Selfish About Money

John Jacob Astor IV with his son Vincent Astor

Selfish About Money.

This afternoon at 2:30 at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church will see the funeral service for Brooke Astor who died on Monday at age 105. Mayor Bloomberg will be a speaker at the service. There is controversy about those who were invited by her family (her son and daughter-in-law) and those who were not invited, including some of the lady’s closest friends.

Mrs. Astor was a deeply respected individual, as we know, venerated in her time, for her generosity through the Vincent Astor Foundation to the city of New York. As we also now know, in her very late great age, when she was no longer able to look after her own financial affairs, those who were in charge made changes and exerted influence that became subject to suspicion.


	Caroline Astor, Vincent and John Jacob Astor VI's grandmother.

One particular individual -- her daughter-in-law Charlene Marshall -- had been publicly suspected of influencing these changes to her own personal advantage. For example, a couple of years or so ago, the daughter-in-law, through a series of transfers, became the owner of Mrs. Astor’s property in Northeast Harbor, Maine. The irony of the transfer was not lost on the friends of Mrs. Astor who knew that she had not been particularly fond of her daughter-in-law. The woman had openly pursued Mrs. Astor’s son, at a time when she was married to the village parson, whom she eventually left to marry Mrs. Astor’s son, Tony Marshall. This was said to have deeply embarrassed Brooke Astor.

At the time of the Marshalls’ courtship and marriage, it was always whispered about that she was after a rich man and therefore the Astor fortune. Marrying for money is what it’s called. Nothing new here, as we all know; and quite commonplace, Indeed it was obvious to everyone at the time that Brooke Astor never would have married Vincent if he hadn’t had a large fortune. Less than a year before that marriage, she’d been widowed after a 20-year marriage to a man she loved and who left her without much.

Two years ago, when the story broke in the press about the quality of Mrs. Astor’s care under the supervision of her son, it was the consensus that she had become victim of people who had their own financial interests, rather than hers at hand. In other words, the mean-old-daughter-in-law was believed to be conspiring to get her hands on the dough. Sound familiar? Furthermore, it was alleged and suspected that she was not operating alone, but with the assistance and self-interest of others.

Today, on this day of Brooke Astor’s funeral, it is said, that the lawyers for the different parties are already meeting to discuss the outcome of Mrs. Astor’s Will with its estate estimated between $60 and $200 million.


Madeleine and Jack Astor.

The real irony in this story, however, isn’t Mrs. Astor’s daughter-in-law, or her son, or even herself. The real irony of the Astor fortune goes back to Vincent Astor, the man whose money it was, and his lifelong efforts to thwart the rights of others, namely his half-brother John Jacob Astor VI, to get their hands on one red cent of the Astor patrimony.

Vincent Astor came into his fortune -- estimated at the time to be as much as $150 million -- at age 21, in 1912, when his father, John Jacob (Jack) Astor IV died on the “unsinkable” Titanic. Jack Astor was returning from a trip to England where he had gone with his second wife, Madeleine Force Astor, to escape the press and public gossip about his marrying a woman 30 years his junior -- she was 19 and he was 49—and younger than his son Vincent.

Naturally, there were many in his society who believed the young girl had married the man for his money. There were others who believed that whatever her motivation, he was lucky at that stage of his life and with his reputation (for being a boor and a dull man) to get a beautiful young girl to marry him. And he was happy. And, it seemed, so was she. During Jack and Madeleine Astor’s stay in England in getting away from it all, the second Mrs. Astor had become pregnant.

Alice Astor being drawn in a cart by her older brother Vincent Astor at the family estate Ferncliff in Rhinebeck, New York. This was according to Brooke, "the only happy picture of Vincent and his sister, taken on his birthday."

Madeleine Astor was five months pregnant when the Titanic hit the iceberg. Her husband had still not made provisions in his will for his new child except for a previously written direction for dispersal of a trust for any issue then unknown at the time of the writing of the will. The unborn child was left a trust of $3 million – a large fortune in itself in those days. His widow also had been provided with the income from a $5 million trust, as long as she did not remarry (she eventually did).

It could be argued that Jack Astor had intended, once he got back to America, to change the provisions of his will and leave a larger portion of his enormous estate to his new son and namesake. However, that is supposition, and not one which ever visited Vincent Astor.


	John Jacob Astor VI.

Vincent Astor at 21 was an intelligent, but ungainly, socially awkward boy who had been emotionally neglected all his life. His relationship with his beautiful mother, Ava, who divorced Astor to marry Lord Ribblesdale when Vincent was still a child, was marred by the harshness of her obvious lack of caring for the boy. There was the famous story he told down through the years about his mother once locking him in a closet when she was getting ready to go out for the evening because he was annoying her. She left the house having forgotten to release the boy so that for several hours afterwards the terrified child shouted and screamed and banged helplessly on the closet door, with no response until a butler finally heard him. It could be argued that that single incident ruled the child’s life thereinafter.

That little boy grew up to be a rather glum fellow; tall, gangly, not anti-social but almost, and without charm. On coming of age and his inheritance, he was keen to take charge of the family assets, which he did with perspicacity and shrewdness. He also did something none of his forebears had ever done: he engaged in philanthropic works. One of his first deeds, right after inheriting, was taking some vacant Astor property and turning it into a playground for children. The Astors were arguably the biggest land owners in New York in the 19th century and a great deal of their property made them slumlords. Vincent Astor, to his credit, at a very young age, tried to right that as well as divest himself of that kind of property – unless he could improve it. He consciously built housing for the working classes that improved the quality of their lives.

Despite this “dear” side to the man, he was otherwise often petulant and difficult, highly unconscious of his own social behavior that people ran from. Although he felt most comfortable with his men friends, (he belonged to something like 20 clubs) he was almost always ill-at-ease in social circumstances where there were women around, and he was never a big hit with them. He also detested his half-brother, Jackie, and his step-mother. So great was his umbrage that he insisted that his half-brother was not legitimate and not a blood Astor. The absurdity of this position went with Vincent Astor throughout his life. The young boy also grew up to be quite the opposite of his older half-brother. Young Jack Astor was a playboy, a multimarried Lothario who lived the highlife and the social life that one might expect from an Astor. Vincent resented him for this, and aggressively.


CBS founder Bill Paley with the with the widow Astor.

His half-brother provoked an obdurate stinginess in Vincent Astor that flew in the face of his very real philanthropy for the community. It was also taken up by his last wife Brooke, who, even after the death of her husband, maintained an arm’s length and sometimes even an estranged relationship with Jack Astor’s children. At one point, she refused to share even any of the Astor heirlooms with Jack Astor’s heirs. She also engaged in promoting the idea among friends, of Jack Astor’s “illegitimate paternity” to the point that there are friends of hers today who claim authority to support that point of view.

So when it came to the end of his life – and he had a sense that his life was coming to an end – probably because of his ever-threatening failing health – Vincent Astor saw to it that his estate would never get into the hands of his father’s other son, Jack Astor. He also discounted other Astor family members in terms of legacy. Everything went to his widow and to his Foundation. The rest is history. There are still Astors around, as it was a large family. But now what’s left of the once legendary Astor Estate, will pass on to an 83-year-old old son of Brooke Astor’s first marriage, Tony Marshall, and his wife Charlene, as well as several New York institutions. Vincent Astor succeeded in keeping his inheritance from the hands of the brother whom he refused to acknowledge as brethren, diverting it, as would happen, in the direction of a woman he never knew, and indeed never even heard of.

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