Sonnytime.

NEW YORK, AUGUST 8

IHAVE many times quoted, in my years at bat, the wry judgment of the Viennese critic. "The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists." I'll probably say it yet again before I go, but how to ignore those words in the week of Mrs. Astor? Her husband died in 1959 and she settled down in her apartment in New York and disbursed $200 million to people and institutions in need.

What suddenly awoke New York was a melodrama as vividly choreographed as any story ever told. She was at the center. She was used to this, being at the center. She had been very beautiful, she dressed like a fashion model, she was escorted by czars and presidents and nabobs of the night, she was funny and just a little impious, though she would never have thrown a rotten egg in the face of the Establishment, which she at once courted and patronized. She wore her Republicanism discreetly, but it was there, just one of the covey of jewels she sported. She sent money everywhere, not least to blighted parts of the city where John Jacob Astor amassed the fortune which five generations later she was spiritedly dissipating. But in 1983 she resolved to focus her philanthropy on the world of books. She is even today, at age 104, the honorary chairman of the board of trustees of the New York Public Library, and who knows, they might figure out a way to keep her presence in sight in the board rooms when she has passed on.

It matters to her friends and admirers that she is being cared for, and the big news story has to do with the fact that the mere question arose. It isn't easy to find such a story. De Maupassant would not have ended it serenely. But when last did we hear of a grandson petitioning the courts to remove from his father title to look after his grandmother?

The grandson nominated a ...