Mrs. Astor Regrets

by Meryl Gordon

  12. The Art of Shunning

  THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES of the Metropolitan Museum of Art meets twice a year in the serene C. Douglas Dillon boardroom, with members taking their places around a richly stained dark brown oak table crafted by Viscount David Linley, the son of Princess Margaret. Those chosen for Manhattan's most sought-after board memberships represent a mixture of New York aristocracy, both old money and new money, culled from society and Wall Street.

  Annette de la Renta, a board member since 1981, is vice chairman of the museum and heads the acquisitions committee, two powerful positions. On the afternoon of September 12, 2006, when the first board meeting since the Astor scandal hit the newspapers was scheduled, the museum staff believed that Tony Marshall would not be attending, since he had not RSVPed. Many gathered at the handsome table had been angry to learn that Tony had not only sold his mother's Childe Hassam, repeatedly promised to the museum, but made off with a $2 million commission. The assumption was that Tony would be too embarrassed to show his face. So there was a collective gasp when, just as the meeting was beginning, he strode in. "We thought he did it for shock value," says one staffer. Heads swiveled to Annette de la Renta, who conveyed her fury with a what-the-hell-is-he-doing-here grimace.

  "I debated, should I go or not?" Tony told me several months later. Elected to the board in 1986, he had graduated to nonvoting emeritus status in 2000 when he turned seventy-six, so his appearance at this meeting was primarily symbolic. "I thought, Look, I know I'm right. I know the truth, we know the truth. I'm not going to shy away from there. I want to see how people react to my being there."

  The answer was immediately apparent: he was persona non grata. The museum's director, Philippe de Montebello, recalls, "I averted my eyes—my gaze never met his. Everyone did. We were rather surprised that he showed up." For Tony, walking to his seat was the equivalent of a long day's journey into social death. It was a shunning worthy of Edith Wharton, although Tony lacked the rebelliousness of Lily Bart in The House of Mirth. Out of compassion, two men broke ranks. Carl Spielvogel, the retired advertising CEO and Clinton ambassador, turned to Tony and simply asked, "How are you?" Malcolm Wiener, a wealthy commodities trader, made a point of walking all the way around the table to be gracious, saying, "I'm sorry to hear about all this. Did you know about it beforehand?" Tony replied, "Absolutely not." Wiener replied, "That's appalling." Tony was so grateful for the gesture of support that he later wrote Wiener a thank-you note.

  As de Montebello launched into his description of upcoming exhibitions, the other board members kept glancing at the adversaries. "It was an unpleasant situation," Annette de la Renta says. "I just did not look at him." Tony, who had seated himself across from Annette, carefully watched her reaction, happily remarking later, "By my being there, for the next hour and forty-five minutes, she was visibly upset." Spouses had been invited to join the members after the meeting for a private tour of the new exhibit, "Cézanne to Picasso," but Charlene stayed away, maintaining an anxious vigil at home with Daniel Billy. When the meeting ended, Tony headed for the exit. "One female—I won't say who it is—went down in the elevator with me," Tony says. "She gave me the worst look you can possibly imagine, this stare." But he had shown up, and he was rather proud of having faced everyone down. He vowed to me that he would not be forced out by social stigma, but this would turn out to be his last board meeting.

  ***

  In public, Tony Marshall was sticking with his Marine Corps attitude, holding his head high and being tough under fire. But in private, his life was a shambles. Ten days before the Metropolitan board meeting he had sent Alec a two-page typed letter that was a howl of pure pain, describing the sleepless nights, death threats, and damage to his reputation. Tony painted a bleak picture of himself and Charlene cowering at home, weeping. With skyrocketing legal bills and no salary, Tony wrote, he was worried about running out of money.

  The other melody in this chorus of woe was an unsubtle effort to convince Alec to pressure Philip to back off. Tony stressed that the lawsuit was a huge drain on Brooke Astor's resources and might diminish Alec's and Philip's inheritance. To Alec, parts of the letter read as if they had been vetted by a lawyer; Alec thought that the words did not entirely sound like his father's voice. Tony closed with the accusatory sentence "Is this what Philip wanted?"

  Although Alec was still trying to play Switzerland in his family's war, this neutral stance was becoming increasingly hard to maintain. Philip had become his frequent overnight guest, taking advantage of Alec's proximity to Holly Hill, only a five-minute drive away. Of course Alec showed Philip the letter from their father. Philip became angry at Tony's divisive effort to set brother against brother. As he puts it, "That letter was so manipulative."

  Charlene's safest refuge was St. James' Church, where she sought comfort from the rector, Brenda Husson. "She certainly came to me to talk and pray," says Husson. "To have your picture splashed in the paper and people stopping you on the street, that can't help." At Sunday church services, Charlene appeared anxious about the reactions of her fellow parishioners. "She'd sit in the back of the church, try to be like a little mouse not to be seen, and people would swarm around her," says Sam Peabody. "When all this hell broke loose, she was very needy. She was teary-eyed—she never thought she could get through something like this. She was called a gold digger, which was really disgusting."

  New York scandals usually fade fast, but the Astor saga was becoming as hardy a tabloid perennial as outbursts from George Steinbrenner and his sons. Christopher Meigher, the CEO of Quest Media, publisher of the on-line magazine New York Social Diary, marveled at the public's seemingly endless appetite for the latest Astor news and gossip. "You would think that people would get tired of it, but they did not want to let it go," Meigher says. "Just like Diana, she was of interest to several generations. Any story having to do with Mrs. Astor, our traffic jumped fifty to sixty percent."

  The plot had shifted from a family feud to a fight over Brooke Astor's money. Les Fagen, representing Chase, alerted Justice Stackhouse that the bank was looking into whether Tony had improperly obtained $14 million, including cash and Cove End, from his mother. Fagen's legal document was filled with moral outrage: "Was Mrs. Astor competent to understand and then authorize or intend these transactions at the relevant times?...Who are the witnesses to these transactions who can support or contradict Mr. Marshall?...And above all, is Mr. Marshall telling the truth?" Chase's lawyer asked for expanded powers to investigate. The judge denied the request as being "overly zealous and premature at this time, however well-intentioned."

  As part of the ongoing blizzard of legal paperwork, Tony Marshall had submitted a thirty-page affidavit denying all charges and insisting, in a wounded tone, that he loved his mother. He blamed Chris Ely for instigating the lawsuit out of spite over losing his job. He said he had deferred to Dr. Pritchett on Mrs. Astor's medical care, and submitted a purveyors-to-the-queen list of the Upper East Side gourmet shops (Marche Madison, Butterfield Market, Ottomanelli's) where he maintained charge accounts for his mother's food. In an effort to demonstrate his mother's affection, Tony even included poems and notes from Brooke, some dating as far back as twenty-one years, such as this birthday note from May 30, 1985:

  Darling Tony—On this very special day, your birthday, I feel so proud, so grateful and so happy that you are my son. Of all the creations you are the Best! But I want to tell you what a difference it has made in my life having you here after all those years abroad. I no longer feel alone because I know that you are there with your wisdom and common sense and affection to help me. It has meant more to me than I can possibly tell you—But I hope that you know.

  With much love and Very Happy Birthday, Mother

  There was another, undated birthday poem from Brooke, with the lines "How much you mean—how much you better my life, being my son and with your own dear wife, Who brings such joy to you and me too, so thank you both and without much ado." Tony also included
a limerick that his mother wrote on May 29, 1989:

  There is a young man named Tony

  Who can't stand anything phony

  He likes things to be clear as a bell

  and will go through hell

  in order to avoid cacophony.

  Scholars of Astor history drily noted that at least two of these missives were written before Tony became involved with Charlene and the third was undated. But the image of Tony Marshall desperately searching through memorabilia to prove his mother's love to the world was ineffably sad.

  In the New York social strata where the latest news about Brooke had become ubiquitous, the most surprising development was the revelation that Tony had won the support of Freddy Melhado, Brooke's dancing partner of forty years. Tony had invested millions of dollars of Brooke's money with Melhado, and he had done well for her via hedge funds (the most impressive was a $3 million investment that climbed to $20 million). Melhado filed an affidavit stating that Brooke was "impeccably dressed," that her apartment was "clean and well-maintained," that Tony was astute in managing her money, and that "Brooke loved Tony very much and it was obvious to me that Tony felt exactly the same way."

  Melhado knew that he was backing the unpopular side and says that his friends "were furious at me." Sitting in his Park Avenue apartment, with sadness in his voice, he asks, "What else can I do? I wasn't going to lie about Tony and lie about what I saw. I never saw in the apartment any neglect or abuse, or think, 'Oh, God, she's got to get out of here.'" Melhado called Annette at her country home to smooth things over and was relieved when she came in from the garden to take his call. "I've known you all my adult life, and I love your children," Melhado says he told Annette, "and I just want you to know that this has nothing to do with the way I feel about you." He adds, "She said she understood. But I'm sure she's not happy with me."

  Indeed, he soon received an ominous legal letter from Annette's lawyer, Paul Saunders, demanding the return of the dog painting that had vanished from Brooke's stairwell at Holly Hill. Melhado explains that he had lent Brooke the painting twenty-five years ago; Tony agreed to return the art, but Melhado claimed the staff sent him the wrong painting. "I would never take advantage of Brooke," Melhado insists. "That's what burned me up so much, when they implied that I did." Word of the purportedly purloined painting made it across the Atlantic Ocean to Viscount Astor. "If anyone deserved a painting, it would be Freddy—he was incredibly kind to Brooke," Astor says. "But Freddy behaved in a stupid manner. The painting he said he lent Brooke was six inches by six inches, and the picture he collected was six feet by four feet. Freddy is a nice man who got on the wrong side. He got sucked into Tony Marshall's web, Charlene's web."

  The painting that provoked intense interest, however, was Flags, Fifth Avenue, long gone but hardly forgotten. Tony abruptly admitted to his lawyers that he had made a major error on his mother's 2002 tax return in reporting the sale of the painting. Tony had claimed to the IRS that Brooke originally paid $7.42 million for the artwork, although the actual purchase price was $172,000. Tony Marshall's inaccurate number dramatically reduced the capital gains tax due after the painting was sold for $10 million. Tony never explained or provided documentation for the figure of $7.42 million.

  This admission of potential tax fraud was a major blow to Tony's credibility and virtually guaranteed that Justice Stackhouse would never allow him to resume control of his mother's finances. Tony blamed the error on Brooke Astor's accountant, Samuel M. Cohen. Of course the accountant, who had kept copies of the paperwork that Tony had provided, did not let this accusation go uncontested. Alan Pollack, Cohen's attorney, says, "My client was outraged that Tony was looking to make him the scapegoat. The WASP is trying to hang the Jewish accountant out to dry?"

  Despite the anticipated high drama of a courtroom confrontation over Brooke Astor's care, the action was taking place either offstage or on the written page, with histrionic claims and counterclaims punctuating the deluge of documents filed with the court clerk at 60 Centre Street. Out at Holly Hill, an unlikely trio had forged a close bond that transcended class boundaries: Annette de la Renta, the intimidating and super-wealthy philanthropist; Chris Ely, the ever-proper butler; and the free-wheeling college professor Philip Marshall were now in this together, joking and talking and confiding in one another with abandon. Annette later said, "I consider Chris and Philip to be among my closest friends."

  Susan Robbins had also won their trust and they hers. She hitched a lift with Annette one afternoon to Holly Hill. "I liked her immediately," says Annette; a year later she recommended Robbins to a friend for another guardianship case involving a wealthy family. Robbins, in turn, had been skeptical about Philip Marshall and his motivations for filing the lawsuit, so she was surprised by her own reaction when they met at Holly Hill in September. "I loved him," she says. "Maybe it's the Buddhist part, that inner peace and genuineness. At first I thought, This guy is too good to be true. I thought I was being taken. That was what I was really afraid of. But I never saw any evidence of it." Philip watched Robbins gently speaking to Brooke and trying to make eye contact. "She was so great with my grandmother," he says. Philip drove the lawyer to the station afterward; she lit a Marlboro and he bummed one; she mentioned that she had a twin brother too; and so it went. From then on, Philip took to calling her more often than his own lawyer to chat about the case.

  As a son protective of his mother's image, Tony Marshall had stalwartly kept her secret for nearly six years, confiding in just a handful of people he trusted. Now, out of the blue, that secret surfaced, at exactly the worst moment for Mrs. Astor's son, and became a weapon to be used against him.

  Although Tony had told his sons and Chris Ely that Brooke had Alzheimer's disease, the name of her doctor and the actual date of the diagnosis had been shrouded in mystery. Even when nurses were hired to care for Mrs. Astor around the clock and were briefed on her physical ailments, in mid-2003, they were apparently never directly informed that she suffered from dementia. Tony had given Chris Ely a handwritten list of symptoms that seemed to have been copied from an Internet site. For all anyone knew, Tony could have come up with the Alzheimer's diagnosis himself by watching his mother's behavior and putting two and two together.

  But while paging through Brooke Astor's medical records, Ira Salzman noticed the name of Dr. Howard Fillit, a geriatric specialist, in the file of another one of her doctors. Paul Saunders contacted Dr. Fillit, asking for any records relating to Mrs. Astor. An astonishing document materialized, a letter more damaging to Tony Marshall than any allegation in the original guardianship petition. As Paul Saunders circulated this letter to the other lawyers, he announced that he had found the smoking gun. After a quick read, Susan Robbins promptly e-mailed him back to say that this "was a smoking cannon." Ira Salzman recalls being equally amazed, saying, "It was an oh-my-God moment."

  It was a deep, self-inflicted wound for Tony Marshall. What he had done, after taking his mother to be examined by Dr. Fillit, was to write the physician a remarkably revealing seven-page follow-up letter, dated December 26, 2000, describing his mother's mental decline. Tony's tormented outpouring covered everything from Brooke Astor's inability to understand and remember simple things, such as basic arithmetic, to her hostile mood swings and delusional behavior. The letter read as if it had been cathartic to write, a way for Tony to put down on paper how wrenching it was to watch his mother deteriorate and to deal with her constant hurtful remarks to him, her loving son.

  For the lawyers, however, it was the date on the letter that had overwhelming significance, because that proved that Tony, fully aware that his mother had Alzheimer's, had nonetheless allowed and encouraged her to make monumental changes in her estate plan and revise her bequests, from selling the Childe Hassam to signing a new will in 2002 and the three codicils in 2003–2004.

  Tony wrote the letter on the day after Christmas, just hours after he and Charlene returned to Manhattan after spending the holiday with Br
ooke at Holly Hill. "I don't know what's the matter with me. I feel awful. I feel like I'm losing my mind," Brooke told her son that day as he was leaving. Tony described how his mother had resisted seeing Dr. Fillit, even trying to discourage Tony from accompanying her to the doctor's office. "When I arrived, Mother, who was half-an-hour late to leave for her appointment with you, said to me: 'You only want to come to see how soon I will die. Why are you coming?'"

  Brooke, then ninety-eight, was constantly misplacing things, Tony wrote, adding that "writing/spelling are increasing problems" and that numbers had become "incomprehensible." "Mother asked me, 'What is my income?'" Tony informed the doctor. "I told her, giving the annual figure. 'Is that for the month or the year?'" Given that Tony's entire income came from his mother, that remark made it sound as if she had no idea what she was paying him.

  Yet she was determined to carry on, and Tony sounded baffled about how to protect his mother, given her iron-willed insistence of keeping up a schedule that would wear down a person half her age. "Mother has an overpowering drive to 'keep going' and her resource of adrenaline keeps her on the move," he wrote, but he conveyed that her outings were tinged with the constant potential for disaster. She did not recognize people, her hearing was poor, and there had been embarrassing incidents when his mother had become incontinent.

  So much acuity had been lost. "She is delusional at times having asked me, 'Are you my only child?'" Tony wrote. He closed by telling the doctor that "now that you have provided me with a diagnosis of my mother's illness," he had passed along the news to her lawyer, Terry Christensen, her social secretary (then Jolee Hirsch), and Chris Ely. "While I'm deeply saddened by the news you've given me it is, at the same time, a relief for me (and an enormous help to the three in whom I have confided) to know what the problem is and not that she is just an elderly person being difficult."