The Personal Librarian

Belle and Bernard begin traveling through Italy as a couple. In Verona, they are powerfully moved by the art they see. When they return to their hotel, Jacques Seligman, a New York dealer who knows both of them, sees Bernard exit their carriage. Belle is forced to drive around the city to avoid detection. That night, she and Bernard have sex for the first time. Bernard cries out in another language—Russian, perhaps—when he climaxes. He refuses to tell her what the words mean. Belle shares that this is her first sexual encounter, a disclosure that shocks Bernard since he assumed her flirtatiousness meant she was experienced. Belle realizes that she and Bernard know very little about each other.

Bernard is a jealous man. When Belle begins writing one of her long work reports to J.P., Bernard accuses her of having a physical relationship with him. Belle teases Bernard by insinuating that he is correct. Bernard grows angrier, so Belle distracts him by displaying her body. His jealousy shows a side to Bernard that scares Belle. She feels glad that she has not shared her racial identity with him. Consumed with her feelings for Bernard and the experience of being in Italy, she doesn’t send her report to J.P.

Belle, now in Venice with Bernard, discovers that she is pregnant. Bernard demands that she get an abortion. Belle knows she cannot be a single mother and still keep her job. Giving birth to a child with darker skin might also expose that she is passing. Without Bernard’s support, she cannot afford the hit to her professional and economic fortunes, so she agrees to the abortion.

One of Bernard’s friends takes Belle to London for a medical abortion after a pill-induced one fails to end her pregnancy. The rapidity of these arrangements leads Belle to suspect this is not the first time Bernard has secured an abortion for a lover. Bernard refuses to visit Belle in London after the procedure.

Belle takes an ocean liner home. She runs into Anne and Bessie (one of Anne’s lovers) aboard ship. They tell her that they ran into Bernard, who shared over dinner with them in Paris that Belle had somehow broken his heart. Anne threatens to reveal to J.P. that Belle is passing and had an affair with Bernard. Belle once again threatens to expose Anne’s relationships with women. Having lost so much, Belle commits to doing whatever it takes to maintain her employment with J.P.

Back in New York, Belle drinks too much. She reveals her racial identity one night while she is drunk and on a date, but her date doesn’t understand what she is revealing. When Belle gets home, Genevieve asks her what happened to her in Europe to make her so depressed and reckless. Genevieve then tells Belle the story of how the Greeners became white.

Early in their marriage, the family lived in South Carolina, where Richard had a job as a philosophy professor at an integrated university. They fled South Carolina under threat of lynching after federal protection of the rights of former slaves under Reconstruction ended. Genevieve sacrificed her identity as a Fleet to avoid ever having to deal with this kind of violence again. Belle recognizes this story as a “mother’s cautionary tale” (227) about how being Black exposes one to harm and the threat of death. Belle is “sobered” (227) by this revelation. She vows to live a more careful life to maintain the illusion that she is white.

Belle successfully becomes more conservative in her behavior. She continues to socialize with more liberated women, however. She experiences professional triumph when she outbids a California tycoon to secure J.P.’s treasured Caxton, Le Morte Darthur. She usually keeps a low profile with journalists to avoid having them dig into her background, but she decides on this night to “hide in plain sight by standing firm and speaking boldly” (236) when confronted by the gaggle of journalists. She tells them that she claimed the Caxton on behalf of New York. She also assures them that the work will be available to academics in the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Belle returns to her office at the Morgan mansion and finds J.P. waiting there to celebrate this triumph. J.P. grows so excited by this success that he asks that Belle be by his side always. Belle suspects he is asking her to marry him or to be his lover. She rebuffs him, and although he agrees that it is for the best, she can tell that he is disappointed. Belle worries this tension will damage their working relationship.

Belle’s fears prove to be correct. J.P. begins accusing her of engaging in affairs with male colleagues. He accuses her of planning to leave him to get married or for another job. The conflict comes to a head when J.P. claims that he owns her and that she owes all of her success to him. She recognizes that he sees her as property, much like masters saw the enslaved women they owned as objects to be used and controlled. His sense of ownership angers and outrages her, especially as she considers her father’s work for equal rights and her mother’s sacrifice of her Fleet relations to secure her children’s future. She tells J.P. that he “cannot buy” (247) her and leaves.