“JUST BECAUSE I’M A LIBRARIAN DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE TO DRESS AS ONE”—BELLE DA COSTA GREENE

THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, JUNE 26, 2025, BLURBS Francesca Wade’s “The Best-Paid Woman in NYC.” Wade is reviewing two books, Belle Da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy and Becoming Belle Da Costa Greene: A Visionary Librarian Through Her Letters. 

Wade begins, “In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene was one of the best-paid women in New York City. As J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, she criss-crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of rare manuscripts to add to his collection, outbidding and outsmarting rivals wherever she went.”

Belle Da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy, edited Erica Ciallela et al., DelMonico, 2024. Published to coincide with the Morgan Museum & Library exhibition, October 25, 2024-May 4, 2025. 

Becoming Belle Da Costa Greene: A Visionary Librarian Through Her Letters, by Deborah Parker, Villa I Tatti, 2024.

Wade cites, “ ‘Miss Belle Greene can spend more money in an afternoon than any other young woman of 26,’ the New York Times reported in 1912, after her winning bid for a Caxton Morte d’Arthur caught the attention of the press. She ‘picks up a musty tome as gracefully as a butterfly alights on a dusty leaf.’ Greene made good use of her handsome salary. ‘Just because I am a librarian,’ she reportedly said, ‘doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.’ ”

And, as recounted by IndieBound, “While she was famous and well known for her librarianship in her lifetime, few people also knew that she had been born to a prominent Black family, and by her early 20s was passing as white in New York City.”

On Passing. Wikipedia relates, “Her father, Richard Theodore Greener, was the first black student to attend and first black graduate of Harvard University (class of 1870). He went on to work as an attorney, professor and racial justice activist and served as dean of the Howard University School of Law…. Her mother was Genevieve Ida Fleet, a music teacher and member of a prominent African-American family in the upscale Northwest Quadrant of Washington, D.C.”

“After her parents’ separation,” Wikipedia continues, “the light-skinned Belle, her mother, and her siblings passed as white and changed their surname to Greene to distance themselves from their father. Her mother changed her maiden name to Van Vliet in an effort to assume Dutch ancestry. Belle also made a change to her name, swapping out [her birth middle name] Marion for ‘da Costa,’ and claiming a Portuguese background to explain her darker complexion.”

All part of the horrors of the Jim Crow era lasting from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. And a sobering history in light of current events.

Wade observes, “Greene’s background was not widely known until Jean Strouse’s 1999 biography of Morgan…. Greene never commented on her race, and the curators [of the Morgan exhibit] contextualised the sparse records of her family history with various contemporaneous materials exploring the phenomenon of passing.”

Morgan Library Goal. Wade recounts, “Her aim was ‘to make the library pre-eminent …. I hope to be able to say some day that there is neither rival nor equal.’ A 1911 cartoon in World magazine showed her in a flamboyant feathered hat, striding towards an auctioneer and declaring: ‘Fifty thousand dollars for that book!’ By this point, she was screening items for potential purchase, opening Morgan’s mail (except when the handwriting ‘looks blonde’), organising his diary and developing her own relationships with dealers.”

Art Historian Bernard Berenson Enters Belle’s Life. “In January 1909,” Wade recounts, “she was introduced to the art historian Bernard Berenson. By April he had sent her sixteen volumes of The Thousand and One Nights and she was marvelling at the ‘invasion which you have made of my life and heart.’ ” 

Wade continues, “Greene destroyed Berenson’s side of the correspondence before her death, to his chagrin, but the six hundred letters she sent to him in Italy survive in the archive at I Tatti (then his home, now the Harvard Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies) and have been digitised. They are full of library gossip, anecdotes, stock tips, wry character assassinations and romantic longing, and offer insights into Greene’s character, from her love of flirting to her scepticism about feminism to her hunger for knowledge in all its forms.”

Her Real Life. In one note to Berenson, Belle wrote, “My real life I live to myself—and within myself.” Later, she confided, “I, at least, am frank enough to admit that I would not cast aside my material life for you, and as I know you feel the same, why waste time hot airing about it?”

Francesca Wade chooses “Why Wasting Time Hot Airing?” as the title for her review. And like so many LRB articles, there’s nary a moment of time waste in the article. Thanks, Francesca, I’m glad to learn about the talented Belle Da Costa Greene and her being herself in complex times. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025