Escaping Dreamland

by Charlie Lovett

  “Not many people have,” she said, “which is too bad, because he was one of the most successful figures in the history of publishing. He wrote, or at least outlined, hundreds of books that sold tens of millions of copies. He also made up the names Franklin Dixon and Carolyn Keene and Victor Appleton, along with Roy Rockwood and Laura Lee Hope and lots of others.”

  “Those people were made up?” said Robert. How could the idols of his childhood, the writers who had filled so many of his summer days, be nonexistent?

  “Entirely,” said Julia.

  “But if they were made up then who . . .” He wanted to say, who inspired me to become a teller of stories? But he found he could not finish the sentence.

  “Stratemeyer ran what he called a publishing syndicate that cranked out scores of children’s series. He would come up with the idea for each series and outline each book. He would pay ghostwriters a flat fee to write the books from his outlines. Then he would publish them through a variety of houses. The first fifteen or so Hardy Boys books were written by a Canadian named Leslie McFarlane who got paid something like one hundred and twenty-five dollars per title.”

  “Those books have sold . . .”

  “Millions.”

  The Tower Treasure by Leslie McFarlane, thought Robert—it just didn’t sound right.

  “And this Canadian didn’t write all of the Hardy Boys?”

  “No. That’s why Stratemeyer invented the pseudonyms. So he could keep publishing books in a series under the same name, even if he switched authors.”

  “So, you think Stratemeyer invented Buck Larson, Dexter Cornwall, and Neptune B. Smythe?”

  “That’s where things get fuzzy,” said Julia. “I know my Stratemeyer pseudonyms pretty well, and I’ve never heard any of those. What series did they write?”

  “Daring Dan Dawson; Alice Gold, Girl Inventor; and Frank Fairfax, Cub Reporter,” said Robert. “And then there was one they wrote together with all three of their main characters—the Tremendous Trio.”

  “Definitely not Stratemeyer titles,” said Julia. “Although he might have liked the idea of the crossover series. I don’t suppose you have any of the books with you?”

  Robert reached into his messenger bag and pulled out his battered copy of The Tremendous Trio at Niagara Falls. The faded illustration on the green cloth cover showed a boy and a girl leaning over the Horseshoe Falls, looks of terror on their faces. On the rim of the falls, about to be swept over by the roaring current, was a barrel-like object. He handed the book to Julia who carefully examined the cover before turning to the title page.

  “Not in very good condition,” she said.

  “Three generations of my family have read it about a hundred times,” said Robert.

  “It’s not your fault. Stratemeyer didn’t waste money on quality. He sold his books for fifty cents at a time when the going rate for a hardcover was about a dollar fifty. That meant he had to sell a lot of books to turn a profit, but it also meant that boys could buy Stratemeyer books with their pocket change. And millions of boys did.”

  “Including my grandfather,” said Robert. “He had the Great Marvel series and long runs of Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys . . .”

  “All Stratemeyer series,” said Julia, examining Robert’s book more carefully. “To sell them for fifty cents he had to manufacture books as cheaply as possible. But everything about this book—the wood pulp in the paper, the cloth on the binding, the quality of the printing—is even more shoddily done than your typical Stratemeyer series. No illustrations either, except the one on the front cover. Are they all issued by the same publisher?”

  “Pickering Brothers,” said Robert.

  “Never heard of them. Maybe it was one of Stratemeyer’s competitors. This is interesting,” said Julia, examining the back of the title page.

  “What?”

  “The address: Copyright 1911, Pickering Brothers, Publishers, 175 Fifth Avenue.”

  “That’s the Flatiron Building,” said Robert. “I used to work there.”

  “It would have been pretty new back then. It was finished in 1902, I think.”

  “So, you think this Pickering Brothers outfit was something like Stratemeyer—inventing authors and using ghostwriters to fill in outlines?”

  “It’s possible,” said Julia.

  “Then how do you explain this?” said Robert, pulling out the letter his grandfather had received in 1911. “My grandfather got a letter from Dexter Cornwall.”

  “Your grandfather got a letter from Pickering Brothers,” said Julia, glancing at the paper, “but I seriously doubt it was from anyone named Dexter Cornwall. They probably had someone at the company who answered fan mail.”

  Robert felt the earth below him shifting. His childhood literary idols were nothing more than a marketing ploy. The letter his grandfather had treasured in the field of battle was a fake. Yet he felt not disappointment, but curiosity. Someone had written the books he had loved so much as a child and shared so deeply with his father, even if from an outline penned by a man named Pickering. Someone had written his grandfather a letter that had kept his courage up during World War II. Just because those people were not named Dexter Cornwall, or Neptune B. Smythe, or Buck Larson, didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Some person or group of persons had made Robert’s childhood wonderful, had connected him to his father, and had changed the lives of who knew how many other young readers. The people who created these books deserved to be recognized. And Robert would be the one to do it.

  “There’s one other thing,” said Robert. “The beginning of a book, but only the beginning.” He pulled out a second file folder, containing the opening passage of The Last Adventure of the Tremendous Trio. Julia looked through the pages, holding each carefully between her fingertips as she turned it over.

  “And this is all you have?” she said.

  “It was folded up in the back of one of the books,” said Robert. “But that’s all.”

  “Strange,” said Julia.

  “Elaine said that none of these books or authors were in the New York Public Library system.”

  “They won’t be here either,” said Julia. “I did a pretty thorough search for children’s series books when I first came here and there’s nothing.”

  “Because librarians considered them dangerous when they came out?” said Robert.

  “It’s not just that,” said Julia. “It’s strange how sometimes the things that are most popular take the longest to be recognized as significant by the establishment. Rare book libraries are full of Shakespeare and Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but they’re not going to spend their money on Victor Appleton and Franklin W. Dixon, even if millions more people read them at the time than ever read Jane Austen in her lifetime.”

  “So, what happens? All those books just get lost?” It seemed immensely sad to Robert that the books that had introduced so many millions to the joys of reading could be simply brushed aside.

  “There is a last line of defense against that,” said Julia.

  “What is that?”

  “Private collectors. Book collectors can collect whatever they want. They have no one to answer to, except perhaps a spouse, no limitations except budget and space—though most collectors I know are good at ignoring both those restrictions. And they collect what they love.”

  “Are there other people out there who love children’s series books?” said Robert.

  “Plenty of them,” said Julia. “Gradually some of those private collections are ending up in institutions where they can take their place alongside other rare and valuable children’s books. Even the finest children’s literature wasn’t generally considered fit fodder for academic study until fifty years ago or so. It’s not surprising it takes longer for the more lowbrow stuff to get a little recognition. It’s happening, but slowly. Ridgefield University bought a colle
ction of four thousand yellowbacks a few years ago, and scholars are practically wetting themselves over it.”

  “Yellowbacks?”

  “Basically they were the nineteenth-century British version of dime novels,” said Julia. “Academia is finally realizing that popular books may not be literary, but they had a huge impact on the culture and on people’s lives.”

  “Are there any rare book libraries that have good collections of children’s series?”

  “There are a few,” said Julia, “but if you really want to see a nice collection, you should contact Sherwood Whitmore.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He has one of the biggest collections of Stratemeyer books in the world. I visited him when I was working on my papers, and his collection is amazing.”

  “And he makes it available to the public?”

  “Not to the public, exactly, but he loves showing off to people who appreciate the genre.”

  “Where does he live?” Robert didn’t relish the idea of dropping a thousand dollars on last-minute plane fare to Chicago or Los Angeles, but to find the missing book, he would consider it.

  “East Eighty-Seventh,” said Julia.

  “What, here in New York?”

  “Forty blocks away,” said Julia.

  “That’s fantastic,” said Robert with a laugh.

  “You’ll like Sherwood,” said Julia, scribbling down an address and a phone number. “Be sure to give him my regards.”

  Somehow discovering the anonymity of the creators of the Tremendous Trio only added purpose to Robert’s attempt to fulfill his promise to his father, to cast out the demons of his past, and to make himself into the kind of man that Rebecca might be able to love. If, by learning everything he could about Pickering and his ghost writers, he could not only recover the final episode of the Tremendous Trio, but also bring recognition to writers who had brought joy to his childhood, he might not only close the book on the story of his own past, but perhaps bring some of that same joy to the present generation. Most important, this entire journey was feeling more and more like a story; Rebecca had loved the storyteller in Robert and if he could get that back, maybe she would love him again. He punched Sherwood Whitmore’s number into his phone, then stepped back into the cold of Forty-Fourth Street and started uptown, waiting for an answer.

  XII

  The Flatiron Building,

  In the Days of Streetcars and Shirtwaists

  Magda carefully slid the letter out of the envelope on the top of a pile on her desk. In addition to typing correspondence, proofreading manuscripts, and making the rounds of the bookstores on Twenty-Third Street to make sure that Pickering titles were prominently displayed, one of her responsibilities at Pickering Brothers, Publishers—where she had been working for the past six months—was answering the fan mail. There was rarely as much mail as the publisher would have liked, but there was always some. With the promise of a quiet afternoon, she began to read the first of several letters to authors who did not exist. The letter, addressed to Cornelius Donovan, care of Pickering Brothers, Publishers, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York City, was written in a childish hand on a piece of business stationery bearing the letterhead of Herman Chlebowsky, tailor, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. At least, thought Magda, some of Pickering’s books had made it across the Hudson River. Most of the fan mail came from inside the city.

  July 11, 1906

  Dear Mr. Cornelius Donovan,

  My name is George Chlebowsky and the books you rite called Drew Stetson, Boy of the Seas are my favorite books in the hole world. I like the one where he sales around Africa and the one where he sales to Antarticle, but my favorite is where he sales to Alaska and camps in the wilderness. The seen when he fights the bare is the best. I like that you have wild animals in your books. I live in Perth Amboy and the only wild animal I ever see is the dog that lives across the street when he sees a cat. Can you please tell me how a boy like me can become a saler? I wood like to go to Alaska and Antarticle, but not Africa because it is to hot. If you will please rite back to George Chlebowsky, 985 Sutton St., Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

  Your Friend,

  George

  Magda loved answering letters like these. Most of them came from young boys, and she imagined each of them like her own brother, Henry—bright and curious, with a fresh-washed face and eager eyes. Her secretarial training made her want to correct the errors of spelling and grammar, but she simply laid the letter on the desk and loaded a sheet of letterhead into her old Hammond typewriter. Like everything else in the Pickering offices—which managed to look shabby, cluttered, and dusty despite occupying rooms in a skyscraper only four years old—it had been purchased secondhand by her parsimonious superior. In secretarial school, Magda had learned to type on the QWERTY keyboard of the Remington, so the unconventional curved layout of the nearly twenty-year-old Hammond had taken some getting used to, but now she found she could type faster than she had in school.

  Pickering Publishing

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York

  From the Desk of Cornelius Donovan

  July 13, 1906

  Dear George,

  Thank you so much for your letter. I have just returned from an expedition to southernmost Patagonia to collect material for my new book, Drew Stetson around South America, so it was nice to find some mail awaiting me. I am very pleased that you like my books about Drew Stetson. The character of Drew is based on a fine young man like yourself who accompanies me on all my journeys. If we hadn’t had him with us on our latest expedition, I shudder to think what might have happened.

  It is too bad you do not have any wild animals where you live, as they are quite exciting to encounter. In my new book you will meet a creature called an anaconda, and you may find yourself pleased there are not many of those in Perth Amboy.

  I am glad that you wish to become a sailor like Drew Stetson. Perhaps you will have a chance to meet the real Drew someday and he can talk to you about how to get started in that line. In the meantime, I can tell you this—study hard in school and learn lots of geography. It is also helpful to read lots of books about faraway places. Drew once told me that he learned a lot from reading the Wild West Boys.

  I hope to see you one day when I am out sailing the seas.

  Your friend,

  Cornelius Donovan

  Her letters generally had the same conceit—that the authors were real people who participated in the same sort of activities as portrayed in their books, that the young boys who featured as the heroes of those books were also real, and that the readers’ aspirations to emulate those heroes could be fulfilled by working hard and buying plenty more Pickering books. She never specifically instructed fans to buy books, but she had become skilled at weaving that message into the letters. Of course, Cornelius Donovan was as fictional as Drew Stetson. His was just one of many pseudonyms that Pickering Brothers used. The publisher wrote most of the Drew Stetson series himself, although lately he had gotten busy with sales and accounting and had handed off the most recent volume to a ghostwriter with only a few chapters written.

  She was just pulling the letter out of the typewriter when the door to the hallway, a door with a frosted glass window bearing the words Pickering Brothers, Publishers in black and gold letters, swung open. This was an unusual enough event that Magda took off her reading glasses and watched with curiosity as a tall figure strode into the office.

  “Good morning,” said the man.

  “It’s five past twelve,” said Magda.

  “Well, good afternoon, then. My name is Neptune B. Smythe, and I’m here to see Mr. Pickering.”

  “Which one? This is Pickering Brothers.”

  “Is there more than one?”

  “No, but he thought Pickering Brothers sounded more impressive than Pickering and Company.”

  “If there is only one, then that’s th
e one I’ll see.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So, no, then.”

  “But I’m sure he’ll want to see me.”

  “And what makes you sure?”

  “I have this—”

  “There are two reasons Mr. Pickering won’t see you,” said Magda, interrupting. “The first is that there is no Mr. Pickering. His real name is Lipscomb. Mr. Julius Lipscomb.”

  “That’s all right,” said the man with a grin. “There is no Neptune B. Smythe. My real name is Thomas De Peyster.”

  “Imagine that,” said Magda, smiling. “And Neptune B. Smythe is such a realistic-sounding name.”

  “It is a real name. I stole it off of a plumbing wagon.”

  “Well then,” said Magda, “we must be sure to contact you if we have any trouble with the pipes.”

  “But you can call me Tom.”

  “It seems unlikely that I shall have much occasion to call you anything.”

  “What’s the other reason he won’t see me? Mr. Lipscomb, I mean.”

  “He’s not in,” said Magda. “He makes sales calls on Friday afternoons.”

  “And, as you so astutely pointed out, it is the afternoon.”

  Magda perused the young man. His blue eyes sparkled in the midday sun that shone through the window. He had taken off his hat and not a strand of his blond hair was out of place. He wore a gray four-button double-breasted suit and carried a silver-handled walking stick. She didn’t often see uptown gents in the offices of Pickering Brothers, Publishers, but Mr. Thomas De Peyster, alias Mr. Neptune B. Smythe, seemed exactly that. Magda had little time for flirts and even less time for flirts from Fifth Avenue. And yet, this man seemed somehow uncomfortable in the latest fashions, and he held his walking stick not with the casual arrogance of the elite, but almost with distaste. Magda sensed that he was something other than—or perhaps more than—what he seemed. That intrigued her.

  “May I ask what you wished to speak to Mr. Pickering . . . that is, what is your visit regarding?”