Daily Bookshot: Burns in a Bowler

Burns in a Bowler, originally uploaded by Robert Burdock.

So I thought I’d start diversifying in my Daily Bookshots, and not only bring you books from my own collection, but also, on occasion, featuring bookish shots of interest which may arise during my day-to-day wanderings. This is the first of these kind of shots, and it’s one that was taken earlier today of a public display in my local library.

The shot features a couple of the selected books from the Murison Burns Collection. You can read all about John Murison and his Burns collection HERE , because the purpose of this bookshot today isn’t so much to show you these antique Burns-flavoured titles (as beautiful as they are) and talk about their origins, but rather to point out a rather heinous case of book crime, which may or may until now, have gone largely unnoticed.

Take a look at the book on the left, Homes and Haunts of Robert Burns by Rev. R. Lawson. Did Robert Burns take to sporting bowler hat and beard at some point in his life? Good Grief, No! The hat and beard are drawn in blue ink. This is the abhorrent act of an ‘ink vandal’ *Rob faints*.

What I really want to know though is when this crime may have taken place? Impossible to know for sure of course, but there is some evidence that may help the investigation:

• The book itself was published in 1884 so the date of the crime would be some time after this.
• What about the choice of headgear, a Bowler hat (I’m sure that’s what it is). A strange choice for someone of a more modern time to make perhaps, but a more common selection for someone living in the latter eighteenth, early twentieth centuries, when Bowlers were a lot more common?
• How about the design of the inked-on moustache. It seems to be rather a winged affair doesn’t it? Are we looking at something more common to the Edwardian period, or perhaps not long after?

Emmm..so based on the above the ‘crime scene’ all looks a bit late nineteenth, early twentieth-century doesn’t it? But what throws me however, is the artist’s choice of writing instrument. I suppose this could be the mark of a fountain pen, which also sets things around this time period, but the inking all looks a bit too neat for me, as if it were perhaps scribed by a ballpoint pen. Does this date the crime a bit later then, from around mid-twentieth-century maybe?

Ultimately though, who knows when this crime took place? We could throw out all these dating theories and suggest that someone just scribbled a random bowler hat and unconsidered fancy facial hair on Burns, just the other day. This may well be the case but that’s not a conclusion I particularly want to stick with. Because I rather like the idea, that what we are looking at here isn’t the product of a modern age, but rather the handiwork of a 100-year-old pen.