Stranded in Time: Andrew Clark and the Language of World War I

Mugglestone, Lynda

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-64300-3_8

Lynda Mugglestone⁵

Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History ((NDBH))

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Abstract

This chapter examines the stranding of Andrew Clark’s real-time record of the language of World War I in ways which explore both his own sense of failure (the project remained unrevised and incomplete) as well as the arresting achievement it still presents. Archived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford are almost 100 alphabetically or thematically organized notebooks and files—many headed “English Words in War-Time,” filled with carefully dated and annotated evidence, by which Clark aimed to create a “record of the great struggle” from a linguistic point of view. It remains an almost entirely neglected work. Clark has, in effect, been “stranded” too, along with his philological expertise and historical principles which also reveal—and refract—his close engagement with the then ongoing first edition of the OED. “Words in War-Time” is, however, a project that was deliberately archived, by Clark himself, in ways which favored the autonomy of the notebook page over print, while revealing distinctive forms of inclusivity. In tracking language on the move in World War I, anything, Clark argued, might be a text, and capable of exhibiting the ways in which language mediated a period of unprecedented historical change.

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Notes

1.
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, in which the Words are Deduced from their Originals and Illustrated in their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers, 2 vols. (London: W. Strahan, J. and P. Knapton et al., 1755), C1^v, C2^v.
2.
Johnson, Dictionary, B2^r.
3.
“English Words in War-Time” can be found at Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Misc.e.265–e.329. Clark’s interest in war-time language also prompted a range of other collective projects, which importantly share the same methodology. Thanks are due to Colin Oberlin-Harris for permission to cite material from the Clark collection, and to the Leverhulme Fund for funding for the wider “Words in War-Time Project.” On Clark as a war-time linguist, see Lynda Mugglestone, Writing a War of Words: Andrew Clark and the Search for Meaning in WW1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021).
4.
Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia: Or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. 2 vols. (London: James and John Knapton, 1728), vol. 1, xxii.
5.
G.H. Martin, “Clark, Andrew (1856–1922),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (September 23, 2004). Accessed September 9, 2020, https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:3030/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-55619.
6.
https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:4563/10.1093/ref:odnb/55619. James Munson edited a one-volume selection from the diaries in 1985. See James Munson, ed., Echoes of the Great War: The Diary of the Rev. Andrew Clark (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), ix. The diaries themselves, under the general heading “Echoes of the Great War” (henceforth War Diary) can be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, at MS Eng.hist. e.88–177c.
7.
Clark, War Diary (1914) I, 2^r.
8.
Andrew Clark, ed., The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary, of Oxford, 1623–1695, described by Himself. 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891–99); Andrew Clark and John Aubrey, “Brief Lives”, Chiefly of Contemporaries, Set down between 1669 & 1696: Ed. from the Author’s MSS. by A. Clark. 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898). All subsequent references are to these editions.
9.
Clark and Aubrey, Brief Lives, 6.
10.
Andrew Clark, ed., Lincoln Diocese Documents, 1450–1544 (London: Published for the Early English Text Society by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1914). Clark’s word-lists appear on pp. 364ff of his edition.
11.
Clark, Lincoln Diocese Documents, vi.
12.
Richard Chenevix Trench, On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries: Being the Substance of Two papers read before the Philological Society, Nov. 5, and Nov. 19, 1857 (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1860), 5–6.
13.
James Murray, The Evolution of English Lexicography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), 48.
14.
See, e.g., Robert DeMaria, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1997); Lynda Mugglestone, “The Values of Annotation: Reading Johnson Reading Shakespeare,” in New Essays on Samuel Johnson: Revaluation, ed. Anthony Lee (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018), 3–24.
15.
On antecedent stages of the OED, and the evidence of proof-sheets, see Lynda Mugglestone, Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (London and New York: Yale University Press, 2005).
16.
Philip Horne, “Briefly Noted,” The Guardian Review, April 7, 2018, 32.
17.
“Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library for 1913”, Oxford University Gazette, March 11, 1914, 558.
18.
Andrew Clark, A Bodleian Guide for Visitors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), iii. By 1914 accessions had increased to c. 52,000 volumes per year though this decreased during the war years.
19.
Andrew Clark to Falconer Madan, February 9, 1914. Bodleian Library, MS. Library Records d.1030: “The Rev. A. Clark’s Donations, 1885–.”
20.
“Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library for 1915,” Oxford University Gazette, May 3, 1916, 436.
21.
Ellen Gruber Garvey, Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 50ff.
22.
“‘The Battle’: A Chaplain Among the Wounded,” Scotsman, March 27, 1915 [Clarke, WiW].
23.
Clark, WiW (XXIX), 171. Citations for biff in the modern OED track usage back to 1889. Its first appearance as headword occurs in the 1933 Supplement.
24.
James A. H. Murray, “Directions to Readers for the Dictionary,” reproduced in the Appendix to K. M. E. Murray, Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). Readers were also invited to provide a short definition “if convenient.”
25.
Henri Bejoint, Tradition and Innovation in Modern English Dictionaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
26.
Bodleian Library, MP/9/6/1882, James A. H. Murray to Bartholomew Price, June 19, 1882.
27.
Bodleian Library, MP/18/4/1883, The New English Dictionary: Suggestions for Guidance in Preparing Copy for the Press.
28.
Bodleian Library, MP/24/4/1896, New English Dictionary: Correspondence and Minutes Printed by Order of the Board.
29.
Bodleian Library, MP/14/6/1882. Henry Hucks Gibbs to J. A. H. Murray, June 14, 1882.
30.
On these contrastive methods in historical representation, see Lynda Mugglestone, “Transcripts of Time: Examining Historical Methods in the Oxford English Dictionary and Andrew Clark’s English Words in War-Time”, in Historical Language Dictionaries: Approaches and Comparisons, ed. Hassan Hamze (Doha: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, forthcoming 2021).
31.
Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Miracle Town,” Scotsman, November 28, 1916 [Clarke, WiW].
32.
“Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s Tribute,” Daily Express, November 20, 1914 [Clarke, WiW].
33.
Daily Express, March 2, 1916 [Clarke, WiW].
34.
Manfred Görlach, Text Types and the History of English (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004), 106.
35.
Clark, War Diary (1914) IV, 82^r.
36.
Clark, War Diary (1914) VIII, 3^r.
37.
Daily Telegraph, October 11, 1918 [Clarke, WiW].
38.
“Fair Porters on the G. C. W.,” Star, April 7, 1915 [Clarke, WiW].
39.
See Call girl (n.), OED Online, accessed September 16, 2020, https://www.oed.com. Call boy is defined as “A person, typically a boy or young man, whose job is to assist the prompter, and call the actors when they are required on stage.”
40.
Daily Express, 28 May 1915 [Clarke, WiW].
41.
H. J. Greenwall, “War and Women’s Dress: The Military Touch in Winter Fashions,” Daily Express, December 8, 1914 [Clarke, WiW].
42.
Daily Express, January 27, 1916 [Clarke, WiW].
43.
See, e.g., Scotsman, 19 September 1914 [Clarke, WiW]: “The enemy’s trenches north of Chalons are a metre (just over a yard) deep, with shell shields every twenty metres and rest chambers. The multiple lines of the trenches are flanked with further defence works, concealing metrailleuses.” Shell-shield remains absent from the OED.
44.
Samuel Johnson, The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (London: J. and P. Knapton, 1747), 2.
45.
Murray, Evolution of English Lexicography, 19.
46.
See James Murray, “Preface to Volume I,” in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society, vol. 1, A–B (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), v–xiv.
47.
See, e.g., James Murray, “Preface to Volume II,” in New English Dictionary, vol. 2. C (1893), vii; James Murray, “Preface to Volume V,” in New English Dictionary, vol. 5, H–K (1901), vii. See also James Murray, “Preface to Volume VII,” in A New English Dictionary, vol. 7, O–P (1909), [n.p.].
48.
Clark, ed., Life and Times, vol. 1, 5.
49.
Bodleian Library, MP/2/4/1896, Philip Lyttelton Gell to James A. H. Murray, April 2, 1896.
50.
Clark, WiW (XXIX), 2^v.
51.
Clark, WiW (XXX), 7.
52.
Clark, WiW (XXX), 23.
53.
Clark, WiW (XXX), 27–8.
54.
Clark, War Diary, Andrew Clark to Falconer Madan, November 25, 1915.
55.
Paul Korshin, “Johnson and the Renaissance Dictionary,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974): 306.
56.
Bod. Library Records d. 1030, Andrew Clark to Falconer Madan, November 12, 1915.
57.
Bod. Library Records d. 1030, Andrew Clark to Falconer Madan, January 17, 1916.
58.
[Falconer Madan], “The late Dr. Andrew Clark,” Bodleian Quarterly Record 3 (1922): 201.
59.
William Craigie and Charles Onions, eds., A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Introduction, Supplement, and Bibliography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), vi.
60.
“Notes and News,” The Bodleian Quarterly Record 2 (1917), 6.
61.
For a comparative study of Clark and the Supplement, see Lynda Mugglestone, “‘Living history’: Andrew Clark, the OED and the Language of the First World War,” in Current Issues in Late Modern English, ed. I. Tieken Boon van Ostade and Wim van der Wurff (Amsterdam: Peter Lang, 2009), 229–49.
62.
Trench, On Some Deficiencies, 5.
63.
OED Archives at Oxford University Press, OED/MISC/393/256.i Kenneth Sisam to William Craigie, January 26, 1932.
64.
OED/MISC/393/74, Kenneth Sisam to Mrs Heseltine, January 1, 1932.
65.
OED/MISC/20/4/, undated note by Charles Onions.
66.
OED/MISC/393/21.1, Kenneth Sisam to William Craigie, January 26, 1932.
67.
OED/MISC/393/24, Kenneth Sisam to Sir Henry McNally, February 2, 1932.
68.
OED/MISC/393/54, Kenneth Sisam to G. G. Loane, March 9, 1932.
69.
OED/PP/1926/13.i–ii, William Craigie to Raymond Chapman, January 12, 1926.
70.
See, e.g., Christian Mair, Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation, Standardization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). As Mair notes (57), while OED evidence for the twentieth century suggests a systematic decline in lexical creativity as compared with that of previous eras, this confirms not a shift in praxis per se but rather than “much work still remains to do for lexicographers of present-day English.”
71.
Joan Beal, English in Modern Times, 1700–1945 (London: Arnold, 2004), 31. On assumptions about the stasis and communicative gaps of war-time use, see, e.g., Hazel Hutchison, The War that Used up Words: American Writers and the First World War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015).
72.
Penelope Lively, Ammonites & Leaping Fish: A Life in Time (London: Penguin, 2014), 5.
73.
Eric Partridge, The Gentle Art of Lexicography as Pursued and Experienced by an Addict (London: Andre Deutsch, 1963), 19.

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Lynda Mugglestone

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Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Linn Holmberg
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Maria Simonsen

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Mugglestone, L. (2021). Stranded in Time: Andrew Clark and the Language of World War I. In: Holmberg, L., Simonsen, M. (eds) Stranded Encyclopedias, 1700–2000. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64300-3_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64300-3_8
Published: 18 February 2021
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