Improper Bostonicm

MRS. JACK by Louise Hall Tharp. 365 pages. Little, Brown. $6.95.

It is not true that Mrs. Jack Gardner customarily perched in the branches of a potted mimosa tree to receive her guests, or that she kept a pride of pet lions in her basement. But it is true that she paraded in elegant furs walking a lion on a leash, did Lenten penance by scrubbing the steps of Boston's Church of the Advent, and attended a concert in Symphony Hall wearing a headband emblazoned: "Oh you Red Sox." It is also true that she ardently supported the Boston Symphony, launched Critic Bernard Berenson on his career, and founded an art museum that contains some of the world's finest paintings. She spent a lifetime inventing and exploiting her own legend, and has remained largely a legend since her death in 1924. Now Louise Hall Tharp, whose last book was The Baroness and the General, has written the most extensive and carefully documented biography of this thoroughly improper Bostonian.

Famous Figure. Isabella was not noted for the beauty of her face. It was plain and rather round. But she had a famous figure, a nimble mind and charm. "To dominate others gave Mrs. Gardner such pleasure," a close associate later recalled, "that she must have regretted the passing of slavery." Actually, she was not a Bostonian but the daughter of a New Yorker who had made millions in importing and iron mining. At 17, she announced her ambition: "If I ever have any money of my own, I am going to build a palace and fill it with beautiful things." At 20, she married John L. Gardner, son of an old-line Bostonian who had become rich in the East India trade, and was one of Boston's most eligible bachelors. For nearly 40 years, he loyally indulged her whims.

The Gardners settled in Beacon Street. Mrs. Jack studied Dante under Harvard's Charles Eliot Norton, read poetry aloud with Novelist F. Marion Crawford, sat for a portrait by John Singer Sargent, paid Paderewski $1,000 to play for her privately at home, entertained Henry James at tea (James described the effects of a chat with her as "absolute vertigo"). She wore diamonds in her hair, hung ropes of pearls around her waist, traveled to Europe, Egypt, Java, Japan and Cambodia.

She used her Beacon Street music room as a showcase for young performers, once staged a matinee prizefight for Back Bay's society ladies, who had naturally never been allowed by their husbands to see such a vulgar spectacle. "It was for a purse of $150," reminisced Referee Jack Sheean, "and I matched Knucksey Doherty of Donegal Square with Tim Harrington of Cambridge and told them to be themselves. I figured some of those sedate, quietly dressed society women would scream or faint, but the vestal virgins in the Coliseum never looked on with more calm than these high and haughty dames as they watched these two babies murder each other."

With Lunch Pail. With Berenson as adviser and purchasing agent, she gathered a collection of old masters that included Rembrandt, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Velazquez and what many experts consider the finest Titian in the U.S., The Rape of Europa. At 60, she realized her girlish ambition. She built Fenway Court, a Venetian-style palazzo, to house her collection. Daily she appeared on the construction site, lunch pail in hand, to harry the architect, fight with the building inspectors.

New Year's night, 1903, she invited fashionable Boston to view the results, received her guests standing at the top of a vast flight of stairs, treated them with characteristic eccentricity to a supper of doughnuts and champagne. By the terms of her will, Fenway Court became the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; it is maintained by the income from her endowment and is open to the public. But not a picture can be added or removed.

One of her last public appearances was as a Persian princess at a charity fete in Brookline. Laden with jewels and swathed in veils, Mrs. Jack, then 73, was scheduled to ride in on an elephant. The moment came, the elephant balked, and Mrs. Jack had to enter on foot. It is about the only occasion on record when she failed to get her own way.

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