Robert Gould Shaw II


Robert Gould Shaw II was a wealthy landowner, international polo player of the Myopia Hunt Club and socialite of the leisure class in the greater Boston area of Massachusetts. He was one of the prominent figures of the boom years at the turn of the century, sometimes called the Gilded Age.
Born in 1872 into one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Boston, he was a first cousin of Robert Gould Shaw. As an adult, RGS II gained a reputation for alcohol abuse and promiscuity. His first wife was Nancy Witcher Langhorne, and they had a son, Robert Gould Shaw III. RGS II and Langhorne divorced after four years of marriage. She moved to England after some time, where she met and married Waldorf Astor, who later succeeded his father as Viscount.
RGS II married again and had another son, Louis Agassiz Shaw II. Both of his sons suffered from depression, alcoholism, and legal difficulties. Bobby was arrested in England for homosexuality; he eventually committed suicide in 1970. Louis Agassiz Shaw II murdered his 60-year-old maid in 1964; was adjudged unfit for trial and was remanded instead to a psychiatric hospital, where he resided for nearly the rest of his life.

Early life

RGS II was the youngest child of Quincy Adams Shaw and Pauline Shaw. Quincy was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts as a result of his investment in the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. RGS II's four older siblings were Louis, Pauline, Marian, and Quincy Jr.
His father's side of the family had Anglo-American roots extending back to passengers on the Mayflower. His paternal grandparents were Robert Gould Shaw and Elizabeth Willard Shaw. His maternal grandfather, Louis Agassiz, was a prominent paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist, and scholar of the Earth's natural history who immigrated from Switzerland in 1846.
Among his large and prominent family was granduncle George Parkman, first cousin Francis Parkman, Jr., uncle Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, cousin Rodolphe Louis Agassiz, cousin Josephine Shaw, and nephew Louis Agassiz Shaw, Jr..

Personal life

On October 27, 1897, RGS II married Nancy Witcher Langhorne in New York City. She was the 18-year-old daughter of railroad millionaire Chiswell Dabney Langhorne and Nancy Witcher Keene. They had one son:
The marriage was unhappy for both and Shaw's friends accused her of being puritanical and rigid, while Nancy's friends contended that he was an alcoholic and a womanizer. Nancy left Shaw numerous times during their brief marriage, the first time during their honeymoon. In 1903, Nancy's mother died and she divorced him, returning to Mirador, her childhood home. After his ex-wife and son moved to England, Shaw had a limited role in his son Bobby's life.
In 1905, while a passenger on a trans-Atlantic ship to England, the recently divorced Nancy met Waldorf Astor, eldest son of William Waldorf Astor and Mary Dahlgren Paul of the Astor family. The couple were married in May 1906, settling in Cliveden, a present from his father and the Astor family estate in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, England. In 1919, Nancy ran for Parliament and won, becoming the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons.

Second marriage

Shaw was married to Mary Hannington and they had four sons:
Shaw purchased a tract of land in Oak Hill, Newton, shortly after the death of its owner, William Sumner Appleton in 1903. He commissioned Boston architect James Lovell Little, Jr. to design and construct several buildings on the property, including outbuildings of a carriage house and horse stable in 1910, a cow barn in 1912, and a primary residence in 1912. As the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era and eventually the Great Depression, the Shaw fortune collapsed.
Shaw died at the Plaza Hotel after a brief illness in 1930.

Legacy

The vacant and decaying Shaw estate in Newton was sold in 1939 to Dr. William Fitts Carlson. Carlson used the property as the new campus for Mount Ida Junior College. Adjoining tracts of land were converted into the Wells Avenue office park in the 1970s, and the Charles River Footpath in the 1990s.

In popular culture

Artist R. G. Harper Pennington in one of his paintings depicted a nude RGS II as the character "Little Billee" from the bohemian novel Trilby by George du Maurier. This painting hung in the bedroom of Henry Symes Lehr, the homosexual husband of Elizabeth Wharton Drexel.
In a 1982 episode of Masterpiece Theatre that chronicled the life of Nancy Astor, Pierce Brosnan portrayed RGS II as a profligate and promiscuous gambler. In this version, Nancy Langhorne Astor continued to love RGS II after her marriage to Waldorf Astor, but this has not been documented. For this performance, Brosnan was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor in 1985.