RESTORING DEFECTIVE BOOKS

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EXPERTS who live by repairing, restoring, and otherwise renovating mutilated books, are to be found in most centres of literary activity; are to be found, that is, by those who know where to look for them, and have themselves a practical acquaintance with dingy holes and corners in forgotten lanes and alleys. The trade is not a good one, and there is, moreover, a sufficient flavour of falsehood and fraud about it to make the scrupulously honest collector wish it were worse. The wages of sin are usually exceedingly small, and hence it comes to pass that the "Book-Faker" has a lean and hungry look, for a pair of hands cannot always provide for a dozen or more of mouths, and apprentices to this particular business are quite unknown.

      The skilled and ingenious man who for a consideration will make your imperfect copy of Walton and Cotton spick and span again, notwithstanding the fact that when it was handed over to his tender care it was "cut," imperfect, mutilated and stained with ink, grease and filth of every description, is probably some fallen bookseller who for years had spent his odd hours in "renovating" his own stock, until regular customers gave him and his tomes a wide berth. His reputation, however, as a "faker" increased as his business declined, and when at last he was forced to go by the board he found plenty of other book- sellers who were willing to employ him in making up imperfections and gilding over blemishes. Books frequently stand in urgent need of repair, and every large library, public or private, contains many which have passed through the hands of the experts before they were sent to the binders. Dealers of repute also often find it to their advantage to "make up" some excessively rare volume and to describe it in their catalogues as "restored" or "beautifully facsimiled," as the case may be and circumstances require. This is legitimate, and both dealer and expert are within their rights; but what about the ragged volume which comes back looking as fresh as a work on Theology, and is catalogued and sold without any reference whatever to the multitude of latent defects with which it abounds? Such a book as this is the bibliophile's horror, for more often than not his latest bargain is found to have been thus tampered with and palmed off as sound.

      The original binding, which now looks so perfect, will, on investigation, be found to have been plastered with a mixture of bread and mastic varnish, and then brushed with white of egg. The surface has perhaps even been designedly soiled to make the fraud look genuine. Leaves have been extracted from other and similar works, and then inserted with great precision and accuracy, and under favourable conditions the very date on the title-page may have been deftly altered. Sometimes the corner of a page that has been torn away is added, letterpress and all, and it would take Argus himself to detect the imposition.

      In some special instances whole pages are inimitably copied by hand on paper resembling that on which the book is printed. These useful sheets of paper are torn out of old folios and carefully preserved by the expert, forming, in point of fact, his stock-in-trade. In the British Museum there are many books containing added leaves, which it is almost impossible to tell from actual typography, so neatly and excellently has the labour of copying been performed. Grolier, who liked wide margins, frequently welded strips of paper to the edges of his books, which became to all appearance as good as they were before they had been planed down. What Grolier did, the expert can do now. The volume is stripped of its cover and each leaf carefully and laboriously made taller, and then perhaps stained with a weak solution of coffee or one of the numerous other dyes calculated to produce uniformity. Worm-holes are plastered up with pulped paper; dirt is removed by oxalic acid, which will not touch printing ink, though it will remove marginal notes in writing ink. If the book is adorned with prints, the sharpness of these is heightened by a bath of whisky and water. The engraved title-page, if irretrievably mutilated, may be transferred to other and similar paper from the stock-in-trade, by means of a receipt which is worth mentioning, as it may be useful for other and more legitimate purposes. The title-page is first exposed for ten seconds to the vapour of iodine. The paper on which the impression is to be reproduced has previously been dipped in a weak solution of starch, and when dry in a similar solution of oil of vitriol. When again dry, the prepared paper is placed on the engraving and put for a few minutes under a press, when all the fineness and delicacy of the print will be found to have been faithfully transferred. A little more whisky and water, and a few strokes from a pen to heighten the effect, and it would take a very circumspect and cautious person, on the continual look-out for cheats and impostures, to discover the interloper.

      Chloride of lime is, of course, largely employed by book-makers (for so they may indeed be called), since this chemical bleaches, though it rots the paper, and invests the grimy page with a surface of virgin white.

      The expert will sometimes purchase on his own account two or three wretched wrecks of volumes, which to all appearance are mere waste-paper, fit only to be thrown aside. If perfect the books would have been valuable, but in their present condition their value is nil. Out of ruin and chaos he produces order, and may greatly enrich himself, for surely one perfect volume is better, artistically and pecuniarily, than any number of shocking examples of carelessness and mutilation such as he has so deftly practised upon.