The Shakespeare Thefts (6 page)

On August 2, 2010, with the report in hand, Judge Richard Lowden told Scott:

You are to some extent a fantasist and have to some degree a personality disorder and you have been an alcoholic… . Your motivation was for financial gain. You wanted to fund an extremely ludicrous playboy lifestyle in order to impress a woman you met in Cuba. Your Cuban friends were brought in to provide support for your elaborate scheme.
²⁵

Passing sentence, the judge condemned the damage to the First Folio as “cultural vandalisation” of a “quintessentially English treasure.”
²⁶
Scott was given a six-year prison term for handling stolen goods and two years’ imprisonment for removing stolen property from Britain.
²⁷
The eight-year sentence was the longest ever meted out in a case involving a stolen First Folio. Chris Enzor, chief crown prosecutor, welcomed the punishment:

Raymond Scott is a dishonest conman and serial thief who found himself in possession of a national treasure. The sentence reflects the seriousness of his crime, handling a book recognised across the world as one of the most important literary works ever published and removing it from the UK with a view to selling it.
²⁸

Did the Durham University copy ever reside in Cuba or belong to a bodyguard of Castro’s? That tale certainly
makes a good story, and who knows, Scott may well believe it.

The Palace Green Library now has locks on cases that contain valuable books, but at the time of the theft there was little security whatsoever. After the book was recovered, you might hope that any aspiring thieves would have to come in through the ceiling, Tom Cruise–like, on grappling hooks, while avoiding lasers and other high-tech devices, but this is not now—nor was it then—the case.

The recovered folio was put on public display in its damaged condition while experts from Durham University’s Conservation Unit, based at Palace Green Library, began the process of conservation. The recovered copy had the binding and first and last pages removed. The first few and the last pages consequently came loose from the sewing and became damaged along the edges. To retain the shape of the book’s original smooth gilded edges, the conservators plan to repair the sewing by laying new cords over those that remain. The damaged pages will be repaired with Japanese paper and wheat starch paste and resewn on to the new cords. New boards—the hard covers of books—will be made and laced onto the cords. Then the First Folio will be rebound in dark blue goatskin. Finally, the title will be lettered directly onto the spine with gold leaf, and a drop-back box, suitable for
storing and protecting valuable books, will be made to protect the binding.

Durham’s stolen medieval manuscripts may never be recovered. But noted author Bill Bryson, who serves as chancellor of Durham University, called the First Folio “arguably the most important book in English literature” as he welcomed “this wonderfully important book home to the university and city.”
²⁹

I am to wait, though waiting so be hell
.

—Shakespeare’s Sonnet 58

My team has been waiting to see a privately owned copy of the First Folio for two decades. In 1991, Anthony James West learned that a family in Tokyo, Japan, owned a First Folio. Anthony contacted the distinguished Japanese rare book dealer Mitsuo Nitta, who had brokered the sale of many First Folios in Japan in the 1970s and who had sold this copy to the family in question, asking if he might be allowed to examine their book. This is a common practice for us: We get in touch with private owners throughout the
world regularly, usually through intermediaries, asking if we might have the privilege of examining their folios. Their greatest worry is maintaining their privacy—no one wants to call attention to the fact that they have a copy of this enormously valuable book in their home. Most owners we contact agree to let us look at their books because they are impressed by how seriously we take their security and privacy arrangements.

Mr. Nitta replied that the owner, a Mr. Kamijo, had died and had left a provision in his will that “access to the volume was proscribed for thirteen years from the date of his death.”
¹
This was an odd provision, and uncommon for Japanese wills. But we were willing to wait.

After the required number of years had elapsed, I got in touch with Mr. Nitta again. The disappointing response: The owner “is not interesting to sell or show this copy to others.”
²

Of course, now we
really
wanted to see it. We had learned from Mr. Nitta that there is a red stain on the Kamijo family copy. If this is true, then it may be linked to a First Folio once owned by an individual named Jean Claude Daubuz, who described it in 1901 as having been stained on “nearly every page … in the upper corner with wine or some other red liquid.” When the Daubuz copy was sold at auction in 1932 to an unknown buyer, the Sotheby’s catalog also noted that it had “a pink stain” in the right-hand top corner.

Could it be blood? Members of the team noticed something suspicious in the course of our research: A surprising number of owners met their demise shortly after getting their hands on a First Folio.

The media is fond of observing that Sir Paul Getty purchased his copy of the First Folio just “six weeks before his death in 2003.”
³
As it happens, the story is somewhat exaggerated. Getty purchased his copy from Oxford’s Oriel College in April 2002 and died in April 2003. (The copy Getty purchased—a particularly prized one, intact but for two leaves and still in its original binding—was given to Oriel College in 1786 by Lord Leigh, who was a certified lunatic and had spent several years in an asylum.)

James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr. Johnson’s biographer, purchased the First Folio that had belonged to the celebrated actor John Philip Kemble in January 1821. On February 4, 1822, Boswell died in his chambers, at the age of forty-three. The Boswell First Folio then passed to his only brother, Sir Alexander Boswell, who was killed twenty days later in a duel with James Stuart.

In 1829, Sir Frederick Francis Baker acquired the First Folio that had belonged to the famed sculptress Anne Damer. On October 1, 1830, Baker was explaining the workings of a windmill to his children but, apparently being very shortsighted, got too close to one of
the blades and was struck on the back of the head and killed. (This amazes me: How many people are
killed
by a
windmill?
)

In 1853, twenty-five-year-old William George Sutton inherited a First Folio from his father and then died himself in the following year.

On July 26, 1887, the London book dealer Henry Sotheran purchased a First Folio at Sotheby’s and subsequently sold it to George P. Byrne. Byrne, however, was dead within months, and his library sold at auction on December 17, 1887.

The list continues. Dean Sage, one of Mark Twain’s close friends, purchased a First Folio on April 9, 1902. Two months later, Sage died of a heart attack, at age sixty-one.

Harry Widener purchased a First Folio in 1910. In April 1912, returning from a book-buying trip in London, Widener and his parents boarded the ill-fated
Titanic
. Harry apparently lost his chance at a seat in a lifeboat when he returned to his cabin to retrieve his copy of Francis Bacon’s 1598
Essays
. He is said to have called to his mother, “I have placed the volume in my pocket—the little
Bacon
goes with me!
⁴
Eleanor Elkins Widener ultimately was rescued by the
Carpathia;
the bodies of the male Wideners were never recovered. In memory of her son, Eleanor underwrote construction of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard
University to which she donated his rare book collection, including the First Folio and the Gutenberg Bible that his grandfather had purchased to surprise the young man when he returned from the transatlantic crossing.

Upon the death of Sir Thomas Edward Watson in 1921, his First Folio passed to his forty-six-year-old son, Sir Wilfrid Hood Watson, who died in the following year.

Arthur Spencer Dayton purchased a First Folio at auction on November 26, 1946, but was dead by 1948, also at age sixty-one, like poor Dean Sage.

And that’s not all. In late November 1949, William Pyle Philips purchased all four Shakespeare folios, which he got to enjoy for just over a year before he died in December 1950, at age sixty-eight.

Of course, if Mr. Kamijo had followed this pattern, he would have died in the early 1970s, shortly after acquiring the First Folio. But he did not pass away for another decade. However, even in death, Mr. Kamijo has succeeded in jealously guarding his potentially bloodstained folio from researchers.

One of the most frustrating things about researching rare books is being stonewalled, but it happens. You hear of a book that is sold at auction, and you contact the venue making the sale to ask about getting in touch with the new owner. The admirable thing about Sotheby’s and Christie’s is that they keep their secrets. If the
new owner does not wish to be identified, you are not going to get that person’s name.

And while this can drive me crazy in my professional life, I appreciate it to the fullest in my personal life. I work with some of the premier book dealers in the world—these are people who, when you dine at their home, will casually say, “I just happened upon the only extant pre-1700 manuscript of Sir Thomas More’s
Richard III
.” And I’ll reply, “That’s impossible, you don’t just
happen upon
such things!” (And then, in an impulse, I will buy it.) One of my friends, Arthur Freeman, has personally handled the transactions of at least half a dozen First Folios. He once bought a copy at a New York auction for a private client. At the conclusion of the auction, he collected the volume and decided to walk the short distance from Christie’s to his hotel. (Having once left a copy of
Don Quixote
worth $250,000 in a Manhattan taxi, he understandably shied away from taking a cab.) Arthur is perhaps one of the very few people on earth who would feel comfortable strolling along Park Avenue with a First Folio tucked under his arm. At the hotel, he asked if the invaluable book could be stored in a safe deposit box but was told that it was too large. Worried about leaving the folio in his room while he went to dinner, he disguised it in a pillowcase. Probably just as well that it wouldn’t fit in a safe deposit box. At a later date, some well-organized thieves held
up the hotel in question and removed not just a few stored valuables but the
entire
secure panel of locked boxes (kept for guests’ jewelry) by simply ripping if off its wall behind reception.

A certain sense of vulnerability comes with being in possession of such a rare and valuable object. I have felt it, my friends have felt it, and so the auction houses must proceed with discretion, even by standing directly in the way of cataloging such rarities, a process that, perhaps ironically, makes these treasures highly identifiable and therefore less of a target.

If you can’t lay your hands on the volume, the first thing you do is research its provenance as far back as you can. You ask yourself who the last possessor was prior to it being acquired by this owner. Then, if possible, you interview that individual’s family: Was there a sale, a disbursement of books to an heir? More often than we’d like, our team gets no concrete answers. The book has simply vanished.

This is not to say that all owners are secretive: A great number are thrilled to have a scholar of Renaissance dramatic literature look at their early books, to have them recorded in catalogs for posterity. I was once invited to Petworth House, in West Sussex, England, the ancestral home of the Percy family. (Harry Percy was immortalized in the character Hotspur in Shakespeare’s
Henry IV
.) They were most open about letting me see
their heirlooms but not accustomed to showing them off, so they dispensed with protocol: They went to the nursery, took some pillows from a cot, piled them up on a table, and placed their copy of the exceedingly rare first edition of
Richard II
on it. I was charmed.

As a First Folio hunter, you can research and push only so far. If you can’t get the actual copy of the book into your hands, you can’t make a positive identification. And you must wait. We’ve been waiting to see the Kamijo family copy since 1991, and we’re willing to wait some more.

The Manchester University Copy

On the night of July 13, 1972, a copy of the First Folio was stolen from the library of Manchester University in England. This volume had been presented to the school by Edward Donner, the chairman of the Manchester and Liverpool District Banking Company, in April 1898. He had bought it from the London bookseller Bernard Quaritch. The copy had been displayed in a specially designed showcase in an exhibition area. Because it was so rare and valuable, the library normally kept a facsimile on display. It was replaced by the original only when distinguished visitors or parties particularly interested in rare books were expected. Unfortunately, on the occasion in
question, it was the original and not its false twin that was stolen.

Sometimes institutions have better luck: One of the best copies of the First Folio actually was saved from a fire because it was on loan to J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. Bound in red goatskin and acquired in the late eighteenth century by James Caulfeild, first Earl of Charlemont, the book had been housed in the Charlemont library for decades. Fortuitously, it was on loan when a fire destroyed most of the library in 1865. It has been on deposit with the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh for over twenty years.

Sadly, Manchester University was not so fortunate. Police and the book trade were informed of the theft (although, frustratingly, we’ve not been able to locate a police report), but the copy stolen on that night in 1972 has remained missing.