Book - The Astor Orphan

The Astor Orphan: A Memoir - by Alexandra Aldrich

"For Alexandra Aldrich, growing up in a 43-room mansion surrounded by 450 acres was not actually all that nice. A descendant of Robert Livingston (he signed the Declaration of Independence) and John Jacob Astor (one of the richest men in American history), Aldrich claims an exalted ancestry. But by the time she inhabited the family home in New York’s Hudson Valley —a sprawling, run-down property called Rokeby—the estate hosted stray animals (a pig named Egbert, goats that had been rescued from a laboratory and a horse named Cricket), bohemian artists and other eccentric drifters more often than it welcomed glittering aristocracy. As a child, Alexandra and her immediate family lived in the third floor of the house—the servants’ quarters—where they scrambled to make ends meet and lived “off the remains of our ancestral grandeur,” as Aldrich writes. Her father worked only to maintain the upkeep of the house; born at the “tail end of the glory days,” he got an Ivy League education but never learned any professional skills that might earn him a living. Alexandra’s world was one of cobwebs and closed-off rooms, walls covered in full-length tapestries that had been “scratched and frayed by cats’ claws at [the] bottom edges”; she dreamed of escaping into a more ordered, average world. The book is a meditation on a way of life, and an examination of what happens when entitlement and refinement meet poverty and neglect. Reading this book is a bit like getting lost in a world somewhere between fantasy and nightmare, where the ghosts of a particular type of antique American greatness confront the realities of the modern world." review in Smithsonian

from the Boston Globe - "Alexandra’s grandparents came of age in the early 20th century and “caught the tail end of the old glory days.” Although her father, Richard Aldrich, attended boarding school and went on to Harvard, he possessed “too strong a sense of entitlement to do a single job day after day and take orders from others,” though, tragically, he “didn’t inherit the money to support that attitude.” Alexandra’s mother, Ala, had a more practical upbringing in communist Poland, but quickly adopted the laissez-faire approach to life endemic to Rokeby, content to feed her children discarded TV dinners — rejects from a local factory — rather than paying for groceries."

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JHT’s comments – 

A great pedigree or family history isn’t much use if you don’t do anything to build on the legacy you’ve been given. Seems like the family admired their ancestors but did nothing to add to the legacy.

The book is essentially a collection of childhood memories and family stories. I kept wanting to tell Alexandra's parents to grow up and take some responsibility. I would have been interested in reading about her life after she “escaped” Rokeby and got on with her life. What did she do to find purpose and meaning in her life? What became of the adults in her life, so many of who were irresponsible in their actions? Answers to some of the questions are in the Internet links below. 

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I enjoyed searching the Internet for followup to this book, looking for people and pictures. Click here, here, here, here, and here. 

This book reminded me of others I read last year about children who had to deal with “unconventional”, some would say negligent, parents. 

- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

- Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Alexandra Fuller’s books about growing up in various central and southern African countries with her British parents

- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight 
- Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness