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Jara Uzenda

ENGL 650

Professor Hutchisson

2 October 2009

The Professor and the Madman

Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester, author of some dozen or so books, has taken on a monumental task.

In the Professor and the Madman, Winchester acts as the tour guide for the seventy plus year

journey of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. The book received rave reviews from

the New York Times, The Economist, USA Today, and the Boston Globe among others.

The subtitle, A Tale of Murder, Insanity, And The Making of The Oxford English

Dictionary, immediately peaks one’s curiosity. How could something as seemly dull and tedious

as the composition of a dictionary be full of mystery and intrigue? The preface begins, as do all

of the chapters, with a classic Oxford definition. The preface starts with the word ‘mysterious’

(xi). The story begins with Dr. James Murray, the dictionary’s editor, setting out “on a cool and

misty late autumn afternoon” (xi). A sunny spring day would not have done this story justice. It

is 1896. For some twenty years, Dr. Murray has labored under the delusion that the most

prodigious volunteer contributor to the dictionary, Dr. W.C. Minor of Crowthorne, is a brilliant,

illusive, retired physician, as he himself is, a lover of the English language. Today, he is

traveling from Oxford. He will finally meet the man he has held in such high esteem over the

past two decades for the first time.

Murray arrives without incident at the Crowthorne train station. His host has sent a

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landau to fetch him. The carriage meanders up a tree lined drive to what appears to be a grand

mansion. Upon being lead inside by a supposed servant, he encounters a man of “undoubted

importance” (xii). He bows and expresses his extreme pleasure that at last they have met. There

is silence. Clocks tick and keys clank. The dignified looking recipient of the long rehearsed

greeting announces he is not Dr. Minor. He is the Governor of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic

Asylum. The illusive Dr. Minor is a patient (xiii).

This is a tale of two doctors and a dictionary. One is a doctor of letters: the other a doctor

of medicine. One is a prominent upstanding member of the literary community: the other a

disgraced civil war surgeon and a maniacal murderer. On the surface, it appears they have

nothing in common. Nevertheless, these remarkable men will earn a place in history as two of

the greatest lexicographers who ever lived, and forge a friendship few men have ever known.

Winchester guides the reader through a labyrinth of sorrowful and stranger than fiction

circumstances, which lead to the collaboration of the Doctors Murray and Minor. In the United

States, the Civil War is nearing its end. Dr. Minor, a young Yale graduate and Union Army

officer, is on the front lines of the fighting (52-54). In England, the London Philological Society

is in its infancy. The battle to compile a dictionary acceptable to the English highbrows was just

getting started (103). Samuel Johnson had published his dictionary a hundred years ago, in 1755,

after persuading Oxford to grant him a degree (96). Although his work was widely admired, it

was not all-inclusive.

The beginning of the ‘big dictionary’, as it was called, began at the London library in

1857 (103). A scholar and man of God, Richard Trench, was chosen as the mastermind. He

analyzed the deficiencies in prior English dictionaries and set the standards for the task ahead.

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The undertaking would be monumental. Trench knew it would take an army to complete the

work. Were it not for his brilliance in conceiving a plan to enlist public volunteers as amateur

lexicographers, the paths of Murray and Minor might never have crossed. Their fate was sealed,

but it would take until the late 1870s for the stars to align (104-107).

The Philological Society faced an uphill battle. Two of its members, Fredrick Furnivall

and Herbert Coleridge, were participating in the endeavor. When Coleridge died two years into

the project, Furnivall took control (109). He was disorganized and lacked the leadership

necessary (38). The project was becoming unglued. On the other side of the pond, the Army

surgeon who had witnessed one of the bloodiest wars ever fought was struggling also. The war

had deeply affected his sanity. One horror would haunt him until his death. The Doctor had been

ordered to brand the face of an Irish deserter. After the war, he was stationed in Virginia then

New York. In 1866, he was commissioned as an officer. As the dream of ‘big dictionary’ was

turning to a nightmare, so was Minor’s life (61-67).

Minor began carrying his gun off-duty while prowling for prostitutes (67). He contracted

venereal diseases. His radical behavior changes alarmed the Army (68). The Doctor suffered a

serious humiliation when he was transfer to an obscure, isolated and decaying fort in Florida. It

was here, in the hot sun, he first meet his demons. Just two years after his commission in 1868,

Dr. Minor was committed to a mental institution (68-69). Located in the nation’s capital, it was

called the Government Hospital for the Insane. The brilliant surgeon was only thirty-four years

old. The following year he was declared incurable. His madness was deemed service connected.

The Army officially retired him with a pension for life (70-72). Upon his release from the

asylum in 1871, he spent time with his family in Connecticut. That fall he boarded a steamer

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headed for London with hope of regaining his sanity. He packed his watercolors, brushes, books,

and his gun (67-73).

The demons followed close behind. By Christmas time of 1871, having traveled the

continent, Minor settled on a flat in a seamy part of London called Lambeth. By day, he painted

beautiful watercolors. By night, he frequented brothels. When sleep did come, he battled the Irish

perverts who attacked him in his bed. He reported the molestations to Scotland Yard (15-17).

They would do nothing. The doctor would have to protect himself. It was self-defense that

fateful bitter cold January night of 1872 that Dr. Minor, pistol in hand, chased the Irish intruder

from his room and through the streets of Lambeth. Shots rang out. Farm boy turned factory

worker George Merritt, an innocent father of seven, lie dying on the icy cobblestone street under

the soft lamplight (10-11). By spring, the assailant had been declared criminally insane. The

Broadmoor Asylum would be Dr. Minor’s new home, as the judge declared, “...until her

Majesty’s Pleasure be Known” (20-21). It was a life sentence.

Both Dr. Minor and the ‘big dictionary’ were languishing. It was 1879 when Dr. Murray,

a longtime member of the Philological Society, officially assumed the position of editor and

Oxford agreed to be the publisher. The call for volunteers was renewed. Minor, who had made

amends with Merritt’s widow, responded to the call for dictionary contributors. With Mrs.

Merritt’s help, he had amassed a personal library in his cell. Minor attended to the task of

lexicography with meticulous detail and dedication. The doctor began regular correspondence

with Dr. Murray inquiring as to the status of the dictionary. Soon, the editors at the scriptorium

(the name of the structure where the work took place) came to rely more and more on

Minor’s contributions (131-144). He was a valuable member of the team. With his assistance, the

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letters ‘a’ and ‘b’ had been completed and made available to the public (164)

And, so it went. Dr. Murray and his staff locked up in the scriptorium for long hours

consumed by their dedication the dictionary: Dr. Minor and his demons locked up at Broadmoor,

laboring diligently on dictionary contributions. Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Year was in 1897. A

grand dinner was held at Oxford to celebrate the dedication of the third volume containing the

letter ‘c’ to her Majesty. An invitation was sent to Dr. Minor, whose contribution had been

duly noted in the dictionary’s dedication (167). He did not appear. It was this absence that

prompted Dr. Murray to board the train for Crowthrone that cold and misty autumn day to

personally thank the illusive Dr. Minor.

In the years to come, Murray and Minor developed a deep personal connection. Murray

and his wife would visit the asylum on occasion. With the progress on the Oxford English

Dictionary, Murray’s esteem continued to rise while Minor’s self-esteem continued its decline.

He had been confined for some thirty years. In an attempt to be purged of the infernal demons,

he committed the ultimate act of self-mutilation: castration (193-194). Shortly thereafter, Dr.

Minor would be allowed to return to the United States. He would be incarcerated at the same

mental institution from which he was released so many years ago. Dr. and Mrs. Murray bid him

bon voyage at Crowthorne. In the guardianship of his nephew, he boarded a steamer for the long

journey home.

The letter ‘t’ was completed in 1913. Dr. Murray passed away in 1915; his work

unfinished (206-207). Minor’s nephew had his uncle moved to a nursing facility in Connecticut.

He died in March of 1920 at almost eighty-six years old (217). Neither friend would see the New

York Times headline on New Year’s Day some eight years later proclaiming the ‘big dictionary’

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was complete at last (219). There were twelve volumes, over 400,000 words and nearly 2 million

quotations (220). It would become an enduring tribute to the American Civil War surgeon. The

brilliant Yale graduate’s war-born demons drove him to murder, but they could not keep him

from making a monumental contribution to society.

Winchester stumbled across a rather dry article about dictionary making. It vaguely

mentioned Minor. His curiosity sent him on a quest to uncover 100-year-old prison records,

hospital files, and other materials from which he has spun a tale of intrigue and truth. He

documents the process by which this story came to be told in acknowledgments that he includes

at the end of the book (231-237). The story is further enhanced by illustration by Philip Hood.

Winchester, Simon. The Professor And The Madman. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

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