Page 316 - The Secret Museum

Anderson Fairy Tale, ready to go on a flying carpet at any moment,’ wrote the

American novelist T. R. Sullivan on 10 January 1902. Alongside the letters are 28
travel journals she wrote and shelves packed with rare books.

I visited the museum to see one particular book, which is actually on display in the
museum. Anyone who visits the museum can see it, but they will never see it open.
For decades, not even the curators had a clue what was inside it. Its contents are a
hidden treasure.

I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful Isabella’s museum would be. I walked into a
flower-filled courtyard and looked up at the Venetian-style palazzo. It reminded me
of being in Italy, where you can push open a plain wooden church door to find a

dazzling feast of colour and beauty.
To see the museum, you visit each uniquely styled room in turn, twice climbing

stairs and circling the central courtyard. I wandered through them all, including a tiny
chapel, until I reached the final gallery of the museum – the Gothic Room – and the
book I had come to see.

The final exhibit in the dark Gothic Room is a portrait by John Sargent of Isabella
Stewart Gardner. It is the most prominently displayed image of her in the museum and
hangs like a goodbye from the museum’s creator. Below her portrait is a wooden
chest, and on the chest sits an enormous book that takes three people to open. Almost
none of the curators who walk past it each day as it lies quietly closed inside the

Gothic Room is sure what is inside. It looks like a book of spells.

The day I visited, the book was to be opened. It was heaved into a corner of the
Tapestry, a big open room on the first floor of the museum, and placed on a lectern on
the floor, under a spotlight. The area in which the book lay was roped off, like the
VIP area of a nightclub. A cameraman started snapping away at the cover as the
entire curatorial and conservation teams of the museum and their artist in residence
assembled to watch. It was like a film set, complete with museum visitors peering
from behind the rope to catch a glimpse of the star: a book.

When the cameraman was ready and everything was still, three conservators in

white gloves gently and slowly opened the book. They were so careful, so curious.
As a curator said, ‘It’s like it’s breathing … and we’re not,’ for we were all holding
our breath in excitement. I think if Mrs Gardner could have seen the reverence in
which her museum treasures are held and the curiosity of everyone watching, she’d
have been leaping with joy.

Page one was a beautifully illuminated hymn. It was written by hand to be sung
annually on 30 November, the feast of St Andrew. Hidden for decades, the song, in
spirit at least, leapt off the page, and almost into sound.

Once everyone had taken in the colourful hymn, the pages of the book were turned
and its illuminated pages photographed. As we watched the pages turn, the curator of
rare books, Anne Marie Eze, a modern Miss Marple, told us everything she had been