When a copy of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” was returned to the Paterson Public Library in Paterson, N.J., in September, there was one small problem that many tardy readers have encountered: It was a tad overdue.
It was supposed to be back on Feb. 1.
Feb. 1, 1923.
The book’s century-long absence came to an end thanks to Cyndy Delhaie. As Ms. Delhaie, a resident of Denver, was decluttering over the summer, she began going through some old books that she had inherited from her grandmother in 1995. One of them stood out: “Shakespeare’s Life of King Henry the Fifth,” with an introduction by Ralph Hartt Bowles, published in 1910.
“I happened to open that one, and I saw the card inside, and I said, ‘This is a library book,’” Ms. Delhaie said in an interview.
The card revealed that the book had been checked out of the Paterson Library by Lillian L. Burns, a name that didn’t mean anything to Ms. Delhaie.
Ms. Delhaie’s grandmother, Arlene Delhaie, was born in 1917, and it seems unlikely she would have been reading such a book in elementary school. It isn’t known whether the mysterious Ms. Burns gave the book to Ms. Delhaie’s grandmother at some point, or if it came into her possession some other way.
It is among many mysteries surrounding the book. Was a long-ago reader so enraptured by the work’s opening words — “O, for a muse of fire” — or the inspiring words of Henry — “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” — that she couldn’t bear to part with it? That answer is lost to the mists of time.
In any case, the book belonged back at the library. “I saw it was the Paterson Library,” Ms. Delhaie said. “I looked it up to see if it even still existed.”
The Paterson Library does still exist, and wanted the book back. But since Ms. Delhaie lives in Denver, she shipped it to the library, rather than just shoving it through the book-return slot. “I was glad to know the little book was going home,” she said.
Though it is not the first time a book has been a century overdue — “Poetry of Byron” was returned to a school in Cumbria, England, after 113 years, “Ivanhoe” after 105 years to a Colorado library — it still stunned Corey Fleming, the Paterson Public Library director. “I’ve been doing the work for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s absolutely phenomenal.”
(Shakespeare might not have approved of such tardiness. “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late,” he has Ford say in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”)
But it wasn’t as if the library had been searching high and low for the missing Shakespeare book. “Every five or 10 years, they kind of clean the system,” Mr. Fleming said. “So we wouldn’t have that in our records.”
Ms. Delhaie found no other delinquent library books in her grandmother’s belongings, and it seems likely this one had been overlooked rather than intentionally purloined.
“It was really little, and it was stuck in between some technical books, one of them on pipe fitting,” she said in the interview.
The century-old copy of “Henry V” will not be simply dropped back on a shelf for another Shakespeare lover to check out. “We’re going to preserve it in our history room or in a museum,” Mr. Fleming said.
Ms. Delhaie acknowledged that she did think about a possible fine. After 100 years, the overdue fee might rival the bill for the nine-course menu at Per Se for 10.
The Paterson Public Library currently charges 10 cents a day for overdue books (a bit more for DVDs). Records of historical fines are scant, but for what it’s worth, 10 cents times 365 times 101 would be $3,686.50. (Generally, however, fines stop accruing once the value of the item is reached.)
In this case, the Paterson library was courteous enough to waive any fines. Phew.
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