Robert Gould Shaw II

Family and early life

RGS II was the youngest child of Quincy Adams Shaw and Pauline Agassiz. 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 (1776—1853) and Elizabeth Willard Parkman (1785—1853). His maternal grandfather was Louis Agassiz (1807—1873), a prominent paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist, and scholar of the Earth's natural history who immigrated from Switzerland in 1846.

A granduncle was George Parkman (1790—1849), a murder victim in a highly publicized case that shook the city of Boston to its core in 1849—1850, due to the gruesome nature of the crime and the high social station of both the victim and the murderer. His first cousin (once removed) was Francis Parkman, Jr. (1823—1893), a noted American historian and author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life. A paternal uncle was Francis George Shaw (October 23, 1809—November 7, 1882), an outspoken advocate of the abolition of slavery. A maternal uncle was Alexander Emanuel Agassiz (1835—1910), who served as president of Calumet and Hecla Mining Company from 1871–1910, as well as president of the National Academy of Sciences (1901—1907). His cousin Rodolphe Louis Agassiz (1871—1933) was a ten goal polo champion who later became chairman of the board of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. His cousin Josephine Shaw (1843—1905) was married to Brigadier General Charles Russell Lowell III, who was killed at the Battle of Cedar Creek. His nephew Louis Agassiz Shaw, Jr. (1886—1940) was a professor of physiology at Harvard Medical School and co-inventor of the first widely used iron lung.

First marriage

On October 27, 1897, RGS II married Nancy Witcher Langhorne (1879—1964) 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, Robert Gould Shaw III (August 18, 1898 — July 10, 1970).

The marriage was unhappy for both RGS II and Nancy. RGS II's friends accused Nancy of being puritanical and rigid, while Nancy's friends contended that RGS II was an alcoholic and a womanizer. Nancy left RGS II numerous times during their brief marriage, the first time during their honeymoon. In 1903, Nancy's mother died and she divorced RGS II, returning to Mirador, her childhood home.

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.

After his ex-wife and son moved to England, RGS II had a limited role in his son Bobby's life. Bobby was educated at the Shrewsbury School in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. Bobby Shaw briefly served in the Life Guards (the senior regiment of the British Army and part of the Household Cavalry), but he had increasing difficulty in his personal and professional life as a result of his homosexuality, alcoholism, and depression. In 1931, he was imprisoned for six months for homosexual offences.

Along with his worsening alcoholism, the 1963 Profumo Affair, his mother's death in 1964, and the sudden death of his half-brother Viscount William Waldorf Astor II in March 1966 may have increased his depression. After years of struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, Bobby Shaw committed suicide on July 10, 1970. He is buried in the chapel at Cliveden. John Singer Sargent painted an oil portrait of Nancy Viscountess Astor in 1909, and also did a 1923 charcoal portrait of RGS III in his military uniform. Nancy gave the portrait to Alfred Edward Goodey, art collector and RGS III's partner. It was sold in England in 2011 for £23,000.

Second marriage

RGS II later married Mary Hannington (1874—1937) and they had one son, Louis Agassiz Shaw II (c. 1906—c. 1987). RGS II purchased a tract of land in Oak Hill, Newton, shortly after the death of its owner, William Sumner Appleton (1840—1903), father of William Sumner Appleton, Jr.). 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 (the Appleton/Shaw House) in 1912. The family lived briefly in a brownstone building located at 35 Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay in 1915, presumably awaiting the completion of their new home in Newton.

Death and legacy

As the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era and eventually the Great Depression, the Shaw fortune collapsed. RGS II died in 1930. 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 (since renamed the Helen Heyn Riverway) in the 1990s.

In popular culture

Artist R.G. Harper Pennington (1854—1920) in one of his paintings depicted a nude RGS II as the character "Little Billee" from the bohemian novel Trilby (1894) 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.