Oxford English Dictionary Repair

It is definitely not Mr. St. Clair, who is taller and only rarely lies down these days, and it’s not a very fat, very short seventh grader. While you’re writing down your answer (ignore the annoying music; serious contestants have learned to block it) we will tell you that it varies in age (some parts are over 130 years old while the youngest bit is not yet a hundred) and may be the first thing you see when you get off the elevator.

Did you get it right? It’s A New English Dictionary, usually called “The Oxford English Dictionary,” although that phrase does not occur anywhere in its fifteen and a half thousand pages. St. Bernard’s has the whole thing, probably the property and later gift of an early master who paid (it says on the flyleaf of the first volume) £40. Perhaps it was Mr. Jenkins or Mr. Halliday? Whoever, he would be pleased to see what has just happened.

An anonymous and generous donor noticed that some of the volumes were rather the worse for wear (C was in particularly bad shape) and offered to pay for re-binding. There are not a lot of high-quality binderies left in New York, but there is one in the East Village, the Henry Street Bindery, and thither all thirteen volumes traveled in those ever-useful Fresh Direct bags, escorted by the slightly sleep-deprived Mr. St. Clair.

The bindery itself is a visit to another century. In the dimly-lit basement of the Congregation Sons of Moses, using hand-tools, waxed thread, glue, and wheel-and-screw presses, a single binderyman, Shalom (“Call me Henry—everyone does”), took off the covers and spines, preserved the end-papers, resewed the books, and put everything back. They look the way they must have when bought in London in the 1920s. The spines are stamped in gold, and you can easily read the motto of the Oxford University Press that produced them. For you Latinists (does that not cover all St. Bernard’s?), a final quiz (hint: It’s three words, in columns. Read down.) (and ignore

the music):