6

Tea and Copyright

Goodrich Takes Over

The one-volume octavo abridgment came out in late 1829. At 940 pages, it was about half the length of the 1828 quarto. Worcester and Goodrich had extracted large amounts of text, chiefly from Webster’s definitions and etymologies, streamlining many of Webster’s and making them less wordy and more quickly understandable to the average user. A quick look at the entry word deface in the quarto and octavo illustrates somewhat representatively the shortening of definition in the octavo:

1828 QUARTO: TO UNDO OR UNMAKE.

1.  To destroy or mar the face or surface of a thing; to injure the superficies or beauty; to disfigure; as, to deface a monument; to deface an edifice.

2.  To injure any thing; to destroy, spoil or mar; to erase or obliterate; as, to deface letters or writing; to deface a note, deed, or bond; to deface a record.

3.  To injure the appearance; to disfigure.

1829 OCTAVO

1.  To destroy or mar the face or surface of a thing; to injure the superficies or beauty; to disfigure.

2.  To injure any thing; to destroy, spoil, or mar; to erase or obliterate.

3.  To injure the appearance; to disfigure.

Worcester and Goodrich also added some thirty thousand to forty thousand new definitions and increased the number of entry words to 83,000, some 16,000 more than the quarto. One of their first decisions very likely was to banish Webster’s long “Introductory Dissertation on the Origin, History, and Connection of the Languages of Western Asia and of Europe,” which began by considering in what language Adam and Eve spoke to each other and going on from there to his theories about the origins of all languages. Instead of that, in a way adding insult to injury, they added Walker’s Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names, anathema to Webster. There was no denying that this was a superior dictionary to the 1828 quarto, and far more usable. Also it cost $6 (about $150 today), a price within the reach of thousands who could not afford the $20 quarto. Immediately, it sold well and continued to do so through the years in a series of printings, reaching a fifteenth in 1836, with a thoroughly revised edition under Good-rich’s total control appearing in 1844.

To give some idea of Worcester and Goodrich’s compression of Webster’s definitions, we might look again at those cited earlier from the quarto (see chapter 4, section 9). It is good to keep in mind, as we consider them, Good-rich’s major role at Yale as pastor and religious adviser. Education now is reduced to only the first two lines, or a quarter, of Webster’s definition: “The bringing up, as of a child; instruction; formation of manners.” Marriage is deprived entirely (the last six lines) of Webster’s portrait of God’s role in marriage. Two additional senses or meanings are added to marriage, “a feast made on the occasion of a marriage”; and the scriptural/theological sense, “the union between Christ and his church by the covenant of grace.” For purpose all reference to a “Supreme Being” in the quarto is dropped; and while all five of Webster’s senses remain, they are drastically reduced, with one being judged as “hardly to be distinguished from the former.” Twenty-nine lines are cut down to nine. Forty-three long-winded lines of Webster’s war are now compressed into eleven lines, though all six of his senses are retained. Woman is shortened from fourteen lines to three; Webster’s two senses remain, but his religious and cautionary message is eliminated. No mention is made of a woman being “soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible.” From these examples alone, it is obvious that the definitions are purged of Webster’s personal views on these and thousands of other subjects.

In his preface to the edition, Goodrich takes, as he always would in future editing, a particular interest in the complexities of pronunciation, much more difficult in his eyes to sort out than Webster’s orthographical eccentricities. “As a guide to pronunciation,” he writes, “the words have been carefully divided into syllables. This, in the great majority of instances, decides at once the regular sound of the vowels in the respective syllables; and where the vowels depart from this regular sound, a pointed letter is used, denoting the sound which they receive in such cases.” This renders unnecessary “the re-spelling of words, as a guide to pronunciation. . . .” As for disputed pronunciations, “different forms are frequently given,” says Goodrich: “But the SYNOPSIS of Mr. Worcester exhibits these diversities much more fully, and gives, in one view, the decisions of the most approved Pronouncing Dictionaries respecting about eight hundred primitive words, which, of course, decide the pronunciation of a great number of derivatives.” The result is that “nearly all the important points of difference in English orthoëpy” are accounted for, and readers are able to decide for themselves which they wish to adopt.

FIGURE 5.  Title page from the 1830 octavo abridgment of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, edited by Chauncey Goodrich and Joseph Worcester. Courtesy of Indiana State University Special Collections, Cordell Collection of Dictionaries.

When Webster saw the completed work in print he was horrified. How could he have let this happen? The octavo made him look like someone who had written a first draft of a book with inconsistent and half-baked ideas, requiring experts to come in, clean up the mess, and make it fit for publication. It disordered his perception of himself as America’s premier authority on the English language and made him appear just the latest in a long string of competing lexicographers. His sentiments began to turn against the mild and unsuspecting Worcester and his irritating Synopsis. “The object of the Synopsis,” writes Worcester, “is to exhibit, at one view, the manner in which words of doubtful, disputed, or various pronunciation, are pronounced by the most eminent English orthoëpists.” That alone was enough to anger Webster, who thought too much choice merely confused a user. He was upset with Goodrich, too, smelling foul play in what he saw as the breathtaking lengths to which his son-in-law had taken revisions of his dictionary’s spelling and pronunciation—not to mention the definitions. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

2

“It is much to be regretted,” Webster told Fowler as he looked back in April 1843, “that I suffered the American Dictionary to be abridged, not only as regards profits, but as regards its usefulness.” The octavo “must not be considered as mine, though most of it is taken from mine.” In any case, the Goodrich octavo was inferior to his quarto, he added, because it lacked a “History of the Language” as well as “the important principles which I have adopted to correct its anomalies”—not to mention that his definitions and etymology had been abridged and in his view were often defective.¹

After what he felt was the fiasco of the Worcester-Goodrich octavo, Webster decided that one way at least to begin to recover his damaged credibility and momentum was to spring back promptly with his own small duodecimo (also called a square octavo, about five or seven inches square), A Dictionary of the English Language, for the Use of Primary Schools and the Counting-House, published in late 1829 by Hezekiah Howe, not by Converse. Webster’s decision to use Howe, a local Connecticut publisher, instead of Converse in New York for the school edition was very likely a reaction against Converse for, as he believed, going over his head in securing Worcester as editor, with Goodrich’s approval, for the octavo. This was the beginning of an irreparable estrangement between himself and Converse, which appears to have taken Converse completely by surprise. Outraged, Converse wrote to Webster: “[B]ut for me your Dictionary would have rested in Manuscript—There seems to be peculiar apprehension lest I should make something from my great labour and expense of time and money[,] and I suppose this is the reason why others are preferred.” Webster’s ego did not take kindly to being counseled in this manner by his publisher. But when Converse warned him of disaster if he tried to publish the book himself, Webster wrote “Menacing letter!” on the back of Converse’s letter and turned his back on him forever.²

With forty-seven thousand entry words in 532 pages, Webster’s school dictionary was supposed to earn Webster more, and it did: the number of pages is reduced by about 75 percent from that of the quarto, with tables added at the end; the definitions are almost all shortened to single lines of phrases (above: “higher, more”; blistering: “raising blisters”; bloated: “puffed, swelled, made turgid”; dejection: “depression of spirits, melancholy”); the notation is simplified to just eighteen symbols; the word count is halved; “uncommon” technical words are omitted, as are derivates and “primitive” (rarely used or obsolete) words; and participles of regular (but not irregular) verbs are almost entirely omitted. The edition was revised and published many times throughout the nineteenth century.

In the preface, which Webster wrote in December 1829 when he was sorely demoralized—this was the only word, he said, he had ever coined—by the outlaw octavo, he defended himself. There were so many spelling and pronunciation discrepancies between his 1828 quarto and this corrected school dictionary, he admitted, because he had spent most of his time on the quarto working out the etymology and definitions and failed to devote enough time to pronunciation and spelling. The reader need not worry. He had removed inconsistencies, as he would have done in the octavo, he assured his readers, had he been given a chance to “superintend” that edition. Therefore this school dictionary, not the octavo, carries his authority since it was “all written and corrected by myself” and “is to be considered as containing the . . . orthography and pronunciation which I most approve.” It was a defensive argument that carried the risk, of course, that readers would begin to doubt his whole enterprise.³

“As far as it can be done,” he told Fowler (now teaching at Middlebury College and fast becoming his confidant in preference to Goodrich) a few days after Christmas 1829, his “spelling book and [school] duodecimo will be exactly alike, as soon as a few mistakes in the former can be corrected. . . .” With this greater consistency, he hoped now to win more favor at institutions of learning, especially the universities: “I understand from Mr. Converse, who has lately been to Boston, that the President and Professors of Cambridge [Harvard] have recommended my Dictionary to their students. I sincerely hope that your Middlebury gentlemen will cooperate with Cambridge [Harvard] and Yale in this work of reform and uniformity. If our colleges go hand in hand, the works will succeed.” He then would be able to hold his head up high when he visited literary institutions. He complained that the sounds of Walkerisms (pronunciations sanctioned by Walker’s dictionary), “operates on me like a box on the ears.”⁴

He then alarmed his family by telling them he might wipe the slate clean and dissociate himself completely from what he considered the appalling octavo by selling his rights to it. Goodrich feared that since Webster was no businessman, he might indeed go ahead and sell the rights to the octavo outside the family at far below its market value, just as he had done with his speller. What appears to have happened next illustrates Goodrich’s advantage in living just down the street from Webster. On July 10, 1829, over a few cups of tea in Webster’s home, he urged his father-in-law to sell the copyright of the octavo to him. That way it would remain in the family. It was logical for him to own the copyright, he felt, since after all he was its chief editor. He reminded Webster he had received no payment whatever for his labors.⁵

Webster surrendered. For a while Goodrich kept members of the family, especially Fowler, in the dark that he now owned the copyright—at a knockdown price, incidentally. Fowler had asked Goodrich specifically to promise not to decide in his absence to whom the octavo would be sold, if it would be sold at all, and was beside himself when he learned what Goodrich had done. In justifying his purchase to his brother-in-law Ellsworth more than a decade later, Goodrich pointed out that purchasing the rights had not been without financial risks to himself and his own family. When the idea first came up, he maintained, “I remarked to Julia, ‘if the work fails and there is danger of it owing to peculiar varieties in pronunciation and spelling, we shall have a millstone round our necks for life: and if it succeeds and becomes profitable to an extent correspondent with the risk, we shall be liable to the imputation of having a money-making spirit in respect to a parent.’ ” That was a fair reading.⁶

Converse continued as Goodrich’s publisher of the book for four years, but the increased income from the octavo was still not enough to save him from bankruptcy in 1833, and Goodrich had to scramble to find another publisher. George and Charles Merriam, then small publishers in Springfield, Massachusetts, but later major dictionary publishers, turned him down. Goodrich had trouble finding someone to take Converse’s place because prospective publishers were wary that Webster might suddenly decide to stereotype yet another abridgment of the 1828 quarto for schools and academies that would compete in the same market as the octavo. That could easily happen, because stereotyping enabled a printer to print quickly and relatively inexpensively, and a small school edition especially so. The publishers who were most interested in the octavo abridgment, Norman and Joseph White of New York, had reservations about taking it on precisely for that reason. The Whites urged Goodrich to ask for a formal, signed affidavit from Webster stating unequivocally that he would never publish a rival octavo for schools or of any other kind. So Goodrich trotted over to Webster’s house for some more tea and appealed to his father-in-law’s sense of fairness. Since he had paid his father-in-law for the copyright to the octavo, would it be decent of him someday to publish another octavo abridgment that would jeopardize his investment? Whether or not hours of persuasion were necessary is unknown, but Webster agreed to sign the needed legal document on May 7, 1833, witnessed by Webster’s wife, Rebecca. In it Webster promised “not [to] publish or permit to be published such an edition in octavo on stereotype plates, without some agreement with said Goodrich that I shall secure him and any persons who may be associated with him from any injury that may result from such publication, by reduction of the price of the larger work, & supplanting the octavo in the market.” The Whites were still not satisfied, and, at their urging, a couple of months later Goodrich got Webster to be more exact: “I, Noah Webster in Connecticut, in consideration of the loss & sacrifices made by son-in-law Chauncey A. Goodrich in the purchase of the copyright and stereotype plates of the octavo form of my American Dictionary, do hereby grant and assign to the said Chauncey, and to his wife, my daughter Julia & to their children, all my right & interest in the premium for copyright of said book, for & during the remainder of . . . the term for which the copyright of said work is now secured to me by law.”⁷

One thing was certain: Webster had signed away what could turn out to be a small fortune, and just to make sure nobody could accuse him of twisting Webster’s arm, Goodrich had him add this blatantly untrue statement after his signature: “I hereby certify that I have made this grant spontaneously, and without the solicitation or previous knowledge of any person whatever.” But even the second phrasing of the agreement, specifically the phrase “in the octavo form”—a book that could be interpreted as looking like an octavo but actually not be one—was slightly more ambivalent than Goodrich and his publishers wanted. So Goodrich pushed Webster again. This time Webster refused. Nonetheless, Goodrich and the Whites were content to draw up a contract on June 1, 1833, for the revision and republication of the octavo.⁸

3

Converse by this point had lost any sort of connection with Webster’s dictionary, but more than that, he was persona non grata all around. Webster had rebuked him for charging too much for various services, failing to hand over copyright earnings when due, not supplying him with the contracted number of copies of the quarto, and not advertising the quarto sufficiently because of his stake in the octavo: “not one fifth part of the United States are supplied with the books.” Such a comment, of course, ignored the inconvenient fact that the copies of the quarto that Converse did print did not sell well. When Webster traveled to Washington in December 1830 to promote the passage of the copyright extension bill soon to come before Congress, he was incensed to learn that Goodrich had invited Converse to accompany him there as well. “I have not seen him & I hope I shall not,” he wrote to Rebecca.⁹

Several letters between Converse and Goodrich between 1830 and 1833 reveal just how unpopular Converse had become with the Webster family and eventually with Goodrich, too. These letters also show how unbending Good-rich could be from his intellectual-moral high ground. He made his own observations and drew his own conclusions, but his opinion of Converse was bound to be influenced by “reports” from Webster. In November 1830, Converse tried desperately to set the record straight, writing to Good-rich that he felt “wronged and injured” and “deeply wounded” by Webster, and that he had “not so far forgotten Mr. Webster’s rights as an author or my own character and obligations as a man, and a Christian, as to commit depredations on his works. . . . Slander in New Haven has been poured upon me without measure, and when I think of it, with the absolute wrongs I have suffered there, my soul turns away with loathing from the places I once loved.” He assured Goodrich, however, that he had no “disposition to revenge” against Webster for not giving him the contract for the school dictionary. On the contrary, he had always demonstrated “good will in both act and motive” toward the lexicographer. The “stings of injury” from Webster, he admitted, had provoked him in the heat of misunderstandings to write two or three angry letters to him, but he had since in vain repeatedly asked for Webster’s forgiveness. Webster was in no mood to forgive him.¹⁰

Converse failed. His attempt to recover Goodrich’s good opinion of him managed only to destroy any chances he had of achieving that. His biggest mistake was to mortgage the stereotyped plates of the octavo to Messrs. Ames, papermakers in New York. They were not publishers but imagined they might make profitable use of the plates in the future. With the borrowed money, he then unwisely traveled to England in hopes of furthering his publishing interests there. While he was away, still financially stretched and distracted and depressed by his worsening financial situation, he defaulted on his mortgage payments to the Ameses. Unable to reach him, they took the initiative of writing to Goodrich to say that Converse was on the verge of forfeiting the plates. Since Goodrich for whatever reason chose not to help Converse, the Ames brothers assumed ownership of the forfeited plates.

When Converse returned to New York, he was crushed to find that the only way he could recover the plates was to buy them back from the Ames brothers. But he had no money to do that, a bitter impasse for him since it was he who had stereotyped the book in the first place, at great expense. He appealed to Goodrich for help, but Goodrich, shocked by what the Ames brothers had told him, reached an agreement himself with the Ameses to buy the plates: “It became apparent that my copyright would be worth but little unless the property could be got out of their hands.” Without telling Converse, Goodrich offered the Ameses a price they could not resist, $11,000 (close to $275,000 today), and thus he became owner of both the copyright and the plates. On June 1, 1833, now rid of Converse, Goodrich contacted the newly formed publishers White, Gallagher, and White, who “agreed to take the publication and the plates, allowing me a certain interest in the latter, on condition that the premium in copyright should be merged in the right of publication, and no more kept as a distinct concern.” No bookseller would have been interested on any other terms, Goodrich informed Ellsworth. For the remaining twenty-four years of the octavo copyright, the Whites would retain exclusive publishing rights. They would also employ Goodrich for that entire time to edit and revise the work. “When I sold out to Mr. White,” Goodrich wrote in December 1844, “I bound myself to prepare a corrected copy with additional words, and all corrections, whenever he [White] should choose to stereotype the work anew.”¹¹

In vain, Converse continued to plead. Goodrich did not take Converse’s protestations kindly and replied that he had given Converse plenty of time to try to recover the plates: “The abuse which you have heaped upon me in your last letter and the base and detestable motives to which you ascribe my purchase of the plates, would justify me, on the ordinary principles of intercourse among gentlemen in passing by your communication and the request which it contained with silent contempt. But you have written under the influence of inflamed passions, and I am willing to give you one opportunity more to consider what you are doing before you plunge yourself into deeper difficulties.” He then explained that Converse was delusional in thinking he still had a right to the plates and had misconstrued everything that had happened: “You think that but for me you might have recovered that property. . . . When I commenced my arrangement for this purchase, I considered the property as much lost to you as though you were already in the grave. I believe so still.” Converse was soon forgotten.¹²