Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder
Page 26
Laura was careful not only to get the details as accurate as possible but also to try to capture the right tone in describing relationships within the family. The pains she took to get the language—as well as the facts—right increases our confidence today that her descriptions of personality and personal interactions were essentially correct. While Laura's father never used language any stronger than “Gosh all hemlock” or “I'll be darned,” her mother would never have stooped to even such expressions. “Her language was rather precise and a great deal better language than I have ever used,” Laura admitted. She said that she and Grace had been more like their father in that respect; Mary and Carrie had been more like their mother. Referring to something that Rose had written about Ma saying that “she vowed she didn't believe those young ones were ever going to sleep,” Laura commented that her mother would never have called them “young ones.” She always referred to them as “children.” Nor, being a lady, would she ever have used the expression “I vow.”48
One technical problem had Laura stumped. During a blizzard when Pa was in town, Ma had to go out to the barn to take care of the animals, raising the question of how the scene should be written, since Rose always emphasized that everything should be described as Laura herself had observed it. But if Laura could not have gone out to the barn, she would have been in no position to describe the action inside. There was a problem, however, in that Laura would not have been tall enough to reach the clothesline that they had stretched from the house to the barn to prevent their wandering off in the storm, and Ma could not have held her hand because one of her hands would have been on the clothesline and the other would have been carrying the milk pail. “I don't know how to handle it,” Laura wrote Rose. “Seeing the inside of that stable and how Ma did the chores seems rather necessary to the interest of the whole thing. But How? I am beat!” In the end they decided to let Laura stay inside the house and imagine what Ma was doing, moment by moment, as she went out into the storm.49
While attempting to get all of the details straight, Laura and Rose were not above manipulating facts or even making things up in order to convey the proper impression to the reader or to keep the story moving. For example, in describing how the creek flowed past their dugout—foaming and roaring as it pushed around the bend—Laura told Rose, “I have an awful suspicion that we drank plain creek water, in the raw, without boiling it or whatever. But that would make the reader think we were dirty, which we were not. So I said a spring. There could have been a spring near where Pa watered the oxen or there could be one near the plank footbridge. As it is located in my imagination, you may put it where it is most convenient.”50
Rose spent about two months working on the manuscript. While mother and daughter were in correspondence about it, Laura added tidbits about happenings at Rocky Ridge. An electrical mishap had sparked a fire in the woods behind their garage by the barn. Luckily, they had been able to rouse the neighbors to help put it out. Almanzo had been in such a hurry to douse the flames that he ran out in just his shirt and shoes, without his pants or socks. More serious was some trouble that Al Turner had gotten into, which Laura advised Rose not just to forgive and forget. “If he gets off too easy,” she cautioned, “he might think he got away with that all right and you would help him out again and try something again.” Rose probably recognized in her mother's advice the same sort of strictness that she herself had been subject to while she was growing up. Laura seemed to be uncertain about the best way to treat the problem. After considering all of the ramifications, she concluded, “Oh Dam! I don't know what to do.”51
Even more difficult to deal with was the situation of Corinne Murray and her husband, who were living in the farmhouse while Rose was in Columbia. Jack Murray had been observed hauling water away in big cans in his truck to use in their laundry operation downtown. His apparent motive was to save on water bills. The situation was bothering Laura, who earlier had urged Rose to let the Murrays stay at the place. Now she advised getting rid of them and closing the house. Finally, as Rose recorded it in her journal four years later, Laura presented her with a simple choice: “come back at once to stay (and throw Corinne out) or get out myself. She added that she had ordered Bruce [the hired man] to kill my dog. (Which he did.)” In evicting Corinne, Rose softened the blow by giving her all of her possessions except for her books, and meanwhile gave the house back to her parents. They wasted little time in moving back into the house they had always preferred living in, and the rock house that Rose had built for them was left standing empty for the time being. Once separated from Rocky Ridge, Rose evinced no desire to return to it and did not come back to Mansfield to visit until Almanzo died in 1949.52
Rose finished revising and retyping the Plum Creek manuscript just before midnight on September 21 and sent the original to Laura the next day with detailed instructions about how to send it to George Bye. He would forward it to Ida Louise Raymond, who was waiting for it at Harper and Brothers. Rose informed her mother that she would hold on to the carbon copy until hearing that the original had arrived safely in New York, because to lose the manuscript would be ghastly. Previously, they had simply mailed packages from the Mansfield post office, keeping the carbon copy at home. Rose was being careful to maintain the illusion that these books were entirely her mother's work. She had worked steadily to get the manuscript finished, “not even stopping to sleep.” She thanked her mother for having sent along a picture of herself. “I am so glad to have your picture,” she wrote, “but I do not think it flatters you at all. Indeed you are much prettier than it.” She thought that the camera had made her look too old. “Your eyes are so lively and your expressions change so, and though if one stops to think of it your hair is white, still the effect is really of blonde hair, of light hair that contrasts so with your dark blue eyes and dark lashes, and is always so wavy and pretty.”53
When this third “Laura and Mary” book—and the fourth overall—appeared at the end of 1937, reviewers praised it in terms similar to the ones that they had used to describe the previous ones. The story was judged to be “fine,” “vigorous,” “honest,” and “magical.” Without reverting to sentimentality, it served up “a warm, glowing picture of steadfast family love and devotion,” Horn Book Magazine commented. The New York Times's reviewer welcomed a story in which the characters were allowed to speak for themselves. Rather than being told by the author what they were like, readers were allowed to observe directly their growth over time and to discover for themselves what kind of people they were. With four books now in circulation, Laura Ingalls Wilder had established a firm reputation for herself as a popular children's author, and her readers were begging for more.54
8
Completing the Series
1937–1943
The publication of On the Banks of Plum Creek toward the end of 1937 further established Laura Ingalls Wilder's stature as one of America's most popular children's authors. By now many of her youthful fans were well acquainted with her characters and wrote letters asking what would happen next to them and when her next book was coming out. Librarians, teachers, and people in the publishing community were also enthusiastic about her work. A teacher in Minneapolis wrote to say that her first two books were being used in every third-grade class in the state.1
Further recognition came with an invitation that fall to speak at a Detroit book fair sponsored by the big J. L. Hudson Department Store. Laura's talk was scheduled for October 16. Laura accepted the invitation despite the long distance and her trepidation in front of large audiences. “I have never lost my timidity with total strangers,” she wrote Aubrey Sherwood of the De Smet News, but this would be a good opportunity to boost book sales, and that helped overcome her initial reluctance. From New York, Rose sent encouraging notes as Laura prepared for the trip. “Everyone who sees or meets you will buy all your books,” her daughter wrote, “and every librarian who does will buy a good many copies.” She urged her mother not to worry about spending too
much money on the trip. “Whatever it costs, you will make up later simply by meeting people and seeing things and being better known yourself. I do hope to heaven you will not appear only for once and then rush away in order to save a few dollars.”2
Laura's decision to go was made easier when a young friend of theirs, Silas Seal, agreed to drive them to Detroit. He was familiar with the area, having worked in one of Henry Ford's automobile plants for several years during the 1920s. He and Almanzo had become friendly after he returned to Mansfield in 1928 with his wife, Neta, to open a service station. The young man impressed Almanzo with his friendliness and willingness to work. Silas always washed Almanzo's windshield and checked his oil and tire pressure before even asking whether he wanted to buy any gas. When Almanzo drove Laura into town to shop, he often wiled away his time at the station, striking up conversations with Silas and other loiterers. Laura also enjoyed the Seals’ company, and Neta was invited to ride with them on the trip. But unfortunately she got sick and had to stay home. Silas paid a man to take care of his service station for a week, and the threesome headed off to Michigan.3
It was a great adventure for Laura and Almanzo. Except for their excursion to South Dakota in 1931, Almanzo had seldom ventured far from home since coming to Missouri in 1894. Laura had been lucky enough to visit the West Coast twice. Silas Seal turned out to be an excellent driver. In Detroit they put two hundred miles on the Chrysler just by driving around the city. Almanzo thought it was a beautiful place. Its parks and streets were neat and clean, and he noted that “if a leaf falls from a tree there is someone to pick it up.” He especially enjoyed visiting the Henry Ford Museum and viewing all the exhibits and machinery on display. Besides, the food was great; he figured he could get a better meal in Detroit for forty cents than he could in Springfield at any price.4
In a letter from the Grosvenor Hotel in New York, where she was living at the time, Rose was full of reassurance and advice for her mother, who was not used to city life or standing up in front of large audiences. “Remain calm, darling. When in any doubt whatever, always pause and COUNT Ten,” she counseled. “Always remember that you are the one to be served. Whatever YOU want, that is the right thing.” Ida Louise Raymond from Harper and Brothers came for the event, and Rose instructed Laura on how to approach the editor about some publishing ideas that she had been mulling over, including the possibility of doing a book of poetry. Laura had always enjoyed writing poems, and now she thought that she might be able to publish them. Rose tried to be encouraging, reminding her, “There's a lot you don't know about this whole field of publishing; remember that ignorance is an asset and do not conceal it.”5
Laura was concerned about giving her speech and the reception it would get, and she solicited Rose's advice in preparing her remarks. She need not have worried. Before leaving home she wrote the entire text on the same kind of lined tablet she used for writing her books. The text added up to sixteen handwritten pages and provided the best explanation she ever gave for how and why she wrote her books. Laura talked a bit about her parents and about the four books she had already finished. She indicated that she was planning three more set in Dakota Territory to complete the series, resulting in a seven-volume novel. She promised that Almanzo, the “Farmer Boy” of book two, would reappear in the fifth volume, the one she was working on at the time. He would go with Laura the rest of the way through the series, which would end happily (“as all good novels should”) when the two of them got married. The question that children asked her most, Laura told Rose afterward, was what was going to happen to Laura and Almanzo.6
Laura's explanation of why she had begun writing the books—that she wanted to preserve the stories that she and her sisters had loved to hear their father tell—was incomplete. Preservation of family folklore certainly played a role, but equally important factors were her longtime desire to write for publication and her wish to leave something significant behind. She had written Little House in the Big Woods to expand the manuscript that Rose had carved out of Laura's autobiography. Probably not sure of what kind of response she would get and not envisioning a long series at the outset, Laura had seen the project grow naturally as time passed. She told her listeners at the book fair that the success of the first volume and letters from children all over the country begging her for more stories had prompted her to reflect further upon her childhood. She realized now that her life encapsulated the several phases of frontier history. She told about her desire to help children understand more about the beginning of things and how they had come to be what they were and how this had led her to conceive of a multivolume “historical novel for children covering every aspect of the American frontier.” She failed to point out, however, that she had actually started writing Farmer Boy before the release of her first book and long before delighted readers began asking her for more. It is likely that the formulation of the larger project evolved in her thinking over a period of time. In the end, four more books, not three, would appear, and the entire series would run to eight volumes.7
Laura stretched things a bit regarding “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” which was being readied for publication at the time, in saying that all of the stories contained in it—all the circumstances and every incident—were true. She and Rose always insisted on the complete historical accuracy of her books, but the two failed to acknowledge that scenes, characters, and dialogue were often modified, embellished, rearranged, or even created when they felt it was necessary. Additionally, Laura's memory was not totally reliable; every year it slipped a little more. Seven years after finishing “Pioneer Girl” she admitted to Rose that her memories of things that had happened many years earlier were no longer nearly as vivid as they had been when she started writing.8 In addition, the fictional format within which they were operating demanded that they streamline some things, expand upon others, modify chronology, redefine characters, and depart in other ways from strict historical accuracy in order to maximize readability and to obtain what could be called “literary truth.” Some things needed to be left out, Laura explained, because they were inappropriate for younger readers. So if her stories were truthful in one sense, they did not always tell the whole truth. The murderous Kate Bender family in Kansas and children freezing to death in a blizzard on Plum Creek—stories like these, Laura said, did not fit into the format that she had adopted.
In her Detroit speech, Laura displayed some of the kind of low-key humor that frequently surprised people. Her husband, she said, still loved horses, but now he drove a Chrysler sedan. At least he held on to the wheel. “Of course I do the driving with my tongue,” she laughed. Mainly, though, her intent was serious: to provide people with some idea of how and why she had gone about writing her books and to distill their essence. “The spirit of the frontier,” she explained, “was one of humor and cheerfulness no matter what happened and whether the joke was on oneself or the other fellow.” People either brought that spirit west with them or acquired it in the process of living there. Her parents had possessed it to a marked degree, she noted. “It shines through all the volumes of my children's novel.”9
Laura drove home her point more explicitly in a talk to the Sorosis Club of Mountain Grove while she was writing “On the Banks of Plum Creek.” She noted that running “like a golden thread” through all of her stories were certain basic values: “courage, self-reliance, independence, integrity and helpfulness. Cheerfulness and humor were handmaids to courage.” Her parents, she observed, had worked diligently, suffered heat and cold, lost their money, endured privation, yet, despite everything, had managed to survive. They had not begged for help and had not expected the government or any person to owe them a living. They had made their own way. “Their old fashioned character values are worth as much today as they ever were to help us over the rough places,” Laura noted. The same kinds of virtues were needed in 1937 that had been required sixty years earlier, she asserted. She made it clear that her books were as much about the present as th
ey were about the past. The moral lessons and advice for living that she imparted in them were simply offered up in a different format from what they had been in the biweekly articles that she had written for the Missouri Ruralist for more than a decade.10
Laura, Almanzo, and Silas Seal returned to Mansfield two days after she gave her talk in Detroit. The trip had been enjoyable, Laura told Rose, promising to send her a copy of her remarks. Rose responded enthusiastically after reading them, “Detroit talk came and it is fine. No wonder you made a great hit. Those stories are marvelous.” Rose, in fact, was getting heavily into pioneer stories herself. After having once asserted that they held no interest for her, she had written one herself in 1932 and then had tried on and off during the next several years to write something about the hard winter of 1880–1881, largely based on stories that her parents had told her about their own experiences. Somehow the project never jelled, however, and within a short time her mother would be involved in writing her own version of those events.11
But now a new story had come into view for Rose to write about, one focusing on her grandparents and the early homesteading experience in Dakota Territory when railroads were pushing into the region, bringing fresh waves of settlers with them. To help visualize the historical context and pinpoint dozens of factual details, Rose had corresponded frequently with her parents during the early months of 1937 while she was still living at the Tiger Hotel in Columbia. They had responded eagerly to her questions, writing long, detailed reports on all of the things that they were able to remember. Not being able to recall the names of many of the plants and wildflowers that had bloomed on the prairie, Laura had written to Grace to see if she could help. When her sister had reminded her of the crocuses, wild onions, violets, sheep sorrel, yellow buttercups, wild peas, tiger lilies, and wild geraniums that had blanketed the land, Laura had sighed, “To think that I could have forgotten all this which comes back to me now. That's why the sooner I write my stuff the better.”12