Authors Interviewing Characters: Emily Franklin interviews Isabella Steward Gardner

Isabella Stewart Gardner, was a daring visionary who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself.  In the new novel, THE LIONESS OF BOSTON (April 11, 2023, Godine), Emily Franklin paints a portrait of a courageous soul who shattered society’s expectations, living life on her own terms.

By the time Isabella Stewart Gardner opened her home as a museum in 1903 to showcase her collection of old masters, antiques, and objects d’art, she was already well-known for scandalizing Boston’s polite society. But when Isabella first arrived in Boston in 1861, newly married and unsure of herself, she was puzzled by the frosty reception she received from stuffy bluebloods. At first, she strived to fit in. Following tragedy and upper-society rejection, Isabella discovers her own outspoken nature, infiltrating the Harvard intellectual world, and discovers a new path to find herself.

As Isabella explores the larger world, she meets artists and kindred spirits—Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and John Singer Sargent. A worldwide traveler, she attends the first Impressionist exhibit, collects a wide range of paintings and objects, and forges an important relationship with Bernard Berenson, who would become her art dealer/confidante. An eccentric trailblazer, Isabella Stewart Gardner was a misfit who befriended other outcasts to later rise into art and intellectual society, using her own collections to open the now-famous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

“This beautiful, sensitively written novel explores the fascinating life of Isabella Stewart Gardner—feminist before feminism, celebrity before celebrity…I couldn’t put it down.”

—Jessica Shattuck, author of The Women in the Castle

Emily Franklin interviews Isabella Steward Gardner

EF: Isabella Stewart Gardner, thanks so much for agreeing to this interview.

ISG: Well, back in my younger years, I would have jumped at the chance to be included in such literary circles. Any circles, really. Might it surprise you to know I was not accepted into Boston’s society life when I moved there? This was despite marrying one of Boston’s beloved sons. [dramatic sigh] Oh, poor younger me! Such struggle. Such social and personal woes. Tragedies, if you want to know the truth. But I survived! And I saw so much of the world, learned so much. And I made friends—

EF: Yes, you had quite the circle of friends.

ISG: Yes, famous and infamous. I suppose I collected misfits like myself—some artists, some other outspoken folks, perhaps people living at the edges. How boring to only have one kind of person around the dinner table, don’t you think? Oh, if only I’d known the years to come that I’d be friends with John Singer Sargent and Henry James and so many others, I might not have wasted my youth’s energy trying—and failing—to blend in. 

EF: And what about now?

ISG: Now you’re lucky to get time with me! [takes cigarette from gorgeous antique silver box] Don’t look so shocked, Interviewer—

EF: I’m Emily Frank—

ISG: And don’t interrupt. I am a woman and I smoke. And have the occasional drink. Of course, I wasn’t always this way. But after those tough early years – the rejection, the losses – I grew. I traveled all over the world and found my way into intellectual society. First Boston ignored me, then rejected me, and then – once I found my life’s passion, Boston gossiped about me. Did you read about me in the paper? [shakes head of auburn hair] Anyway, I adore the Red Sox—did you know that? Once, in 1912, I wrapped a white band around my auburn hair, and to show my support wrote “Oh, You Red Sox” on the band and wore this get-up to the Saturday night Boston Symphony Orchestra concert. Well, I had a chuckle at the reaction—horror and surprise—but they’d just won the World Series, so why not shout about it? 

EF: This wasn’t the first time you’d surprised people, was it?

ISG: [Deadpan eyes] Are you referring to John Singer Sargent’s portrait of me and the night it was revealed at the St Botolph Club and “polite” society gasped? 

EF: Or the time you paraded lions down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue?

ISG: Have you any proof of that?

EF: Well, there are sketches…

ISG: Sketches? You want to see sketches? Have you any idea the number of sketches, paintings, and objects of art I’ve amassed over the years? And—much to my delight—left for the general public to view at my museum? It’s most important, isn’t it—the idea of art being accessible to everyone. [waits, tapping high heeled 14-hook ankle boot] Isn’t it, Emily Franklin, who claims to know all about me?

EF: Yes, art being accessible is very import—

ISG: Not to mention flowers in the interior courtyard of my Venetian palace right in the heart of Boston! And I have 3000 rare books, 7000 archival objects – including some of my letters with Henry James? And 7500 paintings—including the Sargent portrait, sculptures from my travels with Jack, Renaissance art, furniture, textiles, silver, ceramics. 

EF: That’s a lot of… stuff.

ISG: Stuff? It’s a life’s work. What we collect tells so much of who we are. I suppose I’m cluttered and carefully curated both. And, before you get any ideas about [air quotes] modernization or [air quotes] renovation, please tell everyone you know that while I left the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum open for all to enjoy, no one may move ANYTHING.

EF: Nothing?

ISG: Nothing. Not even the empty frames from when the museum was burgled in 1990 and thieves sliced Vermeers and Rembrandts from their frames. What a pity. 

EF: There’s a Netflix series about the Gardner art heist.

ISG: I don’t know what Netflix is, but regardless of the notoriety of the theft and even though I hear there’s still a 10 million dollar reward, I still want everything to stay just as I left it. Nothing moves. Nothing changes, even with the haunting empty frames. The loss of art is. A pity, though… And yet..

EF: And yet?

ISG: [wistful] There’s something beautiful about an empty frame, isn’t there? So many memories, much like my Venetian palace house that I made into my museum. Empty things, rejected people, we all have so much to offer, so much possibility—I do hope you’ll go see it. And, for my sake and yours, dear interviewer—

EF: Emily Franklin.

ISG: [eye roll] I’m the one being talked about here, not you. But I do so wish us both luck with the novel about Boston, about my incredible experiences with artists and writers in the 1800s and well, I suppose you’ve captured my whole life in your novel. And I thank you for that—after all, I was quite a woman.

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Author bio (particularly as it relates to the new book) up to 100-words: A lifelong visitor to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Emily Franklin is the author of more than twenty novels and a poetry collection, Tell Me How You Got Here. Her award-winning work has appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Guernica, JAMA, and numerous literary magazines as well as featured and read aloud on NPR and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She lives outside of Boston with her family including two dogs large enough to be lions.

www.emilyfranklin.com
@efranklinauthor
https://www.facebook.com/emily.franklin.528

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, Interviews, On Writing