Emily Post

by Laura Claridge

  CHAPTER 26

  “the strangest”: “Authors in Vacation Time: Where Some Are Recreating and Others Are Working—the New Books Some Are Writing,” New York Times, July 1, 1905; Michael Decourcy Hinds, “Adirondack Survivors: Rustic ‘Grand Camps,’ ” New York Times, August 27, 1981.

  to her fingernail polish: Marie Weldon, “Society at Home and Abroad,” New York Times, July 23, 1905, p. SM8.

  “bearable or unbearable”: “Love Triumphant,” New York Times, October 28, 1905.

  “let you go!”: Purple and Fine Linen, 9, 5, 10, 6, 11, 2, 125, 196–97, 195, 238, 22, 240, 21, 216.

  “gray in their hair”: “Celebrate Mark Twain’s Seventieth Birthday,” New York Times, December 6, 1905. On December 5, 1905, the newspaper had trumpeted the “notable gathering of authors”—150—invited to the dinner to be given at Delmonico’s, using, as if influenced by the tenor of the event, “woman” instead of “lady” throughout the long essay. See also Justin Kaplan, “A Rose for Emily,” p. 108, in “Books,” Harper’s, March 1969, pp. 106–9.

  May Sinclair: Thanks to Robert Hirst, who has served as the general editor of the Mark Twain Project and Papers at the University of California, Berkeley, for over a quarter of a century, for helping me identify pictures of the dinner’s attendees. Thanks also to Professor Fred Kaplan at the Graduate Center, CUNY, whose biography of Twain has long been a touchstone for research on the writer.

  “another man’s road”: “Celebrate Mark Twain’s Seventieth Birthday,” New York Times, December 6, 1905.

  as in years past: “Good Skating at Tuxedo,” New York Times, December 26, 1905.

  CHAPTER 27

  father and grandfather: “Justice Ingraham Dead in 60th Year,” New York Times, May 1, 1934, p. 24.

  keep their secrets: “Federal Divorce Hunt Makes Much Uneasiness; Papers Long Kept Secret Will Be Opened by Labor Clerks,” New York Times, August 14, 1906, p. 12; “Sealed Divorce Papers Cause Census Wrangle; Court Clerks Won’t Allow Them to Be Examined,” New York Times, August 19, 1906.

  mad for divorce: At least one sociologist believes that the rising divorce rate in post-Victorian America was directly related to the increased expectations now aimed at the institution (see, e.g., David Shumway, “Something Old, Something New,” in Peter N. Stearns and Jan Lewis, eds., Battleground of Desire, 306). Men and women had learned enough about sexuality that they no longer viewed themselves as aberrant for expecting emotional and physical satisfaction in their marriages. Emily and Edwin inherited a Victorian model for their marriage, and unlike other such couples, they proved unable to escape it without divorce.

  “herself to fiction”: “Women of Wealth,” Washington Post, March 25, 1906.

  “far more treacherous”: Town Topics, June 7 and 14, 1906, and June 21, 1906.

  wife wasn’t present: “Happenings at Tuxedo,” New York Times, June 17, 1906, p. 12.

  November 6: The stenographer’s minutes from the New York Supreme Court records, Orange County, October 25, 1906, to November 6, 1906. Emily’s signature on the court testimony was her only statement, the dramatic flourish beneath her name the equivalent of a lady’s act of defiance.

  final workday: According to New York Stock Exchange records, Edwin Post’s last day as a member of the NYSE was December 13, 1906.

  afloat financially: “Divorce for Mrs. E. M. Post,” New York Times, January 23, 1907, p. 1.

  asked for alimony: Upon Edwin’s remarriage four years later in New Jersey, where punishment for the guilty adulterous party was not lifelong bachelorhood, as it was in New York, newspapers would report facts at variance with Emily’s version, even getting the date of the decree wrong: “Mr. Post said that he had been married before, but that his wife had obtained a divorce [in Orange County, New York] on March 4, 1907” (Washington Post, December 30, 1911). Furthermore, the Supreme Court Justice had supposedly ordered Edwin to pay $200 a month in alimony to Emily Price (“College Socialists Meet: Victor Berger and Other Leaders at Mrs. Finch’s Reception,” New York Times, December 29, 1911). The families don’t know which account is true—was there alimony or child support or not? New York State archivists are unable to resolve the ambiguity.

  upon his divorce: “Banker Post Gets Divorce,” Washington Post, January 24, 1907.

  assessed or not: Divorce papers, State Archives, Albany, New York, December 1906. For details, see “Divorce for Mrs. E. M. Post,” New York Times, January 23, 1907, p. 1, and Washington Post, December 30, 1911.

  British stepmother, Eleanor: Nora Post, Edwin Post’s granddaughter, has been an invaluable source of information on Edwin and on his second wife, Eleanor Malcolm.

  “become public, ever”: William G. Post, phone interview with the author, September 26, 2005.

  CHAPTER 28

  en plein air: Truly Emily Post, 157.

  “society, literature, and art”: “Keats-Shelley Meeting Pleases: Much Money Obtained for the Purchase of the Memorial in Rome,” New York Times, February 15, 1907.

  anything she’d ever done: Truly Emily Post, 199.

  “the boys call you?”: Ibid., 157.

  “did not happen”: Ibid., 155.

  “push her away”: William G. Post, interview with the author, February 15, 2003.

  “was your own”: Lately Thomas, The Astor Orphans, and Julie Chanler, From Gaslight to Dawn.

  was not his wife: Chanler, From Gaslight to Dawn, 62 and 70.

  both great satisfaction: Evelyn Perrault, phone interview with the author, July 23, 2006

  “great friends”: Chanler, From Gaslight to Dawn, 60, and Jerry Patterson, The First Four Hundred, 147.

  her hostage again: William G. Post, interview with the author, April 3, 2004.

  pursuit of the trivial: Claudia Roth Pierpont, New Yorker, April 2, 2001, pp. 68–69.

  “a one-time suitor”: Truly Emily Post, 152.

  noted one newspaper: Town Topics, February 14, 1914.

  had a woman chef: Jane Smith, Elsie de Wolfe, 111.

  “conspicuous luxury”: “Women’s New Club, the Colony, Opened,” New York Times, March 12, 1907.

  “system never failed”: Truly Emily Post, 161.

  “must needs pursue”: Woven in the Tapestry, 69.

  “height it reflects”: Review, New York Times, June 27, 1908.

  concept of “healing”: Mark Twain’s Letters to Mary, printed by Columbia University Press in 1961 and edited by Lewis Leary, explains the magnet that drew Twain to Tuxedo: “Mary” was young Mrs. Henry Huddleston Rogers Jr. Her father-in-law, the senior Henry Rogers, a founder of Standard Oil, came to Twain’s rescue frequently. Around the time the publishing house venture with Twain as chief partner failed and went into bankruptcy, Mary and her husband bought a house on the north shore of Tuxedo Lake. See also Tuxedo Park historian Doris Crofut, Tuxedo Park internal library records, “Mark Twain and Tuxedo Park,” and Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life, p. 614.

  “mortal mind”: Truly Emily Post, 155.

  CHAPTER 29

  into her stories: Truly Emily Post, 83.

  short-story contest: Jeanne Perkins, “Emily Post,” Life, May 6, 1946, p. 65, and Gretta Palmer, “Mrs. Post Regrets,” New York Woman, February 3, 1937, p. 11.

  up her back: Patricia Beard, After the Ball, 71.

  she had experience now: “Charles Coster Lost $1,000,000 in Stocks,” New York Times, April 30, 1908, p. 1.

  with her ensemble: “Dark and Subdued Hints Find Favor with the Best Dressed Woman Rather Than the Bright Ones,” New York Times, November 15, 1908.

  through September 1909: Everybody’s Magazine, chapters from The Title Market, February through September 1, 1909. Details about publication in letter from Emily Post, July 8, 1909, and “Memorandum of Agreement, 5 April 1909, Dodd, Mead and Co. and Emily Post,” Dodd Mead Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

  in familiar surroundings?: New York Times, August 21, 1909.

  “very serious item”: The
Title Market, 55.

  the Tribune pronounced: Tribune, January 23, 1910.

  even her closest friends: Emily Post, “On the Care of Husbands,” Life, April 22, 1909, p. 552.

  married woman’s success: “ ‘Outrageous to Wed Titles’: Mrs. Post Blames Mothers,” New York Journal, August 1909.

  CHAPTER 30

  a few years later: Patricia Beard, After the Ball, 347.

  as she read it: For an extended comment on the explicitness of the Times’ coverage of disasters for the fifty-year period following Adolph Ochs’s stewardship, see Michael Barton, “Journalistic Gore: Disaster Reporting and Emotional Discourse,” in Peter N. Stearns and Jan Lewis, eds. Battleground of Desire, 164–69.

  would recover: “Auto Smash Kills Mrs. Bruce Price: Wealthy Tuxedo Woman, Widow of Architect, Flung Against Tree Near Arden,” New York Times, October 18, 1909. At least one obituary, in the Wilkes-Barre Record, mentioned that the car was traveling at a “high rate of speed” (October 19, 1991, p. 9).

  she went to work: Truly Emily Post, 160.

  New York City as well: Orange County Surrogate’s Court, Liber 81, W80, 234.

  “pointing backward”: Jerry Patterson, The First Four Hundred, 127.

  “bad investments”: Margaret Case Harriman, “Dear Mrs. Post,” p. 56.

  instead of her books: Publishers Weekly, November 26, 1909.

  wherever the wives lived: Manfield News, December 28, 1909.

  about politics anyway?: “Girl Strikers Tell the Rich Their Woes,” New York Times, December 16, 1909, p. 3, and “Women Socialists Rebuff Suffragists,” New York Times, December 20, 1909, p. 5.

  CHAPTER 31

  the Smart Set: Edwin Main Post, “The Blue Handkerchief.”

  and Louis Untermeyer: “Among the Magazines: Many Articles of Importance and Much Entertaining Fiction,” New York Times Book Review, January 15, 1910.

  understand her writing: Paul R. Reynolds, The Middle Man, 13–16.

  “houses come high”: Paul Revere Reynolds, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers 1899–1980, internal memorandum, January 26, 1910, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries. Reynolds’s intraoffice memo records his author’s payment arrangements, his notations useful though difficult to translate into today’s jargon. Emily received $3,000 for the novel’s serial rights in magazine form, with an additional $1,000 for each 15,000 copies of the published novel sold.

  “the Atlantic’s covers”: April 8, 1910, to April 19, 1910, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  “who seem happy”: Emily Post, “What Makes a Young Girl Popular in Society?,” Delineator, November 1910, p. 254.

  “a line from you?”: December 10, 1910, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  redefining herself publicly: Washington Post, December 15, 1910.

  awed by her concentration: Albert Foster Winslow, Tuxedo Park: A Journal of Recollections, p. 102.

  Winslow said: Washington Post, December 15, 1910.

  CHAPTER 32

  the heroine’s death: The Eagle’s Feather, 242.

  “been the neck”: “141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire,” New York Times, March 26, 1911, p. 1.

  near their home: Delineator, July 1911, pp. 8, 68.

  the summer before: Letters from Emily Post to Ray U. Johnson. The letters to the editor of the Century Magazine are undated until the final note on May 31, 1911.

  her work for her: Ibid., May 31.

  “won’t have it”: F. Hopkinson Smith, Kennedy Square (New York: Scribner’s, 1911), 9, 10, 26, 35, 39.

  leavened her reprimands: “The Traveling Expenses of the Stork,” Delineator, July 1911, p. 8.

  prodded her agent: Letters from Emily Post to Paul Reynolds, April 15, 1911, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  “this?” he pleaded: Letters from Paul Reynolds to Emily Post, April 20, 1911, and June 2, 1911, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  hard at work: Letters from Paul Reynolds to Emily Post, June 27, 1911, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  manners in the country: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Learning How to Behave, 7.

  “or other later on”: Paul Reynolds to Emily Post, July 7, 1911, and Emily Post to Paul Reynolds, July 25, 1911, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 33

  “intense spiritual energy”: Dominique Browning, Around the House and in the Garden, p. 13.

  to do something similar: Samuel Graybill, “Bruce Price, American Architect,” 6.

  of her social contacts: Neal Bascomb, “For the Architect, a Height Never Again to Be Scaled,” New York Times, May 26, 1905, p. F10. Bruce’s former associate would one day convince his friend’s namesake to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.

  to overextend herself: Jean Strouse, Morgan, 643.

  laughter all the way: Elsie de Wolfe, After All, 132–33.

  to their limits: William G. Post, letter to the author, February 28, 2006.

  self-help genre: Michael Korda, Making the List, 24–25.

  yards of fabric: Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday and Since Yesterday, 105.

  branch of the bank: “Woman Wins Place as Bank Executive,” New York Times, February 13, 1925, p. 1.

  “economic factor”: Ibid.

  on the bestseller list: Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., Old Money, 58.

  Lincoln Highway: Pete Davies, American Road, 28 and 30.

  CHAPTER 34

  admitted into society: “Brilliant Dance Assemblies and Weddings Attract Society,” New York Times, January 11, 1914.

  unformed child?: Morgan’s articles were collected and reprinted as The American Girl; see pp. 5 and 9.

  wrote her encouragingly: Paul Reynolds to Emily Post, May 25, 1914, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  “enough with The Title Market”: Emily Post to Paul Reynolds, June 4, 1914; Paul Reynolds to Emily Post, June 6, 1914, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  “scarlet upholstery”: Beverly Rae Kimes, “Emily’s Great Adventure,” Star (Mercedes-Benz Club of America), September–October 2001, p. 27. On the occasion of the club’s one hundredth anniversary, in 2002, Kimes did extensive research on the Mercedes Ned customized in London.

  paid $5 a day: Jean Strouse, Morgan, 636.

  the supposed upgrading: Kimes, “Emily’s Great Adventure,” 27.

  reached the port: Edwin M. Post Jr., “Henri, War Dog, to the Rescue,” New York Times, April 18, 1915.

  in northwestern Burgundy: “Mrs. Percy Turnure Dies of Pneumonia,” New York Times, January 5, 1931, p. 14.

  graceful prose: Edwin M. Post Jr., “Henri, War Dog to the Rescue.” A sequel appeared the following year in the New York Times, on June 4, 1916. A reprint of the original story about “Henri the War Dog” was sold as a booklet for the benefit of the wounded at an Allied bazaar.

  to Ober directly: Emily Post to Paul Reynolds, June 9, 1914, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  at the president’s side: At The Birth of a Nation’s February 8 premiere in California, the twelve-reel-long silent was accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic playing in the cinema pit, while the movie’s actors (including John Ford) appeared dressed in Klan robes. The movie debuted only after Griffith obtained an injunction from the court overruling the city council members who had ordered the movie suppressed due to its inflammatory racism. The publicity would more than compensate for the delay. What is often forgotten in modern retellings of the film’s release is the less than monolithic support its appearance engendered. Repeatedly, local groups supporting the rights of African Americans to fair representation protested the hate message that spilled across the big screen.

  “scrap of a pickaninny” son: Francis Hopkinson Smith, Colonel Carter’s Christmas, 47.

  not to use it: William G. Post, phone interview with the author from Naples, Florida, April 3, 2004.

  “timekeepers of progress”: J. C. Furnas, Great Times, 181.

  “he was one”: Letter to the editor, New York Times, April 13, 1915.

  CHAPTER
35

  “the punishment severe”: By Motor, 21–24, 26, 57–58. In 2004, the book, edited by Jane Lancaster, would be reissued by McFarland and Company in North Carolina.

  “same of the city”: “Mrs. Post Was Not Well Posted,” Iowa City Daily Press, September 23, 1915.

  “Southwest existed”: By Motor, 88.

  “treasured memories”: Ibid., 60.

  countries in one: J. C. Furnas, Great Times, 181.

  “upstart crass”: Ibid., 182.

  “values startlingly”: San Diego Historical Society, www.sandiegohistory.org.

  for the Golden State: Walter Lippmann suggested that the Panama Canal was “perhaps the greatest victory an army ever won” (quoted in Furnas, Great Times, 182–83).

  “to unimportance”: By Motor, 189, 193, 233, 226, 238–40.

  “O.K., Emily Post”: Emily Post to Paul Reynolds, November 4, 1915, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  CHAPTER 36

  times had changed: “Buy Tickets for Allies’ Bazaar,” New York Times, June 2, 1916; “Honeymoon Trips Are Sold at One Dollar at Bazaar,” New York City Herald, June 9, 1916.

  muddy battlefields: By Motor, 86.

  due for pilot training: “Mrs. Post and Her Son at Lenox,” Washington Post, July 10, 1916.

  “a tarantula”: “Society Is Moving to Mexican Border: Fiancées, Wives, and Parents of Guardsmen are Braving the Torrid Heat of Texas,” New York Times, July 12, 1916.

  she asked proudly: “What Sons Can Do for a Mother,” Morning Telegraph, October 15, 1916.

  “Hurray!”: Emily Post to Paul Reynolds, December 17, 1916, and Paul Reynolds to Emily Post, December 19, 1916, Paul Revere Reynolds Papers.

  CHAPTER 37

  war against Germany: John M. Barry, The Great Influenza, 120.

  disparaged the American government: World War I was an aristocrats’ war. See Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., Old Money, 178.

  true or false: Barry, The Great Influenza, 124.

  for the arts: “Fund for Authors’ Relief,” New York Times, March 18, 1917.

  reported for military duty: New York Times, April 9, 1918; “Town of Tuxedo Centennial Commemorative Program,” Tuxedo Park Recreation Commission, 1990; and Tuxedo Park local history, courtesy of Chris Sonne, town historian. 237 “night of terror”: Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, p. 203.