Her mood couldn’t have been improved by the magazine’s strained compliment to her faded looks: at fifty- eight still “a good- looking woman,” Mrs. Post had been a “perfect” beauty just a few years ago. Perhaps Smith, clearly irritated that Emily refused to discuss her “long ago” marriage to Edwin Post—“a member of one of New York’s pre-Vanderbilt families”— was carefully retaliating. In any event, the writer was never invited back.
CHAPTER 50
HOWEVER PROUD EMILY WAS TO APPEAR PROMINENTLY IN THE New Yorker, becoming a regular over the airwaves was her real goal. After all, people speaking on the radio reached millions. A year before the stock market crashed, Walter Damrosch (the son of Leopold, the founder of the New York Symphony Society) had acted as a missionary to the American masses, delivering to them, over the airwaves, the New York Symphony Orchestra. Now he became the musical adviser at NBC, ensuring that by the early 1930s six million American schoolchildren were regularly listening to his Music Appreciation Hour. By offering to the multitudes what used to be accessible to the very few, the nation built on its democratic foundation. In 1920 most Americans had never been to an opera or a symphony, but by the decade’s end, “millions had enjoyed music of all kinds through the medium of the radio, and a cultural miracle occurred: Classical music, which had never played a significant role in American life, became a widespread form of entertainment,” notes the historian George H. Doug las. Radio was the innovation that would revolutionize the culture, providing a free education for Americans of all ranks, further diluting the sovereignty of high birth or money alone.
Sound resonating in their living rooms also encouraged listeners to visualize an idealized world, just when they needed dreams to refurbish their imaginations. Without a doubt, the 1930s edited over the airwaves sounded more cheerful than the reality camping outside most people’s doors. Helping to lift listeners out of the Depression’s bleak amphitheater, broadcasting during the 1930s was not just a business or a job: it was magic. Announcers and musicians wore tuxedos to work, and female performers dressed in evening attire—even when there was no studio audience. Such respect by the performers paid homage to the costly walnut behemoth as well as the cheap do- it- yourself radio kit, both of which staked a place in the nation’s living rooms. Stentorian tones only added to the broadcast’s allure, transforming homes across the nation into fantasy escapes from the world outside.
Emily would often recite the story of her audition for radio, and her surprise at getting on the air. She enjoyed describing how she had assumed that her voice, which she considered “thin and feminine,” would disqualify her—though in fact she had already broadcast several times in the preceding years and had been greeted with an enthusiastic response from her listeners in spite of the poor-quality sound. Sometime in mid- 1930, remembering those crude early 1920 transmissions and unaware of the dramatic studio innovations over the last decade, she shared her worry with potential sponsors, saying that her voice would probably come across as too squeaky on the radio.
She was, uncharacteristically, a bit behind; not only sound quality had changed but even the way the stations pinpointed their audiences had. Since 1927, NBC, a subdivision of RCA, had split its programming into the NBC Red Network, offering entertainment and music programming, and the NBC Blue Network, primarily carrying news and cultural shows. After the various changes were explained to her, Emily, reluctant but excited, allowed NBC’s Red Network station WEAF to line up seven commercial representatives to hear her audition. According to her favorite account, they all “stampeded” to sign her to advertise their products.
Her grandson recalls a different spin: “She explained to me that her radio success, mostly the etiquette question- and- answer show she would present off and on for years, was partly due to her unobjectionable voice at a time when women weren’t used that much on the radio. Her voice came out well, and in spite of her constant worries when sponsorship of her show changed that she would be dropped, the new sponsors always kept her on.” The opportunity to be onstage again would prove irresistible to Emily: “She loved broadcasting,” Bill Post remembers. “It was her passion.” She was one of the lucky ones; radio was entering its golden age even as her late son’s architect friends stood in breadlines.
Depending on the audience, Emily continued to change her story throughout her life. Most often, she would describe how the eager competing sponsors had queried her about salary requirements, eliciting her bold response that she would be “willing to accept whatever ‘Amos and Andy’ get,” causing the executives to “pale visibly.” Those who knew the history of the hit show understood her reference: two weeks after its debut a year earlier, Amos ’n’ Andy, Emily’s favorite comedy, had proved such an immediate success that the network soon moved it from its late- night spot to a primetime slot at seven P.M. The actors’ salaries escalated accordingly.
Though today perceived as denigrating black Americans, the ostensibly good- natured comedy, starring white men using black vernacular speech, was destined to become the nation’s longest- running broadcast in radio’s history. It was also one of the country’s first successful on- the- air serializations, mesmerizing black and white audiences alike. Radio’s crashing of racial barriers would prove pivotal to later developments far afield of comedy. White performers such as Elvis Presley, growing up amid segregation, were tutored by radio, with its overspill of black gospel music and “sinful” black rhythm and blues.
Into the hodgepodge of the day’s broadcasts marched a jubilant Emily Post. From the few extant records, her short- term deals followed the period’s typical protocol, which included high pay for radio stars. In the heart of the Depression, she negotiated a contract for $500 per week (or about $6,000 today), nowhere near what the top celebrities received. Still, she was pleased, especially because her show would be broadcast nationally. Her exclusive six- month agreement with Procter & Gamble to speak on NBC was renewable after it expired on April 30, 1932, as long as both parties agreed. In November 1930, Emily began appearing regularly on New York City’s WEAF, speaking on Friday mornings over the Columbia Broadcasting System.
SHE WAS AN immediate hit. Her listeners regularly wrote heartfelt compliments to the radio’s office, and her sponsors, of course, were delighted: “I like your voice best of any on the radio. I look forward every Saturday to hearing it. And I bought Camay soap because if you stand for it, it must be good and I like it very much.” The letters came from all over the country, reinvigorating their recipient. It appeared that there was a second act—or a third or fourth—to her already impressive career. She was part of the new age, not a dinosaur, as she had feared. And, much to her pleasure, Lillian Eichler’s voice, which had seemed to intone the modern age so thoroughly that sponsors had aired her often in the late 1920s, had proven too “New York” after all.
By now, newspapers routinely listed information about radio programming, and the Brooklyn Eagle wasted no time in announcing Emily’s new venture. “Mrs. Post” would be talking about “Etiquette,” her program “intensely interesting and instructive,” it noted. More than the mere problems of manners, the author planned to discuss how ethics and etiquette were connected subjects. With a good- willed petulance, Emily complained to a reporter about her more typical experience when speaking to the public: “Every time I have tried to get to the root of the matter and talk about these really important things,” she said, a deluge of mail had arrived soon afterward, inquiring about which fork to use.
Procter & Gamble exercised its option to renew the original contract through the end of the following June, at the same rate of $500 per week. Camay soap also commissioned her to prepare twenty- seven talks on etiquette, its series to run on CBS’s national radio network WABC throughout the same months. For eight years, until 1938, Emily would average one fifteen- minute radio program broadcast nationally three times a week. Among her sponsors were Procter & Gamble, Tangee lipstick, White Owl cigars, and Crane paper, several of them ahead
of the times and already prerecording their studio ads; a few still broadcast live, the musicians set up behind Emily. Her new notoriety prompted various sidelines as well, neatly supplementing her income: endorsements for a gingerbread company earned her $3,000, and she got paid $5,000 for a generic pamphlet in which she lauded upscale linen, silver, and glass.
Endearingly, she opened her initial broadcast a bit self- consciously:
Good morning! Having just been introduced to you, I ought to have said, “How do you do.” No one knows this particular rule of etiquette better than I. But I think this introduction of me, to you, is different. We are not meeting as strangers, out in public—we are not even meeting in the house of one of our friends! I have actually come into the privacy of your home—of course I don’t know where! I may be in your living room, but it is quite as likely that I am in your kitchen or at your breakfast table, or sitting beside your bed—or wherever you happen to be! And so—I can’t quite picture myself as being shown into your drawing room as an afternoon visitor with my card case in my hand, and saying formally, “How do you do.”
Turning to the day’s topic, she cleverly incorporated the task of greeting her audience into the program’s first subject, how to make introductions. “Informal introductions are made about nine hundred and ninety- nine times out of a thousand,” she began. Summoning encounters between old and young, woman and woman, formal, half formal, warm, cool, and stilted, Emily lauded the effective approaches and fingered the weak ones: “Many of us actually suffer from name- blank news and suddenly find a name that we know perfectly well, has vanished from memory. So you say helplessly, to the nameless one, ‘Oh, don’t you know my husband?’ or, ‘You have met Mrs. Elder, haven’t you?’ I must confess that the subterfuge does not often work very well, and the nameless one is rather apt to announce herself— not fooled by your chicanery at all.”
Even before the program was over, her audience inundated the station with questions for Emily Post. One anxious listener actually telegrammed her, frantic about the social situations that might ensue following an introduction. Because of such interest, Emily’s second broadcast set out detailed scenarios that encompassed all possible punctilios regarding introductions. She suggested that upon walking into a room, the first thing one should do was quickly scan the faces to see if any were familiar. If not, one should stand near the hostess, who, if she was worth her salt, would then surely introduce another guest nearby. Upon being introduced, one could discuss what had appeared in the morning’s paper or talk about the weather or the latest radio show. Contributing to a small group conversation created connection, which was the key objective: to show a genuine interest, no matter the subject.
She concluded with one of her pet topics. A person’s speech, she told her listeners, however unfairly, was a ticket into society—or an excuse for exclusion. Thus, if the object was to fit into the social world, attention must be paid. “The words and phrases accepted or taboo are utterly without reason,” she said. “And yet nothing in the entire subject of etiquette is so important and so devastating to those who happen not to have had wide worldly experience, and yet want to be recognized as persons of cultivation and social position.” She ended her tutorial by announcing that the following week she would finally “turn away from these seemingly trifling but very nagging rules and choose one of the nicest subjects possible. I’m going to talk to you about the spirit of hospitality.”
But she had miscalculated: apprehensive listeners guaranteed that she could not tackle her favorite subject yet. Letters flooded the radio office, sometimes begging for help: “How many inches should I sit from the edge of the table?” and “When taking my place at table, should I approach my chair from the right or the left side?” Later, her confused audience would ask why they should never sign a letter “Mrs.” It was all about being pretentious, Emily explained. To sign a letter “Mrs.” indicated that the writer considered herself of a “higher class socially than the one to whom she is writing . . . a shocking breach of good manners.” The correct way to sign a letter was “Mary Brown” with “(Mrs. Arthur Brown)” to the left of the signature.
With as much aplomb as an experienced schoolteacher, Emily forged on, pointing out that pioneer women had been forced to preface their names with “Mrs.” to ward off the overfamiliarity of rough men. “Kings and Queens sign their Christian names, Albert or Marie; Dukes and Earls and all those of highest title sign their last name alone—Broadlands or Everton—while the rest of us sign two or more—Mary Allerton Jones or John Henry Huntington Jones or whatever our full names may be,” she explained. Thus, to sign one’s own name with the honorific “Mrs.” smacked of the gauche and the parvenu. Those easterners secure in their manners had “continued tranquilly the precepts of established precedent,” she said, realizing that nowadays, in fact, names become more complicated as one’s “importance decreases.”
Though she didn’t refer to them as such, Emily didn’t flinch from addressing class issues. She herself continued to blur distinctions in her definition of Best Society (a term that, like most of her labels, she capitalized erratically). Best Society’s Perfect Human Being mixed Old World genes with the classless Christian Golden Rule. Avoiding self- importance and treating others as you wished to be treated were key to becoming part of Best Society, whatever and wherever it was.
Etiquette, both in 1922 and throughout its subsequent revisions, supplied the meat of her radio broadcasts. In both, she warned against the worst impostor, the social climber, inevitably exposed: “A man whose social position is self- made is apt to be detected by his continual cataloguing of prominent names. Mr. Parvenu invariably spices his conversation with, ‘When I was dining at the Bobo Gildings,’ or even ‘at Lucy Gilding’s’ and quite often accentuates, in his ignorance, those of rather second- rate though conspicuous position. ‘I was spending last week- end with the Richan Vulgars,’ or ‘My great friends, the Gotta Crusts.’ When a so- called gentleman insists on imparting information that is of interest only to the Social Register, shun him! . . . The born gentleman avoids the mention of names exactly as he avoids the mention of what things cost; both are an abomination to his soul.”
But, however paradoxically, the notion of a “born gentleman” had little to do with genes or inheritance. It was relayed by one’s behavior. To illustrate the danger of playing the social impostor, she told a story on the air about a party she had attended: a man boasting of his close friendship with Theodore Roosevelt asked his listener if he had “ever seen T.R.?” The man quietly replied, “Yes, I have seen Mr. Roosevelt.” Everyone present except the social climber knew that the speaker was a member of Roosevelt’s family.
BILL POST BELIEVES that broadcasting and, eventually, writing her syndicated advice column were his grandmother’s greatest pleasures, even beyond the books she published. Radio and newspapers allowed her an immediate connection—however scripted—that her novels and even Etiquette deferred. Now she regularly hailed a taxi to the radio station at 485 Madison Avenue, where she had become an instant favorite of the studio staff because of her fastidious use of a stopwatch. Emily Post was no diva needing to be cajoled to yield the stage.
She took her listeners seriously. Among the few papers she preserved was a page of excerpts from fan letters written by aspiring middle- class Americans: “I am greatly interested in your talks every Saturday on the Procter and Gamble Hour. I am sure they are a wonderful help to thousands” and “Your talks are wonderful, I enjoy them a lot. I try not to miss any and I take notes.”
In a period when actors and broadcasters routinely adopted stagy upperclass Philadelphia accents, Emily’s voice, a blend of Baltimore, New York, and a bit of the ubiquitous Main Line, was repeatedly singled out for its “sweetness.” So was her “sweet personality.” Her listeners were correct: buoyant, alive, generous, outgoing, she was lovable. Her sometimes annoying obsessiveness was obscured in the short radio broadcasts. “Your talks are most instructive and entertain
ing,” a listener in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote. “Your talks are ever so interesting and Mother and I enjoy them so much, and hope that they will continue indefinitely. We listen each week.”
Emily reveled in the feedback from her radio show, gradually realizing that her word actually mattered to thousands of people around the country. “I listen to your talks and enjoy them so much. I am trying hard to learn about what should be and what should not be done,” said a fan from Providence; another noted, “Many persons in Massillon, Ohio, are enjoying your clever talks on etiquette. Your voice and charming accent are delightful, and we hope you continue advertising something or other for many months.” “I take this opportunity to thank you for all your splendid, helpful talks which we farm women enjoy, too” came from Seaford, Delaware, and, from McLean, Virginia, next door to the nation’s capital: “Never do I go to town on Fridays now, but I stay home to listen to your talks which are very enjoyable and instructive to me. How good it is that your voice doesn’t sound affected as do those of so many women we hear on the air. I treasure your Blue Book highly and am always hoping for time to study it most thoroughly and to read all your other books, too.” Page after page: Emily recorded sheaves of such comments, as if to remind her sponsors of her worth when renewal time came along. Or to remind herself.
The person behind the voice was a palpable intelligence. Today, it is impossible to read Etiquette without wishing the author were still pronouncing on the best ways to create a harmonious life. In the 1930s, it was hard to listen to Emily Post’s radio broadcasts without wanting her to be around to share a cup of tea and an insight or two.
CHAPTER 51
THE NEW YEAR STARTED SADLY, WITH EMILY RECEIVING WORD THAT her favorite cousin, Baltimore’s Sadie Price—Sarah Price Pell Turnure— was dead. Months earlier, after a series of illnesses had left her with pneumonia, Sadie’s husband, the physician Percy Turnure, had interrupted the couple’s vacation on the French Riviera, in the belief that complete rest in the City of Light would allow Sadie to recuperate. More recently, in desperation at his wife’s weight loss and recurrent fevers, Percy had had her admitted to a private clinic in Paris. Now, her wasted body was returned to New York, where Emily attended the funeral services, held at Grace Episcopal Church.
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