When the creek came from there out into the sunshine it ran over the sandy pebbly bottom where we waded and played so much after we lived in the new house. There was a little patch of sandy, gravelly beach right there. Just below the banks were muddy again and willows and plum trees grew again.
The first tree was a big willow. One end of the footbridge was fastened to it. The other end was fastened in the mud bank and from there the path went to Nelson’s. Below the footbridge was another pond-like place in the creek where big fish lived. The creek ran away among the plums and willows and I never followed it. Never saw it any farther along except where we crossed it to go to town.
There it was out in the sunny prairie, shallow and rather wide, with a gravelly bottom. The water sparkled and rippled and looked altogether different than the dark water in the shadow of the willows and plum trees between the muddy banks.
After all I was only six and very busy about my affairs. What I remember is of course only a series of pictures.
Manly is waiting for this to go to town. When he is gone I will write you another letter.
Hurrah for the Glorious Fourth of July!
Much love,
Mama Bess
Believe me I screamed
A flurry of letters were exchanged between Rocky Ridge and the Tiger Hotel, as Laura and Rose worked through the Plum Creek writing process. It was their first long-distance collaboration. Letters like the following one indicate Laura’s contributions to the critique sessions as she and Rose discussed plot, characterization, and technique.
[CIRCA JULY 1936]
Rose Dearest,
I think I have straightened out the difficulties about the willows etc. in the copy and that it is ready to be typed except for the last bit with note attached.
I don’t like the cattle at the stacks on the same day as the runaway of the cattle on the wagon. How would it be if Pa said the herd boy must be asleep and sent Laura and Mary to find and wake him so he would drive the cattle? Then let them, of their own notion, drive the cattle when they couldn’t find the boy. Would that not clear Pa’s character?
Do as you think best after considering. We could leave it out altogether. Just the runaway on the day in town.
Hope you could get the map straightened out. I see the pictures so plainly that I guess I failed to paint them as I should.
We had some excitement that I guess Corinne wrote you about.
Night before last the electric wires gave an awful pop and our lights went out. I called up and they were out in town and at the other house [the farmhouse] so we waited awhile and Manly went to bed. Ben had barked when the wires popped and he kept barking and I thought he was just nervous. I went to the back door to lock it and stepped out on the porch. And there was a fire back of the garage down toward the barn.
Believe me I screamed. I thought the barn and hay and sheds and all were afire. I managed to make Manly understand and then I ran for the barn to turn the kids and the calf loose. Ben went with me. Around the garage, I saw it wasn’t the barn burning, but the woods, back of the garage . . .
So I came back to the phone for help and the phone didn’t ring right and no one answered. I dropped the receiver and ran with a bucket of water and Manly came, without his pants or socks, just his shirt and shoes. We left Ben in the house and he kept barking.
The fire hadn’t so much of a start and we had it mostly out when Corinne and Mrs. McCormack drove in. Then in a little Jack and Al and Tom [Tom Carnall, a friend of the Turner brothers]. Corinne heard Ben barking over the phone and felt sure something was wrong. So they came. Nice of them and good to have them.
We got Hyberger and his man out and they found our transmitter had blown up and scattered stuff around that caught on fire from the wires someway. I do not understand it yet. I don’t know what caused it, but it was all over town and on the telephone lines too. . . .
[An additional two pages added to this letter returned to the Plum Creek manuscript.]
I am stumped about Ma in the stable.
I can’t see how Laura can go to the stable with her. Laura couldn’t reach the clothesline [a guide between the house and the stable during blizzards].
The storm came suddenly you know and was enough to lose Pa. It would be something Ma would never do to let Laura go out in it, worse than sending her to drive cattle. The only way Laura could get to the stable and back would be to cling to Ma.
Ma had both hands full with the rope and the milk pail and all she could do to go through the storm herself. We can’t have the storm let up so soon after starting. They never, never did. It is unreasonable that Ma should let her go when there was no need for it.
I don’t know how to handle it.
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’m beat!
A stream-of-consciousness technique was devised, in which Laura constructed Ma’s every move from house to stable, and her activities while tending the livestock.
Grasshoppers coming one summer . . . going away the next
AUGUST 6, 1936
Rose Dearest
The central idea is that field of wheat which was going to make them rich. It took both banks of Plum Creek [life in a dugout on the east bank of the creek, and later experiences in the new frame house on the west bank] and three years and the wheat wasn’t raised yet, but the inference in the last chapter is that it was raised in the fourth.
We can’t have the blizzard the year of the Christmas tree, for that awful winter was the beginning of the wet seasons that kept the grasshoppers down and put them out. The winter . . . was so bad that no one would have gone out to a Christmas tree. It was an open winter that permitted them all [the Ingalls family] to go so far to [Walnut Grove for] Christmas.
The last winter was one bad storm after another as I have written it, unsafe to leave home. It caught Pa and Ma at the first [told in the chapter “Keeping House” in On the Banks of Plum Creek].
No, I think that last winter must be left as it is more or less or we spoil the effect as well as not being correct as to conditions in the grasshopper times.
Cut out the dog fight. [The episode was a fierce battle between the Ingalls dog and the Nelson dog.]
On page 62 let the chapter end with the words “The smell of the air was different and the sky was not so sharply blue.”
Cut the chapter “Gathering Plums.” That will gain a little space and nothing lost.
At the last of Page 96 say, “Where Pa had broken the prairie sod for the wheat field the ground lay black and wet.” Pa looked at it and said, etc.
Cut out the town party. Let the girls come out on Saturday afternoon to play on the banks of Plum Creek. Nellie . . . can be snooty just the same. That will keep the action closer to the banks of Plum Creek.
Cut out the prairie fire and the Nelsons altogether except for what has been said. Cut the whole chapter “Straw stack” if you wish.
Pare going to school down as small as possible. . . . That will let the action stay on the creek more.
The chapter about the Christmas tree is all that is needed about that winter.
I have no copy of the thing here that I can go over. If I should try to use the first scraps of scribbling I would get us all confused for I changed it so much from then. This makes it hard for me to tell you where to cut. . . .
Christmas tree for one winter, blizzards for the next, the hard, last winter.
Grasshoppers coming one summer, hatching and going away the next.
The wheat is what they are working and waiting for. The banks of Plum Creek are the stage setting where all these things happen while waiting for the wheat. Would it not be possible to make the chapter shorter? Couldn’t Pa’s coming home and the Christmas tree make one chapter? Couldn’t Pa’s boots be in the church chapter. I mean shorten both and combine in one. . . .
Very much pleased
The New Deal’s
Wisconsin Works Progress Administration (WPA) created employment by transcribing books into Braille. The Wisconsin School for the Blind compiled a list of requested book titles; several hundred women assembled Braille editions.
AUGUST 17, 1936
George T. Bye
New York
Dear Mr. Bye,
I have yours of the 13th and am very much pleased that the Wisconsin School for the Blind is going to transcribe Little House on the Prairie into Braille.
Certainly you have my permission and I am glad you did not wait to hear from me before giving it.
With kindest regards, I remain
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
My position is that Harpers should now give me their best terms
The small royalty percentage on Farmer Boy still rankled Laura and Rose when On the Banks of Plum Creek was submitted. Rose wrote George Bye that “this is the fourth book in a series of seven. The first four are paying my mother around $1,200 a year . . . we met Harper’s unheard-of low terms on FARMER BOY . . . a flat 5% royalty. Harpers can now come across with a fair contract for an absolutely certain best-seller juvenile, part of a series that is a permanent gold-mine for them. If they do not want this book, we can go to another publisher with the whole series.”
SEPTEMBER 24, 1936
Dear Mr. Bye,
This is the manuscript of On the Banks of Plum Creek, a sequel to my former juveniles published by Harpers.
Ida Louise Raymond of Harpers is expecting this manuscript. She has written me that she will give me better terms on this book than on the previous ones.
I know that Little, Brown and Co. give an advance of royalties and a sliding scale of royalties, reaching 15 per cent at 3,000 [sold] for juveniles by unknown writers.
I would like an advance on this book and a royalty of 12½ per cent. The sales on my former books have been excellent and Harpers published one of them at a royalty of 5 per cent.
My position is that Harpers should now give me their best terms for juvenile fiction.
I believe your office can get better terms for this book than I have had before, without difficulty because Ida Louise Raymond has herself suggested them.
Yours sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
My “books are very popular”
Laura sent Ida Louise Raymond essentially the same letter she mailed to George Bye. When her request for an increased royalty was stated, she concluded with friendly news about the Little House books.
. . . At last we are enjoying cool weather and rain and are about recovered from our heat prostration which lasted all summer.
Among other pleasant things came a letter from the librarian of Los Angeles Public Library which is very nicely making a display of my book. She wanted my photo to use in the display and “any bits of personal information that would interest the children” among whom my “books are very popular.” I have sent picture etc. [Laura posed for a dignified photo to be used for the exhibit, but she was unsatisfied with it; it was never again used for publicity.]
I am very glad that the Wisconsin School for the Blind printed Little House on the Prairie in Braille. Sister Mary lost her eyesight when she was 13 years old and read her small library with her fingers. She would be pleased that L.H. on the P. was printed for the blind to read. [Mary was actually fourteen when she became blind in 1879.]
I hope you will be interested in Laura’s adventures on the banks of Plum Creek. . . .
Rose insists that I must carry the story on
Ursula Nordstrom was hired as Ida Louise Raymond’s assistant in Harper’s children’s book department. She was awestruck when reading the manuscript for On the Banks of Plum Creek. “The Wilder books required no editing,” she recalled. “Not any.” One of her first job tasks was writing jacket copy for On the Banks of Plum Creek. She approached the job as if dealing with the Holy Grail.
OCTOBER 26, 1936
Dear Miss Raymond,
I am so pleased that you like On the Banks of Plum Creek so much. It is very dear to me for I lived it all over again as I wrote it.
Your terms are satisfactory, a royalty of 10% to 3000 [copies sold], 12½% to 6000 and 15% thereafter, with an advance of $500 payable half at signing of contract and half on publication.
I will be willing that it shall be published early in October, 1937 if you will give all my previous books a generous publicity this fall and especially for the Christmas holidays.
If there is to be nothing coming in from the new book, it is rather necessary for me that the old ones should continue selling.
I am sorry I was so late in getting the manuscript of Plum Creek to you, but it was impossible to work faster this summer. I shall begin to work soon on the next [book] and perhaps I will not be so long with it.
Rose insists that I must carry the story on until Laura married Farmer Boy. And so I suppose I will.
I am sorry you have been ill and hope you are quite recovered.
With kindest regards, I am
Sincerely yours,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
The best of the lot
Alvilda Sorenson’s work among farm communities during South Dakota’s drought years allowed her to recommend the Little House books to families she met.
DECEMBER 8, 1936
Dear Mrs. Sorenson,
Many thanks for your kind words about my little books and recommending them to others.
The next of the series On the Banks of Plum Creek has just been accepted by Harpers who were kind enough to say it is the best of the lot. It will not be published until next fall.
On the Banks of Plum Creek carries the story on from where it is left off in Little House on the Prairie.
I am planning the next one telling of when we first went to Dakota ahead of the railroad.
Your work must be very interesting also. Though I know very little about it. [Mrs. Sorenson worked with the Farm Home Bureau, an agency created to help farm families.]
Hoping you will be pleased with my autographs and wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas,
I am sincerely,
Laura Ingalls Wilder
PART
II
CHAPTER 4
STAR OF THE CHILDREN’S DEPARTMENT (1937–1943)
Most of Laura’s correspondence to Rose was written with pen and ink on the same lined paper she used to draft her book manuscripts. (Herbert Hoover Presidential Library)
Laura’s nostalgic wish to honor her pioneer father and preserve his tales morphed into a mission. As a story keeper of pioneer life, she became the storyteller for children of the frontier era. Laura’s speech delivered at the Detroit Book Fair when On the Banks of Plum Creek was published in 1937 explained the purpose for writing her books:
“I began to think what a wonderful childhood I had had. How I had seen the whole frontier, the woods, the Indian country of the great plains, the frontier towns, the building of railroads in wild, unsettled country, homesteading and farmers coming in to take possession. I realized that I had seen and lived it all—all the successive phases of the frontier, first the frontiersman, then the pioneer, then the farmers, and the towns. Then I understood that in my own life I represented a whole period of American History. That the frontier was gone and agricultural settlements had taken its place when I married a farmer. It seemed to me that my childhood had been much richer and more interesting than that of children today, even with all the modern inventions and improvements.
I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginnings of things, to know what is behind the things they see—what it is that made America as they know it. Then I thought of writing the story of my childhood in several volumes—a seven volume historical novel for children covering every aspect of the American frontier.
After the work was well started, I was told that such a thing has never been done before; that a novel of several volumes was only for grownups. My daughter, Rose Wilde
r Lane, a writer and novelist, said it would be unique, that a seven volume novel for children had never been written. . . . Someone has to do a thing first; I would be the first to write a multi-volume novel for children.”
I am having to live over those days with Pa and Ma
FEBRUARY 5, 1937
Rose Dearest,
I am going to send you a day by day letter. There isn’t enough in my head to make a letter, but every little bit, I think of something I want to say to you. The letter will be like the dictionary, “fine reading but the subject changes too often.”
Looking through my desk yesterday, I found a book Ma made of writing paper. When I put it there I couldn’t bear to read it, but I am having to live over those days with Pa and Ma anyway, so I did.
Ma had written some of her own poetry in it and copied some that she liked.
And Pa had written two songs. “The Blue Juniata” and “Mary of the Wild Moor.” Any time you want them, I’ll send you copies. He signed the songs and the date is 1860. The whole songs are there. “Blue Juniata” is not much like the printed one we had when I used it [in Little House on the Prairie] but it is as I remember hearing it. I have never seen or heard it anywhere else. So is the other but I have never seen nor heard it anywhere else.
“Oh father, dear father, come down and open the door. But watch dogs did howl and the village bells tolled and the winds blew across the wild moor.”
I am going to write Grace about the wild flowers there and refresh our memories. I’ll be able, I think, to sort out the later imported ones from the old timers. I’ll send them to you when I get them.
The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder Page 10