Mrs. Astor Regrets

by Meryl Gordon

  It was de rigueur that the minister and his wife join the summer social circuit, attending the cocktail parties and mingling at the village's private swimming club with the town's wealthy scions, academics, and literary lights. Northeast Harbor's nickname has long been Philadelphia-on-the-Rocks for its Main Line summer migrants, but New York, Boston, and Washington have also contributed their share of distinguished names listed in the Redbook, the indispensable seasonal phone book, which cites the owners' estate names, Lil Hope and Saltmeadow Farm and Pebble Beach and Windy Willows. Frankie Fitzgerald, a lifelong summer resident and a descendent of the famous Episcopal rector Endicott Peabody, says that in order to succeed as pastor of St. Mary's, "You have to provide pastoral care for the local people and really pay attention to them. Then you have these whiz-bang summers and you have to be a powerful preacher to keep those people in their pews. That's when you raise all your money."

  Brooke Astor, who attended church every Sunday, was quickly captivated by the articulate minister, a fellow literature-lover who worked references to John Updike, Joseph Conrad, and even Winnie the Pooh into his sermons. For his part, Gilbert was pleased to discover that Mrs. Astor, despite her wealth and prominence, was unpretentious and approachable. "I liked the fact she was a straight shooter," he says. "She spoke her mind and functioned very well in a world of men. She was a good listener."

  On a summer Sunday in 1983, Paul and Charlene Gilbert took the five-minute walk from the rectory to Cove End for afternoon tea, on a weekend when Tony Marshall was visiting without his wife, Tee. For Tony, who was not devout, the idea of chatting with the new minister and his wife may not have been high on his to-do list. But as his mother and the minister conversed, he found himself intrigued by Charlene, who was more than twenty years younger than he. She was alluring, with a raucous laugh and a risqué sense of humor. Several decades later, asked if it was love at first sight, he smiles and replies, "We admitted later that we saw something in each other's eyes." At the time, Charlene confided to a childhood friend that she was smitten. "Charlene told me that the moment she laid eyes on him, she knew," the friend recalls. "Charlene said, 'I walked in and I thought immediately, "One day I'm going to marry him."'" But despite the spark, the kindling did not immediately burst into flame. It smoldered quietly, for six years.

  Charlene Detwyler Tyler grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, in one of those downwardly mobile southern families that had more pedigree than money; in the local shorthand, they were the kind of people who were "too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash." Charlene's ancestors are said to include the portrait painter George Inness and President John Tyler. The family home at 14 Rutledge Avenue, built in the 1890s by her paternal great-grandfather, was in a good location, a few blocks from the Battery and its Civil War cannons, with Fort Sumter across Charleston Harbor. But whatever resources had once distinguished the Tylers were gone by World War II. During Charlene's childhood, Azile Brown Tyler, her widowed grandmother, still lived in the handsome Victorian home with the wraparound porch but rented out the top floor to make ends meet.

  Charlene's mother, Marguerite, known as Meg, had been the Azalea Queen in a small town nearby and had been swept off her feet by the charming Charles Tyler, Charlene's father. But early in the couple's marriage, Charles was severely injured at the local navy shipyard when a piece of heavy equipment fell on him. According to family legend, he was pronounced dead at the hospital, but then, to the shock of the attendants, the white sheet placed over him began to move. Tyler was left permanently disabled. "He could walk, but it really affected his arm," said Oscar Johnson Small, Jr., a retired Charleston accountant distantly related to Charlene's family. Suffering from a lifetime of excruciating pain, Charles Tyler turned to alcohol to anesthetize himself, and his wife kept him company. The five Tyler children, four girls and a boy—Charlene, the second child, was born in 1945—were terrified by their parents' boozy battles. As a friend of Charlene's recalls, "The father and mother were alcoholics and they fought like cats and dogs, and it affected the children. The girls got out as quickly as they could. The father came from a good background, a moneyed background, but he just couldn't make it."

  Tyler nominally sold health and accident insurance. "He was a born salesman—he was like a comet and took off. But then he self-destructed because of alcohol, mainly to address his pain issues," said Paul Gilbert. Meg Tyler helped support the family by working as a lab technician at the Medical University of South Carolina and as a caterer. "Charlene had a childhood that was out of one of those southern novels—highly dysfunctional," says a woman who has known her for forty years. "Her mother was a beauty queen and a hard-drinking woman, but she was a great cook."

  Sometimes Charles Tyler would set off to take the children to church on Sundays but would detour to the wood-paneled bar tucked into the back of the members-only Hibernian Hall, an imposing 1840 historic landmark with white Ionic columns, where he would drink while the children played. Family members call him an abusive drunk but refrain from detailing the particulars. A Charleston resident with an intimate knowledge of the Tyler home life explains, "What happened in that house was real, and it was horrible, and everyone in the family is still living with the repercussions. Those girls cannot have enough security or enough money to protect themselves."

  From an early age Charlene took on the role of family peacemaker, using her charm to distract the adults. In search of a reliable parental figure, she turned to her grandmother. "Charlene would come by, and she was a great comfort to her grandmother—she did chores, the little things that you women need done," says Small. Charles and Meg Tyler uprooted their brood to Greenville, South Caroline, but the relocation did not change the sad realities of the marriage. Bravely fleeing toward safety, Charlene, then just twelve, got herself back to Charleston and showed up at her grandmother's door. "The grandmother saved Charlene," says one of Charlene's childhood friends. "Charlene was at a tender age—she needed to get out. Mrs. Tyler thought, 'At least I can save this child.' Charlene was always a loving girl."

  Azile Brown Tyler set out to give her granddaughter the kind of education that would pave her way into Charleston society. The route in was Ashley Hall, one of the most prestigious girl's preparatory schools in the South, whose graduates include Barbara Bush, the novelist Josephine Humphreys, and the children's author Madeleine L'Engle. Founded in 1909, Ashley Hall exudes southern gentility. The administrative office is in a four-story 1816 Regency house with Oriental rugs, marble fireplaces, and antique chandeliers. Located in downtown Charleston, the school boasts elegant gardens and an aviary, the Shell House, which is decorated with conch shells and has been converted into a student gathering spot. Yet despite its finishing-school appearance, Ashley Hall was designed to offer a rigorous education; in Charlene's day, its students were required take Latin.

  After she enrolled in 1960, when she was fifteen, Charlene blossomed. She sang in the glee club and performed on the varsity drill team. Anne Miller Moises, also in the class of '63, recalls that "Charlene was very funny and seemed happy and chipper. She had such rosy cheeks." Moises goes on to speculate, "Maybe she is the type who makes the best of everything, but she never let on that she had had a hard time." Charlene would ride her bike to school with her neighbor Gail Townsend Bailey. "I remember sitting with Charlene on her front porch, shooting the breeze," Bailey says. "She was very gregarious, great to be around."

  Her high school years were a swirl of circle pins, pleated skirts, and dancing the shag. In the 1963 Ashley Hall yearbook, the Spiral, Charlene Detwyler Tyler is described as having "cheeks like apple blossoms in the spring." Her nickname is Rabbit, her favorite phrase is "Hey, babes!" She is slender and lovely in the picture, her dark hair in a flattering bob that comes just below her ears, and she has a shy smile on her unlined face.

  For Ashley Hall girls, the standard path was to come out at the St. Cecilia Society ball, go to college or spend a year working at a socially acceptable job (in an art gal
lery or historic preservation), and then marry and move into a house in the narrow area south of Broad Street. Charlene could not afford college and went to work at the South Carolina National Bank as a teller, the job she had when she met her first husband, Paul Gilbert.

  The year was 1967, the occasion was a boat race in Charleston Harbor, and a mutual friend invited both Charlene and Paul to crew on a sailboat. Faced with a low draft number during the Vietnam War years, Gilbert had entered navy officer training school and had just been stationed in Charleston. New to the city and a Yankee, he was pleased to encounter this popular local girl. "She was very outgoing, very charming, great sense of humor—a slim young woman with a lot of life to her," he recalls, wistfulness evident in his voice.

  Charlene was still living at home with her devoted grandmother, sharing the downstairs quarters while boarders occupied the top floor. One night in November 1967, while at the movies with Gilbert, she suddenly had a feeling that something was wrong and insisted that they leave. The clocks in her grandmother's home had stopped, and her seventy-eight-year-old grandmother was dead. In her will, Azile Tyler left her home to Charlene, who was bereft at the loss of the woman who had raised her. A short time later, Paul Gilbert proposed. "I felt like I was doing the noble thing," he says, "but I was also in love with her." They were married at St. Philip's Church on August 28, 1968, with a reception afterward at the Hibernian Hall on one of the hottest days of the year. "There was no air conditioning," recalls Mary Lou Scott, Paul Gilbert's sister. "I have never seen so many drunk people."

  A month later Gilbert was promoted to captain and became the commanding officer of a minesweeper, the USS Meadowlark, berthed in New Jersey. The couple spent a year in Perth Amboy. When his navy service ended, in late 1969, the Gilberts moved back to Charleston, where their first child, Arden, was born. Paul Gilbert worked at a series of unsatisfying jobs, including administrator at a local medical college and yacht broker. Charlene gave birth to another daughter, Inness, in 1972, and to a son, Robert, in 1976. Pursuing his interest in religion, Paul Gilbert enrolled in the Virginia Theological Seminary and took his family with him to Alexandria. "Faith was important to Charlene, and she supported me all the way through," he says. "I'm very grateful to her for that."

  During the six years between Charlene's introduction to Tony Marshall and the encounter that would rupture both their marriages, she and Paul Gilbert became popular figures in Northeast Harbor. Like many resort communities, the town lives by the calendar, with a summer population of several thousand dwindling to fewer than five hundred people after Labor Day. To supplement the rector's income, Charlene became an event planner, first at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory and then at the Maine Community Foundation. "Charlene and Paul were warmly received, very involved in the community and in activities supporting their children," says Bob Pyle. When the town's fire alarm went off, he says, "Charlene was one of the first people who would show up, with coffee and doughnuts."

  One full-time local resident, Gunnar Hansen, a writer and actor who specializes in horror movies (he played Leatherface in the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), spent two summers living with the Gilberts while he rented out his own house to vacationers to pay the mortgage. "Charlene was more talkative and social, but Paul to me was the caregiver at home," he recalls. "She was out the door in the morning. He had made the sandwiches and got up and made breakfast and got the kids off to school."

  But Charlene took on the role of caregiver when her mother was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Although her three sisters lived in Charleston, their mother chose to leave that city, where she had spent most of her life, to be with her once-rebellious daughter in Maine. Pattie O'Brien, Charlene's younger sister, recalls, "My mother died in Charlene's arms. I've always been grateful to Charlene, because I couldn't have done it. That's so hard, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week." Paul Gilbert supported Charlene's desire to take in her mother at the end. "We converted our living room to her bedroom, and she died there," he recalls. "She reconciled with Charlene, which was quite beautiful."

  As compensation for the difficult winter months in Northeast Harbor, the summers offered a constant cornucopia of invitations for the minister and his wife. "We had them to dinner a few times," says Frankie Fitzgerald. "They're both very smart. Charlene includes people in conversation—she makes a big effort towards everyone." The minister and his wife were also frequent summer dinner guests at the home of August Heckscher, a former New York City parks commissioner. At Heckscher's home, the couple met the erudite and entertaining New York lawyer Francis X. Morrissey, Jr., whose father was intimately involved in the life of the Kennedy family. Frank Morrissey benefited from that Camelot connection and moved in well-to-do circles. "Francis is very charming and worldly. Augie saw him as a third son," recalls Paul Gilbert. "He was so smooth, you wouldn't believe it. He reminds me of the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley."

  Important moments in life often arrive without a change in background music to signify a plot twist. For Tony Marshall, his annual visit to his mother in Maine had always been a pleasant interlude, especially once he stopped taking Tee, who did not get along with Brooke. Cove End was beautiful, the deferential staff looked after him, and his mother invited interesting people to visit, as she did in July 1989, when she gave a large luncheon for Katharine Graham, the Washington Post publisher. She also invited the minister and his wife, seating Gilbert at her table with Mrs. Graham and Charlene next to Tony at another table.

  Oh, the mischief that can arise out of a simple arrangement of place cards. Charlene and Tony quickly discovered they had interests in common: he loved opera, she played the piano; they were both amateur photographers; he had a wry sense of humor, she was a responsive listener. Suddenly they were laughing and flirting on a summer day, having a party of their own. It could have stopped there, but it did not. Tony, always a gentleman, is circumspect about the events that led to the breakup of two marriages. When I asked him about his second meeting with Charlene, he simply says, "It was a renewal. We fell in love, and got married."

  There are few secrets in Northeast Harbor, a town so small that it does not even boast a traffic light. Sandra Graves, whose family runs McGrath's, the only newsstand on Main Street, was working as a cook for Mrs. Astor that summer. "I got to work a little before seven A.M.," she says. "The kitchen window looks out to the driveway, and you can see anyone who walks up. Charlene showed up early and rang the front doorbell. It might have only happened once or twice, but it was drilled in my head because it was so odd." Tony was waiting downstairs and slipped out to join Charlene for a walk. Graves and her companion in the kitchen, the housekeeper, Helen Dodge, found Charlene's appearance disturbing.

  The walks quickly became local knowledge. There was the predictable tongue-wagging because Charlene left her sleeping family for an early-morning stroll with Mrs. Astor's married son. Dot Renaud, Sandy's mother and the newsstand proprietor, says, "If you're a minister's wife, you're supposed to conduct yourself, especially in a small town. She had children, and while they weren't babies, they were young." (Robert was twelve, Inness was sixteen, and Arden was nineteen.) In the next few weeks, other members of Mrs. Astor's staff noted jarring things. Tony, not known to venture far, was gone for twelve hours at a stretch. His new passion for bird watching, he told people, was keeping him busy.

  Philip Marshall, visiting in August, was too wrapped up in his own romantic life to notice much else. Two weeks earlier he had attended a cousin's wedding in Canada and met a painter and filmmaker, Nan Starr, a Philadelphia native who was then living in Boston. "I was telling everyone that I had met this wonderful woman," recalls Philip, then teaching at Southeastern Massachusetts University. Armed with a basket of warm popovers baked by his grandmother's staff and a bouquet of basil from his grandmother's garden, Philip drove down to see Nan. Seven weeks later they were engaged. Nan, whose father ran a gourmet food company, came from an affluent family herself but had s
ome trepidation about marrying into a family with such enormous wealth and public attention. As she puts it, "I was very much in love with Philip, who didn't have any money himself, but I was concerned about raising a healthy family in the shadow of his grandmother's fame and fortune. I've seen excessive wealth cause serious problems for some families." Only later, when Tony Marshall called Philip to say that he had left Tee, did Philip realize that he and his father had been falling in love at the same time.

  Paul Gilbert may have been the last to know. He and Charlene had problems—"We were broke; we had nothing," he says—but the marriage seemed to be "on cruise control." When the summer ended and Tony returned to New York, Charlene told her husband that she had to take several out-of-town business trips on behalf of the Maine Community Foundation. One September Sunday, when Charlene purportedly was in Boston, the Episcopal priest invited parishioners to a communal coffee after services. A woman came over to chat with him and idly passed along a bit of gossip: "My cousin in Washington just saw your wife getting off a plane. She went up and hugged this older man. Was she going to see her father?" The priest managed not to drop his coffee. The marriage ended quickly. When Charlene came home, Gilbert confronted her, and she moved to a friend's house a few blocks away. Three weeks later she packed her clothes and headed to Manhattan.

  Brooke Astor was aghast over the affair. Fond of Paul Gilbert, she was devastated that her hospitality had led to this fracture of two families. "Charlene's husband would call every single day, and they would talk while Mrs. Astor was having breakfast in bed," recalls Sandra Graves. "She swore to God that Charlene would never be allowed in the house. Mrs. Astor made all these comments about how she was going to disown Tony, not let him have anything, didn't want Charlene in his life—she was very, very angry. But I knew she would get over it. Charlene knows how to talk and get things around to her own way."