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American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post by Nancy Rubin Stuart: book review



American Empress (2013) is the history of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the cereal-company heiress and socialite who built several mansions, including the Mar-A-Lago at Palm Beach, Florida – now President Donald Trump’s private country club. 

Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973), born in middle-class Midwest, inherited a fortune from her father at the age of 27. She was both a lover of luxury and an anonymous generous philanthropist.  

Called the Queen of Washington DC and the Queen of Palm Beach, she had a network of high-profile friendships, married four times, and accumulated property, such as the 54-room Fifth Avenue apartment in New York, and the 177-acre country estate on Long Island during the height of the Roaring Twenties – the 1920s. This is reminiscent of Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby!

Her husbands included investment banker Edward Close; stockbroker Edward Hutton; Joseph Davies the ambassador to Soviet Russia under Stalin; and businessman Herbert May.

This is the story of her life, poise and beauty, husbands and children, the war years, influences, independence, extravagance, business acumen (such as buying the rapid-freeze frozen food company Birdseye), how she spent her money, and her golden rules of propriety, punctuality, and perfect posture: ‘she would not tolerate a house that was dark, a movie that ended sadly, or a life that was without hope.’

The chapter on the design and construction of Mar-a-Lago is interesting; completed in 1927 it cost $2.5 million. It was at the age of 40 in 1927 that she reassessed her life and began to give away her wealth. Then there was the stock market crash of 1929 – the end of the Golden Twenties and the beginning of the Depression. 

The chapters about her time in Moscow, as the first ambassadress to Russia, accompanying her third husband Joseph Davies in 1936, are also very interesting – arriving with 50 pieces of hand luggage and 30 trunks! 

This semi-biography of Marjorie Merriweather Post presents luxurious frivolousness with serious business sense, and a historical account of the life and times she lived in. It’s an interesting book. 







MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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