 Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us for our program at Mechanics Institute online for Her Hidden Genius, a novel by Marie Benedict in conversation with Celeste Stewart. I'm Laura Shepherd, Director of Events at the Mechanics Institute. If you're new to the Mechanics Institute, we were founded in 1854, and we're one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature our General Interest Library, an international chess club, ongoing author and literary programs, and of course our Friday Night Cinema Lit Film Series. Please see milibrary.org for all of our programs and offerings. And yes, the library is open, so please come down and see us in person. We're very pleased to welcome Marie Benedict, and also if you're interested in purchasing a book, since we're online right now, you can go to alexanderbook.com and we'll put that in the chat. Also, after our conversation, we will have a Q&A with you, our audience, so you can also put your questions in the chat a little later on. We're very pleased to be celebrating Women's History Month and what better novel to start with. I'd like to introduce our two guests. Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than 10 years experience as a litigator at two of the country's premier law firms, who found her calling unearthing the hidden history historical stories of women. Her mission is to excavate from the past the most important complex and fascinating women of history, and bring them to light up in present day, where we can finally perceive the breadth of their contributions, as well as the insights they bring to modern day issues. And of course, for other novel is the personal librarian, the life of librarian Bell DeCoste Green, JP Morgan's personal librarian, which is also a phenomenal book. So just a few words. Marie Benedict's powerful novel shines light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world changing contributions were hidden by the men around her, but who her relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind and also of science. So I'd like to welcome Celeste Stewart who is going to be interviewing and having conversation with Marie, and welcome Celeste. Thank you, Laura. And I'm just going to gush for a minute Marie, I can't believe I'm in your presence. Thanks, I just finished for Hidden Genius. And I also read your the personal librarian which blew me away. Thank you, both in our library, and I plan to buy all your other books. Anyway, welcome. Thank you so much. It's a delight to be here if you know me as it sounds like you do. You know how much I love libraries, and how indebted I am to them, and how they saved us throughout all of coven I really feel. Well, you're like a dream come true, you're you're accomplished. And I am honored to be able to speak to you. So let's talk about this book. So the book for those of you who haven't read it the book begins in 1947. And it is based on the life of Rosalind Franklin. She's 26 years old in 1947, and she's working in a Paris lab. She's exhilarated to be there because after working in the London scientific community, the male dominant London scientific community. She's exhilarated to be welcomed for her expertise, and accepted for her direct and sometimes blunt style of communication. I love that description. So let's let's begin so Rosalind Franklin, in my understanding was an x-ray crystallographer. She was. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, and so sorry. Can you explain what exactly she discovered that was so groundbreaking. Yes. And I'm going to start by first just describing what x-ray crystallography is. Oh, thank you. I'd like to say, for those of you who aren't familiar with me or my books, I write a lot about women scientists, because my mission is to excavate women who've left important legacies and so often those are scientists, you know that women who've made this incredible contribution to whom we're beholden but we don't know about them because you know historically women have been marginalized in the sciences. So I'm not a scientist. I love women scientists and their contributions. I have to kind of teach myself the area that my woman is working in, if she's a scientist, before I start writing. And one of the things that I do as part of that is kind of immerse myself in their area and what's really interesting about Rosalind Franklin is that she, she was really just to back up a second. You know, she was born into this very affluent Anglo-Jewish family in the 1920s. Her family had been bankers for generations. They'd been in England for a long, long time. Education was important, service was important in her family, but they had no scientists in the family, right? So here comes this daughter who's brilliant from birth, a natural born scientist and mathematician exceptionally gifted in both areas, really from a very young age, and her parents encouraged her. I mean, which is well of them, especially given the time period that she lived in. I think they, they found it kind of hard to understand her commitment to the sciences in some ways, because it was so outside their realm of understanding. But, but they did support her. And she went to Cambridge, Noonam College, which was a college, one of the women's colleges within Cambridge, and she eventually did get her doctorate in chemistry, as you mentioned. Now, what's interesting is during this time period, there is this, for the first time really, science is becoming interdisciplinary. You know, until this time period, science had, you were either a chemist or a biologist, or you were a physicist, right? You couldn't, you couldn't be examining things from a multiplicity of angles. And this is about to change during, during Rosalind's lifetime. And in a way, that's how she got into x-ray crystallography. As you mentioned, she had a PhD in chemistry. She had become well known for her expertise in studying the micro universe of coal during World War Two, and in the years immediately after, which had a lot of military applications. And when she went off to France, as you mentioned, she was hired to, in this incredible lab experience, as you mentioned, it was a place that she really felt like she fit in. She, her personality was accepted, she was blunt, which was not always preferable for a woman at the time. And she, the men that she was hired by Jacques Merring and Marcel Motier, they were very experienced, if not expert in this technique of x-ray crystallography, which was a new technique at the time. It allowed scientists to look into the micro universe of anything that could be crystallized. And what they would do is they would take this, you know, microscopic sample of something that had been crystallized. They would penetrate it with x-ray beams for hundreds of hours in some cases. And then the images that were created from that were captured on a piece of photographic paper. Now, to you and I, those, or maybe, maybe some, there's some x-ray crystallographers in the audience, I don't know. But to me, anyway, that looked like, they would call it scattershot, you know, it was like a bunch of little indentations and dots. But sometimes, if you were very, very good at what you did, would form a pattern that would tell you something. Now, if you took that image, and you did all sorts of measurements, and all these very complicated calculations, you could answer for the structure of a molecular atom. And that is basically what Rosalind Franklin became expert in during her time in France. Now, what she was studying was carbon at that time. So again, she was learning a technique that, as time went on, became applicable to all sorts of substances. And the disciplines, chemistry, biology, all those things are starting to kind of come together. And as was happening during this time, they're trying to un-puzzle some of the big questions of science. In that case, it was the micro universe of carbons when she was in France. Gosh, I hope that wasn't too much. And here I was thinking she discovered the double helix of DNA. We're not there yet. She had to move to France to do that and move to England to do that. But yes, so if I can move on to that. So what happened was after she left France and moved back to England, she took that skill that she learned, the X-ray crystallography skill, which took not only basically genius but took, it was incredibly laborious. You had to be very meticulous to make your findings. She was assigned when she moved back to England, she joined King's College, this group called the Biophysics Unit. Again, this sort of interdisciplinary unit. And she was hired initially to study protein. But right before she started, Professor Randall, who was the head of the unit, he was well known during that time period for his work with the Manhattan Project. He reassigned her to DNA. And when she started at King's College, she was her basic assignment was to utilize her X-ray crystallography skills and apply them to DNA. Now, what's interesting about the research for a book like this is that you not only have to learn, at least in my case, DNA genetics, the basics of X, I didn't naturally know that. You have to learn about it from a historical standpoint. And you have to learn what people knew and didn't know at that time. And scientists at the time, they knew what they knew of DNA, but they really didn't understand what DNA was, what its role was in genetics, what its structure was, how it worked. But they had the sense that unlocking this might unlock everything. And so when Rosalind was assigned DNA and unlocking the structure of DNA, everyone knew it was a bigger question than that, right, that unlocking that could unlock so much more. And she was the only one working on it in England. And the universities at that time, she was at King's College. There was lots of other labs and universities, of course, but they would have these gentlemen's agreements where they would kind of divvy up who was working on what. And there was agreement between her group and the group of one of the sort of similar groups at Cambridge, that only King's College would be studying the micro universe of DNA. And there were other scientists and other institutions and groups that were studying other places on the continent, or in America Linus Pauling the famous scientist he was looking at it as well. So she'd sort of unwittingly stumbled into this race that was happening. But that wasn't how Rosalind operated Rosalind operated by doing the science, you know, kind of harkening back to her own upbringing. It was incredibly important for her from her family to do the right thing and to work towards goals that were really for the betterment of mankind, not simply to win the medal to win the race to make this discovery. I definitely picked that up while reading the book that she did not like that competitiveness. There was a lot of gray area between I had no idea science was so competitive. I know of gray area between the little groups that were studying this or that, and they were supposed to stray over into, you know, someone else I was shocked as I was reading it. So anyway, I, but you, you've already alluded to the fact that you are fascinated by women scientists. And I assume this is why you chose Rosalind Franklin. So, once you chose her site to write about her, I didn't find much in the way of when I went looking, we mechanics has a book called the dark, you know, Rosalind Franklin the dark lady of DNA by pneumatics, and that was written. What 1969 70. It was a long time ago. And she's she had long since died. There was a play. I kept. The one was the big photo that she did. And I finally looked it up and I thought there's a play, and it was on the stage and of all people, Nicole Kidman played her. Isn't that crazy. No idea. Had you seen that play. No, I've never seen it. I would love to. I know. I mean, I'm not saying it's miscast because she's such a gifted actress I'm sure she could play anything that is not who I would naturally slot. No, Franklin Franklin. Who you know was considered to be very attractive in her way but that that wasn't the focal point for Rosalind right. All about the work in the science. I mean, she definitely had a life outside science. Um, you know, she was a wonderful friend had an extended family. Love to travel was a very talented hiker, you know she would hike all these mountain ranges. And I definitely have a question about her personal life as we get into this morse, but I don't come out with my most curious question right off the top. What I would like to know though is you alluded to it in the beginning, while we were talking before is how would one even begin to research Rosalind Franklin's life. I mean, there just doesn't seem to be that much there for the layman. So, and you were writing during COVID. I was writing during. In heaven's name, did you do it. Well, in this case I was extremely fortunate. Um, you know as you mentioned there were a couple biographies, and I feel like Rosalind was a little bit known, more, more so in the science community. So, I would say in what happened to understand the research and how I got a handle on Rosalind, if to kind of understand the history of, of her legacy and not her legacy so much as as her, her iconic status within the scientific community. I don't want to give any spoilers but you know probably most of you know that Francis Crick and James Watson won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA right that that's what's taught in science classes all the Rosalind is now mentioned. Rosalind did not win it. I didn't want to say why but she didn't get it. And she actually went on to do some really incredible research is actually super important for coven in the years after she studied DNA and we can talk about that later. But, um, after in the years after James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA for James Watson run a book wrote a book called double helix, which became like a huge seller. It was an autobiography of his discovery of DNA, which we'll talk about that shortly like how little he actually did and how much he actually relied on Rosalind's work and discoveries in order to do that. Not a lot has changed in the work world. No, sorry to say, very sad. And so he wrote this book and in this book, he portrays Rosalind very poorly. She's stereotyped she's the dark, very difficult woman scientists who really could use a little bit of lipstick and a better hairdo literally says that in it. And he, his description of how and we can talk further about like how how Watson and Crick actually they did take her information and use it and did not give her credit for it that's how they made their discovery in the first place. Again, he wrote this book and Rosalind's good friend and Sarah, who was the wife of a microbiologist that Rosalind worked with, was so incensed by this biography of this autobiography by James Watson and how it depicted Rosalind. And also knowing what and Sarah knew about what actually happened in the discovery of DNA, she couldn't believe the way it was being portrayed. So she decided she was going to write a biography in sort of like to break down James Watson's biography to give a different in in her mind, more accurate account of what actually happened. In the 70s, she spent several years researching it, pouring through letters, scientific documents, conducting interviews of literally everybody involved at every famous scientist of the period, Watson, Crick, Randall, all sorts of people. Everyone gave her access everyone knew answer, right because they knew her husband. And she recorded all that and she became very close with Rosalind's family and gathered all this original source material that's amazing journals, calendars, you name it. She formed the basis for answers really incredible biography of Rosalind Franklin. And of course it also contained her own memories because she was friends with her too. Yes, that information was given to the American Society for Microbiology's library. She gave it to them. That information in many ways is the best information that's ever been assembled about Rosalind Franklin. And during COVID they of course were closed like everything else. And I connected with one of their librarians I told you I love libraries. And this librarian copied hundreds and hundreds of pages for me and sent them to me during the mail during COVID so that I can unbelievable. I mean it was such a gift, and such a, I mean I could not have written this book without it. It gave me access to Rosalind Franklin the person. It gave me insights into all the players in the book you know I write fiction of course so these are my versions of, of people, but it gave me such such structure to work with in creating the storyline and creating the characters in fashion story arcs and motivations and understanding the science as well. Well that's a good segue into what I was going to ask you. As I was reading it I thought, how much is this is literary license, how this of this is actual fact or proof or. I did, I was shocked to learn that she died so young she died at age 37 cancer. It was 1958. And there is a reference in your book to her distaste of wearing the protective gear. They were required to wear while working in the lab. And if you had stumbled upon that in your research. Because clearly they're, they think that this is so very in cancer that's not a common disease. Right, they have come from, you know what she worked around. Yeah. So the all answered those two questions a little separately so. Yes, I write historical fiction, but yes it is very much grounded in the research, the best way I can describe it is to describe the research as the architecture of the story. You know, the foundation the pillars the roof upon which the story hangs, but there is so much we don't know. Women's stories women's histories women's documentation was really not considered worthy of keeping her telling until very recently. So when you go back to reconstruct a life very often there isn't the rich depth of material that you might like, even in situations like like this one where I actually did have a great amount of research material, which is pretty uncommon to have. And of course you there's always things you're never going to know about a person. And so, in many ways the research is the inspiration for my fictional retelling of a person's life, you know, I almost look at these women, you know, I'm honored and inspired by the real women they really are heroic to me, but the characters I create are are really just inspired by the real life people whose stories underpin them. This I the question you asked is a good example of that about whether or not about how she died and why she died. Rosalind did develop cancer. She did die very young. She did see throughout interviews in letters in articles, in which people who knew Rosalind who worked with Rosalind described her disregard of protective gear. So that is true. There were instances where she wouldn't wear a dosimeter which measured radiation, where she wouldn't have any protective gear in her body and just one of the reasons I explain how x-ray crystallography works is because she was right there, moving cameras, adjusting photographic equipment, while x-ray beams are going for hundreds of hours. So her exposure was quite intense. So we didn't know, but this is the literary license. We don't know exactly what caused her cancer. I would, if I were to guess and I'm not a scientist, but I would say it's some sort of epigenetics, you know, she probably had a genetic predisposition and something about the environment triggered it for her. But at the same time, it is a big part of her story, right? And I had to make the logical extrapolation from the commentary about her practices to the end result. I mean, that's one of those things where all those years as a lawyer, working in logic, sifting through the facts, sifting through the cases and creating a, hopefully, a strong narrative on behalf of a client really played to the stories that I was creating here. Got to love those lawyer writers. Oh, there's too many of us. Too many confronted lawyers, probably. And so then that brings me to my next question. While doing your research, there is a significant portion of her hidden genius that pretty much establishes that her mentor, Mary, on true love, overshadows all the other men in the book. Was it true? That's a, that's poetic license, literary license. Again, we do know that she made a lot of comments to people. She was close to about him. Adrienne Weil, who was her mentor. Refugee who came and taught at Cambridge during World War Two, and then introduced her actually to Jacques Meringue and Marcel Metsia. There were some comments made by people Frank Luzetti who worked a new, both of them worked in the lab about something that transpired there was certainly an attraction. He was a very, he was popular with the ladies let's just wait even though he was married. He was married. And so there was definitely something there between them. Do we know exactly what it is. We don't have the letters between them. Certainly she did not leave any behind. And my understanding that he destroyed all her letters to him. He did come and see her at the hospital right before she died. And that's in the book I believe. Yeah, and that's true. He did come. I mean, they stayed in contact in probably better contact than I described in the book, because I did want to have that separation for her. So how far their relationship went, whether it was mostly in letters and in whispers, whether it was just dreamy on her part whether it was something that was completely fulfilled. We really don't know. And so that was where I kind of had to extrapolate from what I did know. And sort of fashion based on my understanding of the characters that I've created. Certainly, he played a large role in those years. And I can't help but think he played a role in her decision to leave the French lab where she was so happy. She was so happy, professionally, she was accepted and celebrated and she was doing incredible work. Because I really did feel like it had to be something other than just the fact that her family was in France. I mean in England that caused her to leave because she really felt at home in France in a way that he never did in England she never quite fit in there. So, so that brings me then to after she left. Yes, to work among these three men. This James Watson and Francis Crick. And there, there was definitely so much in your book, alluding to the fact that they actually stole her because you mentioned the lab was, you know, unlocked that she thought they were in the lab. She was always looking over her shoulder at the end and they were not very respectful of her. Is there any proof that they actually um, well, yes and no so what here's what here's what we do know. We do know you know she worked. Morris Wilkins, one of her co workers. He had been working on DNA prior to the head of their lab giving it to Rosalind. He hadn't been making Morris Wilkins hadn't been making much headway. And the animosity over that never ceased. And his dislike and actual probable hatred of Rosalind because that had been taken away from him and given to her was legion. We do know you know Watson and Crick worked at Cambridge, and we know that he would go and complain about her to them incessantly. Now at Cambridge they weren't supposed to work on DNA right right they they were going rogue. They were breaking the rules that had been made and the contract unspoken. And they were making different stabs at it you know we knew that they were almost like obsessed with DNA, and that Morris Wilkins was feeding them information about what Rosalind was doing right because as a as a co worker he would have a general sense of what she was doing. We know all that to be the case, we also do know that as she progressed in her findings. She created the famous photograph 51 which is considered one of the most important images in science, which really definitively established it's a crisscross which is right of a double helix. That really unlocked the structure of DNA now Rosalind being Rosalind Rosalind being an excellent scientist wanted to do all the calculations to support that right she wasn't going to just make a flip determination and not back that up. And that took time. It's they didn't have computers, I mean that these were no calculations. And Morris was getting frustrated right that came across in the book. And eventually, he basically filled them in on what was happening. And at a certain point, he did show photograph 51 to James Watson. We know that because James Watson said it was true. Okay. So, you wrote about it in his autobiography we know that without her knowledge or permission, her images and her data was shared with him. So it's real. I'm also one last question and I'm very curious about it. There were when those three men approached her they were very disrespectful and they called her by that nickname that she did not like Rosie. Yeah, they called her Rosie in this over. Overly familiar way. Yeah, is that documented did she really Oh for sure they did that nickname. Yeah she hated it. And because she hated it they used it. And her face. And then in James Watson's double helix book he calls her Rosie. Actually, that was one of the things that enraged and Sarah her friend so much she's like, if you knew Rosalind Franklin, you knew that she hated that nickname. She refused to be called it she corrected people when they call it. So either he didn't know her and is making all this up or he's, he is disrespectful of her and he was baiting her. I definitely think that you, you brought that across in the book, beautiful. As I heard him calling that and as I read his dialogue I remember thinking, Oh, oh, not a lot has changed in the work world. Yeah, and he they beat her to the punch. What I'm wondering is for our viewers. Yeah, have a certain passage picked out in your book that you might want to read. Oh, I didn't know I was going to read well. No, I just wondered if you don't know worries no worries. I actually don't usually read because, you know, my books are audio books, and my, the missing. Oh, did you. A masterful job. Oh, it was beautiful. They bring these characters alive and honestly I after listening to my books read by people like that. Yeah, they're very talented. Nicola Barber. Barber. Yes, read it. She's done several of my books. Wonderful. Yeah, I just love her and so when I'm given the option. Usually, you know, I get to ultimately have the same my producers will pull together several actors. I didn't know that. They'll pick a passage and they'll have maybe anywhere from four to six down there down and then you get to listen to them as you're reading your book and then you get to choose which one you want. And I always ask for Nicola if she's available to to join in the process just to see and I never really pick her because I just think she really and she doesn't sound the same in each one but she's just so talented. It was superb. Oh, truly. So you know why I don't like to read my own book. After you listen to Nicola. Yeah, the audio book industry has really evolved. It's amazing. It really, I have to say I was never originally a convert to that but now that I am. Oh, I read books, regular books too but I have that going all the time. It's like a stage production. It is. Yeah. Yeah, they do it in the studio. It's, yeah, it's amazing. I think you could probably carry it off. No, oh my gosh, Michelle Obama reads her own. Michelle Obama. No one could do Michelle Obama but Michelle Obama I think through to be fully open up to some questions. I also ask Marie about through the research where there are other women, other colleagues that sort of surfaced as well. And Roslyn worked with that became also pioneers in this field or in related fields that you found through the research. Oh my gosh. The college King's College. I mean, I have to say, reading through the people that she worked with men and women. There are so many Nobel Prize winners it's right. One of her colleagues was Dorothy Hodgkins who who won a Nobel Prize. One of her very close colleagues after she finished at King's College and did her DNA work she actually did an incredible super important work in RNA and viruses, and I do just want to point out that that work. And this was one of those unique instances in which the legacy of the woman I was writing about expanded before my very eyes as I was writing her story. The work that Rosalind Franklin did with RNA and viruses is foundational to our understanding of and to the creation of the vaccines. We don't know where we would be without that particular work. And that work that she started at work that college after she left King's College. She hired a wonderful scientist to collaborate with her. And I was so happy towards the end of her life that she had this wonderful relationship after having these terrible experiences at King's College. That man was Aaron Kluge. He continued on with the work that he and Rosalind started, and he won the Nobel Prize for that work. Scientists often say that if Rosalind Franklin had been given credit for her DNA work and if she had lived to complete the work that she started with Aaron Kluge. She would have won not one, but two Nobel prizes. So I mean that the people that she was working with and the work that she herself was doing was absolutely groundbreaking and world changing. Amazing. Amazing. She was amazing person. They do not award Nobel prizes though posthumously. And that has been the excuse all along but yeah. Ah, the problem. Yes. Okay. When they won, when Watson and Crick and Morris Wilkins who never deserved it, won the Nobel Prize for the double helix discovery of structure DNA. She had passed away, but what's really interesting is that, you know, the way I had to learn about how the process worked really understand that. The scientists, you know, make nominations and then there's an independent Nobel Prize investigation committee that investigates the nomination and then they do their own research. And in the report that that committee investigation committee conducted made it says explicitly that they didn't understand why Morris Wilkins was awarded the Nobel Prize that Rosalind Franklin, had she been alive it should have been her. So there was, you know, from an independent assessment perspective, there was an acknowledgement that that she's the one who did who made the critical. You can't build a model without data. Right. You kept saying that Watson and Crick built a model. Paper based on the mom jumped the gun. They couldn't have ever built that model without her data. She was the only one doing the research. That's interesting. What an interesting junction of serendipity for you, considering all that she did. It's very timely because of. Yeah, and probably all that research happened because of COVID because that librarian was probably working remotely right at the time to be able to do all that. What an amazing, amazing accomplishment. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. From the audience at the moment, if, and if not, I will also ask a couple of questions about personal librarian, any, any questions out there yet. Okay, well while you're putting your questions in there. I'll just go ahead with a couple of, yeah, it is pretty amazing to think that the vaccines that we're getting for COVID have this foundation RNA and of course, Doudna and her partner in France who also received, didn't they receive the Nobel Prize for their, their RNA, the vaccination with CRISPR. So it's also based on this foundational work. It's an incredible legacy and it's, it's just, it's just exhilarating to, to get this history unveiled and also revealed and brought to the surface. And so, thank you for all your great research and writing and it's really exhilarating. So your other book is also groundbreaking because it is this incredible portrayal of Belle DeCoste Green, who was JP Morgan's personal librarian and also built up the whole JP Morgan library that I was I was just saying to Marie that I was also at the library. I was at the JP Morgan library in New York, just this summer and it's, if you, if you go to visit that library you know what an accomplishment that was. I wanted to find out more about how you came upon this story, and also your collaboration with co writer Victoria Christopher Murray who was also in a very accomplished writer, as well and how you know she's, she's an MBA and you're a lawyer and you're these two, you two of you, you must have just a power. Yeah, firepower together so a little bit of more about your history and finding and finding Belle and how it sent you off in this, in this direction. So, um, you I mean you summed up the story of Belle. So well you know she was JP's personal librarian she was really instrumental in building up the gosh one of the world's best collections of rare and priceless manuscripts. And, you know what's astonishing is not just the collection it's up at the library, I mean, it's lined at Renaissance masterpieces it's, I mean it's one of the most stunning jewel box libraries I've ever been and it's really gorgeous. So, I found Bell or I didn't find her I just, but I learned about her for the first time. When I was a lawyer I think you mentioned earlier, I think somebody did that I was a lawyer for a long time, I was a commercial litigator in New York City for over a decade. I knew I knew it wasn't what I was meant to be doing with my life I had always loved history I had always been fascinated with the unknown pieces of history particular women stories. So I was practicing I worked crazy, crazy long hours and I would kind of duck out in the afternoon which is really like five or six because I worked like 18 hour days, and I would go to the different cultural institutions in New York City, and kind of try to envision a different life for myself and one of the places I like to go with the Morgan library. You step in there and you feel like you're transported into a different time and place and that was what I needed at that time. And I was very fortunate one of my times that I visited there. A docent, who I think probably just finished a tour and I just started talking to her about something I was looking at and she mentioned that. And JP Morgan didn't create the collection alone that there had been a woman who was instrumental in creating with him. His personal library and her name was Bell to cost a green and at that particular time. There really was no mention of Bell in the library, or at least I wasn't aware of it. Now there's a couple things there's a statue of her there's some plaques. There's explanations about her role. At that time there really wasn't and so I, I was collecting information that thinking about what I wanted to do next and I sort of collected that information about Bell and as time went on and I transitioned from being a lawyer to writing and focusing heavily on these women's stories. Her name was always on that long, long list I keep about important women that I wanted to write about. But as the years went on her identity her actual identity became known. It became known that Bell was a black woman passing as white. It was a time period of segregation, all throughout our country. The Jim Crow laws were so strong practices were so strong. She would have not even been allowed in the library that she ran at that time. And it was more than that it was that her, she came from this unbelievably rich heritage of of black people shoot her father was the first black graduate of Harvard. She became a very well known advocate for equality during his lifetime. He was the first black professor University South Carolina, he was a lawyer, famous orator, and her mother was came from this really rich tradition. In Washington DC there was a multi generational free community of color that had been established there for a long time and that's where her mother was from. She was an affluent and educated musicians and doctors and engineers, and this was this woman's culture and heritage, and yet, because the society that they lived in was segregated and and prejudiced. She could not be her authentic self. And when I learned that about Bell, I thought a woman that I had already knew was remarkable, she became even more remarkable still. But something else happened to I realized that once I sort of get a handle on what her true identity was that that was not a story that I can write myself. I can imagine a lot of things as a writer of fiction I mean I just imagined, you know, being a scientist which is definitely outside my my pay grade. But I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a black woman in this country then or now. And I knew it that Bell deserve to have her story told by a black woman to. And so at that time I happened to be reading one of my co writer and now one of my dearest friends in the world of Victoria Christopher Murray. She's a wonderful book called stand your ground which explores the terrible epidemic really in our country of young black men being shot. She explores that from the perspective of women, the mother of the young boy and the wife of the police officer, which is something I hadn't seen done before and it was really kind of getting at an issue from the from the perspective of the women which wasn't again something that really hadn't isn't normally done. And I just thought wow, I really liked what she was trying to do she was trying to approach it from a variety of angles. Both from gender perspectives and racial perspectives. I just thought I wonder if she'd be interested in exploring bell to cost a green with me. And so through our agents I reached out. And fortunately she was she was she was a contemporary writer but she was willing to take a dive into the world of history and she probably will never turn back, I have to say she loves it so much. And really, writing that book was such a gift, not just to bring Bell story out into the world where it really does deserve to be, she deserves to be celebrated and she's going to be at the morgan things are very much changing there, but she also. It was also just a gift to write that book with Victoria. Bell to cost a green and how I found her and. Yeah, it's a it's a really amazing, not because I wrote it but she's just an amazing person, really incredible. No, right. JP Morgan did not know, we don't think he did. You know, we don't really know for sure again. Certainly, when he interviewed her for the position he would not have known. Bell at that time, I mean it's very complicated along the story of how she went from living as a proud black woman to be to living it to passing, living the life as a white woman, but she was fairly fair skinned, but not as fair skin to some of her siblings. And that's why her mother her father's name was Richard T greener. When they decided when she her mother and her siblings decided to live as white they changed their name to green. Because the one thing that could not happen is they could not be linked to Richard T greener because he was a fairly famous black man during his life. And that would have definitely not allow them to pass. But for Bell in particular her mother added the name to Costa as a way of explaining away any questions. Portuguese. So when she. The way that she interviewed for this job with JP Morgan is she was a librarian at Princeton University. She did a lot of things but she has was starting to develop a specialty in rare and priceless books, in particular early printed word. And that was something that Junius Morgan, who was JP Morgan's nephew, and had donated books of that type to the Princeton University Library he spent a lot of time there, they became friends. And that was an area that Bell was fascinated with and was developing a certain amount of expertise. He recommended her to JP Morgan as a potential candidate for his personal librarian. Now, I mean he was interviewing everyone else was a man. For the most part they were senior curators at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and incomes bow this beautiful petite woman. And we, Victoria and I do not think that he would have have suspected that she was black. Not only because of the way she looked but because Junius met her at Princeton at Princeton Princeton was one of the most segregated of the Ivy Leagues, it was the last to have black students. If very much operated like a Southern institution, they would have never hired a black librarian. So when she went to interview for that role, he would have had no reason to think that she was black. And if over the years, when people speculated which they did. You can read it in all the profiles of her the dust. And so, you know, when they did that, you know, it's possible that he heard gossip or rumor. But by that point, they were so close. And he was so dependent on her that even if he had suspicions, we think that he would have pushed them aside. So, yeah. And if JP Morgan said you were white by God, you were white. It's an amazing story. And of course she became so integrated in the society New York society the cultural life. I, you know, I've just started reading the book but you know now I've just found out today and she was also had a relationship with Bernard Berenson the great art critic, but also, and I'd love to talk a little bit about that but I also want to know more about, you know, because of the timeline of her experience with in New York and JP Morgan and I wanted to know more about whether she was a suffragist. And if she's supported the suffragist movement. She's right in the middle, middle of it, you know 1919. Well, there's some sections in the book where we do talk about that. I mean, I would definitely not say I would definitely say that she did not campaign for that. I think there were points of which in her life when she was kind of poo poo that. And then there were other points when I think she changed her thinking on that. And she she definitely had friends and connections in every facet of gilded age and society I mean she was she would hobnob with the Vanderbilt weekend and Newport. She had friends to drive by Rockefeller. I mean, these were the people that she regularly went to the opera with and dinner. And yet she had all these bohemian friends too, and she had friends that were suffragettes so I wouldn't say that that was one of her focus areas. I wanted to shy away from anything political and Victorian I kind of feel like that might be because she was trying to distance herself from her father. She didn't want to run into people or, or make connections with people who might have anything to do with her father she'd be really, really careful of that. And there was certainly a chance in those circles that might happen. And do you want to also talk about baronson at all, a little bit about Baronson. So, she met Bernard Baronson as you mentioned he was really the preeminent art critic of the Renaissance, during the gilded age. In many ways I would say that he brought the Renaissance back to life. In many ways he made it very popular with the people of that time period. He explained it to them, explained the iconography, the backdrop, the characteristics of the artists. He really put it all together and sort of reinvigorated it during that time period. You know, I wouldn't say it was famous, but he was famous in those circles, and Belle de Costa Green actually knew him from childhood, not personally. She knew him from his books he had several books which basically were critical art history texts in various aspects of Renaissance artwork. Her father who was, as I mentioned a lawyer and an orator, he was the first black librarian of the University of South Carolina and he was very interested in art as well. And either he or one of her aunts gave her one of Bernard Baronson's books when she was still a child. That was an area of interest for her. And they met that was where the circles that he traveled in the world of JP Morgan and all those high level art collectors, and they met, most likely at the Morgan Library, the Bernard, the Baronson's Bernard Baronson was the art consultant for Isabella. Isabella Stewart Gardner. They were Isabella Stewart Gardner and JP Morgan were kind of like competitors in terms of who had the best collections. And so there was a lot of kind of, you know, looking over your shoulder seeing who's got what who has what, and they met, and they started a torrid love affair with his wife's knowledge and permission. And that went on for many, many years. And in the years after that part of their relationship was over. They still, they still, even though we don't talk about this in the book because we don't go into that time period but they maintained a long term professional relationship. And so the letters, when Belle died, right before she died, she burned all of her correspondence, and she instructed everyone she knew to burn anything that she had written to them. She did not want to risk that anyone would put anything together about her real identity. She and Bernard were still in contact at that time and the kinds of letters that she wrote to Bernard were almost like diary entries. She would start one at the beginning of the week and each day she kind of write more, and then she would send them to him. And that went on until she died. And he is the only person who did not burn her letters. He kept them in a trunk at Itachi, which is his villa. There was this villa in France, in France in Italy. When he died, he donated that to Harvard. It became like Harvard's Italian outpost. And so if you wanted to see Belle Dacosta Green's letters, you had to go to Itachi, which is where I was supposed to go during COVID, which, and of course it was closed. But I will say this, fortunately, there's only one biographer of her. She did copy some of those and so we had access in that way. But I will say, as part of our book, and as part of the Morgan Library subsequent embracing of the. Thank you, dear Marie. We lost you for a moment. I'm sorry. We lost you for a moment. Oh, I'm sorry. Can you repeat what you said just now? I'm sorry. As part of the Morgan Library in 2024 is going to have a huge 100 year celebration. They became public in 1924, which, Belle Dacosta Green is largely responsible for. But again, Marie, we lost you. I'm afraid. I'm sorry. Can you repeat it now? We can see you but you froze. It's maybe there was something in the universe that doesn't want you to say what you're trying to say. Give us the date of this anniversary again. It'll be in 2024. She will be the focal point of the celebration. And they have digitized all the letters between Bernard and Belle. So people can that's the best source material for us to discover the real Belle Dacosta Green. He did not know she was black, but he knew pretty much everything else about her. It sounds like it should be a movie. It is. We have the sold the rights to. Yeah. It's going to be moving. Oh, he's doing it. He's doing the. He's doing it. A photo of the broker and his wife, Deborah Roberts, who's the court's bonnet for America. They bought it. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Congratulations. Thank you. It's very exciting. We're very excited. They're incredible people and wonderful partners for us. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, I want to thank Marie Benedict. This has been just a delight to have you with us. And thank you for revealing the hidden stories of these great women. a woman of letters. And I thank you as a woman of letters. And thank you, Celeste Stewart, our library supervisor at Mechanics Institute for a wonderful conversation and interview. And once again, everyone join us again for our programs. And we will see you soon, whether it's online or in person at Mechanics Institute at 57 Post Street in San Francisco. And thanks, everyone. It's been a great evening. Thank you.