When the Astors Owned New York by Justin Kaplan

soon calling “the Battle of the Cards.” While the battle raged, it almost seemed that not since the Middle Ages, when rival popes at Rome and Avignon divided the Roman Catholic Church, had an issue of legitimacy stirred up such a tzimmes. Willy’s gentle-natured wife did not have the stomach for battle. She was relieved when, following his “English Plan,” he finally left Caroline in sole possession of her title and moved his family to London.
    â€œAmerica is not a fit place for a gentleman to live,” Willy announced to his former countrymen. “America is good enough for any man who has to make a livelihood, though why traveled people of independent means should remain there more than a week is not readily to be comprehended.” Having “washed his hands of America and American methods,” he was determined “no longer to be connected in any way with that country.” William’s aggressively insulting departure from New York provoked, among other send-offs from the press, a reference to the Astor family origins in “a German slaughterhouse” and the suggestion that the Astor coat of arms should be “a skunk, rampant, on a brindle ox-hide.” Papers in the States reported that “William the Traitor” had been burned in effigy in the streets and likened to Benedict Arnold. William kept a scrapbook of these stories and often brooded over the abuse he suffered in the press.
    In all likelihood it was Astor himself, out of the same perversity that prompted his farewell message to his countrymen, who was eventually responsible for inventing or approving a story blazoned across the front page of the New York Times on July 12, 1892. It was headlined: DEATH OF W. W. ASTOR. HE SUDDENLY EXPIRED YESTERDAY IN LONDON. By swallowing whole what later appeared to have been a hoax, the Times and other American newspapers had demonstrated what Willy saw as their habitual irresponsibility, slovenliness, and, above all, hypocrisy. For now, in an obituary of several thousand words, the Times extolled the former “William the Traitor” as “an ideal American,” “a millionaire who believed in the American idea of government” and had done noble public service as legislator and diplomat:
    William Waldorf Astor was of all the Astors the one that was the most in touch with the great mass of the American people. He was an ideal American, and for a man who was brought up in an aristocratic atmosphere and in constant contact with those who would be glad, perhaps, to see a plutocracy here, he was very much of a democrat. He believed thoroughly in the American idea of government and was the only one of his family that was ever active in politics, for which he had a commendable fondness. His services to his State and his party, while they were not long continued, were such as to be a credit to him.
    The Philadelphia Public Ledger was equally unstinting and imaginative. “His nature was kindly, his manner simple, unaffected, sincere. He had many friends who admired him for his learning, his talents, and the noble qualities of heart which were his most distinguished characteristics.” While accepting the story of his death as true, the New York Tribune said it was “not an event of great and lasting significance whether in the world of action or the world of thought.”
    The Times conceded that there had been “some curiously conflicting reports” as to the authenticity of the news. Like other doings and undoings of the very rich, the news of the death of William Waldorf Astor made too good a story to be allowed to succumb to checking.
    MR. ASTOR NOT DEAD, the Times announced the next day, July 13. reported as rapidly recovering. Mr. Astor apparently enjoyed his obituaries and the gorgeous fantasy, familiar to him from his reading of Tom Sawyer, of observing mourners at his funeral and listening to his own funeral sermon. He “treated