Mrs. Astor Regrets (2 page)

The luster of the evening stemmed from the honored guest and the occasion. Brooke Astor was celebrating her one hundredth birthday on March 30, 2002. Thanks to Vincent Astor's largesse, she had made herself indispensable in New York's five boroughs, using his foundation's millions to help revive the New York Public Library, create a serene Chinese courtyard at the Metropolitan Museum, underwrite an expansion at the Bronx Zoo, preserve historic Harlem houses, and endow innumerable worthy causes.

She had married well, but her real accomplishment had been taking a storied but fading American name and adding luster to it, rebranding the Astor image with a newfound glamour and respect. "She took on the Astor Foundation and made it something to be proud of," says Viscount William Astor, the head of the British branch of the family and her cousin by marriage. "She did a lot for my family's name and reputation in America."

The daughter of a Marine Corps general and a status-obsessed southern belle, Roberta Brooke Russell was bred to ascend to the highest ranks of society. Her ambitious mother, Mabel, tutored her in the art of flirtation, pulled her out of Washington's Madeira School for fear that she was becoming too intellectual, and married her off at the age of seventeen to the heir of a New Jersey fortune, John Dryden Kuser. "Mrs. Russell was a very material-minded woman," says Louis Auchincloss, the novelist, who knew both mother and daughter. "She spent her life in the Marine Corps without any money at all. She wanted to set Brooke up, certainly persuaded her to do it."

That early marriage produced, in 1924, Brooke's only child, Tony. But Dryden Kuser turned out to be an alcoholic with a dangerous temper and a penchant for adultery. He left his young family for another woman, and Brooke headed to Reno in 1930 to obtain a divorce. Her second marriage, to Charles "Buddie" Marshall, a socially connected stockbroker with middling financial means, was more successful. The former first lady Nancy Reagan recalls, "Buddie was the love of her life." But at age fifty, Brooke was suddenly widowed and went on to beat her Social Register contemporaries at their own game.

A mere six months after Buddie Marshall's funeral, in November 1952, Brooke received a marriage proposal from Vincent Astor. Whether she chased him or he set out to win her remains a matter of dispute, although Brooke admitted later that her primary motivation for her marriage in 1953 was financial security. "She always said Vincent was difficult. I don't think she ever loved him," says Barbara Walters, a close friend, recalling Brooke's account of the marriage. "But she did respect him and did her best to make him happy."

When the moody and possessive Astor died at age sixty-seven, a mere five and a half years later, Brooke Astor was left with a famous surname, an intense desire for liberation from a claustrophobic existence, and a trust fund of more than $60 million. Luxury was hers for life. Her forty-two-person staff included a social secretary to manage her schedule, a French maid to choose her wardrobe, a chauffeur kept busy day and night, a French chef to create delicacies for her dinner parties, a butler, and seven gardeners, all to attend to her needs on Park Avenue and at her country homes in Northeast Harbor, Maine, and Briarcliff Manor, New York.

After a lifetime of being an accessory to men, she hungered for meaningful work and the chance to be valued on her own merits. With the well-endowed Astor Foundation, she shrewdly turned herself into a celebrated philanthropist and a sought-after social arbiter. The ability to dispense millions made her popular and powerful, and Mrs. Astor reveled in her long-running starring role, savoring the accolades.

"She always wanted to be in the limelight," says Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum, who fondly recalls Mrs. Astor's regal need to be paid her due. "At a cocktail party, if you were paying too little attention to her, she noticed and she let you know. She would regularly arrive one minute late at all our board meetings to make sure that everyone noticed the grand entrance." Brooke Astor was a narcissist, but a beguiling one, admired and admiring, good-hearted in her deeds and her public persona. "She was terrified of boredom," de Montebello adds. "So she arranged not to be bored."

Mrs. Astor—an instantly recognizable lady in white gloves, an ornate hat, pearls, and a diamond pin—became a symbol of aristocratic beneficence over the course of four decades. No stranger to Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant before gentrification, she supported programs for summer education for Puerto Rican teenagers, gave money to Catholic Charities to maintain a residence for the elderly, and paid for equipment for the Knickerbocker Drum and Bugle Corps. Instead of just writing checks, she went out to see how her money was being spent and to meet the recipients. Her involvement in a cause was the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. "It always really helped to say the Astor Foundation is one of your backers," recalls Peg Breen, the president of the Landmarks Conservancy. "The reaction was, 'If Brooke Astor thinks this is a good idea..." Howard Phipps, the veteran president of the Wildlife Conservancy, adds, "Once Brooke began giving major grants to the zoo, others followed. We named an elephant after her, and when baby Astor died, she was very upset."

At night Mrs. Astor turned her home into an elite salon where big ideas were discussed and connections were made. Bending the rules with her guest lists, she mixed the school chancellor with a curator, society ladies with an up-and-coming movie producer, an acclaimed writer with a Wall Street upstart or a venerated politician. Vernon Jordan, the civil rights leader and Clinton confidant, recalls meeting her in the early 1970s; soon he was a regular at her table in an era when Park Avenue dinners were not integrated. Mrs. Astor did not require a Mayflower genealogy or an eight-figure bank balance. The ticket to admission was being accomplished, interesting, and fun. "The worst thing she could say about someone was, 'He was a dud,'" recalls Linda Gilles, the executive director of the Astor Foundation, who often got the morning-after report from Mrs. Astor about her dinners. "The best thing was, 'He's got plenty to say.'" Mrs. Astor expected amusement and witty banter with cocktails. Her dutiful son was a quiet fixture at her larger parties. Brooke would sometimes complain that he was "boring," although he was widely perceived as conducting himself with aplomb. As Nancy Kissinger recalls, "Tony was always very nice and polite to me, a good conversationalist."

Mrs. Astor boasted about dropping two or three dull friends every year. She was very loyal to her inner circle, but she did have a habit of moving on, replacing dour faces with young and frisky newcomers. "She didn't like the same people to take her around," recalls Vartan Gregorian, the president of the New York Public Library. "Brooke told me the rule of longevity is 'Don't speak to the same people all the time, otherwise I finish your sentences, you finish mine.'" This attitude created anxiety whenever major events like the hundredth birthday party came around. Freddy Melhado, a money manager who was thirty years her junior and her dance partner for decades, notes, "She was determined to have younger friends because she thought it was life-giving."

In the kingdom of Astor, there was a flurry of pre-one-hundredth-birthday-party activity in the sixteenth-floor aerie at 778 Park Avenue where Mrs. Astor had entertained royalty, a president named Reagan, first ladies from Jacqueline Onassis to Lady Bird Johnson to Nancy Reagan, and a succession of mayors and governors. The fourteen-room apartment had been decorated by Sister Parish with Albert Hadley and updated by Mark Hampton. Visitors often admired the pearl-inlaid black wooden Chinese cabinet in the imposing entrance hall. Off to the right was Mrs. Astor's famous red-lacquered library, which housed Vincent Astor's collection of leather-bound first editions and showcased his widow's favorite and most valuable painting, Childe Hassam's
Flags, Fifth Avenue,
which hung over the eighteenth-century French marble fireplace.

The sumptuous central living room, with Louis XVI furniture, overlooked Park Avenue; to the left, the green dining room was decorated with eighteenth-century French scenic panels and billowing curtains designed by Hadley "to look like ballgowns." An eclectic collector, Mrs. Astor scattered valuable jade figurines, dog paintings, and bronze and vermeil animal sculptures around her rooms, along with an inexpensive but eye-pleasing array of teapots. She had recently added a new off-white ceramic version from Swifty's; a mere admiring glance had had the restaurant's owner, Robert Caravaggi, reaching for a gift bag. "She was talking so nicely that I gave her four, for her residences," he recalls. "She seemed so happy." People delighted in giving her presents, for the reward of her radiant smile.

Of course Mrs. Astor needed a new dress for her party, and of course Oscar de la Renta, the designer husband of her best friend, Annette de la Renta, had offered to create a couture gown. "Brooke loved dressing up," recalls Annette. "What else could you get her?"

Brooke and Annette, Annette and Brooke—the two were inseparable, despite a thirty-seven-year age difference. They spoke on the phone every day. They served on the same boards (the Metropolitan Museum, Rockefeller University, the Morgan Library, the New York Public Library) and presided over countless charity galas. The society queen and her protégé were so in sync that observers often remarked that they seemed like mother and daughter. Tom Brokaw says, "It was kind of genetic between them, as if they had the same DNA."

Brooke had initially been close to Annette's mother, Jane Engelhard, a formidable woman known for her beauty and her awesome wealth, which she had gained through her second marriage, to the metals titan Charles Engelhard. An art collector and a Democratic Party power broker, Charlie Engelhard owned a string of racehorses and was said to be the model for the James Bond villain Goldfinger. (
Forbes
estimated Jane Engelhard's fortune, including trust funds for her five daughters, at more than $365 million in 1986.)

Annette was the only child from her mother's brief first marriage. Adopted by her stepfather, she had transformed herself from a self-described "huge" adolescent into a slender, much-photographed epitome of style, perfectly dressed and groomed. She met Brooke through her parents when she was a teenager, recalling, "I inherited her." When Annette, at age twenty, married her first husband, Samuel Reed, in 1960, Brooke attended the wedding and began inviting the newlyweds to her dinner parties. As Annette says, "She was incredibly nice to me as a young married woman in New York, when she didn't need to be." Under Brooke's affectionate tutelage, the once-shy Annette became a power player in board rooms, admired and even a bit feared. "Brooke looked upon Annette as the next Brooke Astor," says Philippe de Montebello. "It was a very conscious mentoring process that she was passing the baton on to Annette."

The relationship between the women had gradually altered in the past decade, as the preternaturally energetic Brooke reached her nineties and began showing her age. Annette had become Brooke's defender and protector, attentive and thoughtful, ever eager to please. She always sat next to Brooke at the Metropolitan Museum's board meetings, helping her follow the agenda and even reaching over to turn pages.

As was her custom, Brooke was wintering at a $45,000-per-month rental house by the ocean in Palm Beach when Annette rang to say that Oscar wanted to make her a dress. When Brooke returned to New York, she eagerly met with the tailors, who went to her apartment for several fittings. Even approaching one hundred, she still cared about her looks and worked with a physical trainer to stay fit. "Brooke always felt it was her duty to enchant everybody," says Oscar de la Renta, who adds that for her special day, she was determined to attract admiring eyes. "In her flirtatious way," he goes on, "she used to always tell me that she could wear a deeper neckline than other ladies of her age." De la Renta's elegant gown was nonetheless age-appropriate, with a neckline high enough for the convent. Brooke was absolutely thrilled by the elaborate concoction, with ruffled long sleeves and a bow at her waist. Even the color had a pedigree; it was called Natier blue and was associated with the eighteenth-century painter Jean-Marc Natier.

Birthdays could be a dilemma, for Brooke Astor loathed acknowledging her age but did love a good party. Vartan Gregorian had orchestrated one celebration for her and instructed the guests not to mention her age. But his warning did not deter Henry Kissinger, who got up and gave a toast, saying, "For an eighty-year-old woman, you look great." Gregorian recalls the upset look on Mrs. Astor's face, saying, "She didn't like that. Because in many ways she was ageless."

Ten years later, on her ninetieth, she had allowed the Citizens Committee for New York City, which she had helped launch with an early donation of $50,000, to hold a fundraiser in her honor. The vast Seventh Regiment Armory was transformed into a rose-covered gazebo and confetti was shot out of a cannon, raining down on the more than 1,500 revelers, including Jacqueline Onassis and Mayor David Dinkins. The entertainment included three musical groups: the Peter Duchin Orchestra, the Marine Corps Band (in honor of her father, the general), and the Illinois Jacquet Big Band. "She had a ball that night," says Oz Elliott, the former
Newsweek
editor, who was then president of the Citizens Committee. Mrs. Astor loved to foxtrot, and even at ninety she danced nearly all night.

Yet she also let her mask slip that evening, revealing her vulnerability in a five-minute videotaped interview that was broadcast at the event. Speaking about a recent dream, Mrs. Astor described a nighttime vision in which her long-dead grandmother, so gaunt as to be initially unrecognizable, materialized on the street. "I ran back and threw my arms around her," Brooke recalled. "She pushed me off. I said, 'Granny, I didn't recognize you, you were so thin.' She said, 'Do you know why? Because the dead live off the thoughts of the living. And nobody is thinking of me.'" It was an odd story to evoke at this celebration of her life, but at ninety, Brooke was worrying about her legacy and wondering how or if she would be remembered.