barbara hutton's chart | brooke astor's chart | philip cryan marshall's chart
... never much of a mother ...
Mrs. Astor died August 13, 2007 of pneumonia. See the coverage in Patrick's New York Social Diary.
I read about the "poor little rich girl" when I was barely old enough to read but I never forgot the story. I had to look her name up on the internet just now ... Barbara Hutton. She was my mother's generation.
How can someone be rich and poor at the same time? Reading her story was when I learned to appreciate -- even if your family is poor, if you have a mama and papa that love you, you're better off than this poor little girl. Let me tell you about her. Then we'll look at Brooke Astor's chart and hers to see what they have in common.
Barbara Hutton was born with a silver spoon in her mouth if ever there was such a child. Barbara was the only child of the daughter and heir to the Woolworth department store fortune. Barbara's father was one of the co-founders of E. F. Hutton. Her aunt by marriage was Marjorie Merriweather Post, married to E. F. Hutton. These people had all the money in the world. When Barbara turned 21, she inherited $50 million, making her one of the richest women in the world.
That's the rich part. Here's the poor part. Barbara's mother committed suicide when she was 6. Her father abandoned her. She was raised in various homes with relatives and also by governesses. She attended private boarding schools.
Barbara Hutton married seven times, each marriage lasting less than a few years. Around 1949 when her brief marriage to Igor Toubetzkoy ended, she tried to kill herself. Her suicide attempt made headlines around the world where she got the nickname, "Poor Little Rich Girl".
Later she began to buy younger men, giving lavish gifts to anyone who would spend time with her. She died alone. It was said she had whittled her fortune down to $3,000.
Here is Barbara Hutton's chart.
Hutton's chart suggests that mental illness may have been a very significant player here, her mother's and her own. With Saturn in Gemini, it might have run in the family for quite awhile.
Also, people with Saturn in the 2nd house have poverty consciousness to overcome from past lives often because they are still under the spell of a Vow of Poverty. Prosperity consciousness is a state of mind. The amount of money is relative. This would certainly explain Hutton's profligate spending. The 9th house would have given her protection, the money and permission to blow it. "Easy come. Easy go. If Hutton was still operating under the vow -- and vows most certainly carry over from generation to generaration until they are consciously or ritually released -- she could have hardly waited to get rid of all that money!
In this chart and Brooke Astor's we find:
and
Sun conjunct Mars and Moon conjunct UranusI will comment on this after we look at Brooke Astor's life.
Brooke Astor is 105 at the time this is written, 2007. Pluto has recently crossed her Moon, similar to the transit Jennifer Aniston endured as her emotional life got smeared across the tabloids. By all accounts Brooke Astor doesn't know what's happening to her now though in a lucid moment of conversation with a distant cousin in an August 2006 story by Meryl Gordon for New York magazine, the following was observed:
Lord William Astor is a British cousin by marriage who has been close to Brooke for decades, and when he called from a vacation in Scotland, he said he is now haunted by his visit to her roughly a year ago. “She didn’t recognize me to start with, but halfway through, she squeezed my hand and said, ‘I’m having a miserable time, please take me away.’ [emphasis mine] She had a lucid moment.” In recent years, she had complained to Lord Astor that Anthony [her son] wanted her to cut spending, so much so that Lord Astor quietly contacted her investment advisers for reassurance that her funds were intact (they were).
Brooke Astor married young, at 17, as befits an Aries gal. She always described it as the worst time in her life. Her first husband was a drinker, womanizer and wife beater. This marriage ended in divorce but not before the birth of Anthony Marshall. It is this son, now in his 80s, who has been sued by his own son for elder abuse. Annette de la Renta, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger joined in the suit to get better care for Brooke.
By the way, it's because of this Brooke that so many little girls of the next generation had that name.
After this divorce, Brooke married a stockbroker named Charles Marshall who left his family for her and adopted Anthony. This next part is a little weird but as Fitzgerald said, "the very rich are not like you and me". When Marshall adopted Anthony, his own father sued him to get back child-support. According to Gordon, "Astor wrote about that court battle, which her son won: 'I rather agreed with the judge -- people who fight over money never seem to me to deserve to have any!'"
Marshall died in 1952. Eleven months later Brooke married Vincent Astor. This next part is a little weird. As Fitzgerald said, "the very rich are not like you and me". The match between Brooke and Vincent Astor was arranged by Vincent’s wife, who had promised to find him a replacement before she divorced him. Actually, Warren Buffett's wife did the same thing.
Vincent Astor was a lonely eccentric but this is whence her fortune. She was married but five years and was left approximately $60 million.
But wait, there's more to the story. As Gordon puts it, "... the story of the Astor [elder abuse] lawsuit is also something simpler and sadder, a tale of parental neglect, repeated generations over. Brooke Astor is a magnificent benefactor and a legendary hostess, but she was, by her own account, a lousy mother. [Anthony] Marshall has little relationship with his own son Philip [who initiated the suit]. For that matter, Vincent Astor, the one who left Brooke all the money, was neglected by his mother, Ava Astor—in one infamous story, he was left in a dressing-room closet to cry until a butler found him hours later."
Brooke was a lousy mother? Gordon elaborates:
Brooke Astor was always candid about the fact that she was not the motherly type. “Brooke was intellectually curious, socially gregarious, a huge reader, but one of the top ten roles in her life was not being a mother,” says one socialite friend.
Another friend takes it a step further, saying, “It was not a good relationship. Brooke just basically didn’t like [Anthony]. He was pretty drippy. He was what I call a ‘manqué’—not quite made it.”Brooke Astor's fortune is now estimated at between $45 and $200 million.
As to Brooke Astor's treatment of her son Anthony Marshall, the following very illustrative anecdotes appear in Gordon's article:
During my fall interview with Anthony Marshall, I mentioned his mother’s two autobiographies, and he went stone-faced and refused to comment. Small wonder, since these long-out-of-print memoirs [available, however, on amazon.com], Patchwork Child (1963) and Footprints (1980), are wrenching in their honesty about mother-son relations. Astor admits that she was always more concerned with her husbands’ wishes than her son’s well-being.
After she married for a second time, she fired the housekeeper who had been caring for Anthony (her new husband disliked the woman) and then shipped off her son at age 10. “I decided that Tony was getting spoiled and should go to boarding school, where he would not have everything his own way,” she wrote.
Even years later, Marshall remembers how miserable he was then, saying quietly, “I didn’t like it very much.” Within days of arriving at the Harvey School, the homesick boy ran his sled into a tree and nearly died, an accident his mother described with intense guilt.Perhaps the more telling tale and a succinct summation comes from Vincent Astor's nephew, Ivan Obolensky, now in his 80s. According to Gordon:
After Vincent Astor died, leaving $60 million to his foundation and a roughly equal amount to Brooke after a five-year marriage, his younger half-brother, Jack, sued unsuccessfully for a share. Vincent’s nephew Ivan Obolensky, now 82, was not part of that lawsuit, but he still bears a grudge. “Vincent Astor would be so horrified by this. Poor Brooke, who took all the money and ran—she pushed him to change his will. He was drinking; he was lonely, poor man. I loved him,” says Obolensky, the chairman of the Soldiers and Sailors Home. “Brooke was one of the great adventuresses of her time. This is sad, but I’m laughing,” he says. “You reap what you sow.”
Ivan Obolensky
Looking now at the two charts, what do they have in common and what are the differences?
Sun conjunct Mars and Moon conjunct Uranus
Barbara Hutton has Sun/Mars in Scorpio in the 8th opposite Saturn in the 2nd. The emotional scars of neglect encourage her to be self destructive. The trine to Neptune in Cancer increases the feeling of Barbara Hutton as a victim, lost in the same abyss that claimed her mother.
Brooke Astor's Sun/Mars is in Aries, encouraging her to be, as Obolensky puts it, "a great adventuress". That's what you call a gold digger of her stature at that time in New York. Surprising, too, how many Aries women leave home or get pregnant between 15 and 17 and head right into abusive marriages. Marshall's third wife, Charlene, is usually accused of being a gold digger. Before she "trapped" Marshall, she was the wife of a small town Episcopal minister. Brooke, who had/has great antipathy for her probably could see right through her -- it takes one to know one? Could this be a form of karma?
Brooke's chart also present dependency issues. Many with Aries/Capricorn make a point of being super independent early in life only to have a reversal that leaves them utterly dependent later on. An extreme always creates a pull to the opposite.
Both charts have Moon/Uranus. This indicates the worst mother possible. Though the woman is -- or precisely because she is -- brilliant, sociable and intellectual, the last thing she wants to do is wipe noses and change diapers! It reminds me of Winston Churchill's beautiful mother Jennie Randolph who was eccentric to the point of cruelty.
Barbara Hutton's Moon/Uranus is in Capricorn/Aquarius in the remote and unurturing 11th house emphasizing coldness, precision and alienation. This is what might incline Hutton to think she could buy someone. The inconjunct of the Moon to Pluto is quite dread-full in this context.
Brooke Astor's Moon/Uranus is in Sagittarius. She is often described in these very positive terms: well read cultural benefactress. Obolensky adds, "adventuress".
Barbara Hutton's Saturn is in Gemini which in this case I think points to what may actually have been schizophrenia running in the family. Brooke Astor's chart has Saturn in Capricorn which is social climbing as well as potential elder neglect.
It seems that Barbara Hutton really is a victim caught in a downward spiral of chilling indifference, cruelty and perhaps serious mental illness (Scorpio combined with Capricorn and Aquarius plus Saturn in Gemini) while Brooke Astor is a perpetator who may be getting back what she sent out. Her chart has the tone of a social climber who forgot to keep the ladder well maintained. There is never any excuse for elder abuse but I think we've seen evidence here of how and why it can run in a family. All behavior is learned behavior.
It isn't far fetched to see animus identification or contamination in Brooke Astor's chart . For a complete discussion of this, please visit Anima Meets Animus. The two yang planets, Sun and Mars, are in yang signs, as are the Moon and Uranus. This much yang energy and an afflicted Moon can lead to the devaluation of yin values, relating and receiving.
Women who identify with their animus rather than learning to mediate with it can end up dying by the sword so to speak, that they lived by. Astor's intelligence, independence, iniative, "adventureness" and solidarity with men left her high and dry at the time in life when relationships become extremely important. It is women who initiate us into and out life. It is the yin value of connectedness that encourages us to care for one another on moral if not emotional grounds.
Astor had insulated herself among men, where admittedly she stood out and thrived, while alienating her own son whose chose a wife enough like her to be at least poetically just. [Charlene has been compared to Lady MacBeth.]
There's a petite lesson here. To avoid elder abuse, treat your children well while they are dependent on you. For sure, one day you will be dependent on them and they will treat you just the way you treated them.
Read Astor history with beautiful illustrations at one of my favorite sites, the New York Social Diary.
Philip Cryan Marshall
Philip Cryan Marshall is the initiator of the lawsuit. A twin and a college professor, apparently he thought this would remain secret. Here is his chart. Perhaps it's the passive aggressive nature of Sun opposite Saturn and Neptune in Libra and the massive denial of social reality sometimes found in Saturn/Neptune/Libra that prompted this expectation. It wouldn't be far fetched to conclude this was done as much to get back at his father as it was to protect his grandmother.
Where the father was a "manque", Brooke seems to have been quite fond of Philip and his twin brother Alec.
Since Philip has Sun square Pluto, he has an explosive relationship with his father, triggered, one might imagine, by the recent passage of Saturn over his natal Pluto , bringing a "New World Order" if not to say downright delusions of power. Since Philip's Sun is inconjunct or quincunx both Saturn and Neptune in Libra, he might also have thought this would bring him closer to his father even though this is not logical.
