Warrior Gentlemen

The Meaning of Words

Returning home one evening, Adam carried a bigger envelope than the one Angel Weiss had given him. Striding to the desk where Miss was sweating over a sock, he tipped out its contents:

– a manuscript titled: The Tippling Quaker

– three newspaper clippings on the Wainwright Trial

– two pages of correspondence

– a document titled: Notes for Editors

These papers were from a friend of Angel Weiss, whose name had been stamped on the envelope's letterhead:

Lehmann's & Co. Publishing

The deal was explained simply to Miss Hee:

"One copper for six pages. Copy forty a day in a tidy hand and make no mistakes. If you work six days, you will make 40 pence a week, almost the wage of a young match girl. No foreman, no toothaches for you, just a slight ache in the hands. If you make mistakes, or your writing's too messy, not a farthing will be given nor deducted.

Thank the Lord, child."

The child put down the half-darned sock, got up from his seat, and said thank you. Bowed and said thank you. Once he was done with the sock, he picked up the manuscript and got to work. It took him an hour to copy three pages, careful as he was not to make mistakes. English was still a foreign tongue to him and a slew of unfamiliar words slowed his progress. At ten-thirty, his master checked his pocket watch and declared it time for bed. The pocket watch he kept in his trousers was a rusted thing with a cracked yellow face and no chain. It ticked noisily, so one had to stow it in a soundproof box before bed, and it worked.

Tucking Kyung into their blanket, Adam asked him to guess how much the little clock cost.

"One shilling?"

"Wishful thinking."

The secondhand good cost ten shillings and a dime. To afford it, a copyist would have to work three weeks and consume nothing. Kyung, dreaming of a pocket watch, said 'good night' and went to sleep.

**

In the mornings, he would learn by copying, referring to a dictionary for words he didn't know. Richardson's Dictionary of the New English Language was arranged in alphabetical order with brief explanations of each word and for some, a list of different forms the word could take:

Abominate

Abominable

Abomination

V. To turn from, to loathe, to execrate.

Unsure of the term 'execrate', the student flipped to the section under 'E' and found on page 52: 'to curse, to banish'. The line in Mr Lehmann's manuscript went:

"Lord Hastings' son was born in the wee hours of Easter Sunday with a sniffling nose, rheumatic eyes, and a face like a diseased potato. His mother, having bled and labored for seventy-two hours, fainted at the sight of him. She would not wake to see the abomination of her making."

Kyung felt sad for this woman and wondered if the author had been too harsh labelling an innocent child an 'abomination'. Copying the rest of the chapter, he flipped through the dictionary at intervals. Every five times he encountered a new word, he would flip. Any more and his scribal progress would stall. At noon, he broke from copying to settle the chores – the wiping of windowsill, folding of clothes, dusting of shelves, and so on. The master of the house was beside him, absorbed in his own tasks.

A white lotus was taking shape on his watercolor paper, surrounded by dragonflies and waterskippers. Pond insects collected in jars had been revived as models for an artist who hated skimming on details. If he drew something he was dissatisfied with, he'd crumple up the draft and toss it to the back of the table. Execrable. Kyung had heard him use this term before in an ill temper. Eh-ke- se-cu- ra -bel. It meant the master was deeply unhappy and had to be soothed. Seated on the mattress, the mistress did not mind playing a song or two on his flute. His favourite was a piece his father composed for a one-winged bird he claimed to have seen perched on an empty branch. That piece never failed to induce a subtle, careworn smile on the lips of a man trying to hide it.