Emily Post

by Laura Claridge

  oversee company operations: The Long Beach Hotel was leased by the Long Beach Improvement Company. A requirement of the rental agreement between Lee’s company and the hotel owner was that $25,000 had to be spent on property improvement the first year of occupancy.

  long-promised railroad stop: The increasingly worried investors were granted an artificial reprieve when President Garfield was shot in the back as he boarded a train— confounding the already confused markets further but in the process deflecting creditors from Long Beach. The country was distracted from its longtime financial fears by the drama being played out publicly, with unsettling medical bulletins issued daily for the next two months. Peculiarly blunt, as if clarity would ward off disaster, they went further than we do today in our supposedly more open age: it was announced, for instance, that Garfield’s heavy discharge of pus appeared healthy. Even after the president’s death, every detail of the surgery to remove his spine for the jurors to examine was covered, including a description of the spine itself.

  progressed nicely: Lately Thomas, Delmonico’s, 192–93.

  structures over the past year: His workload was staggering. Samuel Graybill’s biography provides drawings of more than eleven projects, all believed to have been built, not just designed, during 1880 alone. Graybill, “Bruce Price, American Architect,” 273–74.

  half of that number: In 1860, New York City’s population stood at 1,174,000; just twenty years later, it topped 2,000,000.

  “of much moment”: “Thayer and Barroll,” New York Times, February 2, 1881.

  side that his daughter adored: “Events in the Metropolis: Seventy-Three Giants; The Grand Classical Banquet of the Titans in Delmonico’s,” New York Times, May 22, 1882, p. 2.

  obtain better sight lines: “James Barton’s New Theatre,” New York Times, August 30, 1883, p. 5.

  with gusto decades later: Eleanor Garst papers, courtesy of the Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries.

  couldn’t make a go of it: For the history of the Long Beach investment and construction during this period, Roberta Fiore, historian and founder of Long Beach Historical Society, proved irreplaceable. She turned over every stone and found some truly unexpected gems.

  New York State: Washington Lee’s will left an estate of about half a million dollars in today’s currency. What that valuation consisted of—did it include the property in Wilkes-Barre? the house for the poor female relatives?—is unclear. Certainly he did not leave his five adult children or his wife conventionally wealthy in the terms of the Gilded Age in which he lived.

  CHAPTER 7

  owned a large part of it: The story of Alva Vanderbilt’s entry into society has been told countless times. Several of the best and most readily accessible descriptions appear in Eric Homberger’s Mrs. Astor’s New York, Jerry Patterson’s The Vanderbilts, and Lloyd Morris’s Incredible New York.

  anything even she had sponsored: Alfred Allan Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women, 112.

  the Astors’ daughter: Lately Thomas, Delmonico’s, 238.

  back home in Alabama: Ibid., 88.

  in the age to come: Ibid., 89.

  bungalows by the sea: New York Times, May 9, 1883.

  she would claim: Truly Emily Post, 8, 31.

  at the top: “The Base for Liberty’s Statue,” New York Times, August 15, 1883, p. 2.

  “almost twelve”: For an excellent discussion of this legislative issue and the period in general, see Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers, 180.

  memories rarely exhibited: Truly Emily Post, 39.

  partner and eventual successor: Ibid., 5.

  CHAPTER 8

  facedown, on silver trays: Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society?, 206.

  disrespect toward the South: In her talks with Samuel Graybill, Bruce Price’s biographer, Emily Post emphasized that her father belonged to all clubs except the Union League (Graybill, “Bruce Price, American Architect,” 6).

  sat among them: An extensive account of the evening at Delmonico’s appeared in the New York Times, November 23, 1884.

  captured the popular imagination: Land-based expeditions reached the pole first in 1909.

  Sunday night alone: “Crowds at the Seashore,” New York Times, July 20, 1885.

  CHAPTER 9

  his—or Cora’s—vision: Alfred Allan Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women, 81–82.

  be put in his name: For a thorough account of Tuxedo Park’s founding myth, see Emily Post, “Tuxedo Park: An American Rural Community,” Century Magazine (October 1911). The prestige of being a member of the club’s fifteen-man board of governors caused such excitement that the governors cheerfully paid the annual dues deficit themselves, a debt that ran to $50,000 a year. Until the Depression, no statement was ever sent to the other members.

  played in its genesis: Cora Brown Potter, “The Age of Innocence and I,” Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan (March 1933).

  brown and rust red: Samuel Graybill, “Bruce Price, American Architect,” 28.

  “to the kitchen-maid”: Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society?, 284; Etiquette, 438.

  “bore anyone had ever met”: Papers of Geoffrey Hellman, untitled notes from an interview with Frank Crowninshield in preparation for a New Yorker profile.

  decorous personal behavior: “Lorillard and his son were big philanderers,” Tuxedo Park historian Christian Sonne claims, as do virtually all the gossip columns of the period as well.

  it was not fashionable: “Society Topics of the Week,” New York Times, January 31, 1886,p. 3.

  “all had been lost”: Julia Reed, Queen of the Turtle Derby, 120.

  “lineage mattered most of all”: Ibid., 121.

  CHAPTER 10

  many of the Price family friends: There would be gloomier assessments of Tuxedo Park’s conversion from resort to residence. Cleveland Amory claimed that old-timers deserted it because it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, so it became an ordinary year-round residence for the wealthy instead. “No other community in this country ever started off on a grander social scale, and therefore no other may be said to have fallen so hard,” he noted in The Last Resorts, 79.

  “American domestic building”: Scully is quoted in Samuel Graybill, “Bruce Price, American Architect.” See Vincent Joseph Scully’s The Shingle Style Today and various volumes of American Architect and Building News for a useful catalog of Bruce’s contributions. Also see Graybill, 83.

  “nothing extra to them”: Christopher Gray, interview with Laura Jacobs, May 22, 2001. For other appreciations of Price’s work, see Russell Sturgis, “The Works of Bruce Price,” Architectural Record, Great American Architects Series, 5 (June 1899), and, in the same publication, Barr Ferree’s “A Talk with Bruce Price.” Also see “The Suburban House,” Scribner’s, July 1890, pp. 3–19, reprinted in Russell Sturgis, et al., Homes in City and Country (New York: Scribner’s, 1893).

  most by her gender: “The Statue Unveiled,” New York Times, October 29, 1886.

  “to a closed circle”: Elsie de Wolfe, After All, 19.

  “in his own right”: Ibid.

  Town Topics herself: See Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s New York, 20, for a particularly compact account of Elsie’s relationship with Lorillard and Tuxedo Park. Also see Alfred Allan Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women, 82.

  when an audience responded: Truly Emily Post, 24.

  CHAPTER 11

  forever at Tuxedo Park: Cleveland Amory, The Last Resorts, 100–101.

  “in American history”: Jean Strouse, Morgan, 215.

  complete equality with men: Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York, 15.

  movement for women’s clubs: For an excellent overview of Sorosis, an important women’s club, see Lately Thomas, Delmonico’s, 138–43.

  older sister, Juliet: Jerry Patterson, The First Four Hundred, 129.

  mocked their appearance: Thomas, Delmonico’s, 201.

  CHAPTER 12

  suddenly busy with purpose: Dozens of newspap
er articles, long features on Gilded Age debutante balls, and so on inform this account of Emily’s debut. Among the most pertinent documents are “The Patriarchs’ Guests: A Notable Social Event at Delmonico’s,” New York Times, December 17, 1889; Elsie de Wolfe, After All; Karal Ann Marling, Debutante; Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s New York; and “Society Topics of the Week,” New York Times, April 12, 1891. Also of particular relevance are Joseph Epstein’s Snobbery and Jerry Patterson’s The First Four Hundred.

  Philadelphia or Washington: Marling, Debutante, 11 and 19.

  court of St. James’s: Ibid., 28.

  their quest for a title: In The Custom of the Country, Wharton seemed to take especial delight in showing parvenus longing to become part of old society, and she detailed their coarseness. Henry James, in Daisy Miller, allows the rich American ingénue abroad to be at times truly innocent, if alarmingly simple.

  ball held outside the home: The restaurant was not afraid to take risks: though it was an extremely controversial decision, Lorenzo Delmonico allowed the country’s first all-female club, Sorosis, one that furthered the cause of universal suffrage, to meet at the restaurant, unescorted by men. Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York, 147.

  The fanciest dances: One of the best manuals on the dances of the period is Elizabeth Aldrich’s From the Ballroom to Hell, which exhaustively details everything from the language of the fan to the various moves of dances throughout the nineteenth century.

  sometimes, a quadrille: For a concise portrait of Ward McAllister, see Marling, Debutante, 31, 62–66, 67, 69, 74, 78.

  menu reverted to type: Ibid., 69.

  men they were riding: For an informative essay on such a school, see Henry Collins Brown, Valentine’s Manual of the City of New York, 1917–1918 (New York: Old Colony Press, 1917).

  Thursday, and so on: Patterson, The First Four Hundred, 76.

  would ever complete: See Marling, Debutante, 67; and see Patricia Beard, After the Ball, 163.

  “gloves of different lengths”: de Wolfe, After All, 14.

  debutantes to their own: “The Patriarchs’ Guests,” New York Times, December 17, 1889.

  how to cross a ballroom: Emily slipped this observation into as many interviews as possible throughout the years. Sometimes she was one of two debutantes, other times one of ten ladies in all New York who could cross a ballroom correctly. See Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society?, 20, and The Last Resorts, 99. See also Jeanne Perkins, “Emily Post,” Life, May 6, 1946, p. 60.

  to be plucked: Robert Tomes, The Bazar Book of Decorum (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870), 229, quoted in Aldrich, From the Ballroom to Hell, 113.

  until supper was announced: The New York Times’ coverage of the evening on December 17, 1889, was unusually long, running to three columns.

  her haul to the table: Truly Emily Post, 34. Emily retold the story often, with minor variations, including during a long Saturday Evening Post interview with Margaret Case Harriman, “Dear Mrs. Post,” p. 56. She always sought to emphasize her popularity among the men at her debut.

  compensate for much: Etiquette, 261 and 268.

  CHAPTER 13

  into his life’s plan: “Society Topics of the Week,” New York Times, December 29, 1889.

  Emily as a guest: “Society in Baltimore,” New York Times, May 4, 1890, p. 11.

  noted in the society pages: “Bar Harbor: Every Available Inch Filling Rapidly,” New York Times, July 6, 1890.

  liked the water or not: Jerry Patterson, The First Four Hundred, 62.

  family visitor, Edwin Post: The photos from Emily’s personal picture album are annotated with “Papa” and “Amherst, Winter of 90–91, Jack and Edwin.”

  a syndicated society notice: Fort Wayne Sentinel, January 31, 1891.

  the newspaper recounted: Ibid.

  distressed the old-timers: So many white men wanted to play in blackface that competition was limited to them alone. The style of banjo playing in the minstrel shows was different from society picking as well: the strummer knocked down on the string with the back of his fingernail, “African” style, unlike the European picking style society ladies used (thanks to Bob Flesher, the American Banjo Fraternity, for this information).

  was the perfect hook: Fort Wayne Sentinel, January 31, 1891.

  prospective bride’s “illness”: New York Times, October 11, 1891. The concise announcement mangled the names, combining that of Emily’s good friend Juliet Morgan’s fiancé, William Hamilton, with Edwin’s: “It is understood that the marriage of Hamilton Post and Miss Bruce Price has been postponed, owing to the ill-health of Miss Price.”

  “He rumbled me so!”: Macy log (unpublished handwritten manuscript owned by Colonel Post’s great-granddaughter Nora Post, of Kingston, New York), courtesy of Nora Post, November 6, 1890, p. 189, and August 6, 1909, p. 85. Commissioned in 1886, the boat stayed in the Post family until the death of Edwin’s father, Colonel Henry Albertson Van Zo Post, in 1914. Edwin Main Post wrote most of the entries. Colonel Post, his crew members, and the guests on board made additional entries. Edwin would write the last entry when his father, whom he loved deeply, died: “Colonel HAV Post, owner of the ‘Macy’ died at 11:15 pm. Thus passed away one of the truest gentlemen and one of the best sportsmen the world ever knew. Signed by his son Edwin Main Post February 7, 1914.” Edwin had voiced the praise earlier in his “Brant Shooting on Great South Bay,” pp. 197 and 204.

  making a good match: “The Desecration of a Graveyard in Southampton,” Brooklyn Eagle Daily, July 23, 1887.

  with the requisite eagle: “Dancing in Washington: Mrs. McLean’s Cotillion in Honor of Miss Bonaparte,” New York Times, February 6, 1892, p. 3.

  “it cost was $11.79”: Truly Emily Post, 41.

  has her heroine say: The Flight of a Moth, p. 3.

  “stranger to the other”: Etiquette, 299.

  total killed that season: Macy log, November 6, 1890, pp. 22 and 189, and August 6, 1909, p. 85. Also “Brant Shooting on Great South Bay,” pp. 197 and 204.

  “And yourself”: Truly Emily Post, 19–20.

  84 manageable for all that: Ibid., 21–22.

  84 planted in Emily Post as well: Margaret Case Harriman, The Vicious Circle, 133.

  85 “faithfully yours, Bruce Price”: Emmet Family Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 4755: 774–75.

  “occupation of a woman writer”: Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women” in The Death of the Moth (London: Hogarth Press, 1943).

  “always have a breeze”: Macy log 1889, p. 19.

  descendant of Oliver Cromwell: Thanks to Nora Post and Miriam Medina for information on Caroline McLean’s ancestry.

  the letter “Affectionately”: Emily Post Institute archives, letter, dated from internal evidence to between 1890 and 1895

  had both clearly dissolved: “Calls Post Home to Answer Charges,” New York Times, November 15, 1907.

  holes in the country: New York Times, December 31, 1884.

  mid-seventeenth-century migration: All Post family genealogy comes from The Post Family, by Marie Caroline De Trobriand Post (Mrs. Charles Algred Post). That sometimes convoluted tome was made clearer by Nora Post, Edwin and Eleanor’s granddaughter, who graciously tracked the lines with me far more than once.

  of snagging a title: “The Newport Season: Late Arrivals at the Hotels and Cottages,” New York Times, June 11, 1888, p. 5.

  CHAPTER 14

  “reminds her of me”: The rest of this account of the engagement dinner and the invitation list is taken from Truly Emily Post, 38–45.

  reforming the city government: Jerry Patterson, The First Four Hundred, 153.

  “kick him downstairs”: Truly Emily Post, 40.

  “free-and-easy town”: The description is from Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York, 227.

  assumed benefited everyone: “Saloons All Closed: The Police Aroused by Dr. Parkhurst and the Grand Jury,” New York Times, April 3, 1892, p. 3.

  in this family circle: T
ruly Emily Post, 43 and 41.

  “chagrined at their choice”: Etiquette, chapter 21.

  “both are commonplace matters”: Etiquette, chapter 20.

  point d’Alençon: Syndicated columns in regional newspapers, such as the Daily Northwestern, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, ensured that their readers were tuned in to the wedding’s importance; see, e.g., “Society Wedding Near New York: Elaborate Costumes,” Daily Northwestern, June 1, 1892. Locally, not only the wedding party but its weather captured headlines: “A Very Muggy Day: Only One June 1 on Record That Beat Yesterday for Heat,” New York Times, June 2, 1892.

  quick and pointed substitutions: “Society Topics of the Week,” New York Times, December 29, 1889.

  “too stupid to discuss”: Etiquette, 1927, chapters 21, 31.

  Times boldly pronounced: “All Sorts of Pretty Things,” New York Times, June 5, 1892, p. 12.

  and her physical beauty: Truly Emily Post, 23 and 46–47.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 15

  twenty-minute face-to-face: A particularly detailed account of society women’s days is contained in M.E.C., “Daily Life of an Ambitious Society Woman,” New York Times, February 9, 1902, p. SM4.

  “to squander it”: The Flight of a Moth, 53–55.

  ($55 in today’s terms): Her friend Frank Crowninshield would recall the protocol for producing first-rate terrapin dinners: “We were at the Ritz . . . and we had terrapin and it wasn’t so awfully good . . . . When I was a young man and a rich fashionable man was giving a dinner, we’d telephone the Baltimore Club, tell steward to prepare and cook terrapin for twelve. No males used. No female could be used if over seven inches from tip to tip of shell. Put on one o’clock train, $5 bill to conductor, and my valet will meet the train, take it home, heat it, chafing dish, serve at K [Knickerbocker] club at eight o’clock” (notes from Geoffrey Hellman’s interview with Frank Crowninshield, courtesy of the Hellman collection, Bobst Library, New York University).