The life of Lady Astor

It’s history that reads like an intriguing novel, and the library has several titles about the first woman in Parliament.A very peculiar thing happened at the end of November way back in 1919. In the face of world problems, it isn’t a big thing, but it was a big thing then for American and British women. American-born Lady Astor took her seat in the British House of Commons as the first woman ever to sit in Parliament.

There is an interesting footnote note to this. Nancy Astor was not the first woman elected to Parliament. The first woman elected was Constance Markiewicz who was elected from a Dublin constituency in 1918, but she refused to go to London and take her seat as a protest against the British government. The efficacy of such a decision is clearly debatable, but it left Lady Astor to be the first to actually serve.

Born Nancy Witcher Langhorne in Virginia, Nancy and her five sisters and two brothers were the children of a former slave owner whose loses after the civil war left the family near poverty. In time, her father turned to auctioning tobacco and began to amass a large fortune.

In 1897, the now-socialite Nancy married wealthy Bostonian Robert Gould Shaw II. For whatever reasons, the marriage was a disaster. It must have been a disaster because in 1903 the marriage had to be dissolved by the then-unheard-of act of divorce.

A few years later she moved to England and met and married the great love of her life, Waldorf Astor, the great-great-grandson of the fur trader. Waldorf’s father had fallen in love with England and emigrated there, using his vast fortune to buy numerous estates and also to support numerous public causes which prompted King George V to give him a baronetcy.

Waldorf had been elected to the House of Commons, but when his father died, he took his seat in the House of Lords. This left a seat vacant in the lower House and it was won in a decisive victory by his wife.

Lady Astor was a staunch conservative, but true to the contradictions that informed her entire life, she championed many women’s-rights and child-welfare causes. She served in Parliament until 1945.

But she was so much more than a politician. Her life was also defined by the powerful and gifted people of England at the time. Luminaries including George Bernard Shaw and Charlie Chaplin were in her circle and were drawn to her wit and charm, exemplified by one of her most famous quotes, “I refuse to admit that I am more than 52, even if that makes my children illegitimate.”

If you’d like to read more about Lady Astor and her families on both sides of the Atlantic, the library has some excellent sources. First is Christopher Sykes’ “Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor.” It’s an older title, but still considered the definitive work. And a really fun read about Nancy and her equally notorious sisters, there is “Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia” by James Fox.

For a thorough examination of the entire family tree, there is David Sinclair’s “Dynasty: The Astors and Their Times,” which is backed by solid research on both sides of the ocean; and “The Astors, 1763-1992: Landscape with Millionaires” by Derek Wilson is a modern look at a family tree that extends from the fur trader through Nancy’s tainted political career to Bill Astor, who was implicated in the notorious Profumo Affair.

* CHECK IT OUT is written by members of the staff of the Newport Beach Public Library. All titles may be reserved from home or office computers by accessing the catalog at www.newportbeachlibrary.org. For more information on the Central Library or any of the branches, please contact the Newport Beach Public Library at (949) 717-3800, option 2.