Prairie Fires
Page 72
105. LIW to RWL, February 5, 1937, in SL LIW, p. 110.
106. Wilder, “My Work”: Speech to the Sorosis Club, Mountain Grove, Missouri, Winter 1935–36 in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 581. The text of this speech was derived from the only known source, Irene Lichty Le Count, Laura Ingalls Wilder Family, Home and Friends (Potpourri) (privately printed, 1980), pp. 43–47. The original manuscript was presumably once the property of the Mansfield Collection, where Lichty Le Count served as director for many years, but has apparently been lost.
107. Ibid., p. 584.
108. RWL to LIW, October 11, 1937.
109. Ibid.
110. LIW to Ida Louise Raymond, October 8, 1937, in SL LIW, p. 134.
111. Program for “The Book Fair: ‘A Week of Authors,’ October 11 through 16, 1937” (Detroit: J. L. Hudson, 1937), p. 19. Collection of the author.
112. LIW, “Speech at the Book Fair, Detroit, Michigan, October 16, 1937,” in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 585.
113. Ibid., pp. 585–86.
114. Ibid., pp. 586.
115. Ibid., p. 588.
116. Ibid.
117. See LIW, PC.
118. Ida Louise Raymond to LIW, December 22, 1936.
119. See LIW to Aubrey Sherwood, February 23, 1943.
120. RWL to William T. Anderson, June 30, 1966, cited in Anderson, “The Literary Apprenticeship of LIW,” p. 288.
121. LIW, “‘Dear Children’: A Letter from Laura Ingalls Wilder,” in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 2, p. 802.
12. WE ARE ALL HERE
1. See RWL, “Questionnaire for Almanzo Wilder on Dakota Territory,” HHPL; and “Rose Wilder Lane, interview with Almanzo Wilder,” Sampler, p. 213.
2. RWL Diary, 1936–38, entries for January 20 and 21, 1937. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #59.
3. RWL, “Silk Dress,” Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1937, p. 46.
4. Ibid., p. 50. See also LIW, “The First Three Years,” p. 65 (HHPL pagination).
5. RWL, Free Land (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1938; 1966), p. 25. For ease of reference I have provided page numbers for the novel rather than the Saturday Evening Post serial.
6. Ibid., p. 26.
7. Ibid., p. 23.
8. Ibid., pp. 94–96.
9. Ibid., p. 7.
10. Ibid., p. 29.
11. Ibid., p. 230.
12. LIW to RWL, letter beginning “Perhaps you don’t know about the ‘Horn Book’” on reverse of letter from Ida Louise Raymond to LIW, December 18, 1937.
13. Ibid.
14. RWL to LIW, December 20, 1937.
15. The serial, as well as the novel, did contain a fictionalized account of an anecdote Wilder and Lane had been trading back and forth for years, the story of the desecration of an Indian graveyard by a doctor who stole the body of an infant. Wilder described the incident in her memoir; see PG, pp. 227, 229. For Lane’s version, see Free Land, p. 104.
16. LIW to RWL, February 5, 1937.
17. The former appeared in LHOP, the latter would be included in SL.
18. LIW to RWL, February 5, 1937.
19. SL, manuscript version 2, p. 2, HHPL.
20. Ibid., following p. 5.
21. RWL to LIW, undated, late October 1937.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. RWL to LIW, December 20, 1937.
25. LIW to RWL, March 22, 1937.
26. LIW to RWL, undated letter with “Plum Creek” inscribed across the top. In sequence at the HHPL, this letter appears to follow and respond to Lane’s letter of December 20, 1937.
27. RWL to LIW, January 21, 1938.
28. Ibid., December 19, 1937.
29. LIW to RWL, January 25, 1938.
30. Ibid., January 28, 1938.
31. RWL to LIW, February 3, 1938, in Selected Letters, p. 160. Anderson was given a transcript of the letter by Roger MacBride.
32. LIW to RWL, February 19, 1938.
33. Ibid., undated letter with “Plum Creek” inscribed across the top.
34. See page 1 of “The Shores of Silver Lake,” SL manuscript (version 2). SHSM.
35. Ibid.
36. RWL to LIW, January 21, 1938.
37. Ibid.
38. See LIW to RWL, January 25, 1938; and RWL to LIW, January 21, 1938.
39. LIW to RWL, January 25, 1938. See also Rosa Ann Moore, “Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: The Chemistry of Collaboration,” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 11, no. 3 (Autumn 1980), p. 106.
40. RWL to Guy Moyston, May 30, 1925; “movement of the bowels” was Lane’s term, although she implies that it was the language used by her mother. According to Lane’s letter, Wilder “hate[d] anything at all that has to do in any way with sex.” See also RWL, He Was a Man (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1925), pp. 93–94. The racy scene that Wilder objected to depicted the novel’s protagonist, Gordon Blake (based on Jack London), losing his virginity to an older, experienced woman who lived with a colorful friend, Frisco Jack. Wilder apparently stopped reading the novel at that point; Lane expressed relief that her mother quit before reaching the scene in which Blake seduces “Spanish Mary,” a teenaged refugee, in suggestive but hardly explicit terms: “Her body was firm and yielding, pressed against him by his masterful arms.” See He Was a Man, p. 99.
41. LIW to RWL, January 26, 1938.
42. Ibid., undated letter headed “Plum Creek”; see also LIW to RWL, January 26, 1938.
43. LIW to RWL, undated letter headed “Silver Lake,” in 1938 correspondence.
44. LIW, SL in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 2, p. 12.
45. LIW to RWL, January 25, 1938.
46. Ibid., undated letter headed “Silver Lake,” in 1938 correspondence.
47. LIW, manuscript (version 2), of SL, p. 95.
48. LIW to RWL, February 19, 1938.
49. Ibid., March 7, 1938.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. LIW, “The Hard Winter,” List of Corrections to typescript, see corrections to p. 107, p. 104. HHPL.
57. LIW, “The Hard Winter,” List of Corrections and Map of De Smet. HHPL. See corrections to p. 86.
58. LIW, “Hard Winter” draft manuscript, p. 199. Burton Collection.
59. Ibid., p. 206.
60. Ibid., p. 52. Often repeated in Wilder’s work and in her daughter’s, the anecdote of the Indian predicting the hard winter must have been among her enduring memories of that winter. It appeared in Pioneer Girl; in Lane’s quasi-fictional series for the Bulletin, “Behind the Headlight”; in drafts of “Hard Winter”; and in the published novel. See PG, pp. 203, 204n7; chapter 3 of “Behind the Headlight: The Life Story of a Railway Engineer,” Bulletin, October 12, 1915, p. 8; and chapter 7, “Indian Warning,” of LW in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 2, pp. 207–208.
61. LIW to RWL, June 3, 1939.
62. LIW to Bye, May 7, 1940.
63. “We Are All Here” appears in The Conqueror, the songbook used at the singing school attended by Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder during their courting days; see “We Are All Here,” in C. E. Leslie and R. H. Randall, The Conqueror (Chicago: Chicago Music Company, 1880), p. 22. See also notes on “We Are All Here,” in The Ingalls Wilder Family Songbook, ed. Dale Cockrell (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2011), p. 399.
64. RWL to Mary Paxton Keeley, February 14, 1938.
65. Ibid. See also Lane’s 1040 Federal Tax Return and Missouri State Tax Returns for 1937, HHPL.
66. See RWL Diary, 1936–38, entry for January 17–18, 1937: “I have $189 in bank, besides $600 cushion reserve, & $1000. put aside for boys’ trip to Europe this summer.” HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #59. See also Holtz, Ghost, p. 272.
67. See John Turner and Charlie Clark to RWL, August 26, 1937 (postcard). The Hitler postcard is undated and the date of cancellation on the reverse is illegible; it too probably dates from August 1937.
68. I am indebted to Kathy Short, of the Mansfield Historical Society, for alerting me to this information; personal interview, October 28, 2015. See also Susan Dolan, Fruitful Legacy: A Historic Context of Orchards in the United States (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2009), p. 101.
69. RWL quotes from her mother’s letter in her own to Mark Sullivan, October 11, 1938. Wilder’s original letter has not surfaced.
70. RWL to Mark Sullivan, August 16, 1938.
71. Ibid.
72. RWL to Mary Paxton Keeley, February 14, 1938.
73. Ibid.
74. See RWL, “Free Land,” Saturday Evening Post, March 5 to April 23, 1938.
75. Kirkus Reviews, Free Land, May 4, 1938.
76. RWL to Mary Paxton Keeley, January 25, 1938.
77. Bye to RWL, October 11, 1936.
78. Rexh Meta to RWL, February 28, 1938. The cable transfer from Guaranty Trust Company of New York, dated January 28, 1938, is in Lane’s papers at HHPL.
79. See Holtz, Ghost, p. 277.
80. RWL Diary, 1936–38, entry for February 5, 1938. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #59. See also Holtz, Ghost, p. 284.
81. RWL to LIW, December 20, 1937.
82. See RWL, “My House in the Country,” Woman’s Day, May 1942, pp. 12–13.
83. RWL to Mary Paxton Keeley, February 14, 1938.
84. LIW to RWL, February 19, 1938.
85. Ibid.
86. “Friends and Travelers: The Personal Recollections of Neta Seal,” in Hines, “I Remember Laura,” p. 108.
87. White, Laura’s Friends Remember, p. 20.
88. Portions of LIW’s 1938 travel diary, including a photograph of one page, appear in Helen Burkhiser, Neta, Laura’s Friend (privately printed, 1989). The location of the diary is currently unknown.
89. Burkhiser, p. 15.
90. Ibid., p. 17.
91. See William Anderson, Story of the Ingalls (Mansfield, MO: LIW Home Association, 1967; 1993), p. 31.
92. Ibid.
93. “Somebody’s Coming When the Dew Drops Fall,” music and lyrics by James C. Macy (Cleveland: S. Brainard’s Sons, 1878).
94. De Smet News, June 3, 1938.
95. Ibid.
96. Ole R. Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 17.
97. LIW to RWL, September 26, 1938.
98. See the history of the Mansfield Mirror in History and Families, Wright County, Missouri, ed. Clyde A. Rowen (Morley, MO: Acclaim Press, 1993), p. 76.
99. Nannie Davis was a member of both the Athenian Club and the Justamere Club. See “Rose Wilder Lane Is Luncheon Hostess,” Springfield Leader, May 23, 1928, p. 17.
100. See Miller, Becoming LIW, p. 227, and LIW to RWL, September 26, 1938.
101. A copy of “To American Mothers” was found in Wilder’s papers. See also LIW to RWL, September 26, 1938.
102. LIW to RWL, September 26, 1938.
103. Ibid.
104. RWL, “Why I Am for the People’s Vote on War,” Liberty, April 1, 1939, pp. 11–12.
105. Eleanor Roosevelt, “Why I Am Against the People’s Vote on War,” Liberty, April 8, 1939, p. 7.
106. LIW to RWL, April 2, 1939.
107. RWL, “War! What the Women of America Can Do to Prevent It,” Woman’s Day, April 1939, p. 4.
108. For Lane’s appearance that day, see the photograph held in the Library of Congress. “Neutrality Snags Plague Congress,” New York Times, May 11, 1939, p. 12.
109. See Time, June 12, 1939.
110. Peter Kurth, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson (New York: Little, Brown, 1991), p. 312.
111. RWL to Dorothy Thompson, October 15, 1938, in Holtz, Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane, p. 147.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid., p. 148.
114. For an extensive discussion of the spat, see Holtz, Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane, pp. 149–52. See also Holtz, Ghost, pp. 295–96.
115. Ruth Levine to William Holtz, April 22, 1991, HHPL. Dorothy Thompson to RWL, June 6, 1939, in Holtz, Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane, p. 161. Thompson is quoting from a speech she had recently given at the PEN Congress.
116. RWL to Dorothy Thompson, June 1, 1939.
117. LIW to RWL, January 26, 1939.
118. Ibid., April 2, 1939.
119. Ibid., January 10, 1939.
120. LIW to RWL, March 17, 1939.
121. LIW to Bye, May 29, 1939.
122. Ibid.
123. LIW to RWL, May 23, 1939.
124. Ibid., January 27, 1939.
125. Ibid., February 20, 1939.
126. Ibid.
127. Ibid., April 2, 1939.
128. Ibid., January 27, 1939; see the extended postscript.
129. Ibid., February 20, 1939.
130. Ibid., May 23, 1939.
131. Ibid., June 3, 1939.
132. For the weather on their trip home, see “Local Residents Distinguished Visitors Old Settlers’ Day,” De Smet News, June 29, 1939. Wilder’s article, “In the Land of Used-to-Be,” appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on April 4, 1940; it is reprinted in Sampler, p. 226.
133. Ibid., p. 228.
134. Ibid., p. 230.
135. De Smet News, June 29, 1939.
136. LIW, “The Land of Used-to-Be,” in Sampler, p. 230.
137. LIW, SL in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 2, p. 164.
138. See, for example, Anne T. Eaton, “The New Books for Younger Readers,” New York Times Book Review, February 11, 1940, p. 96.
139. “By the Shores of Silver Lake,” Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1939.
140. “What the U.S.A. Thinks: A Picture of the U.S. Mind, Summer of 1940,” Life, July 29, 1940, p. 20.
141. Ibid.
142. See Lane, “American Jews,” American Mercury, December 1938, pp. 501–502; RWL Diary/Journal—War News, May–June 15, 1940, entries for May 10 and 11, 1940, including typed insertion. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #65.
143. Ibid., May 9, 1940.
144. RWL Diary, August 1939–April 1940, entry for November 1, 1939. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #64.
145. Ibid., March
9, 1940, “Check for $500 received from mother. Working on Hard Winter.”