Girl Sleuth (21 page)

Whatever her motivation, she had clearly not received the lecture Stratemeyer had given many of his other authors by mail. “The work for our syndicate is done sub rosa by the majority of our authors and . . . it is well understood that they are only authors in part,” he had reminded one loose-lipped ghostwriter. “All of our stories are written on our complete outlines and . . . we frequently make many alterations in the manuscripts received . . . As I told you on your last visit, I have no objection to an author saying he is ‘doing work for the Stratemeyer Syndicate,' but to be fair he ought to add that he is working on our complete plots and outlines.”

Though Harriet and Edna had yet to fully appreciate it, this kind of tortured relationship was at the heart of all the Syndicate's work. While each series was invented and edited by the company, it also relied heavily on its ghostwriter, who had been specially picked and trained by Edward Stratemeyer for success.

The sisters were about to find this out the hard way. “We have
had an extremely busy year,” Harriet wrote to Harriet Otis Smith in June of 1931, “and I sometimes wonder how we accomplished all we did.” She, especially, was exhausted and worn down. “Today it looked like Christmas around here with so many bundles,” she wrote to Edna at one point that spring, giving some indication that madness was barely being kept at bay. “Books and more books. Another manuscript and yet another manuscript, to say nothing of page proofs and sheets and sheets of Estate work.” Though Edna had the burden of caring for their mother, Harriet's children ate up all the extra time she had. When she finally escaped the office later in the summer for a trip to her family's farm in rural New Jersey, Edna reprimanded her in a letter for her relentless work ethic. “Was not surprised to learn your blood pressure was low. I've thought that it wasn't humanly possible to lose so much sleep and carry such a strenuous program at your time of life without developing something besides loss of weight.”

Still, they were having some fun as well. When one or the other of the sisters was away, letters flew back and forth with high-spirited details about various series and the office goings-on. “Other high-lights from the Lone Syndicate Sister and her lonesome Secretary will follow,” Harriet wrote to Edna, who had taken Lenna and her nurse off to the Jersey Shore for some relaxation. Edna wrote back with a telling, if amusing anecdote about her perspective on their newfound careers: “We all dropped a penny in the slot of a palmistry machine. We all got quite different fortunes—Mine said in part ‘About middle of life great good fortune falls to you through a death; see that you use it wisely' . . . Did we laugh!”

Back in the office that same summer, Edna wrote to Harriet, “Dear Pardner: Well, you can see we're on the job. Miss Pearson [Agnes Pearson, the secretary who had replaced Harriet Otis Smith] and I think we have turned out a corking good outline and we are sure now it contains enough plot, sub-plot, and what have you, to make a readable story. We will be glad to hear your comments on the enclosed outline.” Edna's somewhat defensive description of her latest effort came in response to a complaint from Mildred, who had suggested in the letter she sent in with
The Secret of Red Gate Farm
manuscript that the sisters had yet to fully master the skill of writing an outline. “Dear Miss Stratemeyer: I am submitting ‘The Secret of Red Gate Farm,' today by express and hope that it will fulfill your requirements,” Mildred wrote. “I venture to call your attention to the length of the plot which, you will note, is a full page shorter than usual. In writing the story it was difficult to find chapter endings with sufficient suspense, and the book ran some chapters short. To lengthen them out I added a few incidents but even so it was necessary to dwell upon the ‘cave' scenes a bit too long. I believe that I would be able to handle the denouement with better technique if the plots were somewhat longer.”

Harriet, who opened the letter while Edna was on vacation, both took Mildred's criticism to heart and seemed to be grateful for the extra work Mildred had put into the book to make up for the lack of plot. “Dear Edna: Before I shut up shop here and take two dozen eggs down to Aunt Etta I shall report progress up to date,” Harriet dashed off to her sister. “Nancy Drew has arrived here from Red Gate Farm and, according to Mrs. Wirt, solved the mystery satisfactorily. However, her ‘guardian' says in a letter that she was very shy of plot and had to add a great deal on her own account. I read the first chapter and it sails along breezily and entertainingly, and I have great hopes that the whole book will be of the same tenor.” Perhaps because she had written the outline in question—her first, admittedly—Edna reacted rather differently. “Well, we got to be gray heads to know everybody's whims,” she huffed by return mail. “Certainly men writers write with much less written outline, I should say.” Still, her letter later in the summer showed she had registered Mildred's comments.

Whatever Harriet thought of Mildred's complaint, she behaved impeccably toward her. She knew she needed her, not only for Ruth Fielding and Nancy Drew, but for the new Doris Force series, which was intended to capitalize on the girl detective genre. “We are sorry that you found the outline short, and, although we have not as yet read the story, we hope that the material which you inserted will hook up well with the story without seeming like intruding insertions,” she wrote to Mildred. “I read a couple of chapters, and up to that point the story is excellent . . . Thank you for getting the story back to us so soon. The publishers seem to like Nancy Drew and her adventures and have already been asking for this volume. It is possible that they will request a second one for this year and, if so, we shall communicate with you.”

That request soon came, and Mildred began working on
The Clue in the Diary.
She was busier than ever on her Underwood typewriter but sent the manuscript in that August as promised. In mid-September the sisters asked her to take on two more Doris Force books and another Nancy Drew, but there was a catch. The publisher of Doris Force was wavering a bit about the future of the series, they explained, and “because of this, and because of the great drop in sales as shown by our July statements from publishers, we are going to ask you to take a reduction on these manuscripts of twenty-five dollars each—in other words, we will pay one hundred dollars for each story. We hope that business is very soon going to take an upward turn, and that we shall be able to return to the former standard of payment.” Harriet concluded, “We hope that you will be willing to carry on with us through this period, as we enjoy working with you, and do not want to make any shifts on these series.” Harriet and Edna had held out as long as they could on pay cuts for the authors of their bestsellers—Leslie McFarlane and Mildred—but by now they were too worried about falling Syndicate revenues to keep even those writers at full salary.

Mildred wasted no time responding. Though she was cordial, it took her only until the second sentence of her reply to address the main issue and to make a pointed remark about the Syndicate's pay rate. “I . . . am sorry to learn that business has not been as good as before with the syndicate. I have always tried to cooperate in every way possible, but I feel that I cannot take less than one hundred and twenty-five dollars for each manuscript—an average of about one-fourth cent a word.” She proceeded to lay out her reasoning, which not only displayed her complete understanding of her own progress as a writer, but highlighted a problem that Edna and Harriet had no way around: Unlike their father, they commanded very little loyalty from their writers, nor had they made an effort to. “At the time I started to work for the syndicate, about five years ago, I believe, I accepted this rate, for at that time I had not had a great deal of experience in book writing. I have never requested a raise although my work has improved, as you will note by comparing it with my earlier volumes. Then, too, after the first year, Mr. Stratemeyer always gave me a bonus, which helped out. As the rate now stands I am receiving less than I did when I first became associated with the syndicate.”

Indeed, Edward had always given a generous annual Christmas “present” to the writers who were doing the Syndicate's best work. Harriet and Edna had decided that they couldn't afford to make that gesture, but its disappearance was a blow that many of
their ghostwriters must have taken as a sign that the Syndicate as they knew it was gone. Though some surely attributed the loss to the Depression, several other writers who refused the lesser rate mentioned the lack of bonuses as well. It turned out that many of them had been writing Stratemeyer books for a price they knew was low in relation to the market in general largely because, as one of them explained, with the annual bonus “my books averaged about $175.00 each as compared to the $125.00 I have been receiving for the past year, constituting an actual reduction of fifty dollars on each book under the present regime.” Another longtime author wrote in to say, “I am sorry that I cannot accept the reduction of $25 that you propose on payments for subsequent books . . . Only my attachment to the memory of a dear friend and my earnest desire to be of real service to the new organization have kept me at the work at the sacrifice of my own personal interests. I do not feel that I can go any further in that direction.”

For Mildred, too, not accepting the lowered fee was a matter of pride—as she wrote in another letter to Harriet, who had asked one more time if she might reconsider. “I realize what difficult times we are passing through and would have been willing to accept some reduction were the amount paid not already as low as I feel I could accept with justice to myself.” But it was also a matter of practicalities. Though the country was in an economic crunch, Mildred, it seemed, was not. She had so much work that she was juggling “clients,” and though she was sorry to stop her work for the Syndicate, she was also able to. “Since writing you I have signed for a new girls' series and have other work in prospect. In my negotiations with the publisher I reserved time for my syndicate work but unless I hear from you soon I must fill up this vacancy,” she informed Harriet rather impatiently. And
then, as if to soften the blow, or perhaps simply to keep relations good, “I trust that the future will produce happier circumstances which will permit a resumption of our relations. With best personal regards and kind wishes for the continued success of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, I remain, Yours truly.”

Mildred was not alone in feeling insulated from the effects of the Depression. Though they were worried about the company, neither Harriet nor Edna had given up the lavish lifestyle in which they had been raised. Each of them had her own income from Edward's estate, Russell was still earning a good living as a stockbroker, and Edna was living at home with Lenna, who had an income of her own as well as royalties and securities from Edward's estate. In fact, there was so much money to be spent that no one was even accounting for it, as Edna complained in a memo she wrote for her sister entitled “Resume of the Management of Monies and Welfare of Mother.”

Certainly no one in the Stratemeyer family had even been ostentatious, but Edward's death seemed to have brought it out in Lenna. “It doesn't seem necessary to pump everything up and live so grandly because Dad died,” Edna sighed. Lenna and Edna were paying a full complement of servants, including a chauffeur, a nurse, a couple to keep the house, and a variety of other staff. Lenna had gotten into the habit of giving them money to keep them happy, something she apparently felt she needed to do and that resulted in them, as Edna put it, “not wanting to follow my instructions in matters, then going behind my back and getting mother to say they don't have to do it.” Edna was also beginning to resent her role as caretaker of her difficult invalid mother. “It certainly works me up and to get no co-operation and no thanks for a hard job is I think the last straw,” she informed Harriet at the end of the memo. “Think it over.” Though she was
aware of how hard Harriet was working at the Syndicate in addition to making time for her young family, Edna could not hide her petulance.

She also had a somewhat different take on the Syndicate's financial problems than Harriet—or at least on the people who refused to help alleviate them. Just as she had once been willing to sell the Syndicate as quickly as possible, she now saw little reason to hang on to pesky writers like Mildred, whom she considered arrogant. When Harriet forwarded her Mildred's letter refusing the lower fee, she wrote back immediately and in great annoyance. “Dear Hat: Received letter from you enclosing Mrs. Wirt's tale of woe. Of course she is getting a swell head and doesn't choose to take less. Well, I think if your letter to her doesn't make her change her mind we better consider Mr. Karig.”

So, after five years and thirteen books, Mildred was suddenly no longer writing for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. A letter went out to Walter Karig, who was writing the Perry Pierce mystery series for the Syndicate, asking him to take on Doris Force. When he agreed, they sent him an outline and a few significant pointers about the difference between writing for boys and girls, according to the Stratemeyer Syndicate: “You will notice that the story contains adventure and characterization but that the idea of the secret oil well is kept from being too prominent. While girls like action in their stories, they are not as interested in the details of things like these as boys are, and therefore such ideas are merely used as background.”

As for Mildred, Harriet and Edna decided to try to keep her “on reserve” for Nancy Drew in the event that Walter Karig proved incompetent, a plan that involved treating her with a gra-ciousness they did not necessarily think she deserved. “My dear Mrs. Wirt,” Harriet wrote. “Of course, we were disappointed that
you felt you were unable to acede [sic] to our request in regard to the writing of certain books, but we are really delighted to hear that you are making out so well with your own stories. As we do not want to hold up any of your own work, we thought it best to write you that we have been able to place the writing of the Doris Force books with someone else. As the Nancy Drew story would not have to be decided upon immediately, we are reserving our decision in this matter. If we should decide that we would like you to do it we will communicate with you at a little later date . . . We wish you every success with your new girls' series.”