Happy Birthday Millie!

Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson was born 120 years ago today, on 10 July 1905. You might not recognise her name, but I’m willing to bet the name Carolyn Keene rings a bell. Carolyn Keene is the pseudonym Wirt Benson shared with a number of other writers who have penned the Nancy Drew books over the years. Wirt Benson was the ghostwriter of 23 of the first 30 books in the original Nancy Drew series, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. The character of Nancy Drew was created by Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Stratemeyer started the company when he found that the demand from publishers for the children’s books he was writing exceeded his output. To keep up with the demand for more books in series he had created, he hired freelance writers. Stratemeyer wrote the outlines, the freelancer would write the manuscript under the pen name for that series, making a flat rate for their efforts, and Stratemeyer would keep the copyright.

Before Stratemeyer died in 1930, he had provided the outlines for the first four Nancy Drew books to Wirt Benson, The Secret of the Old Clock (1930), The Hidden Staircase (1930), The Bungalow Mystery (1930), and The Mystery at Lilac Inn (1930). After his death Harriet Otis Smith, Stratemeyer’s personal secretary, wrote the outline of the fifth book, The Secret at Shadow Ranch (1931), as well as editing that book and the fourth book, The Mystery at Lilac Inn (1930), she is also credited with creating the characters Bess Marvin and George Fayne, cousins and good friends of Nancy Drew. From the sixth book on, the daughters of Stratemeyer, Edna Stratemeyer Squier and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, carried on with the creation of the outlines and editing of the books, until Edna left the Syndicate, and Harriet shouldered the work Edna had done, as well as her own. 

Wirt Benson made $125 per book for the first seven Nancy Drews, but Harriet wanted to cut the rate the ghostwriters were getting paid down to $100 per book. At this point Wirt Benson was an experienced writer, having graduated with a degree in English in 1925 from the University of Iowa, and she went on to be the first person to graduate with a Masters in Journalism there in 1927. When Wirt Benson respectfully declined a pay cut, the Syndicate hired Walter Karig to take up the reins. Karig wrote books eight, nine, and 10, and then the Syndicate had Wirt Benson back for books 11 to 25. After another gap in which the books were written by a number of writers, she was asked to write book thirty, and though she was not formally fired as a ghostwriter, she was not asked to write another Nancy Drew after that point.

It is easy to get caught up in the lore of Nancy Drew and the history of her creators, and if the number of times I have info dumped on my husband about this, my special interest, is any indicator, I could go on for days, or at least until my caffeine buzz wears off. But this is a post about Wirt Benson and she also wrote many successful children’s books, 135 in all. She got her start with the Syndicate with the 1927 book Ruth Fielding and Her Great Scenario. Stratemeyer tried Wirt Benson out, as it were, with the well established Ruth Fielding series, and he had her in mind when he pitched the Nancy Drew series to Grosset and Dunlap. At the same time as she was writing the Nancy Drew books, she was also writing Ruth Fielding, Dana Girls, and Honey Bunch books. In the late 1940s, her husband, Asa Wirt*, had a stroke and became ill, suffering a number of debilitating strokes. Meanwhile, Wirt Benson was also caring for their young daughter, Peggy, and working as a reporter. On top of that she had pseudonyms of her own, which is where, in my opinion, she did some of her best writing. 

Wirt Benson’s favourite series was the Penny Parker Mystery Stories, and I can see why. Penny is everything I believe Nancy Drew could have been if Wirt Benson had been in complete control of the writing of these books. Penny, the daughter of a newspaper man, often writes articles for her father’s paper. She is an enthusiastic and casual girl who doesn’t take anything too seriously, even when her investigating pitches her into the most dire of circumstances. The more I learn about Wirt Benson, the more I see her in the strong women she wrote. The first book Penny Parker book, Tale of the Witch Doll (1939), begins with Penny doing an expert high-dive. Like the character she created, Wirt Benson was a lauded diver in her youth. As well as being on the competitive swim team at her university, where she took part in relays and diving, she also played on the basketball team, the soccer team, wrote for the school paper, the Daily Iowan. In high school she played baseball, basketball, volleyball, acted in the senior class play, played the xylophone, and outside of school she played the slide trombone in the Ladora Band.

After being enthralled by flying in her youth, in 1964, when she was 59 years old, she got her pilot’s licence. It’s no wonder she wrote young women like Nancy Drew and Ruth Darrow who also flew planes. Suddenly all of her extremely talented heroines don’t seem so far fetched. I have often thought while reading a Nancy Drew, “is there nothing this woman can’t do?” and now I am much more inclined to believe a real live person can be as adventurous, talented, and well rounded as Nancy.  

Wirt Benson was talented and clearly had many interests, but writing was her number one objective from an early age. “I always wanted to be a writer from the time I could walk. I had no other thought except that I wanted to write.” She learned to read very early and was soon reading everything she could get her hands on. Her own town of Ladora was too small to have a library, but when possible her father would drop her off at the public library in a nearby town, and there she would spend eight hours at a time reading. 

“Writing is a way of life for me,” she said. “It’s like getting up and having breakfast.” She wrote for the Daily Iowan during university, and after graduating she wrote for the Clinton Iowa Herald, in 1944 she started working at the Toledo Blade, when it was the Toledo Times, working there for the next 58 years. On the afternoon of 28 May 2002, she filed what would be her last story. Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson, Millie, as she liked to be called, died around 8 p.m. that evening in hospital. She was 96 years old.

Through writing this I have realised that when I picture Wirt Benson, she is impossibly high above the water, mid-dive, or donning her flying cap, about to take flight. As a little girl, I wanted to be like Nancy Drew when grew up. Now, I aspire to be like Millie. 

Happy Birthday Millie.

I want to thank my dear friend Gina (@babsbelovedbooks), without whom my Mildred A. Wirt Benson collection would be almost non-existent. Thanks also to my husband for buying me my first proper vintage Nancy Drew book, and spending way too much money on the Dana Girls edition of my dreams one wedding anniversary.

Many thanks to the literary historians, librarians, journalists, and collectors who have made so much information about dear Millie available. It turns out fans of Nancy Drew make pretty great detectives.

List of references:

“Blade columnist, Nancy Drew author Millie Benson dies at age 96”: Mark Zaborney and George J. Tanber, Toledo Blade, May 29, 2002. 

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her (2005) by Melanie Rehak 

“It’s no mystery why Nancy Drew author still writes: ‘It’s a way of life’”: John Seewer, The Associated Press, January 1, 2002.

Nancy Drew Sleuth website run by Jennifer Fisher

Series Books for Girls website run by Jennifer White

University of Iowa archives, Mildred Wirt Benson Collection

There is a lot of misinformation around Nancy Drew and Mildred A. Wirt Benson out there, I sincerely hope none has crept in here. If there are any inaccuracies they are my own and not the fault of the listed sources.

*Asa Wirt died in 1947. In 1959 she married, George Benson.

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56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Haunted Bridge

Book 15

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

Editions pictured: OT (25 chapters, 220 pages); RT (20 chapters, 180 pages)

OT publication date: 1937

My OT edition printed: approx. 1942

OT cover illustrated by: Russell Tandy

RT publication date: 1972

My RT edition printed: approx. 1972

RT cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editors: Edna Stratemeyer Squier & Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

Revised by: Priscilla Baker-Carr

OT & RT setting: Deer Mountain Hotel (a summer resort with a championship golf course), Andover (town near the hotel)

Introduction

I’ve been enjoying the experience of reading both the original text (OT) and the revised text (RT) Nancy Drews so much that when I saw an early edition of The Haunted Bridge with a dust wrapper, and for a reasonable price, I had to order it. I would love to be able to blame my waiting for that book to arrive as the reason this post is going up so much later than planned. But the book was annoyingly prompt in arriving at my door! The problem was getting myself to read the thing. I found the OT to be shockingly similar to the RT. It was so similar that reading these within the same month felt like trying to read the same book twice in a row. If you are filling in the gaps in your Nancy Drew collection I would say you could hold off on acquiring the alternate version of this one. There are other titles in this series that differ greatly between the two versions, but The Haunted Bridge is not one of them.

Synopsis

Nancy Drew and her friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, are visiting Deer Mountain Hotel with Nancy’s father, Carson Drew, who is there on legal business. The summer resort boasts many sporting activities, in addition to a champion golf course, which is where the girls spend most of their days. It’s the lead up to a championship tournament for amateur golfers and the club’s golf pro has urged Nancy to enter. Nancy is playing a qualifying round when she drives her ball into a patch of woods bordering the sixteenth hole. Nancy is keen to retrieve her lost ball as it is one signed by Jimmy Harlow. But Nancy’s caddy refuses to go near the footbridge which stands at the other side of the woods. Apparently, the bridge is haunted and all of the caddies are scared of the woods! But we know by now that Nancy doesn’t believe in spooks. Nevertheless, she is eager to find out what it is that has the caddies so afraid of the spot. 

Nancy soon discovers that the ghost is a rigged up scarecrow and the moaning sound is nothing more than the wind in the trees. But someone has gone to some length to deter people from exploring the woods and Nancy wants to know why. In her investigation, Nancy finds a chest on the muddy riverbank, which turns out to be chock full of jewelry. Meanwhile, Carson Drew has been investigating a notorious smuggling gang and guess what they’ve been smuggling? Jewels! Nancy suspects the chest of jewelry has something to do with these international jewel thieves. Carson Drew gets Nancy’s help by going around to the hotels in the area on the lookout for a suspect who is supposed to have a jewelled compact mirror in her possession. Inside the compact there is said to be a photo of a little boy. In a hotel powder room, Nancy strikes up a conversation with a woman who has a jewelled compact, but there is no photo inside. Logically, the photo could simply have been removed, but Nancy doesn’t believe the kind woman she talked to could be a jewel thief. Besides, when she complimented the woman about the eye-catching compact, the woman had been perfectly willing to talk about it and show it to Nancy. (As we all know, in Nancy Drew Land, baddies act suspiciously, and have cruel faces!)

But there is also a loyal gardener living in a cabin in the woods that has outdoor enclosures filled with injured or orphaned wild animals. The man still potters around the garden of the Judson mansion even though the family haven’t been back to the property since the big fire that demolished the place. When the gardener gets injured and needs round-the-clock care, Ned and his friends arrive on the scene just in time to offer their services. 

As all of this is going on, Nancy is competing in a golf tournament, which she fits her sleuthing around. Things are looking good for Nancy, that is until she falls off a balcony into some bushes when she tries to avoid coming into close contact with unwanted male attention. Mortimer Bartescue, or Martin, as he is called in the RT, is the kind of many any woman in their right mind would gladly throw themselves off a balcony to avoid. Unfortunately, Nancy painfully injures her hand, which makes it difficult to play golf. But, lucky for Nancy, even an injured hand and an accusation of cheating doesn’t prevent her from winning the tournament, finding the missing Judson girl, reuniting a couple, uncovering a band of international jewel thieves, and solving the mystery of the haunted bridge. Not that the “haunted bridge” really has anything to do with the rest of the story, but it is an undeniably intriguing title!

Reading the same book twice

I should say that unlike what I have done in the past, I did not take extensive notes on these books as I was reading. I am sure with a closer reading one would discover more differences than the few I picked out. The biggest differences I found were the fact that in the RT Mortimer Bartescue was changed to Martin Bartescue. Perhaps Mortimer was not as fashionable a name in 1972 as it was in 1937. I cannot say I have ever met a Mortimer, so maybe the name change wasn’t such a bad idea.

But the biggest difference I noted is the addition of Burt and Dave to the RT. These friends of Ned Nickerson’s from college are introduced in the RT as “Burt Eddleton, George’s friend, and Dave Evans, who dated Bess” (RT 94). In the OT Ned arrives at Deer Mountain Hotel with Bud Mason and Bill Cowan, who are first referred to as “two strange youths” (OT 120). I don’t believe we get any description that distinguishes them from each other, despite this being the first time Nancy or the other girls are introduced to them. As far as I can tell they are only there so that Ned has help looking after Joe Haley, the gardener, and so that when the group go to one of the hotel dances, there is an even number of males to females.

One scene, two books

I thought I’d pick a favourite scene to display just how similar these books are. The bolded text is where the two versions differ. The two instances where wording has simply been altered have been italicized. 

First we have the scene in the OT.

[T]he girls made their way toward the haunted bridge. Dark clouds were moving swiftly overhead, and by the time the chums reached the woods a strong wind was blowing.

"Do you think it will rain soon?" Bess asked anxiously, scanning the sky overhead.

"Oh, not for an hour at least," Nancy replied carelessly. "Even if it should, we'll be partially protected by trees. Let's not turn back now."

The girls struck off through the timber, and soon were within view of the old bridge. With the sun under a cloud it was dark and gloomy beneath the canopy of trees. Bess shivered and kept close to her companions. Suddenly they were startled to hear the same groaning sound which had frightened them on their previous visit.

"Oh!" Bess squealed in terror, clutching George's arm. "There it is again!"

Nancy warned her to be quiet, and for several minutes the girls stood perfectly still, waiting for the sound to be repeated. No one could be seen anywhere near the bridge.

"I believe the noise came from far down the ravine," Nancy whispered after she was convinced that the groan would not be repeated. "Come on, let's investigate."

After briefly searching the locality near the bridge, the girls turned their attention to the trail which had interested them upon their first visit to the spot. Footprints were plainly visible. Nancy wondered if someone had not used the path within the past twenty-four hours.

"Let's not go that way today," Bess pleaded, reading her chum's thoughts. "It's growing darker every instant, and we don't want to be caught in a storm."

Scarcely had the words been spoken when a shrill scream broke the stillness of the forest.

This time Nancy was certain that the cry had come from far down the ravine.

"Come on!" she urged excitedly. "We'll solve this old mystery yet!" (OT 109-10)

Now, for the same scene in the RT.

The girls made their way toward the haunted bridge. Dark clouds were moving swiftly overhead, and by the time they reached the woods a strong wind was blowing.

Soon they were within view of the old bridge.

Bess shivered and kept close to her companions.

Suddenly they were startled to hear the same moaning and groaning sounds which had perplexed them on their first visit.

"Oh!" Bess squealed, clutching George's arm.

Nancy warned her to be quiet, and for several minutes the girls stood perfectly still, waiting for the sound to be repeated. There was only a rustle of leaves in the breeze.

"I believe the noise came from somewhere right around here," said Nancy. "Let's investigate. Maybe we'll find someone's in hiding, playing a joke."

The girls searched through the brush and trees near both ends of the bridge, but found no one. Then they explored the trail they had seen on their previous visit which led along the ravine. Footprints were clearly visible. Had someone used the path within the past twenty-four hours?

A moment later a shrill scream broke the stillness. This time Nancy was certain that the cry had come from some distance up the ravine.

"Let's go!" she urged excitedly. "We'll solve the mystery of these strange sounds yet!" (RT 88-89)

As you can see the two texts are remarkably similar. The passage from the OT is 310 words while the RT is 214, which means 31% has been cut from the OT. But as the OT is 220 pages in its entirety and the RT is 180 pages, I would say that on average 19% of the OT has been cut. This is just an estimate, of course, because we are comparing page numbers, not word count. For the most part all that has been removed from the RT is description. Although, in the RT Nancy suggests that the sounds might be from someone “playing a joke”, which diffuses some of the tension. In the OT there is no such explanation offered, and the tension is left to continue to build as the scene plays out. I think most of us would agree that the OT is more atmospheric, but when you are aiming to cut down a text it does make the most sense to start with anything that could be construed as unessential. I must admit that it wasn’t until I was reading these two passages side by side that I was aware there was any difference, besides the change from the friends being referred to as “the chums” to simply “they”. 

Final thoughts

In my opinion, the person who revised the OT, Priscilla Baker-Carr, did a wonderful job. As I said at the outset, I felt like I was reading the same book twice. Nothing important had been altered and I think that readers who are most familiar with the OT could read the RT of this one and recognize the same Nancy. But I wonder if this is because The Haunted Bridge is a fairly tame book. This isn’t a book full of dramatic scenes like some of the other Nancy Drews I have read in the OT. For example, the OT of The Whispering Statue has Nancy save two people from a burning plane that has crash landed in the ocean. In that same book a house set on eroding cliffs is taken by the sea with Nancy inside! Both versions of The Haunted Bridge have a lot of golf, some dances, a bit of exploring in the woods, a suspected forger is locked in a caddy club house until the authorities arrive, Nancy, Bess, and George surreptitiously follow a car, and Nancy confronts a thief with a lot of backup near by, and that’s about it! Minus a brief scene when Nancy falls through a bridge and gets swept away by a storm swollen stream, The Haunted Bridge doesn’t go in for big drama and there was very little bonkersness. I cannot believe I am saying this, because I’ve never thought of myself as a fan of the less believable aspects of these books, but I think more drama and bonkersness would have made this a better book.

Coming up next…

Next time, I will be discussing the Nancy Drew with Persian kittens, tap dancing, Morse code, and a secret room. It’s The Clue of the Tapping Heels. I can assure you that we are in for bonkersness in spades with this one!

While you’re waiting for me to come up the goods, why not check out my new favourite podcast, Regular Nancy Drew? As always, I am late to the party on this one. Regular Nancy Drew has been recording since early 2021 and they already have 92 episodes in the bank. Listening to the hosts, Becky and Kori, is like chatting with your best friends about Nancy Drew. You can find Regular Nancy Drew just about anywhere you can listen to podcasts. But I must warn you that just like your favourite Nancy Drew, it’s very addictive. My friend and fellow Nancy Drew fan, the talented author, Barbara Matteson, introduced me to this podcast three weeks ago and I’ve been listening to about one episode a day ever since. It is so good!

56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Whispering Statue - Part 2/2

Book 14

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

This discussion of The Whispering Statue is in two parts. You can find a link to Part One, here, where we discuss the plot of both the original text (OT) and revised text (RT). 

Now, let's pick up where we left off...

Bonkersness 

There is one bonkers scene in the RT… Okay. There are a few scenes that are fairly bonkers, but one that goes well beyond my suspension of disbelief… Nancy, Bess, and George are snooping in the storeroom of a shop when they hear someone coming.

    Instantly the young detective made a decision.

    Grabbing Bess and George by their arms, she pointed toward the empty portrait frames.

    "Pose!" Nancy whispered.

    The three girls stepped through the frames against the canvas. Each one kneeled and took a different pose. They assumed profile positions so they could not be identified easily if the intruder should happen to know them.

[…]

    The man began looking around and mumbling to himself. 

[…]

    In his search the newcomer suddenly lurched into Bess's frame. It fell over, striking Bess who also went down. Instantly the intruder realized that the person in the frame was alive!

    "Oh!" cried Bess.

    The man gave a deep grunt, then yanked Bess up from the floor. At the same instant Nancy and George leaped from their frames! (RT 110-112)

The girls quickly overpower him because he was "taken completely by surprise" (RT 113). Good thing all baddies in Nancy Drew books are incredibly dim-witted and unobservant. The crazy thing is, the girls almost get away with their disguise! 

As you may notice from the photo to follow, the illustration that goes along with the scene doesn’t do the writing any favours. From where the man in standing in the doorway he would see right down the back of the frames. The girls shouldn’t stand a chance in their silly efforts of disguise! As I said all baddies in these books are very dim, but what does it say about Nancy and her friends that they think pretending to be two dimensional objects would actually work? There are times in the RT Nancy Drews when Nancy seems to be closer to eight than eighteen. Although, I feel I’m doing a disservice to the intelligence of eight-year-olds in saying that! 

More dramatic and more believable?

The OT of this one is so over the top. But, somehow, it works! While it’s much more dramatic than the RT and some crazy things happen in this book, it stops just shy of being completely unbelievable. I think that’s why I’m enjoying the OT Nancy Drew books so much. Nancy has more of a devil-may-care attitude than in the RT, which makes for exciting reading. When this Nancy gets into a pickle I feel a lot less frustrated with her than I do when I’m reading an RT. In her efforts to help others and solve the mystery, the OT Nancy often rushes headlong into trouble and her nutty ideas of getting out of it seem just desperate enough to be believable, like this scene where she has just escaped a house where she has been kept captive and with the help of a sheet attempts to pass herself off as a statue.

    She wondered how much longer the storm would hold off. The tall trees near the place were waving wildly in the wind, and at any moment a limb might snap off and come crashing down. The site was a most dangerous one.

    Nancy stood hesitating an instant; then, with the wind tearing at her garments, she crossed the garden toward the Whispering Girl statue.

    Where three figures previously had stood, but two now remained.

[…]

    Nancy scarcely had time to hide. Wrapping the sheet tightly about her, she stepped up to the empty pedestal to become a living statue in the Whispering Girl group.

[…]

    With head bent low, Joe Mitza stumbled through the garden. He was muttering to himself, saying over and over that he had learned his lesson, and that never again would he be dishonest.

    Nancy had intended to frighten the fellow with another whispered warning. However, observing his nervous condition, she overcame the temptation and remained silent. The fellow cast a frightened glance at the Whispering Girl statue as he hastened by and went on down the road. (OT 196-199)

The scene in the RT where the three girls hide in frames is reminiscent of this one. There are a few reasons why I think this scene works where the other one fails: Nancy is pretending to be a statue and not a painting, she is outdoor at night as opposed to indoors in full daylight, and the baddie she is trying to fool is truly upset and distracted from some life-changing news he has just heard, while the baddie in the RT is just busy casing the joint. The other reason this scene from the OT works while the scene from the RT fails is because of the writing. 

Some of the writing in the RT Nancy Drews is shockingly bad. The plots have all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop and the dialogue is just plain moronic most of the time. But for me, the aspect that really suffers in this RT is the descriptions of settings. In the OT description is used to create atmospheric scenes where anything could happen. While in the RT they virtually skipped descriptions and setups to scenes and substitute them with liberally placed exclamation points. Take, for instance, the scene from the OT when Nancy visits Old Estate for the first time and sees “The Whispering Girl”.

    An ancient gate still barred the entrance to the winding private road which led to the house. As the young man pulled it open so that they might drive through, a loose board fell to the ground, making it impossible to close the barrier again. The road was dry but rutty, and a wild jungle of shrubs brushed against the car as it passed.

[…]

    The automobile rounded a bend and halted before a weather-beaten, rambling old house which was perched high above the sea. It stood at a rakish angle since one wing had no form of support at all. The water had cut a great tunnel beneath it.

    "Another season, and the house surely will topple into the sea," Jack declared, gazing about him with interest. "A lot of damage has been done since last I visited here."

    Toward the right lay what remained of a garden. There were a few scraggly rose bushes entangled among a jungle of weeds. Yet when the visitors came within view of the Whispering Girl statue, they halted and stared in awe, for the figure tended to dignify its unkempt surroundings.

    The marble piece was still imposing, though weatherbeaten and old. The group consisted of three sculptured figures; a life-sized likeness of a beautiful girl with flowing hair, on either side of which, at a little distance, stood a smaller statue. The central figure bore a startling resemblance to Nancy. (OT 68-69)

Even in daylight there is a feeling of foreboding as they approach the estate. This is a place in transition with a house that is teetering on the cliff edge, on the brink of being taken by the sea. Time is running out. If the daughter of the deceased owner isn’t found and brought to claim the property for her own soon, the house, and even the statue will be lost.

There isn’t a scene or setting in the RT to directly compare this to. I found aspects of this scene in three separate settings in the RT: the rutted drive of a derelict mansion the girls are brought to in a foiled kidnapping attempt, the statue at night outside of the yacht club where the girls are staying, and the overgrown garden at a property being used as an artist’s studio.

    The highway ran directly to the oceanfront. Here the driver turned left and drove for some distance. The area was uninhabited and the roads were heavy with sand. After a while the car went up a weed-choked driveway toward a large weather-beaten house. On the ocean side of it, sand dunes ran down to the water’s edge. (RT 24)

    The marble figure cast a broad shadow. There was something eerie about the scene with the beautiful young woman looking longingly in the direction of her Italian homeland. (RT 81)

    The front yard was filled with terra-cotta statues which stood amid high grass. Here and there a rosebud reared its head above an overgrown flower bed, and a few hollyhocks towered above the weeds. (RT 121)

In all of these scenes the bit of tension that is created is destroyed by a quick reassurance of safety. In the first scene the girls hop out of the car and outrun the men who are “past middle-age, heavy, and not so agile” (RT 26) then they double back and steal their car to drive to a phone to call the police (27). In the second, Nancy and Ned, who have been at a dance being held at the yacht club, go outside to see the statue. They think they hear the statue whispering, but shortly discover the voices are coming from a couple sitting behind the statue, the man proposing (81, 82). In the last instance, the girls talk to the artist, look at the statues on display, see someone coming and they scoot next door to have dinner at a “farmhouse [that] had been converted into a charming, old-fashioned dining room” (126).

To a certain extent the tension is softened in the OT, but not enough to clear the atmosphere. In the scene above when Nancy and her friends first see the statue, Bess comments that Mrs. Owen was right, Nancy could be its twin. Nancy’s response, “It makes me feel sort of creepy to see myself reflected in marble” (69). Moments later, Nancy asks everyone to listen.

    Everyone remained quiet for a moment. Save for the whistle of the wind in the pine boughs and the roar of the ocean, there was no other sound.

    “One can almost imagine that the statue is whispering now,” Nancy murmured.

    “It’s only the wind,” George Fayne said impatiently. 

    “Of course,” Nancy returned quickly, “and I hope you won’t think me superstitious, but I find the illusion almost perfect.” (OT 70)

George brings Nancy back down to earth, and while Nancy makes light of her flight of fancy, this only enhances the earlier tension. If logical-minded Nancy Drew is getting affected by the scene we know there is something about the derelict estate that is unsettling.

In conclusion

My plan was not to pick apart the RT, because I thought it was quite good, not great. But it didn’t put me to sleep or cause me to roll my eyes on every other page like the RT of The Mystery of the Hollow Oak did either. Even so, the RT of The Whispering Statue doesn’t compare to the quality of writing in the OT. My intention isn’t to pit the writers of these two editions against each other. Harriet Stratemeyer Adams writes simple sentences. Perhaps, it was thought that was all the children of the day were able to understand. Mildred A. Wirt manages to write a more sophisticated book without elevating the vocabulary to any great extent, rather, she varies it more, and her sentence structure is more complex.

As with many children’s books, both of these books have moments were one has to suspend their disbelief. However, these moments were a little harder to swallow in the RT. I found the incidents that were most unbelievable also made Nancy and her friends appear unintelligent. Nancy cannot be both a skilled detective and believe that hiding behind a frame will make her look like a painting. The two are mutually exclusive. 

The one problem I had with the OT was that I felt it was a bit slow to start. A lot was made of the dog, Togo, getting into trouble and taking Nancy along with him for the ride. He did enable Nancy to meet a character who becomes more important later, but Togo is all but forgotten once the group reaches Sea Cliff. Nancy leaves him at the hotel kennel and a few days go by before there is any mention of him at all. After that Togo isn’t mentioned again until the very end of the book, where he still doesn’t have any connection to the main plot. I am fairly sure Togo doesn’t feature in any of the other books in this series, but I will be on the lookout! (Through a bit of research online, I have discovered that Togo does appear in a number of the books in the Nancy Drew Diaries series. Although, I cannot directly attest to this, as I have not read any of the books in that series.)

Next up is book 15 in the series, The Haunted Bridge. See you in July!

56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Whispering Statue - Part 1/2

Book 14

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

I should add that this discussion of The Whispering Statue is in two parts. Part Two will go up tomorrow. Once it goes live, you will be able to find a link to it here.

Editions pictured: OT (25 chapters, 217 pages); RT (20 chapters, 179 pages)

OT publication date: 1937

My OT edition printed: approx. 1959-1961

RT publication date: 1970

My RT edition printed: approx. 1974

RT cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editors: Edna Stratemeyer Squier & Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

Revised by: Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

OT setting: River Heights & Sea Cliff (summer resort on Atlantic Coast)

RT setting: River Heights & Waterford (town on the coast)

Introduction

Since I have both books in my collection, I had the pleasure of reading the original text (OT) of The Whispering Statue and the revised text (RT). On the other occasion (The Message in the Hollow Oak OT, The Message in the Hollow Oak RT) where I had both editions I discussed each book in its own post. The RT diverged from the OT to such an extent that it would have been near impossible to compare them. While the OT and the RT of The Whispering Statue are quite different from each other, I believe they have enough in common that they can be discussed together. That’s my hope, anyway!

On the other occurrence when I had both the OT and the RT of a title, I read the OT first. But after reading the more sophisticated and — let’s just say it — better written OT, the RT was a slog to get through. I vowed not to make the same mistake a second time around, so when it came time to read The Whispering Statue I picked up the RT first. And you know what? It had the desired results! I had a fun time reading both books. Sure the OT was still better, as I expected it would be, but I didn’t have to force myself to finish the RT and I was able to appreciate that one for what it was without constantly comparing it to the OT. I believe this enabled me to look at both of these books more objectively and better appreciate their strengths without letting the weak points cast a dark cloud over my enjoyment of them!

The other thing I didn’t do this time is take notes while I was reading. This enabled me to get into these stories without all of the stopping and starting that detailed note taking entails. The one downside is that I didn’t have anything to refer back to after I had finished reading, which made this blog post a whole lot harder to write! If you have read any of my Nancy Drew posts before, you know that I usually start them off with a list of the shenanigans Nancy and her friends get up to, followed by how many meals were eaten, and any other interesting details. However, my not having taken notes while I was reading means I don’t have any of that information available to me. I hope you will forgive me for the unusually straightforward synopses to follow. 

RT Synopsis

Mrs. Merriam, a client of Nancy’s father, inherits a large collection of fine books from her uncle. She approaches Willis Basswood, the owner of an art gallery and bookshop in her town, and he agrees to sell the books for her, taking a fee of twenty-five percent from each sale. Some of the books sell for quite a bit of money and others for less as is to be expected. All is well, until Mr. Basswood stopped paying Mrs. Merriam. He explained it was because the books weren’t selling, but Mrs. Merriam suspects the man is selling the books and simply not paying her.

While Mrs. Merriam explains her problem to Nancy, masked men ambush the Drew home, and Nancy gets a threatening phone call with the message, “You tell Mrs. Merriam to shut up or she’ll get hurt and you people too!” (RT 4).

Soon Nancy is taking an assumed name and traveling in disguise to Waterford with friends Bess and George in tow. There they stay at the Waterford Yacht Club where there is another mystery surrounding a missing statue which is said to whisper and bears a distinct resemblance to none other than Nancy Drew.

The mysteries are linked — well, aren’t they always?! — and Nancy brings the baddies to justice with a lot of help from her friends. At one point she is entrapped in a sarcophagus and things would have quickly gone downhill if it wasn’t for the quick actions of Bess, George, Ned, and their new friend Dick.

OT Synopsis

Nancy goes to the opening ceremony of a new park in River Heights, where a lost bull-terrier adopts her, dragging Nancy into all sorts of trouble. The dog, soon to be named Togo, digs up freshly planted flower beds, chases a bevy of swans, and darts wildly at children. He takes a mislaid handbag, plunges into a lake, swims out a ways, and drops it in before paddling back to shore.

Through Togo’s excitable nature — see handbag incident above — Nancy meets Mrs. Owen, the honoured guest speaker of the event, and hears about a statue called “The Whispering Girl” that looks remarkably akin to Nancy, which just happens to be on display near Sea Cliff, a place she will soon be going on holiday. While the two are airing out the woman’s belongings — see Togo’s excitable nature above — Nancy happens to see in the woman’s possession a personal ad clipped from the newspaper. After some consideration, Nancy suspects Mrs. Owen of having a secret sorrow. 

Nancy, Bess, and George go on holiday to Sea Cliff resort. On the train, they see a shady individual preying on an older woman. Nancy warns the woman to be careful of the man, but the woman gives Nancy short shrift for her efforts. Later Nancy suspects the woman isn’t as soft a touch as she seems. There’s a mystery there!

In this one, Nancy and her friends save two men from a burning plane, reunite a man and wife, and stop some thieves from stealing a number of expensive sculptures. Nancy also finds the missing heiress of a crumbling estate, saves an elderly woman from a watery grave, and is rescued during a terrific storm from a most unseaworthy vessel.

Going forward

When I first set out to read one Nancy Drew and write a blog post per week I had no idea how time consuming it would be. It vaguely crossed my mind that for the titles I had both editions in I would then have to read both in one week, but I had so few in the OT that I didn’t think it would matter much. What I didn’t think about at all is my mood. The truth is, as much as I love Nancy Drew, there are a lot of other books that I want to be reading. Besides, there are a lot of other things I want to have time for outside of reading and writing about what I read. As the gaps have grown between posts has proven, a weekly turnaround simply isn’t attainable for me. 

In July and August I will be discussing one Nancy Drew title per month and then starting in September I plan to do two titles per month. Hopefully, this will free me up to do non-Nancy posts if the urge takes me. More importantly, I hope this will rekindle my excitement for this project. It’s hard to get enjoyment out of the process when you can practically hear the clock ticking! I hope you can all understand and aren’t secretly cursing me. 

Fingers crossed I’ll have more time to fine-tune my thoughts, and make my blog posts are little more succinct, so I can stop producing posts that grow so large that they need to be cut in half!

See you tomorrow where we will be talking about bonkersness, good writing, better writing, and the best way to disguise yourself as a work of art. I hope to see you then.

56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Mystery of the Ivory Charm

Week 18, Book 13 

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post.

Edition pictured: Revised text (20 chapters, 179 pages)

Cover illustrated by: Rudy Nappi

Revised text publication date: 1974

Original text publication date: 1936

My edition printed: approx. 1978

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editors: Edna Stratemeyer Squier & Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

Revised by: Priscilla Baker-Carr

Setting: River Heights and local towns, Tannberg and Hanover

Originally published in 1936, I will be reviewing the revised text edition of The Mystery of the Ivory Charm, published in 1974 and pictured above. 

Carson Drew’s friend, Stanley Strong, needs someone to look into possible illegal activity going on at the wild animal show he owns and, of course, Nancy Drew is the one for the job (1)!

With friends Bess and George, and 5-year-old Tommy from down the street in tow, Nancy attends the wild animal show. There they come across a runaway elephant and have a run-in with a cruel animal trainer, Rai, who threatens to whip his son, Rishi, for not looking after the elephant. Nancy notices the man wears a beautiful ivory charm in the shape of an elephant on a cord around his neck. When she asks him about it, he tells her that the person who wears it is protected from harm (9). 

Afterwards, Mr. Strong tells Nancy he is suspicious of Rai. Beyond mistreating his son, Mr. Strong doesn’t know what Rai might be up to, but he would like Nancy to investigate the man (10-11). When Nancy arrives home from the excursion, she discovers a stowaway (12). Rishi has run away from Rai, who is not his real father. Before Rai’s wife died, she told Rishi that his real father is alive and living in River Heights (14). 

In this one, Nancy finds Rishi’s father, uncovers the power of the ivory charm, and restores a stolen fortune to a maharaja. She still has time to temporarily adopt a child (19), search for property (34-36), provide first aid (57-58), find an English tutor (63-64), have a long conversation about mysticism (73-76), help Hannah make breakfast (83), read the newspaper… or at least the headlines (84), dig herself out of a collapsed tunnel (92), go to a “wild-animal show”… twice (3-11, 100-106), go to the market (109), go to Emerson for the weekend for a fraternity party (134-138), pretend she has psychic powers (144-147), use her first aid skills a second time (148-149), jump to conclusions with little proof twice in one chapters and prove to be right both times (157, 159-160), save someone from drowning (162-163), provide yet more first aid (that course sure is coming in handy!) (175-176), eat six meals (which has got to be a record for the lowest number of meals mentioned in any Nancy Drew book!), and have a snack of tea and cake.

Time of year

    [Carson Drew’s] slender, attractive daughter walked toward the car. It was a sunny, warm May afternoon. Nancy’s strawberry-blond hair vividly contrasted her teal-blue convertible. (2)

In this one, there isn’t much mention of the weather,  the temperature, or even what Nancy is wearing. By setting the book in May, I assume the idea was to give Nancy good weather in which to solve the mystery, with the added benefit that Ned is still in university, so Nancy can take a weekend off of sleuthing to visit him. Of course, it doesn’t exactly work out that way, but Ned can keep on hoping!

There is one mention of the weather, a thunderstorm, which gives Nancy and her friends the opportunity to explore a house that has had the insides removed.

    “Rain hard outside,” Rishi said.

    “Then we’ll stay here until the storm’s over,” Nancy suggested.

    Rishi began to test the ropes and swings. Bess uttered a little cry of alarm as the boy swung through space, hanging by his knees from he bar of a trapeze. 

    “He’ll be killed!” she exclaimed.

    Nancy warned him to be careful. “The safety net is broken,” she cautioned. “And some of the ropes look very old and insecure.”

    “Rishi not take chance,” he promised.

    Outside the old house rain fell in torrents.

    “While we’re waiting I believe I’ll do a little investigating,” Nancy said. (50)

The house “without insides” and other nonsense

    An amazing sight met their gaze. The house was indeed “without insides.” The floor had been torn away. From the rafters of the ceiling hung several swings and trapezes, similar to these used in wild-animal acts, as well as many entangled ropes. (49)

I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of a house without insides when I read this book as a child, and I find it even more confusing now. Would it not make more sense to use a building that is already an open space, such as a barn, for the purpose of training animals or practicing a trapeze act?

Stranger still, one of the characters in this book lives in a barn. It is commented on as evidence of him being eccentric. Okay, fine. But clearly, there is no shortage of barns in the area. 

    “You won’t find Pete living in a regular house, though—not that guy. He’s too stingy to build himself a decent place. He lives in an old barn that was standing on the property when he bought it.”

[…]

    “This must be the place,” Nancy commented, stopping the car near a strange structure, which resembled neither a house nor a barn.

    The queer, tumble-down building had originally been painted brick red, but now appeared to be washed-out pink. A porch had been build at the front, and large windows were cut into the walls at uneven angles. An old silo, long since useless, adjoined the east side of the structure, while the west side was supported by a massive stone chimney.

    “Did you ever see such a crazy-looking house?” Bess giggled. “I wish I had a camera with me.” (115-116)

But the architecture in this book is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things that make no sense. Given the title and the fact this is a children’s book that was repackaged in the 1970s, we can anticipate some racist stereotypes with this one and this is definitely the case. The racism in this book could probably be called “casual”, which is so easy to gloss over as just being of its time. 

Rishi, the Indian boy that Nancy meets at the wild animal show and who stows away in her car, refers to himself in the third person throughout the book despite Nancy having found him a professor to tutor him in English who comments on Rishi being unusually bright for a 12-year-old. I have never heard anyone who’s first language wasn’t English refer to themselves in the third person! All I can say is that is seems a lazy and insensitive way of handling Rishi’s dialogue. Thankfully, there are three other characters from India in this book and neither the author, editor, or publisher felt the need to impose any unusual speech characteristics on any of them!

Final thoughts 

Judging by the fact that all I’ve done is complain about this book, I’m sure you’ve already guessed that I didn’t enjoy this one very much. After reading the The Message in the Hollow Oak in the original text a few weeks ago and really enjoying the more adventurous and free-spirited version of Nancy in that book, I’m a bit worried that I’ve ruined myself for the revised texts. Although, I don’t remember particularly liking this one as a child either. I would have liked to have more scenes at the “wild-animal show” — which sounds to me a lot like a circus — and less time spent going to fraternity parties, and visiting the house “without insides”. Beyond the tunnel that leads from the house to a door that looks like it is part of a rock, the setting felt lacklustre. I don’t think the tunnel is ever property explained. The house “without insides” is explained as once being “the headquarters for a circus troupe” long before the current owner came into possession of the property (163). You know, just one of those odd coincidences!

Bonkers quotation

I have got into the habit of finishing these posts off with a favourite quotation from the book, but since I appear to only be ragging on this one — and I didn’t mark a single passage that I liked — I thought I might as well share this very strange section that made me wonder who this imposter is who is trying to pass herself off as Nancy Drew.

    Rishi bubbled with enthusiasm and his gaiety was imparted to the others. He loved the outdoors and amazed the girls with his stories of country life in his native land.

    He asked eager questions about the names of unfamiliar trees and birds he saw in the area. The girls were slightly embarrassed when they could not always answer him, and they resolved to devote themselves to nature lore with new interest.

    “I’m ashamed that I don’t know the names of half the birds I see,” Nancy confessed. “I’ll find out.” (34)

I found this very odd. In the Password to Larkspur Lane, Nancy shows herself to be knowledgeable about flowers, and she has some knowledge of birds too, as she nurses a homing pigeon back to health in that one. How are we supposed to believe that she can’t name the birds they see on the short drive in the countryside near her house? I’m all for a version of Nancy who is willing to admit when she doesn’t know something, and who is eager to learn more to fill in the gaps in her knowledge, but I would also like to see some consistency in Nancy across the books! 

Here’s hoping I have better luck with The Whispering Statue. This is another title where I have both the original and revised text versions in my collection. This time I plan to start with the revised text, in an effort to learn from the mistake I made reading the original text of The Message in the Hollow Oak and noticing all of the places where the revised text failed to live up to the original. Wish me luck!