December 1912: Chapter 20 Summary, Themes, and Key Moments

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens in December 1912, with the Scriptorium showing quiet signs of age and change. Books pile higher, new pigeon-holes are built for slips, and the beards of the editors grow greyer. Dr. Murray's beard grows ever longer. The room has its own comforting hum of sounds — the shuffling of papers, the scraping of pens, and each man's distinctive habits: Dr. Murray grunts and steps outside when a word troubles him, Mr. Dankworth taps his pencil like a metronome, and Da removes his spectacles and rubs the bridge of his nose. Elsie and Rosfrith's skirts sweep the floor, catching dropped slips, and the Murray girls bring lavender and rose into the room.

During a quiet period just before the publication of a fascicle, the editors and senior assistants meet at the Old Ashmolean, leaving the Scriptorium to Esme. Normally she would wander the tables looking for treasure, but on this particular day she is in a hurry. She has spent her morning tea break in Lizzie's room, sorting through more slips from the trunk, and now has a small bundle of women's words she wants to catalogue.

Esme lifts the lid of her desk and takes out the shoebox she uses as a pigeon-hole for her words. It is half-full of small bundles of slips, each representing a word with meanings and quotations from various women pinned together. She spreads the new slips across her desk, considering which should be headwords and fashioning definitions. She is guided by the voice of the woman who used each word — when it is Mabel, she lingers longer, imagining her gummy grin. She takes a pin from Lizzie's pincushion to secure quotations for the word