THE ACQUISITION

The Acquisition is an afternoon in late April for four members, spent at a dealer’s among manuscripts, early printed books and letters, handled rather than looked at through glass.

It ends at dinner, where the four argue for what the Court should buy and keep.

The Librarian

New York’s great private library was built, in large part, by its librarian.

Belle da Costa Greene came to Pierpont Morgan in 1905, in her twenties, from the library at Princeton. She travelled to Europe as his agent, bid for him at the sales, and learned from the dealers until she knew more than most of them. Among much else, she bought a 1485 printing of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. When Morgan’s son made the library a public institution in 1924, she became its first director, and ran it for twenty-four years more.

She was born Belle Marion Greener in Washington, the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard. Her family passed as white in a segregated country, and “da Costa” was chosen to suggest Portuguese descent. She burned her personal papers before she died, and the library is most of what she left to say who she was.

What she knew, and what the afternoon is for, is that a book or a letter is known properly only in the hand: its weight, its paper, the ink gone brown, the note in the margin nobody catalogued.

The Afternoon

Four places, at a dealer the Court chooses each year, in the company of a specialist who knows the stock.

The dealer brings out what is usually kept behind glass: manuscripts, folios, early printed books, and the occasional letter worth reading twice. Members handle them, with the dealer’s leave and in the dealer’s way.

Dinner follows. Each member argues for one thing seen that afternoon, and the Court, having heard all four, buys one of them, within a sum set before the afternoon begins, and it goes into the Court’s library, marked with the year.

One year’s acquisition is a single thing. Twenty years of them is a collection, and a collection outlives everyone who chose it.

What Is Asked

A lounge suit.

Clean, dry hands, and rings off. The dealer will say whether gloves are wanted, and for paper they usually are not.

Nothing is photographed without the dealer’s leave.

Nothing is bought for oneself during the afternoon. A member who falls for something can go back to the dealer on their own account afterward.

Argue for your choice at dinner. The Court’s choice is only as good as the case made to it.

The Places

Four. It is as many as can stand around one table and turn the same pages.

Members are written to in March. Places go first to members who have not held one before.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the afternoon and dinner. What the Court buys, the Court pays for.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.