Daily Blague

Oh, families! What trouble they can raise. But it's nothing next to the trouble that can brew in families with servants. Lots of servants.

Brooke Astor, at 104, appears to have slipped into a "vegetative state." She has not been out of her Park Avenue apartment (except to go to the hospital) for some time. (Sunny von Bulow hasn't been outdoors in a while, either, but then she's only 73.) When Mrs Astor stopped showing up in the Times's Sunday benefit-party review - the closest thing that we have to "society pages" these days - I was sure that the next thing I would read about her would be her obituary. But I was wrong. I am certain that the lady herself would be deeply upset about my being wrong.

In her heyday, Mrs Astor was the grandest of dames, giving away millions, notably to the New York Public Library, and really checking up on the organizations she benefited. She seemed to be an indefatigable party-goer. She had great taste and she even wrote a little. I don't know anything about her but what I read in the paper, and she may be a dreadful person in fact, but I rather doubt that. Nor do I mean to make her out to be a saint. But there is always a need for true grandes dames. The example that Mrs Astor set was just about impeccable.

Having her name in the papers because - horrors! - her grandson filed papers to have her son removed as her guardian, on the grounds that he's neglecting her... Well, I hope that she really is in a vegetative state, because reading about it (or hearing about it from friends) would be a lousy way to die.

For the life of me, I can't see how any judge or panel or even God Almighty could get to the bottom of Philip Marshall's suit. When old people lose their capacities, those who love them are pulled into a vacuum, as each tries to do the victim's thinking. Not surprisingly, inquiring minds differ. Servants as well as family members have their opinions form their allegiances, usually against whoever has assumed their employer's authority, and - there goes the evidence! Who can be "objective" in such circumstances? (And yet who can resist the assurance of being exactly that?) It must be awfully sad to witness Mrs Astor's decline, and unless human nature has changed since I got back from the movies we can be sure that some of her friends are in denial. She'd be better, they think, if she were being better-treated. When a lady of great taste and independence stumbles - but doesn't die - there's bound to be something of a situation. Especially, as in this case, where the guardian is 82!

Now, I guess we just wait for Dominick Dunne to show up.