Authors: Melanie Rehak
After the war was over, Mildred would turn to more uplifting stories about GI brides, who were arriving in Toledo by the dozens and finding the local ways highly impressive. “The washing machines and refrigerators! Why Monday I finished a washing and ironing all in one day!” one of the British transplants exclaimed to Mildred, who added, “Many of the brides said they had found the United States a veritable promised land, and life
here much like a movie.” That life in America was in stark contrast to conditions overseas could hardly have been made clearer than it was in another story Mildred filed about a repatriated American wife who had been living in Germany with her German husband. “I lived in Germany for 12 years and heard of only one concentration camp,' Mrs. Frischmann said. âThe people were kept in ignorance. Now for the first time, I think the German people are beginning to accept the truth.'”
When Mildred arrived home from a long day at the paper, she would relieve her mother, set up her typewriter by Asa's bedside, and start her fiction work for the day. “I was a tired writer,” she remembered. “Lots of people think that Nancy Drew just came, but I've paid for that with blood, with real blood. I sweat when I wrote the books and I worked hard, unbelievably hard. I don't think very many people would ever work as hard as I worked during the most active years of my life. I would never do it again.”
Still, she managed somehow, if only because she had no choice. “The salary is so excellent that I cannot afford to drop it,” she wrote to Harriet of her newspaper job, while still assuring her that, amazingly, she could make the time to write a new Dana Girls book. In an effort to help Mildred, Harriet had offered to let her write her next book from an outline that was more like the brief ones Edward had sent out. The two women had by this time exchanged numerous letters about whose style of writing was more suited to the work. Unable to get Mildred to see it her way but also too busy to find another ghostwriter, Harriet decided that perhaps if she sent out just a “synopsis such as Mr. Stratemeyer used to send,” she might be able to both cut down on her rewriting work and get a better manuscript from Mildred,
who would not be fighting the copious amounts of information and detail that Harriet had become accustomed to putting into each outline. Mildred agreed wholeheartedly with this plan, writing back, “I do feel that it would make for easier writing and a better book.”
An agreement reached, however uneasily, Harriet wrote to Edna to let her know. Though Edna had not set foot in the offices of the Stratemeyer Syndicate for several years, she was still in on the profits and expected to be kept up-to-date on as well as consulted about everything. When Harriet confessed that she found Mildred increasingly hard to deal with, Edna wrote back in Mildred's defense once more: “Mrs. Wirt is certainly a go-getter,” she wrote to Harriet, “and she must have a following even if you find her difficult to work with . . . Her style made the Nancys.”
Thankfully, Harriet's new outlining methods were rewarded when Mildred handed in her next effort. “I think our plan of a less complicated outline has worked out very well,” Harriet wrote to her upon receiving the Dana Girls story, reassured enough to assign Mildred the next Nancy Drew,
The Mystery of the Tolling Bell.
Having solved her problems with Mildred, for the time being anyway, Harriet was left to face a much larger difficultyânamely, Edna. Not only were the two sisters in disagreement about some of the ghostwriters and the way the sale of various rights should be handled, but Edna's growing obsession with her royalty income had started to take the form of constant heavy criticism of Harriet's management of the business. Her letters began to take on a hectoring tone that created an awful tension between New Jersey and Florida. Disconnected from the everyday practicalities of the business, Edna had no comprehension of how it ran or just
how lucky she was that Harriet was willing to put in the time to keep them wealthy. She asked constantly for numbers to show that Harriet was not making grave errors. “A convincing answer to some worries which you seem to have over the income of the Syndicate,” Harriet wrote her at one point, trying to defend herself. “They [figures she had just compiled for the last fifteen years of business] prove to me that our profits have increased each year, and there is no indication the depression hit our pocketbooks.”
In addition to other insults, Harriet had not had a raise since 1942, when Edna had first become a silent partner. She knew, however, that Edna was bound to be stingy about money, and her efforts when it came to getting her sister to agree to spend more were well prioritized. Instead of thinking of herself, she put the issue of a very necessary increase for the office secretaries, of whom there were now several, to her reluctant partner. Without their help, she could not run the business smoothly. The same went for ghostwriters, and so she also made a pitch for Mildred, whose work, she had discovered during her accounting blitz, had been consistent and brought the Syndicate a great deal of money over the years. “Before getting off the subject of remuneration, I think it would be a nice gesture to Mrs. Wirt to let her share in the profits of the Nancy Drew,” she wrote to Edna. “Dad always gave Christmas gifts to his writers, but we have never practiced the same generosity.”
Harriet could not have known just how badly Mildred needed both the money and the affirmation at that particular moment. Her bonus check for $1,000 arrived in Toledo in September of 1945, just a few months after a joyous VE Day made the end of the war official, and just weeks after America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two hundred ninety-five thousand American lives had been lost in the fighting, but now the
grief was leavened with celebration as the danger came to an end. For Mildred, however, peacetime brought new reasons to worry, as her stable job was now uncertain. Things had not improved much at home, either. “During the past four and a half years, while my husband has steadily gone down hill following a series of seven strokes, there have been times when I seriously considered giving up all writing,” she admitted in her thank-you note to Harriet. “Some of the copy I turned out a year or so ago probably was not my best, but you were very patient, and I feel now that I am over the hump, so to speak . . . The Syndicate gift of $1,000 is more than generous, and to say I am appreciative expresses it very mildly. I trust that Nancy will go on for many years, and that she will vie with the Rover Boys in carving a lasting name for herself in popular fiction.” Then, signing off contentedly, she wrote, “I have earmarked part of your gift for a new typewriter as soon as they are released to civilians! I am sure this will be good news for everyone remotely connected with my copy!”
But when Mildred handed in the next Nancy Drew, the awful pressures under which she was trying to bear up were apparent everywhere in the text. Exhausted, she had allowed her own troubles to seep into the charmed world of River Heights, most noticeably in the character of Nancy herself. Like Mildred, Nancy was no longer the strong, optimistic firebrand she had once been. One of the office secretaries wrote a mini-review of the manuscript for Harriet in which she made no effort to hide her disdain for Mildred's work: “The MS did not read like a Nancy Drew mystery at all . . . The characterization was outstandingly poorâeveryone, from Bess to the gypsy violinist, spoke the same, and acted undistinguishably [sic] . . . Perhaps Nancy herself was worst of all, appearing as a sissy and a defeatist, a far cry from the girl whom the young readers have come to admire.”
After reading this report, Harriet decided to take some kind of action. Nancy Drew was by this time both her favorite character and her most important asset, and she could not simply stand by and watch her be ruined. Nor did she have the time to do an extensive rewrite of every manuscript. She began to keep a list of the various criticisms she had sent Mildred over the past decade or so, presumably to create a paper trail for future reference, and she let Mildred know that her work was unsatisfactory. “Nancy does not seem like the courageous, untiring person she has always been,” Harriet wrote. “She is definitely a defeatist, always weary and ready to give up. There was no differentiation between Bess and George, and the comraderie [sic] we had tried to build up between Mr. Drew and Nancy was lacking entirely. Nancy spoke in a very adult fashion, and it made her seem much older than in former books.”
Harriet was, as always, unfailingly polite to her employee, but in a letter to Edna about the problem, she was more candid about wanting to sever ties with Mildred, and she did not hesitate to lay the blame not only on the overworked writer, but on Edna herself. “Right now we are re-writing the
NANCY DREW
,” she wrote to her sister somewhat bitterly. “After you wrote you thought Mrs. Wirt should go on with the series I decided to try her once more. Before making any comments on the story I listened to those of three or four other people who voted it practically a washout.” As usual, Edna was not ready to accept her sister's opinion. In her reply, she asked to see the outline Harriet had send to Mildred before she would agree to “drop her from the S.S.” “You and I never could agree on how a Nancy should be written,” she reminded her sister. “After all,” she finished, jabbing at Harriet's conscience unmercifully, “her years of work mean something to her too.” Harriet put off, yet again, a decision about what to do with Mildred. But she could distract herself with other, more pleasurable pursuits, like the fact that her daughter Camilla had given birth to a baby girl. She threw herself into the role of grandmother with characteristic gaiety and pleasure. Sending congratulations on another new baby to a young man who had written an article about her in the
Herald Tribune,
she mused on the changes that had taken place since her own children had been born. He had mentioned to her that he was taking over domestic duties while his wife recovered, and the very idea brought her up short: “Recently I have reflected upon my own post-war life after World War I, when my domestic status quo was similar to yours now. I don't dare let myself think that things have retrogressed considerably, or I become wuzzy!” she wrote. “Nevertheless, my husband's situation at that time was not unlike your own, yet the country's whole economic system was so different that he never washed the dishes nor took care of the baby. Somehow you young people of today will have to straighten out the present hectic situationâand I am sure you personally will want to do it as soon as possible and get out of the dishpan!”
In the meantime, Edna had taken to getting advice from her own tax man down in Florida, no longer trusting Harriet to even present a legitimate picture of the business. Among other things, Harriet had decided in 1946 to bring out a new baseball series, and, as usual, she had consulted Edna about the contract. When Edna finally wrote back almost a year later, Harriet was as close to outraged as she could bring herself to be. “I was rather amazed at your recent reply to my letter about what you wish to do concerning the new series,” she sputtered. “I wrote to you nearly a year ago about this, and again some months later, so it seems to me that you had a long time in which to get the âexpert advice'
you mentioned. I had hoped to have the whole matter settled for Income Tax purposes, and also for contract with the publishers. At the end of the week I shall deliver the second baseball story to Cupples and Leon and I dislike having them bring out a series under unsettled conditions between us.”
Before too long, “unsettled” was a mild way of describing relations between the sisters. When, in the middle of 1947, Harriet tried to address the issue of giving herself a raise after five years of backbreaking work at the Syndicate, Edna's response was to demand a complete and thorough accounting of all Syndicate profits and expenses before she would even consider the matter. She had pushed too hard. Harriet was both hurt and furious, and she did not mince words in her reply. “Actually, the picture from 1942 to the present is a very good one, but I have yet to hear one word of commendation from you. And despite the ever increasing amount in your pocket due to new business, you keep silent, and let me be the only one in the office who has had no raise since 1942,” she wrote. “I've had all the headaches, and have given increasingly of my time and efforts, but still the sum of 37.50 a week from you that I agreed upon as a starting salary has never been changed. Frankly I cannot understand your attitude, and psychologically the effect does not make for good business . . . Sincerely, Harriet.” A permanent rift had opened. While Harriet would continue to write letters about family news and holidays to her sister over the next decades, there was a part of her that would never forgive Edna for her mistrust and selfishness. The playful notes between “Syndicate Sisters” were a thing of the past.
In June of 1947, having decided to give her one more try, Harriet sent the plot for the next Nancy Drew,
The Ghost of Blackwood Hall,
off to Mildred in Toledo. The reply she got astonished her. As usual, Mildred had buried the lead. After four paragraphs
about
Blackwood Hall,
of which the first eight chapters had been written, she wrote, rather abruptly: “On the day that the plot arrived, my husband died after a very long and hard illness. He has been a complete invalid for the past two and a half years, requiring almost constant attention. The time has been a most trying one, but I have returned to my newspaper work now and expect it to continue, as I always have enjoyed hard work.” Upon hearing the news, Harriet could not have been more sympathetic, nor could she have agreed more heartily with Mildred's prescription for self-medication. “It was with surprise that I read of the passing of your husband, and I am deeply grieved that you have had this tragedy in your life,” she wrote. “Such a parting is not easy, and I do send you my deepest sympathy . . . You are right in thinking that work is the best solace at a time of grief. Nevertheless, it must have been hard for you to have undertaken the Nancy Drew just now. I do appreciate your going ahead with it.” When it came time to pay Mildred for her work, Harriet included a small bonus, and with it a kind thought: “You will notice that the check is somewhat larger than formerly. I think you certainly deserve the extra amount!”