1929
Fall found us back in Manhattan, where I awoke one chilly morning to stare through my picture windows and see Central Park’s trees tinged with shades of bright amber, gold, and orange. I took a slow sip of my Postum and felt a warm sense of contentment. Ned had already left for the office, and I could hear Deenie, now six, laughing in the hallways as she played chase with her nanny.
My little Deenie. The child continued to be the delight of my life, having traveled throughout England with Ned and me over the summer and delighted in the chance to join us for a private audience with King George V and Queen Mary. There, to my stunned surprise, the queen had even congratulated me on our completion of Mar-a-Lago, saying she had read all about the home and she was eager to see it.
The air in New York was getting cooler, and soon we would decamp to Palm Beach. Since we had finished our construction and I had convinced Ned to forgive me for the price of it, things had been harmonious for our scattered family. General Foods was soaring, and we’d soon make back the money we’d spent on Birdseye’s company. My Adelaide, recently married, was living in a lovely apartment close by with her new husband, Tim Durant, and she was expecting—my first grandchild. Eleanor, just shy of her twentieth birthday, was finished with school and back in New York City, a charming young lady with no shortage of men giving suit for her time and attention. Yes, things were quite all right in the world, I noted, smiling to myself as I rang my bell to dress.
Later that day, after I’d caught up on letters, after lunch and a walk with Deenie through the park and a quick trip to Bergdorf’s for a new pair of autumn gloves, I picked up the newspaper, wondering what they’d have written about me in the latest columns. Although, these days, there was just as much interest in my Adelaide and Eleanor as fixtures of the Manhattan social set, a fact that displeased the former and delighted the latter. But before I could even skim the front page, a sound at the bedroom door pulled my attention up, and I stared at the threshold to see my frowning husband as he burst in. “Ned, dear?” We had plans to leave with Deenie for the Gold Coast that evening, but not for several more hours. What was he doing home?
My husband said nothing as he strode into the room, his face in crumpled and inscrutable disarray, his skin the color of ash. I put the paper slowly to the side. “What is it?”
He looked up and into my eyes as if he had only just realized I was in the room. I noticed the quiver of his hands. And then, finally, with a voice thin and hollow, he said simply, “They are calling it the Great Crash.”
* * *
They were also calling it Black Thursday. And then Black Friday. And then Black Monday. And then Black Tuesday. The worst days in Wall Street’s history. The largest and cruelest loss of wealth in our nation’s history. The economy had not simply crashed—it had cratered. After a decade of runaway profits and risky credit and recklessly optimistic excess, we were plummeting uncontrollably toward a ruthless reckoning. It would be not only a recession, but far worse. A depression. A very great depression.
I sat back in stunned silence, the breath catching in my throat as the radio droned on. It felt absurd that in just the few months prior I had been dining with a king and queen in London. Fretting over Mar-a-Lago’s golden light fixtures. Ordering an entirely new season of custom gowns from Paris and London. Dressing for dinner parties wearing precious jewels as big as eggs.
Each day brought fresh news of horror and loss. Grown men hurling themselves from their Manhattan office windows. Droughts and food shortages stretching from the Midwest to California that would leave millions starving. This, when I’d just spent millions building myself a palace in Palm Beach. Millions more on clothing and parties and yachting and travel. The past decade had been a time of ravenous, reckless consumption, but now America stared down a new decade that promised to bring deep and punishing hunger of a very different sort.
Like most everyone else in the country, I was poised to lose profits, but I myself would never go hungry. I would never be desperate. I would continue to enjoy wealth and privilege beyond what most others in the world could even imagine. People would always need to eat, and thus General Foods would continue to do fine business; in fact, our affordable and ready-made foods would do a fair bit of good for those who suddenly lost access to fresh crops and more costly seasonal produce. And so I heard Papa’s voice as clear as if he stood there in the room with me: Time to put on your good head, Budgie.
If I was to live amid such splendor and enjoy such wealth, I would use it for good. That had always been the point of our Post wealth, and that philosophy was needed now, perhaps more than ever before. As Papa had taught me to do as a young girl returning home from school to a white barn that smelled of wheat and molasses, I would roll up my sleeves and I would get to work.