How’s this for a faux pas? Brooke Astor, noted philanthropist, age 97, reminding Camilla Parker Bowles, during a toast at a crowded gathering, that Parker Bowles’ own great-grandmother had also been a royal mistress.
“You’re keeping this mistress business in the family!” Astor told Parker Bowles at the 1999 luncheon. “Two generations providing mistresses!”
The cringe-inducing moment of social gracelessness was recounted yesterday, as the Astor swindle trial kicked off its fourth week of prosecution testimony with witness Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corp.
Prosecutors are trying to show that Astor was out of her mind with Alzheimer’s disease by the time she hit age 101 — when her son, Anthony Marshall, allegedly began strong-arming her into bequeathing him and his wife, Charlene, some $60 million Astor had long intended go to her favorite charities.
Gregorian’s story yesterday showed that Astor was slipping at least two years before then — or at least the one-time grande dame of New York was losing her social mojo.
The occasion was a luncheon that television personality Barbara Walters and Astor were throwing for Parker Bowles, to welcome the then-mistress of Britain’s Prince Charles to New York City.
“Who is this woman?” Astor asked when Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom Astor had assumedly invited, walked past.
“I said, ‘Catherine Zeta-Jones, a great actress,’ ” Gregorian recounted.
“Then she said, ‘Well, she’s wearing the wrong dress for this occasion,’ ” Gregorian remembered.
Astor made the remark loudly — something the one-time polished doyenne would never have done in years past, he said.
Then came the ruinous toast of Parker Bowles.
“I drink a toast to Mrs. [Alice] Keppel. Your grandmother would have been proud of you,” Astor announced to Bowles, raising her glass. Actually, it was Parker Bowles’ great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, who began the family “mistress business,” as Astor called it.
Keppel was a mistress of Britain’s King Edward VII.
“You’re keeping this mistress thing in the family,” Astor said. “Two generations providing mistresses!”
Gregorian, who met Astor while he was New York City Public Library president in the 1980s, noted that Parker Bowles herself kept her footing nicely.
“She laughed.”
In her earlier days, Astor excelled at keeping her more cutting remarks under wraps.