He must have sensed these thoughts even though I did not voice them, because he went on with a measured tone: “Now, Budgie, there’s a whole world outside of Battle Creek, and I aim for you to take it on.”
I felt the fight go out of me as I heard the conviction in his voice. It was decided, whether I wanted it or not. Nobody overpowered Papa once he’d set his mind to something. “But there’s more,” he said. “And you can quit giving me that frown, because it’s not all bad.”
“Oh?”
“I’m going with you.”
“To…to boarding school?” I frowned again, confused. Was such a thing allowed?
“Well, not to Mount Vernon, no. I think I’m beyond the hope of any finishing school, no matter how first-rate it is. But I’ll be going with you to the capital.”
“You will?”
He nodded. “That’s right. The Posts have big things up ahead. And I think our nation’s capital is the place to be.”
I didn’t doubt that what he said was true, simply because I had learned years earlier never to bet against C. W. Post, but that didn’t mean I understood what could possibly be coming next.
Chapter 6
Washington, D.C.
January 1902
I was the envy of every girl in my class at the Mount Vernon Seminary as I left our school’s brownstone, riding by covered coach with my parents until we stopped under the grand portico of the White House. President Theodore Roosevelt had been in office only a few months, taking over after President McKinley’s shocking assassination the previous autumn, and he was hosting a New Year’s reception to usher in his first full year as commander in chief.
Compared to the raw January nights we had known back in Battle Creek, the night felt balmy here in what had previously been Potomac swampland. As we stepped inside, greeted by liveried attendants in immaculate suits of dark blue and cream, the White House glowed warm and bright. Papa helped me out of my mink stole as a footman stepped forward to receive it. Inside, the mob of close-pressed bodies filled every corner of the large space, women with neatly coiffed hair piled high in the bouffant style, men in tailcoats and gloves, the crowd as decorous and plentiful as the arrangements of pine and holly that gave the grand White House rooms their festive holiday feel. Our new president was famously opposed to the American tradition of chopping down trees at Christmas, being a fierce defender of the woods, but I saw that he’d put the White House staff to work at decking the grand rooms with plenty of other yuletide accoutrements, with fragrant wreaths and berried garlands, red bows and colorful blown-glass ornaments.
“Here we are, Budgie. Ella.” Papa directed us forward through the large Blue Room. As we took our place in the massive queue, awaiting our turn to greet the president and first lady and members of the cabinet, I noticed how in spite of the candlelit warmth of the house, the relations between Mother and Papa could not have been frostier. It had been that way for months, ever since our move to Washington. Papa had taken a spacious brownstone on Vermont Avenue and had opened up a Post Cereal office just a short walk’s distance. Mother had moved with us but, to my surprise, had taken lodgings of her own, a furnished suite of rooms just a few blocks from my school on leafy M Street. There was now not even the pretense of any marital union between my parents; Mother still spent a lot of her time visiting various spa towns seeking cures for her headaches and nerves, and when she was in town, my visits to her home never included Papa.
As we neared the front of the line to greet the president, affectionately called “Teddy” by the press and the adoring public, my eyes fixed on the tall, striking young woman who stood nearby. Alice Roosevelt was in the midst of some lively conversation, surrounded by a gaggle of admiring young men and eager newspaper reporters. The First Daughter was already famous—infamous—as the president’s brash and free-spirited eldest child. Newspapers loved nothing more than to fill their pages with stories of her sharp-tongued quips, her midnight escapades with other Washington socialites and their roguish suitors, and her attendance at parties with her pet snake, named Emily Spinach, slithering freely in her pocket. Reporters—and the public—could not get enough details about how Alice and her siblings kept the White House staff constantly on their toes, rigging silver trays to slide down the wide stairways and bringing horses and other animals into the bedrooms of the storied old home.
But the favorite topic, it seemed, was whether America’s First Family would be hosting a wedding in the White House during Teddy’s tenure. To see the columns tell it, every ambitious young man in America hoped to marry the beautiful Alice and dance at a wedding reception given by the country’s most powerful father. Like all the young girls in America, I had read plenty about Alice, and so now I eagerly took in all the details of her appearance in the flesh, noting the flattering cut of her dress, the stylish waves of her upswept dark hair. Her gown was a bright shade already being called “Alice blue” because of how it complimented her bright eyes, eyes that had made her father cry when he’d first beheld her as a newborn, so the story went, for their resemblance to those of the beautiful mother who had borne the baby and then perished on the birthing bed. Teddy had gone on to remarry and now had five more children, and the papers also liked to report on the tiffs between the First Lady and her spirited stepdaughter.