Nancy Drew and the mystery of the frosted cake

Friday Night, 8:13 PM

Nancy Drew, as Kepler notes, is nice. She is really nice. The bad guys should get a time out.

Nancy Drew likes dessert. At the Drew household in River Heights, luncheon, dinner, supper, etc. are all accompanied by dessert. Breakfast might include coffee cake or waffles. So I bake a cake and invite Nancy Drew to tea. We have some questions.

At first I thought the mystery was Nancy Drew’s hair. We started in the middle with the Mystery of the Tapping Heels (book 16) and her hair is titian like the Persian cats. But then in The Secret of the Old Clock she is blonde. And in the original 1930 edition she has a “curly golden bob.”

Not at all the sort of head which one expected to indulge in serious thoughts.

Nancy Drew is a one woman Marvel Universe. Continuity be damned.

Unlike other superheroes, Nancy Drew does not die. No one dies, though many are dead (including Nancy’s Drew’s mother who either died six years ago or when Nancy was three years old). Nancy’s first best friend, Helen Corning, gets married — which is effectively death, we never see her again.

Nancy Drew is a collective endeavor, written by anonymous women over time following the three page spec of Edward Stratemeyer — but Stratemeyer died in 1931, so he deserves no credit for Bess, George, and football star boyfriend Ned.

The books were revised and republished in 1959, and in 1991 Applewood Books began publishing a facsimile edition of the original (Los Angeles Public Library has both) complete with an introduction that warns of the differences to be encountered. The convertible is really a roadster, and, oh, you are about to meet some blatant racist stereotypes.

In 1930 The Secret of the Old Clock was written by “Mildred Wirt, a young ghostwriter from Iowa” and in 1959 The Secret of the Old Clock was rewritten by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams (daughter of Edward!). I think Harriet is trying to tell us something.

Clue #1: After leaving Masonville, Nancy drives her blue convertible along River Road hoping to see the mailbox of the Hoover’s (side note, in 1930 Nancy solves her first mystery mostly through random luck, or, woman’s intuition. She’s much more systematic in 1959.) and when a storm blackens the sky she presses the button to raise the top of her convertible, “but nothing happened.” Don’t worry, she’s okay and the car is mopped out, but she never goes to a mechanic! Nancy can change a tire — we later learn — but it’s not clear that she has the tools or technical knowledge to resolve mechanical failures. Nancy! Don’t you want to be able to raise the top of your convertible? The roadster original plot does not require such diversions from the storyline. Did Harriet forget that Nancy’s top was down? Or was she offering some sort of social commentary about impractical new cars (the convertible was a birthday present from Nancy’s father).

Clue #2: Nancy ends up at the Hoover’s house. Here things get a little risqué, her clothes are drenched and she takes them off to be dried (borrowing a robe) and then irons them in the living room (1930 = no convertible, thus no wet clothes, and Nancy is fully dressed the whole time). But it’s okay, the Hoovers are two girls around Nancy’s age and Grace has made a cake to celebrate Allison’s birthday.

Grace stepped to the stove, removed a golden-brown cake from the oven, and set it on the cake to cool. […]
Soon Nancy finished pressing her clothes and put them back on. Meanwhile the cake had cooled and Grace started to spread the chocolate frosting.

What!? If you have baked a cake then you can deduce as well as I that either,

Nancy just spent over an hour ironing her outfit.
The Hoover house is very cold.
The chocolate frosting is puddling at the base of the warm cake (which is Nancy is too polite to point out).
Harriet has never baked a cake.
Harriet is playing a sneaky trick on her editors.

In 1930 the girls are Horners, the cake is unfrosted (still golden yellow), and it’s no one’s birthday.

Let us return to the question of women and intuition and reason. The best chapter of Nancy Drew #1 is “Frustrating Wait” (Chapter XIII, 1959)/”Let to Starve” (Chapter XVI, 1930). Despite the change of title, the fast-paced content is much the same in both versions. Nancy has been locked in the closet of a vacated house by a group of thieves.

At first Nancy was to frightened to think logically. She beat upon the door with her fists, but the heavy oak panels would not give way. (1959)//At first Nancy was too frighted to think logically. She beat frantically upon the door with her fists, but the heavy oak panels would not give. (1930)

Then, after a page of trying to beat down the door and call for help,

At last she sank down again on the floor to rest and tried to force herself to reason calmly.
“I’m only wasting my strength this way. I must try to think logically.”
//
At last she sank down again on the floor to rest and tried to force herself to reason calmly.
“I’m only wasting my strength this way. I must try to think logically. If I don’t, I’m lost.”

Eventually, Nancy pulls down a rod and tries to wedge the door open. Here we get a glimpse of her classical training!

At first the door did not move in the slightest.
“That old Greek scientist, Archimedes, didn’t know what he was talking about when he said the world could be moved with a lever,” Nancy murmured.
//
At first the door did not budge.
“Archimedes didn’t know what he was talking about when he said the world could be moved with a lever,” Nancy murmured.

But then, suddenly, someone blocks the door. Don’t worry! It’s the caretaker Jeff Tucker, who mistakes Nancy for one of the burglars, pretending to be a woman. Happily, Nancy proves she is not one of the thieves by … “a long, loud feminine scream” (in 1930 it's “her longest and loudest”).

I had only ever read the 1959 edition in which Jeff Tucker is a very thin, very tall old man. In 1959 Tucker had been tricked by the thieves and locked into a shed. In 1930 Tucker is a bit drunk, oh, and, he’s also African American (the book describes him as “colored” and doubles down on the point with a heavy dose of “dat”s and “de”s). Apparently, when in 1959 it was decided to update Nancy Drew by softening offensive racial stereotypes, it must have seemed easier to whitewash Jeff Tucker rather than simply making him sympathetic, sober, and law-abiding.

So I made a cake.

Exactly on time, Nancy Drew knocked on the door, I showed her in, she took a seat, I server her a slice of cake.

“Nancy Drew,” I said, I have some questions for you.”