The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by William Anderson

  It is almost impossible to hire help here and when we do they are absolutely no good. Karl Tripp is almost impossible too.

  But I had not thought the situation in New York could be as you write. [Rose had probably complained about New Deal programs hiring employees away from the private sector.] I wish Mrs. Roosevelt would have to scrub her own floors and do her own work.

  Hope you are settled and comfortable. Much love,

  Mama Bess

  I am sorry you still have to work on my books

  MARCH 17, 1939

  Rose Dearest,

  We were so glad to have your letter of the 4th and I was going to answer it at once, but you know where good intentions are used to best advantage.

  What a time you do have getting anything done! But at that we have almost as hard a time. How we are going to get the yard raked and such work done I don’t see.

  Bruce has more than he can do and can’t get any help. Mr. Williams is not able to work much anymore and wants to hire a man to help with spring work but cannot find one. It is that way all around here. The P.W.A. [the New Deal’s Public Works Administration, which dealt with the construction of buildings for the common good] is still going strong using all the men at that work should be helping people to earn money to pay the P.W.A. workers, if you know what I mean.

  I am surprised that John [Turner] is in Columbia, but it likely is the best for him. It surely is better for both boys to be on their own and independent, rather than depend on you longer. By our old-fashioned standards, they are men now and should look after themselves. I am pleased that they want to do it.

  You have given them a good start in every way and it is time now you looked after yourself instead of other people. I am really pleased about the boys and hope you are not disappointed about John. They are good boys and will make their own place.

  It must seem strange to you, not to have anyone’s expenses to pay, except your own, and to have everybody, including us, off your hands.

  I am sorry you still have to work on my books. I would like to have you perfectly free for just your own affairs. But that trouble will soon be over and you will get enough out of it to pay your rent for awhile anyhow. I am glad you took a place so cheaply. It sounds like a nice place and is much better than a more fashionable address and the harder work to keep it up [Rose rented a “slum apartment” to use during stays in New York City]. If you are comfortable, a little money ahead or at least your bills paid so you don’t have to worry over them, it will add greatly to your happiness. Don’t I know!

  I haven’t gone alone down that long, dark road I used to dream of, for a long time. The last time I saw it stretching ahead of me, I said in my dream “But I don’t have to go through those dark woods, I don’t have to go that way.” And I turned away from it. We are living inside our income and I don’t have to worry about the bills.

  Speaking of economy—you see I am using up the scraps of paper.

  Our fuel, wood, for this winter, both for heating and cooking, has cost $10.00. We spent $20 getting the wood ready for use last fall and we have used not quite half. We have enough left over for next winter.

  Last winter, using the furnace, it cost something over $100 just for heating, and there were the electric bills for the cooking.

  By fighting for it, making them [the power company] cut off the electricity for awhile, I got a contract so that the electric bill for last month was $7.42. There is a meter for Bruce, with Hyberger’s consent, so he pays for what he uses and last month his part was $2.60, leaving our bill only $5.82. We use Frigidaire, lights, iron, and the stove for a quick bit of hot water.

  I am glad you have come to agree with us about furnaces. I think you are wise to put stoves in the Danbury house. It seemed to us such a pity to tear up that lovely old house for pipes and radiators, to say nothing of the expense. Manly and I think you should get a hard coal heater. Hard coal is clean & the stove needs only one filling for all day. I suppose are much improved since you were creeping, eh?

  I don’t know just why the furnace did as it did here. Perhaps we didn’t handle it right. But we went to bed at 8 o’clock, while you were up much later. That might have helped in the difference.

  Since your letter, we have told Karl Tripp, and also Johnson at Mountain Grove, to sell it for us. Both have promised to try to place it.

  Manly says to tell you, he does not want to go to the World’s Fair [which opened near New York City in 1939]. That some way he doesn’t care so much about going as he used to. We are glad we went west last summer when there were not such crowds everywhere as there would be this summer.

  I am glad you know Laura Ingalls. It seemed all the time as though she must belong to our family, and it is nice that she looks like you, and that you like her. Adventuring seems to run in the family, and you and she must have a lot in common. Here’s good luck to her. Hope she gets the backing she needs for her flight. [Laura Ingalls was a highly publicized female pilot of the 1930s, with many record-breaking flights to her credit.]

  Dorothy Sue [Hoover] married a man in West Plains. Tom Carnell works at the Chevrolet garage. Joan Herndon has been going to teacher’s college in Springfield. I saw her at Christmas time, home for vacation. She seemed very nice. [These were all high school students who were often guests at Rocky Ridge when the Turner boys lived there.]

  Mr. Divan is about as usual. Mrs. Divan has nearly lost her mind. She never goes anywhere.

  I am sending samples of the living room curtains.

  There are no signs of another down comforter needing to be covered. They both are in perfect condition.

  There is no use in trying to say anything about the news. We are probably thinking alike about things. Hitler’s word is about as good as Roosevelt’s, isn’t it? I am worried though, for between dictators and Communism, what chance has a simple republic? If the dictators are stopped, the Communists will get ’em.

  Oh Well!

  Mrs. Gere is president of our study club now and I am loose again. We had our last meeting at Norwood [a town fifteen miles from Mansfield] with Alice Carnell Davis, Daisy Freeman’s daughter. Her grandmother Alice Freeman raised her, you remember. Seemed someway strange to me to be in a club with Alice Freeman’s grandchild.

  Madelon Craig is going back to Guatemala in about three weeks. Bill Craig is already there, with a better job than he had before. I hate to see Madelon go. We all like her very much.

  Manly and I are going to Hartville Wednesday. Mrs. Frink wanted me to meet her there. Mr. Frink is helpless, but more help to her than he ever has been before, as he draws an old age pension.

  We have been to Springfield each week for two weeks now, and are going again the last of this week or first of next. I am trying, you see, to get a haircut and Jack Humble has been out of town. Manly and I are agreed no one else can do it. My hair is long enough to do up and I am tired of it. Am going to get a very short cut.

  Very much love, I hope you are well and comfortable.

  Mama Bess

  I am scared about what we are coming to before long

  APRIL 2, 1939

  Rose Dearest,

  Silver Lake has waited until the deadline for fall publishing has past. Ida Louise wrote me it was April 1st, as I wrote you some time ago.

  Do you suppose it would be possible to have it published this fall anyway, if it is not much later? If not, then it will be three years between books. By then, I’m afraid I and my stories will be forgotten.

  Your article on the Ludlow amendment in Liberty [magazine] is great, so plain and fair and true.

  But I simply gnashed my teeth when I read Mrs. Roosevelt’s. It evaded the truth—you proved that presidents cannot be trusted. She said trust them. Also, she tried to scare people by completely ignoring the fact that a vote would not be taken in case of attack.

  My opinion is that Roosevelt has already made his secret agreement [with England] and Eleanor knows it. Your article touched them in a tender spot by speaki
ng of such a thing.

  I am scared about what we are coming to before long.

  Also I bragged too much in my last letter to you, though goodness knows I only meant it in the way of thankfulness. Anyway it offended some of “the Gods there be” [from William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus”] and I have no blue ring or bead.

  Manly has had trouble with his head and ears and I went with him to an ear specialist in Springfield last Monday. Since the treatment the pains in his head have stopped and I think he hears a little better. We are going up again last of the week. It is awfully dry again and I guess we will have to put down a well and get a pump for the other house. That will cost more than the year’s rent. [Both the Rocky Ridge farmhouse and the Rock House had relied on flowing springs for their water source. Eventually the springs became unreliable and wells and pumps were installed.]

  I strained my hand and a rheumatism has settled in it, so now I will have to hire the washing done and buy an electric cleaner to do the sweeping and someone, if possible to do housecleaning or let it go.

  I can’t even crochet much, so enjoy my handwork you have. I may quit doing any.

  And I will have to cut expenses or increase income and how can I do either?

  “But may I with fools and dunces everlastingly commingle, if ever.”

  I brag again about being on easy street. I am going to play poor as poverty and fool those jealous imps of misfortune.

  Anyway I’m still thankful.

  Things could be so much worse. I might have broken a leg instead of wrenching a hand. We are otherwise as well as usual and everything is all right.

  Much love,

  Mama Bess

  We have a little more time on Silver Lake

  Eager for a new Laura Ingalls Wilder title on the fall 1939 book list, Louise Raymond inquired about Silver Lake. “Don’t fret about SILVER LAKE,” she said. “I know you will get it done when you can . . . all the librarians and booksellers I met taxed me about there not being a new book by you. . . . If by May 15th you know one way or the other that you can or cannot get the book to us by, say, the end of June, won’t you drop me a line and just tell me?

  APRIL 10, 1939

  Rose Dearest,

  You will see by this letter that we have a little more time on Silver Lake. I am letting you know at once as I just got the letter this morning. I hope we can make it.

  I have not been well for a week now. Everyone has had a queer sort of flu and I guess that was it. But I’m getting well now and there are no germs in this!

  Dr. Fuson is in St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, very low with pneumonia.

  Mr. Frink was buried last week. Haven’t heard from Mrs. F. since. [The Frinks were Hartville friends; Emma Frink and Laura Wilder were members of the Athenian study club.]

  Much love,

  Mama Bess

  We will be very careful

  MAY 23, 1939

  Rose Dearest,

  I might have known you would fix things!

  We are delighted that my business with Harpers can be done so speedily.

  May I send you “The Hard Winter” now? I would rather you had it so if anything should happen on our trip you could finish it. Shall I send it to New York or will you be in Connecticut?

  We plan to take our driving easily, stop early and lay over if we are tired. And not drive at all on Sunday when every drunken loon is drunk and on the road. If we find it too hard, we can come home any time. It is all right to have a driver but so many times we could have stopped comfortably for two but not for four. Anyone is always in a hurry and don’t want to do the things we want to do.

  We will be very careful, drive slowly and stop when we please.

  You see if we are by ourselves we will be independent.

  I must tell you how much I enjoyed reading your books about central Asia and the Chinese and Tibet. “Beyond Khyber Pass” and the rest. Oh Rose! What a world! Thanks so much for letting me keep them to read. [The book was written by Lowell Thomas, a broadcaster and world adventurer. During the 1930s Rose did ghostwriting projects for Thomas.]

  But now do you want us to send them back to you when we come back home? There will hardly be time to pack them up and send them, before we are gone. There are a lot of your books here yet. There is plenty of room for them to stay if you would rather they did.

  I have handled over every book in the house this winter and spring and nowhere did I find Charlotte Temple [a British novel, published in 1791, one of the seduction genre, which was wildly popular at the time]. I am sure now that it is not here. I found some more, collections of Best Short Stories and there are all your gardening books.

  About Silver Lake—it covers so much more than the homestead that I don’t think the use of the word in the title would be good. “On the Banks of Plum Creek” went over so well that I think that sort of title is taking. But it isn’t all about the shores, so I think By the Shores of Silver Lake would be better. It is no longer than the title of Plum Creek.

  I think I wrote you about the teacher from Fort Wayne coming when I was just able to sit up after the flu. She said that what her children were wondering about most was whether Laura ever got to be a teacher. In Hard Winter I have kept that idea working.

  Be careful with the copy of Hard Winter. I mean don’t lose it, which of course you would not do anyway.

  But it is the only copy. All I have besides are my notes. Because my hand was so lame, I did not make another copy.

  I expect you will find lots of fault in it, we can argue it out later. If the manuscript is with you, it will be where you can work on it when you please and get it over with when you like.

  It is good of you to tell me how to handle the business with Harpers.

  Sometimes I have a suspicion that you are a nice kind of a person.

  Much love,

  Mama Bess

  We are interested in all you do

  MAY 24, 1939

  Rose Dearest,

  House cleaning is mostly done and I will leave the house clean when we go.

  You would not know the sleeping porch [the porch had been Rose’s combination office and bedroom during her stays at Rocky Ridge]. The floor is covered with an all-over linoleum of “knotted pine” flooring. See Montgomery Ward [catalogue]! It looks like the real thing. The wall covering is my own idea. It was a problem what to do with the siding and boarded up window places for we did not want to spend much. It would cost a lot to take it off and use any of the wall boards in its place. Then I thought of real tapestry. And we covered the walls with an imitation of real tapestry, tacking it at the top and letting it fall smoothly to the floor. It hides the chimney which we built in the old place and makes two small closets, one at the side and one underneath. The tapestry hides them and looks as tho the wall were unbroken. Over the windows is a curtain like the sample. It hangs in an unbroken curtain the length of the south side and over the windows at each end. Between each two windows it is looped up and nowhere does it shade the windows, only enough to hide the rain spout at the top. The ceiling is painted ivory white and the casings a light cream.

  Mrs. Gere and her mother raved over the room.

  Bruce said it was “such a quiet, restful room.”

  The big, old, oak bedstead is in the west end [of the room] with a new inner spring mattress on it.

  The old dresser and commode are refinished and stand by. Both desks are in their places and one of the big, Bruce-made walnut chairs, with new upholstery, stands by the windows between them. The spread on the bed is that Albanian silk one you gave me so long ago and afterward said I would never use. There are the pretty fur rugs on the floor, brown and white [the rugs were goatskins from Manly’s herd].

  The sleeping porch is not dark. So much light paint offsets the darkness of the tapestry and makes it just right. The flower pattern on the curtains is tulips, some larger than the sample shows.

  The white bedstead in the north room has a new, good mattress. The
cover is that silk crazy quilt I made so long ago, with a silk shawl as a cover for the pillows. The rose colored rugs from my bedroom are on each side of the bed and before the dresser. There is a lot of rose color in the quilt. The curtains are cretonne with rose colored roses on a light cream ground.

  When you come you may take your choice of the rooms or use them both. Just to show you we are keeping the place up. Marion Dennis drove in with a register and he said, “You folks have the prettiest place in this whole country.”

  Am sending a sheet from Carrie’s letter I thought might interest you.

  How terrible about Catharine [Brody]. I wouldn’t think she would want to come back to this part of the country after what she said about the people when she left. [Never fond of Catharine, Laura later snubbed her. As Catharine traveled cross-country by train, she stopped in Mansfield to visit; Laura refused to see her.]

  What is Helen’s address? You said, or wrote, before we moved over that she had written Corinne to send her, her doctor books that Corinne was supposed to pack and send them to her. She did not, or at least she did not send them all, for I found quite a lot of them.

  If you will tell me her address, I will send them to her. I have already packed a box full, like those boxes we sent you.

  Perhaps I have got it all said this time. I wanted you to know that we are keeping the places up and they are still the show places of the country.

  I agree with you about Congress, but what can you expect? This is a representative government we have yet, and I ask you, does it not represent the majority of the people?