British Aeolian rolls didn't use waxed paper.  Indeed, hardly anybody
did until modern days -- set fire to a scrap and you'll soon spot the
difference between the paraffin-waxed paper and the untreated stuff!

What Aeolian used was "machine glazed" paper, where the back has
a shiny surface arrived at by passing the wet paper over heated rolls
in the Fourdrinier machine that it's made on. [*]

When rolls of this paper are somewhat spongy they're probably slightly
damp, or possibly just haven't been played for a very long time.
Beethoven symphonies come into the latter category in most collections,
be they the Liszt arrangements or not!  Much more likely they've come
from a damp house; given a month or two they'll adopt the humidity of
their new home.

The reason for the slightly uneven edges when the rolled-up spool end
is viewed is quite probably the way that the paper feed rolls went
through the perforator.  I find that the same can be true of new rolls,
it depends on the grain in the paper and the way that the feed spools
were wound in the mill.

I don't know just what image of British weather or Aeolian workmanship
gives rise to an assumption that the rolls have swollen because of
90 years' damp!  The normal relative humidity in London is about 45%,
rarely above 60%, and Aeolian produced a high-quality product, part of
which entailed "maturing" their paper for many months to stabilise it
to normal atmosphere before perforating.

There is a picture of the paper store at the Hayes factory showing an
unbelievable amount of paper neatly sitting on racks, each reel with
its date of manufacture and date of reeling, and an identification
number.  The edges of some of these reels show the same serrated profile
that the rolls have, suggesting again that it's an innate property of
the paper.

Julian Dyer

 [ * from my 7 kg dictionary of 1927:  A machine for making paper
 [ in an endless web, developed in England in the early 19th century
 [ chiefly by Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier.  "Fourdrinier cloth" is
 [ a metal fabric mesh used in the machine for draining the paper
 [ pulp, woven of fine brass wire and made by a "Fourdrinier loom".
 [ -- Robbie