Girl Sleuth (25 page)

But the real story was altogether different. In a letter to a dear college friend that same year, Harriet spent the first half confiding about how hard it was to find reliable help to keep her household running while she ran the Syndicate. Even with all her money, she was not immune to the problems of balancing motherhood and career. “As soon as the children were all home and my sister leaving for a month's vacation, my housekeeper-maid told me that she was leaving . . . So at present, along with many other things, I am looking for a satisfactory woman, and am in a quandry [
sic
] . . . sometimes I can hardly figure out how I am going to swim out of all the things I am trying to do.”

It was all, however, for the sake of her profession, which now that she had it, she would not dream of giving up. “You and I, Rig, were such infants in college we missed a lot,” she finished her letter. “And though it is pleasant to feel that one's life is beginning at forty, nevertheless, it is regrettable to realize that one missed so much from fourteen to forty. All we can say is that we are glad we are not going to miss it entirely.”

Rai! Rai!
Elephants, Charms, Indians,
Drugs, Snakes, Treasure, Nancy Drew!
Nancy Drew!
Rai! Rai! Rai!
Will Mildred Wirt please come forward
to receive her Cum Laude.

 

S
O BEGAN
a giddy letter from Harriet to Edna in mid-1936. “Rai” was the name of a sinister circus elephant trainer in the latest Nancy Drew book,
The Mystery of the Ivory Charm,
from which the references to drugs, treasure, and all the other exotic items listed in Harriet's epistolary cheer also came. Nancy—who begins
Ivory Charm
“neatly dressed in a blue traveling suit, her golden hair bound snugly beneath a modish little hat”—is soon caught in a death grip by an escaped jungle snake and plunged headlong into adventure. The superstitious Rai, who believes Nancy is saved not by the animal trainer who calms the snake but by her own powers, gives her a tiny ivory elephant as a token of his admiration. Being, apparently, an amateur art historian, Nancy does not make “the mistake of believing that it was a cheap, crudely made trinket.” Her sleuthing instincts are confirmed when Rai tells her, “It has a story which fades far back into the past—a strange tale of a little known, mystic province of India. This charm was once a prized possession of a great ruler—a Maharajah who is said to have been endowed with supernatural powers.” The charm, naturally, has a much more significant secret than this vaguely delineated myth. Nancy eventually uncovers it, but not before she takes in a runaway circus boy who turns out to be a lost rajah, gets to shout “Arrest that man!” and gives mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the boy king at a critical moment “with a sureness of method that surprised even the detectives.” The story ends with Ned trying to persuade her not to go to India at the invitation of the young royal. “‘I'm sure I'd love India,' the girl said musingly. ‘But it's so far away,' Ned protested. ‘Perhaps,' Nancy agreed, smiling. ‘But I would go to the very ends of the earth to find another mystery.'”

Mildred pulled it all off without a hitch, including the collapse of a secret tunnel that almost buries Nancy and her father alive, several trances, a kidnapping, a helpful if somewhat meat-headed intervention by Ned (“Why didn't someone tell me I was carrying jewels?” he mutters after spilling the precious cargo on the ground), and a kind of mini-tour of the customs and traditions of India placed in the mouth of a helpful professor Nancy consults about instructing her new charge. Harriet was thrilled.

“[The check] went out by mail today,” she continued jubilantly in her letter to Edna, who was at the Jersey Shore. “We think the lady in Cleveland did herself proud, and as we are always more adverse in our criticism than you, we have no doubt but that you will find the story excellent. We shall mail it to you tomorrow for your perusal. I did not have the pencil in my hand until I had reached
[>]
. I think the story will need so few corrections that I might as well do it as I go along.” With Nancy Drew number thirteen, published in 1936, Harriet, Edna, and Mildred had reached the apex of their working relationship.

It was all the more impressive considering Mildred's schedule. Though it would take America's entry into World War II to really put an end to the Depression, book publishing was finally recovering somewhat and orders were rolling in almost faster than she could keep up with them. In that same year, a Dana Girls book and two Kay Traceys she had written for the Syndicate were published, along with two books in her new Mildred A. Wirt Mystery stories (put out by Cupples & Leon), a stand-alone girls' novel called
Carolina Castle,
and the first three books in her Penny Nichols series, also mysteries, written under the name Joan Clark. In 1937 another eleven books in those and other series—including two more Nancy Drews—were published. It seemed the more pressure she was under, the faster and better she could write.

For not only were Harriet and Edna pleased with
The Mystery of the Ivory Charm,
they were complimentary about Mildred's recent work on the Kay Tracey books as well, in spite of getting after her to keep her characters speaking the way they thought girls should express themselves. “We have found this story well handled as a mystery. It is baffling, and the revelation is interestingly delineated,” Edna wrote to her. “[But] we will have to round out and develop the conversation between our heroine and her chums, tempering their speech at times. For instance, you often say ‘she informed,' which is decidedly abrupt and not youthful.”

It was only logical that a person who had been in as much of a hurry to grow up and speak like an adult as Mildred might occasionally lose her grasp on someone else's idea of girlish talk, and her journalism training probably didn't help, either. But Harriet and Edna became more and more disapproving of Mildred's characterization of girls and the kind of language she had them use in almost every manuscript. “Our only criticism is that we believe Kay and her chums at times speak too sarcastically and audaciously for growing girls. The story has a boyish ring throughout which we will temper to conform with more girlish ideals,” Edna wrote to her at one point. The following year it was a similar line: “The writing is well done and the only changes we are making are along the lines of softening the characters of both Kay and the tramp. The heroine seems a bit too officious at times.”

Mildred's portrayal of Nancy Drew, too, came under fire. “Enclosed is the outline for the new Nancy Drew story,
The Clue of the Tapping Heels,
” Harriet wrote to her. “As you write, will you please bear in mind two things—in your zeal for synonyms in the latest manuscript you included a generous number of words beyond the comprehension of the average girl reader of our stories. We think you have improved a great deal in your writing during the past few years, but once in a while the phraseology is really
too good—in other words, a bit adult for our yarns.” In particular, she thought, Mildred was unaware of what it meant to behave like a proper girl. “We have already mentioned to you the idea of making the heroines too officious. This does not occur very often, but once in a while Nancy or Kay will get beyond the bounds of respectfulness for their elders. After all, they are a bit young to order around police officials and doctors!”

While Mildred was surprised by all of these comments, she was not unwilling to alter her style. “It never occurred to me that the use of ‘she informed' was brusque or unusual,” she replied, “and there are perhaps other expressions of mine which could be altered to meet your wishes, if I know just what they are.” No doubt she felt she had plenty of other places besides Syndicate books to make her girls talk as she wished. Indeed, Sally Lansing, the heroine of
The Hollow Wall Mystery,
the second title in the Mildred A. Wirt Mystery stories, both “grumbled” and “declared in a low tone” within the first few pages of the book. Her chum Victoria, not to be outdone, said things “firmly” and also “commented grimly.” These girls talked the way Mildred talked, with an edge that served them well in a world where men and boys were still mostly in control.

Still, the Syndicate remained a major supplier of work to Mildred, and assignments and outlines flew fast and furious through the mail to Cleveland in the first half of 1937. In January of that year, Edna wrote to her to ask if she would be interested in doing another Kay Tracey volume. Mildred replied with a shot of her usual brisk professionalism: “I am just completing a book but will have it finished within ten days and will be very glad to write the new Kay Tracey for you, forwarding it in approximately the usual time.”

Her next paragraph, however, contained a revelation that made her ability to write so much and so well even more astonishing. “You and Mrs. Adams may be interested to know that early in November I gave birth to a blue-eyed, red headed baby girl,” she wrote. “My work this past year was somewhat difficult, but at present I am in excellent health, thoroughly enjoying both my writing and the new baby.” In contrast to many of the other writers for the Syndicate, fathers included, who asked for extra time when there was a new addition to the family, Mildred had not only not breathed a word of her situation, but had worked harder than ever while expecting. Motherhood had no doubt loomed as an unwelcome specter for a woman who, unlike Harriet, was not invested in family life or parenthood in the slightest. The relentless writing, in addition to providing some extra cash in anticipation of the new family member, was probably her best effort to make sure her career did not slip away from her when the baby arrived, a necessity for someone who measured her self-worth by the number of pages she could turn out each month.

Harriet and Edna were amazed. They sent her the plot for
The Secret at the Windmill
later that month, saying, “We hope you will find this story interesting to write and that it will not take too much time away from your new baby. It is a mystery to us, a la Kay Tracey, how you were able to manage so well with your writings and your household last year. We do congratulate you upon the birth of a daughter and should like to hear her nom de plume. That wisp of red hair sounds most intriguing.”

Though her daughter was only two months old, Mildred kept right on going, cheerily informing the Syndicate sisters, “The new baby's nom de plume is Margaret Joan, and most fortunately, she seems to be a very good baby!” She was called Peggy for
short, and Mildred kept her employers apprised of the child's development from time to time, even as she kept up a breakneck pace with her writing. In addition to the three girls' mystery series she was writing, Mildred took over the Honey Bunch series, which was for the age group the Syndicate referred to as “children,” the assumption being that from ages six to nine, boys and girls would read essentially the same kinds of stories (the Bobbsey Twins also fell into this category).

She was, by this time, well aware of her value to the Syndicate, and she used her leverage to angle for the raise she had been seeking. “I am pleased to note that book sales have been picking up recently,” she wrote to Edna, at the same time accepting a few more assignments. “I do hope that it will soon be possible for the Syndicate to reestablish the old rates which were in effect before the depression, as I feel that I should begin to increase my income if I am ever to do so.” She had found her preferred method of parenting as well, and it included less involvement than Harriet's. “Our vacation this year extended over six thousand miles, quite too strenuous a trip for little Peggy Wirt, who only went a part of the way and spent her time with a doting grandmother,” she wrote to Harriet at the end of 1937. “She seemed to thrive on it for she came home talking a blue streak!” When Asa was transferred by the Associated Press the following year, the young family moved to Toledo, and Mildred continued to keep the ladies of the Syndicate updated on her life. “We are well settled in our new home now, and have just sold our residence in Cleveland,” she wrote to Edna. “However, as yet I cannot say that I like Toledo, as it seems a rather dirty, noisy city.” But despite her distaste for her new surroundings, which she found “at best . . . smoky,” thanks to the factories for the glass, automobile, and other industries that made up a huge part of the city's livelihood,
Toledo would prove a boon for Mildred. Its huge public library downtown provided her with information for many of her series books, and its newspapers—the
Toledo Blade
and its morning edition, the
Toledo Times,
where she got a job during World War II—would be her journalistic home for the rest of her life.

Even as Mildred began to experience the joys and trials of motherhood, Harriet was leaving them behind. “Your son goes to Colgate this fall, does he not? It is exciting, having children about to leave for college,” she wrote to the current writer for the Bobbsey Twins, also a woman. “My oldest is headed for Princeton. Now that our big children will be away we shall have to adopt the Bobbseys as small charges to take up our attention!” Harriet took great pride in the accomplishments of her children as they began to make their own lives. “I must tell you what happy occasions Class Day and Commencement at Blair were,” she wrote to Edna when her eldest son graduated from prep school. “Perhaps you read in the Newark News that Sunny made Cum Laude.”