The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder
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Mr. Craig will make a good prosecuting attorney. We know this from his past record and his reputation. If you are a Democrat I’m sure you will vote for him and if you are a Republican I hope you will put his name on your ticket.
My sensibilities were somewhat bruised
By 1920 Laura’s column “The Farm Home” had been published for two years in the Ruralist. Her friendly rapport with her editor was briefly ruffled in late 1920. The misunderstanding was settled, and Laura’s submissions continued unabated. Her column was renamed; it became “As a Farm Woman Thinks.”
DECEMBER 8, 1920
Dear Mr. Case:
My sensibilities were somewhat bruised by the December 5th issue of the Ruralist. I see that I am no longer Farm Home editor but that Mrs. Migliario has taken my honors as well as the name of my department.
Does this mean that I am not to do any more editorial work? It looked so interesting to me that I am sorry to give it up. I am writing personal letters to all the women who wrote to me in the contest . . . but under the circumstances perhaps I would better not send them.
I am sure it was not your intention that I should be humiliated before the Ruralist readers. But I feel it in that way, to be put off the editorial staff in just the way it has been done. It seems to me that the Ruralist does not need two Farm Home departments. . . .
After dinner we sat by the fire
Laura and Manly spent a cozy Christmas together in 1920, alone on Rocky Ridge. Rose was in Paris, working as a publicist for the American Red Cross; she telegraphed warm greetings to her parents. In a surviving letter fragment, Laura describes the holiday for her family in De Smet. Laura’s sister Grace, and her husband, Nate Dow, were living with Caroline and Mary Ingalls in the family home.
DECEMBER 27, 1920
Dear Mother and Sisters:
We were glad to get your letter Grace. It came on Christmas day. Manly and I spent the day by ourselves, with roast chicken and dressing, mashed Irish potato, baked sweet potato, brown bread, white bread, blackberry jelly, doughnuts, sweet potato pie (in place of pumpkin pie), cheese and coffee, for dinner. After dinner we sat by the fire in the fireplace and read and looked at our Christmas cards and letters. Then later we popped corn over the fire and ate apples and walnuts and corn.
We did not give each other presents of any value. I had made Manly a scrap book of clippings he was particularly fond of. . . .
CHAPTER 2
THE EMERGING WRITER (1921–1930)
Laura, Rose, and Isabelle, the Buick, in the Tennessee Pass, Colorado, 1925. (Herbert Hoover Presidential Library)
As America entered the 1920s, Rocky Ridge remained a quiet, isolated country home. Laura and Manly found it increasingly difficult to maintain the place. Rose abhorred her parents’ relentless workload, and gave them a yearly $500 subsidy, enabling them to reduce their labors. Rose’s writing career flourished as she continued her travels through Europe and the Middle East. At last, in 1923, she returned to Rocky Ridge, vowing to spend time at home.
The 1920s’ new technology, cultural changes, booming economy, and added leisure time influenced the Wilders’ lives. A media boom enabled Rose to sell her writings for high fees. With the proceeds, she bought her parents their first car. Rose spent freely on credit, her confidence bolstered as her stock market portfolio grew. Laura and Manly likewise invested their own small savings. When Rose felt assured that her parents were comfortable, she left the farm in 1926 to travel with her friend Helen Boylston, a nurse and sometimes writer. The women first settled in Paris, then moved on to Albania, where they lived until 1928.
Flush with selling a magazine serial for $10,000, Rose built a new house on Rocky Ridge for her parents’ retirement home. The Rock House, as it was called, was a monument to 1920s consumerism. Rose symbolically presented the house to Laura and Manly as a 1928 Christmas gift. Next she customized the farmhouse to fit her own tastes. Electricity and central heating were added. Helen Boylston, supported by an annuity, continued as Rose’s housemate in the original Rocky Ridge Farm. In October 1929, less than a year after the Rock House was completed, the stock market collapsed. Rose was burdened with two expensive households to support, a dwindling market for her magazine stories, depleted savings, and a plummeting stock market account.
Laura was retired from the Missouri Ruralist and her farm loan job. Rocky Ridge was no longer a working farm; it provided only garden stuff, milk, and eggs. During this era of personal and national economic emergency, Laura resumed writing. In the modern Rock House, she pondered over the frontier times she knew, and drafted an autobiography. It was titled Pioneer Girl. It was the prelude to writing her Little House books.
Dear Farm Women
Agricultural products were in high demand during World War I, but the inevitable postwar demand left farmers disgruntled. Returning soldiers abandoned the farm; cities lured them with better wages and shorter work hours. The Missouri Ruralist invited the female readership to share views on the problem. Laura was gratified with the response; her note to readers was published in the Ruralist’s first issue of 1921.
JANUARY 5, 1921
Dear Farm Women,
For several years I have been talking and talking, hearing no reply, until I came to feel no one was listening to me. And to find that you are really there and will answer back is truly delightful.
Mrs. A. J. Wilder
I’m so hungry to see you
Laura enclosed a letter from Ruralist editor George Jordan when she wrote Rose, who was in Paris. Jordan said he “wanted to let you know that with your stories the pleasure of reading them compensates for the hatred I have of editing. . . . Frankly Mrs. Wilder, I like you and your stories better than anything that reaches us.” Laura’s letter alludes to Rose’s continued financial support. Rose urged Laura and Manly to semiretire. She advised: “Think of Rocky Ridge as a country home, and not as a farm . . . there is so much that is fun to do on a farm, when you aren’t killing yourselves trying to make a living on it.”
[CIRCA APRIL 1921]
Dear Rose,
Here is a letter I want you to read but I hate to send it to you for I like to read it over now and then. It gives me such a warm, comfortable feeling around in my interior decorations but I have decided that pleasure of sharing it with you is greater than that of keeping it. I have never seen Mr. Jordan you know; he is associate editor of the Ruralist. Please do not lose the letter if it is not too much trouble to keep it and some day perhaps I may warm my feet again by reading it over.
Funny about the [lost] bags. Manly swears it’s the same story but I’m glad as glad if it isn’t [a reference to missing gifts sent by Rose]. A collar from Switzerland should have come with the hat, I suppose that was from Peggy [Peggy Marquis, a photographer and Rose’s frequent travel companion on magazine assignments]. But the box was torn up and the collar and a box of Paris candy lost out. Later she sent Manly some ties and me some candy and a little powder box. I haven’t heard from her since. It will be nice for you to have the old crowd in Paris.
I want to send Berta something [likely a gift for the artist Berta Hoerner Hader, whose son had been born in March] but I haven’t the faintest idea what her address is and can’t send it in care of Betty [Bessie Beatty] if she has resigned from McCalls, that is the only address I know for her. That’s what Berta gets for not sending me a Christmas card. I wish Betty would not go into Russia. There is no doubt that it is a very unpleasant place. . . .
I do hope you are back from your Constantinople and beyond trip by now [this trip was canceled; it would occur in 1922] and that you are well and rested. I’m feeling fine and the weather is beautiful; indications are that we will have a dry summer and spring seems to be a month ahead of time. Planted the early potatoes yesterday—dark of the moon you know—had to plant ’em!
There isn’t any news to write you. I haven’t been to town to see anyone for so long except to the Farm Loan Association and then I was tied up all afternoon in
the hall handling business. [Laura’s office was in the Odd Fellows Hall on Mansfield’s square.] Our colored member was there and when he was introduced to me I shook hands with him which nearly paralyzed some of the others. But if we have him for president, why not treat the colored brother kindly? [A reference to rumors that President Warren Harding had African ancestry; she was egalitarian in her views on race and nationality, and abhorred sexism, child labor, and the inappropriate use of power.]
I’m a hero worshiper, you know, and likewise a bitter ender and almost all the other foolish things you can think of.
Supreme Court has declared the Farm Loan Act constitutional so we’ll begin business again as soon as the business can be put in shape. I’ll be one busy person then, for I think everyone wants a loan.
I’m so hungry to see you Honeybug, my little Busybee. Write when you can find time and are not too tired and I will not let there be such a gap in my letters again.
Loving you so much,
Mama Bess
Treated like visiting princesses
When Rose’s employment with the American Red Cross terminated, she was hired by Near East Relief to do similar publicity work. The new job sent her on fact-finding missions as she wrote about the organization’s humanitarian efforts. In this letter fragment, Laura shares news of Rose with her aged mother, Caroline Ingalls.
[CIRCA SEPTEMBER 1922]
A letter from Rose yesterday, so I can tell you the good news that she is about five miles from Constantinople and she says we are not to worry about her for they are treated like visiting princesses and no one will harm them. They are both with the Near East Relief people, you know, Rose writing and Peggy taking the pictures. Her letter was written on ship board on the Black Sea and dated September 2. She says that they would be in Batumi the next Sunday. The Black Sea ports were closed so they would go the whole 585 miles from Constantinople without a stop. They will take a trip through Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and northern Persia, then back to Constantinople. After that, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt and possibly, Arabia.
Just live on the Ozark climate and views
Meroe Andrews and Ed Stanton made their wedding plans while they picnicked at Rocky Ridge Farm on July 4, 1915. When the couple moved to Florida, Manly supervised the loading of their possessions onto one end of a railroad emigrant car. The other end was reserved for the Stantons’ livestock, which Manly tended on the trip to Florida. On visits to Missouri, the Stantons and their five children never failed to call on the Wilders.
DECEMBER 17, 1924
My Dear Meroe:
You will likely be surprised to hear from me after so long a time, but if you knew how often I have planned to write to you “tomorrow” and how busy I have been, you would forgive me the delay in answering your letter.
We often speak of you and wonder how you all are and if you still like Florida. There is no prospect yet of our leaving here, but sometimes we wish we were loose from everything for a little while anyway.
We are well as usual and have cut down our farming until we really don’t do any. Just live on the Ozark climate and views.
The State Highway runs just north of the house now, just far enough away that the dust does not reach us. It is only now open to travel. People say it has added $1000 in value to our farm, but we don’t see it that way. We get tramps now and people who want to stay all night or borrow things to fix their cars and all that. It is a nuisance.
Rose is in New York now. She was with us nearly a year and will be back again in January. It is lonesome with her gone and we will be glad when she is with us again. . . .
And now I will get my little bit of business out of the way. The Federal Land Bank has made a new ruling that stickers like the enclosed one must be attached to canceled certificates after this, and they asked that we get them signed and attach them wherever we could to those transferred before the ruling (meaning unclear; possibly a bureacratic technique to validate loan documents). . . . I will appreciate it very much if you will sign it and return it to me at once so I can get my books in shape as soon as possible.
Mr. Timberlake and I were talking over the phone this morning. He said they were both “fine as silk.” I haven’t seen Mrs. Timberlake for ages, nor any of the Quigleys. . . . They come out to see us whenever they come to see Sophie’s mother. Sophie has her hair bobbed now. I wonder if you have bobbed your beautiful hair, some way I hope not.
How I would like to see you and the kids, I can’t believe you are grown up and with such a houseful of children. Give my regards to Ed. And we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.
Lovingly your friend,
Mrs. A. J. Wilder
A few words to the voters
In March 1925, Laura made her sole bid for political office. She ran for tax collector of Pleasant Valley Township, which paid an annual salary of $300. She claimed the independent farmer’s ticket, though she was well known as a Democrat. She roundly lost the election, but Rose remarked that “thank goodness Mama Bess doesn’t awfully mind.” Laura’s statement to voters leaned heavily on her Farm Loan Association work.
I have been asked to place my name before the voters of Pleasant Valley Township as candidate for the office of Collector in the election of March 31, 1925.
Mr. Wilder and I came to Wright County thirty years ago and bought the farm east of Mansfield where we now live. My character is known to neighbors and friends throughout the county. I have been a busy farm woman and have not had time to do as much for the community as I would have liked to do, but wherever possible I have done my best.
Seven years ago, with eight other farmers, I organized the Mansfield National Farm Loan Association, which I have served ever since as Secretary-Treasurer. The Association now has 54 members. . . . I have been entrusted with $102,675 . . . government money, which the Association has loaned to farmers in this community at 5½% interest. I believe that this amount of money . . . has increased our prosperity . . . and has been of direct or indirect value to us all.
I have personally handled all the details of these loans and been responsible for the money. Federal bank examiners certify that I have attended promptly to the business and that my records are always accurate and in order. I believe the members of the Farm Loan Association who receive an 8% dividend on their stock every year will testify that my work has been satisfactory to them.
After these seven years of experience I am confident that I can perform the duties of Collector of Pleasant Valley township. . . .
I am not a politician and have no thought of entering politics, but I appreciate very much the compliment of being asked to be candidate for this office. . . .
Mrs. A. J. Wilder
Wonderful for the family to have such a record
Laura’s last regular column in the Ruralist was printed in December 1924. Rose had returned to Rocky Ridge from her travels and was living there. Her articles and short stories were published regularly in Country Gentleman and other mainstream magazines. She urged Laura to submit to Country Gentleman, assisting her in placing two articles in 1925: “My Ozark Kitchen” and “The Farm Dining Room.” Laura thought of her pioneer heritage as possible writing grist. She wrote her elderly aunt Martha Quiner Carpenter in Pepin, Wisconsin, asking for family lore. This letter indicates her first tentative resolve to write about frontier times.
JUNE 22, 1925
Dear Aunt Martha,
Mary [Ingalls] writes that you have not had the circular yet and so I am cutting across the corner and writing you direct. [Quiner-Ingalls relatives maintained a continuing circulating letter that shared family news for many decades.]
I have been wondering how you are standing the hot summer, for I suppose it is warm weather there as well as here. We have been having a very dry season as well as hot and are needing rain very badly now. We are not doing much farming but would be glad to have rain on meadows and pastures.
Rose is still here and busy on a new book.
I don’t know what the title is nor how soon it will be finished. It is a story of the Ozarks. [The book became Hill-Billy.] Her friend Helen Boylston from New Hampshire is still here with her. [Rose met Boylston, a nurse, in Europe. She became a semipermanent guest on Rocky Ridge, and Rose’s traveling companion.]
We are all usually well just now but I have had a very serious sickness, very near to nervous prostration. It is good to be well again, though I am not very strong. . . . [Wilder’s illness prompted Rose’s return to the farm in January; she referred to her mother’s illness as indeterminate exhaustion, brought on by overwork.]
The Ladies Home Journal is wanting me to write an article for them on our grandmother’s cooking, brought down to date, and I am thinking that you could give me some old recipes for dishes that your mother or yourself used to cook. . . . I would like to cook them for myself as well as write about them.
Mother used to make what she called “Vanity Cakes.” . . . They were mostly egg and they were friend in deep fat. When done they were simply bubbles, usually with a hollow center and they were crisp around the edges. Perhaps you know how to make them. I would so much like to have the recipe.
There was something I wanted the girls to do for me, but they never got around to it and Mother herself was not able. I wanted all the stories she could remember of the early days in Wisconsin when you were all children and young people. Now it is too late to ever get them from her [Caroline Ingalls died in 1924], but I think as I thought then it would be wonderful for the family to have such a record.