The Personal Librarian

Belle catalogues the collection for Jack, who believes that too much of the family’s wealth is tied up in the collection. Her future and that of the collection are up in the air as a result. Bernard sends letters to Belle claiming that he loves her. Eventually, Jack shares the news that J.P. specified in his will that Belle should be kept on as the librarian for at least a year. J.P. has also left Belle $50,000 (the equivalent of over a million dollars in 2022 dollars). This fortune will secure her future and that of her family.

When Belle shares the news with her family, they do not thank her. They instead begin making plans for what they can do with the money. Genevieve is the only one who notices that Belle is crying. Belle tells her that these tears are out of sadness over the death of J.P., who “made [her] into who [she] is” (260). Genevieve assures Belle that while J.P. certainly gave her a chance, Belle is a self-made woman.

Belle enters a restless and depressing period in her life. She spends more time with her suffragist friends, drinks more, and begins reading works by the Black writers Richard loved. She feels the absence of her father, the fetus she aborted, the ability to be a mother, and Bernard. She realizes she cannot go on like this. She must instead “go back to move forward” (266).

She goes to Chicago to reconnect with Richard. Over lunch, Richard tells her he has watched her triumphs by reading articles about her in the newspaper. When she suggests that it is time she stopped passing, he tells her not to do it because there is no place for her to fulfill her ambitions otherwise. Far in the future, maybe someone will discover who she was and realize that she was a credit to her race. They part after he gives her his blessing to continue her life as it has been.

Belle reconnects with Bernard and Mary over dinner. Bernard calls Belle out for socializing with actors, bohemians, and suffragists, people he sees as riffraff. He is so appalled by her argument that it is time to embrace modernist art that he walks away. Mary then reveals that Bernard grew up as a Lithuanian orphan who had to survive the dangers of anti-Semitism. This experience made him tough, and he has had a string of affairs with men and women as a result. With Belle, however, he finally let his guard down. Mary pleads with Belle to come back because Bernard needs Belle in his life. Belle later tells Bernard she will give him another chance with the requirement that their relationship be strictly casual. The two resume their affair.

After a trip to England, Jack tells Belle that they plan to sell parts of J.P.’s collection. They will sell items—including some Ming vases—from before her time. Jack is worried that a British collector will hire Belle away. He reassures her that they will keep the rest of the collection intact because he knows the collection brings prestige to the family. He also tells Belle that she has a job with the Morgans for as long as she wants one. Anne and Belle later make peace by acknowledging the hidden parts of their identity. Anne finally admits that jealousy was the source of her coldness to Belle.

It is 1916, and the United States’ entrance into World War I looms. Belle goes to London to buy art flooding the market and arrange sale of the Ming vases. She is expecting to meet up with Bernard, but he fails to show up. Jack forbids her from traveling further in Europe; it is too dangerous, news Bernard had not bothered to share with Belle.

Belle meets with the Duveen brothers to arrange for the sale of Fragonard’s Progress of Love (1771-1772) painting series. They surprise her by asking to handle the sale of the Ming vases. They promise to give her a kickback if she agrees to let them handle all of the Morgan sales instead of taking them directly to auction. Belle realizes that the only person she told about the porcelain was Bernard.

When she rejects these offers as unethical (it will cheat Jack out of the higher profit he could get from an open auction), the Duveens tell her that Bernard, begging for work now that Renaissance art isn’t as popular, authenticates items and then takes a kickback from the sale price all of the time. They mention Bernard to persuade Belle that she need not be so squeamish about taking the money, with the implication that they are aware of her relationship with him. Belle ends the meeting and hides the anger and betrayal she feels now that she knows Bernard has been selling information from their personal conversations.

Belle writes Bernard to rebuke him for his betrayal and to break off their relationship. Just as Belle is about to make the trip from her hotel to the ship that will take her home, Bernard arrives. He begs for her forgiveness. She tells him he has betrayed her twice now, first by abandoning her after her abortion and then by sharing their confidential conversations for money. She instructs the footmen to take Bernard away, and the chauffer of the Rolls Royce waiting for her takes her to her ship. She promises never to dwell on the past again.

Belle’s father dies nearly six years later without any of his family around him because they cannot risk being outed as Black. Belle feels lost at first. On the day the 19th Amendment (which gives women the right to vote) is ratified, she visits J.P.’s grave, but it is really her father that she is mourning. While there, she decides that the best way to honor both her father and J.P. is to make the Pierpont Morgan Library public so that everyone has access to its treasures.

Two days later, Belle meets up with Jack at a party. After having suffered several attacks at the hands of anarchists, Jack has permanent injuries that might predispose him to think ahead to his family’s legacy. Belle argues that J.P.’s will implies that a public library was what he wanted. Jack is not convinced, but he agrees to consider her argument.

Belle’s vision was realized, and the public library was established with her as director. Years later, Belle gives an interview, now a rarity because she fears technology and mass media make it more likely than ever that someone will discover her identity. In a country that has fallen even more deeply into segregation, being outed would be devastating to the library, she reasons. Belle keeps her responses to the reporter brief. She poses for a photograph between J.P.’s desk and Portrait of a Moor, a 17th-century painting by Domenico Tintoretto; she added it to the Morgan collection because the central figure in it looks like her father. Emboldened by his access, the reporter asks if there was ever anything to the rumor that Belle and J.P. had an affair. She responds only by saying that they “tried” (321), a sexually suggestive and ambiguous response. She tells the interviewer that her only desire is to be the “lady directress” (321) of the library. She has, she claims, no personal plans.

It is 1948, 24 years later, and Belle is burning all of her personal letters. She fears that anyone reading them will discover who she really is, and this knowledge would tarnish the legacy of the library. She does have a “rogue thought” (324) in which she wonders if far in the future, the world will be one of equality. Maybe someone will discover who she really was, “the colored personal librarian to J.P. Morgan whose name was Belle da Costa Greene” (324).