Mrs. Astor Regrets by Meryl Gordon

Author:Meryl Gordon [Gordon, Meryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

As Annette de la Renta headed out the door after a visit at 778 Park, she asked Pearline Noble what she could bring for Mrs. Astor the next time. "A man," Noble playfully replied. The following week Annette took that advice and turned up with one of Brooke's male friends, much to Brooke's evident delight. She became so engrossed in her gentleman caller that she completely ignored Annette. As Noble recalls, "I said, 'How you doing, Mrs. D?'" Laughing at her irrelevance, Annette replied, "Pearline, I'm toast."

Brooke was still alert enough to point with a mixture of amusement and horror every time Annette visited wearing designer jeans, much like an elderly mother who cannot stop criticizing her middle-aged daughter's clothes. As Annette says, "She thought I should be more feminine."

Affectionate, playful moments like these were recompense to Annette for more difficult days when Brooke was incoherent. Even though she was never certain what to expect, Annette frequently popped by for an hour or so. She would kneel on the rug so that Brooke, who had difficulty holding her head up straight, could see her. "Mrs. Astor would stroke her hair and kiss her head," recalls Minnette Christie. Noble concludes, "She was like a child in Mrs. Astor's eyes."

But many of Brooke's other longtime friends drifted away because it was so painful to behold her in her sad state. "I went to see her, and she had shrunk," Vartan Gregorian says. "I said 'Brooke, I'm here,' and she opened her eyes and grabbed my hand and said, 'I love you.' I kissed her hand and said, 'I love you too.'" Philippe de Montebello also gave up. "I would go to have tea with her with Annette, and Brooke would say, 'Who is that man?'" he says, grimacing with sorrow at the memory. "She wouldn't recognize me."

At the end of 2004, Brooke Astor's universe narrowed even further. Holly Hill, with its majestic view, landscaped gardens, and winding trails, was placed off-limits. Just before Thanksgiving, Brooke became seriously ill with a fever while visiting her Westchester retreat and spent several days in nearby Phelps Memorial Hospital Center. For Tony and Charlene, that was the breaking point—they decreed that Brooke was too fragile to ever go to the country again.

In February 2005, the Marshalls, accompanied yet again by Francis Morrissey, drove out to Holly Hill to tell Chris Ely (who lived in an apartment above the garage) that they were shutting down the property and his services were no longer necessary. The butler was not surprised—Tony and Charlene had always seemed to resent Brooke's reliance on him—but he was worried, since he felt that he had become Mrs. Astor's sole protector. Brooke's closest friends were troubled by the firing too. "Chris was wonderful with Brooke," says David Rockefeller. "It was shocking to Annette and myself when Tony let Chris go."

From Holly Hill, Ely had long been his employer's conduit to the outside world. If Mrs. Astor seemed especially lonely, Ely would invite people over on her alert days.

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