Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Philandering husband ed when Post found himself blackmailed by a scorned mistress who threatened to go public with their affair unless he paid her and her publisher to stay silent. This is a story about blackmail, but it isn't actually a story about Edwin. Not really. This is a story about how his wife, Emily Post, suffered the humiliations of his actions and the blackmail that ensued and then came
out on top. Let's hop back to New York City during the Gilded Age for this story of adultery, blackmail and best selling books. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky and I'm Holly Frye. Emily Post was born Emily Price in eighteen seventy two, the only child of Josephine Lee,
a cole heiress and famous architect Bruce Price. Born into a wealthy and socially prominent family in Baltimore, she was educated by a German governess, and after the families moved to New York City, she was enrolled in Miss Graham's finishing School. Her family was close with the astors, the Morgans, and the Vanderbilts. She made her social debut in New York society shortly before meeting her future husband, Edwin Main Post, a prominent banker, at a ball in a Fifth Avenue mansion.
They married during the summer of eighteen ninety possibly eighteen ninety two, and then they settled in New York City. They also had a country cottage that was called Emily Post Cottage in Tuxedo Park, New York. It was one of four cottages she inherited from her father. The Tuxedo Park community was one of his designs, and he had named that cottage after his daughter. The couple had two sons, Edwin Mayne Post Junior born in eighteen ninety three and
Bruce Price Post born in eighteen ninety five. Edwin Post was not a good husband. He had little interest in his wife except for her money and her social position, and he was known for his serial and hardly secretive extramarital affairs with chorus girls and starlet's. The Post's marriage had become distant about a dozen years in Emily divorced him after one jilted lover made him the target of blackmail scandal in their social circle was not a scent
you wanted lingering around you. Edwin's role here as adulterer and victim of blackmail, it turns out, was actually a catalyst for what Emily would become. And you'll see this as their story unfolds. Yes, we are talking about the Emily Post whom we today know was a quote fun loving Benjo playing workaholic who became the go to on etiquette advice. So here's what happened.
In late April of nineteen oh five, Edwin ended an affair with a young woman actor, but she continued to make romantic gestures toward him and seeking his attentions. She returned to the Connecticut cottage that he kept solely for his lovers. When he spurned her advances, she took revenge. She strategically contacted the office of Colonel William Dalton Mann, a Civil War soldier turned gossip columnist. Colonel Man, who was a Civil War hero, was described as both suave
and condescending. You'll also find him described as looking a lot like a stereotypical Santa Claus. We don't know what that's about. Did he wear red? Was it his beard? We really don't know, but that is one description that you'll see. He was the owner and publisher of a gossip sheet called Town Topics, and he was no stranger to scandal.
Man wouldn't allow sloppy grammar or poor writing in his publications. That he was just fine with extortion to get the stories he wanted and a little money in his pocket. He'd previously had his hand in several blackmail schemes, and he actually had an organized plan ready to execute for demanding money in exchange for keeping the love affairs of high powered businessmen under wraps. He hired or paid off domestic workers, friends, spouses, and family members to spy on
his potential victims. He would then bully those victims into paying for a subscription. If you didn't hear my air quotes, they were there to an expensive book. Subscription prices were set on a victim buy a victim basis. The book, by the way, was fake, and the subscription price was just code for blackmail.
Through friends and the rumor. Mill Edwin was already familiar with Man's scheme before he became a target of it himself. Mostly people in his social circle just paid the requested blackmail money and moved on. Representatives of Town Topics contacted Edwin, and Charles All, who was Man's second in command, suggested that he and Edwin should meet as as soon as possible, and they did in June of nineteen oh five. Town Topics.
It was explained to him was going to go public with details of Edwin's affairs, but they would suppress the gossip if he subscribed to a vanity book that they intended to print sometime in the distant future. Five hundred dollars Town Topics, editors suggested would cover the costs, and remember this was a fake book and the five hundred dollars was hush money. All added that the other men had been quote taxed at a greater amount for similar reasons.
Mann referred to this scheme in those he targeted as his Gilded Age prey, a group of select men and women who were basically stalked by the writers and editors of his publication. He had a group of wealthy New Yorkers that he took great pleasure in stealing money from through his extortion schemes, and this went on for years.
Edwins sought advice from prominent society lawyer Phoenix Ingram, who insisted that Emily be brought into the discussion. It was agreed the Posts would not pay man. But before we start talking about how the blackmail scheme went down, we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors, and when we're back, we will talk about how the scandal played out in the headlines and at home.
Welcome back to Criminalia. So let's talk about how when confronted with a divorce, Emily Post blossomed in a new writing career.
Instead of giving in to the demands, pay the money or pay the price of public humiliation when your affairs go public in print, Edwin decided to stand up to the blackmailers and expose them, hoping it would make him look like a hero. Some versions of Edwin's story suggest that while his wife was from a wealthy family, Edwin, due to bad investments during the Panic of nineteen oh one, personally did not have the funds to make the whole thing go away. He contacted authorities and was involved in
a sting to have the blackmailers caught and arrested. They were apprehended by police in a local restaurant while waiting for their payment Charles Hall too was arrested in Edwin's Wall Street office, and he was prosecuted and convicted of extortion.
Edwin's colleagues celebrated him for standing up to threats, and some versions of history suggest that he even received a standing ovation on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Whether that's true or not, Edwin did raise his social status by standing up to bullying in blackmail, but his wife did not receive similar celebration. In mid July of nineteen oh five, both the New York Times and the New York Tribune began publishing running commentary of Edwin's blackmail situation.
Across The front page of the Tribune splashed the headline Stockbroker's way of dealing with bribe offer Edwin, post, the article stated, was a partner in a brokerage firm and summered with his wife and children in Tuxedo Park. The Baltimore Son, which was Emily's hometown paper, ran a short front page article on Edwin's affair, but did not mention that Emily was the daughter of Baltimore's famous and celebrated architect Bruce Price. The New York Times did portray Edwin
as the hero he wanted to be kind of. However, in trade, Edwin had publicly exposed his infidelity and embarrassed his wife. As the gossip and then his subsequent lawsuit against town topics were splashed across New York City papers four months for everyone to read. Of all involved, the name of Edwin's paramore seems to have been the only name kept secret during this whole blackmail case.
Divorced during the Gilded Age, one possible, but society frowned upon it. Plus it was incredibly difficult to obtain one in many areas of the country. While suffering through the days of the blackmail's scheme, Emily insisted on maintaining appearances and would go to meet Edwin at the train each night, only to return home each night alone. She would later say that she and Edwin together decided to expose his blackmailers,
but historians, including her biographer, disagree with that. Rose colored Glass's view of her marriage's final act. Though Edwin and his lawyer warned her of the impending storm, it's believed she was not involved in the decision. It's also believed her revision of the event was her attempt to conceal Edwin's failure to protect her his wife from social humiliation. The couple divorced about a year later.
Emily never forgave Edwin. Later, she would write quote, the man who publicly dismirches his wife's name besmirches still more his own and proves that he is not, was not, and never will be a gentleman. She was opposed to divorce both before and after her own experience, and never
had another romantic relationship. In her article called on the Care of Husbands, which ran in Life magazine three years after the divorce, Emily openly chastised women who paid more attention to winning the vote than to ensuring their husbands were comfortable and content. The vote in this instance is of course, in reference to women's suffrage women's legal right to vote in elections in the United States.
Emily rarely mentioned her ex husband after their divorce, and neither does history. According to Emily's grantson Billy quote, she never once mentioned Edwin in my hearing, nor did she ever speak of remarrying. I have absolutely no idea whether my grandmother wanted to divorce Edwin or not. What I do know, without a doubt is that she did not wish her personal problems to become public. Ever, Emily went on to transform herself into an expert on successful marriage
and the ins and outs of daily etiquette. You could say the blackmail and eventual divorce led her into a successful writing career.
Remarrying was the traditional path for a woman of her status in the early nineteen hundreds, but with no interest in another relationship and no forthcoming financial support from Edwin, Emily charted a different path. Her writing career began in roughly nineteen oh two ish when Francis Hopkinson Smith, who was a family friend, passed along some of her letters to an editor at Ainsley's Magazine. It was after the
tragedy of her marriage that Emily really flourished. She became a novelist, a travel correspondent, and a syndicated columnist, and she raised two sons. And that is all before she became famous for her writings on etiquette, which is probably how many of us best know her. Edwin had discouraged her creative talents and interests, but after their divorce he
no longer stood in her way. She published five novels, Flight of a Moth in nineteen oh four, Purple and Fine Linen in nineteen oh five, Woven in the Tapestry in nineteen oh eight, The Title Market in nineteen oh nine, and The Eagles Feather in nineteen ten. In nineteen oh nine, Emily's mother tragically died in a car accident, leaving her
daughter a large inheritance. Her father had already passed away in nineteen oh three, so she had enough money to live on, but Emily chose to stay in the writing game.
On April twenty fifth, nineteen fifteen, Emily left on an adventurous road trip from New York to San Francisco with her son Edwin and her cousin Alice Beatleston. This was adventurous, yes, but it was also dangerous. Both cars and roads across the United States weren't always up for the trip. At this time, it was shocking for a woman to engage in such a thing. It took twenty seven days and close to eighteen hundred dollars, but the trio made it.
Emily's cross country story was published by Collier's Weekly in three parts on September fourth, September eleventh, and September eighteenth, and it was so well received it was turned into a book called by Motor to the Golden Gate and published in nineteen sixteen.
We're going to take a break here for a word from our sponsors, and when we return we'll talk about when and how Emily Post famously became the go to on all things etiquette.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about Emily's famous etiquette book and what it did for her career.
The six hundred and fifty page Etiquette, the Blue Book of Social Usage, was published by Funk and Wagnalls in July of nineteen twenty two, when Emily was fifty years old. Referred to then and now simply as Etiquette, the book became a bestseller, despite its author allegedly stating quote domestic details bore me. The way Post herself liked to tell the story, she hated the idea of writing a book
that told people how they should act. Long after she became the Queen of etiquette, Emily would claim that it was Frank Crowninshield, the long standing editor of Vanity Fair magazine,
who had put her up to it. She claimed that he had urged her to consider all of the people who would benefit from such instruction, including quote, all those new war wives desperate to know how to write a thank you note, all those immigrants who had made it to our country before the rules tightened, all those new money people ashamed to admit they had no idea how to behave in society. So whether that story is true
or not. In nineteen twenty one, she was approached by Richard Duffy of Funk and Wagnall's and asked to consider writing a book on etiquette. She agreed to do it only because she quote took issue with the content in
the available books on the subject. According to her biographer, though Emily had actually proposed this very type of book to a literary agent years earlier who had dismissed it as unworthy of her, she got there somehow, regardless of which Path and Etiquette was a nonfiction bestseller.
She'd hit a nerve, and Emily's advice about everything from forks to greetings became incredibly popular at this time. In the United States. For instance, people weren't always taught not to blow their noses into their hands, or that propping one's elbows on the table at dinner quote really makes no difference. Her books helped people fit in every edition of Etiquette emphasized her one basic rule to make the other person feel comfortable.
In addition to writing, she also established herself on the air, talking about etiquette on her own radio show sponsored by General Electric. Her program was so popular President Franklin Roosevelt stated that the greatest compliment he'd received when he started his own fireside chats was quote, you're as good as Emily Post. She received thousands of letters a week and
wrote a monthly column in McCall's magazine. In addition to content creation, in becoming a star media personality, she endorsed all kinds of products, from cigarettes to gingerbread, and she financed the construction of a fourteen story apartment building at the corner of Madison Avenue in seventy ninth Street in Manhattan. She moved into apartment nine B and in what sounds like the dreamiest arrangement, her friends filled the rest of the building.
Since the first edition of Etiquette found its audience, the name of Emily Post has become synonymous with all things etiquette, and in nineteen forty six, after sixty five reprints of her book book, Emily founded the Emily Post Institute with her son. Four years later, Pageant magazine named her the
second most powerful woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. Emily Post. Historians, including the Emily Post Institute and her biographer, believe that at the heart of her philosophy of life was kindness, and Emily tells us just that in the very first edition of her etiquette book, quote best society is not a fellowship of the wealthy, nor does it seek to
exclude those who are not of exalted birth. But it is an association of gentlefolk, of which good form and speech, charm of manner, knowledge of the social amenities, and instinctive consideration for the feelings of others are the credentials. When she died at the age of eighty six, Life magazine reported that quote, the world has lost its best known arbiter of good conduct, and that is our Emily Post. Blackmails stories really a story about Emily, not Edwin.
I like that this is one where the person who's most harmed by the whole thing comes out on top of We don't always get.
There, We almost never get those.
Would you like a little coercion concoction?
I would love to hear about this drink? I hear, it's delightful.
The drink I think is pretty yummy. But here's the thing that Emily is very interesting in a variety of ways, one of which was Emily is alleged to have never had a drop of alcohol in her life. What's very very interesting about her is she was also against prohibition
because she was not a teetotalert. This is a really interesting time in American history where a lot of the people, or a significant fraction of the people who were really pushing for prohibition were women who had probably most of them been exposed to some really bad experiences because of men who could not control their relationship with alcohol, and so that was a big driver of it. But Emily is this weird outlier because aside from the fact that
she also was not about the right to vote. But we're going to look over that.
Kind of novice. I'm going to go with time and below.
But then she was like, no, I don't think prohibition's good. You should let people make their own choices, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, one for this concoction, We're going to start with the mocktail, since she was not a drinker, But this mocktail has its own function. I will say,
and I'll explain it at the end. This is called good conduct, by the way, and it starts with a half an ounce of rosemary syrup, which you were going to put in your shaking tin, with three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice and an ounce and a half of pineapple nectar, and give that a shake because you have a lot of sugar in there, and you want the citrus to break down your sugar so everything
can come together nicely. And then you're just going to strain that into like a double rocks glass with in it, and you're gonna top it with three ounces of ginger ale. You can hit it with like a dash or two of angusterra bitters and then garnish it with a rosemary sprig. This is a delicious drink. I am in love with
this thing. I want to make it constantly. But the whole idea that I was trying to work on while I made this was that I wanted to make a drink that a good hostess could offer any of her guests with the option that whatever spirit of their choice would go into it and they would all work. So if you want to add an ounce and a half of gin great an ounce and a half of vodka, great an ounce and a half of the whiskey of
your choice. Whether you're into like Canadian whiskey or a rye or a bourbon, they're all gonna work in this drink. The flavor of it is what I would call refined, but not stuffy. It's interesting. The flavors all do nice things together, but it's not like, fancy, just drink your drink. I made mine with a rhubarb gin that I had found at our local liquor story recently.
I was delicious, delicious.
But I really wanted to come up with something that, you know, if you were having a soiree and you wanted like your signature drink or whatever, you could make and then the guests all. You have made them all feel comfortable by saying, if you would like to add the spirit of your choice, we can absolutely do that. But if you don't want any, the main drink is fine, and it has no alcohol. Donna obviously for some people, if you really are hardcore and you do absolutely not
a drop, leave those bitters out. It's not a big change trips that just adds a little flavors in to it. But this felt like the best way I could stay in line and honor Emily Post's ideology while still making drinks of plenty. This is also a really easy one to batch. If you are having people over, you can the rosemary syrup and the lemon juice and pineapple nectar. Just scale up your numbers, make a picture and then just add that top it with your ginger ales so
you still have bubbles when people drinking it. And then obviously you can stir in whatever spirit they delight in and that will make it easy.
Piec.
I want to try this with Bourbon day.
I actually have pineapple ube and the refrigerator right now, so I will be experimenting with different ones.
I know it will work, but I want a different You know, recently we had Rye on the show. I think I might want to play with that this evening. But in any case, that is good conduct because it's the best way I could think of to make everybody who might be at your house comfortable. This happens a lot. I think most of our mocktail drinkers in the crowd know that when you go out, you don't have a lot of options for drinks, and even if you go
to a party. There are not a lot of great non alcoholic drinks that are actually drinks that are like put together as a thing and not just here is your ginger Ale with a little grenadine in it or whatever, which is fine if that's what you love, that's fine. But the idea of making something that is uniquely itself and a little bit special so everybody feels like they're included right out of the jump and you're not the weird outlier.
It reminds me of the vegetarian party problem, where you're always a flatbread with rist and red peppers.
Yes, I'm sorry to the vegetarians in the crowd, because I have seen it happen. Some people that don't drink are perfectly happy and are like I would like ginger ale or a club soda or whatever, and that's totally cool. But I like the idea of welcoming people with the drink that everyone can partake in. It's very emily post inclusive. Make everybody feel good. That's my hippie rejoinder, the good conduct. We are so grateful that you were here with us.
If you were here with us in our physical space, I would make pictures and pictures of this for everyone to drink, and we will be right back here next week with another story of blackmail and another coercion concoction. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.