The following morning, Dr Murray called me over.
‘I’d like you to come with me to the Bodleian, Esme.’
I looked over to Da. He smiled and nodded. Dr Murray put on his black gown and ushered me out of the Scriptorium.
We rode side by side down the Banbury Road and, following my usual route, Dr Murray turned onto Parks Road.
‘A far more pleasant ride,’ he said. ‘More trees.’
His gown billowed, and his long white beard was swept back over one shoulder. I had no idea why we were going to the Bodleian Library, and I was too stunned to ask. When we turned onto Broad Street, Dr Murray dismounted. Town, gown and visitor all seemed to fall back as he made his way towards the Sheldonian Theatre. As he passed into the courtyard, I imagined the guard of stone emperors along the perimeter nodding to acknowledge the Editor’s presence. I followed like a disciple until we came to a halt at the entrance of the Bodleian.
‘Ordinarily, it would not be possible for you to become a reader, Esme. You are neither a scholar nor a student. But it is my intention to convince Mr Nicholson that the Dictionary will be realised far sooner if you are permitted to come here and check quotations on our behalf.’
‘We can’t just borrow the books, Dr Murray?’
He turned and looked at me above his spectacles. ‘Not even the Queen is permitted to borrow from the Bodleian. Now, come.’
Mr Nicholson was not immediately convinced. I sat on a bench watching students pass and heard Dr Murray’s voice begin to rise.
‘No, she is not a student, surely that is obvious.’ he said.
Mr Nicholson peered at me, then quietly presented another argument to Dr Murray.
The Editor’s response was louder again. ‘Neither her sex nor her age disqualifies her, Mr Nicholson. As long as she is employed in scholarship – and I assure you, she is – she has grounds for becoming a reader.’
Dr Murray called me over. Mr Nicholson passed me a card.
‘Recite this,’ said Mr Nicholson, with obvious reluctance.
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
