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Emily Post's SecretHow a disastrous marriage drove her to etiquette.

By Laura ShapiroPosted Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008, at 6:30 AM ET

Emily Post by Laura Claridge. Nearly half a century after her death, we finally get to meet the woman who invented American good manners. Or tried to. Nowadays people who suspect their public behavior is making them look boorish don't shudder with embarrassment—they gleefully display the evidence on YouTube. But we weren't always like this, as Laura Claridge's Emily Post makes clear. Straight through the Jazz Age, the Depression, World War II, and the early '50s, Emily Post handed down rules of social behavior guaranteed to be authentic insignia of the upper class, and the nation kept begging for more. People loved her gracious air of certitude, whether she was advising on the proper wedding outfit for a second marriage (gray, with a small, matching hat) or how to manage telephone use when six neighbors had to share the same line. ("The rule of courtesy when you find the wire in use, is to hang up for three minutes before signaling. If there is an emergency, you of course say 'Emergency!' in a loud voice, and then 'Our barn is on fire.' ") Like Freud and Betty Crocker, the name "Emily Post" became shorthand for authority itself.

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But her charmed perspective on what she called "best society" disintegrated soon after she died in 1960 and not just because the all-gray wedding pretty much fell from favor. Mrs. Post (who would have cringed at being referred to as "Ms." or, worse yet, "Post") often said etiquette had much more to do with "instinctive considerations for the feelings of others" than with using the right fork, and she herself was famous for putting her elbows on the table. But she never cooked a meal and never spent a day without her maid in attendance. She stayed aloof from the suffrage movement, hated the New Deal, couldn't abide Eleanor Roosevelt and her many causes, and lobbied the Social Register to banish any mention of a mixed-race laundress who had married into a prominent family. In 1947, she explained that if you happen to see or hear "something definitely threatening to our government," the correct thing to do was write to the FBI or a local government official. ("Or, if you prefer, you can telephone.") She offered a sample letter: " 'A group called the Junior Revolutionists who meet regularly Monday evenings at 40 X Street is distributing handbills.' " These were not the politics of an authority figure with a message likely to outlive the '60s.

Related in Slate

Ann Hulbert reviewed the latest book from another etiquette expert, Miss Manners. Timothy Noah revealed how the Marine Corps were being equipped with an Emily Post-style guide to etiquette in Iraq. Troy Patterson explained the modern etiquette of bachelor parties, and John Dickerson examined the new etiquette of lobbying.

Claridge, whose extensively researched biography is the first major treatment of this legendary figure, would undoubtedly disagree with this assessment, for she takes a far more admiring view of her subject. She sees Emily Post as something of an unsung feminist, an heiress who started out a cosseted creature of the Gilded Age but moved beyond her comfort zone to "buck the system" and promote "genuinely democratic ideals and sympathies." As each new edition of Etiquette succeeded the last, she argues, Mrs. Post changed with the times. The chapter called "What Is Best Society?" became "The Growth of Good Taste in America." Another, originally headed "One's Position in the Community," became "Making One's Position in the Community," underscoring her message that behavior rather than birth defined true gentility. She discussed ever-simpler weddings, and dinner parties without servants. Religious traditions other than Episcopalian showed up, as did the "businesswoman," who always received Mrs. Post's full support. When Rosie the Riveter made her appearance on a Saturday Evening Post cover in 1943, Claridge writes, "It was as if Emily Post's intuitive version of the capable, modern woman had come to life."

"Capable," for sure. Mrs. Post racked up truly startling accomplishments—along with her best-selling guide, Etiquette (1922), she wrote six novels, scads of journalism, and a 500-page book on architecture; had a long career in radio; designed her own high-fashion clothes; endorsed everything from cigarettes to gingerbread; and built a 15-story apartment house that still stands at the corner of Madison Avenue and 79^th Street in Manhattan. She lived in 9B, and her friends filled the rest of the building.

But "modern"? Not the Emily Post I found in these pages. Listen to the rapture in her voice as she evoked a debutante at her coming-out ball in the first edition of Etiquette: "It is your evening, and you are a sort of little princess! There is music, and there are lights, and there are flowers everywhere … all for you! Up the wide staircase come throngs of fashionables ... on purpose to bow to you!" During her own debutante year, Emily Price had only one ambition: to stage a glorious wedding and ascend to her place in New York society, a "sort of little princess" forever. She did attain that place and become American royalty, but her marriage at 19 was a disaster. Edwin Post had little interest in his wife apart from her money and social position, and he didn't bother to keep his mistresses secret. Society, running as it did on formulas she knew perfectly, kept her afloat, and she clung to it.

A powerfully conservative outlook on the structures governing everyday relationships—husband and wife, master and servant, upper class and everyone else—seems to have settled in. She wouldn't hear of divorce and insisted on maintaining the appearance of a perfectly happy married woman. Night after night, she dressed up and went to meet Edwin at the train (they were living in the posh enclave of Tuxedo Park), only to return home alone with all the dignity she could display. Eventually she was dragged into a tawdry lawsuit around his adultery and forced to divorce him.

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Laura Shapiro is the author of Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

Laura is ridiculing Mrs. Emily Post for being a powerful New York figure who maintained her marriage to an openly philandering husband marriage as long as she could, but ultimately divorced after his infidelity led to a scandalous lawsuit. Hilary Clinton, a powerful New York figure maintains her marriage to an openly philandering husband even after his infidelity led to a lawsuit so scandalous it brought the entire federal government to a standstill.

Laura attacks Mrs. Post under the guise of feminism, but really it is out of the liberal insecurity that comes from knowing how many ways life used to be better in America before the radicals had their way. Every lad-ish magazine, every girl gone wild is also the face of feminism and anathema to Mrs. Post's rules. Laura is right that Mrs. Post's message is lost - this is obvious every time one has to listen to an obnoxious cellular telephone conversation on the train, endure an airplane flight next to an unshaven unkempt bore, or try to watch a movie while half a dozen conversations go on around the theatre.

Mrs. Emily Post described etiquette as the thousand small sacrifices we make each day to ensure the world runs smoothly for all those around us. The radical view that replaced etiquette, much to Laura's delight, is that everyone is so unique, so special, so brimming with self esteem, he should never feel obligated to sacrifice anything, no matter how minor. Don't bother with fussy notions that you should bathe before flight, describing your sexual escapades is too important to wait until you can find privacy, your conversation is more important than others being able to watch the film - to think otherwise isn't just outdated, according to Laura it's unfeminist.

--here2help

(To reply, click here.)

It is certainly ironic that the writer praises Eleanor Roosevelt at the expense of Emily Post, when in fact Mrs. Roosevelt lived exactly the type of life that Post advocated. Married to a man with whom there was little sexual relationship, she tolerated a lifetime of adulterous affairs by her husband in the name of preserving the family, his future, and her position in society.

--edhgirl

(To reply, click here.)

Luckily, it was E.R.'s legacy that lasted? Really?! A woman as respectable and dignified as Emily Post deserves better than that. For crying out loud, if more women today behaved as stoically, dignified, reserved and well behaved as Emily Post, I believe that America would be a much better place to live, not to mention substantially less crude. Instead we have Madonna, Spears, & "girls gone wild", and the young girls that emulate this poor behavior. What a shame.

--thekenpoist

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Somehow you managed to reduce a woman who single-handedly created an empire (doing so in a time when women did not create empires, making her a true modern woman in this womans book), took all that life threw her way and made something excellent come out of the nightmare (she didn't just make lemonade with those lemons - she made lemon sorbet!), held to the principles that she believed in even when those around her didn't hold to those same principles (such as marriage is permanent and you should be faithful to those vows, whether your spouse chooses to or not) and stood tall and proud to be the woman that she really was (obviously, it was not socially acceptable for her to attend the movies and have ice cream with her maid - but she did it anyway, perhaps setting a new tone of social acceptability in doing so). This is the same woman that I just read, in your own review, being reduced to a woman who should be mocked, somewhat pitied, thought to be out-dated in her outlooks even in her own time and discounted as not being very valuable or authentic? Oh, then there was her advice to women going through a high profile divorce that it would be vulgar to discuss the intimacies of that divorce in the press. Quite frankly, I wish that more celebrities read Emily Post today!

--ibejewels

(To reply, click here.)

Emily Post started writing about etiquette the decade after waves of immigrants landed on Ellis Island. These immigrant families, anxious to assimilate into America and join the middle class, used her writings to familiarize themselves with American social customs. They were also politically progressive, so it makes sense that they admired both Post and Eleanor Roosevelt. I suppose someone like Martha Stewart plays the role today that Emily Post had in the early and mid-twentieth century.

--msd

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Certainly from the stand-point of 2008, Emily Post's etiquette can seem dated, but I submit this is due to almost 40 years of in-your-face vulgarity, rudeness, and obscenity, which has thoroughly eroded a key part of an identity that was intrinsic to Americans until the break of the 1960's.

I'd also point out that societies such as Japan have become modern without abandoning useful distinctions of behavior depending on circumstances – unlike today's Americans who ignorantly assume that 'casual' dress, speech, and manners are always good. The Japanese (and many other cultures) are still aware of the value of formality. They would understand that Mrs. Post's ability to play a different role depending on the circumstances (her going arm-in-arm with her maid to the movies, but eating her supper separately in the formal dining room) reflects a deftness & subtlety of behavior which has disappeared in the US. Maintaining appearances – even when personally painful – was part of what made the US a kinder, more-civilized place.

--Thomas Graves

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(10/28)

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