Joseph Wright was a remarkable man, especially for his day. He was born in a time when the children of poor families only rarely learned to read and write, let alone rise to be the Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford University. As if that weren't enough, his crowning achievement was his English Dialect Dictionary, which held 80,000 entries in its six massive volumes. His was the life Jude Fawley wanted to live, Jude the Obscure with a happy ending. Almost.
Many fans of Tolkien will know that Wright taught Tolkien philology in his years at Oxford. When Wright died, his wife, Elizabeth Mary Wright, wrote a two volume biography of him. She describes his death and their relationship, both personal and professional, on p. 682 of the second volume:
There was only one thing more which had to be done, a last message to leave behind on the last day of all: and so he gathered up his strength in the midst of a long stretch of silence, and framed his lips to say to me quite clearly the one word ‘Dictionary’. It was, in essence, a humble echo of the words of One greater than he, when the hour had come : ‘I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.’ At the time I thought all he wanted to say was to remind me of his wish to be ‘remembered by’ that one literary achievement. Later, when I came to re-read his letters which had lain in an old red morocco case for over thirty-four years, I saw in that one word a message and a reminder of deeper significance. Might it not be that he was thinking of the Dictionary as the seal and token of that priceless and imperishable gift he had given me long years ago, which had sustained every moment of our life together, the love which is stronger than death ? He wrote of the Dictionary : ‘It is a work that is a most sacred task to me. . . . Had it not been for you, nothing in the world could have induced me to undertake what seemed an impossibility to everybody else. But deep genuine love can overcome impossibilities’ ; and also —as I have already quoted among the extracts from these letters: ‘It would be premature to enlighten the world at present, but someday it will all be made known what a man’s deep love for a woman can inspire him to do.’He died in the evening of February 27, 1930.
Really, what more is there to say?
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| Joseph and Elizabeth Wright with their children, ca. 1907. Photographer unknown. Public Domain. |
