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| She loved her jewelry. But that honey-colored hair, is it dyed? She said no; her friends thought otherwise. |
Philanthropist Brooke Astor burst into
the news in 2006 when one of her grandsons filed a lawsuit accusing his father,
her only son, of neglecting her care and exploiting her to enrich himself and
his wife. Brooke Astor, then 104, was
suffering from dementia and anemia and other ailments, making her vulnerable to
abuse. Anthony D. Marshall, the son,
denied the accusations, and the dispute stretched over many months, a bitter
closing chapter in the long career of a woman who had come to be known as an
aristocrat of the people and the unofficial first lady of the city of New
York.
Brooke Astor died of pneumonia at her weekend
estate in August 2007. Her funeral at
Saint Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street was attended
by 900 people, including luminaries from the worlds of finance, the arts, and
philanthropy, and Mayors Bloomberg, Koch, and Dinkins. Her son was present and in a choked voice
read a note that his mother had written to be delivered at her funeral: “When I go from here, I want to leave behind
me a world richer for the experience of me.
I want the creatures and the animals and the birds to be a little less
afraid of human beings. Death is nothing
and life is everything. I want to leave
behind me a deeper sense of God.” He
then broke down in tears.
Sadly, Anthony D. Marshall later faced
criminal charges of mishandling her estate.
In 2009 he was convicted of grand larceny, and his attorney of forgery;
both were sent to prison.
Prior to this I had known of Brooke Astor
only vaguely. So who was she and how did
she come to be known as an aristocrat of the people and the city’s first lady?
Brooke Russell was born at Portsmouth,
N.H., in 1902, her father a major general in the Marine Corps, and later the Corps’
sixteenth commandant. She remembered her
childhood as secure and happy, albeit solitary, since she had no siblings. Much of it was spent abroad, because her
father’s career took him to distant lands.
At age 16 she met John Dryden Kuser, a New Jersey politician with a vast
fortune that dazzled Brooke’s mother more, it would seem, than it dazzled
her. When he proposed, she reluctantly
accepted, thus embarking on a tumultuous marriage that she later termed the
worst years of her life, owing to her husband’s physical abuse, alcoholism, and
adultery. They were divorced in 1930.
In 1932 she married her second husband,
financier Charles Henry Marshall, the love of her life. Twenty years of happiness followed, with life
in a penthouse full of servants, dinners and parties, and a castle in
Italy. When her husband’s firm suffered
financial reverses in the 1940s, they undertook to live more modestly, and she
went to work as a features editor at House
& Garden magazine. In 1952
Marshall was suddenly stricken with a heart attack. She found him lying on the floor, summoned a
doctor, cradled his head in her lap; by the time the doctor came, Charles
Marshall was dead.
So far, viewers may wonder what all this
is about, and rightly so, for Brooke Kuser/Marshall had yet to become
herself. That transformation began in
1953, when Vincent Astor, a grandson of the
Mrs. Astor, and great-great grandson of old John Jacob, the founder of the
Astor fortune, proposed. Though
hesitant, she accepted. As her friend
Louis Auchincloss, the novelist, remarked, “Of course she married Vincent for
the money. I wouldn’t respect her if she
hadn’t. Only a twisted person would have
married him for love.”
She tried to make her new husband happy,
for he was a very suspicious person who thought everyone wanted something from
him, and was given to depression. To
alleviate the depression, she would sing to him or dance with her dogs, until
she provoked a smile. Still, she felt
shut off, losing contact with her friends; in the end the couple were left
alone. She did, however, take an
interest in his real estate and hotel empire and his philanthropies. And when he died in 1959, she inherited some
$60 million, and as much more for a foundation to alleviate human
suffering. “Pookie,” he had told her,
“you are going to have a hell of a lot of fun with the foundation when I’m
gone.” She did, reinventing herself as
Brooke Astor.
“Money is like manure,” she said with a
wink and a smile, quoting Dolly Levi in Thornton Wilder’s play The Matchmaker. “It’s not worth a thing unless it’s
spread around.” Since most of the Astor
money had been made in New York City real estate, she decided to spread her
millions around in the city in the form of grants from the Vincent Astor
Foundation to museums and libraries, boys’ and girls’ clubs, homes for the
elderly, and other programs and institutions.
As a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library and
Museum, the Rockefeller University, and other prestigious institutions, she
spent much time in their board rooms, working with curators and other staff
members, but from 1983 on she devoted herself almost exclusively to the New
York Public Library, where she remained honorary chairwoman until her
death. Thanks to her, the Arnold
Constable department store was converted into the Mid-Manhattan Library, and
the Astor Court, a replica of a Chinese gentleman scholar’s garden courtyard of
the Ming Dynasty, was created at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Me and Brooke Astor: No, I never met her, never even glimpsed her
in action. But I have often visited the
Mid-Manhattan Library and the Astor Court, sublimely unaware of whose largesse
had made them possible, so I am in her debt.
The great attraction of the Mid-Manhattan Library is that, unlike the main
library across the street, it lets you check out books. And I have sat there reading or taking notes,
in the company of restless teen-agers, and an older scholar whose innumerable scribbled
notes were spread out in little piles on the table in front of him, so that any
minor disturbance – a sneeze or a slight gust of air – would have sent what may
have been his life’s work fluttering to the floor. Fortunately, I never sneezed. As for the garden courtyard, it is one of my
favorite spots at the Met, since it brings alive for me the life of a Chinese gentleman
scholar of earlier times. I have also
glimpsed that life in venerable scroll paintings of landscapes showing a
scholar in his little house in the pine-clad mountains, while his invited
guests, coming for tea, make their way up a path through the woods. Nature, tranquility, a little house, friends:
the formula for an ideal (or illusory?) existence.
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| The Astor Court, inspired by Brooke Astor, who had spent part of her childhood in China. Constructed by Chinese craftsmen using traditional materials, tools, and techniques. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
But Brooke Astor had no intention of
confining herself to board rooms and their denizens. Considering it her duty to evaluate
personally every organization seeking help from her foundation, she sallied
forth in her chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz to visit churches and tenements and
neighborhood programs throughout the city, to witness the ground-breaking of a
playground in a Brooklyn slum, or the launching of a day care center in the
impoverished South Bronx. During these
forays she was often treated to lunch on paper plates and plastic folding
tables set up for the occasion, prompting her to exclaim over the “delicious
sauces” – deli mustard and pickle relish.
On her rounds she gladly talked to anyone:
a child at a computer, a library secretary or guard, a janitor at a branch
library whom she thanked “for keeping this place so clean.” No wonder that, at the institutions she
visited, she made friends among the staff at all levels. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art a burly
black janitor once gave her a hearty hug when she stepped out of her limousine,
and she returned the hug with gusto. And
her money often went to humdrum necessities that were never publicized, like
air-conditioning or a staff lunch room, new windows for a nursing home on
Riverside Drive, fire escapes for a residence for the homeless in the Bronx, a
boiler for a youth center in Brooklyn, or small parks scattered around the
city.
During these trips around the city she wore
white kid gloves, finely tailored suits or designer dresses, a hat in all
weather, and a cashmere coat in cool weather; in her later years she carried an
elegant cane. “If I go up to Harlem or
down to Sixth Street,” she explained, “and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing
my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them. People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some
dowdy old lady, and I don’t intend to disappoint them.”
But at night, even into her 90s, she
returned to the world of society – high society – usually as an honored guest
at some black-tie affair, sporting designer dresses and jewelry, and seated to the
right of the host at dinner, while flirting freely with every gentleman in
sight. Her apartment on the 15th
and 16th floors of 778 Park Avenue had 14 rooms and 6 terraces. An invitation to one of her luncheons or
dinners there meant you had arrived at the highest level of society. At her formal dinner welcoming President
Elect Ronald Reagan to the city, the guest of honor dropped to his knees to
find a diamond earring she had dropped under the dining table, and in so doing
bumped into Walter Wriston of Citibank and Felix Rohatyn, the financier
credited with saving the city from bankruptcy in the 1970s, both on their hands
and knees hunting the same elusive earring.
 |
| Her bedroom, giving a hint of how she lived. |
And yet, unlike her husband’s grandmother,
the Mrs. Astor of the era of the Four
Hundred (see post #88), she had no desire to be an arbiter of Society, was of
that world and yet apart from it. She
appreciated those who helped her help others, but had a wicked eye for high
society as a whole. “Unlike Queen
Victoria,” she said, “we are amused –
we are always amused.”
She was slight of build and, in her last
years, frail and thin, but she kept fit by swimming a thousand strokes on
weekends and almost daily in the summer, even in the chilly ocean waters around
her house in Maine. Her hair remained
honey-colored, and on meeting a member of the British royal family she
captivated him with the announcement, “I am ninety-five, sir, and never had a
facelift.” (Bravo for her! But her friends cast doubt on the
assertion.) Even into her 90s she loved
to dance. “When that music starts,” she
said, “it enters my blood like a fever.”
Which this blogger enthusiastically applauds, having in his later, less
inhibited years experienced that same kind of fever. And I’ve seen photos of her dancing; it was
no prim waltz or foxtrot, it was wild!
A widow for 48 years, she could have
married again but chose not to, though she admitted to a fondness for
flirting. An acquaintance once said to
her, “Mrs. Astor, you’re such a beautiful woman, you must have had many
lovers.” “When I can’t fall asleep at
night,” she replied, “I sometimes start counting them, but I’m asleep long
before I get to the end of the list.” Perhaps
this was said with a wink and a smile.
One wonders if her philanthropic endeavors and active social life left
room for any such adventures.
As age and infirmity overtook her, she
remained at her Park Avenue apartment, a
recluse toward the end, unable to recognize friends and family. In the litigation following her grandson’s
suit against her son, gruesome stories emerged of overflowing wastebaskets,
sofas reeking of urine, her pet dogs locked in a pantry, and the grande dame of New York society in rags,
stumbling about in the once palatial rooms of her apartment. The saddest of endings to a splendid life.
Brooke Astor was always glad that she had
not lapsed into the idle life of pleasure that her fortune would have
permitted. When she terminated the Astor
Foundation in 1997, it had given away close to $195 million, mostly within New
York City. Her donation to a cause
signaled to the big foundations that it deserved support; much larger grants
often followed. She had long since
chosen the epitaph for her gravestone: “I had a wonderful life.”
Brooke Astor combined glamor, wealth,
savvy, patrician grace, and a gently wicked sense of humor. Like Taylor Mead, her polar opposite (see
post #91), she took herself seriously but at the same time could have a laugh
at her own expense. I never knew her,
but I wish heartily that our paths had crossed just once, so we could exchange
a wink and a smile. But why stop
there? I’d love to have rubbed shinbones
with her, to have heard her designer dress rustling and her jewelry clinking as
she danced. Yes, dance! Brooke Astor and I
could have danced up a storm.
Congressional perks: Members of Congress enjoy numerous perks, as
for instance
- A private gym with a swimming pool and basketball court
- Private elevators, and a subway to get them the vast distances from their office to the Capitol
- Free mailings
- On-site medical care
- Free parking at Washington airports
- A generous travel allowance
- Free dry-cleaning
To my knowledge, none of these
have been suspended during the shutdown.
Presumably they are essential services, vital to the health and
well-being of the nation.
Coming soon: The Living Theatre (champions of freedom and
nudity, and why I kept my clothes on). In
the offing: Quentin Crisp.
©
2013 Clifford Browder
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