Girl Sleuth (17 page)

Stratemeyer was ecstatic, and he wrote to Mildred to tell her of his coup: “I have just succeeded in signing up one of our publishers for a new series of books for girls, the same length and make-up as the ‘Ruth Fielding' books. These will be bright, vigorous stories for older girls having to do with the solving of several mysteries.” He wanted her to write the first three books right away, turning out each manuscript in about four weeks' time. She accepted the offer, and by October 1 the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories by Carolyn Keene (a change from Louise Keene, Stratemeyer's original suggestion for a pseudonym), were contracted. The first three titles in the series would be
The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase,
and
The Bungalow Mystery,
each of them hewing to one of the plots Stratemeyer had hatched in his initial proposal. They were to sell for fifty cents each, returning a royalty of two cents per copy for the Syndicate. Mildred would be paid $125 for each manuscript and, as usual, would sign away her rights to the stories and characters as soon as she handed in the manuscripts.

Sending his first three-and-a-half-page outline for
The Secret of the Old Clock
to Mildred, Stratemeyer impressed upon his young writer the difference between the kind of girls' books she had been writing for him and the new line, which was to be less about niceties and more about being brave and adventurous. The plot of
Old Clock
remained just as he had first envisioned it, with a full complement of selfish rich people (the Tophams) and virtuous poor ones (the Horner girls), and a possibly fictitious missing will that would set everything straight if only it could be found. “I trust that you will give this outline and also the note above it a very careful reading. In reading over the plot, you will, I am sure, see the advantage of bringing out the disagreeable points of the Topham family and especially of the daughters and also the advantage of stressing old Abigail's poverty and then her sickness and also the poverty of the Horner girls. All these things will increase the interest in what Nancy is trying to do . . .” Signing off, he expressed absolute faith in Mildred and in his new creation. “With best regards and trusting that you will be able to give us a first story that will make all girls want to read more about Nancy Drew, I remain, yours truly.”

Sixteen days later the stock market crashed, throwing the country into uncertainty and despair. By the spring of 1930, the average income of the American family had sunk to $1,428—between 1929 and 1933, it would drop a full 40 percent. In 1930 alone, more than a thousand banks would fail as America plunged ever deeper into recession. Ten million women, now celebrating the tenth anniversary of their right to the vote, had gone out to work over the past two decades, many of them out of financial necessity, but seven out of ten American women overall still believed firmly that the place for them was in their own kitchens. From 1930 to 1940, the number of women who worked outside the home would increase only a smidgen, from 24.4 percent to 25.4 percent, as all the progress that had been made in the early part of the 1920s seemed to wither away under the duress of the country's newfound morality and the strictures of the Depression. Thanks to the scarcity of jobs, a new debate cropped up: Should married women whose husbands were employed even be allowed to seek jobs? Those who did were now vilified in the media, and one popular women's magazine featured a piece in which a
former career woman proclaimed, with no apparent angst, “I know now without any hesitation . . . that [my husband's] job must come first.” Women had more reasons than ever to stay at home washing the clothes, the baby, and everything in between. To those lower on the economic ladder, of course, such debates were a luxury they couldn't afford. In many slightly better-off families, women who had never before considered it were forced to find work of any kind in order to help pay the bills.

There was also a third, untouchable category of Americans—the very rich, who made up a minuscule portion of the country. Though many of them lost an enormous amount of money in the crash, the more conservative ones, like Stratemeyer and his family—including Harriet and Russell—did not give up much of anything. Instead, they had trouble hiring and keeping good help, an insignificant problem compared to what most of the country faced.

It was into this world that Miss Nancy Drew, well-to-do plucky girl of the twenties, arrived on April 28, 1930, dressed to the nines in smart tweed suits, cloche hats, and fancy dresses—including “a party frock of blue crepe which matched her eyes.” From the very first moments of her life on the page, it was obvious that she knew how to keep her head above water in any kind of situation. Even the Great Depression would prove to be no match for her. Pretty enough to be exceptional, but not so pretty that she would alienate readers, she was also in possession of not only an admirable intellect, but a shiny blue roadster, the latter a birthday gift from her devoted father. Her mother had died when she was three, and so she was the sole wise mistress of her charming upper-class household, which she ran superbly with the help of a grandmotherly servant named Hannah Gruen. The blond, blue-eyed teenager, affectionately called “Curly Locks” by
her father, was an all-around knockout, “the kind of girl who is capable of accomplishing a great many things in a comparatively short length of time. She enjoyed sports of all kinds and she found time for clubs and parties. At school, Nancy had been very popular and she boasted many friends. People declared that she had a way of taking life very seriously without impressing one as being the least bit serious herself.” As Mildred Wirt later confessed, she was everything her author—or any girl, in fact—wanted to be, and then some.

As in so many of Stratemeyer's books, there was nothing in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories that might break the spell of this new fictitious world. The sixteen-year-old sleuth did not attend school (she had graduated some time in the recent past and did not plan to go to college) and had no worries about money, career, or marriage. She did not even have a boyfriend yet (though Ned Nickerson would show up before too long). Her wardrobe expanded to fit whatever sleuthing or social occasion befell her, and she was free to do exactly as she pleased, even if it meant getting tied up or kidnapped in pursuit of a thief. Her father's faith in her was unshakable. River Heights, Nancy's attractive midwestern town, was hermetically sealed off from the unemployment and hard times that were crashing like tidal waves over the country. Even as Eleanor Roosevelt began serving seven-cent meals in the White House to show her solidarity with her husband's citizens, Nancy Drew was shopping at a posh department store in downtown River Heights for “a frock suitable for the afternoon party she had been invited to.” She reminded everyone that the good old days, the days of frills and festivities, of tea parties and a maid to do the cooking, were not so far gone and thus, perhaps, not too far off, either.

As for moral character, Nancy's was established from her very first sentences, written for her by Stratemeyer himself. “It would be a shame if all that money went to the Tophams! They will fly higher than ever!” she cries out to her father, who is reading his evening paper by lamplight, the epitome of cozy authority. By the end of her first adventure, the inheritance in question has been removed from the greedy, already-wealthy Tophams and restored to the deserving Horner girls. To achieve this result, Nancy endures, among other mishaps, near death while driving through a “rain[storm] blinding in its violence”; “a paralysis of fear” when trapped in a deserted summerhouse with a “rough-looking man”; and being tied up and thrown in a closet by this man and his dastardly henchmen. “Left to Starve” (the less-than-subtle title of chapter 16 of the book), she panics, then reminds herself, with awe-inspiring pragmatism, that it is unproductive. “She began to think of her father, of Helen Corning, and other dear friends. Would she ever see them again? As despondency claimed Nancy she was dangerously near tears. Resolutely, she tried to shake off the mood. ‘This will never do,' she told herself sternly. ‘Surely, there is a way to get out of here. I must keep my head and try to think of something.'” Moments later, fueled anew by her own optimism, she uses the hanger rod, which she's managed to tear down in spite of her high heels and narrow skirt, as a lever to break the door hinges.

Underneath her matching sweater sets, Nancy, as her decisive last name implies, was a force unto herself from the first, all action, and it prevented her from being an unredeemable goody-goody. She was also not beyond a petty moment or a petty crime if either should be called for. Encountering the Topham girls while on her downtown outing at the beginning of the story, she passes judgment with a confidence born of the spiritual high
ground: “‘Snobs!' Nancy told herself. ‘The next time I won't even bother to speak to them!'” Later on, in mad pursuit of the solution to her mystery, she steals the all-important clock of the title and endures a harrowing ride in her blue roadster with a police officer next to her and the contraband on the floor in the backseat. Spurred on by adversity, Nancy Drew can make even cattiness and thievery seem brave and right.

The trick to this is that she does it all in the name of rising to a challenge, a quality most people wish they had but can only hope to approximate. Nancy is never better than when she's in trouble. Trapped in a spooky barn with a band of quarreling robbers approaching, she reacts with the calm of a true professional: “While Nancy Drew hesitated, uncertain which way to turn, her mind worked more clearly than ever before.” Under pressure, she relies entirely on herself, a trait developed perhaps in reaction to her lack of a mother to guide her. The absence of that role model is not only sympathetic but serves her well in some senses. There is no one to nag her about chores or clothes or to worry about her gallivanting around; her brilliant, charismatic father dotes on her. Most importantly, Nancy never runs the risk, as so many girls did in her day (including the dreaded Isabel Topham of
Old Clock),
of having a mother whose “ambition [was] that some day she marry into a wealthy family.” She would never betray her readers as Dorothy Dale and the Outdoor Girls had by getting hitched. She would never, like Ruth Fielding, worry over the feelings of a fiancé or agree to wear his ring.

The combination of Stratemeyer's outline and editing with Mildred's efforts had produced a fantasy girl with a few touches of the real—possibly touches of the Mildred, who had added some of Nancy's bolder moves and snappier dialogue to Stratemeyer's outline. Together, they had created a star, and Stratemeyer knew
it. Though it would later become a part of Mildred's lore that he had disapproved of her first rendition of Nancy, thinking her too “flip,” no evidence of this reaction exists. In fact, Edward had no problem with Mildred's interpretation of his outline. He was especially pleased with the second half of Mildred's manuscript for
Old Clock,
and, after giving her some pointers and telling her he would go ahead and fix up the first half himself, he sent off the outline for Nancy Drew Mystery Story number two.

The plot of this book,
The Hidden Staircase,
involved a creepy haunted mansion inhabited by two rich, elderly sisters who need Nancy's help. Mildred, fresh off a fishing trip in Canada with Asa, dug right in, and when Stratemeyer read over her manuscript, he found, to his delight, that she had gotten the tone just right. “Dear Mrs. Wirt,” he wrote to her just before Christmas of 1929. “I have received the manuscript of The Hidden Staircase and read it with much satisfaction. It seems to me it ought to interest any girl who likes mystery stories. I shall make only a few changes and those of small importance . . . I think the new outline [for
The Bungalow Mystery,
the third book in the series] will appeal to you, as it is full of action and with many good holding points. Of course, keep the girlish part girlish and don't get the dramatic part too melodramatic. The second story was very well handled in this respect.”

In addition to providing the requisite thrills, the final book in Stratemeyer's breeder set also had to fulfill a very specific function: making every girl who finished it desperate to buy Nancy's next adventure. At the end of
The Bungalow Mystery,
after Nancy has escaped sinking boats, lightning, a near miss with a falling tree, and being knocked out by “the butt of a revolver” and tied up in a dank basement (“You're a smart detective, but your smartness won't do you any good this time!” the villain sneers at her,
of course encouraging Nancy to prove him wrong within a few pages), a tantalizing promise is dangled before readers. “It was written in the annals of the future that before many months had elapsed she would be engrossed in a problem as puzzling as the bungalow mystery—a problem which would tax her mental powers and ingenuity to the limit.” In other words, dear reader, stay tuned.

As it turned out, no manufactured temptation to read
The Mystery at Lilac Inn
and
The Secret at Shadow Ranch,
books four and five, would be necessary. The first three volumes did the job nicely all on their own. Nancy's clever, privileged ways struck a chord instantly with little girls. The blue-and-orange volumes, with their brightly colored dust jackets featuring America's first full-time girl detective mid-adventure and in gorgeous attire, sold out of stores by the thousands. Less than a year later, other publishers were looking enviously at Nancy Drew as a model for bestsellers—the books were, in the words of one competitor, “selling like hot cakes.”

Indeed, if the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories became essential to girls almost immediately, they became critical to Grosset & Dunlap just as quickly. In a market weakened by the Depression, the publisher soon counted on the girl sleuth to bring in money just as faithfully as the needy characters in her books did. They knew that if a Nancy Drew was in their catalog, they might be assured at least of survival, if not huge profit. “We expect to publish a few juveniles in September and would like to have a Nancy Drew to feature on this list,” Laura Harris, the series editor at Grosset, wrote to the Syndicate in May of 1931. “Can you let us have the manuscript as soon as possible, and no later than July 10? There will only be three or four titles brought out then and the Nancy Drew is one of the most important.” By Christmas of
1933 they were outselling most other series books, even the Syndicate's other big winner of the moment, Bomba the Jungle Boy.