ACT 1, SCENE 4

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: OXFORD, AUGUST 1894

MURRAY is sitting at the Sorting Table in the Scriptorium. Enter SWEATMAN.

MURRAY: Good morning, Mr Sweatman.

SWEATMAN: Good morning, Dr Murray.

MURRAY acknowledges, gets up, goes over to his own standing desk. Enter MALING.

MURRAY: Good morning, Mr Maling.

MALING: Bonan matenon, Dr Murray, Fred.

MURRAY: And it is indeed a bonan matenon. I anticipate a break from correspondence and a focus on lexicography. What could be better?

Enter HARRY and ESME (aged 12).

HARRY: Morning, James.

MURRAY: Harry. And Esme too? Are you not at school?

ESME: No, sir, Dr Murray. I’m not feeling very well.

HARRY: Stomach-ache. My cooking, I expect.

SWEATMAN: How do, Harry. Hi ho, Esme.

MALING: Bonan matenon, Harry. Kiel vi fortas, Esme? (‘Key-el vee four-tas’)

ESME: I’m not well today, thank you, Mr Maling.

MALING: Ah-hem?

ESME: Mi fortas bone, dankon, Mr Maling. (Mee four-tas bon darn-kon)

MALING: Excellent, Esme. Esperanto forever, eh?!

Enter CRANE.

MURRAY: Ah. Mr Crane.

MR CRANE: Dr Murray.

ESME: (as prompted by HARRY) Good. Morning. Mr. Crane.

CRANE stares at her. She shrinks. She goes to slip under the table.

CRANE: Not still under the table, surely? At age twelve?! Especially given she’s not safe near the slips! She’s light-fingered, Harry! And you know it!

MURRAY looks up, looks at ESME – who sees him doing so – then looks away.

HARRY: Maybe sit in the corner today, Esme. Over there? Quiet now.

ESME: Yes, Da. (goes to the corner)

MURRAY: And now. Let us reaffirm our assiduous commitment to the letters C to E.

ALL: The letters C to E.

MURRAY: Mr Crane? This … definition …

CRANE walks past ESME to get to MURRAY. Two slips fall from his bundle. They lie on the floor next to ESME. She stares at them, then … ESME takes the slips. She looks.

WORDS SIGNAGE: COUNT

ESME: (whispering to self) ‘Count’. Definition: To include in the reckoning. Quotation: ‘I count you for a fool’, Tennyson, 1859. But which Tennyson? And which book?

She puts the first slip into the sleeve of her dress and is putting the other into her pocket when HARRY turns around, sees her. Nailed!

HARRY heaves ESME towards the door.

ESME: Da!

HARRY: Out! Now!

They exit together. CRANE watches. Once ‘outside’, HARRY holds out his hand.

HARRY: Esme.

ESME: (she gives him the slip from her pocket) Da.

HARRY: The word ‘Count’. Oh. Plus definition and quotation! I see we’re not doing things by halves!

ESME: Yes, but it’s a duplicate slip, Da! It’s incomplete! It would have been thrown away!

HARRY: You are to go to Lizzie back over at the Murrays’ house, Esme. You are not to spend time in the kitchen with her and Mrs Ballard. You are to go up to Lizzie’s room. And you are to stay there, Esme, until I come. Is that clear?

TRANSITION

IN ROOM

ESME pulls out the trunk – which now has quite a few slips in it. She gets the slip from her sleeve.

WORDS SIGNAGE: COUNTED

ESME: ‘Counted’. Quotation: ‘There is less wisdom, honesty and mercy in men than is counted on …’ Ohhh …!

The following is a full-on regression to about 4 years old. A proper tantrum.

ESME: And ‘Counted’, you’re a duplicate, too! You would have been thrown in the discard basket, too, just like ‘Count’! Mr Crane was careless! So I saved you! So! ‘Counted’. In you go. With – all the other treasures. The slips and … and Ditte’s letters about me that Da hides. Yes! If Da can hide his letters, why can’t I hide my words? (to the trunk) You’re like the Dictionary, aren’t you, Trunk? You’re full of words. So that’s your NAME. I should write that!

She sees LIZZIE’S hatpin (in camera – visual).

So. This is what I’m doing, Trunk. This is what I am making. Me. Esme Nicoll. Lexicographer. Because these words are treasures, and they are not – they are not! – superfluous to need!

She scratches the trunk with the hatpin.

WORDS SIGNAGE: THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS

She sits. Holds her stomach. Gets on the bed. Her stomach still hurts. She looks at the photograph of LIZZIE’S mother on the bedside table. Puts it back. She lies back. Her stomach cramps badly. She puts her hands down to her skirt. Draws them back. They are wet with blood. She looks down. She is horrified. She staggers to the door.

ESME: (calls downstairs from doorway) Lizzie!

LIZZIE: (off) Your da said you must stay put, Esme!

ESME: But please!

LIZZIE: He’ll be here at five o’clock.

ESME: But I’m dying, Lizzie! My tummy hurts! There’s blood!

Fast steps up stairs. Enter LIZZIE (aged 19), who takes in the situation immediately.

LIZZIE: Oh, Essymay …

ESME: Lizzie?!

LIZZIE: Essymay. You’re not dying. Don’t you remember what I told you about older girls and the blood?

ESME: No. Yes. But I’m not older.

LIZZIE: Nearly thirteen is old enough. For some. In this case, you. The Monthlies, Essy. Remember?

ESME: I forgot.

LIZZIE: Move over now, Essymay. I need to get to – this – box. Maybe you wanted to forget.

ESME: How could I ‘want to forget’?

LIZZIE: How would I know that? (beat) Now. You take that skirt off. And the underthings. That’s right. Here’s a belt. And rags. You see if you can fix them. I’ll take these and rinse them, and they can dry by the range.

ESME: Don’t leave me, Lizzie!

LIZZIE stays, laundry at hand.

ESME: How long will the blood last?

LIZZIE: A week. Maybe less. Maybe more.

ESME: Every month?

LIZZIE: Every month.

ESME: All women?

LIZZIE: All women.

ESME: But why does it happen? What’s it for?

LIZZIE: It’s to do with babies.

ESME: How?

LIZZIE: (beat) I don’t know, Essymay! It just is. Now –

ESME: One more minute? Lizzie? Do your needlepoint? Your prettiest thing. Your lovely thing. Just one more tiny flower? Please? Stay?

LIZZIE: (beat) Hand me my pincushion then, Esme.

She sits, starts to work. ESME watches her.

ESME: (beat) I do remember.

LIZZIE: What?

ESME: When you told me about the Monthlies. Before.

LIZZIE: Yes?

ESME: We’d been talking about people being – you know – mean to me at school … And then you said – well, seeing we’re /talking so serious I may as well get this one done too!

LIZZIE: /talking so serious I may as well get this one done, too! Yes. I did. Your da had asked me. So I did. And then you just forget it on me!

ESME: No. I just sort of thought it didn’t apply to me! But then I asked Da the word for it, and then I found it in one of the pigeonholes in the Scrippy under M.

LIZZIE: And?

ESME: The word is – ‘Menstruate.’

WORDS SIGNAGE: MENSTRUATE

LIZZIE: Never heard of it! Probably a doctor’s word. My ma just called it the Curse.

ESME: Well, she must be right because the words are – something like – ‘Menstruate’: Definition: ‘To discharge the menses: and to pollute as with menstrual blood.’ ‘Menstrous’: ‘Horribly filthy or polluted.’

LIZZIE: Essymay, it’s just blood! (sees trunk – a moment) What’s this?

ESME: Oh.

LIZZIE: Really deep. Really fresh. Esme?

ESME: Um. Yes.

LIZZIE: What you done? Essymay?

ESME: Um.

LIZZIE: What have you done, Esme Nicoll? To my trunk?! (picks up bent hatpin from floor) And – oh no! – what have you done it with?! Essymay?! (she’s crying) Ohhhhh! (another moment) WHY?!

ESME: It’s just – some words. Lizzie?

LIZZIE: And what do these – words – even say? I can’t read, Esme! What do these words on my trunk say?!

ESME: These words say – they say – THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS.

LIZZIE: Dictionary of Stolen Words more likely! They are ‘just words’, Esme! Just … bits of paper. With bits of words. For heaven’s sake! All I had of my mother was this photograph here. She’s not smiling. She never did, really. And I felt sad for her. But then you found the pin. Like. This sparkling thing. So bright! So pretty. So … well made! I don’t know much about her for sure, I was about your age when she died, but it helps me to imagine her with something beautiful that came to her. One little-bit-forever thing that she left behind. Maybe she wore it. On some dowdy hat. And felt … happy.

ESME: I’ll fix the pin.

LIZZIE: No, you won’t. You’ll lie in bed and get your poor little body straight again. I’ll fix the pin later. It’s mine after all.

ESME: (tears) Lizzie, I am so, so, so sorry!

LIZZIE cuddles her.

LIZZIE: I know you are, me little cabbage. Poor little lonely cabbage. Sore-tummy cabbage, even. What a shocking bad day!

ESME: They won’t let me back into the Scriptorium.

LIZZIE: It’s just an old room, Esme. A garden shed!

ESME: It is not ‘just an old room’! It is the most beautiful – best! – most secret! – place! In the world!

LIZZIE: Now you’re yelling at me!

ESME: No! I mean. Yes! I’m so sorry! I wrecked your trunk! They think I’m a thief! I can never go back!

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: LANSDOWNE CRESCENT, BATH, SEPTEMBER 1896

DITTE: You would miss her, of course. And she you. But the school would train her fine mind.

HARRY: I would miss her. So much.

DITTE: Harry?

HARRY: I know. I cannae get another job like this easily. My talents and my circumstances are very particular.

DITTE: I’m glad you said it, not me.

HARRY: And I cannae keep taking her to the Scriptorium. Clearly.

DITTE: No. (beat) So … schooling? (beat) Cauldshiels is vouched for by the Women’s Education Union.

HARRY: Cauldshiels. Yes. An excellent reputation.

DITTE: And Edinburgh is where you – and Lily …

HARRY: Yes. Scotland. Esme’s heritage. My own. Yes.

DITTE: Harry. She’s fourteen now.

HARRY: I know, I know.

DITTE: What?

HARRY: I worry that sometimes she … attracts the unkind.

DITTE: Oh, Harry! Who doesn’t from time to time? Think! She has that wonderful bright intelligence! We can’t let her waste it! Boarding at Cauldshiels would equip her for scholarship, Harry! Somerville College? In Oxford? In time.

HARRY: Aye. You’re right. Of course you are. Yes.

TRANSITION as ESME makes her way alone. Solutions may vary but e.g. Slips of words, treasures from her past life may swirl around her. She grabs at them and tries to stow them in her satchel. But it’s a losing battle. Most escape her, though a few do stick.

SONG: ‘LOCH LOMOND’.

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: CAULDSHIELS, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, 1896

As ESME approaches ‘Cauldshiels’ the words and definitions below swirl in a tableau.

WORDS SIGNAGE: MONTAGE #1

INADEQUATE: ‘Not equal to requirement, insufficient’

ILL-BRED: ‘Badly brought up, unmannerly’

LAZY: ‘Averse to labour, indolent, idle’

LATE: ‘Tardy, slow in progress, tedious’

MISTAKEN: ‘Taking a wrong view, wrongly conceived or carried out’

SHAME: ‘Painful emotion arising from the consciousness of something dishonouring’

PUNISH: ‘To cause an offender to suffer for an offence’

ALONE: ‘Quite by oneself, unaccompanied, solitary’

Finishes with ESME crying alone.

WORDS SIGNAGE: … ALONE … (TRANSITION to) BEREFT

ESME: ‘Alone’. ‘Completely without … Sad and lonely, having lost all.’ (beat) ‘The shock had left her feeling alone and bereft.’ ‘Taken away. Removed. Quite gone. Robbed.’

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: BATH, 1897

DITTE: My dear Harry,

For some time, despite Esme’s excellent letters to you, which I must thank you for sharing with me, I have been concerned.

What I have not told you until now was that my own letters to Esme have been returned unopened since Esme began at Cauldshiels. When I enquired of Miss McKinnon about visiting her, Miss McKinnon said it might be better to leave that for now. I took her at her word.

My sister, however, did visit when in Edinburgh to see her publisher. She said Esme was sweet, if subdued, but that there appeared to be bruises on her knuckles and that she was very thin. Then I saw this, in the newspaper.

HARRY: ‘A teacher has been dismissed from Cauldshiels School for Young Ladies following complaints. It is believed that one student was admitted to hospital for observation …’ Esme?

DITTE: I only hope I can remedy my poor judgment by urging you now to bring Esme home as soon as possible, and to send her to the Oxford High School, where the Murray girls have done so well and where perhaps –

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: OXFORD, 1898

ESME and HARRY are mid-argument at HOME.

ESME: – you should have sent me in the first place! Except that when I did go to Oxford High School – after Cauldshiels – I was this broken thing, and I couldn’t study at all! Not when I got back –

HARRY: Esme, you’ve been back a year!

ESME: Yes! And now I’ve failed. Every subject! Unlike the Murray girls.

HARRY: Comparisons with Rosfrith and Elsie will not –

ESME: Yes! Them! At school and now working at the Scrippy they are – clever and capable and kind! They know exactly what to do at any moment, under any circumstances. Just like their mother, who makes everything work for Dr Murray. Can you imagine how he’d do his work without her?

HARRY: I’m not sure what Dr Murray has to do with this, Esme.

ESME: Or should I call him God?

HARRY: No God around here /since

ESME: /since Mama died. Yes! And quite right! But Dr Murray does care about God! Lizzie must attend prayers every morning, and twice on Sundays! Not that she minds. She’s besotted with God too!

HARRY: How did this come to be about God? Or Dr Murray?

ESME: Everything in our whole lives is about the Dictionary one way or another, Da, and Dr Murray is the god of the Dictionary, so why not?!

HARRY: Indeed.

ESME: Anyway, I don’t care about Dr Murray either. Or the Scrippy!

HARRY: Mr Crane no longer works for the Dictionary, Esme, as you know. You could have come back to the Scrippy at any time this last year.

ESME: No, I could not!

HARRY: Would not! (they stand off) Why will you not tell me precisely what happened to you at Cauldshiels?!

ESME: Because – because I have no words for it!

HARRY: No words.

ESME: (savage) ‘Wordless’. Definition! ‘Inexpressible in words; unspeakable, unutterable … not uttering a word, silent, speechless …’ Quotation! ‘So sat she joylesse down, in wordless griefe complaining.’ 1633, I believe. So, no. No words at all. Ever. So don’t ask.

HARRY: (beat) How can this be?

ESME: Da, don’t you understand that I am just another young woman with nothing to recommend me! I have no means. And now not even an education! To everyone but you, and maybe Lizzie, I’m invisible!

HARRY: Invisible.

ESME: Invisible. The world is tooth and claw, Da. As Mr Darwin said. And some are more vulnerable to the teeth and the claws than others.

HARRY: Oh, Esme.

ESME: And you know why I don’t go to the Scrippy! They think I’m a thief!

HARRY: They do not!

ESME: Oh, really!? If they didn’t – if you didn’t! – then why did you send me away? (beat) Da, I loved the Scrippy. And now I do not!

HARRY: Ditte says –

ESME: And I loved Ditte. And now I do not!

HARRY: Ditte loves you, Esme –

ESME: Ditte betrayed me! She said she would always be on my side, and she was not! I do not forgive her! I do not!

HARRY: Esme! Please. When you are married and have –

ESME: And I do not wish to be married! Ever! If I am married, I cannot work! Ditte’s not married, is she?

HARRY: Not. Marry?

ESME: You say to me what will I do now? I don’t know what I’ll do! But I do know that no one is going to let a girl be a lexicographer, or an editor, or a … scholar or … anything really, especially now I’ve failed my finals, so I don’t care about that either!

HARRY: Then what’s this? (he pushes some slips of paper across to her)

ESME: Your … your … the slips you brought home last night to work on.

HARRY: Read it?

WORDS SIGNAGE: HALT

ESME: ‘Halt.’ Definition: ‘To be lame, walk lame, limp.’ (looks underneath) Quotation: ‘The lady shall say her minde freely, or the blanke Verse be halt for it.’ Shakespeare, 1599.

HARRY: ‘Halt’. Aye. Well. But whose writing is this, with this new quotation?

ESME: Mine.

HARRY: It captures a sense that wasn’t there.

ESME: I thought so, too. I took away the quotation that didn’t suit and put this one there instead. Sometimes I think the volunteers get it quite wrong. This was one of those times. So I changed it.

HARRY: Could you pour me another cup of tea?

ESME: Of course.

She does.

HARRY: What about the Dictionary, Esme? Do you no longer love the Dictionary now, too?

ESME: Da?

HARRY: An answer, please.

ESME: The Dictionary. Is …

HARRY: Come on.

ESME: It is … the most magical endeavour I can begin to imagine. To name. And record the means by which we – well, the English-speaking ‘we’ – encapsulate and understand the world. I think … the Dictionary. The project. Itself. It is a mighty … and exhilaratingly wonderful thing.

HARRY: Esme, Dr Murray has suggested that since you are not otherwise occupied, you come to the Scrippy and work as my assistant. The Dictionary is so behind. The letters H (English pronunciation = ‘aitch’) to I. What monsters they’ve been! We are ‘halt’ ourselves without more help!

ESME: Da?

HARRY: You’d sort the post. Write replies to letters of appreciation, return books and manuscripts to libraries, and run errands to the press. You would be paid. Not much. But you would have your own income, like the two Murray girls already working at the Scrippy do, and a desk. But if you are still too sad or angry or disappointed to manage this, then of course you need not.

ESME: Da …?

HARRY: Are you still too sad, Esme Nicoll, my invisible girl?