The Dictionary of Lost Words(25)
I looked at the card. Then I looked around at all the young men in their short gowns and the older men in their long gowns. The words would scarcely come.
‘Louder, please.’
A woman walked past: a student in a short gown. She slowed and smiled and nodded. I straightened up, looked Mr Nicholson in the eye and recited.
‘I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all the rules of the Library.’
A few days later there was a note on top of the pile of books waiting to be returned to scholars and college libraries.
You would be doing me a service if you could visit the Bodleian and check the date for this quotation for flounder. It is in a poem by Thomas Hood, published in the Literary Souvenir:
‘Or are you where the flounders keep,
Some dozen briny fathoms deep.’
Thomas Hood, Stanzas to Tom Woodgate, 18__
J.M.
My mood did improve by degrees. As the number of tasks and errands increased, I began to visit the Scriptorium earlier and earlier in the afternoon. By the end of the summer of 1899 I was a regular visitor to many of the college libraries as well as to a number of scholars who were happy to make their collections available to the Dictionary project. Then Dr Murray started asking me to deliver notes to the Oxford University Press in Walton Street.
‘If you leave now, you’ll catch Mr Hart with Mr Bradley,’ Dr Murray said, hurriedly writing out the note. ‘I left them arguing about the word forgo. Hart is right, of course; there is no rationale for an e. But Bradley needs to be convinced. This should help, though Bradley won’t thank me for it.’ He handed me the note and, seeing my bewilderment added, ‘The prefix is for-, as in forget, not foregone. Do you understand?’
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I understood at all.
‘Of course you do. It’s straightforward.’ Then he looked at me over his spectacles, one corner of his mouth turning up in a rare smile. ‘That’s forward, without an e, by the way. Is it any wonder Bradley’s sections are so slow to materialise?’
Mr Bradley had been appointed by the Delegates as a second editor nearly a decade earlier, but Dr Murray was in the habit of putting him in his place. Da once said it was his way of reminding people who the engine-driver was and that it was best to let such comments go unanswered. I smiled, and Dr Murray turned towards his desk. When I was outside the Scriptorium, I read the note.
Common use should not override etymological logic. Forego is absurd. I regret its inclusion in the Dictionary as an alternative spelling and would be happy for Hart’s Rules to discourage it.
J.M.
I knew about Hart’s Rules; Da always had a copy to hand. ‘Consensus is not always possible, Esme,’ he once told me, ‘but consistency is, and Hart’s little book of rules has been the final arbiter of many an argument about how a word should be spelled or whether a hyphen is required.’
When I was a child, Da would sometimes take me with him to the Press if he had reason to speak with Mr Hart. Mr Hart was known as the Controller. He was in charge of every part of the printing process of the Dictionary. The first time I walked through the stone gateway into the quadrangle, I was awed by its size. There was a great pond in the centre with trees and flower gardens all around. The stone buildings rose two and three storeys high on all sides, and I’d asked Da why the Press needed to be so much bigger than the Scriptorium. ‘They don’t just print the Dictionary, Esme. They print the Bible, and books of every kind.’ I took that to mean that every book in the world came from that place. The grandeur suddenly made perfect sense, and I’d imagined the Controller to be a bit like God.
I dismounted under the imposing stone arch. The quadrangle was crowded with people who clearly belonged there. Boys in white aprons pulled trolleys loaded with reams of paper, some printed and cut down to size, others blank and as large as tablecloths. Men in ink-stained aprons walked in small groups, smoking. Other men, without aprons, scanned books or proofs instead of the path ahead, and one mumbled an apology when he bumped my arm, though he never looked up. In pairs they talked and gestured towards loose sheets of paper, the contents apparently flawed. How many problems of language were solved as they traversed this square? I wondered. Then I noticed two women, a little older than me. They walked across the quad as though they did it every day, and I realised they must work at the Press. But as we drew close, I could see their talk was not like that of the men: they were leaning in, and one had her hand up near her mouth. The other listened then laughed a little. They had nothing in their hands to distract them, no problems to solve. Their day was over and they were glad to be going home. They nodded as I passed.
A hundred bicycles lined one side of the quad. I left mine a little apart so I would find it easily on my way out.
Mr Hart didn’t answer when I knocked at his office door, so I wandered down the hall. Da said the Controller never left the building before dinnertime, and never without taking leave of the compositors and making an inspection of the presses.
The composing room was close to Mr Hart’s office. I pushed on the door and looked around. Mr Hart was on the other side of the room, talking to Mr Bradley and one of the compositors. The Controller’s large moustache was what I remembered most from my visits with Da. Over the years, it had grown whiter, but it had lost none of its volume. It was like a landmark now, guiding me along the rows of compositors’ benches, their slanted surfaces crowded with trays of type. I felt I might be trespassing.