James A. H. Murray At First Hand

By Anatoly Liberman

I cannot stop praising our libraries. Unfortunately, they do not always keep records of how they come by their treasures, and our lunatic pursuit of privacy has annihilated the cards, formerly tucked away in the back of library books, the precious cards that showed the names of previous borrowers. For example, Friedrich Klaeber, the author of the best edition of the Old English poem Beowulf, taught all his life (that is, after he became a PhD in Germany and before he retired at 65) at the University of Minnesota, which honored him with a Festschrift at his retirement and much later named a building after him. Every now and then I would pull a book from a shelf that has been checked out only once before—by Klaeber. I would remove the cards with his name and give them as prizes to my best students at the end of the year or keep them as souvenirs for inflating my vanity: a card with two “entries” on it: Klaeber (with his signature) and Liberman (copied from my ID). What a source of innocent joy! In my recent post on the word slang, I recounted how I had found a full set of The Cheshire Sheaf at the University of Minnesota. As a rule, no one can tell under what circumstances such books end up at our libraries.

Several years ago, I was exploring the origin of Lilliputian. It is universally known that Lilliputian first appeared in Gulliver’s Travels, but how did Swift coin it? According to a rather far-fetched hypothesis, he knew the Latin word salaputium and extracted -put(e) from it. Salaputium occurs only in a poem by Catullus (No. 54 in modern editions of his works). Its meaning is unclear, but, knowing Catullus, everybody assumes an opprobrious allusion. A politician named Calvus, whom Seneca characterized as being of short stature, is called salaputium in mock or real admiration by a witness of his eloquence. To find out how well Swift knew Catullus and especially whether he was aware of Seneca’s remark, I had to study the catalogues of Swift’s library and to see the early editions of Catullus that Swift may have used. As happened with The Cheshire Sheaf, I expected to obtain photocopies of the necessary pages through interlibrary loan. But I did not have to order anything. Among the rare books at my university I found all the works I needed, including an annotated 1554 edition of Catullus, published in Venice. Seneca’s remark is mentioned in it, but Swift did not own the book, so that the posited association from salaputium to Lilliputian became most unlikely. When did the University of Minnesota purchase that splendid volume? Librarians have no clue.

While I was gloating over the pages of the Italian book, the curator of Special Collections inquired whether I was the person who, as he had heard, professed interest in etymology. Seeing no need to deny that fact, I answered in the affirmative. “Then,” he added, “you may want to look at Murray’s letters.” “Surely, not James A. H. Murray?” I responded. “Indeed, James A. H. Murray,” was the reply, and he brought out several envelopes with letters from Murray and Bradley, the first two editors of the Oxford English Dictionary. I recognized both handwritings at once. The batch consisted of 26 letters and postcards addressed to Julian Marshall. Twenty-three of them were written by James Murray, and three by Henry Bradley. Except for the last two, they go back to the period between May 27, 1886, and July 3, 1893. In June 1899 Marshall asked Murray why the dictionary, habitually referred to as N.E.D. (that is, the New English Dictionary) is called H.E.D. (that is, the Historical English Dictionary) in Notes and Queries. Murray answered that he was not responsible for that usage. The letter of June 27, 1899 was followed by one more, whereupon the correspondence between Murray and Marshall seems to have stopped.

The neatly organized folder, with letters and sundry other materials, was originally pasted in the first volume of the OED (Marshall’s copy?); the letters were catalogued only in 1948. Julian Marshall (1836-1903) published widely on sports, and Murray, who valued his expertise, asked him questions about the meaning of some terms. Too pressed for time to look up a word in the Bodleian, Murray never missed a chance to send a query, thank for help, attack an opponent, or complain of how overworked he was (“I have to build up the fabrics of 36 or 40 words a day, to read them all in Proof, Revise, 2nd Revise, & Final; if you think there is any time left after 12 hours of that to ‘say this is probably in earlier edd. of Hoyle, and an hour or an hour and a half in the Bodleian, would determine the point’—then please say so.”) His aggressive, self-asserting style never changed. For example, Marshall had the temerity to advise Murray against following Skeat’s etymology of catgut and was immediately assured that there was no need to bother because he had no idea where Skeat had published his etymology and because he, Murray, never followed anyone. Murray resented the presence of another editor and complained to Marshall of Bradley’s imperfections. In his obituary of Murray (respectful but not warm), Bradley recollects how much he owed to Murray’s supervision but does not conceal his mentor’s disappointment when it became clear that even the most indefatigable person in the world could not do all the work alone. (Later two more editors were appointed.)

In retrospect, numerous things look more glamorous than they were. Today the OED has the admiration of everyone who studies the history of English, but for decades Murray, no less than other mortals, was plagued by the lack of funds, like other mortals. He wrote to Marshall as early as December 1888, that is, when work on the letters A and B (the first letters of the alphabet!) was in progress: “I have spent on the dictionary all my savings; I have extreme difficulty in making ends meet with the income that it yields (for which I relinquished comfortable prospects), and I have to do without many[,] many books, which would be immensely helpful, because I have not the money to buy them.”

The letters preserved in Minneapolis do not contain any revelations, but still Murray at Minnesota: who would not glow with pride at such a discovery! Yet I will probably never know how the letters crossed the ocean and came to our library. Could I have found that correspondence without the curator’s help? Yes, most easily. All I had to do was look up James A. H. Murray’s name in the computer: his letters are listed there, and the place where they are kept is given, call number and all. But it would never have occurred to me to do such a thing.

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to [email protected]; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.”