An Experience To Treasure

For the past two months I’ve been living in a single room in east Oxford.  It’s not an enviable experience, but it’s actually ok – we’ve squeezed a lot in – but however hard you try, there’s a limit. 

So for now my brother’s loft still hosts 17 boxes of my precious books.  Fingers crossed we’ll move to our own home round the corner soon, with shelves aplenty for storage and show.

So I sympathise with the university’s Bodleian Library.   They too have hoards of priceless, underappreciated manuscripts with too little space to keep, let alone exhibit them.  At least they have a firm date to move them to the adjacent Weston building, even if it’s not until 2015.

In the meantime the only treasures they can display are crammed into one room, with barely two score of texts on view.  What’s more, it’s dimly lit, and everything is a thick layer of glass away from sticky plebian fingers.  Not a promising start for an exhibition.

Oh, but what a top 40:  diminutive, dim and distant it may be, but I was blown away by the treasures of the Bodleian!

The tone is set from the start:  no less than an original first Folio of Shakespeare plays.  Next is a Guttenberg bible, one of the first books ever printed in the west, flanked by a mystical, ancient-Egyptian parchment.

Each was beautiful, even awe-inspiring.  But what I loved was that the library didn’t stop there, but instead offered some wonderful nuggets of extra information.

So, looking closely at the Shakespeare, you can still see the iron ring which was used to securely chain it to a rail.  This may imply that the library appreciated its value, but when a new edition came out it was discarded, and had to be bought back at huge expense.  Apparently they still keep a roll of names relating to the fundraising appeal – a list of those who refused to contribute!

Similarly, the bible marks a seminal moment in the history of printing, but for me the best part was noticing how the first letter of every sentence was picked out in red, making it not only beautiful but easier to read.  I actually preferred the ‘colophon’ next to it, hand-copied by an amateur scribe called Maria in 1476.  At first it looks old and impressive, but on close inspection it’s actually pleasingly imperfect, with inconsistent spaces between the letters and lines which start to slope down at the ends, just like my niece’s wobbly writing.

The Egyptian papyrus trumps others on age, but is also one of the most surprising subjects – not a worthy philosophical or religious tract, but rather an angry note from a petulant schoolboy complaining bitterly about being left behind while his father went off to Alexandria.  This is no literary masterpiece, just a timeless teenage tantrum, unofficially translated as “oh dad, it’s so unfair!”

This is what’s so great about this exhibition – the stuffy Oxford academics actually seem to have some humanity and even a sense of humour!

They even allow modern objects into their very limited space.  Early handwritten drafts from Jane Austin and Wilfred Owen may be monetarily less valuable, but are still priceless.

Again it’s the quirky details which catch the eye:  hearing Harold Macmillan’s speeches right at the time British colonies were gaining independence is intriguing – but it’s only by seeing the original typed drafts that you notice his timeless ‘winds of change’ phrase was actually a hurriedly scribbled afterthought.

And whilst it is laudable to include documents on suffragettes, the one which jumped out at me was a postcard from the seldom mentioned women’s anti-votes movement:  a primly-dressed lady with the simple message “No Votes For Women.  Thank You”.

Finally, I just love the first ever Penguin books.  The iconic design and borderline-autistic coded jackets are just my thing.  More importantly, the Bodleian, that bastion of dusty, rare manuscripts, makes the brave and unusual decision to include these colourful, populist books amongst its top treasures.

Perhaps this is the greatest success of all.  The curators of such a valuable collection could easily have settled on showing things worth a lot of money.  But to their immense credit they go further, seeing treasure as also something we do – to cherish what is valuable, influential, inspirational. 

Applying this enlightened approach to such an amazing collection - this truly is an experience to treasure.