The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020)

by Williams, Pip

  It had come earlier than he’d expected, Da said, looking apologetic. It was called catamenia, and the process of shedding it was menstruation. He reached for the sugar bowl and took great care to sprinkle a liberal amount on his porridge, even though it was already sweetened.

  New words, but they made Da feel uncomfortable. For the first time in my life I felt unsure about my questions. We fell into a rare silence, with catamenia and menstruation hanging meaningless in the air.

  I stayed away from the Scriptorium for two weeks. When I did return, I chose the quietest time. It was late afternoon, when Dr Murray was visiting Mr Hart at the Press and most of the assistants had gone home.

  Only Da and Mr Sweatman sat at the long table. They were preparing entries for the letter F, which meant they had to check the work of all the other assistants to make sure they matched Dr Murray’s very particular style. Da and Mr Sweatman knew the Dictionary abbreviations better than anyone.

  ‘Come in, Esme,’ said Mr Sweatman as I peered around the Scriptorium door. ‘The big bad wolf has gone home.’

  M words lived in pigeon-holes beyond the sight of the sorting table, and the words I wanted were crammed into a single pigeon-hole. They were already sorted under draft definitions. That is what Ditte spent so much of her time doing, and I wondered if I would recognise her hand on any of the top-slips.

  There were so many words to describe the bleeding. Menstrue was the same as catamenia. It meant unclean blood. But what blood was clean? It always left a stain.

  Four slips with various quotations were pinned to the word menstruate. The top-slip gave it two definitions: To discharge the catamenia and To pollute as with menstrual blood. Da had mentioned the first, but not the second.

  Menstruosity was the condition of being menstruous. And menstruous had once meant horribly filthy or polluted.

  Menstruous. Like monstrous. It came closest to explaining how I felt.

  Lizzie had called it ‘The Curse’. She’d never heard of menstruation and laughed when I said it. ‘Probably a doctor’s word,’ she’d said. ‘They have their own language, and it hardly ever makes sense.’

  I took the volume with all the C words from its shelf and searched for curse.

  One’s evil fate.

  It didn’t mention bleeding, but I understood. I let the pages fan past my thumb. There were thirteen hundred in just this one volume, about the same as in A and B, and I remembered Da saying there would never be an end to words beginning with C. I looked around the Scriptorium and tried to guess how many words were stored in the pigeon-holes and the books and in the heads of Dr Murray and his assistants. Not one of them could fully explain what had happened to me. Not one.

  ‘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 wo
uld 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.

  There were the usual announcements. I sat rigid, looking down at my hands and wishing the time would pass more quickly. I barely heard what Mrs Todd said, but when the girls began to clap I looked up. I was to receive the history prize and the prize for English. Mrs Todd nodded for me to approach, and as I did she told the school that I was leaving to attend Cauldshiels School for Young Ladies.

  ‘All the way up in Scotland,’ she said, turning to me. The girls clapped again, though this time with less enthusiasm. They couldn’t imagine leaving, I thought. As I couldn’t imagine it. But then Ditte said it would prepare me. ‘For what?’ I’d asked. ‘For doing whatever it is you dream of,’ she’d said.

  The week after Christmas was wet and dreary. ‘Good preparation for the Scottish Borders,’ Mrs Ballard said one day, and I burst into tears. She stopped her kneading and came to where I sat shelling peas at the kitchen table. ‘Oh, pet,’ she said, holding my face in both hands and dusting flour across my cheeks. When I stopped my snivelling, she put a mixing bowl in front of me and measured out quantities of butter, flour, sugar and raisins. She took the cinnamon jar from the top shelf of the pantry and put it beside me: ‘Just a pinch, remember.’

  Mrs Ballard used to say that rock cakes didn’t care if your hands were warm or cold, deft or clumsy. She relied on them to distract me whenever I was unable to accompany Lizzie, or when I was out of sorts. They’d become my specialty. Mrs Ballard went back to her kneading, and I began to break the butter into bits and rub it into the flour. As usual, my right hand felt gloved. I had to watch my funny fingers do their work to really feel the crumbs begin to form.

  Mrs Ballard chatted on. ‘Scotland is beautiful.’ She’d been there when she was a young woman. Walking, with a friend. I couldn’t imagine her young. And I couldn’t imagine her anywhere other than in the kitchen at Sunnyside. ‘And it’s not forever,’ she said.

  Everyone who was at the Scriptorium that day came out to farewell me. We stood in the garden, shivering in the early morning: Da, Mrs Ballard, Dr Murray and some of the assistants. But not Mr Crane. The youngest Murray children were there, Elsie and Rosfrith either side of their mother. They each held the hand of one of the two smallest and kept their eyes on their shoes.

  Lizzie stood in the doorway of the kitchen, even though Da called her to come out. She never liked being among the Dictionary men. ‘I don’t know how to speak to ’em,’ she said, when I teased her about it.

  We stood just long enough for Dr Murray to say something about how much I would learn and the health benefits of walking the hills around Cauldshiels Loch. He gave me a sketchbook and a set of drawing pencils and told me he looked forward to receiving letters with my impressions of the countryside around my new school. I put them in the new satchel Da had given me that morning.

  Mrs Ballard gave me a box filled with biscuits still warm from the oven. ‘For the journey,’ she said, and she hugged me so tight I thought I would stop breathing.

  No one said anything for a while. I’m sure most of the assistants were wondering what all the fuss was about. I could see them moving from foot to foot in an effort to keep warm. They wanted to return to their words, to the relative warmth of the Scriptorium. Part of me wanted to return with them. Part of me wanted the adventure to start.

  I looked over to where Lizzie stood. Even from a distance, I could see her swollen eyes and red nose. She tried to smile, but the deceit was too much and she had to look away. Her shoulders quivered.

  It would prepare me, Ditte had said. It would turn me into a scholar. ‘And when you leave Cauldshiels,’ Da had added, ‘You can enter Somerville. It’s as close to home as any of the ladies’ halls, and just across the road from the Press.’

  Da gave me a gentle nudge. I was meant to respond to Dr Murray, to say thank you for the sketchbook and pencils, but all I knew was the warmth of the biscuits coming through the box into my hands. I thought about the journey. It would take all the daylight hours and half the night. There would be no heat left in the biscuits by the time I arrived.

  The garden at Sunnyside looked smaller than it had two seasons earlier. The trees were in full leaf, and the sky was a patch of blue between the house and the hedges. I could hear the clatter of carts and the clop of horses drawing trams along the Banbury Road.

  I stood under the ash for a long time. I’d been home for weeks, but only now did I understand what I’d been missing. Oxford wrapped around me like a blanket, and I began to breathe easily for the first time in months.

  From the minute I’d arrived home from Cauldshiels, I’d wanted more than anything to be inside the Scriptorium. But every time I stepped towards it, I’d felt a wave in my stomach. I didn’t belong there. I was a nuisance. That was why I’d been sent so far away, whatever Ditte tried to say about adventure and opportunity. So I pretended to Da that I had outgrown the Scriptorium. In truth I could barely resist it.

  Now, a week before I was to return to Cauldshiels, the Scriptorium stood empty. Mr Crane was long gone – dismissed, too many errors. Da could barely hold my gaze when he told me. Da and Dr Murray were at the Press with Mr Hart, and the other assistants were spending their lunch hour by the river. I wondered if the Scriptorium might be locked. It never had been, but things could change. Everything was locked at Cauldshiels. To stop us getting in. To stop us getting out. I took one step and then another. When I tried the door, it opened with a familiar creaking of hinges.

  I stood on the threshold and looked in. The sorting table was a mess of books and slips and proofs. I could see Da’s jacket on the back of his chair and Dr Murray’s mortar board on the shelf behind his high desk. The pigeon-holes seemed full, but I knew that room could always be found for new quotations. The Scriptorium was as it had always been, but my stomach wouldn’t settle. I felt changed. I didn’t go in.

  When I turned to leave, I noticed the pile of unopened letters just inside the door. Ditte’s handwriting. A larger envelope, the kind she used for Dictionary correspondence. I grabbed it without any thought, and left.

  In the kitchen, apples were stewing on the range, but Mrs Ballard was nowhere to be seen. I held Ditte’s envelope above the steam from the apples until the seal gave. Then I took the stairs to Lizzie’s room, two at a time.

  There were four pages of proofs for the words hurly-burly to hurry-scurry. Ditte had pinned additional quotations to the edges of each page. The red-haired hurlyburlying Scotch professor was attached to the first, and I wondered if Dr Murray would allow it. I began to read the edits she’d made on the proof, trying to understand how they might improve the entry. Then tears were running down my face. I’d wanted to see Ditte so much, needed to see her, to talk to her. She’d said she would visit at Easter to take me out for my fifteenth birthday. She never came. It was Ditte who’d convinced Da to send me to Cauldshiels. Ditte who’d made me want to go.

  I dashed the tears away.

  Lizzie came into the room, startling me. She looked at Ditte’s pages, splayed on the floor.

  ‘Esme, what are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Essymay, I may not be able to read but I know fair well where those papers belong, and it’s not in this room,’ she said.

  When I made no reply, she sat on the floor opposite me. She was heavier than she used to be and didn’t look comfortable.

  ‘These are different to your usual words,’ she said, picking up a page.

  ‘They’re proofs,’ I said. ‘This is what the words will look like when they’re in the Dictionary.’

  ‘You’ve been in there then, the Scrippy?’

  I shrugged and started gathering up Ditte’s pages. ‘I couldn’t. I just looked in.’

  ‘You can’t take words from the Scrippy anymore, Essymay. You know that.’

  I settled my gaze on Ditte’s familiar handwriting on the sl
ip pinned to the last page of proofs. ‘I don’t want to go back to school, Lizzie.’

  ‘You’re lucky you have the chance to go to school,’ she said.

  ‘If you had been to school, you’d know how cruel it can be.’

  ‘I guess it’s bound to feel that way to a child who’s had as much freedom as you, Essymay,’ Lizzie soothed. ‘But there’s no one that can teach you here, and you’re too bright to stop your learning. It will only be for a little while, and after that you can choose to do whatever you please. You could be a teacher, or write about history like your Miss Thompson, or work on the Dictionary like Hilda Murray. Did you know she’s started working in the Scrippy?’

  I didn’t. Since going to Cauldshiels I felt further away from the things I once dreamed of. When Lizzie tried to catch my eye, I looked away. She retrieved her sewing box from beneath the bed then walked to the door.

  ‘You should eat your lunch,’ she said. ‘And you should return those papers to the Scrippy.’ She closed the door softly behind her.

  I unpinned Ditte’s note from the proof. It was an additional meaning for the word hurry: this definition was more akin to harassment than haste, and it only had a single quotation to support it. I said it out loud and liked it. I leaned under the bed and was relieved to feel the leather handle and the weight of the trunk as I pulled it towards me. Lizzie must have kept the trunk secret the whole time I’d been away. I wondered what might have happened to her if anyone had found it here.

  The thought made me pause, made me think about pinning hurry back in its place. But taking it felt like a reckoning. I opened the trunk and breathed in the words. I put hurry on top, then closed the lid.

  In that moment, my anger towards Ditte faded, just a little, and an idea occurred to me. I would write to her.

  I returned the proofs to their envelope and resealed it. As I left Sunnyside to walk home, I dropped Ditte’s envelope in the letterbox on the gate.