|
From the Author
Brooke Astor is the second strong woman I’ve written about. Perhaps because I spent much of my early childhood in the company of two resourceful and supremely confident grandmothers I’ve always been fascinated by strong women. In my introduction to this book, I describe my first meeting with Brooke Astor and how I came to write about her. As a biographer, I’d subscribed to two hard and fast rules: First, never write about someone unless you’ve done sufficient research to feel sure you won’t tire of them -- or, even worse, turn on them. Second, never write about someone who is still alive. As a longtime editor I understood that in shaping a story it is crucial to know where the story is headed. In other words, how the story is going to end. No less important, I understood that it is difficult, if not impossible, to write with any ease when your subject will be one of your readers.
Never say never. Although Mary McCarthy had been dead almost a year when I began to write her biography, Brooke Astor was very much alive and very much in the public eye when I started work on this book, back in the fall of 2001. On the other hand, Brooke Astor was about to turn one hundred. Given her age, I believed I could make out the shape, or arc, of her life – a life that had moved from triumph to triumph, with occasional setbacks, and was now winding down. Furthermore, I believed there would be no need to publish my biography before her death. Both beliefs were based on reasonable assumptions on my part. But just as it is tempting fate to say you will never venture anywhere without taking certain necessary precautions, it is no less risky to place too much faith in reason. When this book came out in May 2005, Brooke Astor was still very much alive and her life had taken a turn no biographer could anticipate.
It would be fair to say that even after her story veered off track, the Brooke Astor I had come to know from my research remained surprisingly intact. Writing about Brooke Astor and Mary McCarthy, I had chosen to take the measure of two women who were not only very different from each other, but also very different from me. Because I liked what I knew of them, I thought I could learn from them. In both instances I was not disappointed. Sometimes in my research I stumbled upon some not altogether happy revelation, but this, too, was part of the story. Strong women are not necessarily perfect.
Occasionally people will ask me what I learned in the course of writing about Brooke Astor. Certainly I learned that there is no way to guarantee that a full and happy life will have a happy ending. But I also learned that as long as you have control over your circumstances, you can make the best of the hand you are dealt. One way to make the best of that hand is to remain passionately and unabashedly curious. You will have a good time and almost everyone will be the better for it.
Of course there are many ways to look at Brooke Astor’s story. Her life, with all its astonishing triumphs and setbacks, will continue to be examined from different perspectives, while her actions will be subject to wildly different interpretations. She was a complicated woman. To be sure, many of the men and women whose lives she touched were no less complicated. Many of them were also famous. Few, though, had her gift for capturing the public’s imagination as well as its attention. Indeed sometimes with Brooke Astor it is hard to see where the legend leaves off and the real woman begins. What remains clear is that her story not only promises to reward further consideration; it merits serious discussion.
Discussion
Questions
1. On her grave stone Brooke Astor asked to have inscribed this epitaph: “I have had a wonderful life.” Would you say that, on balance, this was true? Has your view of this matter been altered by the revelations that followed upon Mrs. Astor’s grandson’s petitioning the court to have his father removed as her guardian?
2. What do you believe makes Brooke Astor in her prime worthy of serious attention? Is it her role as Queen of New York society for close to half a century? Or her role as a longtime and hard working philanthropist? In either of these roles can she serve as a model for young women today?
3. Brooke Astor very much wanted to be taken seriously as a philanthropist. Do you think that her hands-on approach as head of the Vincent Astor Foundation was made possible by the groundwork done by staff members, particularly by Linda Gillies? Do you see this approach as being truly innovative? If so, do you think that a new generation of philanthropists, like Michael Bloomberg and Bill and Melinda Gates, will follow in Mrs. Astor’s footsteps? Will her insistence on personally visiting every organization that received Foundation money be feasible, or even desirable, in the future?
4. Brooke Astor liked to say that she had been blessed with a particularly fortunate childhood. To her father she credited her discipline and to her mother her love of reading and fondness for an active social life. What importance do you attach to her years in China? Do you feel that her childhood truly accounts for the woman she became?
5. In her memoir, Footprints Brooke Astor suggests that her mother pushed her into marrying her first husband, Dryden Kuser, because his family was rich. She also suggests that the one bright spot in this ten year marriage was the birth of her son and only child, Tony. How big a part did Brooke Astor’s mother actually play in her agreeing to accept Dryden Kuser’s proposal? Do you wonder if Brooke’s memories of a drunken womanizer and wife beater grew more vivid with time? Do you credit the birth of her son with giving her the strength to stay in the marriage while carving out an independent life? How did Brooke Astor survive such a marriage with her high spirits and humor intact? Do you think that seeing the story of this marriage in print may have been painful for her grown son, no matter how he felt about his father?
6. In the end it is Dryden Kuser who asks for a divorce, announcing that he has found a woman he wishes to marry. When Brooke Astor says she has no idea why the marriage ended so abruptly, is she being honest or not? When touching on her various flirtations during the marriage should she have said more about her attractive fellow beagler Charles (Buddy) Marshall? Do you see hints of the life she will later lead in the two years she spends as a young divorcee? What do you make of the little household she establishes in New York, where the man in her life is a six year old Tony? Are you surprised when she decides, at her parents’ urging, to give up the freedom she has enjoyed as a divorced woman and agrees to marry a newly divorced Buddy Marshall?
7. It would seem that once Brooke Kuser married Buddy Marshall and moved to a larger and far more luxurious apartment down the street, her son ceased to occupy a central place in her household and in her thoughts. Do you see this as inevitable? Might Buddy Marshall’s initial reluctance to overcome Tony’s resentment stem from the fact that he had left behind a seriously damaged son of his own? Was there anything Brooke could have done once Buddy made up his mind to send Tony away to boarding school? Or was her acceding to her new husband’s wishes understandable, given that she was living in a social milieu where children were relegated to the care of governesses and tutors and then sent away to school?
8. In Footprints, Brooke Astor calls Buddy Marshall the love of her life, and first- hand witnesses have vouched for the rosy picture she paints. What do you think made this second marriage work for so long? What carried it through the rough patches after the war, when Brooke’s glorious summers at the Castello were a distant memory and money was so tight she had to take a job at House and Garden? And what do you think about the possibility that Brooke may have not always been faithful to Buddy? What might have happened if Buddy Marshall had lived another ten years?
9. Although Brooke Astor always claimed to have been devastated by Buddy’s death, she married Vincent Astor less than a year later. Why do you think she went along with Vincent’s plan to marry immediately? Do you feel that the Marshall family had reason to be angry with her? Although by then Tony was married and about to have a family of his own, do you feel that he, too, had reason to be upset?
10. Vincent Astor was one of the richest men in America, but by the time Brooke Astor married him he was not only physically unattractive and notoriously reclusive but frequently irascible and a terrible snob. Louis Auchincloss, one of Brooke Astor’s longtime friends, likes to say that of course Brooke married Vincent for his money –indeed he wouldn’t respect her if she hadn’t. Do you agree? And do you agree with Auchincloss’s assessment that after marrying Vincent Astor, Brooke lived up to her end of the bargain and made Vincent happy? No less important, could she have continued to make Vincent happy even as his health deteriorated further and his foul moods worsened?
11. In his last will Vincent set up two trusts -- one to generate an annual income for his widow and one to endow the Vincent Astor Foundation. Do you believe that for his widow Vincent’s death came just in the nick of time? If so, does this give too much credence to the uncharitable remarks made by various disappointed legatees? What do you make of Brooke Astor’s response to Jack Astor’s motion to have his half brother’s last will declared invalid? Do you find her response excessive? Are you troubled by the disparity between her memories in Footprints and contemporary clippings and court documents? Did the lawsuit pose a serious threat, or was Jack Astor simply hoping to be bought off? Do you find Brooke’s hiring a press agent surprising? Are her actions in court a preview of how she will handle the men who want to take over the Vincent Astor Foundation, or of the way she will operate as the Foundation’s president?
12. Because of the lawsuit and subsequent struggle for power at the Vincent Astor Foundation, Brooke later claimed that her health was seriously compromised. Within a couple of years, though, she seems to have fully recovered. Do you think that her success at the Foundation owed something to the challenges she had faced during her years at House and Garden? Or do you think she was simply a natural? Do you feel that she was correct in refusing to go along with her first director’s wishes to professionalize the organization? Do you feel that having fought all these battles she believed she had earned the right to her new life as a merry widow? Was her exuberant social life more than offset by her philanthropy? Or did she frequently blur the lines between them? What part do you think Maine played in her new life? How serious do you think her romances actually were? Finally, how do you think she found the energy and time to accomplish all she did in subsequent years, including publishing four books?
13. In the years after Vincent Astor died, did Brooke Astor set aside sufficient time for her son and grandsons? Do you think it was wise of her to put Tony Marshall in charge of her finances in the late 1970s? In Footprints, which was published in 1980, she wrote about Tony’s dismal academic performance in a string of prep schools – was it right to do that, even if it was in the interest of telling an inspirational story? Aged parents can be notoriously difficult for children to handle, but as the years passed, do you think Tony had a more difficult time than most? Were his difficulties compounded by his third marriage? Is there any way he could have managed things better?
14. In her nineties, when she recognized that her mind was failing, Brooke Astor closed down the Vincent Astor Foundation and wrote a final will. By then she had given powers of attorney to her son, Tony Marshall, and her lawyer, Henry (Terry) Christensen. All these steps appeared to be both appropriate and sensible. Yet in the summer of 2006, after the court removed her son as her guardian, it became apparent that for some time things had not been going the way Mrs. Astor had planned for them to. Although Tony Marshall was later cleared of charges of elder abuse of the person, he was not cleared of charges of financial elder abuse. If something like this can happen to Brooke Astor, can it happen to anyone? And if it can indeed happen to anyone, do you believe new safeguards need to be put in place, to protect the elderly? What kind of protections would you suggest, and how easily could they be enforced? Will any immediate good come of this sad final chapter of Brooke Astor’s story?
Five Favorite Biographies of Women by Women
A Video Interview with Frances Kiernan
Click here to visit the WETA.org book blog Author Author! and watch a video interview with Frances Kiernan. [Duration: 10:59]
|