A Fall from Grace

It is my duty to report a slight misadventure. Whilst perched high upon the Scriptorium stepladder yesterday evening, overstretching myself in a futile attempt to reach Grace (a little known philosophical masterpiece from 1612 by Sir Geffrye Buccleuch), I missed my footing and found myself soon – sooner, indeed, than was advisable for a man of my age and size – prone upon the polished parquet.

My own rapid descent was soon matched by that of a hefty tome from the Anthropology section, dislodged it would appear by my flailing arms.

‘Great Scott, Teed, is it all right?’ exclaimed Mr Bennett from his illustrator’s eyrie.

‘To which part of my anatomy are you referring?’ I enquired from my painfully supine position.

‘Not you, you buffoon – the book!’

Luckily I was able to alleviate Mr Bennett’s concerns by informing him that my chest had broken the fall of said tome.

‘Which volume was it?’ he enquired.

‘A large one’, I replied, rubbing my ribs.

Bibliographical concern for the volume’s well-being drew my colleague swiftly from his artistic perch, and he was soon lovingly caressing it.

‘It’s Lorimarr Sedgewick’s Lost Tribes of America‘, Mr Bennett informed me as I picked myself painfully from the floor.

‘Which volume?’ I enquired.

‘Volume III. Ah, this takes me back, Mr Teed’.

I joined my colleague in poring over the third volume of Sedgewick’s landmark anthropological work.

‘Unless I’m mistaken’, continued Mr Bennett, ‘this volume was the source for one of our earliest Lexiconfusions’.

‘You are indeed in the right, Mr Bennett’, I replied. ‘I believe the word was Genial. It must have been one of the first Lexes that we created for The Times of London, as our American cousins so charmingly term it’.

‘I’ll look it up in the Lex scrapbook – I mean the Index’, my colleague said, and went to fetch the immense folio in which we archive all our published and unpublished researches.

In the meantime I repaired to a fireside armchair in an effort to soothe my aching torso, and began to reacquaint myself with Lorimarr Sedgewick’s remarkable piece of work, hoping to stumble once more upon the citation which had once inspired us.

Peace in Our Time

It appears that peace has broken out all over the Scriptorium. Perhaps it was the momentary appearance of spring sunshine through the high windows, or certain herbal additions made by Mrs Spelling to her chocolate macaroons, but détente has softened to entente, which in turn has become once more the special relationship of old.

‘A round of Junior Scrabble, Mr Bennett?’ I offered my colleague after we had taken tea.

‘Only if we play Polish rules’, he replied.

‘Quite so. With Latvian wildcards?’ 

‘Absolutely. Fetch the board, Mr Teed’.

And thus ensued a thoroughly diverting game, which Mr Bennett won thanks mainly to tactics taught him by Boris, our recently employed plumber from Gdansk.

Word for Sat. 19 April: Vent

 

Vent (n.): A vertical slit at the back or both sides

of a jacket.

  

I have to confess that after the horror that was Undergrowth, which Mr Bennett had reluctantly to draw last week, it was with something akin to a spirit of reconciliation that I pinned my suggestion of Vent to his drawing board whilst he tended to his morning ablutions.

   

For, truth be told, the atmosphere in the Scriptorium had been decidedly frosty for several days since the Undergrowth farrago. All our usual mutual pleasures, such as crosswords over Mrs Spelling’s chocolate macaroons, or fireside contests of Junior Scrabble, had been suspended. Mr Bennett was always ‘busy’ or ‘tired’. Nothing more was said, of course, this being England and we being truly English in our approach to emotional distress. But the frisson was there.

 

And so it was that I awaited Mr Bennett’s response to Vent – my peace offering, my olive branch, my flag of truce - with a not inconsiderable degree of trepidation. I had positioned myself in an armchair with a view of his desk, so that I might assume an insouciance behind my copy of Pick Me Up whilst carefully noting his expression.

 

Mr Bennett emerged from what the French would call his toilette reeking of Sage and Passionflower Milk Balm Douche Cleansing Lotion. My nostrils twitched behind my magazine, and momentarily I wondered if there was not a lady in the picture. Would that explain the sudden swings of mood?

 

Then he was at the desk and glancing with apparent disinterest at my suggestion. He said nothing, merely climbed onto his high perch, and thus we remained in stalemate while he sharpened innumerable pencils and I feigned interest in an account of a prison guard who fathered his own daughter’s child behind bars.

 

‘It’s a bit easy, isn’t it, Mr Teed?’ ventured Mr Bennett eventually.

‘Pardon me, Mr Bennett?’

My colleague waved the yellow Post-It note in my direction.

‘This word. Vent. A bit easy’.

 

I put down my copy of Pick Me Up, not without some feeling of relief, I have to say.

 

‘I thought our readers might appreciate that. I saw it more as a light repast after the somewhat indigestible fare we presented them with last week’.

‘Right. You mean you’re trying to buy me off with an easy one’.

 

I could see my friend’s ire was still bright. What more could I do, other than apologise and discuss the whole matter in what Mrs Spelling’s latest edition of Love & Housekeeping, which I had happened to glance at in the pantry, would call “an emotionally intelligent way”, which was obviously an utterly impossible course of action for an honourable Englishman?

 

‘I was merely acting with our readers’ best interests at heart’, I replied stiffly.

‘Tell it how you like. But I expect something more worthy of both this Scriptorium and our readers next week’.

 

Oh how my friend’s tongue doth lash. And yet, I believe he may have a point.

 

Word for Sat. 12 April: Undergrowth

Undergrowth (n.): A growth of short fine
hairs beneath longer ones; underfur.

The inspiration, if that is not too grand a phrase, for this week’s word came in the bath not long ago when, owing to the fact that Mrs Spelling had failed to replenish our stock of My Little Pony Bubble Bath, an increase in visibility led to a contemplation on the word ‘undergrowth’.

However, when I first presented my thoughts on the word to Mr Bennett, he was aghast. This was not an unsurprising reaction, in anticipation of which I had pinned my note to my colleague’s desk whilst he was attending to a stricken vole (Nature-worship being ever the burden of the artistic soul), which had been mauled by Professor Higgins, the Scriptorium cat. Thence I had retreated to stand in quiet contemplation of the southern reaches of the metropolis beside the rhythmic turbulence of the South Circular until such moment as might be judged safe to return.

‘How the ‘eckers do you expect me to draw ‘underfur’?’ thundered my illustrative amanuensis upon my return, the moment the baize door of the Scriptorium had clicked shut. It was always interesting to note the prominence of Mr Bennett’s northern roots when riled, and I made a mental addendum to further investigate the origins of “‘eckers” at a more propitious moment.

‘Tush, Mr Bennett. Does my note not seek to explain the extent to which my admittedly limited artistic sensibility has envisioned the illustrative interpretation?’

‘Don’t get cocky with me, lad. If you mean what you scribbled here – “perhaps some shrubs growing in the hairy undergrowth?” with your cheeky little question mark there trying to get you off the hook – well that’s not much help, thank you very much!’

There ensued what I believe the diplomatists refer to as ‘a free and frank discussion’, but finally my friend settled into his labours, and the silence of the Scriptorium was broken only by the crackle of the fire, the scratch of the nib and the occasional ejaculation of disgust from the drawing stool.

Such sounds are to me as lullabies to the infant babe, and thus it was that, having selected a volume of the great Dictionary (ECK-ELK) to peruse at the fireside, I was within moments in the arms of Morpheus.

‘Wake up, you old pedant!’ Mr Bennett was standing before me, his red sideburns glowing dangerously in the firelight. I took the paper he was holding out and examined the fruit of his labours.

‘It puts me in mind of Urbino’s Hunt in the Forest, Mr Bennett’.

‘Except there are no hunters, eh?’

‘Precisely, Mr Bennett. No hunters. I have no idea if our reader, or readers, will ‘get it’ as they say, but the work is very fine’.

‘Is that damning with faint praise, Mr Teed?’ Mr Bennett enquired in his most dangerous, steely tone. ‘Because if it is, you’re going to find this nib so far up your…’ But thankfully the destination of said nib was left to the imagination, as at that moment Mrs Spelling arrived with her tray bearing tea and cakes.

 

Word for Sat. 5 April: Vane

Vane (n.): A fin or plate fitted to a projectile
or missile to provide stabilization or guidance.

‘Why vane?’ asked Mr Bennett in his customary way just as my eyes were closing beside the Scriptorium fire.

‘And why the devil not?’ I retorted with some vigour. Then, adjusting my torso into a less supine mode upon the leather armchair, I relented somewhat and proferred the beginnings of an explanation: ‘Like many of my findings, it was accidental’.

‘You mean you stuck a pin in the big book’, my colleague countered roguishly as he sharpened his pencils in the dwindling light. Ignoring this, I continued:

‘My attention had been drawn to the term ‘vandyck’, and its use as a verb and as an adverbial past participle to mean ‘zigzagged’, as in the 1860 usage ‘the vandycked morocco valance’.’

‘Well’, surmised Mr Bennett, ‘we’ve done ‘zigzagged’ already to mean ‘drunk’, and we couldn’t do Van Dyck because it’s a proper name’.

‘Indeed – although the word has come to lose its capitalization over time. However, you are quite right, in that the second, or better known, definition is a proper noun.’

‘All the same’, mused the illustrator as his nib scratched the surface of the drawing paper, ‘I could have made a nice drawing of a zigzagging Van Dyke on horseback’.

‘My thoughts exactly, Mr Bennett. But in the end you had to make do with a weather-vane on a missile, which happened to be on the adjoining column’.

‘My point still stands, then, Mr Teed. You stuck a pin in the big book’.

Welcome to the Lexiconfusion blog

So this is what the young people these days call a blog. I must admit that when Mr Bennett first used the word, I thought a piece of gristle from Mrs Spelling’s steak and kidney pie had caught in his throat and he was trying to dislodge it with a violent eructation:

‘Mr Teed, shall we start a – [blog!]…?’

‘Bless you, Mr Bennett, that was a nasty one’, I replied from the top of the Scriptorium’s stepladders, where I was perusing volumes relating to impetigo.

‘No, a blog!’ Mr Bennett repeated.

‘There you go again. I shall have to speak to Mrs Spelling about her butcher. Far too much gristle.’

‘Damn it, man’, my colleague ejaculated, ‘it’s what youngsters do on the internet when they are not being preyed on by paedophiles’.

‘And what, pray, should induce us to do what the youngsters do?’ I begged to know, descending the ladder with a copy of Dr Saess’s Green Legs and Hams firmly under my arm. ‘Do we not bury ourselves here within this bilbiographic mausoleum’ – I waved a hand at our beloved, lofty Scriptorium – ‘precisely so that we have no contact with the youngsters and their misguided antics?’

‘Quite so, Mr Teed, quite so, but a blog might just, well, be useful. For our readers’.

‘Our readers, Mr Bennett? But we have no readers!’

‘Someone must read our Lexiconfusion entries which have appeared weekly in Saturday’s Times magazine since 2004′, Mr Bennett retorted in a strangely disembodied voice, sounding remarkably like a man in a cheap advertisement, in fact.

‘Well we know who those readers are. They comprise you, me, Mrs Spelling, Mrs Spelling’s sister Muriel and the Revd Oakes, who wrote in 2005 to take violent issue with our interpretation of the word Quarrel. I make that five.’

‘Mr Teed you do us both an injustice. For all we know there could be as many as a dozen people out there who bother to read our work. And a blog would connect us to them’.

Not since Mr Bennett’s encounter with the Patagonian Paper-clip Priest had I known him to be this evangelical, and so it was with that in mind that I consented to try his suggestion, and thus find myself writing these first words of our very own weblog. I hope there is nothing thus far that may offend the Revd Oakes.