Emily Post

by Laura Claridge

  Many professional models sought the Old Gold assignment, which would involve a blind taste test of various brands of cigarettes, but Emily was actually approached by the company’s executives, who knew her advocacy would matter, especially among all those potential clients still unsure if they should smoke at all. Although the number of women smokers had tripled in the past ten years, the Washington Post commentary from a decade earlier still seemed prudent to a certain set of worried females: “A man may take out a woman who smokes for a good time, but he won’t marry her, and if he does, he won’t stay married.”

  Emily, who saw no reason these days to censure women’s use of tobacco, agreed to accept the assignment only if she be allowed to tell the truth about her choice. After all, she had yet to take up smoking and didn’t intend to start now, as she would make clear in a later interview: “Personally I have never acquired a taste for tobacco. For most cigarettes seem to burn my tongue and sting my throat. The only time I ever smoke, therefore, is in courtesy to someone coming to my house, who would lay her accustomed cigarette aside unless I at least lit one too. It seemed absurd, at first, that I should be chosen to attempt this blindfold test. . . except that never having become a smoker, my taste is extremely sensitive to the burning harshness of the average cigarette.” Choking after each puff, she went through four cigarettes, gulping coffee because she kept getting dizzy.

  Fortunately for the sponsors, Emily not only chose Old Gold but lauded it for being “perceptibly smooth, stingless and pleasant to taste. In fact,” she added, “I now quite easily understand why the OLD GOLD compartment in my general cigarette box must be so constantly refilled.” Later, describing the blindfold test, she explained that the advertising executives were extremely jumpy throughout it, their nervousness adding to her own tension. After she announced her decision, Old Gold’s representatives practically bounded around the room in pleasure. But as soon as the ad appeared, Emily herself spent several restless nights, unable to sleep, worried what her friends would think.

  Or so she said, fobbing off her current relentless insomnia upon such concerns. In fact, as ill- advised as it may have been, the cigarette assignment had helped distract Emily from her sadness. Now she just needed to get out of the city and clear her head. For several months, she had been arising before daybreak, after tossing restlessly for hours, and writing notes for her gardener about preparing her soil in Edgartown, then shooting off inquiries to the expert at her Philadelphia seed store after she chose the garden’s colors. One typical order, placed unseasonably early while Emily was still in New York, requested eight varieties of gladiolus bulbs, all by their botanical names.

  By late spring, finally in Edgartown, she was sending detailed records to the Philadelphia store and commending Dreer for his advice, which had helped her attain the exact shade of red she had doggedly pursued. “I HATE crimsons and the red of scarlet sage and the yellow of golden glow. These two [sic] colors are pulled up the instant they appear. Also all purples and Jacquemenot [sic] red. But I LOVE the pale yellows—especially lemons and pale lacquer vermillion, the brilliant orange and salmon like the Prince of Wales. Richard Deiner [one of the varieties she has ordered] is wonderful, but Mrs. Pendleton with large globs of blood I detest.” The almost manic letter continued for several jarring, energetic paragraphs, surely taking aback the readers at Dreer’s. They realized they were dealing with yet another high- minded lady, but this one, at least more personable than most, was also far more eccentric: pleasant as could be, she was particularly opinionated and strong- willed about her garden plot. Never, Dreer mused, had any customer talked about yanking out perfectly formed flowers just because they proved the wrong shade of pink.

  On May 28 Emily’s journal practically shimmered with excitement: her garden, she believed, was now in full bloom. Two days later, however, she noticed where improvements were needed. Out of all the cornflower blues she had planted, very few had survived the winter. Next year, she decided, she would have to do better.

  WHILE EMILY POST weeded her garden to make peace with one son’s death, she heard from her older child, Ned, about a calamity that had recently upset him. In 1928, twenty- two years after his divorce from Emily, Edwin Post was living with his spouse and their three children—two boys and an infant daughter (soon to die)—in an inn near Babylon. He was content with his life, the balance just about right at last: a loving family that embraced his passion for the sea, a theatrical wife like the woman he’d thought he was marrying the first time around.

  One summer day, acting as the broker for a friend and client, Edwin volunteered to deliver a twenty- five- foot secondhand speedboat to the new owner’s summer home near Stamford, Connecticut. The wealthy young medical student eagerly accepted Edwin’s offer, then thought to go along as well, inviting two friends, one a noted art historian, to accompany them. Against the entreaties of his apprehensive twelve- year- old son, Henry, who thought the boat unseaworthy, Edwin, impetuous as always, insisted he could navigate around Long Island. Including Henry, three generations of Posts had sailed these waters. The foursome passed through the Great South Bay, then headed toward Fire Island Inlet, a rough spot that connected the bay to the Atlantic Ocean. They planned to continue west, toward New York City, then motor through the East River to reach Stamford, located on the north side of Long Island Sound.

  As Edwin steered, the Ethel Ray ripped through the tricky currents of Fire Island Inlet; from descriptions of similar trips, the excursion was well known as a scary ride for even the most experienced navigators. Suddenly, unaccountably, just three miles offshore, the craft capsized. A few days later, two of the bodies were retrieved, the other two eventually surfacing as well. Edwin’s body was the last to be recovered.

  He was laid to rest in Woodlawn Cemetery, among the rich and famous he had always admired most, his family name ensuring his admission to this exclusive acreage. Jay Gould, R. H. Macy, and other notables faced each side of the imposing Post ancestral vault: Edwin was part of the big money at last. According to their grandson, Emily never said a word about Edwin’s death. She may not have known that his widow, whom he had married in 1911, resumed her stage name upon his death. Nellie (Eleanor) Malcolm acted with a professional company, the Idle Hour Playhouse, located on the former Vanderbilt estate at Oakdale. Remembered by her great-grandchildren as “delightful, imperious, kind, and, of course, theatrical,” Nellie sounded a lot like Emily Post.

  THAT FALL, WHILE the nation went about electing its new president, Emily sought to take advantage of the lively speculation her whimsically themed pieces for Vanity Fair had created over the past year. Originally she had written “How to Behave—Though a Debutante” at editor Frank Crowninshield’s behest, as a series of magazine articles, illustrated handsomely by the well- respected graphic artist John Held Jr. The writing by “Anonymous” appeared monthly, and some readers had even assumed the story to be a satire aimed at the writer of Etiquette. Few had identified the real author, and Emily’s successful subterfuge pleased her enormously—so much so that by April she had not only met with Doubleday editors about expanding the collection into a book but she had suggested to (or been convinced by) them, that she leave Funk and Wagnalls for good in the process.

  Even in the 1920s considered something of a musty publisher, Funk and Wagnalls was associated largely with dictionaries and encyclopedias. Emily, a fifty- five- year- old woman in an era glorifying youth, worried that publishing with the specialized company ossified her name, handicapping her against ever- younger writers. To make matters worse, in 1927 Doubleday had merged with the George H. Doran Company, creating the largest publishing business in the English- speaking world. Emily hadn’t failed to notice, either, that sales of Lillian Eichler’s books continued to increase. Accordingly, as she worked out her contract for the Debutante book, the shrewd businesswoman, false pride never her weakness, concluded that she would do better to turn Etiquette over to Doubleday as well, regardless of the company’s fondness for
Eichler.

  To her surprise, however, the Funk and Wagnalls executives removed their gentlemen’s gloves and prepared to do battle—however genteelly. This time Emily Post lost, though at least it was edifying that the publisher wanted her so much. “Dear Madam,” the letter of April 18, 1928, read (no “Mrs. Post” now). “We have seen yours of April 3rd, 1928”—presumably about Emily’s intention to take Etiquette to Doubleday. “Notice is hereby given you that we have instructed our attorneys to take the necessary steps against you and against Doubleday, Doran & Co. and that all further proceedings by either of you will be taken at risk.”

  Emily didn’t know that this brisk communication was far more genteel than Funk and Wagnalls’s law firm, Griggs, Baldwin and Baldwin, had first urged be sent. Either more charitable by nature or worried about irreparably offending its author, Emily’s publisher had replied to the lawyers’ initial draft with polite alarm: “On reading [your suggested letter] over we thought the phraseology was a bit abrupt, and I have tried my hand at a letter which will probably have the same effect, at the same time not be such a direct blow. Will you kindly look this over and let me know what you think of it and make such changes as you may deem proper.” Though no names are legible, the company’s president apparently signed it. Emily did not defect to the competitor, and Funk and Wagnalls continued to publish Etiquette until after its author’s death.

  HOW TO BEHAVE—THOUGH A DEBUTANTE debuted in the fall of 1928. Whimsical and charming, the parody promoted the notion that youth was its own category, one that deserved respect—as did one’s parents, though the burden fell largely on the older generation to accept gracefully the passage of time. The Times reviewed it positively a few days before Thanksgiving. Questioning whether the market could support yet another book on etiquette or on the new generation, the reviewer answered, “Exactly. Both.” A “distinctly likable book” because of its author’s charitable persona, How to Behave allowed Emily to revisit the debutante as the 1920s drew to a close. Whatever nostalgia the romp inspired in the author, her creation Muriel, neither “snobbish” nor “purse proud” nor “cynical,” was a distinctly modern creature. With divorced parents, she was forced to cope with various second- marriage relationships. Through it all, whatever the trials, the girl remained compassionate and likable: “With her breezy honesty, she is very attractive; she is, really, lovable,” the New York Times reviewer concluded.

  Muriel is sad that she can talk only “emptiness to Mamma . . . because she doesn’t really want anything else. . . . She cares nothing for all the problems of human nature. . . . Originality, independence, and breadth of experience are simply bad form!” Given how the girl continues, forthrightly pouring out her feelings about topics unthinkable, let alone mentionable, in Emily’s age, it’s easy to see why few guessed the author’s identity: “We of today,” Muriel explained, “believe in freely discussing everything we can think of— especially if it is a Problem. We talk quite a lot about sex, of course, . . . and we quite often analyze its unexpected appeal—or failure to appeal. We believe that every serious problem of human nature is discussable.” This casualness in mentioning what was still unmentionable to many readers even of Vanity Fair hardly seemed the natural terrain of an etiquette adviser.

  A week before Christmas, with Emily’s identity divulged, the Washington Post lauded her acceptance of the day’s youth on its own terms. The modern debutante was “no doll baby,” after all. “She is a high- powered individual who cannot be coaxed, coerced or driven.” Most important, the reviewer concluded, no matter how “brazenly unconventional” Muriel’s decisions seemed to her elders, they succeeded ethically because they were “for the most part predicated on kindliness and consideration for the other person.”

  ETIQUETTE, HOWEVER, DID NOT commend silence when speaking up was the ethical thing to do. Provoked by a writer whose disdainful comments about women were several decades out of date, Emily finished the year with a diatribe. Her aggrieved, aggressive rejoinder appeared in the December issue of the American Magazine, its take- no- prisoner intelligence causing it to be included in the New York Times Magazine’s list of must- read articles. Whether she now realized that she was tough—she had survived many women’s worst fears—or whether her outburst was simply a signpost of the age’s newly liberal society, she reproached Clarence Budington Kelland mercilessly for his anachronistic assumptions.

  Money management within marriage was the subject. Kelland claimed that women tended toward two extremes, the “parsimonious” or the “pred -atory,” and that only after a husband signed a release for his wife to purchase on credit should he be legally responsible for any purchases she made. Wives were destined to be either tightwads or spendthrifts; with women, there could be “no happy average.”

  To Kelland’s picture of the industrious husband in “last year’s pants” while his wife wore the latest extravagant fashions, Emily contrasted the reasons why she herself had sometimes reused her own fashionable outfits long ago: “Plenty of wives. . . are wearing much farther back than last year’s clothes, and worrying themselves to death about every expenditure, even necessities for the children’s well- being, when up drives husband in his expensive new car, clothed according to fashion’s best and latest.” There existed, she quickly agreed (misusing a word she thought meant spendthrift), “penurious wives,” but more often, in her experience, women were the prudent “little partners, trying their best to keep the firm solvent despite whatever form of expenditure happens to be the policy—or weakness—of their men!”

  She cited from her own acquaintances and their friends twenty women suddenly thrown back upon their resources, widows who belatedly discovered that their husbands had rifled the family bank accounts and who thereupon squared their shoulders and made a living for themselves and their children. A wife’s overspending of the budget, she charged, was due to the husband’s failure to consider her an equal who should be included in all financial decisions. The real problem at the root of marriages was that a “certain kind of husband—the ‘100 percent he- man type’ especially” treated his spouse “as though she were a moron” instead of valuing her as an intelligent and dependable companion.

  Repeatedly, Emily returned to her thesis: women were capable of being valuable lifetime partners, but men—“about a hundred years backward— and then some”—arrogantly prevented them from contributing their expertise to the marriage or to the larger world outside, for that matter. Angrily rejecting Kelland’s accusation that financial problems were usually due to the woman, she lashed out, motivated by her own past, and insisted that “the money difficulty in family life is chiefly the fault of the husband, who, for reasons known only to himself and the Almighty, tells his wife nothing whatever, or as little as possible, about what he is doing, or trying to do, or failing to do”—even when he is on edge of bankruptcy.

  This was Emily Post at her finest, crusading out of personal conviction, not as part of a movement supporting the strong women who populated her nation. Instead, though singular, she nonetheless spoke from experiences that others shared. She strove to be fair, admitting that more than men’s ill- placed contempt motivated marital failure: the social system was set up to overvalue one sex at the expense of the other. Even this observation, however, had been born out of the muddle of her own marriage. The rebuttal to Kelland was Emily’s final rejoinder to her dead ex-husband, unwitting but therefore all the more passionate, unleashing her frustration at Edwin’s carelessness and at the conjugal lack of trust that had ruined their marriage. Edwin might have died in an accident, but it was no accident that the ethical, hardworking Emily Post, not the man whose name she shared, was still alive and thriving.

  CHAPTER 48

  SHE REVELED IN THE DIVERSITY OF HER READERS, PROUD THAT the people who wrote to her for advice by now included “every type imaginable: simple people, smart people, gay people, quiet people.” A new equality had seized the day: even the changes in fashion supported egalitarianism
. A decade earlier, clothes had divulged one’s place among the Best People, but by 1929 such distinction was no longer possible. A businessman complained to reporters, “I used to be able to tell something about the background of a girl applying for a job as stenographer by her [dress] . . . but today I often have to wait till she speaks, shows a gold tooth, or otherwise gives me a second clue.”

  If, as Emily maintained, how one spoke would always indicate one’s class, gold, in a tooth or otherwise, would prove far less reliable. On March 4, 1929, helped by the phenomenal economic boost of the 1920s, Herbert Hoover became president, elected largely because of his association with the preceding two Republican administrations and their legacy of monetary success. But in late March, just after Hoover’s inauguration, a worried Federal Reserve Board started meeting every day behind closed doors. The first of numerous minor crashes and rebounds began on Monday, March 25, but a seemingly quick recovery reassured the jittery market.

  In contrast to the excitement Josephine would have felt, Emily was relieved that she didn’t have to think about high- stakes finances. Her family inheritance, along with the money she believed she would earn from future revisions of Etiquette and apparently endless magazine assignments, re -assured her that she could support herself, no matter what happened to the economy.

  Most important was her understanding that her success lay in writing about what she knew, a reality she no longer fought, whatever dreams she had once held about becoming a great novelist. That spring, she worked on several articles for Collier’s, all of them centered on the family. The magazine’s July issue featured “How to Be Happy Though a Parent,” which Emily had aimed at mothers and fathers of up- and- coming flappers. Reminding her older readers that mores inevitably altered as times changed, she none -theless agreed that the current generation’s behavior could be exasperating. For the most part, however, she sided with the younger crowd. Far more upsetting than the silliness of a misguided youth was the “stupidity” of a parent “who complains and nags and asks questions and illustrates all arguments with bygone pictures.” Earnestly, she continued: “As a grandmother, I ought to be far less in sympathy with the youngest generation than with that of their mothers who are usually much younger than I. Instead of which, I have an enormous sympathy and liking for what I should call the ‘typical moderns’ of the younger generation. I like their honesty of outlook, their complete frankness (if given a chance to be frank), I admire their courage, their self- confident pride in being able to cope with whatever may turn up.”