*Only two years before these negotiations, William Waldorf had given a big dinner in London on the night [Jack’s] sister, Mrs. James Roosevelt, lay dead in the city. Perhaps in retaliation the following year, when Mrs. William Waldorf’s body was being returned to this country for burial, Ava and the Mrs. Astor appeared at the opera together. Society was shocked at the impropriety.” Lucy Kavaler, The Astors (New York, 1966), 155.