The morning call., 1895-01-09
TRIBULATIoNs OF THE AsTORS.

Society is convulsed over rumors OF
more fluctuations among the aristocracy.
1t seems that the efforts to hush up the
troubles in the w. K. Vanderbilt house.
hold have been unavailing, and that me
divorce suit with all it's sensational details
is inevitab BILE. Meanwhile the remarkable
success which has attended the endeavors
Of Mrs. William Astor and Mrs. John
Jacob Astor to conceal their emotion over
the death of Mrs. William Waldorf Astor
is topic of general comment. On the day
tina, Mrs. William Waldorf died the New
York Astors went to the opera, and on the
day that her body arrived at New York
from England both ladies gave large dinner
parties. Mrs. John Jacob Astor, who was
known as the belle of Philadelphia when
she was Anna Willing. even declines 10 go
into mourning. Under all this society
seems to scent family scandal.
The career of William Waldorf Aston
has always furnished Quidnuncs with a
topic for gossip. The son of John Jacob
Astor. and the great grandson of the
founder of the family, he evinced at an
early age a creditable ambition to be
something more than a rich man. His
tastes were literary and political. To
crafty the former he wrote couple of
books, which the public had the bad taste
to decline to read; he ran for Congress,
and the voters of his district were so i'll
advised as to elect him to stay at home.
His friend President Arthur consoled him
for their neglect by appointing him Minis
ter to Italy, and when the magazine
editors. with a combined malevolence
which cannot be too severely reprehended,
persistently refused his contributions he
started mag aZine of his own to give them
to the world.
At this stage in his career he seems to
have vowed, like the unappreciated classic
hero, that his ungrateful country should
not have his homes. He removed his resi-
dence from New York to London and set
about becoming. to all inten,s and pur-
poses, an Englishman. To conduct his
magazine he engaged two Englishmen of
title, as one might say Lord Verisoft and
Sir Mulberry Hawk. He purchased a
daily paper and conducted it as high
Tory organ. deeply imbued with distrust
of the American future and with bitterness
for American institutions. He bought an
estate from noble Duke and qualified
himself for the title which such a dis
tinguished American convert to English
principles was ent titled to expect
In the meantime, his wife, the lovely
Mary Paul, whose goodness and whose
beauty are still toast in Eastern cities.
was slowly pining away in her baronial
castle far from those who loved her and
the friends among whom she had spent
her youth Her husband, wrapt in his
new ambitions and hopes and dreams of
future Lord Astors. or Bsrons OF Waldorf,
probably never realized that the hand of
death was lowering over the head of the
woman he had loved. When the bolt was
sped it was for him a rude awakening 1t
was then too late to do anything but place
the body in a casket and ship 1t across the
ocean for interment in the family vault
His kith ana kin showed by their behavior
that they no longer counted him as one of
them. To their notion, he was a stranger.
an Englishman.
The law recognizes the right of expatria-
ton, and William Waldorf Astor was free
10 shake from his feet the dust of New
York and to cast his lot among foreigners
if he thought he could thus promote his
happiness. lie had a perfect right TO
choose London as the place where a
magazine could be started to publish his
articles, and there is no provision of the
English law prohibiting an American from
owning London daily. But. for all this.
We are a jealous people. and we never
cherish with the old blood brotherhood an
American who has cast US off to sleep in
the tent of the stranger.