While at Princeton she decided to specialize in early printing, rare books, and historical and illuminated manuscripts. She studied the history of printing from its inception in 1445 to the present day. It was after she had taken up the study of manuscripts from the standpoint of their contents that she found that it was next to impossible to progress further along that line in this country, as at that time we had neither the material nor the scholars. She has often expressed the wish that there had been in her day a Morgan Library for consultation.
When she had finished the course at Princeton she went abroad and studied with the recognized authorities in England and Italy. Ten years, in fact, were spent in unceasing application, what the college boy calls "grind," without which Miss Greene is convinced it is impossible for any one to succeed in any vocation or attain a distinguished position. To all demands for advice her answer is, "Work, work, and more work."
She took hold of the Morgan Library in its raw state, when the valuable books and MSS. Mr. Morgan had bought at sales in Europe were still packed in cases; and out of that initial disorder Belle Greene, almost unaided, has built up one of the greatest libraries in the world. Soon after her installation she began a systematic course in Art research. She visited the various museums and private collections of this country, and got in touch with the heads of the different departments and their curators. She followed their methods until it was borne in upon her that most of them were antiquated and befogging, whereupon she began another course in Europe during the summer months in order to study under the experts in the various fields of art; comparing the works of artists and artisans of successive periods, applying herself to the actual technique of painting in its many phases, studying the influence of the various masters upon their contemporaries and future disciples.
By attending auction sales, visiting dealers constantly and all exhibitions, reading all art periodicals, she soon learned the commercial value of art objects.
Thus in time she was able and with authority to assist Mr. Morgan in the purchase of his vast collections which embraced art in all its forms. With the exception of that foundation of the library which caused Mr. Morgan to engage her services, she has purchased nearly every book and manuscript it contains.
Another branch of the collectors' art that engaged Miss Greene's attention was the clever forgery, a business in itself. She even went so far as to buy more than one specimen, thus learning by actual handling and examination to distinguish the spurious from the real. Now she knows the difference at a glance. She maintains there is even a difference in the smell Mr. Morgan bought nothing himself without consulting her; if they were on opposite sides of the world he used the cable.
Naturally Miss Greene to-day enjoys the entrée to that select and jealously guarded inner circle of authorities, who despise the amateur, but who recognize this American girl, who has worked as hard as a day laborer, as "one of them." But she maintains that if she had not thoroughly equipped herself in the first place not even the great advantages she enjoyed as Mr. Morgan's librarian could have given her the peculiar position she now enjoys, a position that is known to few of the people she plays about with in her leisure hours.
She has adopted the mottoes of the two contemporaries she has most admired: Mr. Morgan's "Onward and Upward" and Sarah Bernhardt's "Quand Même."