5

The Lexicographer’s
Fifth Column

In 1828, Webster was ailing. He tired easily and hoped he had seen the last of any heavy dictionary work, including major revisions of his quarto. One of many problems for him, and in the long term for his heirs, was that even before the unabridged quarto was published, he knew it would never make much money. It would be too expensive and bulky for most people, as has been the case with most unabridged printed dictionaries ever since, and would not pay its way.

It was also clear even to Webster, and especially to Percival, who knew the unabridged manuscript better than anyone except Webster himself, that it would meet with criticism because of its orthographical eccentricities (e.g. bridegoom for bridegroom, ieland for island, turnep for turnip, wo for woe) and the flawed etymology he inherited from Horne Tooke. This was a particular problem, since the object of education was to instruct pupils, not confuse them. The demand of the hour was for a revised, smaller, single-volume octavo abridgment of the 1828 quarto (an octavo size is formed by folding a printer’s sheet three times, making eight leaves or sixteen pages), one less expensive and more accessible and practical for the average user that would tap into the larger market waiting to be exploited by an imaginative publisher and editor. Such an edition would need to answer the requirements and demands of an increasingly large and receptive literate mass market. He would be entering uncharted editorial and commercial waters; and his hesitancy proved to be well-founded, when through various miscalculations and failures, he was never able to capitalize on the market that existed.

A more immediate obstacle to a compact octavo edition, however, was Webster himself. Convinced that his work was the product of a sacred “duty” and mission that he continued to hold in trust in behalf of the American people, he felt a calling to protect it from less inspired and knowledgeable, even if well-meaning, editors who might wish to meddle with the bond he imagined existed between himself and the American reading public. He feared potential efforts by others to reconstitute his 1828 edition with revisions that in his “retirement” he would be less able to control. Anyone who attempted such revisions would therefore have him to reckon with. As for alleged poaching by competing lexicographers, they of course had to be fought off like predatory wolves.

2

It was no mere coincidence that the publication of Webster’s 1828 unabridged edition, and the dictionary wars that broke out full force soon afterward, coincided with a print revolution between 1825 and 1850 that greatly advanced the age of mass communication. At the center of this development was the invention of the steam-powered printing press by the Germans Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, in 1802, and then refined by Koenig in London around 1810. The invention used steam to power the rotary motion of cylinders that replaced the flatbed on which paper, or whatever was to be printed, had been placed. (Very labor intensive, flatbed printing had been the mechanized method for centuries, ever since Gutenberg invented his printing press in the fifteenth century.) The ink was applied to the type by these rollers. The invention enabled rapid printing, requiring far less manpower, on a scale never before possible.

The machine was first installed in the United States in 1826 by the American Tract Society, after which media in the country expanded in a rush of many different types of both entertaining and informative printed information: small town and city newspapers, magazines, annuals, the penny press, pamphlets, literary periodicals, book publishers, civic and reform groups that published books promoting their causes, and government reports of one kind or another on a widening array of subjects. At the same time, the proliferation of printed material encouraged literacy, since people had a greater quantity of inexpensively available printed material to read and therefore enjoyed a valuable incentive for learning both to read and write. “Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816.¹

Among other factors driving literacy were an expanding middle-class readership; the increase of free public schooling and female teachers; a growing link between education and a strong republican government; population diversity; a decline in regionalism; a diversity of occupations and increased wealth; a larger urban population; the evangelical Protestant tradition, with its emphasis on Bible reading and publication of new editions; advances in printing techniques such as stereotyping (see appendix C), which made books less expensive; and the developing morality of individual aspiration. America by the end of the eighteenth century was not lagging behind England in literacy rates. Available evidence has it that the United States by the time Webster’s dictionary was launched had even a higher rate of literacy than England.²

3

Even before the unabridged 1828 dictionary was published, Webster had in mind an octavo abridgment—not a school dictionary—for the general market, but one that would not involve much work, merely streamline the 1828 edition by getting rid of illustrative quotations and most of the etymological commentary, shorten definitions, and give the whole work a perkier look. His friends advised him that such an edition was needed if he ever hoped to make money from his work.

Webster mentioned his idea of a compact octavo edition to his publisher, Sherman Converse, and made it clear he did not want to do the work involved. It was at this point that Converse angered Webster. Webster had written impatiently and dismissively to Converse shortly before the quarto was published on May 23, 1828: “Your letter of the 20th contains remarks respecting my proposal to stereotype a small dictionary, which it was and is improper for you to make. You are not acquainted with the circumstances and views by which I am governed, nor are your rights in the least concerned in my plans. . . . My friends here all agree that the Dictionary must be abridged into the Octavo form, but I cannot do the work myself & who shall be procured to do the work, I do not know.” But Converse maintained a couple of years later that when Webster mentioned an octavo abridgment to him, he was skeptical, feeling that it would be too much work to turn the 1828 quarto into a saleable commodity: “As to an abridgement of the Dictionary, I never had any intention, wish, or thought of making one, or causing one to be made. I don’t think the idea ever crossed my mind that such a thing could be done. If it did, I have no recollection of it, and were I sufficiently destitute of principles I should be unwilling to compass myself so great a blockhead as to attempt it.”³

Converse already was on very uncertain ground with Webster. After Webster returned to New Haven from England and was growing desperate because he could not find anyone in America willing to risk the investment of publishing the dictionary, Converse had saved the day. One might have thought Webster forever after would be grateful to Converse, but he was not. He thought instead that Converse was the one who ought to be grateful for the fame and chance offered to him to have a part in the publication of what he believed was a major work in American history. On top of that, Webster was accusing Converse of defrauding him and charging for extra expenses resulting from poor sales, a “penalty for being unfortunate,” as he explained on December 8, 1829, to Hezekiah Howe, the book’s printer, from whom Converse had borrowed money to publish the book. He complained that Converse “has charged me also with a large sum for proof-reading, which is contrary to all justice,” as well as for engraving his picture, which he refused to pay. One way to save money there, of course, would have been to abandon Webster’s idea of including his picture. After all, not even Johnson included his own picture in his first edition, nor did Webster’s major competition later on. This was his reward, Webster groused, for the “liberality” and generosity he had manifested toward Converse: “During the execution of the work, I received letters from Mr. Converse filled with abusive language wholly unmerited, and which was not easy for me to overlook.” He wanted nothing more to do with the man “after the vexation and embarrassment I have experienced from Mr. Converse for two or three years past.” For his part, Converse did feel some guilt about the exasperated way he had written to Webster, but he could not recollect he had ever written anything “abusive”: “I asked his forgiveness from I hope right motives. I hope he has forgiven me, and that I also have forgiven him in my heart.”⁴

There was more to Webster’s resentment than just Converse’s dealings with him over the 1828 quarto. Since Webster was uncertain about whom to hire to edit the octavo, Converse took it upon himself to begin looking around for someone to take it on. His attention was caught by a new edition in 1828 of Alexander Chalmers’s 1820 octavo abridgment of John Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary. It was edited by a retiring scholar and bachelor living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few hundred yards from Harvard College. His name was Joseph Emerson Worcester.

4

Born in 1784 in Bedford, New Hampshire, the very year Samuel Johnson died, Joseph Worcester was twenty-six years Webster’s junior. He grew up on his father’s farm in Hollis, New Hampshire, with his eight brothers and six sisters. The family was well schooled and had a reputation for erudition. The children’s father, Jesse, spent a few years teaching, was an occasional contributor to public journals, and authored at least one book. Four of Worcester’s brothers attended Harvard; and one, Yale. A younger brother, Samuel, wrote a sequel to Webster’s speller in 1831, and in 1833 the American Primary Spelling Book.

Young Joseph, the second of the brothers, graduated with distinction from Phillips Academy in Andover in 1807—he and his elder brother, Jesse, who also graduated with distinction, were there together for four years. There is a sketch of Joseph in the Phillips Bulletin, written more than a century later but sounding accurate, which portrays him as having all the makings of a retiring, private scholar, not one by nature inclined to mingle in the lives and activities of the other boys or likely to make a big splash in the company of men and women:

In his manner he was reserved, and he was hesitant in his speech, as if in quest of the right word. His natural shyness had been accentuated by his rather lonely existence, for he had few friends. His qualities were substantial, not showy. He was no romantic figure, full of dash and fire; it was his function,—and his pleasure—, to plod doggedly along, producing one reference book after another. The lure of philological research, the joy of building an exact definition, the satisfaction of hunting a word to its origins,—these were his delights. He had little originality. . . . It is men of this type who bear the burdens of the world.

As for his character, the sketch highlights qualities universally confirmed by all who knew him, and countless who did not: “[H]e was without a stain. He bore suffering with equanimity and aspersion without complaint.” One of his nephews spoke of his “forbearance, gentleness, and kindness.” Joseph and his brother Jesse both planned to go on to Dartmouth College, but Jesse took ill that summer and soon afterward died, whereupon Joseph decided to enter Yale instead as a sophomore in 1809 at the age of twenty-five, where he discovered his affinity for debate and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in the top four of his class. He graduated in two years after establishing himself there as a promising scholar. At the age of twenty-eight he made his way to Salem, Massachusetts, where he taught at a private academy for several years. He may have chosen Salem as the place to open his school because his uncle Samuel Worcester lived there, a feisty orthodox minister at the Tabernacle Church who had turned down a professorship of theology at Dartmouth.⁵

In one of those literary coincidences over which one can only marvel, one of Worcester’s thirty pupils at Salem was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was born there in 1804. For the first eight months of his formal education, Hawthorne attended Worcester’s school like any other pupil, but in November 1812 a ball hit his foot violently at school, which rendered him lame and sentenced him to more than a year of painful convalescence. In a conscientious and caring manner, Worcester then took it upon himself to teach Hawthorne at home during that period. He was a taskmaster with high standards, however, who appears at times to have made the boy grumble to his parents. Patiently and with his own wide reading to draw on, Worcester exposed his captive pupil to a wide range of authors, including John Bunyan, John Milton, Edmund Spenser, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley” novels, the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, and particularly Shakespeare. According to one of Hawthorne’s biographers, he may even have acquainted Hawthorne with James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, a significant addition in light of Worcester’s lifelong devotion to Samuel Johnson. Hawthorne once reminisced that Worcester had taught him the value of words. Worcester in later years referred to him as “a very pleasant and interesting young pupil.”⁶

Tired of the arduous life of a teacher, in 1816 Worcester moved to Andover, Massachusetts, where scholarship now became his life. It is not clear how he made a living, but he promptly began doing research on geography, his first love. For scholarly work on the scale he envisioned himself doing, however, he needed to be near large libraries, so in 1819 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived within walking distance of Harvard’s vast collections. He immediately thrived in that world, partaking of the cultural, social, and literary life of both Boston and Harvard. Between 1817 and 1828, he published several major works on geography and history that earned him highly favorable national attention as well as an excellent income—among them, Elements of Geography: Ancient and Modern with an Atlas (1819), An Epitome of Modern Geography with Maps: For the Use of Common Schools (1820), Epitome of History (1820), a two-volume Sketch of the Earth and Its Inhabitants (1823), and Elements of History, Ancient and Modern (1826). In 1825, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded by John Adams and others during the War of Independence and headquartered in Cambridge. Several of his books surpassed all previous works on their subjects and became standard texts for schools. It was after 1825 that he began to take a greater interest in history and then language.⁷

Quickly after his move to Cambridge, Worcester’s character and temperament became well-known there. William Newell, governor of New Jersey and of the Washington Territory, wrote in a memoir for the American Historical Association in Boston in 1880 that Worcester “had nothing of the selfishness of the mere literary recluse and hard worker. His absorption in his studies never made him forgetful of the wants and claims of others.” Another biographical sketch of Worcester recalling those early Cambridge years was provided some thirty years after Worcester’s death by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. A native of Cambridge, Higginson remembered him there during the 1830s, when Worcester was about fifty and Higginson in his teens. Higginson in his own right became an interesting figure in American social thought. A liberal thinker and prolific author on a variety of subjects, he is remembered perhaps mostly for his long and fruitful friendship with Emily Dickinson, who called him her “Preceptor.” His affectionate anecdote about Worcester captures a glimpse of the latter’s quietly industrious and retiring character:

Among the various academic guests who used to gather in my mother’s hospitable parlor on Sunday evenings, no figure is more vivid in my memory than one whom [James Russell] Lowell in his Fireside Travels has omitted to sketch. This was Dr. Joseph E. Worcester, whose “Elements of History, Ancient and Modern,” I had faithfully studied at school; and who was wont to sit silent, literally by the hour, a slumbering volcano of facts and statistics, while others talked. He was tall, stiff, gentle, and benignant, wearing blue spectacles [shielding his eyes], and with his head as it were ingulfed in the high coat collar of other days. He rocked to and fro, placidly listening to what was said, and might perhaps have been suspected of a gentle slumber, when the casual mention of some city in the West, then dimly known, would rouse him to action. He would then cease rocking, would lean forward, and say in his peaceful voice: “Chillicothe? What is the present population of Chillicothe?” or, “Columbus? What is the population of Columbus?” and then, putting away the item in some appropriate pigeon-hold of his vast memory, would relapse into his rocking-chair once more.⁸

5

Worcester’s reputation as an exacting scholar was the primary reason he was hired to undertake revision of the Todd-Johnson dictionary, which was published less than a year before the appearance of Webster’s 1828 quarto. More importantly, it was Worcester’s work on that particular book that recommended him to Converse. His role in the edition was summed up by a reviewer in the February 1832 issue of the American Monthly Review, who testified to his universally respected scholarship: “This was edited by Mr. J. E. Worcester, a gentleman then already well known for accuracy of learning, diligent research, and judicious application of his knowledge in regard to some other subjects.” The reviewer concluded that the dictionary was “faithfully and judiciously compiled, [and] may justly be regarded as a great accession to English Lexicography; containing as it does so complete a vocabulary, and exhibiting in respect to words of doubtful pronunciation, the authorities of other orthoëpists, in those cases, in which they vary from Walker.”⁹

Worcester’s edition of Todd-Johnson had given him the opportunity to introduce into lexicography a major emphasis on pronunciation, an area that his exploration of lexicographical history, including recent American lexicography, told him had been neglected and clumsily misrepresented in dictionaries. He settled on the idea, for example, of citing the “most popular” English orthoepist authorities—such as William Kenrick, Thomas Sheridan, William Perry, Sir William Jones, and G. Fulton and G. Knight—for the pronunciation of words about which the Americans and British disagreed, going beyond even Walker. For an appendix on words of “doubtful pronunciation,” Worcester happens to mention one of Webster’s arch-enemies, John Pickering, his “learned and respected friend,” whose work on American vocabulary has had “a salutary influence on our own literature, by calling the attention of scholars to the occasional deviations of American writers from pure English.” That remark leaves little doubt regarding Worcester’s views of American radical “innovations,” generally known then to be identified with Webster’s lexicography. At that point, however, Webster himself was only of remote interest to Worcester, although in his preface to the Todd-Johnson edition, he credited “Mr. Webster’s Dictionary” in 1806—the Compendious Dictionary—“with regard to such of the [American] words as are found in that work, from which the definitions of them have also been partly taken.”¹⁰

Converse had a look at Worcester’s work on the Todd-Johnson and was promptly convinced by his scholarship that this was the man to prepare the octavo abridgment. Moreover, Worcester had not come to Todd’s edition of Johnson cold. He had already decided that lexicography was his great calling and begun work on his own independent dictionary of English, a much smaller work than Webster’s, suitable for schools but also for the general public and intellectual community, easy to use, inexpensive, and one that could compete in the market. He was deeply immersed in that dictionary when Converse wrote to him.

Converse realized in 1828 that Worcester could be trusted to moderate Webster’s controversial pronunciation, spelling, and etymology, as well as drastically shorten definitions and etymologies, and produce an octavo that would have wide appeal. What better man for the job could there be? Whether Converse checked first with Webster before approaching Worcester, as he said he did, is unknown. What we do know is that Webster told Fowler a couple of years later that Converse had exceeded his authority by hiring Worcester:

I had been informed that Hilliard, Gray & Co. [later the firm became Little, Brown, & Company in Boston, founded by two of William Hilliard’s publishing partners] were stereotyping and publishing an abridgement of my Dictionary . . . but I could not believe what I suspected that this was the doing of Mr. Converse. In this he has manifested the worst trait in his character or spirit of vindictiveness. He wanted to have the publication of an abridgement promised to him before I had determined to make one. This I absolutely refused but said to him these words, “If I ever make an abridgement, you will probably have the offer of it.” This he would have had, if his subsequent conduct towards me had not destroyed my confidence in him. Now he alleges that I promised him the work, which is absolutely false. His efforts to wrong me will produce serious results.¹¹

It was obvious to Converse that Webster was extremely reluctant to allow anyone apart from himself to tamper with vital elements of his dictionary, such as orthography, pronunciation, and definitions. Nonetheless, Converse felt that was a hurdle that could be, must be, negotiated, if anyone was ever going to make money from the dictionary, even if Webster protested every step of the way. Converse hoped he could convince Worcester to take on a revision that would involve much exhausting, detailed work. Years later, he recounted his own version of what happened: “When I applied to Mr. Worcester to abridge the quarto, he objected on the grounds that he had already projected a school dictionary and that such an undertaking would interfere both with his plans and his interests, that he could not abridge Mr. Webster’s work without suspending his own. . . .” Other than having to suspend his work to edit Webster’s, Worcester apparently saw no obvious conflict of interest in working on both dictionaries, because his school edition involved rewriting definitions and pronunciation guides as well as reducing the number and types of entry words. Worcester was familiar enough with Webster’s writings on the English language, however, to realize that to attach his name to an octavo that, under Webster’s pressure, might end up being only moderately different from Webster’s 1828 quarto would place him in an awkward position in relation to his own work when it was published, and perhaps even damage his reputation. Converse wrote again, and again Worcester declined. Undeterred, Converse traveled to Cambridge to see if he could win over Worcester in person. He offered Worcester $2,000 (approximately $50,000 today) for what turned out to be about eight months’ arduous work. The fee probably helped persuade Worcester to edit the octavo, but it is also feasible that, on thinking about it, he may have liked the idea of having a hand in improving the first large comprehensive dictionary to be published in America. He also had Converse’s assurance that the plan played to his strengths: to correct Webster’s egregious spelling innovations in the quarto and make the pronunciation more systematic and rational by citing a string of orthoepists. He would also have the freedom to add to the word list, and he generously agreed to contribute his own “Synopsis of Words Differently Pronounced by Different Orthoepists.” The “Synopsis” would include words whose “correct” pronunciation was uncertain and inconsistent in both America and England and offer alternatives to Webster by several of the leading English orthoepists.¹²

Converse hoped the abridgment would also include the bonus of John Walker’s celebrated 103-page Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names (1798). Most but not all of the many editions of Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary published in America in the early nineteenth century included his Key. It would bring added value to the octavo, as it was already popular in America: at least seventeen editions of it had been separately published there by 1829. Worcester, however, was reluctant to include it because he had included and made much of the Key in his own update of Todd-Johnson. In the absence of an international copyright agreement, of course, there was nothing to prohibit Converse from including the Key in the abridgment, regardless of Worcester’s ethical qualms. That awkwardness could always be sorted out later. In the meantime, Converse would accept all the risks of stereotyping plates for the octavo and absorbing costs, but Webster would have to pay one-quarter, or $500, of Worcester’s $2,000 fee, an ironic detail in light of what lay ahead in their relationship. It seemed like a large project, but Worcester was well primed for it, had the best private library of dictionaries in America on which to draw, and was confident he could complete the work in not much more than a year.

Converse’s comment on his visit to Cambridge was, “I must say that my persuasive powers were very severely taxed in securing the desired result.”¹³ But it is more likely that Webster’s shrewd son-in-law persuaded Worcester. Goodrich had chosen Converse to publish the quarto to begin with, and he went along with Converse on his first visit to Cambridge to meet Worcester. It is easy to imagine Converse mostly listening as the more erudite Worcester and Goodrich talked about language history, dictionaries, Webster, and Worcester’s own lexicography. Goodrich’s presence encouraged Worcester, who insisted that Goodrich must also play a central part in the editing. The meeting can be seen as a happy conjunction of Yale and Harvard, New Haven and Cambridge, the competitive spheres of influence. Since Converse and Webster were not on the best of terms, Goodrich was well placed to impress upon his father-in-law the urgency of getting on with an abridgment in order to earn some badly needed income from his twenty-five years of work. He had also made a study of Worcester and recognized not only his linguistic expertise but also his remarkable concentration and ability to get the job done. He could assure Webster that he would act as his representative and shepherd the edition along to ensure that Converse in New York and Worcester in Cambridge would make editorial decisions significantly improving the reputation of the dictionary and, above all, making sense commercially.

6

Goodrich was a complicated man. A respected linguist, rhetorician, and lecturer on theology and composition, first as professor of rhetoric and after 1817 as professor of theology and rhetoric at Yale, he had quickly made a name for himself as a scholar and personality, turning down the presidency of Williams College in 1820 to remain at Yale. He was also a resourceful tactician in getting his own way. Highly principled and essentially compassionate, he was tough-minded and could be ruthless if he detected dishonesty or deception. He was devoutly religious and a devoted husband and father. An ordained minister but without any trace of theological bitterness and narrowness in his pastoral work, he was awarded the honorary degree of doctor of divinity by Brown College (now Brown University) in 1837.

His friend and faculty colleague at Yale, Theodore D. Woolsey, who later became president of Yale and delivered Goodrich’s memorial commemoration in Center Church on the Green in New Haven in 1860, spoke of his “Pauline temperament,” his strong character, efficiency, and “practical power.” Goodrich, he said, was devoted to “practical religion,” spoke every week in the chapel to students and faculty as part of his course of lectures on eloquence and oratory, and met with students individually on a regular basis to help them become “vigorous and effective writers.” Commenting on Goodrich’s working life, Woolsey observed, “He was . . . qualified to throw off work fast” and yet capable of “unwearied painstaking” labor: “I have often wondered how such a man, so natively restless, and of so nervous a temperament, could endure the drudgery of drilling in speaking and composition, day after day, as he did while he was Professor of Rhetoric.” It was not part of his career plans in 1828, when he became involved in his father-in-law’s dictionary, but the project would occupy him in unforeseen ways for the remaining years of his life.¹⁴

FIGURE 4.  Chauncey Allen Goodrich, a professor of rhetoric at Yale University and Noah Webster’s son-in-law, became the primary editor and thorough reviser of Webster’s dictionaries from 1829 to 1860, including early revisions for the 1864 edition. Courtesy of Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. James Grant Wilson, 1888.

7

Webster was furious when he learned from Converse of the proportions of the agreement reached by Converse, Goodrich, and Worcester—and that he had been deliberately left out of the planning stage. Nonetheless, he grudgingly went along with it, perhaps at first not fully realizing either who Worcester was or the implications of what Goodrich and Converse would encourage Worcester to do. He wrote to Worcester on July 27, 1828—this was still before the quarto was published—with not a very enthusiastic welcome: “Mr. Converse has engaged you to abridge my Dictionary, and has requested me to forward you the copy of the first volume. This was unexpected to me; but under the circumstances, I have consented to it, and shall send the copy.” Goodrich also wrote to Worcester the next day on an entirely different note: “This gives me and Mr. Webster’s other friends [at Yale] the highest satisfaction; for there is no man in the United States, as you know from conversation with me, who would be equally acceptable.”¹⁵

Goodrich quickly established a working relationship with both Converse and Worcester that for the most part ignored Webster and enabled them to navigate efficiently through the quarto and the rough waters that Webster’s demands and complaints might otherwise have created for everyone concerned. Worcester would do the editing, but Goodrich would be at the center of the whole enterprise: “Cases of doubt, arising in the application of the [Webster’s] principles,” Goodrich would write of himself in the preface to the octavo, “and such changes and modifications of the original as seemed desirable, in a work of this kind, intended for general use, have been referred, for decision, to PROF. GOODRICH, of Yale College, who was requested by the author to act, on these subjects, as his representative.”¹⁶

Goodrich could not have come to the study of language from a more different world and point of view than Webster’s. For one thing, and this is crucially important, Goodrich was, unlike Webster, a literary man whose “well-known literary tastes” and “long and familiar acquaintance with English literature,” said the Methodist Quarterly Review in January 1848, enabled him to judge the meanings of words from their use in Anglo-American literature. This was thought to be an indispensable background and ability because there was widespread agreement that written prose was “the foundation of a reliable English dictionary.” Furthermore, Goodrich and his father-in-law could not have been more apart in their ideas about language. Where Webster was unorthodox and experimental, and relatively untrained in the history of rhetoric and oratory, classical and modern, Goodrich was “utterly orthodox” and superbly qualified to take up his professorship in 1817. He was a fine classical scholar, having published a Greek grammar in 1814 and Greek and Latin Lessons in 1832; and in 1852, he would publish Select British Eloquence, nearly one thousand pages of “the best speeches of the most distinguished English orators, accompanied by critical and biographical sketches, arguments, and notes.” As Woolsey put it in his Goodrich memorial address, Select British Eloquence manifested Goodrich’s “many years of familiarity with British models . . . and he took great delight in the subject. No one can help feeling that he was at home.” The book reflected his desire “to put the reader in a position to understand what he reads, nearly as well as could be done when the speeches were delivered.” Goodrich taught his students out of a deep and natural appreciation and understanding of the elegance of traditional classical and British oratory and grammar. He had found in Worcester a kindred spirit.¹⁷

Converse, for his part, was relieved to be working with Goodrich, happy to be staying clear of Webster in the lines of communication. He and Goodrich together again visited Worcester in Cambridge soon after their agreement, “when the matter of variations was settled” regarding how to proceed. Without doubt, Converse was an opportunist and might well have thought this collaborative link with Goodrich was an indirect way of encouraging his relationship with Webster to improve slowly, or at least keep it from worsening, for the sake of any future editions Webster might agree to let him publish.¹⁸

Once the octavo was given the go-ahead, Worcester shifted from his own work to Webster’s dictionary. His understanding was that his principal contact would be Goodrich, not Webster, almost entirely by mail, although Webster occasionally did stir himself enough to send Worcester additions to the word list as well as the occasional random correction of the quarto. Goodrich also visited Worcester in Cambridge on his own several times as the work moved ahead, where they could freely discuss proposed revisions and adaptations of the quarto’s pronunciation and spelling that he knew were sure to anger Webster. Goodrich then in his conversations with Webster could delicately discuss Worcester’s proposals, filtering out what he knew would alarm Webster as most toxic to his reputation and work. Twenty-five years later, Goodrich glowingly described Worcester’s role and ethical conduct throughout their collaboration:

Mr. Worcester made no changes of a literary or any other kind, except under the direction of Dr. Webster and myself. He was exceedingly delicate on this point, sending on lists of some hundreds of words with queries whether their pronunciation or spelling should be changed. I answered these queries for Dr. Webster, and Mr. Worcester acted accordingly. His abridging was performed almost wholly by erasure; but now and then he condensed definitions, or threw in connecting words of his own. . . . I have always said, that Mr. Worcester’s abridgement was well made. Every one knows that the changes of orthography and pronunciation made by my direction (as Dr. Webster’s representative) were highly advantageous. Some of his [Webster’s] spelling & pronunciation were so obnoxious to the public that Dr. Webster’s best friends feared greatly for their effect. There was danger that the large work, encumbered by these, would be considered as a book for the learned alone. It was the Octavo abridgement, thus popularized in orthography & pronunciation, which gave a decided favourable turn to the popular mind at this crisis.¹⁹

8

In his first surviving letter to Goodrich, on October 28, 1828—after most of the unabridged quarto had been printed but about one month before it was published—Worcester was concerned that his and Goodrich’s revisions thus far were not reducing the quarto’s text enough and that the octavo would swell to a self-defeating size. He was also frustrated that proofs of the quarto needing to be forwarded to him in the prepublication stage were not arriving quickly enough to enable him to get up to speed. He urged Goodrich to send him prompt responses to his suggestions once he had had a chance to talk to Webster about them: “I shall endeavor to forward the early pages as soon as opportunity offers that you and Mr. Webster may see them and judge whether much more can be properly erased.”²⁰

It was Webster’s treatment of spelling and pronunciation that worried Worcester most, which were incompatible with all the leading authorities like Johnson, Todd, Walker, Chalmers, and a host of others whom Webster wished largely to ignore. Webster allowed the following as alternatives to the conventional preferred spellings, which most people did not think should be any part of a dictionary of English: duce for deuce, nehbor for neighbor, nusance for nuisance, spred for spread, and turky for turkey. As for pronunciation, Worcester reminded Goodrich: “You mentioned to me that you should go through an examination of the Dictionary and anticipate me in your remarks on the pronunciation of words which I hope you will be able to do.” He wanted to get on with it. In the meantime, he was sending Goodrich lengthy lists of words that he had tentatively decided should be pronounced this or that way, either leaving them as they appeared in the quarto or returning them to conventional orthography. But without clearer directives, he was becoming doubtful about how to proceed. He pressed Goodrich again three days later to make decisions promptly after talking to Webster: “I would thank you to specify as definitely as you can, what words, which are found in the quarto in a new orthography, are to be restored in the definitions to their usual form.” “Am I or am I not to introduce other pronunciation with authorities?” he questioned. In December 1828, Worcester thought it best “to send a list of all the words that will be inserted in his Synopsis, together with various others about which there may be a question of some sort.” That way there would be less confusion, less chance of recrimination, although he admitted he seldom had the “leisure to make all the explanations and queries that might be useful.”²¹

All in all, Worcester was finding it a perplexing process to edit the work of a man he had met only two or three times, to whom he knew his revisions would be anathema: “It is a matter of delicacy and difficulty to fix the pronunciation of various foreign words, and I fear that I will not always do it in a manner that Dr. Webster and yourself would approve.” “I regret that some points relating to the abridgement were not more definitely fixed,” he told Goodrich. As for recording inconsistencies in Webster’s pronunciations in the quarto, he supposed “it is Mr. Webster’s wish that I should not [do so] in any instance, nor am I desirous to do it, provided the work will not suffer and Mr. Converse will be satisfied.” He was nervous that his own “Synopsis” might be muddied with “instances of words which are not proper to be inserted” in it and “of which the pronunciation given in [Webster’s] dictionary is certainly questionable.” He still remained uncertain how far he could go, whether the “orthography is to be restored or not” in many of Webster’s words, such as ax, cloke, and zink. In the end, Goodrich decided to include a few of Webster’s reformed spellings, but he degraded them: “old orthography takes the lead, and is immediately followed by the one proposed.” Moreover, Worcester was troubled with doubts that this project was going to succeed or do him personally any good: “It is difficult to make such a work as this conformable to the views of another who is 150 miles distant. It is my wish to give satisfaction to those interested, but fear the work will have more blemishes than could be wished.”²²

As the days and months passed, however, Worcester became less tentative, confident that Goodrich was behind him all the way. Goodrich continued to visit him in Cambridge, and the two men were becoming good friends. Worcester was pleased to hear from his brother, then living in New Haven, that Goodrich had been “good enough to call” on him there. Still, the persistent hazard in their collaboration was that Goodrich had to be extremely careful not to anger his father-in-law who might at any moment attempt to put a stop to their work on the octavo. On December 30, Worcester returned to his main complaint, still feeling at sea in Websterian waters: “I cannot but regret that the principles on which the abridgement is to be formed were not better settled before it was commenced. The work must suffer somewhat on this account, though I hope not very much, and it must cost some more labor and trouble.”

Goodrich for the most part agreed with Worcester’s objections to Webster. Webster’s spelling oddities should not be allowed to stand further on in the entry than their first mention, in the definitions, for instance, and in derivatives of words. An example of what both Goodrich and Worcester wished to avoid in the octavo is Webster’s entry word, bridegoom. The reader who looks up bridegroom in the quarto is told to go to bridegoom, defined thus: “A compound of bride and gum, guma, a man, which, by our ancestors, was pronounced goom. This word, by a mispronouncing the last syllable, has been corrupted into bridegroom, which signifies a bride’s hostler; groom being a Persian word, signifying a man who has the care of horses. Such a gross corruption or blunder ought not to remain a reproach to philology.” And they agreed that entry words ought to be alphabetized according to conventional spelling. That way a substantial part of Webster’s display of unorthodoxy, eccentricity, and occasional defiance could be eliminated or downgraded—a type of lexical housecleaning without knocking over all the furniture.²³

Near the end of the collaboration, Worcester began to feel restless and uncomfortable about conflicts of interest. It worried him especially that Converse had decided to include Walker’s Key in the octavo after he had assured Worcester he would not do so. Worcester made no secret of it to Goodrich that his own publishers were upset:

You may perhaps have understood that the publishers of [Todd-]Johnson and Walker’s Dictionaries have had some unpleasant feelings about my having undertaken to abridge Dr. Webster’s dictionary, but I have not felt that they have any right to oppose it. When I undertook the business, Mr. Converse said that he did not expect to add Walker’s Key; and afterwards when the plan, in this particular, was changed, I told him that I could have nothing to do with that part of the book. My reason was that having edited the work for other publishers, they would complain if I should do it for him, nor should I feel satisfied with myself to do it.²⁴

That was in early April 1829, by which time all the proofs for the octavo had been printed and reviewed by Worcester, just over nine hundred pages of them. The end was in sight, and he longed to return to the completion of his own dictionary. “I wish to be released from the confinement of the work, as soon as I can,” he wrote to Goodrich. “Please to say how many pages of introductory matter you expect to furnish, and when it will be ready.”

A final visit to Cambridge by Goodrich to tidy up details and enjoy Worcester’s company concluded their collaboration. The work was done, bringing both relief and renewed doubts, but neither Goodrich nor Worcester—nor Converse for that matter—came anywhere near anticipating the damaging repercussions of their productive collaboration in the remainder of their lives and on the course of early American lexicography.