The Professor and the Madman

There is nothing like an unbelievable true story!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve posted over 1400 blogs here and sometimes I can’t remember whether I’ve earlier written about a specific subject. I do search my blogs in an attempt to make sure I don’t duplicate subjects, but sometimes my searches are not completely thorough. So this week I was cleaning up my library shelves and I came upon a wonderful book that I read approximately ten years ago. I count it among the most astounding and remarkable true stories I’ve ever read.

By Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman, the story is entirely spell-binding and surprising. Let me present the Preface here in its entirety (I hope this is legal!) and it will likely capture you as it captured me.

Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire.l

One of the parties to the colloquy was the formidable Dr. James Murray, the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. On the day in question he had traveled fifty miles by train from Oxford to meet an enigmatic figure named Dr W. C. Minor, who was among the most prolific of the thousands of volunteer contributors whose labors lay at the core of the dictionary’s creation.

For very nearly twenty years beforehand these two men corresponded regularly about the finer points of English lexicography, but they had never met. Dr. Minor seemed never willing or able to leave his home at Crowthorne, never willing to come to Osford. He was unable to offer any kind of explanation, or to do more than offer his regrets.

Dr. Murray, who himself was rarely free from the burdens of his work at his dictionary headquarters, the famous Scriptorium in Oxford, had nonetheless long dearly wished to see and thank his mysterious and intriguing helper. And particularly so by the late 1890s, with the dictionary well on its way to be half completed: Official honors were being showered upon all its creators, and Murray wanted to make sure that all those involved – even men so apparently bashful as Dr. Minor – were recognized for the valuable work they had done. He decided he would pay a visit.

Once he had made up his mind to go, he telegraphed his intentions, adding that he would find it most convenient to take a train that arrived at Crowthorne Station – then actually known as Wellington College Station – just after two on a certain Wednesday in November. Dr. Minor sent a wire by return to say that he was indeed expected and would be made most welcome. On the journey from Oxford the weather was fine, the trains were on time, the auguries, in short, were good.

At the railway station a polished landau and a liveried coachman were waiting, and with James Murray aboard they clip-clopped back through the lanes of rural Berkshire. After twenty minutes or so the carriage turned up a long drive lined with tall poplars, drawing up eventually outside a huge and rather forbidding red-brick mansion. A solemn servant showed the lexicographer upstairs, and into a book-lined study, where behind an immense mahogany desk stood a man of undoubted importance. Dr. Murray bowed gravely, and launched into the brief speech of greeting that he had so long rehearsed.

“A very good afternoon to you, sir. I am Dr. James Murray of the London Philological Society, and Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is indeed an honour and a pleasure to at long last make your acquaintance – for you must be, kind sire, my assiduous helpmeet, Dr. W. C. Minor?”

There was a brief pause, a momentary air of mutual embarrassment. A clock ticked loudly. There were muffled footsteps in the hall. A distant clank of keys. And then the man behind the desk cleared his throat, and he spoke:

“I regret, kind sir, that I am not. It is not at all as you suppose. I am in fact the Governor of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Dr. Minor is most certainly here. But he is an inmate. He has been a patient here for more than twenty years. He is our longest-staying resident.”

Although the official government files relating to this case are secret, and have been locked away for more than a century, I have recently been allowed to see them. What follows is the strange, tragic, yet spiritually uplifting story they reveal.

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My wife likes true stories. She rarely reads fiction. When we go see a terrific movie of adventure and intrigue, she almost always leaves the theater asking: “Do you suppose that’s a true story?”

Rarely do true stories match the excitement and complexity of fiction (mind you, I didn’t say “never” did I?). We all know true stories that are “stranger than fiction” or just plain more interesting than fiction, but The Professor and the Madman may be the best and most unusual one that I have ever read.

Did you ever think that a story about “the making of the Oxford English Dictionary” could possibly be spell-binding?

William Chester Minor was not always insane. His parents were missionaries. He attended Yale University and eventually became a medical doctor. He was a volunteer during the Civil War; and perhaps it was in the war that he grew mad. He was discharged because of mental instability and paranoia. He unsuccessfully sought relief from his madness by traveling.

On a chilly, February morning in the Lambeth section of London, while it was still very dark, Doctor Minor, consumed by a deep attack of paranoia, shot a man dead who he thought was attacking him. William Chester Minor was sentence to spend his life in an asylum for criminally insane. It was there that he read about the incredible project, the creation of a dictionary of the English language. There was a call for volunteers.

I recommend the remarkable book to you!

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