Starting their new year with a luncheon, Delphi Study Club members were introduced to The Second Mrs. Astor during a review by Marjilea Smithheisler of New York Times bestselling author Shanna Abé’s story of John Jacob Astor IV’s teenaged second wife.Abé chose Madeleine Talmadge Force as the protagonist when her agent suggested a book about the Titanic disaster. She constructed Madeleine’s personal story from 1910-1912 as gleaned from contemporary newspaper accounts.Daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate, 17-year-old Madeleine caught the eye of John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV, richest man in the country, in 1910. Jack, aged 46, was divorced from his first wife, Ava Willing, and the father of a son a year older than Madeleine and an 8-year-old daughter.Because of Jack’s wealth and social position (his mother was Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, leader of the elite Four Hundred in New York society), photographers and journalists followed Madeleine constantly, much as the paparazzi hounded Princess Diana nearly a century later, stressing Madeleine’s youth and later labeling her a social climbing gold digger.The couple married quietly a year later in a private ceremony conducted by a Congregational minister after a search for an Episcopalian clergyman who would marry a divorced man provided futile. The couple was snubbed by the Four Hundred and decided to make an extended winter tour of Egypt as part of their honeymoon. Returning in spring of 1912, Jack booked passage on the largest, fastest, most luxurious ocean liner, set to embark on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.Four days into her voyage, the unsinkable Titanic collided with an iceberg and disappeared beneath the ocean in less than three hours. Jack put Madeleine into Lifeboat No. 4, and she was among the fewer than 700 passengers who survived the shipwreck. Jack was among the more than 1500 who did not, leaving Madeleine a widow two months before her 19th birthday.Jack’s body was among the 333 recovered, and it was identified by his watch, ring and the monogrammed initials in his jacket. Four months later, Madeleine gave birth to John Jacob Astor VI. The press continued to hound her, now praising her as a tragic heroine.Jack’s will gave her $100,000. She also received the income from a $5 million trust and tenancy of their home on Fifth Avenue, which she lost when she remarried in 1916.Social Committee members Ann Cales and Doris Osborn served the luncheon ...
