The Personal Librarian

by Marie Benedict

While Mr. Junius Morgan is ostensibly a banker, he has generously donated dozens of ancient and medieval manuscripts to the university, which is why he also holds the titular position of associate head librarian.

the Virgils,

share a passion for the ancient Roman poet Virgil. The library houses

fifty-two volumes of his poetry. My discussions with Junius

about the dark voyages in The Aeneid and The Odyssey are some of the brightest moments in my days. While Junius admires Odysseus, I identify always with Aeneas, the Trojan refugee who desperately tries to fulfill his destiny in a world that holds no place fo...

One day, the beauty of your mind and the beauty of art will be as one, Papa had said once.

Junius doesn’t need to identify who his uncle is. Everyone at the library knows he is the nephew of the infamous financier J. P. Morgan, which is exactly why I never mention him. I want Junius to understand that I appreciate him for his erudition alone.

the most fascinating discussion of the evening was with my uncle about his personal art and manuscript collection. I advise him about it from time to time, as well as the new library he’s constructing for it right next door to his home in New York City.”

“I have recommended that he interview you for his newly created post of personal librarian.”

T Street NW in Washington, DC.

To be a Fleet was to be well educated (all of my aunts and uncles had gone to college) and hardworking (the women were all teachers and the men, all engineers). Fleets were understated in dress and presentation, connected to the community, mannerly in demeanor, and always dignified, no matter what treatment we encountered outside the bubble of our small world.

my sisters, Louise and Ethel; my brother, Russell; and our cousin, Clafton, Uncle Mozart’s son—Papa

“A colored girl named Belle Marion Greener would never have been considered for a job with Mr. J. P. Morgan. Only a white girl called Belle da Costa Greene would have that opportunity.”

“Your heritage! Ah yes, you are a daughter of the great Fleets, while I am just the lowly grandson of a slave. You married a Greener, a man far below your station in life.”

You reported our race to the census workers as white.”

I’d learned long ago, among my many etiquette lessons as a Fleet, that race, like politics and religion, was never to be discussed in public and only very rarely in private.

That we should not be defined by how many drops of African blood run in our veins, but by our character and our deeds. That we should not be ashamed of our heritage and we all, blacks and coloreds alike, should unify in our fight against prejudice. Your act goes against everything I stand for and everything I’ve worked for—”

How could a man renowned for his oratory skills—the Richard Greener, first colored graduate of Harvard, former professor at the University of South Carolina, and former dean of Howard University School of Law, who gave speeches all around the country—be

assimilating

Papa, so fair that folks often mistook him for white no matter his words and actions to the contrary, must have composed himself, because his tone was more regulated, though his voice was still raised, when he continued. “Reporting yourself and our children as white is like turning your back on your own people. Turning your back on yourself.” There was a long pause before he spoke again, but when he did, it was barely above a whisper. “And turning your back on me, most of all.”

I would no longer be called Belle Marion Greener, proud daughter of Richard Greener, a lawyer, an advocate for equality, and a member of the talented tenth, and of Genevieve Fleet Greener, part of the elite Washington, DC, community of free people of color. No. Shortly thereafter, I accepted my mother’s decision as if it were my own and I became the white woman known as Belle da Costa Greene.

Before, I had a desire to be successful, but now, it can no longer be a simple desire; success must be my commitment.

In order to assimilate with this crowd, I must be bold, daring to hide my differences in plain sight.

While segregation is the law of the South, the tentacles of Jim Crow have stretched into New York, too.

Together we are saving the past for the future. With my fortune and your gifted eye and hard work, we are rescuing and protecting the most beautiful and important treasures that history has to offer—those artifacts and manuscripts that memorialize the physical history of the book.”

office?” he asks, sounding incredulous that a woman—a young woman—should

“My romantic entanglements always end badly, and I could

never stand to lose you, Belle. You mean more to me than any woman, even more than my own family most of the time. I want you at my side—as my partner, my confidant, and my librarian—until the end.”

How strange is the power of geography and law that we could leave New York City as white people but arrive in Washington, DC, as colored

To be colored in America is a burden that I don’t want them to have to shoulder.”

Segregation is really just slavery by another name, lynching is one of its proponents’ weapons, and we would be subjected to segregation and threatened by lynchings if we lived as colored anywhere in this country.

imprimatur

nonplussed.

intimation

“It is my name that is carved above this library’s doors, not yours. And I never want to have to remind you of that again.”

Caxton,

Le

Morte

Da...

I explain to Mama that in the late fourteen hundreds, an English merchant and diplomat named William Caxton used the new printing technology invented by Johannes Gutenberg twenty years prior to make the first English-language books. “After all,” I point out, “Caxton not only made available a larger range of texts to English speakers but unified the English language. His books are important for not only historical and literary significance but also linguistic.”

combine the sixteen Caxtons on offer at the auction with the volumes we already have, it will go far in establishing the institution’s preeminence.”

mien.

perambulate

hubris

striations

obviate

peccadilloes?

florid

hewn

allegorical