Mrs. Astor Regrets (48 page)

While having breakfast in bed the next morning, Brooke spoke fondly about Sophie and Winslow to her housekeeper, Alicia Johnson. "She loved the little girl," recalls Johnson. "Mrs. Astor said, 'She danced for me.' She thought Philip's son was such a little gentleman—he had a tie on at dinner. She was proud of Philip."

Brooke had chartered a boat that day to explore the waters off Mount Desert Island in search of seals. The family posed for a photograph on the waterfront. In a white straw hat, pearls, a green blouse, white pants, and a stylish white coat, Brooke is beaming in the center of the picture. On the left, Philip, balding and tall, wearing a windbreaker, a polo shirt, and shorts, is grinning, his arms around his shyly smiling daughter. On the right, Nan, short-haired and athletic, looks affectionately at the camera, resting her hands on Winslow's shoulders. On the boat, Philip sat close to Brooke, whispering in her ear as they bounded over the deep blue water with the mountains in the background.

At Cove End the next day, Annette de la Renta arrived by private plane from the Dominican Republic, just for lunch, in an extravagant gesture of affection. "I'd never met any of them," says Annette. "Brooke didn't talk so much about them." Here she was, Brooke's closest friend, and yet Brooke's grandson and his family were strangers. Brooke was the queen of New York, the world's most famous philanthropist, a best-dressed icon, and her family had never come first. But now she was Gagi, an affectionate matriarch trying on a new role extremely late in life. "I saw her having a great time. Her great-grandchildren were all dressed up and performing for her," Annette recalls. "It was nice to see Brooke that way."

Brooke wanted to share her family with yet another close friend, so David Rockefeller came over for lunch the next day. The group got into a lively discussion about the upcoming presidential election. As Nan recalls, "Brooke and I were trying to convince David to vote Democratic." Brooke, once a GOP stalwart, was annoyed that George and Barbara Bush, unlike previous presidents, had not included her at state dinners, although they were social acquaintances. "She was a little offended," says Rockefeller. "She felt that the Bushes had not paid a lot of attention to her."

Gagi was not lacking for attention during this visit. Sophie and Winslow tried to entertain her with their athletic talent. "She was impressed when I was doing back flips into the pool," Sophie recalls. "I did gymnastics in her yard, cartwheels—she liked that."

At the end of the five days, Brooke had an impulsive inspiration: she decided to give Philip and Nan the cottage by the water. She loved them; they loved Maine; it would make her happy to imagine Sophie and Winslow cavorting for decades to come. Of course, if she had given this gesture much thought, she would have known that Tony would be irked. But the property was hers, and she was already leaving Tony so much—Park Avenue and Holly Hill and the main house at Cove End. What could a single cottage matter?

What stayed with Nan was Philip's happiness. "It was really, really important to Philip for the kids to have a connection to their great-grandmother, and not for any reason but sentiment," she says. "He wanted some normalcy. He romanticizes those days, but it meant so much to him."

Brooke said her goodbyes and the family drove away. The blue sky and ocean water, Brooke's riotous garden of pinks and purples, Sophie in a blue dress at the swim club, Winslow in a yellow life jacket—all now photos for the scrapbook. Five days in the life of a family is so little time, but sometimes the memories, and their repercussions, can last forever.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

N
OTES

B
IBLIOGRAPHY

Acknowledgments

M
ANY PEOPLE
helped make this book possible, but at the top of the list is my agent, Gail Hochman, who stirred up a bidding war in August, no less, and has been tremendously supportive and involved at every stage of this process.

To the more than 230 people who agreed to be interviewed for this book, I send all of you my sincere thanks for your time and your trust. A handful of people were very helpful on a background basis: you know who you are, and I am immensely grateful.

As I wandered around in Columbo fashion with just one more question, a number of people showed endless patience. My thanks go to Philip Marshall, Annette and Oscar de la Renta, Daniel Billy, Jr., Susan Robbins, Alec Marshall, Elizabeth Wheaton-Smith, Nan Starr, Paul Gilbert, Sam Peabody, Linda Gillies, Fraser Seitel, Vartan Gregorian, Ashton Hawkins, Minnette Christie, Pearline Noble, Suzanne Kuser, Emily Harding, Ira Salzman, Harvey Corn, Barbara Thompson, Liz Smith, Alicia Johnson, Ivan Obolensky, Alice Victor, Louis Auchincloss, Marilyn Berger, Randy Bourscheidt, John Dobkin, Barbara Goldsmith, Steve Hamor, John Hart, Naomi Packard-Koot, Mary Lou Scott, Patricia Roberts, Viscount William Astor, and Alice Perdue.

Frances Kiernan, the author of
The Last Mrs. Astor,
has been generous with research help and advice. As for my journalistic colleagues on the Astor beat, I have benefited from their reporting and guidance, with special thanks to Stefanie Cohen, Neil Weinberg, Serge Kovaleski, Dareh Gregorian, Helen Peterson, Barbara Ross, Alison Lynn, Melissa Grace, Laura Italiano, John Eligon, Ralph Gardner, Jr., and Samuel Maull.

I have been blessed with wonderfully supportive friends. I am grateful to Jane Hartley, Ralph Schlosstein, Mary Macy, Michelle and Stephen Stoneburn, Suzanna Andrews, Christine Doudna, Rick Grand-Jean, Tom Curley, Patricia Bauer, Ed Muller, Gail Gregg, Tamar Lewin, Swoosie Kurtz, Jim Wetzler, Rita Jacobs, Jenny Allen, Jules Feiffer, Charles Tolk, Ron Silver, Elaine and Tino Kamarck, Louise Grunwald, Mandy Grunwald, Matt Cooper, Benjamin Cooper, Rachel Gotbaum, Betsy and Victor Gotbaum, Josh Gotbaum, Joyce Thornhill, Susan Chira, Michael Shapiro, Judy Miller, Jason Epstein, Susan Birkenhead, Jere Couture, Julie Glass, Joanna Coles, Joe Klein, Victoria Kaunitz, Stone and Betsey Roberts, Gale Epstein, Paula Sweet, Toni Goodale, Elizabeth Rohatyn, Maralee Schwartz, Jonathan Alter, Emily Lazar, Garrett Epps, Gwen Feder, Caroline Miller, Eric Himmel, Lindi Oberon, Jodie-Beth Galos, Jane Stanton Hitchcock, Nancy Leonard, and Urban Lehner.

My husband, Walter Shapiro, has been terrific during this exhilarating and exhausting marathon. Champion editor of boring sentences, comforting presence at 3
A.M.,
ever-vigilant and curious journalist, stand-up comedian who keeps me laughing, closest friend after thirty years together—I am so lucky that we found each other.

My parents, David and Adelle Gordon, have cheered me on all through life and read every draft of this book. My father is a marvelous descriptive writer; my mother, a social worker, has a talent for drawing people out. I'm grateful for their love and the skills they have sought to pass on.

My nephews, Jesse Gordon and Nate Gordon, are the lights of my life, and it has been a pleasure to welcome to our family Meghan Wolf and Victoria Clark. A special thanks is due to Nate, the baseball photo editor at
Sports Illustrated,
for his professional help in coordinating the photos for this book. My two sisters-in-law, Sarah Cooper-Ellis and Amy Shapiro, have been consistently warm and wise and fun. My brother, Bart Gordon, taught me how to read without speaking the words out loud, and remains always in my thoughts. I miss him every day.

This book evolved from a story I wrote for
New York
magazine, and I remain grateful to Bruce Wasserstein and the editors—Adam Moss, John Homans, Jon Gluck, Hugo Lindgren, Lauren Kern, and Emily Nussbaum—for this assignment and many others. Wendy Wasserstein, Bruce's sister, repeatedly urged me to put aside magazine stories to do my own work, saying, "Seize the means of production." Her friendship and encouragement meant a great deal.

At Houghton Mifflin, Jane Rosenman, the acquiring editor of this book, was a dream to work with, and I regret that she was unable to see the book through for reasons beyond our control. George Hodgman, who took over the editing of the manuscript, came up with a terrific title and offered many smart insights. Lois Wasoff turned the legal vetting into a surprisingly pleasant experience. Liz Duvall provided thorough manuscript editing.

I am grateful for the support and enthusiasm of Rebecca Saletan, the publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Andrea Schulz, the editor in chief, Lori Glazer, executive director of publicity, Bridget Marmion, senior vice president of marketing, Becky Saikia-Wilson, executive director of editorial operations, publicity manager Alia Hanna Habib, and Sasheem Silkiss-Hero. Julia Dahl, who provided research assistance, and Bob Hammond, who fact-checked the book, made invaluable contributions, but any mistakes in the manuscript are mine.

Notes

This book evolved from a story I wrote for
New York
magazine in August 2006. I began the research that led to that story a year earlier, in September 2005, before the legal fight began. Although I had contacts in Mrs. Astor's world from previous magazine assignments, I did not come to this subject with any special arrangements or access, just an intense desire to understand what happened to this family.

Ultimately, I was able to speak to every major figure involved in this controversy. I interviewed more than 230 people, including Mrs. Astor's family members, close friends, and former staffers. Many were initially reluctant to grant full cooperation. Only after ten months of phone calls did Philip Marshall agree to meet me in person and describe in detail the events that led him to sue his father. In her role as Mrs. Astor's guardian, Annette de la Renta refused all press requests for a year, but six months after Mrs. Astor's death, she spoke with me at length. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger also discussed the lawsuit and their friendship with Mrs. Astor in conversations at their respective offices.

Tony and Charlene Marshall, who met with me at their home in 2005 for my story in
New York,
declined to schedule a formal interview for this book but were nonetheless accessible. Tony granted me a half-hour phone interview in June 2007, and during a break in the surrogate's court proceedings in Westchester in October 2007, the Marshalls sat and spoke to me for nearly an hour. Whenever I went up to them at events and asked questions, they took the time to answer. They graciously provided family photographs for the book.

The majority of my interviews were taped. When taping was not possible, for various reasons (such as the ban on tape recorders at courthouses or requests by individuals that I not record them), I relied on my notes. Most conversations were on the record, but a few people would agree to speak only on a background basis. During two years of reporting, I did multiple interviews with many sources.

In researching this book, I read numerous newspaper clippings and books, especially Brooke Astor's two autobiographies,
Patchwork Child
(1962) and
Footprints
(1980), and Frances Kiernan's invaluable
The Last Mrs. Astor
(2007). I relied on, and derived insights from, several types of documents not available to the general public:

• The nurses' notes written by Mrs. Astor's caregivers from September 2003 to March 2004. As indicated in the text, these notes are far more than medical notations, since they include descriptions of Mrs. Astor's state of mind and running commentary on the events that occurred at her two homes, Holly Hill in Westchester and 778 Park Avenue in Manhattan.

• Schedules and phone message logs prepared for Mrs. Astor. These documents, some of which date back to 1990 and which conclude in 2005, have been verified for accuracy by members of Mrs. Astor's household.

• Letters written by Mrs. Astor and her family members to one another. Several of her close friends, including Vartan Gregorian, Liz Smith, and Annette de la Renta, shared personal notes that they received from Mrs. Astor.

• Documents related to the 2006 guardianship lawsuit. Some documents were part of the New York State Supreme Court files (index no. 500095/06; the public files have been redacted). Others derived from legal discovery in that case but were never formally filed with the court; these documents subsequently became part of the proceedings in Westchester County Surrogate's Court and New York County criminal court. Though some of these materials have been quoted in newspaper stories, I was able to make greater use of them at book length. In the chapter notes, for simplicity, I list these documents as related to the guardianship case.

Philip Graham, who acquired
Newsweek
with Brooke Astor's blessing from the Vincent Astor Foundation in 1961, famously described weekly journalism as "the first draft of history." A book like
Mrs. Astor Regrets
aspires to a higher level of accuracy than a news story written under unrelenting deadlines. But I also know something about the limitations of even the most careful reporter, and I make no claims to omniscience. That said, I have done my best to be meticulously accurate and fair-minded in telling the story that became
Mrs. Astor Regrets.

page
PROLOGUE: TRIAL BY TABLOID

[>]
"She could make her will known": Author phone interview with Lois Orlin, Jan. 24, 2008.
"She really loved": Author phone interview with Sandra Foschi, Jan. 31, 2008.

1.
THE ASTOR
100

[>]
 The
New York Times
later took the unusual step: Alex Kuczynski, "100 Candles for a Darling of Society and Charity,"
New York Times,
Mar. 30, 2002. p. B1.
"She took on the Astor Foundation": Author phone interview with Viscount William Astor, July 30, 2006.

[>]
 "a very material-minded woman": Author interview with Louis Auchincloss at his Park Avenue home, Nov. 16, 2008.
"Buddie was the love of her life": Author phone interview with Nancy Reagan, Apr. 25, 2007.
"She always said Vincent was difficult": Author phone interview with Barbara Walters, Jan. 18, 2008.
Her forty-two person staff: Judith Miller, "Old Money, New Needs,"
New York Times Magazine,
Nov. 17, 1991.