In the spring of her junior year, Harriet, who had often found the task of warding off outside reporters and photographers in the name of school honor difficult, was watching an outdoor play being performed on the college green from a hidden vantage point in the school’s woods. Apparently, she was not the only one who found it a choice spot for gathering material for an article. She became aware, suddenly, that two newspaper photographers were also secreted in the foliage, preparing to take a picture of the girls onstage, who were dressed in tights. In addition to the other restrictions, Wellesley girls were not allowed to perform in men’s clothing if men were to be present in the audience. Under no circumstances were they to be photographed wearing even pants, much less tights. “At that time Wellesley . . . even had the girls standing behind tables or stone walls when the town photographer came,” Harriet remembered. She immediately took the interlopers to task, waving a threatening finger at them and crying out, “You can’t do that!” As she herself told the end of the story: “A week later I saw myself in a newsreel with the title ‘Wellesley Press Board member tries to stop the above picture.’ The above picture was a scene of Wellesley girls cavorting on the green in pants. No one ever reprimanded me, but I learned a lesson which has been invaluable to me in being interviewed: ‘Don’t threaten the media!’”
Though the girls were not allowed to be photographed wearing masculine clothing, according to the mores of their time, they never shied away from filling in for their missing beaux on social occasions. As an editorial in the school paper chided, “Don’t kiss each other in the public highway. It’s awful to see a woman doing a man’s work.” Single-sex dances where the girls dressed up as men to “escort” their partners were de rigueur, as men—fathers excepted—were not allowed on campus. On Sundays they could not be entertained even in the village. The first great exception came in the winter of Harriet’s junior year, when a senior dance with men was planned for the first time. “Tomorrow night is the Glee Club Concert and the Senior Dance, and of all the excitement!” one thrilled girl wrote home to her mother. “Of course the faculty are still rather careful about the whole thing,—make them stop at midnight, etc.” In preparation for the big occasion, the faculty passed a rule that all dancers must maintain a three-inch distance from one another, so as to be “preventive of the ‘turkey trot,’ the ‘bunny hug’ and other recent substitutes for the staid old waltz and two-step . . . Some of the girls are considering the availability of crinoline gowns as a precautionary measure.”
When the time came for Harriet’s own senior dance, she invited Russell Vroom Adams, her old childhood playmate, to be her escort. He was so enthusiastic that he danced his date into a punch bowl at one point, leaving her little doubt as to his eventual intentions. But the dances were a rare exception; generally speaking, the sexes were not allowed to mingle unless in the presence of the proper chastening influence. “Young men who call on the girl students at Wellesley Sunday nights must attend divine worship in Memorial Chapel under a new rule just put into effect by the faculty,” a Boston newspaper reported in 1914, adding grimly, “The young men must sit through the service.”
For the most part, Harriet’s years at Wellesley were uneventful and enriching. The spring semester of her final year, however, would give her the chance to prove herself to her parents and everyone else in a very different manner and under circumstances no one could ever have imagined.
In the earliest hours of March 17, 1914, around 4:30 in the morning, two of Harriet’s fellow Wellesley seniors awoke to the smell of smoke emanating from the Zoology Laboratory across from their room. Seeing a red glow through the glass transom above the door, they jumped from their beds and ran to alert the night watchman and the college registrar. Another girl who had awakened in the meantime ran to a lower floor and rang the great Japanese dinner bell until the actual fire alarm bell could be reached. The other residents of College Hall, Wellesley’s main building, filed out calmly. For all anyone knew, this was simply a drill and, as such, they reacted without panic. Some of them grabbed coats or robes, but many were barefoot and clad only in nightdresses as they made their way out into the foggy early morning.
By the time they reached the first floor of the massive brick-and-wood building, flames were already eating away at the upper floors. Within ten minutes of the first alarm, all the students were shivering in the chilly March morning as they watched their possessions go up in tongues of flame and smoke. Later the head of College Hall, Olive Davis, recalled the moment vividly:
What few words can picture that scene forever etched on the mind of each who shared in this experience? Outside the darkness and the stillness of night; within, the light of flames and the clang of the fire alarm, the crackle of the fire’s steady onslaught, the falling embers, the students’ white, terror-stricken faces as they realized the danger, the quiet of voices broken only by muffled answers to the roll call, the quick, decisive order, the unhesitating obedience to recognized authority, the passing of the students out through the north center windows, the breathless, frightened run through smoky, deserted halls for the missing seven, the sharp order “Dangerous, All out,” and College Hall was gone.
As the uncontrolled flames blew from west to east, all students and faculty were accounted for, and the crowd fell silent.
Then, all at once, several faculty members came to the realization that the ground floor of College Hall contained not only student records, class schedules, and the entire life’s work of many professors, but also cherished antiques and furniture that had been part of the school since its founding. They dashed into the inferno to try to save what they could. In their wake, groups of students, including Harriet, who had rushed over from her dorm, began to form long lines—bucket brigades of a sort—from the smoldering first floor of College Hall to the library next door. As the columns of girls grew longer, faculty members inside the burning building began to hand their rescued treasures out to the eager pairs of hands, which passed them, girl by girl, to safety in the library. Before long, the students could see that there would not be enough time to save everything, and several of them joined the faculty inside the building to aid the process. Among them was Harriet, who later won a medal of honor for her bravery and was commended by a fellow student, Hazel Cooper, in a Newark newspaper account of the fire printed the next day:
Miss Harriet Stratemeyer of 171 North Seventh Street . . . with several others, carried valuable records from the burning building. Miss Stratemeyer also helped organize the endless chains of students that passed things along . . . As the girls in the building or in the chain gangs became exhausted, others stepped in at a quiet word of command.
Within half an hour from the time the alarm had first gone out, the building was completely gone. The firefighters who had finally arrived had been unable to get enough pressure in their hoses to reach the flames high above, and within minutes of their arrival had turned their attention instead to protecting other structures. Henry Durant’s prized hall, built upon the very first stones laid on the campus in 1871, had been reduced to a shell of brick wall filled with a pile of blackened, smoking timber. Charred wood was found on rooftops as far as a mile away, and many speculated that only the cold, rainy weather, which had filled the calm air with mist, had kept the flames from spreading not only to other buildings on the Wellesley campus but to the town itself.
But Wellesley College would not be cowed. As the president wrote in her year-end report, “No one thought of Self; everyone thought for the College, and the result was greater than one could have believed.” At 8:30 that morning, just three and a half hours after the building had come down, the students and faculty assembled for chapel at the regular time. Many were dressed in borrowed clothing, and the remains of College Hall were still smoldering nearby. The choir sang, “Oh God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,” and President Pendleton said a prayer of thanks for the preservation of lives, before announcing that school would recess for spring
vacation two weeks early and would reopen on the planned day of return. As offers of lodging, money, and goods from the town poured in and the railroad began to make special stops at the Wellesley station to ferry students home, the girls quickly packed what they could and left campus. One cheery soul commented on their good fortune in that “the fire was before and not after Easter shopping!”
“Attired in costumes plainly not their own, and carrying little baggage save magazines and musical instruments, about one hundred Wellesley College students arrived at the Grand Central Station last night at half-past six o’clock, bound for their homes,” ran an article in the New York Herald. Ever cautious of how they represented their school, many of the girls “refused to admit that there had ever been a fire.” Coming at last upon a clutch of girls who had been separated from their chaperone, the dogged reporter was finally able to get some facts. He tried to interview Harriet as well, but she said that “she hadn’t even seen the fire, living outside the college confines.” Only after she got permission from the faculty adviser to the Press Board did Harriet feel free to discuss her experiences.
Others, however, did not hold back. A school janitor, quoted in one of the hundreds of stories about the fire that came out all over the country, was nothing short of awestruck at the girls’ behavior in a moment of crisis. “This heroine has not been and cannot be excelled,” he told his interviewer. “For they were calm, determined, and unafraid, and chatted in quiet tones as they worked in the cold damp morning, performing feats that would be tests for young men of their years.” Harriet’s own account of the fire included her assertion that “not one girl flinched or fainted at the work before them.” Though she would not own up to it, she herself fit this description well. A letter from one of her first-year roommates that reached Harriet at home over the vacation attested to her bravery at the scene of the fire: “Some style to Billie [Harriet’s nickname] the Heroine! I sent all those things (letter and all) to Mother so she can see what kind of a girl I roomed with. Meanwhile we are all bursting with pride.”
Harriet’s parents, relieved that she had made it home unharmed, were also touched by her ordeal. Edward gave a generous donation to the Fire Fund almost immediately. Soon thereafter, Harriet and her fellow Press Board members announced that they would be donating their annual earnings to the Fire Fund as well. As for Lenna, she wrote to her elder daughter in pure admiration: “Whoever you inherited the nerve from in the family to go thru such an ordeal I’m sure I don’t know.”
When the students arrived back on campus in early April, provisional classroom and office space was almost completed, in the form of a wood-frame building that was thrown up in fifteen days and nicknamed the “Hen-Coop.” Other colleges and students donated money and laboratory supplies (it was thought that the fire had perhaps started in the Zoology Lab, and much of the college’s scientific equipment was replaced through gifts from other schools). The freshman and sophomore classes at Barnard took up a collection and sent $400, and many publishers donated books to replace the more than five thousand that had been destroyed. Thanks to the quick and astonishing mind of the dean’s secretary, Mary Frazer Smith, classes started up again without interruption. In the hours between the fire and the triumphant chapel service, she had sat down at the president’s house and written out both the class and examination schedules for the remainder of the year from memory.
Miss Frazer Smith and the indomitable spirit of both faculty and students ensured that the year finished off successfully. Indeed, commencement week for the 304 graduating members of the class of 1914—which included a senior class play, a garden party, and various concerts—was a thoroughly joyous affair. Engraved invitations were mailed out to family and friends, and the festivities culminated in the commencement exercises on June 16, replete with music by Verdi and Handel and followed by a luncheon. The Stratemeyer family attended the full week of events and had a grand time. Edward, flushed with happiness over his daughter’s success, also had some thoughts about her immediate future. Writing to a friend and business acquaintance, he said: “I am just back from Wellesley with the whole family. We had a most delightful time at Harriet’s graduation, the exercises lasting a week. She came through with flying colors and was offered a position at the college this Fall,—and she has also received three other offers, to teach, etc. But I think she will take a much-needed rest for the present.”
Edward had thought to take Harriet to Europe as a graduation present. But, as he wrote to a friend: “Everything in Newark is War and the excitement is intense. We are mighty glad Hattie and I didn’t go to Europe, as once planned.” Instead, Edward took his daughter to Maine for a vacation. Perhaps he was trying to distract her from the fact that he had forced her to turn down not just the job offer from Wellesley but all the others as well. Among them were a post at the Boston Globe, which had gotten to know Harriet through her work with the Press Board; a teaching job; and, most unlikely, a job as a pianist in the Poconos. Edward, however, would have none of it. He wanted his daughter home, where he could take care of her until she was safely married. She was allowed to take a course in practical nursing at the Newark YWCA and to volunteer at the Home for Incurables, but otherwise he expected her to remain under his care. It was a frustrating turn of events not at all to Harriet’s liking, and she and her father wrangled for some time. “He felt that as long as a father could take care of his daughter, he should,” she remembered later. Though he was employing several women writers by this time and clearly appreciated and admired their work (he was generous with praise in his letters to authors and never failed to compliment a scene or bit of dialogue he especially liked), they were a separate breed from his daughters. “His idea of a woman writing was to earn a living,” Harriet said, “and this was unnecessary [for me].”
Though Harriet’s headstrong personality had been tempered during her time at Wellesley, it was not banished for good. She argued with her father for so long that he eventually gave in and said that if she had to work, she would work for him. Not in the office in Manhattan, of course—he had recently moved his operations to 17 Madison Avenue, where he worked with his secretary, Harriet Otis Smith—for a true woman of the upper classes did not go into an office. Instead, a compromise was struck. Harriet would be allowed to edit manuscripts and galley proofs, but only in the privacy of her parents’ home. Nevertheless, she managed to learn a great deal about her father’s winning formula. Just reading the books, which she had not done much of before, taught her about ending chapters on a suspenseful note and making sure that the first page of each story was good enough to make a reader continue. Looking over a book manuscript one afternoon, she discovered an entire page of action that had been carefully written by a ghostwriter and then crossed out by Stratemeyer in the editing process. Instead, written at the top of the page was the single word “CRASH!” On another, the entire introduction had been replaced by one emphatic “Bang!”
But Harriet’s career as a junior editor was to be short-lived. Just as her father had planned, it endured only until another man assumed responsibility for her well-being. Over the course of her first year home after college, her relationship with Russell Vroom Adams, who had been her ardent admirer for years, intensified. He had become an investment banker in the intervening period and felt he was prepared to take care of Harriet in the style to which she was accustomed. The match was approved, the couple got engaged, and the Stratemeyer household was thrown into happy chaos.
In October of 1915, Edward wrote to one of his most prodigious authors, assuming the role of the grumbling patriarch: “On the 20th, my older daughter gets married, so matters at our house are pretty lively just now.” The wedding took place at the Stratemeyer home at 6:30 on a Wednesday evening, with the family’s Presbyterian minister presiding. Harriet, who was given away by her father, wore an elaborate dress concocted of white satin and “real” lace, complete with a train and flared standing collar. Her veil was done up with a cluster of orange bl
ossoms, and she wore as her ornament a wristwatch that Russell had given her. The bridesmaids wore pink and blue, and Lenna Stratemeyer wore deep purple velvet adorned with silver lace and a diamond or two. Though the guests numbered under one hundred, Edward spared no expense. The house was resplendent with yellow and white flowers and potted palms, and a string orchestra played well into the night. When the young couple left for their honeymoon in New Orleans by boat, Harriet was attired in a chic black traveling outfit, including a velvet hat trimmed with autumn flowers. It was a grand affair all around, lush and expensive.
One important element, however, cost nothing, for it was made of a family heirloom. Lest she should forget her bond to her family and her father, she would literally wear it on her finger every day. As she vowed to marry Russell and be true to him, Harriet accepted a wedding band that had been formed from a nugget of gold that her grandfather Henry Stratemeyer had dug up in 1849. Though she had changed her name to Adams, the ring, along with what was now her middle name, ensured that, devoted to Russell as she was and would always be, she remained a Stratemeyer.
4
Hawkeye Days
“FROSH WOMEN WIN SWIMMING EVENT!”
“FROSH CO-EDS WIN IN INITIAL GAME!”
“HAWKEYE SWIMMERS GIVE EXHIBITIONS AT THE BIG DIPPER!”
HEADLINE AFTER HEADLINE trumpeting athletic events at the University of Iowa—whose school nickname was the Hawkeyes—ran in the school newspaper, the Daily Iowan, in the fall of 1922. All of them attested to the triumph and dominance of Iowa’s powerful sports teams. Seventeen-year-old Mildred Augustine, who had just arrived from Ladora—forty miles and a world away—was a member of many of them.
Girl Sleuth Page 8
