The Second Mrs. Astor: A Heartbreaking Historical Novel of the Titanic

June 1907. A third-person narrator describes the first time Madeleine saw Colonel Astor. She is 13 and playing on the beach in Newport, Rhode Island, during the time set aside for women to swim. Madeleine wishes she could stretch out in the sand, but her mother is watching. Madeleine watches a carriage approach. Servants set up a tent and escort a white-haired woman to it. Her sister, Katherine, tells Madeleine that is the Mrs. Astor, a woman who has the power to strike people from the social register. A man approaches, her son, Colonel Astor, and Maddy observes that he is fit and tall and handsome in an older, hawkish sort of way. He is smiling as he looks her way, and Madeleine feels a “dart, sweet and wonderful and terrible, right through her heart” (10).

The next time she sees Colonel Astor, it is summer in Bar Harbor, and she is performing as Ophelia in a Junior League production. As she twirls on stage, proud of her costume and her performance, Madeleine spots him in the audience and for a moment forgets her line. After the play, the Colonel steps backstage to be introduced to Madeleine. She shakes his hand and is struck by the touch:

She didn’t see him so much as feel his presence; the warm, tanned glow of his skin, the knowing curve of his mouth, the air of a man who knew what he wanted and was not bothered by the wanting, because everything he touched was already his (13).

A photographer takes their picture, and Madeleine thinks later that he has stolen that moment when Colonel Astor took her hand.

In the first person, Madeleine tells Jakey that his father’s courtship began with a daily delivery of flowers. She suggests that courtship via flowers must be carefully chosen, and there must be teas and picnics and cotillions before one can work up to red roses and orchids.

July 1910. The third person narrator describes the Forces’ summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine, as a brick-and-cedar prison, not as fancy as the “cottages” dotting Millionaires’ Row, but a metaphor of Maddy’s life: “cramped, elegant, and strictly contained” (16). Bar Harbor is described as a whirlwind of yachts and straw hats and billowing white linen. Newport is where the very wealthy and ossified stay for summer; Bar Harbor is more lively.

Madeleine joins her family for breakfast. The dining room is full of flowers delivered for her sister, Katherine, but Madeleine also receives a bouquet with a card reading “Pansies, for thoughts. –JJA,” a reference to one of Ophelia’s lines. Katherine and Mrs. Force take note of this attention.

The family attends an al fresco dinner at another cottage, and as Madeleine walks through the garden, she encounters Colonel Astor. They discuss the opera song the orchestra is playing. Madeleine thinks that he is still handsome but has such presence; he fought in the Spanish-American war, descends from an important family, has traveled, and has had adventures. Madeleine remarks that the cottages of Newport, where he typically summers, must be resplendent palaces, and he says they are mostly gold leaf. The Colonel comments on her performance as Ophelia, and Madeleine feels understood.

Others note them together. Though they are seated apart at dinner, Madeleine listens for the colonel’s voice on the other side of the garden. Madeleine’s friends learn that Colonel Astor sent her pansies, and a visiting boy tells her that beyond being divorced and too old for her, Astor would never marry Madeleine because he’s a Knickerbocker and she’s not.

Madeleine, in first-person narration, lists the flowers Jakey’s father continued to send but reflects that all she can smell now is the lilies that heaped his casket at his funeral.

July 1910. Madeleine beats a friend and schoolmate at tennis. Colonel Astor watches their match, holding a large dog on a leash. He’s sent flowers every day that week, which Madeleine’s mother keeps next to her place at breakfast. Katherine suggests they call on him, since it’s the 20^th century and they no longer need to follow the rules the previous Mrs. Astor hammered out, but Mrs. Force declines.

Colonel Astor introduces his dog, Kitty. Madeleine introduces her mother and Katherine, who observes that dogs aren’t allowed at the club. The colonel simply says, “Alas.” Someone asks to take their photograph. Mrs. Force agrees, and Madeleine wonders later if anything would have changed if she, Madeleine, had said she’d rather not. But “the Madeleine of that particular afternoon was scarcely a month past her seventeenth birthday; she was teenaged and untested and sweaty and bedazzled. She didn’t speak the subtle code of the magnificently rich, not then” (35).

The photograph appears in the paper, and Madeleine starts to notice photographers following her. She is at the raceway with her father, watching the track, when Colonel Astor approaches her again. He introduces his son, Vincent, who is Madeleine’s age. She sees a photographer watching them and tries to pretend she is a Gibson girl, cool and elegant, as she makes conversation. She admits to the Colonel that she would rather be in the action than observing. He invites her family to his cottage for the weekend. The picture of her and Jack shows up in the paper the next day.

Madeleine observes to Jakey that her society is stratified, and not all are created equal. She describes the immense cottage and the land owned by one man in an exclusive town on an exclusive island. She notes the servants everywhere and the sight of the lobster boats of the working fisherman bobbing in the harbor next to the grand yachts.

August 1910. Madeleine reflects that things feel different in the colonel’s backyard, the world softer, more artistic. She talks with her sister Katherine, who asks if Madeleine wants to marry him. Katherine tells Madeleine to believe in her own worth. Other guests approach, and Madeleine senses Mrs. Cardeza is looking for a way to snub her.

Madeleine is struck by the décor for the dance that night, garlands of red roses. They were the Mrs. Astor’s favorite, and Madeleine says they are her favorite, too; “[s]he was not entirely without wiles” (49). She and Jack waltz together, and Madeleine is in bliss. They walk on the porch, and he asks her to call him Jack. He reflects on his struggles with Vincent and says parents can want different things for their children than what their children want for themselves. He says he locked horns with his father, but now sees that he was right about some things. Madeleine admits to Jack that she admires his many accomplishments and asks to read his book. He says he will give her a copy. Jack shows his interest in technology and inventions, telling Madeleine, “We live in a marvelous age […] witness to innovations and ideas never before imagined upon this earth” and are “[d]estined to be improved by them” (53).

Madeleine reflects to Jakey on his father’s presence, a combination of the man’s worldliness, intellect, and attention.

August 1910. Katherine observes a reporter standing outside the Force residence, waiting for sight of Madeleine. The man watches when Jack arrives, along with Vincent and Kitty, and the girls climb in the car. They pass carriages as Jack drives them to a secluded beach, and they picnic. Jack enjoys the dog’s romping and feeds her from the picnic basket, though Vincent disapproves. Jack is relaxed, and Madeleine “liked that about him right now, that informality that made him more human than myth” (60). But she knows that he is no ordinary man.

Vincent is surly to Madeleine, and when they are left alone, Jack explains that Vincent was troubled by Jack’s divorce from his wife. He also has a daughter, Alice, who is eight. She and Jack hold hands, which thrills her.

Madeleine tells Jakey that Bar Harbor is an island where she felt trapped for the summer months. Everyone knows each other, and everyone does the same thing. As a result, everyone noticed when the newspapermen began to drift in.

August 1910. Madeleine attends the symphony with her mother, and Jack appears. Mrs. Force makes a show of giving Jack her seat and sitting with a friend. Jack is amused by her ploy and says he’s used to “ambitious mamas.” Jack holds her hand during the performance, and Madeleine’s heart “bloomed like a savage flower inside her chest” (70). Outside the building there are vendors, and Jack buys Madeleine a fried doughnut. Someone photographs them together, and the flash startles her. Jack scolds the photographer and persuades Madeleine to pose for a picture so the man will leave them alone. Madeleine resents the attention, which has only begun.

The chapter opens with a newspaper clipping referring to Madeleine and Jack’s courtship and calling Madeleine’s mother La Force Majeure. Gossip has always been a fact of life in Madeleine’s circles, but she has never been subjected to this level of attention. Her father tells Madeleine not to let it bother her, saying, “If you dance in the limelight, it’s only natural that people will look at you” (76). Her father counsels Madeleine to think about her happiness and advises her that marriage takes work and will push and bend her. Madeleine says she doesn’t know if Jack will offer marriage and says she won’t worry about it. She’s not afraid. When she’s with Jack, it feels like they are the only two people in the world; she feels she’s come alive only because he discovered her.

Jack stays in Bar Harbor, so all of society stays in Bar Harbor into autumn. Katherine complains that she’s getting cold and that Madeleine needs to do something. Her friends agree that Madeleine has influence over Jack, telling her, “You, the sublime Miss Madeleine Force, hold us hapless, commonplace mortals hostage, captured in the heart of your hand” (81). Madeleine sits with Jack at these dinners now, and she suggests they go back to New York. He agrees.

Madeleine describes her debut, which marked the end of her childhood and her entry into womanhood. Jack sends her pink roses and what she describes as a cable of pearls, which Madeleine wears like a bandolier of bullets around her body. She dances at a Christmas Ball and tells Jakey she and his father shared their first kiss at that ball.

February 1911. Madeleine travels to a party at Jack’s house, driving in a motorcar up Fifth Avenue where “the mansions grew taller, more stately […] Row after row of gabled and copper-roofed palaces sprouted from the plain pavements and dirt, blotting out the sun, the moon, the sky” (87). She is nervous about being in his house and nervous about the increasing scrutiny in the tabloids; there is a throng waiting outside his house to take her picture. Madeleine feels she’s being compared to Jack’s first wife, Ava, or his mother, the Mrs. Astor, whose picture looms over the entry hall. She has heard stories of people wounded by Mrs. Astor’s slights. Madeleine is awed by the “concert hall of a house, a colossus twisting of a house, crammed with rare and beautiful things yet at the same time composed mostly of hollow air, of wraiths” (92). Jack says his mother valued virtue, fairness, and goodness, and she would have liked Madeleine.

Madeleine finds Jack alluring yet out of reach. He says she is only 17. He warns her she will forever be scrutinized and will have no peace with him. Madeleine replies that she’d forfeit peace for Colonel Jack Astor. Jack touches her shoulder and says he will talk to her father tomorrow.

Madeleine tells Jakey they kept their engagement private because Jack wanted to hold the announcement until she turned 18.

July 1911. Madeleine slips away to Beechwood, Jack’s estate in Newport, to spend time with him during the summer. Beechwood is a red-brick mansion overlooking the sea. Lina has decorated it to resemble a fairytale, a waking dream. Madeleine is taking breakfast on the porch when Vincent approaches. He tells her his grandmother would be rolling in her grave to find Madeleine in her house; she would never have acknowledged her presence. He tells Madeleine she is cheap tinsel that will tarnish, like all the other girls.

Madeleine’s mother tells her to be kind to Vincent, not just because he endured public humiliation when his parents divorced, but because “[k]inder hearts are stronger” (102). But her mother also thinks the colonel looks at Madeleine as if she is the sun. As Jack approaches from town, crossing the lawn, Madeleine goes to meet him. Her hair comes loose in the wind. They meet on the lawn and share a kiss. He gives her an engagement ring, a white oval diamond.