Simon Winchester - The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary
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PENGUIN BOOKS
THE SURGEON OF CROWTHORNE
A weird and wonderful story of an eccentric friendship, and a slice of history Sunday Times
What a revelation. Beautifully told and awe-inspiring Daily Mail
An extraordinary tale, and Simon Winchester could not have told it better a splendid book Economist
A vivid parable full of suspense, pathos and humour Wall Street Journal
A cracking read Spectator
The linguistic detective story of the decade The New York Times
Masterful one of those rare stories that combine human drama and historical significance Independent
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simon Winchester was born and educated in England, has lived in Africa, India and China, and now lives in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Having reported from almost everywhere during more than thirty years as a foreign correspondent, he now contributes to a variety of American and British magazines and makes regular broadcasts for the BBC.
Simon Winchesters other books include Outposts: Travels to the Remains of the British Empire; Korea: A Walk through the Land of Miracles; The Pacific; Pacific Nightmare , a fictional account of the aftermath of the Hong Kong hand-over; Prison Diary, Argentina , the story of three months spent in a Patagonian jail on spying charges during the Falklands war; The River at the Centre of the World A Journey up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time ; the number-one international bestseller The Surgeon of Crowthorne ; and The Map that Changed the World , which tells the extraordinary story of William Smith, pioneering geologist of the British Isles. His most recent book is Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded .
THE SURGEON OF CROWTHORNE
A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary
SIMON WINCHESTER
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published by Viking 1998
Published in Penguin Book 1999
Copyright Simon Winchester, 1998
All rights reserved
Frontispiece: the Call to the Contributors has been reproduced from a New English Dictionary pamphlet of April 1879, by permission of Oxford University Press
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-194204-9
To the memory of G. M.
Contents
An extract from the call to the contributors to what would eventually become the Oxford English Dictionary .
Preface
mysterious (mIstIr1s), a . [f. L. mystrium MYSTERY + OUS. Cf. F. mystrieux .] Full of or fraught with mystery; wrapt in mystery; hidden from human knowledge or understanding; impossible or difficult to explain, solve, or discover; of obscure origin, nature, or purpose.Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in Berkshire.
One of the parties to the colloquy was the formidable Dr James Murray, the then editor of what was later to be called the Oxford English Dictionary . On the day in question he had travelled fifty miles by train from Oxford to meet an enigmatic figure named Dr W. C. Minor, who was among the most prolific of the thousands of volunteer contributors whose labours lay at the core of the Dictionarys creation.
For very nearly twenty years beforehand these two men had corresponded regularly about the finer points of English lexicography. But they had never met. Minor seemed never willing or able to leave his home at Crowthorne, never willing to come to Oxford. He was unable to offer any kind of explanation, or do more than offer his regrets.
Murray, who himself was rarely free from the burdens of his work at his Scriptorium in Oxford, had none the less long dearly wished to see and to thank his mysterious and intriguing helper. And particularly so by the late 1890s, with the Dictionary now well on its way to being half completed: official honours were being showered down upon its creators, and Murray wanted to make sure that all of those involved even men so apparently bashful as Minor were recognized for the valuable work they had done. He decided he would pay a visit; and the myth that came to surround that visit goes something like this.
Once he had made up his mind to go, he telegraphed his intentions, adding that he would find it most convenient to take a train that arrived at Crowthorne Station then actually known as Wellington College Station, since it served the famous boys school sited in the village just after two on a certain Wednesday in November. Minor sent a wire by return to say that he was indeed expected and would be made most welcome. On the journey from Oxford the weather was fine; the trains were on time; the auguries, in short, were good.
At the railway station a polished landau and a liveried coachman were waiting, and with James Murray aboard they clip-clopped back through the lanes of rural Berkshire. After twenty minutes or so the carriage turned into a long drive lined with tall poplars, drawing up eventually outside a huge and rather forbidding red-brick mansion. A solemn servant showed the lexicographer upstairs, and into a book-lined study, where behind an immense mahogany desk stood a man of undoubted importance. Murray bowed gravely, and launched into the brief speech of greeting that he had so long rehearsed:
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