Have you ever longed for a book you’ve read, but don’t own? This doesn’t happen to me often, but last week An Illuminated Life; Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey From Prejudice to Privilege by Heidi Ardizzone (W.W. Norton, 2007) began whispering to me after I added something to my Facebook profile and saw that I had listed it as a favorite. I’d checked it out of the library almost as soon they’d acquired it (it wasn’t a hot title in Medina), so it’s been three years since I read it. An online search showed several copies available as well as a 1997 Biblio Magazine in which Belle had been featured. Of course nothing would do but to buy both the book AND the magazine. The magazine arrived this morning and I am fairly aswoon.
If you are a bibliophile and have not made the acquaintance of J.P. Morgan’s librarian and buyer of rare books for over forty years (from her early 20’s through her late 60’s), you owe it to yourself to at least know who she was. Belle, with her high school education and highly developed autodidatic proclivities, commanded serious attention in the world of rare books, both in America and in Europe. Not only was she beautiful -- dark,exotic, cultured -- but she moved through the world of rare books and auctions like an elegant panther ready to leap gracefully over whoever got between her and the book she coveted. And Belle coveted big-time -- especially 15th century illuminated manuscripts which took a mighty bite out of the Morgan fortune, but helped build a library of rare distinction.
In the 1960’s some of the medieval Books of Hours were reprinted by the Morgan, as were others in the 90’s from the J. Paul Getty Library, all exquisitely designed with slipcases. I bought several last year, but have nothing left of them, not even the photo of my favorite, The Hours of Simon De Varie published by the Getty. This book is so sensuously delicious – it feels like satin – you want to clutch it to your heart like your first born child. So you can just imagine what it must have been like to experience the original.
But this post is not about books so much as it is about Belle herself. I have not mentioned the fact that she was part African American because it shouldn’t matter, but of course it does. To use the euphemism, Belle “passed,” in part because of her light skin, but also because she adopted the middle name da Costa and insinuated a Portuguese background. I find this last part especially amusing because I am half Irish and half Portuguese and couldn’t pass for Portuguese if I put a bag over my head! But Belle could and did. Of course suspicions arose from time to time, but she retained a dignified detachment and kept her eye on the prize – the successful procurement of the world’s most beautiful books
In her spare time Belle also focused on a string of lovers, the most important of whom was the noted art scholar, Bernard Berenson, her relationship with whom forms the set-piece of the Biblio magazine article. The article (and the book)relate how Berenson was so bewitched by the Belle of Morgan Library that he once burst into tears when she canceled an assignation and withdrew into a depression so deep his wife offered to comfort him through it! But Belle’s great passion was the books. To make so memorable a mark in the rare book world of her day (she came to work for J.P. Morgan in 1905 and retired in the 1940's) is astounding. Rare books were the province of men and yet this woman with no college degree who “passed” as white managed to rise like cream to the top. The single-minded determination of it, the pleasure derived from it, thrills me to goose-bumps.
As you know already if you read my post about selling a first edition Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I’m not a book collector in the true sense of the word, but all of this has left me badly coveting Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, a tribute book published by Princeton University Press in 1954 with a very limited print run. The cheapest copy I could find was $68, but I won’t buy it because the seller did not find it worthy of a description.If he doesn’t appreciate Belle, or at least the book itself, then he’s not the dealer for me. So that leaves me to choose between a beautiful copy lacking its jacket for $75, or a fine copy with a not very good, but at least present, jacket for $125. A true collector’s copy would command considerably more depending upon one’s "picky"-ness. I think though that I could love the $75 copy very much.
So if you’re reading this, Eric, pay attention please! There are only 91 shopping days left until Christmas. And Belle and I have bonded.
No comments:
Post a Comment