Vincent Astor

Source: Public Domain

The August issue of Quest magazine, a New York glossy, featured one Vincent Astor on its cover. Were he still around, Astor would not have been pleased, because the cover story by David Patrick Columbia was not exactly flattering. Nor was it a hatchet job, however, something I regretted because Astor was not a nice man. Snubbing those born less rich and less posh is something no real aristocrat does—plutocrats, perhaps, but not real aristos. Astor was known for his rudeness toward those he deemed beneath him, and that included guests of his. He was a bully and a snob, neither being aristocratic trends, characteristics probably inherited by his German ancestor who began as a butcher. Here I will take a parenthesis that deals with my own Astor story.

Forty or so years ago, in the green and pleasant county of Oxfordshire, England, I took a long lease on Bruern Abbey, a stately pile of about twenty bedrooms, five grand drawing rooms, a ballroom, a cricket pitch, a tennis court, and what have you. I rented it from the Astor family, who lived in less salubrious circumstances nearby. I had twenty young people down each weekend, and the beautiful classic house had a reputation for wild parties. On the day I moved in, William Astor, or Viscount Astor as he prefers to be known, dropped in uninvited and made some remark about me renting the house. I am not known for letting things go, nor do I suffer fools gladly. I told William Astor that unlike him, the descendant of a butcher, my people were landowners in Sparta on my mother’s side, and industrialists and shipowners on my father’s side. “We shot it or bought it, but did not sell it, like you did,” was the way I put it about meat. At another friend’s grand lunch in the country many years later, I had the misfortune of sitting one seat away from him. He was going on about his stepdaughter being Prime Minister David Cameron’s wife, and his sister Janet’s husband becoming a duke, of Richmond. I muttered something under my breath. We’ve kept clear of each other ever since. Astor has a very nice wife and a sister whom I took for a short cruise on my boat long ago, but the trip ended innocently, alas. William Astor, as far as I know, continues to be a fool. There are many more Astors, both in America and the U.K., who are perfectly nice and normal, I am told.

But let’s get back to the other jerk, Vincent Astor. He expired in 1959, leaving his great fortune to charity. He didn’t know it, but his favorite Brits (dukes and the like) thought him a vulgar American, and middle-class social climbers like the very talented Evelyn Waugh and very feminine Cecil Beaton thought him dead weight. Upper-class Brits do not go around calling people lower-class—a simple raise of the eyebrow will do—and Vincent’s openly crass remarks about homosexuals and the lower classes were seen as vulgar Americanisms. Poor Uncle Sam, it wasn’t his fault Vincent Astor was a spoiled, rich fool and terrible snob. He ended up marrying Brooke Marshall, whom his wife, Minnie, chose for him after she could no longer remain married to the bore. Brooke became the famous charitable person we now know as Brooke Astor. Vincent died soon after their marriage, leaving her with the loot. Which brings me to the point of my story.

Brooke had a son from a previous marriage, Anthony Marshall, who was convicted in 2009 of taking advantage of his mother’s dementia. Marshall’s wife, who recently died at age 79, was painted by the gutter press as the real villain of the story. When Marshall married his wife, Charlene, his mother waged war against her. Not to the manor born, announced Brooke about her daughter-in-law. The court ruled against Anthony Marshall, and he received a couple of years in the pokey for allowing Brooke to live in squalor and mismanaging her millions.

Both Anthony and Charlene are no longer, and I’m not surprised after what they went through. My question is, what is the use of being a Marine Corps officer who was decorated for his actions in the bloodiest of all battles, Iwo Jima, then risking his life as a CIA agent, and after that serving his country as a diplomat, to die disgraced because he mismanaged and took some of his mother’s moola for himself? A life of courageous service erased by a bad decision over the money his mother had lawfully helped herself to. He ceded guardianship to Annette and returned 11 million. Anthony Marshall died in 2014, Charlene recently. I always thought Brooke Astor a total phony, but her son was a brave and good man who deserved more respect for his war record alone. Sic transit gloria mundi.