Binding by the Picture: The Very Rare “Puzzle Bindings”, or “Bindings with Surprises”, “Vexierbuch”, “Puzzle Binding”

Dear bibliophiles, good day,

Decidedly, the crooks who gravitate around the world of old books are as whimsical and original as the bibliophiles themselves: some climb cliffs and discover secret passages, others steal identities, others still hope to leave a famous library with two folios in each pocket, and so on. Here is a new example, with the adventures of Raymond Scott.

2008. An elegant Englishman presents himself at the Folger Library (United States) to have a copy of the first-edition folio of Shakespeare’s works (1623) authenticated. This book is not extremely rare (some 200 copies are known… but only 40 complete), yet it is much sought after and is valued at a few million euros.

The Folger is the right place to have the copy authenticated, since it holds 79 other copies, and one may imagine that Scott’s idea was to offer his copy to the institution.

Alas, the library’s expert quickly notices a few manuscript notes in the margins of the copy, characteristic of a copy stolen in 1998 from the English library of Durham. The elegant Englishman is arrested at once and prosecuted.

It is at this point that the world discovers the eccentric Raymond Scott, bookseller, son of a bookseller and a whimsical character if ever there was one. It quickly emerges that although he lives in a modest house a few kilometres from the Durham library, and lives on a meagre welfare allowance (100 euros a week), Raymond Scott drives an Aston Martin or a Ferrari, wears luxury suits and travels constantly abroad, in particular to Cuba. On that island he has in fact made the acquaintance of a 30-year-old dancer, Heidy, who is 23 years his junior. One quickly understands that she prefers to enjoy the largesse of this capitalist on a spree rather than devote their meetings to extolling the virtues of Fidel-style communism.

This love with a scent of vellum costs Raymond dear, and finally obliges him to try to put the Shakespeare up for sale to meet the growing needs of his young fiancée.

Outside the court, where Scott arrives by horse-drawn carriage preceded by a Scotsman, in a limousine, or dressed as Che Guevara, our elegant Englishman proclaims, despite the evidence, that the book has in fact been in Cuba for more than a century and that it was Fidel’s regime that prevented its authentication and its sale abroad.

He did the family of his fiancée a service by devoting himself to getting the book out of the island, having it authenticated and selling it. Soon the evidence tied to the manuscript notes confounds Scott, who opts for a second version of the Cuban thesis.

It was in fact the Cuban parents of his dulcinea who stole the Shakespeare from the Durham library, at the end of a journey of thousands of kilometres, before returning to their island and, happy coincidence, their daughter happening to fall in love with an Englishman, a bookseller living close to the Durham library.

In short, the case seems to be going badly, all the more so as the evidence piles up against Scott, who, we now know, has been arrested several times for theft, and notably for book theft just before his trial.

Nevertheless, there is no proof of the theft… The library’s employees having seen nothing, heard nothing or almost, while the book was on display in a glass case. To tell the truth, they did not realise the book was missing until a few days later. The thief, indeed, had taken care to put back the velvet that protected the case from the sun’s light between two exhibitions.

Rules are rules, and they were visibly not embarrassed to have left the book on display under the velvet for some time. Ah, professional conscience, what a lovely thing.

Scott will therefore be convicted only of handling stolen goods and of damaging a work of art (he scraped off the stamps), to a prison sentence of 8 years (enormous, wouldn’t you say?).

Hard not to find the character likeable, in any case. Personally, I rather like him.

H