Queer Places:
Morgan Library & Museum,
225 Madison Avenue
at East 36th Street
Manhattan, New York City
Kensico Cemetery
Valhalla, Westchester County, New York, USA
Belle da Costa Greene (December 13, 1883 – May 10, 1950) was the librarian to J.
P. Morgan. After Morgan's death in 1913, Greene continued as librarian
under his son, Jack
Morgan. In 1924 the private collection was incorporated by the State of
New York as a library for public uses, and the Board of Trustees appointed
Greene first director of the Pierpont
Morgan Library.[1]
Belle da Costa Greene by everyone's assessment was an outrageous person. She
had been librarian for J.P. Morgan as well as his mistress. A stunning beauty
of mixed Negro/Caucasian blood, she had thick, sensuous lips, face and figure.
Rumors abounded as to her wild sex life; some said that after Morgan's death,
she overcompensated with many lovers; others said these were flirtations to
cover her same-sex affairs.
Born Belle Marion Greener in Washington,
D.C., Greene grew up there and in New
York City. Her biographer Heidi Ardizzone lists Greene's birth date as
November 26, 1879. Her mother was Genevieve Ida Fleet, a member of a
well-known "African-American" family
in the nation's capital, while her father was Richard
Theodore Greener, an attorney who served as dean of the Howard
University School of Law and was the first black student and first black
graduate of Harvard (class
of 1870). After his separation from his wife (they never divorced), Greener
became a U.S. diplomat posted to Siberia,
where he had a second family with a Japanese woman. Once Greene took the job
with Morgan, she likely never spoke to her father again. She may have met him
once in Chicago around
1913, but no written records of this meeting are known. Historians long
believed that Richard Greener had lost most of his papers in the 1906 San
Francisco earthquake.[2] In
2012, however, Chicago Sun reporter Kim Janssen reported that a treasure trove
of documents formerly belonging to Richard Theodore Greener had been recently
discovered in the attic of an abandoned house in Chicago. Further
investigation of these papers may shed more light on Greener's life, and
possibly onto his daughter's.[3]
After her parents' separation, 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, apparently in
an effort to assume Dutch ancestry, while Belle dropped her given middle name,
Marion, for "da Costa" and began claiming a Portuguese background
to explain her dusky complexion. Sometime before 1905, she moved to Princeton,
New Jersey, where she worked at the Princeton
University Library.
Belle da Costa Greene, pastel portrait by Paul César Helleu, ca. 1913
Belle da Costa Greene, by Clarence White, 1911
The financier J. P. Morgan had in 1902 engaged Charles
F. McKim to build a library to the east of his Madison
Avenue brownstone as
his collection had already expanded beyond what his study could hold. To
manage his collection he hired Greene as his personal librarian in 1905,
having been introduced to her by his nephew, Junius
Spencer Morgan II, a Princeton student. Soon trusted for her expertise
(Greene was an expert in illuminated manuscripts) as well as her bargaining
prowess with dealers, Greene would handle millions of dollars buying and
selling rare manuscripts, books and art for Morgan. The power that she wielded
for forty-three years, first as librarian, and then as the first director of
the Morgan Library, was unmatched. She told Morgan – who was willing to pay
any price for important works – that her goal was to make his library
"pre-eminent, especially for incunabula, manuscripts, bindings,
and the classics." The
Morgan's Da Costa Hours that was acquired under Greene's aegis, a Flemish prayer
book with 121 full-page miniatures illuminated by Simon
Bening, is named not for Greene, but for Don Alvaro da Costa, chamberlain
of Manuel I of
Portugal, who possessed the manuscript around 1520, and whose coat-of-arms
is depicted on its flyleaf.[4][5] In
1939, she was elected a Fellow of the Medieval
Academy of America, only the second woman – and first known person of
color – to be so honored.
Greene has been described as smart and outspoken as well as beautiful and
sensual. While she enjoyed a Bohemian freedom,
she was also able to move with ease in elite society, known for her exotic
looks and designer wardrobe. "Just because I am a librarian," Greene
reportedly announced, "doesn't mean I have to dress like one." Not only did
her bearing, style, and seemingly unlimited means attract notice, but "her
role at the Morgan Library placed her at the center of the art trade and her
friendship was coveted by every dealer." In 1913 J. P. Morgan left Greene
$50,000 in his will. Asked if she was
Morgan's mistress, Greene is said to have replied, "We tried!" Once, she
recalled, Morgan asked if she might love him "if he were thirty years younger.
I said no, I’d leave the library – he would be too dangerous – which seemed to
please him. And then he said he never wanted to be younger except when he was
with me and thought of me. I don’t doubt he has said that to every woman he
knows but I love him just the same."[6]
She never married, however, and her most lasting romantic relationship was
with the Renaissance Italian art expert Bernard
Berenson. Berenson found Greene both charming and "miraculously responsive
and most of all to the things I really care most about."[7] The
Bernard and Mary Berenson Papers in Harvard's Villa
I Tatti, Florence,
contains numerous letters by Greene.[8]Although
Greene may have burned all personal papers in her possession shortly before
her death, her professional correspondence is archived in the collections of The
Morgan Library & Museum. Judging by the diary entry in Aleister
Crowley’s Magical Record for May 31, 1920, he had a limited affair with
Greene.[9] Crowley
referred to her as "a truly remarkable woman of color."[10]
Greene retired from the Morgan Library in 1948 and died in New
York City two years later.
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