Seated massively at his desk that day in 1905, John Pierpont Morgan seemed lost in thought. He hardly even bothered to look up when his nephew Junius appeared before him with a slim, grey-eyed girl in tow. "Uncle," said Junius, "this is Miss.
Greene." Thereupon the Great Man grunted a "How d'you do?"—and the interview was over.
Thus, scarcely out of her teens, "quaking with fear and shaking like an aspen," Belle da Costa Greene began her career as head of the Pierpont Morgan Library. She was not to quake or shake for long. In time she became famous in her own field....