* * *
Now that I had established for the press and the gossip circles that I was back, settled in my splendid new home and ready to host again, the columns began churning with fresh gossip and speculation. “She’s America’s Hostess, known for throwing the best dinners and the liveliest dances. Now she just needs to find her dancing partner.”
“Is it true what I’m hearing, Mom?” Deenie—no, Dina, now that she wanted to be called by her movie star name, Dina Merrill, heralded as she was as our country’s next Grace Kelly—was at Hillwood for a visit that autumn, and she stared at me with a teasing smile on that mild, sunny Wednesday morning.
“Well, that depends.”
“On?”
“On what you are hearing.”
Dina sighed. “They say you’re being courted by some Texan oilman. And that you’re madly in love.”
“That so?” I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. It was a new man each day, according to those pesky reporters, but I had not yet heard of this latest one. “Well, he sounds great. I’d like to meet him.”
Dina laughed a moment, but then her features turned serious. “Do you really think you would marry again, Mother?”
I weighed my words carefully, answering after a long pause: “Not anytime soon, my dear. And certainly not with anyone I’ve already met.”
I could see my daughter’s chest deflate with a relieved exhale.
“My goal now is to do good for this world that has given me so much. Wealth is a great responsibility, more than it is a privilege.”
“All right,” Dina said, her tone tentative. “But, you have not ruled it out entirely?”
“Ruled what out?”
“Mother!”
I chortled. “Deenie, when you’ve been around as long as I have, you learn to never rule anything out.”
* * *
—
And so, because I was happiest when I was at work, I set to work. As much as I loved studying art and collecting antiques, music had also always played a meaningful part in my life, going back to my youth as a dance student in Battle Creek and right up to the present, when I’d rebuilt my home specifically to include a ballroom. I did not want classical music or traditional dancing to fall into distant memory in the era of rock ’n’ roll, so I had decided to endow a program through the National Symphony Orchestra called Music for Young America, in which the orchestra would put on concerts for students and teach our jukebox-crazed youngsters about the importance of the classics.
I gave generously to schools—to my beloved Mount Vernon Seminary but also dozens of other high schools and universities throughout the country. I donated to the Boy Scouts, to the Red Cross, to churches and food pantries and hospitals. I tried to help anyone who asked, whether an organization that sent a formal letter or petition or simply an individual who worked in my kitchen who had the look of someone struggling. I never wanted thanks. And yet, the thanks came rolling in, in the form of medals and buildings bearing my name, awards and parties given in my honor.
But the best thanks of all came at the end of that year, just before Thanksgiving. My daughters appeared in my bedroom one cool, clear morning and insisted that I put on a blindfold. For weeks I’d been told not to walk out toward the woods past my rose gardens. I knew they were working on something out there, with the groundskeepers and the gardeners and I did not know whom else. It had been difficult not to take a peek, but I’d stuck to my word.
“You promise you haven’t cheated?” Dina asked, as she settled the blindfold in place over the bridge of my nose and took my hand.
“I haven’t cheated and I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re about to do to me,” I answered, taking my first tenuous steps as she led me out of my bedroom.
My daughters did not remove the blindfold as they guided me down the front stairs and out onto the back terrace, from where I was led by the hand toward the garden. There, on the flagstone path, I was permitted to blink my eyes open as we walked past bushes, past the magnolia and cherry trees, until eventually we came to something I had never seen before: a round patio giving out over a view of the grounds. And there, etched into dappled marble, were the words:
FRIENDSHIP WALK, HILLWOOD
DEDICATED BY HER FRIENDS
AS A TRIBUTE TO
MARJORIE MERRIWEATHER POST
FOR HER GENEROUS NATURE
LOVE OF BEAUTY
AND DEVOTION TO HUMAN NEEDS
“My goodness!” I looked around, seeing the flagstone circle with benches, hemmed by trees and shrubs as well as small busts of bronze eagles and four larger statues, each one a charming cherub.