Chapter Eight
New York City
ANNA
Sally Bellingham emerged from a door off the reception area. “You’ve come!” She threw her arms out wide, to the evident consternation of Fanning and Scott’s formidable receptionist.
“I could hardly not! Your uncle bade me.” Anna laughed, accepting her friend’s embrace. Sally led her back through the door, which opened onto a long hall.
“I was treated to quite a tableau while I waited,” Anna said.
“Were you? Tell!”
“A tidy, eager young man came in with a large envelope and was ushered into an office. Not thirty seconds later, a gentleman was disgorged from another. He was stooped and shaggy, much older, and very discouraged. I feared I was watching the metamorphosis of a fiction writer.”
“You are endowing this with far too much metaphorical significance.” Sally laughed. “But it can be a dispiriting business. That’s why it’s best to come with an attitude like yours.”
“And what attitude is that?” Anna asked, as they stopped before the last door, with a window that bore the name GREGORY FANNING in large black letters.
“Deep reluctance!”
Anna opened her mouth to protest, but Sally held up a finger. “I have not forgotten your plans for the future, and juvenile fiction was nowhere in them.” Sally lowered her voice. “But I hope you’ll give my uncle a listen.”
Anna assured her that she would not be there otherwise, though she could promise nothing else. In his letter, Mr. Fanning had said only that he wished to discuss “the reception of ‘Liberty Island,’ and possible future opportunities.”
Sally knocked, and a deep voice beckoned them in.
Two hours later, Anna sat with Sally at a teahouse, her head spinning from the meeting.
Mr. Fanning was businesslike, but not unfriendly.
Pleased with the reception Anna’s story had received, he proposed that she write an entire series set on Liberty Island.
They would run one in Young Friends every month, and then publish it as a novel next summer.
“I will certainly give it some thought.” Anna was glad to hear the story had done well, but she was not certain about making such a commitment.
Mr. Fanning smiled gently. “Sally has told me your ambitions run in a more scholarly line. I gather you are one of our accidental authors, which, as it happens, are often the best sort.” He handed over some papers. “Perhaps this will help.”
Anna took the proffered contract. Her eyes scanned over legalese and deadlines and then settled on the bottom line.
“Oh!” she replied, stunned by the numbers before her.
“It has been many years since we received so many letters from young readers in praise of one of our stories.”
“Rhapsodic praise,” Sally interposed.
“May I ask, Miss Bradley, how long it took to write the story?”
“Not a great deal of time, if I’m honest.”
“Would it be difficult to come up with more ideas?”
“It would not.” Anna could not hold back a chuckle. After sending off the story, she’d had another month on Jumaru, so she had loads of material.
“Well, then, it sounds as if this project would not be too much of a diversion from whatever else you would rather be doing.”
This was certainly true. It would not take much time, and if the novel did well, it would set her up nicely, and then she could get back to the Fuller biography.
“All right, Mr. Fanning. I will accept the offer,” she said. “On one condition.”
“What is that?”
“A different illustrator,” she replied.
Mr. Fanning looked at Sally, a question in his eye.
Sally laughed and held up her hands. “On my honor, we did not conspire!” She looked at Anna. “Did you and I discuss the illustrations?”
“Not a word passed between us on the subject,” Anna said.
Mr. Fanning sighed. “All right. I accept that you came to the same conclusion independently. It will cost us more to hire an illustrator who is not already in our stable. Do you have someone in mind?”
“I do, in fact. Margaret Seaborne.”
“I thought she had retired,” Mr. Fanning said.
“She is an old family friend. I believe she can be persuaded to come out of retirement for this.”
“If she can be convinced and doesn’t try for highway robbery, I will consider it. Presuming she accepts, or we find another you are comfortable with, do we have a deal?”
“We do,” Anna said.
Sally cheered, quite unprofessionally, and then laughed at her uncle’s raised eyebrow.
“I must thank you, dear Anna,” Sally said now, raising her teacup in a toast. “My stock has risen quite precipitously. My only fear is that my uncle is now under the impression that I can pull more rabbits out of the hat, when I know you are a rare bunny.”
“I can’t imagine that’s true,” Anna said. “Surely others have equal or better skill.”
“I am not sure you understand how unique your story is,” Sally said, shaking her head. “You might single-handedly revolutionize children’s literature.”
“Sally!” Anna laughed.
“I read children’s stories all day every day, and I could not be more serious.
It is not just that you took girls out of the domestic sphere and set them on adventures.
It’s also your style.” Sally put her hands together in prayer and cast her eyes toward the ceiling.
“Lord, deliver me from wise adult narrators talking down to the child reader.”
“I have noticed that tiresome tendency,” Anna conceded.
“And those few who do write from a child’s point of view have obviously forgotten their own childhoods. Such idealized, sentimental pap. But your characters are so real, so true to life! How did you do it?”
Anna thought for a moment. “I confess I did not think it out. In addition to drawing inspiration from my very real niece and her friends, I suppose I was also responding to Julia’s very real literary aversions.”
“Perhaps I should hire her. Does she despise domestic stories?”
“She certainly prefers adventures. She is terribly addicted to dime novels.” Anna thought some more and added, “And it’s not that Julia minds feelings. Indeed, she has loads of them. But she cannot bear mawkishness.”
“That reminds me, we did get a few complaints. One of our authors stormed into Mr. Scott’s office and complained that the story was a ‘dime novel masquerading as literature.’”
Anna smiled. “I accomplished my goal, then. Who was that author?”
“Mrs. Howland,” Sally groaned.
“Oh, I know her books,” Anna said. “I didn’t realize Fanning and Scott was her publisher.”
“We shouldn’t be. Her tone is too moralizing, and her novels do not sell well anymore. She’s also a terrible shrew. Mr. Scott has known her forever and puts up with her, though I don’t know how. With every new book, we print fewer copies, and she invariably gives him an earful.”
“What were the other complaints?”
“I’m sure you can guess.” Sally shrugged. “The girls have too much license and behave in an unattractively masculine manner. Portraying girls outside the home gives them unrealistic expectations, which will lead to dissatisfaction. Oh, and the pacing will cause unhealthy vicarious excitement.”
“And neither you nor your uncle is troubled by these concerns?”
“All the hand-wringing in the world will not keep girls from reading what they wish.”
Anna returned home to find that Julia was in hot water. William, it seemed, had infuriated Julia with some comment. In retaliation, she snuck into his room, found his geography text, and wrote “Wee Willie’s Book” on the inside front page.
This might not have been so bad, had his friends not seen it and called him “Wee Willie” all day.
Julia had hit William where it hurt the most: his pride.
He had learned his lesson on Haven Point, though.
Rather than demanding his mother take some particular course of action, he came home and presented the evidence without comment.
As punishment, Julia would not be allowed to go with her school friends to Brownies in Fairyland at the Music Hall on Saturday, which she had looked forward to.
Anna found Julia in her room, quite impenitent, angrily railing about the injustice, but she could do little more than listen. The child was not ready to hear that she had brought this on herself.
When Saturday came, Julia’s spirits were so much better that it aroused Anna’s suspicions, and she wished she did not have an appointment with Mr. Wimborne at the Athenaeum. (He had been so forlorn when she announced she was quitting, she agreed to meet with him twice a month.)
When she returned two hours later, Lillian’s carriage was outside, and upon entering the house, she saw her niece being led upstairs by Rosemary. Julia’s face was scraped, her hair tangled, and her petticoat had a large rent through it.
Rosemary turned, and Anna shot her a questioning look. She whispered down the stairs, “Meet me in the library. I’ll be down shortly.”
Ten minutes later, Anna and Rosemary were huddled together behind the closed door of Jerome’s library.
Julia, it seemed, had concocted a plan to see the show at the Music Hall after all.
She waited until Rosemary left to take William to a birthday party, then sat by her window until she spotted Katie, the servant girl next door.
Julia opened her window, waved until she got Katie’s attention, then gestured for her to stay put.
Julia had written a letter, wrapped it around an apple, and then somehow tied it with string.
Katie soon saw the missile flying from Julia’s room, over the fence, and onto the ground a few feet away.
In the letter, Julia claimed to have been kidnapped by a bad old lady, and begged Katie to bring a ladder to her window.
Katie, as addicted as Julia to adventure stories, had no trouble believing the tale.
Rosemary was not sure how the girl pulled it off, but Katie somehow snuck out of her yard, found the ladder, dragged it to the side of the house, then scurried back to her own side of the fence.