The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post
Allison Pataki
I am not the richest woman in the world. There are others better off than I am. The only difference is that I do more with mine. I put it to work.
—Marjorie Merriweather Post Beauty is truth, truth beauty, That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
—John Keats
Prologue
Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida
1968
“Mrs. Post, the president and first lady are here to see you.”
“Thank you, Frank. You can show them in.” I smooth the ripples of my slate-blue skirt and rise, my spine going straight, my heart speeding to a gallop. From across the room, I catch my reflection in the mirror—the thick glint of diamonds at my neck, my ears, my wrists. Eyes a vibrant blue, bright and alert, even if surrounded by an etching of fine lines wrought by my many full years. Long silver waves of hair, pulled back, tidy and upswept. Oh, and this room. This grand room, its sprawling confines pierced by windows that open out over lush lawns and sapphire sea. Yes, it’s fine indeed; I’ve done some job on this place. I clear my throat, allowing just the subtlest of nods. I was right to request that the meeting take place here, rather than at the White House.
The click of footsteps on the stone floor, and I know that the president approaches. I wonder if he suspects anything; if he knows about the offer I am going to make him. Mrs. Post, the president and first lady are here to see you. It could have been any number of presidents being announced by my staffer. These commanders in chief keep changing every four to eight years, but I remain at my post to greet and host them all. I blink, and I’m a girl of fourteen, dressed in bright blue, bandying with Alice Roosevelt at a White House ball. And then there I am, in command of a castle floating between cloud and sea, a space grander than anything my friends the Vanderbilts or Windsors have ever enjoyed. I am Lady Bountiful, ladling soup to women with as much hunger in their eyes as in their sunken frames. The prism of memory shifts yet again, and there I am, crouching low, surrounded by the murdered Tsar’s treasures in a dark Moscow warehouse. Next I’m racing through torpedo-laced waters, the Nazis nipping at my wake, the RAF bombers overhead ripping the sky with angry thunder. Then I am in my library, the perfume of summer blooms intoxicating as I greet a tall, timid, big-eyed brunette, doing my best to put the young Mrs. Jackie Kennedy at ease.
But all of that is in the past. I blink again, coming back to the present, as this new president and first lady cross the threshold of my living room and stride toward me. Lady Bird Johnson is rose-cheeked and smiling as she extends her arms for a hug. “Oh, Mrs. Post, how wonderful to be here. Every time I step into one of your homes, it’s like I’ve stepped into some beautiful Neverland.”
I smile, returning the first lady’s greeting. I may live like an empress, but I’ve never asked an emperor to pick up the bill. And since I’ve never had a crown for which to answer, I suppose you might say I’m that much better off. I turn next to her husband, eager to make my offer that could change the lives of these presidents. I’ve changed so many lives already. And I’ve changed your life, too. I know that as a certainty. How can that be, you may ask, when you do not even know my name? Who am I?
Well, the answer is, and has always been, that I am Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Chapter 1
Battle Creek, Michigan
Winter 1891
I was raised in religion, but it was not God who loomed largest over my girlhood and its earliest memories. That was Charles William Post, Charlie, or simply C.W. to those who knew him best. To me, he was only ever Papa.
He cut no particularly imposing figure, what with his narrow frame, standing at just over six feet tall, and his fine, blue-eyed smile. But the man molded my world, and then he went on and changed everybody else’s as well.
You might say the same about my education, too, for although I went to school for all of my girlhood, it was on Papa’s lap that I did the learning that would shape me. How Papa could spin a story, building worlds in my young mind until I came to believe that just about anything was possible. Because to Papa, anything was. There were the tales of the tall Springfield lawyer whom Papa admired, a family friend by the name of Mr. Abe Lincoln, who taught himself to read as a boy in a drafty log hut with nothing more than a tattered Bible and yet somehow found himself in charge of the White House. Of course Papa—and then I—knew all the presidents, but I loved the stories about Mr. Lincoln the best; Papa had made this singular man a friend while they lived in Springfield, after they’d both sprung up from nothing but their own grit and the fertile frontier soil.