Having recently written posts about books of one sort or another, I had in mind writing about word games in the Kripke Collection, but they weren’t on the table where I’d first seen them. A colleague pointed out the boxes now holding the games, but as I took in the boxes stacked behind them, I saw one marked “Journals, Madeline and others.” I decided to leave the games for another day.
The box of journals was tightly packed, in two columns. I started on the left, but the first two journals I inspected were still blank books. I had hoped to find one of Madeline’s journals right away, of course, but I was disappointed. On the right, I saw an obviously older, red-covered notebook standing out from the crowd. I drew it from the box, opened it, and once I’d realized what I was holding, I gasped. It isn’t a fancy dictionary, but it is unique — it’s a personal dictionary, that is, a dictionary written by and for its original owner.
The manuscript book, written throughout in the same legible hand (suspiciously, without many corrections) is titled
Lexicon
compiled for my own use
J. B. C.
It doesn’t take long to identify J. B. C. On the inside front cover, one finds a red bookplate for J. B. Calwell. Above that, someone has penciled, “This appears the autograph MS of the Millionaire Caldwell.” A stamp on the end paper identifies Calwell’s location as “White Sulr Sprs Va.,” with the date “1824.” The inside back cover announces that the lexicon was “compiled by J Bowyer Calwell,” on all of which evidence, we’re getting somewhere.
John Bowyer Calwell (1798-1875) had a Bowyer mother, Mary, called “Polly.” The Bowyers were long-established in the White Sulphur Springs area of what was then Virginia but would end up in West Virginia when it became a state in 1863. James Calwell, a successful Marylander, moved to Virginia just to marry Polly, and John was one of their brood. Many members of the family, before and after James and John, are remembered as Caldwells, suggesting something about the name’s popular pronunciation — the inscriber who identified John Bowyer Caldwell as a millionaire either cared about spelling or himself pronounced the name with the “d.” James Calwell was a Democratic-Republican, an ally and friend of Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser (congressman, senator, Secretary of State), whose compromising ran out the clock on the Antebellum period. John Bowyer Calwell was a Democratic-Republican, too, who served two terms in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The Boyers owned considerable property around White Sulphur Springs, an area called Greenbrier, including the springs themselves. They developed a spa next to the springs, just cottages and a tavern, but famous people came to relax and take the waters, including Clay. In 1910, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway bought the property and developed it into the present deluxe resort, The Greenbrier, well-known to many, though too expensive for most. The Bowyers and Calwells were the original proprietors, which helps to explain how John Bowyer Calwell became a millionaire.
The lexicon itself is more surprising than not, but the surprises aren’t immediately apparent from the manuscript. The notebook is 218 pages long. Entries in the lexicon are basic, just a headword and definition, none of the apparatus (pronunciation, etymology, illustrative quotations) we expect in modern dictionaries. The word list begins with “Abacted Drawn away by stealth or violence” and it ends with “Zootomist a dissection of the bodies of brutes.” The last definition raises a flag about Calwell’s lexicographical proficiency, as zootomist would refer to the dissector rather than the dissection, but most of the definitions are sound and an amateur deserves some latitude for error.
The surprises begin with evidence of Calwell’s knowledge of Greek, Latin, and French throughout the lexicon. Clearly, he was well-educated, though I haven’t been able to determine yet whether he attended university or learned his languages under private tutelage, or both. Interest in languages certainly aligns well with the somewhat unusual project of writing one’s personal dictionary.
But that project itself is the great surprise. I reckon there are many more personal dictionaries or partial dictionaries out there to collect — surely, more people start a dictionary than finish it, just as more people start diaries or journals than write in them persistently. So, the surprise isn’t just that Calwell started a dictionary, but that he saw one through to completion. But why did he do so? Was the project a jeu d’esprit for a wealthy, educated man in the Antebellum South — too much time on his hands, so he made a dictionary rather than play in the Devil’s playground? Or was making a dictionary for Calwell like solving word puzzles for my grandfather, a way for someone with a love of words to pass time pleasantly and keep the memory sharp?
Most important, writing a personal dictionary was, strictly, unnecessary. In 1824, a Virginia millionaire could have imported Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) or purchased the Reverend Henry Todd’s revision of Johnson (1818, advertising for which was a subject of an earlier post on this blog) or Noah Webster’s Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806). He could have adopted John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary as the family dictionary (first published in America in 1803, as illustrated with another family in yet another previous post). Indeed, he may have owned all of these dictionaries and more — a careful collation between his personal lexicon and those dictionaries might show that he copied words or definitions from them in making his own.
But he made his own lexicon, anyway, and any great collection of dictionaries ought to include at least one autographical example, representing who knows how many others. We haven’t yet discovered how Madeline acquired Calwell’s lexicon, but one can easily see its allure and finding it in the collection is only the beginning — the book begs for scholarly answers to the many questions it raises at a glance.
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