The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Page 15
That night the wind stopped and next morning it was only 4 above zero. It is still cold.
Thought you might like to see the clipping from Allen Oliver’s Springfield Slants [from the Springfield News and Leader].
I spent Saturday afternoon with Aunt Daisy. She told me, she rents the apartment in her house for $15 a month and her other house at the back of the lot for $12. Her taxes on the property were $148.90. Out of what is left from her rent she must pay for insurance and upkeep. She said Mr. Freeman didn’t leave her enough to live on and if she hadn’t been wise enough to save what Mr. Bray, No. 1, left her, she didn’t know what she would do.
Aunt Daisy sent you her love. Jessie [Fuson] said she saw in the Leader that someone from Springfield, she had forgotten the name, had gone to New York to visit Catharine Brody. [Brody, a novelist and later a Hollywood scriptwriter, made two extended visits to Rocky Ridge while working on a book. Laura disliked her, and eventually Rose also tired of her company.]
Aunt Daisy said too, that if there was a party next voting time that offered a chance to make a start out of this New Deal mess, she would vote their ticket, she didn’t care what the party’s name was.
Lots of love,
Mama Bess
We can’t spoil this story by making it childish
It is unclear why Laura consistently referred to teaching at the age of fifteen. Official Kingsbury County records indicate that Laura was sixteen when she began her first teaching position at Bouchie School (called “Brewster School” in These Happy Golden Years).
JANUARY 26, 1938
Rose, My Dear,
Just a word more about Silver Lake. You fear it is too adult. But adult stuff must begin to be mixed in, for Laura is growing up.
In three years she will be teaching school and we can’t jump into grown up stuff all at once.
I thought I showed that Laura was rather spotted at the time, grown up enough to understand and appreciate grown up situations. But at times quite childish, as when she quarreled with Mary over seasoning in the stuffing of the goose Pa didn’t get. She followed the moon path and saw a fairy ring on the old buffalo wallow. There is this too, and I tried to convey the idea.
Mary’s blindness added to Laura’s age. Laura had to step up and take Mary’s place as the eldest. She must help Ma for herself and Mary both, and had a responsibility for Mary besides. It is no wonder she was older than her years. . . . I tried to show this.
Can’t we let the readers see the children were more grown up then?
We have got to show this for no 15 year old girl could or would teach school now. Laura did and we have got to tell that she did and make it plausible. If the critics say this book is too adult, how are we going to make them let Laura teach school at 15?
I don’t see how we can spare what you call adult stuff, for that makes the story. It was there and Laura knew and understood it.
It was not all plain and simple. The riots were just plain rioting [the railroad men became restive at the end of the construction season]. It was a joke on Sullivan about the Sheriff. Neither Laura nor the grownups had any complicated thoughts about any of it.
If grown up readers see the beginnings of labor problems, where is the harm? I suppose it was. But what it grew into has no bearing on the story, nor would it prevent a child, then or now, from understanding the simple facts that occurred. Surely all these things, the riots, the mock sheriff, the railroad building and the town are told from a 12–13 year old point of view. Are they not?
I remember hearing Pa say he did “wish Docia and Hi would quit railroading and settle down somewhere.” That they never would have anything until they did, for there was nothing “in this game of trying to out steal a railroad.”
I believe children who have read the other books will demand this one. That they will understand and love it.
They all seem wildly interested and want to know how, where and when Laura met Almanzo and about their getting married. You should have seen the interest in their faces when I spoke of it at Detroit and lots of their letters want me to hurry up and write about it.
Surely Laura will have to be rather adult then. And I think it will be more reasonable and easier to begin mixing it in, in Silver Lake.
Why Francis [Prock; Bruce’s son] would stand wide-eyed to hear about and understand the riots of the men, the joke on Sullivan if “Daddy and Mr. Wilder” did it; the way the railroad was built, etc. And Francis is only nine. He would be slower to understand the stealing, but in three years he could not be.
We can’t spoil this story by making it childish. Not and keep Laura as the heroine. And we can’t change heroines in the middle of the stream and use Carrie in the place of Laura . . . we must not spoil the story that way. It could easily be done.
Put these sheets with the letter I wrote you, so you will have it all together to refer to, if you want to read it over.
Much love,
Mama Bess
I am going to insist
JANUARY 28, 1938, FRIDAY A.M.
Rose Dearest,
Don’t work on Silver Lake until you hear from me again. I am going over it carefully once more.
I like your idea of the beginning less and less the more I think of it. That was the way I tried to start it but all the objections I have mentioned cropped up as I wrote it. It made too much of Plum Creek. We don’t want to go back there. It would make the book too long and nothing later can be cut out if the picture is to be true.
It made an unpleasant beginning, a tale of sickness and failure and death. We don’t want to tell of Jack’s dying. Nor of Mary’s sickness. Nor of Pa’s failure so that it was necessary for him to make a new start because he hadn’t gained anything by all his hard work. The readers must know all that but they should not be made to think about it. The story of Silver Lake is connected with Plum Creek close enough in Laura’s mind and her thoughts are given to the reader, but it is second hand and the knowledge isn’t even sad, as it would be your way. It will be passed over lightly by the reader in the interest of the new adventure which is already begun.
I am afraid I am going to insist that the story starts as I started it.
How about rhythm and balance in the sentences?
I was in hopes that I had profited enough by your teachings that my copy could go to the publishers, with perhaps a little pointing up of the highlights. If it could, then perhaps I could do the following two books without being such a bother to you.
Let me go over it carefully again now and see if in your judgment we can try it out on Harpers. I’ll make it plainer that the story starts in the fall of the year. I’ll try to touch it up here and there myself, to overcome some of your objections.
If I can do it, it will give you more time for your own work.
Manly’s foot is all right again. He just has to be a little careful. I am feeling fine.
Bruce’s folks are well. Francis is growing up such a nice boy. He is smart and quick and dependable. He can be trusted and is getting good marks in school. He brings them up to show me. Paul [Prock, another of Bruce’s son’s] is smart too, and mean as the dickens, but the funniest kid. He says “I like Mama and Daddy and Francis and Mrs. Wilder” plainly, but when he is excited his tongue tangles and no one can understand.
It is a beautiful, sunny morning but cold.
Birdie Freeman (Mrs. Manie Freeman) is dead and was buried Sunday. She was buried in Springfield.
Aunt Daisy is going to visit her brother again next month.
Very much love,
Mama Bess
P.S. Do you ever see Helen [Boylston]? I hear she is in New York.
SILVER LAKE
Laura drafted a defense for her method of opening the story of By the Shores of Silver Lake for Rose’s consideration. She added other background information with her four-page memo to Rose.
Laura was impatient on the train. She was in such a hurry that the train went slow.
I meant to show it th
at way but of course I didn’t or you would have gotten it.
Take a girl of 12, who is always active, set her on a red plush chair in a stuffy hotel “parlor” and keep her still so as not to wake the baby, or just being still because she was all dressed up. Wouldn’t the afternoon seem two months long? Wouldn’t she be bored? I meant she was tired of it, not physically tired. But again I failed to put it over or you are hyped on the idea of malnutrition. Which I don’t think.
Lena and Jean could not be Aunt Docia’s children for Docia was a girl in the Big Woods when Laura was 5. Lena was older than Laura and . . . appears so in the story.
The house where they [Lena and Laura, in By the Shores of Silver Lake] lived was a one story house squatted on the bare prairie. There were no trees. Even at that time I felt a distaste for it. But it was not a shanty. That area had been settled long enough that claim shanties were not there.
The threshers were in a field at the back. For some reason they were threshing early, though it was the 9th of September. Threshing was usually done in the late fall when the ground was frozen and a cold wind blew. Remember how late Pa stayed away threshing in Plum Creek?
Jerry rode a white pony, not a horse.
Pa found the homestead when he went to hunt the wolves before Christmas. The family was pleased over it as Pa told of it. When he came back from filing on it the question “Did you get it?” meant that particular homestead—the N.E. ¼ of Section 3, Township 110, Range 56. As I remember it there was no great excitement. We were not excitable, usually Pa, sometimes and Laura, now and then.
I don’t think Ma ever was. She would not be—was not excited at finding Uncle Henry at the R.R. camp. It seems to me we were rather inclined to be fatalistic . . . to just do things as they came. I know we all hates a fuss, as I still do.
I have just found an old notebook of Pa’s where he says of those days:
“We used to keep a lamp burning in the window for fear that someone might try to cross the prairie from the Sioux River to the Jim River and that light brought some into shelter that must otherwise have perished on the prairie. The coyotes used to come to the door and pick up the crumbs that were scattered shook from the table cloth.”
I had forgotten.
Change the beginning of the story [By the Shores of Silver Lake] if you want. Do anything you please with the damn stuff if you will fix it up.
This is all in the old days, you must remember
Again Rose relied on her parents’ familiarity with agriculture.
FEBRUARY 15, 1938
Rose Dearest,
Likely you need not feel so badly over the threshing in your story. Threshing could have been done the last of July.
Remember, I am talking of spring wheat. Harvesting was done the very last of July or the first of August.
Wheat was left in the stack six to eight weeks to go through the sweat before threshing. After that when threshed the wheat could be kept in bins on the farm or in elevators for years, and stay sweet and good. If it were threshed before going through the sweat in the stack the grain would get musty and spoil so even the stock would not eat it. It could be saved by shoveling it over into other bins every few days. But sometimes when a man threshed too early he lost the grain entirely. Couldn’t sell it if it was musty. So you see if harvest was in August, stacking in September, then left in the stack for 6 or 8 weeks, it would be the last of October before threshing would be on hand. Fall plowing was done before threshing because threshing could be done after the ground froze and plowing couldn’t. The price was better for wheat that had gone through the sweat and was properly threshed, than for wheat that was threshed too early.
Still, if a man was in a hurry to get the money out of his wheat crop, he could thresh the first of August or perhaps the very last of July and sell the wheat at once. So perhaps your story is all right. This is all in the old days, you must remember. Now they use combines and cut the heads off the wheat, thresh it, and sack it in the field all with one machine, as you know. What they do about keeping it from getting . . .
[The letter’s content takes an abrupt change as Laura resumes discussion of her own work in progress, By the Shores of Silver Lake. The following discussion refers to the “spring rush” of settlers who flocked into the future town of De Smet. The Ingalls family, living in the railroad surveyors’ house, provided newcomers with food and shelter.]
The lamp was kept burning in the window in The Shores of Silver Lake. It was done only when the weather got cold and snowy. Mr. Boast saw the light, but they were not lost. I don’t think we put the lamp in the window until Christmas for that was the first snow.
Mr. Alden and co. came to the house because they saw the light and I remember one load of awfully cold men who came to it. . . . I don’t see how I forgot to put it in. We did not expect anyone to go through until spring and would not have thought of a lamp in the window until Boasts told us how they felt when they saw it.
I had Laura and Mary quarrel over the stuffing for the goose . . . to show the relaxing from the strain first of loneliness and then the hard work and excitement of so many strangers underfoot.
Usually, you know, Laura and Mary disagreed now and then. Now here they had been good for a long time. That was not natural, especially for Laura. Their tempers were a little frayed and I thought it very natural that they should snap when at last the let-down came.
I have the chapters for The Hard Winter blocked out a good deal as you suggest, even to Pa going hunting and not getting any game, which was true. I can make it interesting without the goose-stuffing incident. And don’t you think it is best left where it is?
Aunt Docia and Charley’s mother, Aunt Polly, were sisters. Pa and Uncle George, Uncle Peter, Uncle James and Uncle Hiram were brothers.
Uncle Henry and Uncle Tom were brothers and their sisters were Ma and Aunt Eliza and Aunt Martha. Pa and Uncle Peter married sisters, and their sister married a brother of their wives. Sounds like a Missouri family.
There are just two more books after Silver Lake. I will block them out soon and talk them over with you.
Your check was a big surprise [Rose had sent the annual $500 subsidy, which she had been providing since 1920]. I suppose it is meant for expenses of running the house on your “head of the household” exemptions. I can’t think what else.
If something doesn’t hinder, I’m afraid I’ll come into income tax class this year. But I don’t suppose that need hinder you keeping up your home here. Oh well! We’ll think about that next winter.
Thanks a lot anyway for everything. I am sure you will be glad to know I made such a pig of myself with that enormous heart full of candy that I can’t look a piece of it in the face anymore. I am full. But it’s been fun.
Tomorrow I expect to go to Hartville club meeting. [This was the Athenian Club, of which Laura had been a founder in 1915]. They want me to give them the talk I made at Detroit and are making quite a fuss about it. Hope it will sell a couple of books.
A week ago Sunday we went to West Plains and visited with the Park Summerses. Manly said he couldn’t remember when he had enjoyed himself so much. You remember he is interesting and she is a very nice person. They sent you their best regards and said lots of nice things about you. And they insist we shall go some Saturday and stay until Sunday p.m. with them. I think we will do so when the weather is settled again. It looks now as though we are in for a bad spell.
Manly and I have both had the flu again. Everyone is having it. I had a spell of asthma with mine and couldn’t get breath enough to blow my nose.
It seems to be all over now and we will be all right again. We are just being lazy now with a good excuse. And it is pleasant to be lazy.
I guess Al has written to Dorothy Sue for Mrs. Hoover told that Al was working in a garage near St. Louis.
Mrs. O. B. Davis came out and spent the P.M. Monday. Had a nice visit.
Very much love,
Mama Bess
ROSE’S EDITORIA
L CRITICISM FOR SILVER LAKE
By the Shores of Silver Lake was a difficult book to draft. In it, Laura’s character reaches adolescence, and shifting the point of view was a challenge. After many exchanges, Rose and Laura reached an impasse. Rose finally took a hard-line editorial position, giving Laura an unvarnished assessment of the manuscript.
The Grosvenor Hotel
New York City
FEBRUARY 3, 1938
Dear Mama Bess,
You are one of the few writers in the country who would turn down a collaboration with RWL, but go ahead. You certainly are handling the material much better all the time, and if you don’t want this book touched, you’re absolutely right not to have it touched. . . .
I don’t say that Harper’s won’t take this manuscript as it stands. They’ll take it on your reputation, and publish it; any publisher will. But you’ll lose your audience for future books, and cut your income, unless you work it over, and work it over by concentrating on every word and sentence until you know precisely what its values are, why you use it. . . . There’s a lot of fine stuff in it that doesn’t need to be touched, and there is deadwood, and clumsy spots and a lack of sufficient sharpness of identification with Laura—your point of view wavers. . . . Stretches of dialogue slow the story. Dialogue is used to convey information, always an ineffective method. Dialogue should be used only to convey character and to keep the story moving. Paragraphing is poor. Every paragraph must have its own shape . . . its shape and cadence and color must be suited to the tempo of the mood. . . . Forget you are telling a story; you aren’t, you are living Laura’s experiences. Live every word and sentence and paragraph intensely enough, and you’ll make them fit what you feel. . . . Go over this story living it, and you’ll feel a complete despair at how meaningless all the words are in comparison with the experience. Every writer does. But the job is to get words that will be the experience. I’m glad you are taking on the job. It’s your book, and if you want to send it to Harpers as is, that’s all right with me. I’m only telling you what will happen if you do. You can do that, or you can work at the manuscript, till you bring it all up to the level of its best parts now. Unless you want to do that work on it, my advice would be to make it your last book and not do any more. This book as it is will go on your reputation, but it will not add to it, in my opinion.