I thought it might be interesting to write about different unusual photos of Col. Astor that I have. This one I acquired from the Library of Congress...
Admittedly it isn't all that clear, but that is him on the dock on the right. Madeleine is probably the girl in the sailor suit in the middle of the group. That was a typical outfit for a teen-age girl in that period. It probably made it all the more obvious about the age difference. But as my husband has said, "The heart wants, what the heart wants..."
I have seen other couples with extreme age differences before and after the Astors. So I don't think the public 'outcry' was really about that...or that he was so rich and she so young. I read a theory that the newspaper reporters, stung over the fact that he cut them out of the divorce scandal very neatly and completely, used his engagement to this young girl to get back at him.
In a way, the newspapers did have a powerful influence over the minds of people -- so perhaps this idea has some merit. I heard one person say later that if the reporters hadn't caused the scandal to be so much more than it was, that the Astors wouldn't have even been on the Titanic at all. That they originally had no plans to get married so quick, that the hounding of the reporters quickened up everything. If they had not married that September, then no honeymoon to go on, and no Titanic ship to come back on the following April. I certainly wish that they could have gotten the time to know each other as they could have, to have the privacy to be happy together. Of course, the irony is that if they had had that privacy, I never would have know about them at all. I only learned about the Astors through reading about the Titanic disaster.
Still, I would trade all of this obsession, and 3 years work, for them to have the next twenty years together after the Titanic went down. For them to have been a "typical" family and had a chance to have a life together. I want that for them, even knowing how it all ends.
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