AT HOME WITH SMOKI BACON

Author: By Brenda Marchand, Globe Correspondent Date: 12/20/2001 Page: H2 Section: Life At Home

Concannon and Bacon's small den, where a tiled floor holds shelves and shelves of books covering a variety of topics. Globe Staff Photo, David L. Ryan.

Sitting on the flat part of Beacon Hill, behind that stately facade, a family of Boston Brahmins once lived. Several years ago, the building was reconfigured into five large condominiums.

Bacon and Concannon, a legendary couple on Boston's cultural and social scene for decades, live on the lower level and the first floor in an elegant, spacious setting where Henry James or Edith Wharton could comfortably take tea.

Concannon, 72, who graduated in the same Harvard class (1951) as Bacon's late husband, Edwin Conant Bacon, first met his wife at one of her annual Harvard pre-reunion parties. In 1976, at the 25th class reunion party, they met again and married three years later.

For the next 22 years, they lived in the Back Bay townhouse she had shared with Bacon on Fairfield Street; they moved to Beacon Hill not quite three years ago.

Perched on the edge of a beige brocade period chair in her formal, art-filled living room, Bacon, 73, wearing her signature outsized eyeglasses, said, "After living for years in a large home, I thought I would be restricted in a condominium. But I keep referring to this as `our house.' "

"One thing that worked for us," added Concannon, "is the rooms here are somewhat larger, not chopped up. Everything fit."

Long known as patrons of the arts, Bacon and Concannon live with their own large collection, often hung one over the other up the 12-foot walls.

"We're very much into the Boston School and American Impressionism," Bacon said. "We back cutting-edge art, but we live with what we are comfortable with."

Described by her husband as "very artistic," Bacon decorated their home herself. Her tiny, book-lined studio is crammed with autographed copies of books by authors the couple has met. Up a few stairs is Concannon's office, dominated by a gilt-edged, Italian Baroque paneled mirror, adorned with two electrified crystal sconces mounted on the glass. The 19th-century Chickering piano was a present to Bacon's daughter, Brooks, from her godmother. Nearby, a large desk is piled high with books awaiting Concannon's attention.

A massive mahogany table holds pride of place in the dining room, beneath a crystal chandelier and above a Chinese Deco carpet in rose, turquoise, and deep gold. Numerous chairs, upholstered in a rich, deep, red-and-gold velvet, surround the table. Nearby, the same fabric is used to drape a large window, where glass shelves display Japanese and Chinese porcelains. Above this window is a three-piece carved cornice of lounging and cavorting putti.

The dining room opens to a small, compact, contemporary kitchen done totally in gray formica, with a black marble backsplash. Here, Bacon likes to make soups, but professes to "not making dinners very often," except during what she refers to as "the high holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter."

On the lower level are two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a tiny laundry room.

Formerly in commercial real estate, Concannon joined Bacon, a graphic artist, in public relations and event planning for small, nonprofit groups shortly after their marriage. For 18 years, Bacon said, they "did a radio show interviewing movers and shakers and authors, from the old Cafe Rouge in the Boston Park Plaza."

Eventually, they focused on the authors. Concannon reads two to four books each week in preparation for their cable show. Now in its seventh year, "The Smoki Bacon and Dick Concannon Show" is seen on BNN TV3 in Boston and six other stations in New England. The two take turns interviewing and videotaping authors in Swan's Cafe at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, then have a luncheon with the program's guests in the cafe.

"Authors are wonderful," said Bacon. "They never tire of talking about their books. They are like new mothers. Once they find out Dick has read the book, they go on and on. It has been an extraordinary education."

Active on the social scene as party givers and goers (they host an annual author's party for an "eclectic group" of 300 professional and social types each September), they are out several nights a week. Their social calendar is kept on a computer-generated printout.

Their life also includes Bacon's two daughters, Brooks Conant Bacon, 43, who lives in New York, and Hilary Bacon Gabrieli, 41, who lives nearby with her husband, Christopher, and their five children. It is to the Gabrielis' summer home north of Boston where Bacon and Concannon go to "veg out" on weekends and during the summer.

As for "Smoki," she was born Adelaide Ruth, but dropped the "Ruth" early, then later dropped "Adelaide," too, in favor of Smoki, which itself is a modification of "Smoky," an old family name.