Mrs. Astor Regrets

by Meryl Gordon

  Mrs. Astor, who had given the reporter a Rockefeller button, worked hard for her Hudson Valley neighbor. If Rockefeller had won the GOP nomination and the presidency, a post in the new administration might have opened up for Tony. Tony had joined the board of his mother's foundation, but he had higher aspirations. Once Richard Nixon became the Republican standard-bearer, Brooke, according to her friends, made generous contributions to his campaign on her son's behalf. A year after Nixon took office, the president named Tony Marshall as ambassador to Madagascar, a volatile former French colony off the coast of Africa. "I'm sure that her contributions were a factor," says Henry Kissinger. Tony's half-sister, Sukie Kuser, who spent her entire career at the State Department, is blunter, saying, "Brooke bought the ambassadorship for him."

  Just how much Mrs. Astor contributed to the Nixon campaign cannot be determined: full and accurate record-keeping began only after the Federal Election Commission was established in the wake of the Watergate scandal. According to transcripts of the White House tapes, Richard Nixon instructed his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, on June 17, 1971, "Anybody who wants to be an ambassador must give at least $250,000." As Louis Auchincloss recalls, "Brooke used to say that he was a great ambassador to Madagascar. I said, 'Have you ever heard of a bad ambassador to Madagascar?' She said, 'That's enough out of you.'"

  Tony Marshall has a more elevated view of his diplomatic career. "I was a friend of Dick Nixon, I helped him in '64 and '68," he told me. "After he won the election, he asked me where I wanted to go to be an ambassador. I did not want to go to Europe. I wanted to go to Africa." After Common Cause, a public-interest group, successfully sued for information about Nixon donors who became ambassadors, it was revealed that Tony Marshall contributed $20,000 to Nixon's campaign in 1968.

  "Suzy Says," the syndicated gossip column by Aileen Mehle, made mention of Tony's new job, with the assumption that readers had no idea who he was but might be interested because of his mother. The item referred to "Anthony [Tony] Marshall, Mrs. Vincent Astor's son." He could not escape that comma after his name.

  William Fulbright, then the leading Democratic critic of the Vietnam War, held a confirmation hearing on Tony's nomination before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on December 12, 1969. The senator lobbed softballs, inquiring how long it would take to travel to Madagascar ("You can make it if you hurry in about four days," Tony replied) and asking what language the natives spoke (French, Tony replied, noting his own "brushing knowledge" of Swahili). Tony's résumé, provided to the committee, seemed almost a parody of a clubbable man, listing eighteen memberships in organizations and private societies, including the Brook Club and Explorers Club in New York, the Metropolitan Club in Washington, the Chevy Chase Club in Maryland, and Buck's Club and the Royal Geographic Society in London. Asked about his occupation, Tony told the committee that "my principal interest was in food manufacturing in Nigeria using locally available raw materials." When pressed, he acknowledged that he ran a company that used cocoa, yams, plantains, and potatoes to make doughnuts and chips in Nigeria. He listed his apartment as his office address.

  "Madagascar was not one of our critical posts," said David Newsom, who was then the assistant secretary of state for African affairs. "He had some Africa experience, and therefore he wasn't totally the new boy on the block." Pamela Walker, whose husband, Peter, a career foreign service officer, spent six months as Tony's deputy in Madagascar, recalls, "We wondered what Tony Marshall would be like, given his background, but he turned out to be a very good friend and a good ambassador." But she came away with the impression that there was tension between Tony and his wife, Tee. "They both were only children and both had difficult mothers," Walker says. "Tee's mother was constantly sick and needed to be cared for. I don't think Tee cared much for Mrs. Astor."

  While Brooke rarely spent time alone with her grandchildren, she made an effort during those years, taking the teenage twins to Europe on a ski trip. They flew to Paris, where she took them to a cocktail party with Jackie Onassis and Sargent Shriver, and then went on to St. Moritz. "I had brought my ratty clothes, and my suitcase was lost on the flight," recalls Philip. "She took me to Pierre Cardin—I wasn't used to shopping. She got us each our own personal ski instructor, and would meet us back at the chalet for lunch."

  After eighteen months, Tony's tour in Madagascar ended abruptly under mysterious circumstances. On June 1, 1971, local officials asked that he be sent home, and Tony left the country five days later. "He was persona non grata with the Malagasy government," recalls Sukie Kuser. "They said he was a spy—he had been with the CIA." A 1971 Wall Street Journal article titled "Little Black Lies: Spy Groups Increase Use of False Material to Put Enemy on the Spot," led with the tale of Tony Marshall's ouster. The Malagasy government claimed to have received a secret document that implicated Tony "in a supposed coup planned against President Tsiranana," according to the Journal. The U.S. government dismissed the document as a hoax. The Washington Post noted that Tony Marshall "aggressively attempted to attract American business and ranching investment to Madagascar."

  Getting booted out of Madagascar, even if the charges were fraudulent, did not boost Tony's stock at the State Department. His next diplomatic appointment was a distinct step down: ambassador to the tiny Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago. Languishing in the tropics on an ambassador's yearly salary of $31,000, Tony donated $48,505 to the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) between January 1971 and March 1972. In January 1974, Nixon named him ambassador to Kenya, a post that he held until Jimmy Carter took office in 1977. "I suspect the influence of Mrs. Astor in the White House was not an insignificant factor," Newsom said drily.

  Kenya was unquestionably Tony Marshall's most challenging diplomatic assignment. A former British colony, the country won independence in 1963 after the violent Mau Mau uprising and was led by President Jomo Kenyatta, whose regime was marred by charges of corruption and brutality. With American companies eager to invest and a large Peace Corps contingent in the country, Tony had his hands full representing U.S. interests.

  "Tony was competent," says Henry Kissinger. On a visit to Kenya, Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state, met with Kenyatta to discuss U.S. military aid, accompanied by Tony, and posed for the cameras on a safari, telling reporters that he had borrowed Tony's bush jacket. Declassified cables and news stories show Tony negotiating over American aid, protesting the expulsion of American businessmen, helping a high-ranking African leader get medical treatment in the United States, and flying back to Washington to brief the White House national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.

  During his time as an ambassador, Tony scarcely saw his sons, and he was furious when Philip ridiculed Nixon in a cartoon for the St. George's School magazine in the wake of the Kent State shootings. But after the twins went off to college—Philip attended his father's alma mater, Brown University, while Alec went to the University of Vermont—they visited him in Kenya. Brooke wrote to Tony during this period expressing her concerns about Philip and Alec and urging her son to be more involved as a parent. She was particularly troubled by Philip's rebelliousness and the lack of an authority figure in his life.

  After the Democrats took over in Washington, Tony Marshall and his wife returned to New York, in the spring of 1977. He did some consulting work for Amoco and United Technologies, but ended up dependent on his mother once he took on managing her money in 1980 as a full-time job. "I was very glad to do it," Tony told me. "I discovered things were being mismanaged badly. The trouble was that a bank had all of my mother's money, which wasn't very much at the time, and banks, in my opinion, don't manage money well."

  At the Vincent Astor Foundation, Tony took over an office right next door to his mother's. He placed some of her money with Freddy Melhado's firm and also invested in bonds, options, and stocks. Over the next twenty-five years, his rate of return lagged significantly behind the Standard and Poor's index. Monitoring these investments was not a nine-to-five job,
so he had ample time for long lunches and to dabble as a writer. Linda Gillies recalls that Brooke was happy to have her son on the premises: "You could often hear them laughing together." As the secretary of the Vincent Astor Foundation, Tony kept an eye on the budget, but he never joined his mother on her trips to the slums or weighed in on grant proposals.

  By then Tony was accustomed to seeing his sons sporadically. After college, Alec moved to New York to study medical photography, and at the last minute his housing arrangements fell through. "My father had plenty of room, but he didn't take me in," Alec says. "It would have disrupted his life." First as children and then as adults, the twins learned that if they wanted to see their father, they needed to make an appointment. As Alec puts it, "He told us when to arrive and when to leave."

  During the years that Tony had been overseas, Brooke had been running the most famous salon on the Upper East Side. She had tepid feelings toward her son's second wife, Tee, which became more of an issue once the couple was back in New York. "The wives couldn't get along with her," says Sukie Kuser. "It got so that when he was married to Tee, they had separate holidays, he with his mother, she with her mother."

  The publication of Brooke's autobiography Footprints in 1980 led her to grant another interview to the New York Times. She coyly told the newspaper that in the twenty-one years since Vincent Astor's death, she had received "lots of proposals" but preferred single life. "I'd have to marry a man of suitable age and somebody who was a somebody, and that's not easy," she said. "Frankly, I think I'm unmarriageable now. I'm too used to having my way." She mentioned her affection for her grandsons. "They were hippies to begin with," she said. "But now they've emerged and they both have paying jobs." Alec was then working as a medical photographer for Mt. Sinai Hospital, while Philip had just received his master's degree in historic preservation at the University of Vermont.

  Even though the seventy-eight-year-old Mrs. Astor was reflecting back on her life, she was then in the midst of creating her crowning achievement at the Metropolitan Museum—Astor Court, a courtyard crafted in Soochow, China, and installed on the second floor at the museum. She had lived in China from 1911 to 1914 and devoted much of her memoir Patchwork Child to those years. She would often reminisce about a peaceful summer spent with Buddhist monks. Under Mrs. Astor, her foundation spent nearly $10 million to install the courtyard, which featured a skylight, a koi pond, and Ming Dynasty furniture, at the museum.

  The New York Times Book Review described Footprints as "delightful" and "bubbling," but avid readers in Brooke's social circle thought her portrayal of Tony was cruel. She described him as a "spoiled" boy and an emotionally wounded war veteran who would "cry out in his sleep," and she admitted that she had not been a good mother. "A lot of us knew there had been difficult times between Brooke and Tony and he legitimately could have felt a little bit hurt by her autobiography," said Howard Phipps. In the closing pages of the book, she did write that "one of my great delights is my son Tony." But that did not atone for the pages that came before.

  However, there were perks associated with being Mrs. Astor's son. She used her clout at the Metropolitan Museum, the Wildlife Conservancy, and the New York public television station, Channel 13, to help Tony win seats on those boards. "She asked all of the boards to take him on as a trustee," says Ashton Hawkins. "They did it, swallowing hard."

  Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 boosted Brooke Astor's already high profile, as she reveled in her close friendship with the president and the first lady. She threw a celebratory party at her apartment right after the 1980 landslide victory over Jimmy Carter. Nancy Reagan now fondly recalls the evening as "the party where Ronnie was under the table looking for Brooke's earring."

  Mrs. Astor had dined at the White House before, but during Reagan's two terms she took the shuttle to attend state dinners so often that she might just as well have left a toothbrush in the family quarters. "A lot of people wanted to sit next to Brooke—she was so much fun," says Mrs. Reagan. "She'd stay at the White House, in the Lincoln bedroom. She was more of a night owl than we were. Ronnie was tired and we would go to bed." In the morning the two women would dish. "We'd talk about who looked pretty and who didn't and who did what that they shouldn't have. I felt like I could tell her anything." Brooke Astor was reticent about personal matters but quietly conveyed her disappointment with Tony. "I did meet him," Mrs. Reagan says. "You got the feeling that all was not happy, but I never questioned her about him. They just didn't have a good relationship."

  Mrs. Astor made a point of summoning many of the friends who attended her fete for the Reagans—the Kissingers, William Paley, Douglas Dillon, Liz and Felix Rohatyn, Victor and Betsy Gotbaum—back to 778 Park Avenue for another gathering almost exactly a year later. This was, in a sense, a revenge dinner. Always in denial about her age, she had been furious when officials at the Metropolitan Museum invoked the standard policy requiring board members to step down to nonvoting emeritus status when they reach age seventy-five. Mrs. Astor did not want to go quietly into the New York night. Now she was giving a dinner in honor of Vartan Gregorian, the newly hired president of the New York Public Library. For her, this was the equivalent of taking out a twopage ad in the Times to announce that she had chosen the library as her new philanthropic cause.

  Gregorian was charmed when Brooke paraphrased Thornton Wilder to explain her approach to philanthropy: "Wealth is like manure—if you collect too much, it stinks. You've got to spread it around." He describes their relationship as friendship at first sight. "She could talk about books, about people, about issues, about nature, about gardens, about African Americans," he explains. "My wife told me that if Brooke were thirty years younger, she wouldn't have trusted me." The library was so cash-strapped during those days that books were moldering from neglect, the doors were closed on Thursdays to save money, and neighboring Bryant Park had become a haven for drug dealers. Mrs. Astor gave an influential grant of $10 million, urged her friends to join her, and created an annual fundraising gala for the library that became a sold-out event where socialites mixed with raffish authors.

  There was something touchingly personal about Mrs. Astor's involvement in the library. Just walking into the building made her happy. She admired the underappreciated librarians and started a tradition of sharing lunch with the staff on her birthday. While she did not single-handedly save the library, she was profoundly involved in its renaissance. "By virtue of her prestige and influence and ability to inspire people, she brought a whole level of interest to giving to the library by New York's social-philanthropic-economic circles," says Paul LeClerc, the current library president. "She made the place."

  But for all her warmth and generosity, Mrs. Astor had developed an imperious side. As her courtiers learned, attention had to be paid. Her elegant mask slipped at home, since no woman is a heroine to her social secretary. "You had to be tough to work for her, because she went after people," says John Meaney, her chauffeur from 1985 to 1995. "Her favorite thing was to say, 'I just took a hate on them.' She knew it was irrational, but she could be erratic and harsh. She needed to vent, and the only people she could vent with was staff. Familiarity breeds contempt."

  Like her predecessor Caroline Astor, the twentieth century's Mrs. Astor believed that all guests, no matter how high their station, should abide by her rules. She was not subtle in expressing her feelings. When she hosted a lunch at her home for Nancy Reagan, she was not pleased when the guest of honor was late. She broke with protocol by seating her guests and telling the waiters to start serving the appetizer. As John Hart recalls, "It was Brooke's way of saying, 'You don't show up forty-five minutes late for a lunch, even if you are the president's wife.'" Mrs. Reagan still recalls the experience with mortification. "It was traffic," she explains, by way of apology. "She went ahead and started lunch. I was glad she did. I was upset because I was late—I didn't want her to be upset with me."

  All was forgiven. And a few years later, when Mrs. Reagan was goin
g through a difficult time, her friend reached out with memorable words of comfort. "After my mother died, Brooke said to me, 'Now Nancy, I know nobody can replace your mother, but I'd certainly like to try. Anything I can do for you, anything you want, just think of me as your mother.' It was so sweet."

  In truth, a younger woman was already playing the role of Brooke's surrogate daughter. This intimate relationship had begun in the 1950s and lasted for nearly half a century, with powerful repercussions for both women.

  Annette de la Renta was a central figure in the drama during Brooke Astor's last years, yet despite her rarefied social standing (or, perhaps, because of it), she has always been a reclusive figure to reporters. It was not until the early days of 2008, six months after Mrs. Astor's death, that I finally arranged my first formal interview with her.

  A butler answers the door at the de la Renta apartment, which occupies an entire floor of a Park Avenue building in the east sixties. An enormous Edward Lear landscape of Kilimanjaro dominates the marble-floored foyer. The sixty-foot living and dining room, which encompasses the entire width of the building, is sumptuous, with eighteenth-century English furniture, an Aubusson rug, yellow walls, and cranberry drapes. The room is filled with so many beautiful objects—a collection of little leather boxes, a Saint-Gaudens sculpture of Diana, two severe portraits of Elizabethan women all in white, a Gericault painting of a nude man, ornate side tables, pink peonies in a vase—that one's eyes dart around trying to take everything in. On this wintry afternoon, both fireplaces are ablaze.