Nancy Astor

American-born British politician

• Born: May 19, 1879
• Birthplace: Danville, Virginia
• Died: May 2, 1964
• Place of death: Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, England

Born a Virginian, Astor was the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons. Always a controversial figure because of her direct views on almost every subject, from temperance to race relations, she was a zealous campaigner, especially for the rights of women and children.

Early Life

Nancy Astor (AS-tohr) was born Nancy Witcher Langhorne in Danville, Virginia. Her mother, Nannie Witcher Keene, was of Irish descent; her father, Chiswell “Chillie” Dabney Langhorne, had been a soldier in the Confederate army. Ten of their eleven children were born in Danville, a moderate-sized southern city notable for its tobacco markets and cotton mills. Nancy was the third of five surviving daughters.

Although various members of the Langhorne family had distinguished themselves in Virginia politics since the eighteenth century, the Civil War and Reconstruction had devastated the southern aristocracy. Chillie (pronounced “Shillie”) Langhorne was forced to take a number of menial jobs and eventually decided, when Nancy was six years old, to move to Richmond, the state capital, to better his situation.

It was several years before his luck turned, but Chillie was eventually able to make a fortune contracting laborers for the railroad. In 1892, he bought a country house, Mirador, and settled down to lead the life of a Virginia gentleman. Hunting, riding, and gracious hospitality were considered more important than a formal education, especially for a young girl. Nancy attended several schools and loved to read, and though she was no scholar, she was no mere social butterfly. She had strong religious feelings and briefly considered becoming a missionary. A searching for spiritual values and concern for the poor were to be important aspects of her personality throughout her life.

All the Langhorne women were attractive. Irene, Nancy’s elder sister, received more than sixty proposals of marriage before she accepted that of Charles Dana Gibson and became the model for the Gibson Girl. Nancy was not as conventionally beautiful as her sister, but she was a striking woman, small and athletic, with sparkling blue eyes.

In 1897, Nancy married Robert Gould Shaw II of Boston. The marriage was not a success. Shaw was a heavy drinker, and Nancy, only eighteen and homesick for Mirador, refused to play the role of a submissive wife. Soon they were separated, and they were divorced in 1903 so that Shaw could marry another woman. From this unpleasant experience, Nancy bore her first son and also conceived a lifelong aversion to drunkenness.

After the divorce, Nancy, her mother, and a friend visited Europe to lift her spirits. A few months later, Nannie Langhorne died unexpectedly, and Nancy stayed at Mirador to keep house for her father. Chillie soon saw that this arrangement was not satisfactory; his daughter was miserable, and he and Nancy were temperamentally too alike. In 1904, he sent her and her sister Phyllis to England, where they visited friends and moved freely in society. The following year, accompanied by her father, Nancy met Waldorf Astor, son of William Waldorf Astor, one of the world’s wealthiest men. The attraction was mutual, and they were married in May, 1906. The senior Mr. Astor gave the young couple his magnificent country house Cliveden as a wedding present.

Like many wealthy and well-educated men of his day, Waldorf decided to enter politics. In 1910, he was elected Conservative member for Plymouth, beginning an association with that city that would be a part of his and Nancy’s political lives for thirty-five years.

In 1914, Nancy reached a spiritual crisis. She had had an extended period of illnesses and found no comfort in either conventional medicine or conventional religion. Her sister Phyllis introduced her to Christian Science. Nancy embraced its tenets with enthusiasm and attempted to convert her family and friends. Her missionary efforts were not entirely successful, but they, along with a military hospital set up at Cliveden during World War I, provided an outlet for her boundless energies.

Life’s Work

In the general election of 1918, women in Great Britain were allowed for the first time to vote and to be elected to Parliament. A number of women stood for election, but all were defeated except a Sinn Féin candidate who refused to take the oath of allegiance.

Death, not the rising feminist movement, decided who would be the first woman in Parliament. In 1916, William Waldorf Astor had been given a peerage, which meant that the younger Waldorf could stay in the House of Commons only as long as his father lived. In October, 1919, First Viscount Astor died. Shortly thereafter, the Plymouth Conservatives approached Nancy Astor, who agreed to stand. She won her first election against two men, with a majority of more than five thousand votes.

Astor’s resounding success was not based solely on her husband’s reputation and support, although both were important. She was a natural politician, full of confidence. She knew the people of Plymouth, especially the poor among whom she had worked as the wife of a member of Parliament, and they supported her. She had a lively wit and loved to confront hecklers. She was never shy.

On December 1, 1919, Astor was officially introduced to the House of Commons by David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour. Most of Astor’s new colleagues were polite, although some, like Winston Churchill, disapproved of women politicians on principle and Astor in particular. Her bold, direct manners did not change; she was always ready to interrupt or even make personal remarks about another member. Members who took themselves too seriously found this disconcerting.

For two years, Astor was the only woman member, and so it was natural that she pursued women’s issues, though not to the exclusion of others. Her first speech was on controlling the sales of drink. In 1923, she was able to put through an act that limited the sale of drink to minors. Particularly prior to the 1930’s, she concerned herself with such social issues as widows’ pensions, equal guardianship of children, nursery schools, the raising of the school age, naval and dockyard conditions an interest particularly important to Plymouth and slum clearances. Nor was her influence limited to Parliament and the various women’s groups of which she was a member. As mistress of Cliveden, where she held court not unlike a modern Elizabeth I, Astor was the center of an ever-changing galaxy of European, English, and American politicians, literary figures such as Henry James, T. E. Lawrence, and George Bernard Shaw, family and friends, Christian Scientists, and anyone to whom she happened to take a fancy, particularly Virginians abroad.

Astor had very definite ideas on almost every subject, both foreign and domestic. She believed in an Anglo-American alliance for the improvement of the rest of the world. She inclined to pacifism, believing that one had to accept the existence of dictators, however personally unpleasant they might be. In 1931, she, Waldorf, Shaw, and others visited the Soviet Union, which at the time was a very unusual thing for a Western politician to do. Shaw was sympathetic to the communist system, but Astor terrified the interpreters by boldly asking Joseph Stalin why he had killed so many of his own people. (Stalin’s answer, after he ordered a translation of her question, was that many deaths were necessary to establish the communist state.)

Although neither of the Astors came home converted to communism, this trip created bad publicity in Great Britain, particularly for Nancy Astor. Her greatest political mistake, however, was in not recognizing the cruel insanity of Adolf Hitler, whom she never met, before World War II began. Like Neville Chamberlain, she learned too late the impossibility of dealing with a tyrannical madman. Her support of appeasement led to numerous accusations that the Astors and their friends, the so-called Cliveden set, were forming a pro-Nazi secret government. Once the conflict began, she would throw herself into war work with her usual energy, but Astor’s political star was fading, even as that of her rival, Churchill, was beginning rapidly to rise.

Plymouth was hit by the Blitz in March, 1941, and again in 1943 and 1944, suffering some of the worst air raids of any British city during the war. Waldorf was lord mayor of Plymouth from 1939 to 1944, and much of the time he and Nancy stayed in the city, doing what they could.

Both Nancy and Waldorf were sixty-five in 1944, and the strains of war had affected them deeply, though in different ways. With the war’s ending, the British people wanted new leaders and new ideas. The “Cliveden set” myth had never been entirely forgotten. Waldorf was ill with asthma and a heart condition. Nancy’s tactlessness had increased, making her enemies both within and without her party. She was becoming a political liability.

Nancy seemed unaware of any difficulties, but Waldorf feared she would lose the next election. He and their children persuaded her not to stand again, but she accepted retirement with obvious reluctance. After twenty-six years, her remarkable political career had come to an abrupt end, and not by her own choice. She blamed Waldorf, and for several years they drifted apart, but they grew closer again as his health declined. He died in September, 1952. Nancy lived another twelve years but without ever finding another vocation. She traveled widely. She attempted an autobiography but abandoned it. Gradually her health failed, and she died peacefully on May 2, 1964, at the age of eighty-four.

Significance

Astor was a pioneer in British politics and a great host; she was also a phenomenon, an atypical woman who inspired affection or hatred but almost never indifference. Yet she had many of the virtues and faults of her social class: She was honest, determined, and a loyal friend, but also tyrannical, rude, and unrealistic. She was a mass of contradictions. A wealthy woman, she was a spokesperson for the poor; a society figure, she crusaded for temperance; a combative individual, she tried to work for world peace. History has not passed its final judgment on Nancy Astor perhaps it never will.

Bibliography

Astor, Michael. Tribal Feeling. London: John Murray, 1963. Nancy Astor attempted an autobiography in the 1940’s but for various reasons abandoned it. Her son Michael remedied this loss in his book of personal recollections, on which later biographers have heavily relied.

Collis, Maurice. Nancy Astor: An Informal Biography. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1960. Conceived and written in the late 1950’s, this biography has the distinction of being the first written about Astor and also the only one published while she was still alive. There are both advantages and disadvantages in dealing with a living subject. Compared to later works, which have the benefit of time and more material available, it is more flattering and less detailed.

Grigg, John. Nancy Astor: A Lady Unshamed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981. A short, concise, and generally favorable account of Astor’s colorful career. Numerous pictures and good documentation of sources.

Harrison, Rosina. Rose: My Life in Service. New York: Viking Press, 1975. Harrison was a lady’s maid to Astor for thirty-five years, and so her view is unique, though limited. Her account of this mistress-servant relationship adds depth and enlightenment to the often contradictory personality of Astor.

Langhorne, Elizabeth. Nancy Astor and Her Friends. New York: Praeger, 1974. The author, who is related to Astor by marriage, concentrates in this work on the Astors’ circle of friends, with an emphasis on British politics. Especially useful in describing events leading up to World War II.

Musolf, Karen J. From Plymouth to Parliament: A Rhetorical History of Nancy Astor’s 1919 Campaign. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. A thorough account of Astor’s first parliamentary campaign, describing the obstacles she had to overcome, including creating an acceptable persona, attracting women voters, confronting her opponents, and handling hecklers and the press.

Rose, Norman. The Cliveden Set: Portrait of an Exclusive Fraternity. London: Jonathan Cape, 2000. An account of the activities of Astor, her husband, and their friends, who exerted considerable influence on British foreign policy. Includes information about the group’s alleged pro-Nazism.

Sykes, Christopher. Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Generally acknowledged to be the standard biography of Astor, this comprehensive study deals with an abundance of accounts, letters, and events in a clear and objective style. Covers the subject admirably and with restraint.

Winn, Alice. Always a Virginian. Lynchburg, Va.: J. P. Bell, 1975. A series of family reminiscences. Winn’s accounts are detailed but episodic, and readers, who unlike the author is not a Langhorne, have to search for dates. Like many family memoirs, however, it is lively and has many vivid descriptions of even small events.