The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Page 18
Don’t bring Aunt Docia, Uncle Henry and the cousins into the story more than necessary. I mean don’t stress them, don’t play them up. The story is of [our] family and the family life. Families lived more to themselves in those days, at least where we were. Our interests all centered at home.
Oh I don’t suppose I am making you understand. I suppose Aunt Docia and Uncle Henry meant as much to Pa and Ma as my sisters did to me, but at that time they meant nothing whatever to me. I feebly disliked Aunt Docia and Uncle Henry hardly made an impression. . . .
While working with her mother’s penciled manuscript of By the Shores of Silver Lake, Rose found it necessary to gain clarification about various relatives. Accustomed to creating fictional characters, she did not realize that her mother’s uncle Thomas Quiner was known as a member of the Gordon Party, among the first to try settling in the Black Hills.
Rose asked:
Would it be possible to substitute Uncle George for Uncle Tom? You remember Uncle George was “the wild man” in Big Woods. In changing the lead of SILVER LAKE to make it chronological and bring Aunt Docia in, she tells news of the folks in Wisconsin (and of Black Susan [the cat] which covers that point [children’s letters had asked about the Ingalls family’s cat]). She can say that Uncle George is now a river jack on the Mississippi; that sort of revives his memory. Then if he shows up later—Was it on his way east from the Black Hills—we revive “the wild man” memory that Laura has, and describe him as he is now, and he goes on back to logging on the Mississippi. So that his whole life is in the books, because in Big Woods he is the boy who ran away to the war as a drummer boy when he was very young.
Uncle Tom has not been in the books before.
Laura’s response:
I hardly know what to think about this. There are records of that first party of white men in the Black Hills and there was no Ingalls among them. To make it historically correct, it should be Uncle Tom. But I don’t suppose anyone will take the trouble to look it up and only a few are left who will know it is not correct. I can see how it will add to the story to let it be Uncle George. So if you think best, knowing the circumstances, you may make the change from Uncle Tom to Uncle George. Uncle Tom was in the Black Hills in 1874, the grasshopper year. He went in sometime during the summer and the soldiers took him out the next spring. He spent only the one winter there, then went back east. He had been west to Oregon . . . and was on his way east again when he stopped to see us [described in These Happy Golden Years] the next year after the Hard Winter. People were going back and forth, up and down, continually.
Uncle Tom had not seen Pa and Ma since he was in the Black Hills and so told them all about it. We knew, of course, that he had been there and come back, but not of his experiences. Uncle Tom was such a quiet, small man, no one would have thought him capable of the things he did. He ran logs on the Mississippi, handled log jams . . . and he couldn’t swim a stroke. He was low-voiced and quiet spoken, one couldn’t imagine it of him, but he had fought Indians and apparently thought nothing of that terrible trip into the Black Hills with ox teams and afoot, lost in the awful Badlands before they got there.
Remember the date and don’t have the first white men in the Black Hills too late. That would be a bad mistake. It was in the spring of 1882—eight years later that Uncle Tom visited us in De Smet. If Aunt Docia told news of him at the beginning of Silver Lake, it must be of what he had done since he came back from the Black Hills.
Are you short of money
Rose remained tied to the Turner brothers, especially John. When John’s tonsils were removed, Laura feared that the medical expenses may have cramped Rose’s budget.
JANUARY 10, 1939
Rose Dearest,
I am uneasy about you and reading over your last letter, December 12th, doesn’t help.
Are you short of money, what with John’s hospital bills and all. If you are, I have a couple of hundred loose, you can have it if it would help you.
Please don’t laugh. I know that is only a tiny bit to you, but it might be of use. If you want it just let me know. I feel as though something is wrong, and if there is I want to help if possible.
We are about as usual.
The weather is very warm and a small rain yesterday. The longest spell of the warmest weather ever known in the Ozarks at this time of year.
Very much love, in haste,
Mama Bess
LETTER FROM DAD
JANUARY 15, 1939
Dear Rose,
We did not hear from you for so long we were very much worried, you must not do that again. You’re going to mind. Well, we were mighty glad to get a letter when we did. Glad John got along all right and I think he is right about leaving school if what I can get here and there about schools is true. I am sure the less he has to do with them the better he will be.
I think what a man needs most is good straight common sense and John has that.
Our richest men did not have college education, they just had good common sense.
We have been having the most wonderful weather here this fall, except we need more rain. You must not feel bad because we don’t use the furnace, you see. (now listen, read this carefully and see how it looks.)
To use the furnace I had to get up in a cold room, dress, do the furnace and put more fuel in it than it takes to warm the six rooms we use for 24 hours. It took 2 hours to get the water to boil before there is any heat in the house. . . . Now with the heater in the corner of the dining room, when I go to bed I put in 2 small pieces of heating wood or 1 larger one & shut the draft, open the night draft, and in the morning the rooms are still warm because that wood keeps the 400 pound stove hot and it was throwing out heat all night. . . . Before I dress and step to the stove, I shut the night draft and open the front draft. Just a jiffy to let the smoke out of the stove, then open the stove door & a big bed of coals, nice popcorn fire. . . . I throw in a couple sticks of wood & by the time I can get my clothes on, it is plenty hot. A good many days just 3 or 4 sticks of wood is all we need.
You see, besides the extra cost, there is a lot of walking down to the furnace & back, to say nothing about shoveling 10 tons of coal & 18 loads of heating wood. I got me a little red wagon like the boys have to play with, took it to the tin shop and had it shortened a little longer than a heating stick of wood. At night I fill it up and draw it right in by the side of the heater, and there is the wood right by the stove all evening and all morning. After breakfast, then I pull it out. If there is any wood left I cord it on the back porch. . . .
You remember when you bought your house in Danbury, you wrote us that just a little fire in the cook stove kept the whole house warm. That is just the way it is here now. . . .
Did I tell you what a wonderful trip we had last summer [to the West Coast, with Silas Seal doing the driving]? I guess I enjoyed it more than any of the rest of them. Sometimes I think I’d take a trip east next summer if I can get hold of the money & then I think I am getting old and had better stay by my nice bed and don’t always get a good bed when you are on the road.
. . . You wrote me that I ought to spank Bessie and make her pay more of the expenses. Now there is where you got me wrong. I said I paid more of the expense, or something to that effect. Well it was this way. Mr. Seal was to pay his & his wife’s expenses & I pay mine & Bessie’s & I furnish the car & car expense. Well sometimes there would be a cheap place & Seals had to go cheap, so he would want to stop there. & I wanted a better place so we all got a good place. So to kind of make it right & all that sort of thing, I just paid the bill once in a while. Sometimes they would buy a few things and eat a lunch in the car & we would go get a dinner. Lots of times I said come on in and have dinner & I paid the bill. He was such a good driver & took such good care of the car it was worth a lot anyway. Bessie would have been afraid for me to drive those side trips up the mountains and that made the trip a lot better. I think we made the trip about the best time of the year all except the rose gard
en at Portland, Oregon. It would have been nicer in about 5 or 10 days but it was a wonder anyway.
Oh we had a wonderful trip anyway and I made it on that check you sent me and have enough left to start the next trip. Now that is getting a lot for your money don’t you think? Mrs. Seal says Bessie can get more for her money than anyone she ever saw, but I think I did fairly well, don’t you? Now you can’t say but what I write you a letter sometimes. Wilder Thayer [Almanzo’s nephew, son of Eliza Jane] sent us a half bushel of oranges for Christmas and some little yellow things about as large as plumbs. When you have time just say you got my letter, then I will know you are all right.
From Dad
She can think I have gone to Timbuktu
On the reverse of a letter from Louise Raymond, Laura wrote Rose. Miss Raymond’s letter of January 23, 1939, said: “As you have guessed, I am again asking you if you have any idea when we can get the finished manuscript of SILVER LAKE. . . . It is entirely too long since I have had the pleasure of reading a new Wilder book, and I am terribly impatient to see it!”
JANUARY 26, 1939
Rose Dearest,
You must, I think, be in your apartment by this time, so we are sending an express package to 550 East Sixteenth Street. Evidently you have no mail box there yet or I would have heard word of it.
I have used up all my excuses, etc. and think I will just not answer this letter. She can think I have gone to Timbuktu or am sick or mad or just too lazy to write.
We have had two snows that were so deep, 10 inches once and then 7 inches. We could not get up the hill with the car if we had gone down, so we didn’t go down for two weeks or more. I lose my breath if I walk down the hill, so I don’t do that, even for the mail and the house is getting awfully stale.
We are all right and comfortable, waiting for spring to come.
Much love,
Mama Bess
What a wise woman I am to have a daughter like you
The long dependency on Rose for the Wilders’ financial support abated in 1939. With advances from Harper & Brothers for new books, and increasing royalties, Laura’s income was adequate. She still practiced frugality, but seldom obsessed over money. Rose’s own career as a highly paid fiction writer was on the wane. Free Land exhausted her. Her ideas for stories dried up, or were out of synch with editorial tastes. Rose transitioned; she committed to writing about current events and American individualism. The following letter, from Laura to Rose, is a mother’s tribute to a daughter’s generosity.
JANUARY 27, 1939
Rose Dearest,
Yesterday I was thinking how unbelievable it is that we are so comfortably situated. What with the car license ($11) added to expenses, the $15 rent money [from the Rock House] wouldn’t spread over the month. We used the dividend checks as they came and when they were gone, I took some out of the bank.
It was when I was drawing the check that I realized how lucky we are to have rents and dividends and money in the bank.
You see usually I don’t believe it and when I do, it is with a shock of surprise.
When I realized it this time, I thought again who we had to thank for all our good luck. But for you we would not have the rent money. You are responsible for my having dividend checks. Without your help I would not have the royalties from my books in the bank to draw on.
I looked up to admire the new window curtain in the dining room and there was the dining table you gave us, with the chairs around it.
Over the new, blue glass curtains in the bedroom are the blue and rose drapes you gave me and beside the window is the dresser with the lovely mirrors and drawers full of jewelry you have given me.
I thought about you all day and when night came I lay on the Simmons bed you gave me and pulled over me the down quilt, a gift from you. I looked across the room at Manly in his Simmons bed covered with his down quilt, both gifts from you, as well as his chest of drawers I could see on his side of the window.
It is always that way. When I go to count up our comfortablenesses and the luck of the world we have, it all leads back to you.
And so, snuggled under my down quilt, I went to sleep thinking what a wise woman I am to have a daughter like you.
Oh Rose my dear, we do thank you so much for being so good to us.
Very much love,
Mama Bess
I can’t fit in with the crowd
Laura’s letter of January 27 included an additional page of local news.
[JANUARY 27, 1939]
I have finished covering Manly’s down quilt and it looks as good as new. A fine job if I do say so myself. The cover is American beauty rose satin. A good piece cost $5.
Now I am beginning on the curtains. Gosh! How I hate it! Always did dislike a tearing up job but I can’t stand these old rags of curtains any longer, two pieced together to make one in some cases. They are what was given me as your curtains but I don’t know where they were hung in the house, if they were [this remark is an allusion to what Laura considered Corinne Murray’s careless ways when she vacated the farmhouse]. I should have put some up before now but couldn’t drive myself to choose them and get them made.
The goods I have at last selected are not very expensive but I do think they will be pretty.
The over drapes are two-toned gold cotton & rayon damask. The design a lengthwise raised flowered stripe. The under curtains are a marquisette very fine, a Capri blue. Which is a very light blue? I am in hopes that they will look like a filmy, misty blue cloud against the windows. Seems like the colors will brighten the room.
Yesterday I put up a dotted marquisette of the same blue at the dining room windows. I like it very much. It is like the picture only not so deep over the window.
The Study Club meets with me the second Friday in February and I want the curtains up then.
I am going to serve a tea for refreshments.
And here is a way to make sandwiches for a Valentine tea. I am going to make them cut the slices of bread, equal number of brown and white, with a heart shaped cutter. Then out of the center of half the slices each, cut a smaller heart. Spread the whole heart and on it put a heart with the small heart cut out in the cut out place in a white sandwich. And in a brown sandwich put a little white heart.
I want some little tea cakes besides the sandwiches but don’t know how I’ll make them.
Since Mary Craig left, I have had to act as president but there is an election in March and I’ll get rid of it.
I can’t fit in with the crowd someway. Never could very well and now I am tired of them more than ever.
Guess I’ll have to go with the old church crowd, Burney, Rogers, Hoovers (?)
Well, my dear I must get dinner now. Hope I hear from you soon.
Much love,
Mama Bess
Hope you and John are well
FEBRUARY 3, 1939
Rose Dearest,
We sent you a shipment of books today.
The weather has been so bad that we couldn’t get them off before. Snow and ice and cold fog.
Having no chains we don’t drive when the hill is covered with snow and ice. Manly will not drive in the rain either so we are just now in hopes of being able to go again. Snow is gone and the sun is shining.
There were twelve (12) boxes sent you. When you get them better count. I am in an awful hurry so good bye.
Hope you and John are well and comfortably settled.
Much love,
Mama Bess
God help the poor taxpayers!
Laura’s conservative bent escalated. Her reference to a birthday party for President Roosevelt was actually a fund-raiser to aid victims of infantile paralysis. Laura does not mention it, but Corinne Murray was on the planning committee. The New Deal Works Progress Administration had funded a sanitary sewerage project in Mansfield, and a $5,000 vocational-agricultural building at the high school.
FEBRUARY 20, 1939
Rose Dearest,
The job of writing
to you was all done up. And now comes the goody Valentine which calls for another letter. Never mind! I like to talk to you. And thank you for the Valentine box of candy. I may wear store teeth, but my old sweet tooth has never been extracted.
There isn’t much to write about, so I’ll just gossip a little.
Have you celebrated F.D.R.’s birthday properly? Mansfield is all torn up over it.
The tickets for Roosevelt’s birthday party in the Masonic Hall were 25 cents apiece and “they” couldn’t sell them. There were less than fifty people there. The refreshments were ordered from Springfield and cost nearly all the ticket money.
I really should have thought that there would have been the whole town there.
Mansfield has got $65,000 from the WPA and is bonding the city for $17,000, to be their share for building a sewerage system. The town is already bonded for more than it is worth.
God help the poor taxpayers!
We have had a rain. For three days and nights it rained. Water ran down the ditches and the creek roared. Yesterday it stopped and turned cold. Last night there was a sprinkling of snow and today is cold but the sun shines.
Have I told you we have lots of goat milk again? There are five little kids. We’ll be getting fat now I suppose.
We will be going up to Springfield first of next week so I can collect $20 interest from the Union National Bank. I intend to buy a mattress and blankets for my old oak bedstead on the sleeping porch and enamel to refinish it, and the dresser and commode that go with it. Then my $20 will be spent. We are going to put some kind of wallboard on the sleeping porch and make it look nice again, as it did when you were here. Then I’ll put a pretty linoleum on the floor. But we will not put in a bathroom upstairs, at least not now. It will take all my interest money to do the other things I want to do now. And we are living within our income, in spite of your advice. We feel easier that way. Besides, it would be a lot of trouble to put in a bathroom, and we are dodging all the trouble we can.