by Meryl Gordon
Charlene came back to Northeast Harbor several weeks later to visit her children. The streets of the small town were empty, and she and the rector took a walk. Charlene said that things seemed to be moving too quickly. As Gilbert recalls, he replied, "Quick? You moved out, you left your kids, you've taken up with an older man—what do you mean, quick?" The couple filed for divorce in the fall of 1989.
When the official decree came through, Gilbert felt obligated to talk about the breakup in a sermon. "He had to. Everyone sort of knew," says Nancy Pyne. "This winter was a particularly hard one for me," he told his congregation. "My marriage of twenty-one years came to an end in January. I thought that I knew what brokenness was, but this was a new and even deeper experience. Each day as I woke up to face this new situation, all I could say to myselfwas this: 'I am alive this day, and it will be a good day.' Some days were not good at all. Now the days are good again, and all I can say is that somewhere along the way my brokenness was mended. I have more of a limp than I did before, but I am walking once again."
Given Gilbert's role as the wounded party, left with two children still at home, the blame for the split fell on Charlene. But her friends argue that she had reasons for wanting to get out of the marriage. Sam Peabody explains, "She has said the marriage was very difficult, and Tony came along and she adores him."
Tony's wife, Tee, took the news as hard as Charlene's husband did. "One of the sad things about Tee is that she just couldn't get over the divorce," says Pamela Walker, who had befriended Tee in Madagascar. "You have to pull yourself together and go on, but she had a hard time doing that." The soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Marshall made anguished phone calls to Tony's sons. "I'd talk to her—I'd want to be polite and nice," said Alec. "I just felt that I didn't want to take sides, and blood is thicker than water." Philip, sympathetic to Tee's misery, found it difficult to welcome Charlene into the family. "It was hard because I knew Tee had been collateral damage of this new romance," he says. Yet he was also glad to see his father's spirits soar, adding, "Charlene is outgoing, fun—she really did bring a lot of great stuff into my father's life." Mortified by the scandal, Brooke could not stop complaining to her friends. Ashton Hawkins says, "She didn't go to her parish for a year because she felt so embarrassed."
Against this backdrop, the two women who dominated Tony Marshall's life embarked on a relationship fraught with mutual mistrust. Even though Brooke had a permissive attitude toward divorce, she could not believe that Charlene had walked out on her husband and children. Charlene presumably was not interested in hearing moral strictures about parenting from Brooke Astor. Just as Vincent Astor had once regaled Brooke with tales of his mother's cruelty, Tony was apparently honest with Charlene about his tangled relationship with his mother. Impressed by Tony's accomplishments, she loyally believed that his family should show him more respect. But she made a strategic error in voicing those complaints to Philip, who found her obsession with ancient family history to be self-serving. "Charlene was talking about 'Look what your grandmother has done to your father, sending him away to boarding school as a child,'" he says. "We always wondered why she was harping on that so much."
Tony Marshall was not a wealthy man by his mother's standards, but he was a millionaire with an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel (which Tee received in the divorce settlement), a hefty annual income, and the prospect of a staggering inheritance. As someone who had been living in a minister's modest quarters, Charlene was bedeviled by the same kind of gossip that had followed Brooke's marriage to Vincent Astor—that she was only marrying for money. Nan Lincoln, the arts editor of the Bar Harbor Times, recalls the speculation: "Was she a gold digger, or was this a romantic love story—the poor stifled parson's wife who finds the man of her dreams?"
The final judgment on docket number BAR89-DV-053, Charlene T. Gilbert v. Paul E. Gilbert, was entered into court records on January 26, 1990—a divorce document with a poignant breakdown of the couple's assets. Charlene was ordered to pay her husband $113 per week in child support for Inness and another $73 a week for Robert. The Gilberts had a meager $720 in a money market account, $550 in a savings account, and $28 in a checking account, but jointly they owed $2,800 on credit cards. They did have one valuable asset; 4.4 acres of land in Bar Harbor, valued at $200,000, with a small mortgage of $22,000. Paul Gilbert kept three Persian rugs, a guitar, a bookcase, the stereo system, a cedar chest, his father's picture, a baby picture, and a thermos lamp. Charlene claimed as her property $20,000 worth of possessions: a 12-inch television, a brass tray, a portrait of her ancestor Judge Tyler, a Chinese plant stand, a piano, a wicker sewing basket, some silver and cut glass, a boudoir rocker, a brass fireplace set, a Zenith radio, a Duncan Fyfe couch labeled "broken," and a beer stein lamp.
Charlene spent more than two years in Manhattan waiting for Tony's divorce to be finalized. Living in a studio apartment (which Tony now describes as "a ratty hole"), she supported herself as the executive director of the Garden Club of America. "She had a miserable beginning in New York," says a Charleston confidante. "She was flat broke." (During this period, though, Tony did have something in common with one of his sons. Alec Marshall's first marriage had just broken up, and over lunch at the Racquet Club, he and his father would commiserate about divorce lawyers.)
Tony and Charlene were married in 1992 at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, in a service conducted by Father John Andrew. Reconciling herself to the inevitable, Brooke graciously played mother of the groom. The couple's five children from their previous marriages did not attend. "I was not invited. I would have gone," says Alec. "My father said, 'We've decided that either all of you go or none of you go.'" Charlene's version of her wedding day was passed to me via a note from her Manhattan friend Suzanne Harbour Kahanovitz. "When Tony and Charlene married, they wanted a small private ceremony," Kahanovitz wrote. "Mrs. Astor insisted on being the witness and then taking them out for a celebratory lunch at her favorite place, La Grenouille, so she could be the first to tell all her friends. Mrs. Astor also called the judge to make sure that Anthony's divorce from his prior wife went through in a timely manner." Sensitive to Tony's postdivorce financial situation, Brooke bought the couple a duplex apartment in a prewar building at Seventy-ninth Street and Lexington Avenue.
To friends, Brooke stressed that "Charlene makes Tony happy." As a mother, she appreciated how Charlene cared for Tony, whose health was not always robust. A few years after the couple married, Tony suffered a heart attack, and the doctors found scar tissue that indicated he had had a previous episode. Charlene told Philip and Alec that she had found the stricken Tony in the closet, searching for the right tie to wear to the hospital.
Tony would later insist that his mother and his wife enjoyed each other's company. But Brooke's friends said that she never warmed up to her new daughter-in-law. "Brooke was never hostile to Charlene in any way, never said anything unkind," says Freddy Melhado. "Charlene tried very, very hard, but they didn't speak the same language." Henry Kissinger is blunt in describing Brooke's attitude: "My impression was that Charlene set her teeth on edge."
Charlene did not begin to understand the rigorous rules of Brooke's social set in New York, and her faux pas endlessly irritated her ninety-year-old mother-in-law. For example, Charlene decided to take advantage of Tony's membership at the Knickerbocker Club to give him a birthday party there. The old-fashioned club, which discourages meetings and forbids guests from taking notes in the dining room, was Brooke's favorite lunch spot, and she relished its gracious atmosphere. But on the evening of Tony's party, she heard the strange sound of jangling bangles: Charlene had hired a belly dancer, whose bare stomach was undulating away. Brooke muttered to Marilyn Berger, who was seated next to her, "Can you believe this?"
Charlene admired Brooke's jewelry, but her compliments displeased her mother-in-law. "Charlene is one of those people who is in your face," says Viscount Astor, who recalls an evening when Brooke wore her sapphires and Charlene overdid it. "Brooke grabbed my
hand and whispered, 'She only said that because she wants it.'" Brooke always sensed a subtext, whether it was present or not, when Charlene was around.
At Cove End, Brooke's houseguests were struck by the simmering tensions time and again. "Tony and Charlene would be staying in the cottage and Brooke would say, 'We have to go see them,'" recalls John Dobkin, then the head of Historic Hudson Valley. "Tony would have prepared little Ritz crackers with peanut butter and bacon chips. We'd be there half an hour, and Brooke would heave a deep sigh of relief when we left, apologizing." Even Mrs. Astor's staff felt uncomfortable watching how she treated Tony. "Mrs. Astor used to tell Mr. Marshall what to do all the time," says Alicia Johnson, the housekeeper. "That grated on Charlene. He tried so hard to please his mother. He used to see her every day—he was kind to her. He'd go through the mail with her, set up dinner parties."
If Tony and Charlene were visiting when prominent guests arrived, Brooke would order the couple to vacate the large cottage and exile them to less desirable quarters, a cabin without a water view. "Brooke assigned them to the little cottage—I stayed in the big one," recalls Ashton Hawkins. "We wouldn't see them for meals, only for big parties. Brooke was very embarrassed and very upset and did not conceal it from Charlene." When Liz Smith visited, she heard an earful of complaints from her hostess. "She thought Charlene was taking her jewelry. I said, 'Oh, Brooke, surely not.' I thought it was geriatric insecurity," says Smith. "Brooke wasn't very nice to them. I felt she didn't want them there, but she had no choice."
Everyone in Northeast Harbor was aware of Mrs. Astor's deliberate efforts to maintain a friendship with Paul Gilbert. When Gilbert married his second wife, Patricia Roberts, in 1994, she magnanimously gave the newlyweds the use of her Maine summer camp, August Moon, for their honeymoon. She also paid for the addition of an extra bedroom at the minister's church-owned housing. These gestures, especially the honeymoon stay, undoubtedly struck Charlene and Tony as deliberately hurtful. When Charlene and Paul Gilbert's oldest daughter, Arden, was married in Northeast Harbor, with a reception at the Asticou Inn, Brooke Astor made a point of spending time with Gilbert's second wife, who recalls, "I loved sitting next to Mrs. Astor." Paul Gilbert's derogatory nickname for Charlene was his "ball and chain." He would tell Roberts, "I can't believe the ball and chain is going to get that house."
Tony and Charlene arrived for their annual visit to Cove End on July 25, 2002, and stayed for nearly three weeks. Tony had always loved boating, and Charlene took a triumphant pleasure in returning to this village where her life had changed for the better. She did not mingle much with old friends. "She behaved like a summer person," says Gunnar Hansen. "She'd be delighted to see me because I'm an old friend, but she would never invite me to the house. The summer community sticks with the summer community."
The Marshalls were solicitous of Brooke that summer, sharing at least one meal daily and taking her out to lunch at the Asticou or to dinner at the Bar Harbor Inn. They ferried her to cocktail parties and took her for a walk in the Rockefeller gardens. Now that she had fewer houseguests and was no longer such a formidable figure, she was more dependent on them for companionship—and Tony snapped a photo of Brooke and Charlene chatting amicably in the library.
Brooke had always told her son that he would inherit Cove End (valued at $6.2 million in 2004), but she had periodically considered giving the $850,000 waterfront cottage to someone else. She asked Vartan Gregorian if he was interested (he declined) and half offered it to the butler, Chris Ely, who became alarmed. As Hart recalls, "Chris said, 'Don't do that. I can't afford to keep it up, and Tony wouldn't be happy to have me here.'" She also told Steve Hamor Sr. that she might give him a portion of her Maine property for his own greenhouse—she even told Nancy Pyne about this plan—but she never followed up on that offer either.
These were the whims of an elderly woman. But to Tony, Brooke's effort to give her grandson Philip the cottage in 2000 may have represented a serious change in his mother's estate plan. In deference to Tony's objections, Brooke backed off from the gift, but she had not entirely abandoned the idea. In the most recent version of her will, dated January 30, 2002, she had written: "My grandson, Philip Marshall, has visited me in Maine with his wife and children to our common pleasure. I hope that he will keep visiting his father there after my death and that his father will leave him an interest in the Maine property upon his death, if Philip still would like to own and use my home in Maine when that time comes." For Tony and, more important, for Charlene, that wording had worrisome implications. If Brooke, now one hundred, were to outlive Tony, with his history of heart attacks, Philip would have a legal claim to Cove End. Under that scenario, Charlene would never reign at that shingled Maine retreat. At the time, though, Mrs. Astor's will was a confidential document; only Tony, Charlene, and Terry Christensen had read the contents.
Unaware of his grandmother's wishes and his father's anxieties, Philip was still trying to be a dutiful son. He had sent his father a large fruit basket as a birthday gift in May 2002. Tony responded with a warm handwritten thank-you note, saying that he had been "delighted" to catch up during a recent conversation and was looking forward to seeing Philip soon. He signed the note "With much love, Father."
The Marshalls left Northeast Harbor in mid-August to return to Manhattan. Mrs. Astor spent a leisurely final few weeks at her cherished home. She took her entire staff out to dinner on Friday, August 30, as a gesture of gratitude. That Sunday she attended church at St. Mary's, and afterward, with plans to fly back to New York the next day, she spent the afternoon sitting in her backyard overlooking the water, soaking up the sun and the scenery.
"We went by and she was sitting in her chaise lounge," recalls Pyne. "My husband said, 'My God, Brooke you have the most beautiful ankles and feet.' She was known for that." Brooke was pleased but could not resist teasing her guests about their motives. As Pyne adds, "She paused and looked around at her possessions and said, 'What are you after?' It was so funny."
8. The Painting Vanishes
OF ALL THE ROOMS in Brooke Astor's Park Avenue apartment, the library was her favorite place to entertain visitors. The room gleamed with old-money elegance, from the red velvet Louis XV chairs to the walls shimmering with ten coats of oxblood lacquer, which the decorator Albert Hadley had used to replace fake wood paneling. Brass-accented bookcases showcased Vincent Astor's collection of three thousand first editions bound in Moroccan leather. For more than thirty years, the place of honor over the marble fireplace belonged to the Childe Hassam painting Flags, Fifth Avenue.
Mrs. Astor reveled in compliments about her painting, an astute purchase that had taken on a powerful emotional resonance. "An exhilarating picture it is, full of high hopes," wrote Brendan Gill in The New Yorker. Mrs. Astor was often identified with the 1917 painting, a vibrant image of the city awash in patriotic sentiment in the month after the United States entered World War I. The red, white, and blue flags of America, Britain, and France are draped on the B. Altman department store and neighboring buildings, with a busy street scene below.
Hassam, America's best-known impressionist, painted a series of similar flag pictures, and when he died, in 1935, he left most of them to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which later sold the majority. The paintings slowly increased in value and renown. Mrs. Astor's Childe Hassam (also known by art historians as Up the Avenue from Thirty-fourth Street, May 1917) had previously belonged to Irving Mitchell Felt, a sports impresario and the president of Madison Square Garden Corporation, who had snapped up the New York Rangers and the New York Knicks. Like many first-generation mega-rich New Yorkers, Felt wanted to enhance his social standing through philanthropy. Already a Metropolitan Opera board member and a founding patron of Lincoln Center, he targeted the Metropolitan Museum, where in the early 1970s a donation of $250,000 in cash or art would make him a benefactor. Felt sensed that the Childe Hassam would be his ticket, but the Met disagreed. As Ashton Hawkins, then the secretary of the Me
t's board, recalls, "The curator felt it wasn't worth that."
Hawkins, disappointed by the Met's decision, thought of Brooke Astor's zest for the city and the patriotism of her Marine general father. When he told her about the painting, Mrs. Astor eagerly sought it out, purchasing it for $172,000 in 1971 through Wildenstein & Company. She loved flags; the sight stirred something in her dating back to her expatriate childhood. In the belief that the Metropolitan Museum had undervalued the work, she decided to have the last word. "After she unveiled it, we talked about how she got it," recalls Hawkins. "She said 'It's going to go to the Metropolitan, along with certain drawings.'"
For decades Mrs. Astor repeated that verbal promise to museum officials. Philippe de Montebello says, "Every time I went to her house for dinner, she'd say, 'See that—that's for you someday.'" Dating from 1992 and perhaps earlier, her wills bequeath the Childe Hassam to the Metropolitan but feature a provision that was pure Brooke, insisting that the painting be kept on permanent display rather than risk the indignity of storage.
But then, in early 2002, Mrs. Astor suddenly sold her beloved painting to the Gerald Peters Gallery for $10 million, the highest price ever paid for a Childe Hassam flag painting. (The previous record, set at Christie's in 1998, was $7.9 million for Afternoon on the Avenue.) Even though she was still an emeritus member of the board and attended meetings, Mrs. Astor did not notify the Metropolitan; the bequest simply vanished from her most recent will. She could be capricious, but to many of her friends, the disappearance of the Childe Hassam seemed to reflect more than the whims of a one-hundred-year-old society matriarch.
