The Liar's Dictionary

Terence Clovis Frasham was one of the few people for whom Winceworth’s lisp presented an opportunity for cruelty. He was quite the darling of Swansby’s, not because he was a particularly talented lexicographer nor a very hard worker. He was, however, both exceedingly rich through some family jam-making business. Just as usefully, he also had a real flair for attracting and massaging the egos of exceedingly rich friends. Every so often, whenever Prof. Gerolf’s coffers ran low, Frasham was able to amass some glinting and bulging soirée and press his associates and acquaintances for donations, and magically money appeared. This genius for accruing funds for the dictionary meant that whenever Frasham did make an appearance at Swansby House, he was fêted as a princeling and benefactor.

Occasionally Winceworth saw invitations to these fundraising events – dances or regattas depending on the season – but never felt moved to attend. He had nothing to offer, after all, and was sure that some fault would be found with his attire or that he would make some embarrassing slip of etiquette. Terenth Clovith Fthrathm. According to the invitation slipped onto his desk the previous month, Frasham had been accepted to the 1,500 Mile Society on the occasion of his twenty-seventh birthday and would Peter Winceworth like to join him in celebrating this achievement?

There were many reasons to drink heavily in the presence of Terence Clovis Frasham. He was handsome, popular and had the posture of a professional tennis player. Tennis was a sport, along with fencing and long-distance swimming, for which Frasham had received Blues whilst at university. Winceworth, by contrast, if one was in the business of contrasts, had the posture of a middle-ranking chess player. Frasham also possessed that particularly resentful quality of being a complete braggart while also seeming simply charming. He had entered the employ of Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary at the same time as Winceworth and both were of similar ages.

According to the party invitation, Frasham qualified for entry to the 1,500 Mile Society having successfully returned from Siberia. This jaunt had been funded by Swansby House in order that the etymology of the words shaman and struse and (obtusely or abstrusely) the correct spelling of tsar might be researched for the S volume. Winceworth was still not quite sure how Frasham had talked Prof. Gerolf Swansby into this since Frasham did not speak, nor was qualified to translate, a word of Russian as far as anyone knew. Spurious (adj.), from the Latin spurius, ‘illegitimate’, from spurius (n.), meaning ‘illegitimate child’, from the Etruscan spural meaning ‘public’. According to one of the letters Frasham sent back to the offices, pursuing the etymology of starlet (n.) necessitated a funded audience with various members of Russian aristocracy.

Given the parallels between their lives thus far, the fact Frasham was sent to the steppes of Asia whilst Peter Winceworth was funded to undergo Dr Rochfort-Smith’s attentions in Chelsea seemed fair. Then Frasham’s photographs started arriving back at Swansby House. As London passed through smog-fumey summer and autumn, with horses slaughtered in the street to make way for automobiles and the city filleted for the Underground railways, the photographs sent by Frasham caused grown men and women at the Dictionary to coo with envy and excitement. Here was one featuring Frasham on camelback, another with him wreathed in silks looking over Lake Baikal and taking tea with a diplomat. A particularly dramatic shot of Frasham mock-wrestling a walrus was greeted with something bordering hysteria by members of Swansby House’s staff and was immediately pinned above his empty desk, shrine-like.