Footprints: An Autobiography

This was written in 1980 and its author, who remains alive as I write this, was almost 80 years old then. She looks back with perspective on a wide ranging and interesting life. I was surprised at some of the things, not only that they happened, but that she includes them. She gives perspective on her early life and describes the impact of her desire to please, a trait which she said affected her for 40 years. She downplays her financial life and social status with Buddie, but how many children who do not graduate (quit second from the bottom of their junior class) from high school get into Brown, as did her son? When she took a job, without a college degree, she goes right to the top. How many wives will throw their wedding rings out a window knowing they replace them later as she did? It's too easy for some to write off her third marriage, the one that created the image we have of her today, as a gold digging enterprise. I believe it is exactly as she portrays it. She was lonely, needing companionship, following the death of the love of her life. Vincent was a classic co-dependent who would attend to her every need to keep her. It was a match where needs were met. The prose is like a period piece. She refers to friends as "The Cole Porters", aquaintances as "Mrs. Peggy Belmont" and her inlaws "Mrs. Kuser" and "Colonel Kuser". The Kusers take lunch and dinner each day as a family and fine Dryden and Brooke if they're late. Friends and associates play croquet and canasta. Her attitudes toward the status of women were classically defensive for the accomplished woman of her time, and seem very dated today. Interesting for me, having just finished The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship were her observations on Taliesin. She had met A. R. Orage, but fortunately had never fallen under the spell of Gurjieff... as a single woman, she would have been an excellent prospect for his cult. The last chapter, is basically a catalog of the work of the Astor Foundation. I doesn't doesn't fit with the rest of the book in content or writing style.

There is no one in contemporary New York society who would dispute that Brooke Astor is its grande dame. Since being widowed by the fabulously wealthy Vincent Astor, Mrs. Astor has devoted her life to good works, and to giving away his huge fortune to worthy beneficiaries.FOOTPRINTS, however, is about her earlier years. Mrs. Astor celebrated her 100th birthday quite conspicuously a number of years ago, so she was born right at the cusp of the 20th Century. She was raised in an upper class family which took their status, and the life style such status afforded, without a second thought. Thus, Mrs. Astor was raised with servants and estates and a gracious manner of living which shaped the lady she became.FOOTPRINTS offers a good look into life as it was lived by the American upper classes a century ago, as well as revealing clues as to why Mrs. Astor matured to be such a great lady. And she also turns out to be a good writer as well.