didn’t. He just looked at me a little longer, then said it was time for bed.

A few days later, after Da had kissed me goodnight and returned downstairs to work on proofs, I tip-toed across the hall and into his room. I crawled into the wardrobe and retrieved the shabbier of the two boxes. I took out Ditte’s letter.

November 15th 1896

My dear Harry,

What a mixture of sentiments your last letter brought. I have been trying to compose a response that Lily would approve of (I have come to the conclusion that that is what you desire above all else, and so I will try not to fail you, or her, or Esme. Try, mind you. I promise nothing).

Mr Crane continues to accuse our Esme of thieving. It is a weighty word, Harry. It conjures an image of Esme sneaking around with a sack slung over her back, filling it with candlesticks and teapots. However, from what I can glean, her pockets contained nothing more than slips that others had been careless with. As to your parenting being unconventional, well, I suppose that it is, but where Mr Crane meant it as a rebuke, I mean it as a compliment. Convention has never done any woman any good. So, enough self-recrimination, Harry.

Now, to the matter of Esme’s education. Of course she must continue, but where to go when she outgrows St Barnabas? I have been making enquiries of an old friend, Fiona McKinnon, who is headmistress at a relatively modest (by which I mean affordable) boarding school in Scotland, near the town of Melrose. It is years since I last spoke to Fiona, but she was a formidable student, and I daresay she has fashioned Cauldshiels School for Young Ladies on her own precocious needs. As your sister is less than fifty miles away, it seems an excellent alternative to the far more expensive schools in the South of England.

Esme will not likely celebrate the idea in the short term, but at fourteen she is old enough for an adventure.

Finally, while not wanting to encourage her wayward behaviour, I am enclosing a word that Esme may like. ‘Literately’ was used in a novel by Elizabeth Griffiths. While no other examples of use have been forthcoming, it is, in my opinion, an elegant extension of ‘literate’. Dr Murray agreed I should write an entry for the Dictionary, but I have since been told it is unlikely to be included. It seems our lady author has not proved herself a ‘literata’ – an abomination of a word coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that refers to a ‘literary lady’. It too has only one example of use, but its inclusion is assured. This may sound like sour grapes, but I can’t see it catching on. The number of literary ladies in the world is surely so great as to render them ordinary and deserving members of the literati.

A number of volunteers (all of them women, from what I can tell) sent in the same quotation for ‘literately’. There are six in all, and as none of them is of any use to the Dictionary, I see no reason why Esme cannot have one of them. I look forward to hearing how the two of you employ this lovely word – together we might keep it alive.

Yours,

Edith



It was our last school assembly before Christmas, and I would not be returning to finish the school year. The headmistress of St Barnabas girls’ school, Mrs Todd, wanted to wish me well, so I sat on a chair at the front of the hall, facing the assembled girls. They were children of Jericho. Daughters of the Press and Wolvercote paper mill. Their brothers attended St Barnabas boys, and would grow up to work at the mill or on the presses. Half the girls in my class would be binding books within the year. I’d always felt out of place.