In My Little Corner of the World

  

She was a glamorous librarian, whose image lends panache to an often undervalued profession, an astute collector who shaped an internationally renowned library of rare written and artistic treasures from around the world. 

-      Heidi Ardizzone, An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege (2007)

 

This is the second book about the life of Belle Greene that I have read since the beginning of the year. The first was a novel, The Personal Librarian (2021), by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray, a fictionalized account of the famous librarian’s life and career. Both books spent considerable time dwelling on Greene’s racial heritage, her lengthy, on-again-off-again affair with Bernard Berenson, and her many other flirtations and possible affairs. I turned to the biography after the novel in hopes of learning more about the bookish aspects of Belle’s life.

 

She worked in the Princeton library and pursued “informal studies of rare books and illuminated manuscripts,” as well as taking a few classes there and elsewhere along the way, and then Greene, who acquired no degree and had no academic standing, was hired as J. Pierpont’s “personal librarian” at the age of 26 and remained with the library through the death of its founder and on throughout the life and death of the founder’s son, retiring only shortly before her own death that same year (1950). What I wanted to know was more about how she acquired and built on her knowledge of rare books and manuscripts, and while much of that remains a matter of mystery and speculation, I found hints in Ardizzone’s biography, most tellingly perhaps this one: In April of 1949, when the Morgan Library mounted an exhibit in her honor, Lawrence Wroth (historian, author, and John Carter Brown librarian at Brown University) gave a speech in which he “likened her ability to recognize quality to the gift of perfect pitch in a musician, and noted that her ‘inherent taste’ had been molded ‘through years of association with great men, great books, and great productions of artist and craftsman’” [quoted in Ardizzone, 2007].

 

Certainly Greene took advantage of every opportunity to learn from those with whom she came in contact—scholars, collectors, and dealers—but I believe, from what I have read, that her “inherent taste” and natural “ability to recognize quality” formed the basis on which all subsequent learning was built. Knowledge can be passed from one person to another, insatiable curiosity can reap much from books and experience, but what the Artist and I called “the eye” seems to be much more a matter of natural gift. Some people never develop “the eye” (or, in music, “the ear”), despite years of study.

 

Benedict and Murray’s novel was my first encounter with Belle da Costa Greene, but once on my radar she started to turn up again and again. Shortly after the novel, I read Timothy Egan’s Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, and there again was Belle da Costa Greene, receiving letters from Curtis asking for her intercession with his patron, J.P. Morgan, so that now I can hardly look at one of Curtis’s magnificent portraits without thinking of Greene and Morgan and how Curtis was so determined to publish his 20-volume great work that he agreed to take no salary for himself but only use Morgan’s money for expenses. Belle Greene did not always reply to his letters; Curtis must have seemed very much the uncivilized frontiersman in sophisticated New York.

 

How fascinating it is to assemble even a few pieces of the enormous jigsaw puzzle of the turn of the 19^th century to the 20^th, and to learn something of how great names of the past weathered earlier wars and economic crises in our country! Greene was far from destitute, thanks to her position at the Morgan Library, but the stock market crash of 1929 pretty wiped out what she had been saving for her retirement. As it turned out, however, retirement played almost no part whatsoever in her life. 

 

Then, reading the acknowledgements at the end of Ardizzone’s book, I came upon this surprise: 

 

…Conrad Rader wisely refused all offers to become my full-time unpaid personal assistant, but he kept the cats out of the office and the dishes washed, dragged me out to Warren Dunes at least once a week, and provided a calm center in my life. For that and so much more, I dedicate this book to him. 

 

Warren Dunes? Sure enough, I see now on the jacket, the author (who teaches at Notre Dame) lives in Niles, Michigan. She is a Michigan author!

As for the rest of my recent reading, I binged through seven books of a detective series (it was not the complete series), books about The Sanibel Sunset Detective, by Ron Base, given to me by a friend, and then I boxed them up to send to my baby sister, who is recovering from a broken leg. She will pass them on to our other sister, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are back in Northport sometime this summer. The stories are action-packed but also include more than a few laughs. True escape reading!

And now it’s back to Robert Reich’s Aftershock; Yvonne Sherratt’s Hitler’s Philosophers; etc. The serious stuff.

 

Dog and Yard Notes

Difficult to get much in the way of decent photographs at the dog park, even with a phone, but Sunny and I managed to get there to see friends both Sunday and Monday of the last two weeks. Rapidly disappearing snow in our yard makes tennis ball play and Frisbee a lot easier at home; however, socializing is as important as exercise—for both of us.

In general, my yard is in great need of attention—raking, mostly, at this stage of the season—and yet it’s encouraging already to see bright green hellebore leaves, now that the snow covering them is gone. I absolutely love hellebore and thank my friend Susan every time I look at the ones she gave me. Stay posted for the lovely blooms. On the other hand, if you were looking for one of my inimitable political rants, see here and/or here. No need to wait for that stuff!

 

Adventuring Ourselves to a Frazzle

I have fallen behind in recounting our winter adventures — bookish, outdoor, and otherwise — either because the pace has picked up or we have slowed down. Or both. Either way, it’s been over a week since I posted about the curved-bill thrasher and associated thoughts, and my faraway northern Michigan readers have as yet seen nothing of our first visit to Bisbee this season, much less the past few exciting days in the big, bustling, beautiful but overstimulating city of Tucson. So I’ll begin by going back in time to a Friday in Bisbee, but please understand that you are not seeing the whole day, by any means — only the day’s most spectacular highlight.

Because we had a definite destination in mind that day: The Copper Queen Library, the oldest library in Arizona! How could we possibly have missed it on previous visits? I guess because a library is generally for residents, and we were only day-trippers. But now we were motivated to seek it out, because Cochise County has a new system whereby anyone with a card to any public library in the county can borrow books from any public library in the county! That’s not all, either. You can borrow from another town’s library by requesting books be sent to your own town’s library, and books can be returned the same way. In fact, a book I wanted was not available in either Willcox or Bisbee, but the Bisbee librarian requested it for me and had it sent to Willcox for me to pick up. That's real service, wouldn't you say?

Down the rabbit hole we went!

Where's the bookseller?

But first -- flashback! By a lucky chance, we stumbled on the new location of Meridian Books (saving ourselves a long uphill trudge), and I wish I’d taken more photographs inside the several rooms of this treasure trove, but I was too occupied with looking at books and finally carried off a couple I couldn’t leave behind, as did the Artist. The bookseller, as you see (do you see him hiding around that corner on the left?) was too shy to have his portrait snapped, but we enjoyed visiting with him, and it was amusing, to Michigan eyes, to see all the new children’s books about javelinas.

Javelina story books!

Then the library. I’ll just show you the pictures, and you can judge its beauty for yourself. Note (looking back up a couple paragraphs) that there are tables and chairs out on a gallery overlooking the street … comfortable Mission furniture in the periodical reading area … a whole room of old books … large children’s section … and more people enjoying the various spaces than I was comfortable capturing with my camera. I was especially happy to see so many children in the library. School was only a half-day, and many were playing outdoors, but quite a few were in the library, also.

The Friends of the Library group operates a small, crowded, but well-stocked bookstore downstairs, and we stopped there a while before leaving the building. Result: another couple of books each to stow away in the car. Then bowls of pho and curry at the little Vietnamese restaurant that is our usual lunch spot, and back by way of a new road, a lovely drive through the Mule Mountains. 

-- But now I find myself without sufficient energy to include three days in Tucson (we just got home!) in the same post with Bisbee, so I’ll save those adventures for another day. And you just have to imagine the mule deer we saw grazing in a ranch yard early in the morning as we drove south. Yes, it was pretty much a perfect day and deserves to stand alone here in the ongoing saga of our Arizona winter.

Bisbee additions to my Western private library