This well researched biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner offers so much detail that the best word to describe it is…thorough. And yet, by the end, she felt almost as distant to me as she did in the beginning. 

I know that she traveled the world, purchased a plethora of art in nearly every country, built her collection–and ultimately her famous museum in Boston–with great care and detail. I know she spent her husband’s and her own family money with abandon, she was driven, and clearly different from the average woman born in the Victorian Age who made a name for herself in the Guilded Age. I know she suffered loss and grief, but I never really felt her grief even after her two-year-old died, perhaps because the story of her pregnancy, birth, early mothering, Jackie’s disease, and death is covered in 3.5 pages.

She’s described as charismatic and a rule-breaker but also as a social outcast, feeling too scrutinized. Later in life, she’s described as achingly lonely and grief stricken after her husband dies. But again. I didn’t see or feel any of this. Maybe because the book lacks any stories or personal letters and instead offers 400 pages of facts, people, travelogues, shopping lists, and one sentence excerpts from letters or newspapers, I just couldn’t get inside her. Though the little bit I did, she came across as slightly bitchy, demanding, and status-seeking, wanting to be noticed and admired. 

I could have the wrong impression entirely, and her beautiful museum (that I’ve not been to) is clearly a magnificent gift to the public with its 18,000 items–paintings, tapestry, furniture, sculpture, books–from multiple continents. 

I thought that by the end of this biography I’d come to know the woman behind the museum, but I really didn’t, except in a few places such as when she’s designing the building and planning out each room and one tiny story where she brings a lion home. Other than that, I got a bit bored and started skim reading because after thousands of facts, my brain got tired and my attention waned. 

3.5⭐️ though most reviews seem to love this book.