Titanic Ego
by digby
You all remember John Astor, right? (He’s the one Kathy Bates as Molly brown rudely called “Astor” in the movie.) Anyway, he was said to be the richest man in America at the time the ship went down.
Here’s yet another sample of how they are “different from you and me.”
Madeleine and John were engaged in August 1911 and married in September. There was a considerable amount of opposition to his marriage mainly because John had divorced his first wife only two years previously in 1909. Many were opposed to divorce at this time and felt that if people were divorced they should not be allowed to remarry. Some Episcopalian Ministers refused to perform the ceremony. The couple were eventually married at Beechwood which was John’s mansion in Newport, by a Minister of the Congregational Church.
After they were wed John Astor took Madeleine on his yacht and before he left he said. “Now that we are happily married I don’t care how difficult divorce and remarriage laws are made. I sympathise heartily with the most straight-laced people in most of their ideas but I believe remarriage should be possible once, as marriage is the happiest condition for the individual and the community.”
He believed in “what works.” For him.
He was 47 years old when he married Madeleine. She was 18.
h/t to JS
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