Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (20 page)

SATURDAY

For those of us who are leaving tomorrow, this is the day for the final garnish. We are like well-done cakes, out of the oven, cooled and ready for icing. Hair is now cut, washed, tinted, and set: nails (both toe and finger) coated with pink polish. Faces are painstakingly dealt with: eyebrows are plucked, lashes touched up with black dye and mascara on top of that; foundation lotion, rouge, and powder carefully applied. Legs are coated from ankle to upper thigh with a hot thick brown wax which is ripped off after cooling, leaving the legs hairless and gleaming. Rather to my terror, the same procedure is followed for the armpits; surprisingly, it hardly hurts at all, so quickly and skillfully is it done. But (I think gloomily) it is all very much like taking old Tray to the vet for a clip and bath; he looks marvelous for a few days, but quickly reverts to his usual state.

Now we get our report cards. I am alleged to have lost two inches round the waist and the promised half-inch off upper arm, with corresponding reduction of hips, thighs, legs. I have also lost five pounds.

This evening, at dinner, those of us who had done well were each allowed a tiny sliver of a magnificent cheesecake, a speciality of our chef. One of the International Setters was so moved by the appearance of this dessert that she did some rapid calorie calculation and dined off cheesecake alone—forgoing her first course entirely in order to be entitled to an extra piece.

SUNDAY

My last day. A super-lull has fallen over these hushed precincts. The place is almost deserted: some patrons have already departed, and those who are staying on have rented cars or chartered planes for a little Sunday outing. I took advantage of the inactivity to seek out a higher-echelon staff member who told me something of the history and operation of Maine Chance.

The original Maine Chance, a farmhouse in Mount Vernon, Maine, was acquired by Elizabeth Arden before World War II, and is open each year from June to September. The Arizona establishment, which operates in winter only, opened in 1948 with 9 clients; it has expanded over the years, several new buildings have been added, and today the average enrollment is 40 to 45. In a six-month period, some 750 flowers are processed.

The staff numbers about 60. There are 27 beautifiers (masseuses, hairdressers, and so on), 25 household help (kitchen personnel, maids, drivers), 2 hostesses, 2 office workers, several gardeners. Most of the staff migrate to Mount Vernon in summer. They work a six-day week and for three months of the year, when both establishments are closed, they are on leave.

My informant explained that the reason Maine Chance is never advertised is that it is “definitely noncommercial.” “You mean, it doesn’t make money?” I asked, incredulous. She said that it might break even or might lose money, but it is not a profit-making proposition. “A charitable enterprise?” “No, not exactly, more an accommodation for clients.” “Any camperships under the Poverty Program?” “You must be joking.” (I was, for once.)

Maine Chance is, she went on, the fulfillment of a dream—an expression of Miss Arden’s personality, her beliefs, her life’s dedication to principles of health and beauty, cleanliness inside and out, serenity, simplicity of regimen carried out in beautiful, peaceful surroundings.

Yet from the prosaic viewpoint of an innkeeper, Maine Chance has much going for it. There are no men, children, drunks, dogs, or other misusers of furnishings among the clientele. While the food is delicious (and French chefs come high), there are no substitutions on the $750 dinners, and no second servings. For the sake of restfulness and serenity, lights go out at 10 p.m. and the telephone switchboard closes for the night—a practice also highly compatible with economy.

Later, sitting in the Phoenix airport coffee shop, I felt as though I had awakened from a curious dream. Although I had been gone from the real world for only a week, somehow it seemed much longer. It was a wonderful feeling to be once more surrounded by ordinary people with ordinary preoccupations, hurrying about carrying things, looking at watches, coping with little children. The coffee-shop hostess, with her iron-gray bouffant hairdo and lame dress, could have stepped right out of the Maine Chance dining room—right age, right clothes, same incipient figure problems—only she probably makes eighty dollars a week, paid forty dollars for the dress, sets her own hair, and really does do the Air Force exercises.

Waiting for my plane, I did some simple sums. My week at Maine Chance, including tips (15 percent of my bill) and transportation, cost roughly $1,000. I had lost five pounds, at $200 per pound. The forty of us at Maine Chance represented a total investment of some $40,000 in a one-week effort to jack up sagging muscles and restore the fading roses to aging cheeks. A poignant thought.

Friends met me at the airport. “Do I look different?” I asked hopefully. “Well ... not really. But you’ve lost some weight, haven’t you?” And at least I could say that, like Poor Jud in
Oklahoma!
, my fingernails have never been so clean.

COMMENT

A major part of the magazine editor’s job is to think up ideas for articles with which to fill those flapping pages of text that serve as the fragile connective tissue for the many more pages of advertisements. Some editors will bombard the “established writer” with article proposals without much regard for that particular writer’s sphere of interest or expertise. I have a large file of such proposals, ranging from a story on Queen Elizabeth’s coronation to ecological advances in the Midwest. Because I make my living by writing, I do not lightly turn down article assignments; I consider them very carefully. But I also know that if I cannot, after earnest contemplation, warm up to a subject, the finished piece will please nobody: I shall be dissatisfied, so will the editor, so will the reader.

There are exceptional editors who have an instinct for matching the story with the writer. Such a one is Vivian Cadden of
McCall’s
. “Honestly! Maine Chance—for
me?
” I roared in astonishment when she called up to suggest this subject. Of course, she said; it will be a giggle all the way, do go; besides, you might lose some weight. That last observation, while not exactly kind, was persuasive.

“How do I go about getting accepted?” I asked.

“Oh, come
on,
” said Vivian. “You know better than that. Just do it.”

Of course she was right. Yet a slight feeling of paranoia took hold at the moment of actually picking up the phone to call Elizabeth Arden’s for a reservation. Maine Chance would surely be, for me, enemy territory; what if my identity were discovered by the reservations people? Would they refuse my application? I could use my married name, but this would be scanty cover at the local Arden salon in San Francisco, where they might easily make the connection with Jessica Mitford. So I telephoned to the New York office and announced myself as Mrs. Robert Treuhaft, which was how I was introduced to the other slimmers at Maine Chance. One day at lunch I overheard a woman asking another, “Who is that?” “Oh, that’s Mrs. Fruehauf” came the reply. “Her husband is very big in trucking.” This, for me one of the major giggles, I omitted from the article as too much of an in-joke for
McCall’s
readers.

The other giggle was the bathtub. I really loathe not having a proper bath, and had even asked Reservations if there was a bath somewhere in the building to which I could nip in my dressing gown, as is often the case in the cheap European hotels where I sometimes stay. Reservations, sounding very reserved, answered in the negative. Although
McCall’s
are generous about expenses —and were well aware that the outlay for this piece was going to be large—I did think it advisable to check with them about the $150 bathtub, and wrote to Vivian anxiously inquiring if they would underwrite this extra expense. The reply came by telegram:

“MCCALL’S WOULD NOT WANT YOU TO BE WITHOUT A BATHTUB.”

LET US NOW APPRAISE FAMOUS WRITERS

ATLANTIC /
July, 1970

Beware of the scribes who like

to go about in long robes, and

love salutations in the market

places ... and the places of

honor at feasts; who devour

widows’ houses ...

Luke 20:46, 47

In recent years I have become aware of fifteen Famous Faces looking me straight in the eye from the pages of innumerable magazines, newspapers, fold-out advertisements, sometimes in black-and-white, sometimes in living color, sometimes posed in a group around a table, sometimes shown singly, pipe in hand in book-lined study or strolling through a woodsy countryside: the Guiding Faculty of the Famous Writers School.
*

Here is Bennett Cerf, most famous of them all, his kindly, humorous face aglow with sincerity, speaking to us in the first person from a mini-billboard tucked into our Sunday newspaper: “If you want to write, my colleagues and I would like to test your writing aptitude. We’ll help you find out whether you can be trained to become a successful writer.” And Faith Baldwin, looking up from her typewriter with an expression of ardent concern for that vast, unfulfilled sisterhood of nonwriters: “It’s a shame more women don’t take up writing. Writing can be an ideal profession for women.... Beyond the thrill of that first sale, writing brings intangible rewards.” J. D. Ratcliff, billed in the ads as “one of America’s highest-paid free-lance authors,” thinks it’s a shame, too: “I can’t understand why more beginners don’t take the short road to publication by writing articles for magazines and newspapers. It’s a wonderful life.”

The short road is attained, the ads imply, via the aptitude test which Bennett Cerf and his colleagues would like you to take so they may “grade it free of charge.” If you are one of the fortunate ones who do well on the test, you may “enroll for professional training.” After that, your future is virtually assured, for the ads promise that “Fifteen Famous Writers will teach you to write successfully at home.”

These offers are motivated, the ads make clear, by a degree of altruism not often found in those at the top of the ladder. The Fifteen have never forgotten the tough times—the “sheer blood, sweat and rejection slips,” as J. D. Ratcliff puts it—through which they suffered as beginning writers; and now they want to extend a helping hand to those still at the bottom rung. “When I look back, I can’t help thinking of all the time and agony I would have saved if I could have found a real ‘pro’ to work with me,” says Ratcliff.

How can Bennett Cerf—Chairman of the Board of Random House, columnist, television personality—and his renowned colleagues find time to grade all the thousands of aptitude tests that must come pouring in, and on top of that fulfill their pledge to “teach you to write successfully at home”? What are the standards for admission to the school? How many graduates actually find their way into the “huge market that will pay well for pieces of almost any length” which, says J. D. Ratcliff, exists for the beginning writer? What are the “secrets of success” that the Famous Fifteen say they have “poured into a set of specially created textbooks”? And how much does it cost to be initiated into these secrets?

My mild curiosity about these matters might never have been satisfied had I not learned, coincidentally, about two candidates for the professional training offered by the Famous Writers who passed the aptitude test with flying colors: a seventy-two-year-old foreign-born widow living on Social Security, and a fictitious character named Louella Mae Burns.

The adventures of these two impelled me to talk with Bennett Cerf and other members of the Guiding Faculty, to interview former students, to examine the “set of specially created textbooks” (and the annual stockholders’ reports, which proved in some ways more instructive), and eventually to visit the school’s headquarters in Westport, Connecticut.

An Oakland lawyer told me about the seventy-two-year-old widow. She had come to him in some distress: a salesman had charmed his way into her home and at the end of his sales pitch had relieved her of $200 (her entire bank account) as down payment on a $900 contract, the balance of which would be paid off in monthly installments. A familiar story, for like all urban communities ours is fertile ground for roving commission salesmen skilled in unloading on the unwary housewife anything from vacuum cleaners to deep freezers to encyclopedias to grave plots, at vastly inflated prices. The unusual aspect of this old lady’s tale was the merchandise she had been sold. No sooner had the salesman left than she thought better of it, and when the lessons arrived she returned them unopened.

To her pleas to be released from the contract, the Famous Writers replied: “Please understand that you are involved in a legal and binding contract,” and added that the school’s policy requires a doctor’s certificate attesting to the ill health of a student before she is permitted to withdraw.

There was a short, sharp struggle. The lawyer wrote an angry letter to the school demanding prompt return of the $200 “fraudulently taken” from the widow, and got an equally stiff refusal in reply. He then asked the old lady to write out in her own words a description of the salesman’s visit. She produced a garbled, semi-literate account, which he forwarded to the school with the comment “This is the lady whom your salesman found to be ‘very qualified’ to take your writing course. I wonder if Mr. Cerf is aware of the cruel deceptions to which he lends his name?” At the bottom of his letter, the lawyer wrote the magic words “Carbon copies to Bennett Cerf and to Consumer Frauds Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office.” Presto! The school suddenly caved in and returned the money in full.

Louella Mae Burns, the other successful candidate, is the brainchild of Robert Byrne and his wife. I met her in the pages of Byrne’s informative and often hilarious book
Writing Rackets
(Lyle Stuart, 1969, $3.95), which treats of the lures held out to would-be writers by high-priced correspondence schools, phony agents who demand a fee for reading manuscripts, the “vanity” presses that will publish your book for a price.