In my novel Sheltering Angel, based on a true story of the Titanic disaster, my characters Florence and Bradley Cumings spend time with John Jacob Astor and his young wife Madeleine. In many accounts of the maritime tragedy, Madeleine’s story ends in that spring of 1912—but her tale grows even more tragic as time passes.

Mr. Astor and Titanic

John Jacob Astor was recently divorced from socialite Ava Willing when he spotted Madeleine Force playing tennis one afternoon. Ava had been six years older than Astor, and at age 47 he was beginning to yearn for youth. It was youth he saw in Madeleine—youth he wanted to possess.

How fortunate it seemed for a slender, blonde eighteen-year-old debutante to receive a marriage proposal from one of the richest men in the world, even if he was nearly three decades older. Did she fall in love with him? Or had her father William Force pushed her into the marriage because he thought a wealthy son-in-law would raise his own status? Force owned a successful shipping business and was a member of Brooklyn high society, so what could Astor offer him that he didn’t already have? On the other hand, if Madeleine’s father was occupied with social standing and finances, he may have neglected his two daughters. In that case, one can believe Astor was a father figure for the teenage bride.

After a private wedding and a lengthy honeymoon in Europe, the newlyweds boarded Titanic to return to the States. Madeleine’s belly protruding with Astor’s unborn child suggested the months away must have been drenched in passion.

When the ship hit the infamous iceberg, women were helped into lifeboats while first and second-class men watched from the tilting decks as they awaited their fates. Madeleine boarded lifeboat number four and was saved by the rescue ship Carpathia. Her husband’s body was later discovered floating in a life jacket, his pockets stuffed with gold notes.

Second marriage

Four months after the Titanic disaster, Madeleine gave birth to John Jacob Astor VI. Her husband’s will awarded three million dollars to the child and to Madeleine one hundred thousand dollars and income from a five million dollar trust, so long as she did not remarry. Even as a widow, she appeared to have it all—a position in New York society and all the jewels, opera boxes, motor cars, yachts, and town and country houses she needed as reminders of her wealth. But at nineteen and with a new baby, the burden of so much responsibility overwhelmed her. And she was lonely.

In the spring of 1916 Madeleine relinquished her inheritance as well as her rights to the Astor mansion when she wed her childhood friend, banker William Karl Dick. The Bar Harbor wedding was “a simple and quiet affair, without display or ostentation,” according to the New York Times. Even so, when word got out of her second marriage, crowds gathered outside the church to get a glimpse of the couple. She left her son, now four years old, in the care of her parents for a month while they honeymooned in California.

 William Dick had enough to support the little family, including a three-million-dollar inheritance from his grandfather, a sugar refiner, and they kept houses on East 53^rd Street in Manhattan as well as a mansion in Islip on Long Island. Madeleine bore him a son in 1917 and another two years later, but now with three sons and still young in her twenties, she grew restless. Was motherhood and a life of ease all there was for her?

Third marriage

Years later, when Madeleine’s teenage sons requested boxing lessons, she hired light heavyweight prizefighter Enzo Fiermonte to come to the Islip house to teach them. After a few sessions, the Italian boxer’s curly black hair, olive skin, and fierce dark eyes captured her heart. She was forty and Enzo was twenty-six, four years older than her son with Astor.

In the summer of 1933 in Reno, Nevada, Madeleine secured a divorce from Dick and urged her Catholic lover to file for annulment from his first wife. When Enzo resisted, she insisted. They married the following fall.

She pleased him by buying a 600-acre estate in Charleston, South Carolina, but it may have been his humiliation at betraying his faith that threw him into a rage. He took money from her and pummeled her with his powerful fists. When reporters caught wind of the abuse, scornful stories appeared in newspapers. The Social Register expunged her name, Palm Beach society ignore her, and both her stepson Vincent and her son John Jacob kept their distance. From the pinnacle of respect, Madeleine had fallen into contempt and mockery. In 1938 she filed for divorce from Fiermonte claiming extreme cruelty and moved to West Palm Beach, Florida.

The finale

            Despondent and miserable, Madeleine Force Astor Dick Fiermonte died in Florida at age 46, a year after her third marriage ended. Could it be her heart was lost at sea with her first husband, her only true love? Or was she one of the unfortunates whose very soul was empty?

Without fanfare, Madeleine was buried in a mausoleum next to her mother at New York City’s Trinity Church cemetery.