George Watson and the Dictionary of American English

GEORGE WATSON AND THE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH M. M. Mathews Editor's preface: In 1958, Mitford M. Mathews submitted the following essay to American Speech for his regular column, "Of Matters Lexicographical." Allan F. Hubbell, then editor of American Speech, questioned its suitability for publication, and Mathews promptly substituted another contribution. But Mathews felt strongly that the importance of George Watson's work as a lexicographer should be recognized and the role played by Sir William A. Craigie put in perspective. His reply to Hubbell shows the intensity ofhisfeeling on this matter: Feb. 5, 1958 Dear Hubbell: I had a feeling that the propriety of publishing the piece I wrote about Watson might be a question in your mind, so at the time I did it I wrote another to substitute for it in case you hesitated to venture. I had thought of sending them both to you together, and perhaps I should have done so. Anyway, here is the substitute. For a long time I have been of two minds about saying anything about Sir William's record as a lexicographer among us. I could rest much more comfortably on this score had he not, before the ink was dry on the DAE, written an entirely erroneous account of his achievement, and of how he planned it with consummate skill, and executed it in a superb manner. Those who read Sir William's account, and believed it, got a very distorted notion of what took place here, but I am by no means sure that the Lord has commissioned me to adjust his report. 214 M. M. Mathews215 The fact is that we owe the DAE, in a very large measure, to Watson. Someone ought somewhere, sometime, to say as much. I will cogitate more about the matter, hoping that the Lord will give me guidance in a dream or something. He hardly ever does that, however. Cordially, M. M. Mathews The essay that Mathews asserts to be "an entirely erroneous account of [Craigie's] achievement" is almost certainly "Sidelights on the Dictionary of American English," Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, 30 (1944): 100-113. In that essay, Craigie names only J. R. Hulbert and the "regular staff," and in tribute to their work, he implicitly excludes his countryman Watson from the project: "the highly efficient work of both the older and newer members of the staff whose American background and special knowledge on many subjects was of the greatest value" (113). Yet anyone who consults the first volume of the DAE, though only Craigie and Hulbert appear on the title page, will find listedfirst among the acknowledgments of the staff: "Mr. George Watson, who did much valuable work as research associate and assistant editor, and had the charge ofputting A and B through the Press" (p. xii). The typescript ofthe essay that follows was supplied by David B. Guralnik and is printed here with the permission of Mathews' widow, Georgia G. Mathews, and son, George Mathews. It would please Mathews, I believe, to know that the huge computerized file of library records maintained by the Research Libraries Information Network includes George Watson among the editors of the Dictionary of American English. And he wouldfurther delight in the knowledge that his attempt to "adjust [Craigie's] report" has at last reached the 216George Watson and The DAE scholarly public, though some ofour readers will recognize in it the substance ofa lecture Mathews gave called "The Mystery of the Missing Title Page. " George Watson contributed so much to lexicography, and particularly to American lexicography, that he should be held in esteem by all those interested in the study of American words. He always spoke of himself as being from Jedburgh, Scotland, the county seat of Roxburghshire. I suppose he was born in that small town of some four thousand inhabitants in the southeastern part of Scotland, within less than twenty miles of the Border formed by the Cheviot Hills. It is an old town situated on one of the small streams that flow into the Tweed. James Thomson, famous for The Seasons, was born not far away and attended the grammar school in Jedburgh. Watson...