{"id":912,"date":"2016-12-06T09:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=912"},"modified":"2016-11-30T09:50:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T14:50:22","slug":"mortimer-bartescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/2016\/12\/06\/mortimer-bartescue\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortimer Bartescue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HauntedOut of the 51 Nancy Drew books I read as a child, I remember only a handful of secondary character names \u2014 and bits and pieces, at that. Except for two. There are two character names that I remember distinctly all these years later: Mehearty<\/a> and Mortimer Bartescue<\/a>. So imagine my dismay when I learned recently that these two had been given makeovers \u2014 and new names \u2014 in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

In my secondhand 1937 version of The Haunted Bridge<\/em>, Mortimer Bartescue was described thusly:<\/p>\n

He was a tall, thin man in his late twenties immaculately dressed in white slacks, with his sleek black hair plastered back from an angular, hard face.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the 70s, he was still tall, thin and rocking the white slacks. But then there is this:<\/p>\n

Bushy black hair and a beard partially covered his angular, hard face.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nancy tells her chums she dislikes his type, but one thing about him did capture her interest.<\/p>\n

Bess giggled. \u201cWhat was that? His ultramodern clothes?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, silly Bess. It\u2019s the way he\u2019s always trying to disguise his handwriting. And, of course, I have to point out that the passage above was from the 1972 version. The 1937 version goes like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cHis sleek black hair?\u201d Bess giggled wickedly.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be silly, Bess. That fellow looks like one of those wax models one sees in store windows.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I digress. <\/p>\n

I started out talking about his name. And what a name it was. Mortimer Bartescue. How could you not remember that?!<\/p>\n

But in the 70s, he was given a much less dated name: Martin Bartescue. And apparently, that wasn\u2019t even good enough. As I\u2019ve already discussed, Mehearty\u2019s makeover had a bit of silliness<\/a> in it, as was common in 70s updates. And I\u2019m afraid that Mortimer, er, Martin<\/em>, suffers the same fate, when George adds a silly nickname:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyway, hereafter I\u2019m going to call him Barty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBarty the Barge-In!\u201d Bess said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, oh, what a tangled web we weave. If you change his name from Mortimer to Martin, then you have to change other things, too. You see, in this mystery, Nancy is looking for Margaret Judson, a young woman who suddenly disappeared, leaving behind a jilted fiance named Morton. Nancy\u2019s search for Margaret leads her to an old gardener named Mr. Haley, who accidently shoots himself, and Ned and his friends stay with him during his recovery. Nancy asks Ned to write down everything Mr. Haley says in his delirium. In the 1937 version, he jots down:<\/p>\n

“\u2018Miss Margaret, I\u2019m afraid the box was stolen\u2014don\u2019t cry, Miss Margaret\u2014why don\u2019t you marry Morton?\u2019”<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you sure the name was Morton?\u201d Nancy asked quickly. \u201cIt couldn\u2019t have been Mortimer?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah. So now that Mortimer is changed to Martin, the name Martin couldn\u2019t possibly be mistaken for the name Morton, could it? Well, actually it could! But apparently Morton was too old-fashioned, too, so now the passage reads: <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Miss Margaret, I\u2019m afraid the box was stolen \u2014 don\u2019t cry \u2014 why don\u2019t you marry Mark?\u2019”<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you sure the name was Mark?\u201d Nancy asked quickly. \u201cCould it have been Martin?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I should mention that in the 70s update, Ned\u2019s friends changed from Bill Cowan and Bud Mason to our old familiar chums Burt and Dave. That\u2019s no mystery. <\/p>\n

The real mystery is, why in the world was the golf caddy\u2019s name changed from Sammy to Chris? <\/p>\n

Oh, well, as Nancy tells the \u201cghost\u201d scarecrow at the end: <\/p>\n

\u201cA million thanks for a very pleasant mystery!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, wait, that was updated, too! <\/p>\n

\n\u201cA million thanks for spooking me into a very puzzling mystery.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Out of the 51 Nancy Drew books I read as a child, I remember only a handful of secondary character names \u2014 and bits and pieces, at that. Except for two. There are two character names that I remember distinctly … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":928,"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-912","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\/912","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=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":931,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions\/931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lucynolanbooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}