Girl Sleuth (11 page)

 

Miss Harriet Stratemeyer of 171 North Seventh Street . . . with several others, carried valuable records from the burning building. Miss Stratemeyer also helped organize the endless chains of students that passed things along . . . As the girls in the building or in the chain gangs became exhausted, others stepped in at a quiet word of command.

 

Within half an hour from the time the alarm had first gone out, the building was completely gone. The firefighters who had finally arrived had been unable to get enough pressure in their hoses to reach the flames high above, and within minutes of their arrival had turned their attention instead to protecting other structures. Henry Durant's prized hall, built upon the very first stones laid on the campus in 1871, had been reduced to a shell of brick wall filled with a pile of blackened, smoking timber.
Charred wood was found on rooftops as far as a mile away, and many speculated that only the cold, rainy weather, which had filled the calm air with mist, had kept the flames from spreading not only to other buildings on the Wellesley campus but to the town itself.

But Wellesley College would not be cowed. As the president wrote in her year-end report, “No one thought of Self; everyone thought for the College, and the result was greater than one could have believed.” At 8:30 that morning, just three and a half hours after the building had come down, the students and faculty assembled for chapel at the regular time. Many were dressed in borrowed clothing, and the remains of College Hall were still smoldering nearby. The choir sang, “Oh God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,” and President Pendleton said a prayer of thanks for the preservation of lives, before announcing that school would recess for spring vacation two weeks early and would reopen on the planned day of return. As offers of lodging, money, and goods from the town poured in and the railroad began to make special stops at the Wellesley station to ferry students home, the girls quickly packed what they could and left campus. One cheery soul commented on their good fortune in that “the fire was before and not after Easter shopping!”

“Attired in costumes plainly not their own, and carrying little baggage save magazines and musical instruments, about one hundred Wellesley College students arrived at the Grand Central Station last night at half-past six o'clock, bound for their homes,” ran an article in the
New York Herald.
Ever cautious of how they represented their school, many of the girls “refused to admit that there had ever been a fire.” Coming at last upon a clutch of girls who had been separated from their chaperone, the dogged reporter was finally able to get some facts. He tried to interview Harriet as well, but she said that “she hadn't even seen the fire, living outside the college confines.” Only after she got permission from the faculty adviser to the Press Board did Harriet feel free to discuss her experiences.

Others, however, did not hold back. A school janitor, quoted in one of the hundreds of stories about the fire that came out all over the country, was nothing short of awestruck at the girls' behavior in a moment of crisis. “This heroine has not been and cannot be excelled,” he told his interviewer. “For they were calm, determined, and unafraid, and chatted in quiet tones as they worked in the cold damp morning, performing feats that would be tests for young men of their years.” Harriet's own account of the fire included her assertion that “not one girl flinched or fainted at the work before them.” Though she would not own up to it, she herself fit this description well. A letter from one of her first-year roommates that reached Harriet at home over the vacation attested to her bravery at the scene of the fire: “Some style to Billie [Harriet's nickname] the Heroine! I sent all those things (letter and all) to Mother so she can see what kind of a girl I roomed with. Meanwhile we are all bursting with pride.”

Harriet's parents, relieved that she had made it home unharmed, were also touched by her ordeal. Edward gave a generous donation to the Fire Fund almost immediately. Soon thereafter, Harriet and her fellow Press Board members announced that they would be donating their annual earnings to the Fire Fund as well. As for Lenna, she wrote to her elder daughter in pure admiration: “Whoever you inherited the nerve from in the family to go thru such an ordeal I'm sure I don't know.”

When the students arrived back on campus in early April, provisional classroom and office space was almost completed, in the form of a wood-frame building that was thrown up in fifteen days and nicknamed the “Hen-Coop.” Other colleges and students donated money and laboratory supplies (it was thought that the fire had perhaps started in the Zoology Lab, and much of the college's scientific equipment was replaced through gifts from other schools). The freshman and sophomore classes at Barnard took up a collection and sent $400, and many publishers donated books to replace the more than five thousand that had been destroyed. Thanks to the quick and astonishing mind of the dean's secretary, Mary Frazer Smith, classes started up again without interruption. In the hours between the fire and the triumphant chapel service, she had sat down at the president's house and written out both the class and examination schedules for the remainder of the year from memory.

Miss Frazer Smith and the indomitable spirit of both faculty and students ensured that the year finished off successfully. Indeed, commencement week for the 304 graduating members of the class of 1914—which included a senior class play, a garden party, and various concerts—was a thoroughly joyous affair. Engraved invitations were mailed out to family and friends, and the festivities culminated in the commencement exercises on June 16, replete with music by Verdi and Handel and followed by a luncheon. The Stratemeyer family attended the full week of events and had a grand time. Edward, flushed with happiness over his daughter's success, also had some thoughts about her immediate future. Writing to a friend and business acquaintance, he said: “I am just back from Wellesley with the whole family. We had a most delightful time at Harriet's graduation, the exercises lasting a week. She came through with flying colors and was offered a position at the college this Fall,—and she has also received three other offers, to teach, etc. But I think she will take a much-needed rest for the present.”

Edward had thought to take Harriet to Europe as a graduation present. But, as he wrote to a friend: “Everything in Newark is War and the excitement is intense. We are mighty glad Hattie and I didn't go to Europe, as once planned.” Instead, Edward took his daughter to Maine for a vacation. Perhaps he was trying to distract her from the fact that he had forced her to turn down not just the job offer from Wellesley but all the others as well. Among them were a post at the
Boston Globe,
which had gotten to know Harriet through her work with the Press Board; a teaching job; and, most unlikely, a job as a pianist in the Poconos. Edward, however, would have none of it. He wanted his daughter home, where he could take care of her until she was safely married. She was allowed to take a course in practical nursing at the Newark YWCA and to volunteer at the Home for Incurables, but otherwise he expected her to remain under his care. It was a frustrating turn of events not at all to Harriet's liking, and she and her father wrangled for some time. “He felt that as long as a father could take care of his daughter, he should,” she remembered later. Though he was employing several women writers by this time and clearly appreciated and admired their work (he was generous with praise in his letters to authors and never failed to compliment a scene or bit of dialogue he especially liked), they were a separate breed from his daughters. “His idea of a woman writing was to earn a living,” Harriet said, “and this was unnecessary [for me].”

Though Harriet's headstrong personality had been tempered during her time at Wellesley, it was not banished for good. She argued with her father for so long that he eventually gave in and said that if she had to work, she would work for him. Not in the office in Manhattan, of course—he had recently moved his operations to 17 Madison Avenue, where he worked with his secretary, Harriet Otis Smith—for a true woman of the upper classes did not go into an office. Instead, a compromise was struck. Harriet would be allowed to edit manuscripts and galley proofs, but only in the privacy of her parents' home. Nevertheless, she managed to learn a great deal about her father's winning formula. Just reading the books, which she had not done much of before, taught her about ending chapters on a suspenseful note and making sure that the first page of each story was good enough to make a reader continue. Looking over a book manuscript one afternoon, she discovered an entire page of action that had been carefully written by a ghostwriter and then crossed out by Stratemeyer in the editing process. Instead, written at the top of the page was the single word “CRASH!” On another, the entire introduction had been replaced by one emphatic “Bang!”

But Harriet's career as a junior editor was to be short-lived. Just as her father had planned, it endured only until another man assumed responsibility for her well-being. Over the course of her first year home after college, her relationship with Russell Vroom Adams, who had been her ardent admirer for years, intensified. He had become an investment banker in the intervening period and felt he was prepared to take care of Harriet in the style to which she was accustomed. The match was approved, the couple got engaged, and the Stratemeyer household was thrown into happy chaos.

In October of 1915, Edward wrote to one of his most prodigious authors, assuming the role of the grumbling patriarch: “On the 20th, my older daughter gets married, so matters at our house are pretty lively just now.” The wedding took place at the Stratemeyer home at 6:30 on a Wednesday evening, with the family's Presbyterian minister presiding. Harriet, who was given away by her father, wore an elaborate dress concocted of white satin and “real” lace, complete with a train and flared standing collar. Her veil was done up with a cluster of orange blossoms, and she wore as her ornament a wristwatch that Russell had given her. The bridesmaids wore pink and blue, and Lenna Stratemeyer wore deep purple velvet adorned with silver lace and a diamond or two. Though the guests numbered under one hundred, Edward spared no expense. The house was resplendent with yellow and white flowers and potted palms, and a string orchestra played well into the night. When the young couple left for their honeymoon in New Orleans by boat, Harriet was attired in a chic black traveling outfit, including a velvet hat trimmed with autumn flowers. It was a grand affair all around, lush and expensive.

One important element, however, cost nothing, for it was made of a family heirloom. Lest she should forget her bond to her family and her father, she would literally wear it on her finger every day. As she vowed to marry Russell and be true to him, Harriet accepted a wedding band that had been formed from a nugget of gold that her grandfather Henry Stratemeyer had dug up in 1849. Though she had changed her name to Adams, the ring, along with what was now her middle name, ensured that, devoted to Russell as she was and would always be, she remained a Stratemeyer.

4

“
FROSH WOMEN WIN SWIMMING EVENT!
”

“
FROSH CO-EDS WIN IN INITIAL GAME!
”

“
HAWKEYE SWIMMERS GIVE EXHIBITIONS AT THE BIG DIPPER!
”

H
EADLINE AFTER HEADLINE
trumpeting athletic events at the University of Iowa—whose school nickname was the Hawkeyes—ran in the school newspaper, the
Daily Iowan,
in the fall of 1922. All of them attested to the triumph and dominance of Iowa's powerful sports teams. Seventeen-year-old Mildred Augustine, who had just arrived from Ladora—forty miles and a world away—was a member of many of them.

She played right guard on the basketball team, was on the freshman soccer team, and made a short-lived effort to run track as well. Most importantly, she was a proud member of the Seals Club, a competitive swimming team for women that specialized in “Style Revues,” relays, and fancy diving. It had been formed just prior to her freshman year in order to promote swimming among university women and had been so successful that by 1922 the sport was “perhaps the most prominent and popular” for women at the university (a trend that reflected a new national interest in swimming for women as well). Membership in the Seals was by audition only, and the competition was fierce. The group often gave elaborate shows that displayed their cutting-edge swim attire (they showed most but not all of their legs, and bare arms were a matter of course).

But the Seals were more than just fashion plates. They had been formed as a counterpart to the men's swimming club, the Eels, and one of the special features of all Seals and Eels exhibitions was coed relays. On one occasion when the Eels were giving a show at the Iowa City municipal swimming pool, known as “the Big Dipper,” this report followed in the
Daily Iowan:
“The feature event of the evening was the exhibitions given by Captain McCullough of the University 1923–24 team . . . In a mixed relay with a man swimming against a woman, Mildred Augustine touched the wall a few seconds before McCullough did.” Even the captain of the men's team, older than her by several years, was no match for the slender first-year from Ladora.