Dame at Sea
Bachrach, Judy
Dame at Sea Life overshadows art in Mrs. Astor's biography. by Judy Bachrach Frances Kiernan, the ladylike biographer of Brooke Astor, hadn't been expecting, during the course of her research,...
...Then Felix Rohatyn weighed in, pointing out that hey, Brooke may have been loaded and philanthropic, yes, "but she hadn't made any significant difference...
...Astor and her son, Anthony Marshall...
...However, as Mrs...
...But back to mothers and sons...
...DISASTER FOR MRS...
...life were aided, the author reports in a blithe-but-too-brief sentence, by "the cooperation of Mrs...
...Thanks to Marshall's own son, and the intervention of Mrs...
...What happened to her biographer that she explains none of this...
...For example, Marshall sold his mother's Childe Hassam painting to a dealer, for which he got a $2 million commission...
...This she makes perfectly clear in her introduction...
...Or what resentments he might have harbored...
...The author, of course, believes that Rohatyn was wrong, since he was simply talking about "money," whereas she, Kier-nan, was talking "about a contribution that defied any assessment that placed a high value on results subject to measurement in dollars and cents...
...The tabloids, along with the newly intemperate New York Times, made many lavish meals of these morsels...
...However, "at those times when Tony's life was threatened, his mother remembered just how much she loved him, but ordinarily her son's welfare was not foremost on her mind...
...Do you delve into Mrs...
...As it happens, the biographer does touch on this tricky subject, and in a fairly original way, too...
...Astor's son was "intentionally and repeatedly ignoring her health, safety, personal and household needs," it was revealed, while helping himself to Brooke's millions...
...Well, everyone except for Brooke's biographer, it would seem...
...After five years of toil, Kiernan explains, she figured she could wrap the book up in a tidy bundle...
...The author's investigations into a long, flush, and husband-packed Judy Bachrach is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair...
...Astor, she explains early on, was "concentrate on the years she served as president of the Vincent Astor Foundation," an organization which gave money to worthy causes, named for Brooke's bizarre, rich, and ill-tempered late husband—third in a line, in fact, of bizarre husbands...
...These activities did not go unrecorded or unremarked...
...The dealer promptly sold it again for $20 million—double the original price...
...SON FORCES SOCIETY QUEEN TO LIVE ON PEAS AND PORRIDGE IN DILAPIDATED PARK AVE...
...Everyone was riveted...
...She had by then done all the heavy lifting...
...Astor's close friend, the socialite Annette de la Renta, Marshall was removed as his mother's guardian...
...With her philanthropic subject almost a century old, no longer empress of New York, and ailing, Kiernan writes, "Mrs...
...Let's say you're about to scribble that quiet coda, and along comes word that your heroine's only offspring, in his early eighties by the time he sells the Childe Hassam, isn't behaving in a manner widely considered filial...
...But about one's book selections, one absolutely does...
...What to do...
...by Judy Bachrach Frances Kiernan, the ladylike biographer of Brooke Astor, hadn't been expecting, during the course of her research, anything much in the way of excitement to write about...
...Astor's friends as "bad manners...
...She wasn't brilliant or especially witty, but men, even rich men, adored her...
...ASTOR, read the unquiet headline...
...Astor—even better, met her at the Carlyle Hotel in New York for lunch— and the two discussed Mrs...
...Hmmm...
...It isn't every publisher that will allow such a dispiriting observation to appear on page 10...
...Yes, I'm afraid she did write that sentence...
...Astor "was a bad mother...
...Why...
...DUPLEX...
...Even worse, stunning court allegations were promised: Mrs...
...Astor (a misnomer, as its author readily concedes, since Brooke really isn't the last) the reader can tell just how dismayed Kiernan was to learn of the kind of scandal most biographers can only pray for in the lives of their subjects...
...Astor's past to reconsider what part, if any, she might have played in her son's life...
...In The Last Mrs...
...Astor led a pretty interesting life...
...Then, almost at the end, comes another sure-fire conclusion: "One chooses one's friends...
...What she originally wanted to do with Mrs...
...Astor was very likely limited...
...Astor's story was over" after a few years, "awaiting only her death to provide a quiet coda...
...Alas, the cooperation of Mrs...
...Alas, it was none other than David Rockefeller who observed to the author "in the kindest way possible" that such a book, concentrating only on Brooke's philanthropy, sounded completely worthless to him...
...It would be wrong," she writes defiantly, to say that Mrs...
...The answer, I suspect, comes early in the book—right in the introduction, in fact...
...Astor's first marriage, which was not a good idea, evidently...
...She was never beautiful at any age, but she was always resourceful...
...For example, the author had met Mrs...
...About this she is sure...
...In vain did Marshall protest his innocence or describe the legal interventions of Mrs...
...when it comes to family, one has no choice...
...The bride remained a virgin six months into her marriage...
...One can only imagine the horror the author experienced last summer when she glanced at the New York Daily News and discovered that the cooperation—the complete, let-it-all-hang-out cooperation, that is—of Anthony Marshall was also likely of limited and insufficient value...
...And that, unfortunately, is about the first—and last— interesting revelation the reader is likely to trip over...
...Astor married for money, valued money, lived in a moneyed fashion, wore money in the form of famous emeralds and satin designer gowns, and above all, gave piles of money away—it is hard to know what to make of such sentiments...
Vol. 12 • May 2007 • No. 35
