![\"Illustration](\"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Salty-193x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Clams by the bushel,
\nClams by the lot,
\nClams for the kettle,
\nClams for the pot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nQuick, which Nancy Drew character sang this song in The Clue in the Crumbling Wall<\/em>?<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a diehard fan, you\u2019ll know. But the name that you\u2019ll come up with will depend on which version of the mystery you read: 1945 or 1973.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how the character was introduced in my secondhand 1945 version:<\/p>\n
\u201cHere comes old Mehearty down the street!\u201d Nancy laughed, shaking off her somber mood. \u201cDo you want any clams today?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not,\u201d Mrs. Gruen said with emphasis. \u201cBut if I know Mehearty, he\u2019ll probably talk me into buying some anyway!\u201d<\/p>\n
The old man, once a sailor, had received his nickname from Nancy when she was a little girl. He often addressed other people as \u201cme hearties,\u201d and sang nautical songs including these words. Little Nancy had gotten the whole thing mixed up and called him \u201cMehearty man.\u201d Her nickname had stuck to him. Mehearty was a good-natured, lovable person, full of yarns of the sea. An injury on shipboard had kept him on land for many years. He dug clams in the near-by river and sold them for a living.<\/p>\n
The man\u2019s cart bell tinkled merrily, and a moment later the jolly, weather-beaten old fellow rounded the corner of the driveway, wheeling his little wagon\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cReal cheap today,\u201d he coaxed. \u201cYe can\u2019t turn down my clams, me hearties.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As well as I can remember, Mehearty was only in this one book. But his name has stuck with me all these years. (Much like Mortimer Bartescue<\/a> in The Haunted Bridge<\/em>.) So imagine my surprise when I recently picked up the 1973 version and found out that Mehearty had been given a completely different name.<\/p>\n
He is still wheeling his cart and chanting the same bad poetry. And he still addresses everyone as \u201cYe,\u201d because, well, how else would we know he was an old sailor if he didn\u2019t say \u201cye\u201d? But the rest of the 1973 introduction is very\u2026 seventies \u2014 a decade where silliness abounded in pop culture. (1979 was the year that Scrappy Doo was introduced. Need I say more?)<\/p>\n
The good-natured, elderly man, once a sailor, had received his nickname from Nancy when she was a little girl. He had introduced himself to the Drew household as Boatswain Bostwick Bumpleton \u201chome from the salty seas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nancy had tried to say his whole name but sometimes mixed it up. Once she addressed him as Bumple Boat and another time as Humpty Dumpty Bumpleton, much to his amusement. Finally the little girl settled on Salty and her nickname stuck to him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The rest of Mehearty\u2019s rhymes sound very 70s, too. But believe it or not, they’re original to the 1945 version.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy clams are nutritious, my clams are delicious, my clams are delectable, my clams are respectable!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mehearty might have been a \u201clovable person,\u201d but at least one person wasn\u2019t a very big fan. As you\u2019ll notice in the passage above, Hannah Gruen displayed a certain amount of disdain for the man. Later in the book, she adds this:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy I keep buying that man\u2019s clams I don\u2019t know,\u201d she muttered. \u201cNo telling where he gets them–certainly not from a protected bed. I wouldn\u2019t risk eating one of them raw.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That<\/em> line was taken out of the 1973 version, thank goodness. I\u2019ve spoken before about how revising older texts<\/a> can take out some of the charm. But taking out references to bad shellfish? That\u2019s one revision I can get on board with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clams by the bushel, Clams by the lot, Clams for the kettle, Clams for the pot. Quick, which Nancy Drew character sang this song in The Clue in the Crumbling Wall? If you\u2019re a diehard fan, you\u2019ll know. But the … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nancy-drewsday","tag-nancy-drew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}