in turmoil: Yi-Fu Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 18–21.
“and so it goes”: Emily Post, “My Gay Little Garden,” American Home, April 1934, pp. 245–46, 307–8.
“get going again”: Dominique Browning, Around the House and in the Garden, 51 and 48.
they had lost: Patricia Klindienst, The Earth Knows My Name.
hospital’s flower beds: Michele Owens, “The Healing Power of Flowers,” O Magazine, November 2006, p. 314.
midwife to her flowers: Letter from Henry A. Dreer to Emily Post, July 20, 1927, courtesy of the Emily Post Institute.
her expectations: Emily Post’s Garden Log, courtesy of the Emily Post Institute.
recently begun selling: Thanks to Bob Armstrong and to Anne Williams for sharing their research on jigsaw puzzles.
“reds together”: William G. Post, phone interview with the author, from Naples, Florida, April 3, 2004.
Etiquette to save herself: Display ad, New York Times, November 30, 1927.
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four and a half residents: Ron Chernow, “How It Sparkled in the Skyline,” New York Times, May 26, 2005, p. F8.
“those who do”: Time magazine, December 12, 1927.
the Post opined: “Social Laws Are Changed in Blue Book,” Washington Post, December 25, 1927, p. S9.
“and do likewise”: Etiquette (1927), 631–32.
“its chosen members”: Ibid., 3.
“as well as manners”: Ibid.
Pete Hamill has said: Pete Hamill, Downtown, 20.
“sexual exploitation”: William B. Scott and Peter M. Rutkoff, New York Modern, 22.
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measure of inches: Ron Chernow, “How It Sparkled in the Skyline,” New York Times, May 26, 2005, pp. F8–F9. Admiration for the Art Deco icons would ebb when critics such as Lewis Mumford and Alfred Barr promoted European modernism instead of what they believed to be products of mere “real estate speculators.”
“were the things to have”: “Value of Antiques Debated at Macy’s,” New York Times, May 18, 1928.
“he won’t stay married”: Cynthia Crossen, “When Worse Than a Woman Who Voted Was One Who Smoked,” Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2008, p. B1.
friends would think: Margaret Case Harriman, “Dear Mrs. Post,” Saturday Evening Post, May 15, 1937, and Display ad, Morning News Review, Florence, South Carolina, May 3, 1928.
readers at Dreer’s: Letter to Henry Dreer, Philadelphia, n.d., part of Emily’s private Garden Log, courtesy of the Emily Post Institute.
have to do better: Garden Log, n.p.
surfacing as well: “Post’s Capsized Boat, 4 Missing, Washed Ashore,” Herald Tribune, July 4, 1928; and “Edwin M. Post’s Body Recovered on Beach,” New York Times, July 11, 1928.
last to be recovered: “Launch Floating on Side Points to Tragedy,” New York Times, July 3, 1928, p. 3, and “Columbia Students Missing from Boat,” New York Times, July 4, 1928, p. 9.
big money at last: “Edwin M. Post’s Body Recovered on Beach.”
a lot like Emily Post: “Mrs. Post Back on Stage,” New York Times, August 8, 1929, and Nora Post, interview with the author, Kingston, New York, June 5, 2005.
its author’s death: Letter to Mr. Edwin N. Moore, n.d. (around April 18, 1928), courtesy of Funk and Wagnalls; letter to Emily Post (with a copy sent to Doubleday, Doran and Co.), April 18, 1928, Funk and Wagnalls; courtesy of Helen Moore at HarperCollins.
Times reviewer concluded: “A Debutante’s Code,” New York Times Book Review, November 25, 1928.
“human nature is discussable”: How to Behave—Though a Debutante, 56, 62, 227.
“for the other person”: R.R.W., Washington Post, December 16, 1928, p. S12.
“of their men!”: “Kelland Doesn’t Know What He Is Talking About, Answers Emily Post,” Emily Post, American Magazine, December 1928, pp. 13, 111–13, and “Notes on Current Magazines,” New York Times, December 2, 1928, p. 93.
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“a second clue”: Quoted by Liesl Schillinger in “The Beautiful and Damned,” New York Times Book Review, April 16, 2006, p. 18. See also Lillian G. Genn, “Society Is Changing—and How: Life of New York’s Aristocracy ‘Not What It Used to Be,’ ” Washington Post, March 10, 1929, p. SM5.
“may turn up”: Emily Post, “How to Be Happy Though a Parent,” Collier’s, July 20, 1929, pp. 17–18.
“unselfconscious frankness”: Collier’s, September 7, 1929.
family inheritances: Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday. Some scholars date the beginning of the Depression to October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, the day the stock market crashed. Undoubtedly a traumatic day for those who owned stock as sales volume broke all records, Black Thursday nonetheless registered a deterioration in overall stock prices of about 2.5 percent, from 261.97 to 255.39, as measured by the New York Times index of fifty stocks. The worst still lay in the future; the market hit bottom on July 7, 1932, when the Times index was only 33.98, a decline of over 89 percent from its high of 311.90 on September 19, 1929.
pay their taxes: Courtesy of Chris Sonne, Tuxedo Park historian.
$1,027 for men: Deborah Felder, A Century of Women, 144.
“happy ending”: Bell Syndicate, “Good Taste Today,” Roanoke Times, September 22, 1940.
to the workplace: Alfred Allan Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women, 419–20.
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her two Bruces: In February 1993, Mitchell Owens, a columnist for the magazine Decorating Remodeling, would list The Personality of a House as one of three “must reads” on the art of decorating. The other two imperatives were Mark Hampton on Decorating and Stephen Calloway’s Twentieth-Century Decoration, both written more than fifty years later.
“on my sleeve”: Letter from Emily Post, Eleanor Hubbard Garst letters, courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, circa May 1931.
“call it that”: Ibid.
fifty years later: Samuel Graybill, phone interview with the author, July 13, 2005. Now the proprietor of an inn in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Graybill interviewed Emily in the 1950s. She told him that she believed her father’s Quebec hotel, the Château Frontenac, to be his greatest achievement. Graybill held out for Tuxedo Park and the American Surety skyscraper.
“furniture in them”: The Personality of a House, 3, 66, 74.
“house is practical”: Interview with Christopher Gray, May 22, 2001, courtesy of Laura Jacobs.
“typically yours”: The Personality of a House, 206.
“and the fundamentals”: “The Etiquette of Home Decoration,” New York Herald Tribune, magazine section, 1930.
“of this sort”: “Home Decoration,” New York Times, April 27, 1930, p. 68.
“anything else”: Eleanor Hubbard Garst, “Book-Helps for the Busy Homemaker,” Better Homes and Gardens, September 1931, p. 27.
“Big Names”: Edwin Alger, “Meeting the Big Names,” Boston Globe, May 22, 1951.
women activists: “Social Leaders Here Reject Cocktail Ban,” New York Times, June 10, 1930.
“not encouraging temperance”: “Famous Woman Says WCTU Should Be Changed to WCPU,” Jefferson County Union, July 4, 1930.
and hydrangeas: “Vineyard Haven Fetes Yachts,” New York Times, July 27, 1930.
was carefully retaliating: Helen Huntington Smith, “Profiles: Lady Chesterfield,” New Yorker, August 9, 1930, and Smith, “Ask Mrs. Post,” New Yorker, August 16, 1930.
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Music Appreciation Hour: George H. Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 161.
“form of entertainment”: Ibid., 153.
most people’s doors: The growth and prosperity of national radio networks was linked tightly to the number of potential affiliates. RCA was the first to recognize that independent organizations could manage broadcast services more efficiently than one giant umbrella corporation. With this realization, RCA created NBC in 1926 and purchased the WEAF and WCAP
radio stations and network from ATT, merging them with RCA’s own major network, the WJA New York/WRC Washington chain. NBC was divided into two networks, called the Red and the Blue. Similarly, CBS debuted during this period, its parent, United Independent Broadcasters, barely solvent until 1929, the year after William Paley, investing his own money, bailed it out and spearheaded its new operation. See also Nicholas Lemann, “Amateur Hour: Journalism Without Journalists,” New Yorker, August 7, 2006.
“her passion”: William G. Post, phone interview with the author from Naples, Florida, April 3, 2004.
“pale visibly”: Truly Emily Post, 235. Even theaters dared not open their doors until Amos ’n’ Andy was over. At one point the nightly show was listened to by one- third of those owning radios. Some historians credit its popularity for increasing radio sales during the Depression.
rhythm and blues: Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday, 352.
broadcast nationally: Contracts between the Blackman Company Advertising and Emily Post, October 22, 1930, and November 28, 1930, courtesy of the Emily Post Institute; and William G. Post, e-mail to the author, June 7, 2006.
Emily was paid well by her sponsors, though she never commanded the salary of the major stars. According to the reliable radio (and later television) critic of the Chicago Tribune, Larry Wolters, Major Bowes’s sponsors, including Chase and Sanborn coffee, paid him $18,000 a week for his beloved amateur hour (which would stay on the air until 1970), the first year of its radio network broadcasts auditioning more than thirty thousand acts in the talent contest program, among them Frank Sinatra. Singer-comedian Eddie Cantor was paid $14,000 a week (though he paid much of that to his bandleader and other sidekicks), Jack Benny made $7,000 a week, and Burns and Allen received up to $8,500. The higher their ratings, the more their sponsors paid them. (Chicago Tribune, November 15, 1936, p. SW4; thanks to Donna Halper for this information.)
their recipient: Mrs. Post’s Radio Talk, November 1, 1930, Procter & Gamble radio script, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
fork to use: Jo Ransom, “Radio Dial-Log,” Brooklyn Eagle, November 16, 1931.
“chicanery at all”: Procter & Gamble radio talk, November 8, 1930.
“spirit of hospitality”: Procter & Gamble radio talk, November 15, 1930.
left of the signature: Excerpts from Emily Post Inquiries, typed list from Emily’s file, courtesy of the Emily Post Institute, Burlington, Vermont.
the parvenu: Procter & Gamble radio talk, March 14, 1931.
“abomination to his soul”: Etiquette (1922) 508, and Etiquette (1937), 617–18.
of Roosevelt’s family: “Mussolini: Mispronounced,” New York Times, May 14, 1939.
“I take notes”: Comments courtesy of the Emily Post Institute, Burlington, Vermont.
remind herself: Ibid.
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Grace Episcopal Church: “Mrs. Percy Turnure Dies of Pneumonia,” New York Times, January 5, 1931, p. 21.
“the village green”: C. Gray, “A New Age of Architecture Ushered in Financial Gloom,” New York Times, January 1, 2006, Section 11, p. 2.
children to feed: “$10,000,000 Asked for Jobless Here: Republican Aldermen Request Fund for New City Work—Plea Sent to Committee. Breadline Control Urged: Relief Agencies to Plan Revision of 82 Mass Feeding Stations—Architects Seek Aid to Mobilize Relief Agencies. Architects Appeal to Hoover,” New York Times, January 21, 1931, p. 14. See also “Asks Aid for Draftsmen: Architects’ Committee Says Many Idle Men Are Destitute,” New York Times, March 23, 1931, p. 40.
no longer necessary: “Jobless in Distress Put at 160,000 Here: Gibson Estimates Half Are Family Heads and About Third Are in ‘White-Collar’ Class. Women to Organize Today; Mrs. Belmont Hopes to Enroll 500—Walker Seeks to Have Harvard Play the Army Here. Job Bureau to Be Used. 1,200 Architects Seek Jobs. Charity Games Yield $107,777,” New York Times, September 30, 1931, p. 6.
knew it or not: “Emily Post Rules on Potlikker Etiquette About Dunking,” New York Times, February 19, 1931.
most people’s reach: “Enactment Meeting Held in Baltimore,” Frederick Post, April 7, 1931.
been divorced: Her heart lay with her radio audience, which was even taking priority over her magazine readership. She hurried off an apology to an interviewer from Better Homes and Gardens, explaining that she was answering her query belatedly today, on Sunday, her day off, because it had been “lost under the avalanche of radio letters.” Letter to Emily Post from Eleanor Hubbard Garst, late May 1931, courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, University of Iowa Libraries; and Garst, “Book-Helps for the Busy Homemaker,” Better Homes and Gardens, September 1931, p. 27.
“EP on 2 nights”: Contracts between the Blackman Company Advertising and Emily Post, October 22, 1931, courtesy of the Emily Post Institute.
“and good taste”: Procter & Gamble radio talk, November 1, 1931.
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“her only grandchild”: William G. Post, phone interview with the author, October 24, 2002.
“it felt claustrophobic”: Ibid.
“she was happy”: Yvonne Sylvia, interview with the author, Martha’s Vineyard, October 20, 2002, and by telephone October 23, 2002.
“part of it”: Letter to the author, February 28, 2006.
“feeding their families”: E-mail to the author, July 22, 2004. Emily’s tension every time she needed a contract renewal was motivated partly by the financial concerns evident even in the magical world of modern entertainment. Time magazine announced that radio moguls would begin charging their sponsors, such as General Electric, more, even as they paid the radio entertainers less. Emily was able to relax once everything settled down. Her own contracts were unaffected, and she was beginning to realize additional profit from an informal relationship between the Bell Syndicate newspapers and the radio stations. The earlier antagonism between newspapers and radio had yielded to an alliance wherein Emily’s mutual promotion was the current gold standard. Columbia’s radio systems had already affiliated thirty-five newspapers with its ninety radio stations. Walter Winchell, Little Orphan Annie, and Emily Post were held up as celebrity examples of mutually beneficial crossover. (Time, May 9, 1932.)
“dry” citizens: “Ask Women to Make Repeal Sole Issue: Mrs. Post and Mrs. Sheppard Want Candidates Judged by Their Attitude on Prohibition,” Letter to the Editor, New York Times March 30, 1932, p. 21.
Welfare Councils of New York: “A Garden Party: Events to Raise Funds for Unemployed Architects,” New York Times, May 29, 1932, p. X8, and Anne Lee, “Real Aid for Architects: Emergency Committee Has Created Useful Jobs for Many,” New York Times, June 13, 1932, p. 14.
a mere $975: “Contest for Beauty in Filling Stations: Awards of $975 Offered for Designs by Unemployed Architects,” New York Times, April 3, 1932, p. RE20.
when serving tea?: Emily Post, “Good Taste Today,” Appleton Post Crescent, September 14, 1932.
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“busy she was”: William G. Post, telephone interview with the author from Naples, Florida, April 3, 2004.
“depths of mines”: George H. Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting, 109–12. Lowell Thomas was a man after Emily’s own heart: he indulged in so many different activities that when the Library of Congress librarians cataloged his memoirs, they had to place them in “CT,” the section for people whose lifework doesn’t fit any one category.
about the future: Ibid.
and Fifty-seventh Street: “Sale Will Aid Architects,” New York Times, January 18, 1933, p. 6.
“I abhor you”: William G. Post, phone interview, April 3, 2004. Pony Duke says he “seriously doubts” that Katharine would have said such a thing. Given Emily’s propensity to take the kernel of a true story and exaggerate it into a better one, she probably doctored Katharine’s statement.
“Good as Emily Post”: Truly Emily Post, 236.
hailed from: Alfred Allan Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentlewomen, 102.
<
br /> from another age: Ibid.338 March 9, 1937: Thanks to Chris Sonne, Tuxedo Park historian, for his April 22, 2006, e-mail to the author and two interviews at Tuxedo Park, in 2002 and 2005. The insurance detectives had been watching the chauffeur for years as he had been blackmailing Keech—another instance of Colonel Mann’s premise that servants were the best spies into the households of the wealthy.
could be sold legally: “Citizens of 19 States Get Legal Beer Today,” Charleston Gazette, April 7, 1933, p. 10.
held firm, he said: From the New York Supreme Court records. Records from an unsuccessful lawsuit Holman would file at the end of the decade reveal Emily as making an average of $10,000 a year ($137,000 in 2006 dollars) for the daily column from November 16, 1931, until February 27, 1937.
Bill Post remembers: William G. Post, phone interview with the author, November 17, 2004.
“of seasonal patterns”: “She Was Leading Lady in American Life to Millions,” Vineyard Gazette, September 30, 1960.
battered farmland: Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday, 196.
paying customers instead: Quoted in ibid.
as supercilious: “Private Lives of the Great,” Vanity Fair, December 1933. Miguel Covarrubias’s linear drawing style influenced other caricaturists, including Al Hirschfeld.
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irritated Emily profoundly: “Book Notes,” New York Times, May 9, 1934, p. 17.
“pluck and fertilize”: Emily Post, “My Gay Little Garden,” American Home, April 1934, pp. 245–46, 307–8.
Seventy-ninth Street: Obituary, New York Times, May 1, 1934, p. 23.
Statue of Liberty: Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 152.
“of the current”: “Slapping Emily’s Wrist,” Washington Post, July 13, 1934, p. 8. Over seventy years later, another Washington Post critic, Tim Page, would recall how, “in a moment of early-teen hippie scorn,” he had begun to read Etiquette in order to mock it, certain he would find an “ ‘uncool’ justification of bourgeois rules and regulations.” Instead, to his amazement, the book offered “clearly stated reasons for courtesy, gentility and scrupulousness.” It became, says Page, who suffered with Asperger’s syndrome, “the book that helped pull me into the human race” (“Parallel Play,” New Yorker, August 20, 2007, pp. 38–41).
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