
Theodore C. Marceau, Belle da Costa Greene, 1911, © Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti-The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
Everything close to the heart of Alexandra Lapierre seems to be in this new novel: America, books, exceptional women and love. And zooming through the 500 page biographical novel which she devotes to Belle Greene, the founder of the Morgan Library, is a shared adventure. Born in a metis family, the daughter of Richard Theodore Greener and Geneviève Fleet, Belle chooses to be white at a time when, to be white or colored meant succeeding or failing in life. When the 1865 Civil rights law was revised, a “black” girl could not take the same train as a “white” one. And she could certainly not succeed professionally. Belle changed her name and that of her whole family, when her father became consul general in Vladivostok and abandoned them all. He had been the first “black” man to graduate from Harvard in 1870. All her life she will have to keep the secret.Read More