The Dictionary of Lost Words(73)

When Mabel’s coughing stopped and my tears dried, I asked, ‘Morbs, Mabel? What does it mean?’

‘It’s a sadness that comes and goes,’ she said, pausing for breath. ‘I get the morbs, you get the morbs, even Miss Lizzie ’ere gets the morbs, though she’d never let on. A woman’s lot, I reckon.’

‘It must derive from morbid,’ I said to myself as I began to write out the slip.

‘I reckon it derives from grief,’ said Mabel. ‘From what we’ve lost and what we’ve never ’ad and never will. As I said, a woman’s lot. It should be in your dictionary. It’s too common not to be understood.’

Lizzie and I left the covered market, each with our own thoughts. Mabel’s state had been a shock.

‘Where does she live?’ I was ashamed I’d never thought about it before.

‘Workhouse Infirmary on Cowley Road,’ said Lizzie. ‘A wretched place full of wretched people.’

‘You’ve been?’

‘Took her there myself. Found her sleeping on the street, a pile of rags draped across that crate of hers. Thought she was dead.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Keep buying her whittling and writing down her words. You can’t change what is.’

‘Do you really believe that, Lizzie?’

She looked at me, wary of the question.

‘Surely things could change if enough people wanted them to,’ I continued. I told her about Muriel Matters speaking in Parliament.

‘I can’t see nothing changing for the likes of Mabel. All that ruckus the suffragettes make, it isn’t for women like her and me. It’s for ladies with means, and such ladies will always want someone else to scrub their floors and empty their pots.’ There was an edge to her voice I’d rarely heard. ‘If they get the vote, I’ll still be Mrs Murray’s bondmaid.’

Bondmaid. If I hadn’t found it and explained what it meant would Lizzie see herself differently?

‘Yet it sounds as though you’d change things, if you could,’ I said.

Lizzie shrugged, then paused to put down her bags. She rubbed her hands where the handles had left red grooves. My own bag was lighter, but I did the same.

‘You know,’ she said, when we were on our way again, ‘Mabel thinks her words will end up in the Dictionary, with her name against them. I heard her bragging to Mrs Stiles, and I didn’t have the heart to right her.’

‘Why does she think that?’

‘Why wouldn’t she? You never told her otherwise.’

Our pace was slow, and despite the cold day, a trickle of sweat ran down the side of Lizzie’s face. I thought about all the words I’d collected from Mabel and from Lizzie and from other women: women who gutted fish or cut cloth or cleaned the ladies’ public convenience on Magdalen Street. They spoke their minds in words that suited them, and were reverent as I wrote their words on slips. These slips were precious to me, and I hid them in the trunk to keep them safe. But from what? Did I fear they would be scrutinised and found deficient? Or were those fears I had for myself?

I never dreamed the givers had any hopes for their words beyond my slips, but it was suddenly clear that no one but me would ever read them. The women’s names, so carefully written, would never be set in type. Their words and their names would be lost as soon as I began to forget them.

My Dictionary of Lost Words was no better than the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery of the House of Commons: it hid what should be seen and silenced what should be heard. When Mabel was gone and I was gone, the trunk would be no more than a coffin.



Later, in Lizzie’s room, I opened the trunk and nestled Mabel’s words among Mr Dankworth’s clandestine corrections. I was surprised by how many I had collected.

Since discovering Mr Dankworth’s unauthorised corrections, I’d made a habit of checking proofs before delivering them to Mr Hart, though I only unpinned the corrections if I thought they added nothing to the original edit.

I began watching him. I watched him searching the shelves for slips or books, conferring with Dr Murray or sitting down at the sorting table to ask one of the other assistants a question. I saw him tilting his gaze towards their work, but I never saw him mark it with his pencil. Then, one morning, Mr Dankworth arrived early at the Scriptorium as I was finishing my cup of tea with Lizzie. Da had joined Dr Murray for an early meeting with the other editors at the Old Ashmolean.

I saw Mr Dankworth go into the Scriptorium and begin riffling through the edited proofs waiting in the basket by the door. ‘Lizzie, look,’ I said, and she came to the kitchen window. We watched as Mr Dankworth removed a proof from the pile and took a pencil from his breast pocket.

‘So, you’re not the only one with Scrippy secrets,’ said Lizzie.

I’d decided to keep Mr Dankworth’s secret – despite myself, I liked him a little more because of it.

Now I looked into the trunk and saw Mabel’s words resting against Mr Dankworth’s neat hand. She’d like that, I thought. He wouldn’t. I read random slips, his and hers. Not quite, he’d written on a top-slip I recognised as one of Mr Sweatman’s – it seemed Dr Murray’s were the only edits that escaped his fastidious attentions. Mr Dankworth had drawn a line through the definition and rewritten it, no more accurately in my mind, though two words shorter. I’d rewritten Mr Sweatman’s original and pocketed Mr Dankworth’s correction. It was such a contrast to Mabel’s poorly spelled and childishly written slips. Their production had obviously been an effort for Mrs Stiles, making the favour all the more generous.