Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder
Page 15
Through the years Laura stayed in touch with her family in South Dakota. While teaching school west of De Smet near Manchester, Grace met a farmer named Nate Dow, and they were married in October 1901. Carrie continued to work at the De Smet News and Leader office. She and Mary lived with their mother in the Third Street house. During the summer of 1903 Carrie was able to travel by train to Mansfield to visit Laura and Almanzo. The previous year Charles Ingalls, suffering from heart disease, had died at the age of sixty-six. Laura visited De Smet for several weeks in May and June, arriving before he died. She was glad for the chance to visit with her mother and sisters for the first time in almost a decade. It was the last time she would see her mother and her sister Mary and the last time that she would visit De Smet until 1931.47
Sometime during the early 1900s Laura started giving some thought to writing, perhaps as a way of supplementing the family income. Possibly as early as 1903 she was beginning to consider how she might write some of the stories that she remembered from her childhood. Virtually no evidence about this remains besides a two-page fragment, written on the back of some oil-company stock requisitions dated February 1903. The incident she wrote about had occurred during the first winter that her family had spent at Silver Lake in 1879.48 Unfortunately, Laura possessed no models to follow and had no one to ask for advice, either on how to compose them or on how to get them published. For the time being, at least, her energies would remain directed at running her own household, building up Rocky Ridge Farm, and establishing financial security for her and her husband. As she turned forty in 1907, and Almanzo turned fifty, they had to start thinking seriously about how they would support themselves as their physical strength declined.
Rose worked as a telegrapher in Kansas City from 1904 to 1907. It is unclear how often, if at all, she was able to visit. Laura had a chance to stay with her in Kansas City for several weeks in late 1906; when a nationwide strike of telegraph operators erupted the following year, Rose went home to Rocky Ridge, awaiting developments. Afterward, she spent some time as manager of a Western Union office in Mount Vernon, Indiana, and then in April 1908 she boarded a train for San Francisco to take a new position there. The following March she married a real estate salesman named Gillette Lane, and the two of them made a quick trip to Mansfield so that he could meet her parents.49
By 1910 Laura and Almanzo were probably planning to expand their little house at Rocky Ridge into more spacious and livable quarters. This would be their dream house, their retirement home and the one they expected to live in the rest of their days. Some of the five hundred dollars from the sale of their house in town went into purchasing building materials for the project, but, as always, practicing frugality, they tried to obtain as much lumber, stone, and other materials as they could on their own property. Using native materials would also add to the uniqueness of their house.
Almanzo had done the initial construction on the house, making several additions over time. He was not capable of doing this larger job himself, so they hired some people from town to help them. Ezra Dennis and his nephew Oral did much of the work on the expansion. Laura had often thought about what an ideal farm home would be like. Almanzo now told her to draw up some plans. Her design included ten rooms, four porches, a native stone fireplace, large windows in the parlor looking out on the countryside, and a library. When Almanzo suggested that they use brick for the fireplace to avoid having to haul more rock, Laura stamped her foot down. “I objected strenuously,” she wrote later. “I argued; I begged; and at last when everything failed I wept.” Almanzo yielded, and the rock fireplace was installed.50
The task took the Wilders more than a year. Once completed, the house became something of a showplace in the area.51 It signaled that the Wilders, having arrived in Mansfield two decades earlier with hardly anything to their name, had finally succeeded. If they did not have much money deposited in the bank, they did have a comfortable home that they could grow old in. Little about the couple at this time yet hinted that Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Wilder of Mansfield would ever be anything other than a typical Missouri Ozarks pair who had managed to make a living from the area's rough, rocky soil. But soon that would begin to change.
5
Building a Writing Career
1911–1923
For the first forty-three years of her life, little about Laura Wilder seemed to indicate that she differed significantly from her neighbors. During the almost two decades since she and her husband, Almanzo, had arrived in Missouri in 1894, almost penniless, they gradually had built up their farm at Rocky Ridge, converting it into a paying enterprise that provided them with at least a modicum of security as they progressed into middle age. Active in church and community affairs, they were solid, substantial citizens but not particularly outstanding in the eyes of their neighbors. If anything set them apart, it was their daughter, Rose, who fit the definition of the “New Woman”: a free-spirited career girl of the type that attracted increasing attention after the turn of the century. Her spunk and self-reliance suggested that there had been something unusual in her upbringing, but what it was that might have stimulated her highly unusual nonconformism remained somewhat mysterious.
Shortly before Laura's forty-fourth birthday an invitation to speak at an agricultural meeting changed her life. Laura's expert knowledge of chickens was recognized in the area, and from time to time she was invited to talk to farm groups about her methods and ideas on the subject. This time, however, unable to attend the session in person, she wrote her speech and had someone else read it for her. In the audience was the editor of the Missouri Ruralist. The bimonthly farm paper published by Arthur Capper of Kansas combined information about agriculture and practical tips on farming methods with features about rural living aimed at both the man and the woman of the household. Laura's written talk impressed the editor so much that he invited her to submit material to the Ruralist for publication. Although later she would tell about the school composition for which she had received a perfect grade in De Smet, until this time she had never paid much attention to writing, beyond exchanging letters with family and friends. The invitation to write for a farm newspaper opened up a new dimension of her personality.1
Laura's first article, a fifteen-hundred-word paean to rural living, received featured billing at the front of the issue of February 18, 1911, a week and a half after her forty-fourth birthday. Titled “Favors the Small Farm Home,” the essay developed several themes that would recur frequently in her work: the virtues of the rural way of life; the advantages wrought by technological progress in the form of the telephone, delivery of the news, innovations in transportation, and the like; the need for husbands and wives to work together cooperatively in managing their farm operations; and the desirability of small-scale farming. She asserted that a five-acre farm was large enough to adequately support a family. Written in clear, straightforward prose, the article moved from point to point directly and economically. Combining detailed descriptions with broader lessons to be learned constituted a hallmark of her writing from the beginning.2
Laura signed her article “Mrs. A. J. Wilder,” which is how she would be identified as a farm-newspaper writer. For some reason, Almanzo's name was attached to her second article, “The Story of Rocky Ridge Farm,” published in July. Maybe Laura thought that the words would carry more authority coming from “the man of the place,” or perhaps it was hard getting used to the idea of being an author and she did not expect to become a frequent contributor. The success story that she recounted in this piece reinforced her earlier contention that an adequate living could be garnered from a small acreage (in this case, it was one hundred acres, not a mere five). Hard work and perseverance had paid off in their own experience, she noted. “Our little Rocky Ridge Farm has supplied everything necessary for a good living and given us good interest on all the money invested every year since the first two. No year has it fallen below ten per cent and one extra good year it paid 100 per cent. Besides this it has
doubled in value, and $3000 more, since it was bought.”3
Almanzo appeared again as the “author” of the third article, “My Apple Orchard,” and his picture graced the cover of the issue. This was Laura's only contribution during the entire year of 1912, however, and she published only one article in the Ruralist in 1913, three in 1914, and two in 1915. For several months after the apple-orchard article appeared, Almanzo was listed in the credits of the paper as a contributing editor. Toward the end of the summer in 1912 Laura had taken over as editor of the paper's “Home” column. Her own contributions, however, remained infrequent. Noting a growing tendency to establish neighborhood clubs, she encouraged women to initiate their own local units. “It used to be that only the women in town could have the advantages of women's clubs, but now the woman in the country can be just as cultured a club woman as though she lived in town,” she assured her readers. Her other articles in 1914 and 1915 discussed beauty hints (“Washing in buttermilk will whiten the hands and face. Fresh strawberries rubbed on the skin will bleach it, and rhubarb or tomatoes will remove stains from the fingers”); the story of a former city woman who had made a home for her family in the Ozarks (“Women have always been the home makers, but it is not usually expected of them that they should also be the home builders from the ground up”); the “magic” of plain foods; and the Missouri exhibit at the San Francisco International Exposition (“Missouri has met all the states of the Union, all the countries of the world, in fair competition, and has made a proud record”).4
It is not clear why, when she was given the chance, Laura did not produce more material for the Ruralist. Her slowness in producing articles may have derived from her conception of what made a good story; she seemed to be looking for items that were unusual or unique. Later, as she discovered possibilities existing in the common things that could be observed every day, she never lacked for subjects. Her slow start probably also reflected the novelty of the task and its unfamiliarity. She was not used to sitting down and forcing words onto a page for publication. Also, at Rocky Ridge, she lacked editorial guidance and the kind of personal encouragement that might have proved useful. Things would change dramatically, however, after her trip to San Francisco in late 1915. Rose's helpful advice and encouragement at that time would provide the impetus to write regularly for the Ruralist. In the meantime, Laura found several other outlets for her farm journalism, including the Missouri State Farmer and the St. Louis Star.
Mansfield, its people, and the rapidly changing world also presented potential subject matter, but for the most part Laura avoided writing much about her own community and its residents. Living in town for a time and near it in later years, she certainly would have been able to draw upon the town for material. As regular churchgoers, lodge members, and shoppers in town, she and Almanzo had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances who might have inspired commentary, but they seldom appeared in her columns.
Many things might have attracted her attention. Mansfield's boosters proclaimed their burg to be “the Gem City of the Ozarks,” pointing to the abundance of mineral wealth lying buried in the surrounding hills. Although Wright County as a whole, like most of its rural counterparts, lost population during the decade after 1910 (3.1 percent), Mansfield's population jumped from 477 to 757, an increase of 59 percent. Mansfield still trailed the largest town in the county, Mountain Grove (2,212), but the increase did put some distance between it and Hartville (521), which had been founded a decade earlier than Mansfield. Nestled in the orbit of Springfield, fifty miles away by rail or by crude dirt roads, residents of Mansfield still had little to worry about with regard to competition from retailers in that large town (Springfield's population in 1910 was 35,201). Not for another decade would local store owners have to be concerned about their customers driving to other towns to do their shopping.
People in Mansfield were more likely to note the benefits brought by technological progress than the potential pitfalls. An article in the Mansfield Mirror in October 1913 boasted of the east-west Frisco rail line (formerly the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis) crossing through the southern part of the county and the relatively new narrow-gauge short line of the Kansas City, Ozarks and Southern Railway, which from 1908 connected Mansfield and Ava, twelve miles to the south. The laying of gravel on the road between Mansfield and Hartville portended things to come. In short order a bus line connected the two towns. Mansfield was home to three churches, an electric light system, two banks, a bottling works, a canning factory, a creamery station, a telephone exchange, a weekly newspaper, three wholesale produce houses, three hotels, two mills, three restaurants, a bakery, five real estate firms, and a variety of other businesses and professional offices.5
The editor of the Mirror also took pride in the town's “beautiful park, with granitoid walk and curbing, macadamized streets around the public square, and granitoid sidewalks.” The Mansfield concert band, he boasted, was “one of the best musical organizations in South Missouri, and during the summer months free open air concerts are given in the park.”6 The gap between a local newspaper's account and reality often can be substantial, so readers had to discount some of the Mirror's rhetoric. Although much of what we can recapture about the context of the Wilders’ lives derives from such newspaper accounts, we need to be wary of broad generalizations asserting what life was really like for them. In the absence of other resources, though, such articles provide a basis for understanding.
Like their counterparts in other small towns, Mansfield's residents constantly sought to improve their community and trumpeted the progress they had already made. To achieve as much as possible, without spending much money, the townspeople repeatedly promoted the town by reorganizing the commercial club, resuscitating the band, encouraging people to participate in annual spring clean-up drives, and, of course, boosting business. A few property owners complained about the cost of installing new concrete sidewalks in 1913, but the Mirror editor reminded them of the improvement's long-term benefits. “We must make the Mansfield Park the beauty spot of Wright County,” exhorted another editorial. A public subscription raised funds for sprinkling the streets to reduce the dust that summer, while a better solution for several of the major downtown streets came with their macadamization.7
The driving force energizing Mansfield's modernization efforts during the teens was go-getting dentist F. H. Riley, who had quit his practice in Kansas City in 1911 and moved to Mansfield. He quickly plunged into community affairs, generating a continual stream of ideas for fixing up the town and soliciting public support for needed improvements. He presided over the Young Men's Business Club, which was designed to facilitate cooperation among Mansfield's business and professional men and to boost Mansfield's growth and progress. The year after arriving in town Riley spearheaded the creation of what became an annual agricultural and stock show. The following year he organized the townspeople to work on beautifying the town square, which was the center of community life. He concocted the idea of a six-minute blind auction to raise funds for materials and then organized a “Klondike gold digging contest” in the park, inviting people to search for buried treasure while they spaded the ground to prepare new flower beds. The installation of new iron seats and the electrification of the bandstand completed the transformation of the square. In an article published in the Mirror, Riley urged his fellow citizens to join him in boosting Mansfield: “Now let's get down to business. Put your shoulders to the wheel and all push together. We can continue to improve the ‘Gem City,’ each citizen doing his part.”8
Every Saturday people flocked into town from miles around, hauling in their cream and eggs and doing their weekly shopping. Many of them stayed to chat with friends or to listen to a band concert on the square. People loved to listen to a band, but enthusiasm among the players periodically waxed and waned, and every few years it was necessary to reorganize and rejuvenate the group. Money was needed to purchase sheet music or to pay the band leader and to take care of other
expenses. Concert times varied; Saturday afternoons and Saturday and Wednesday evenings were most common. The music tended heavily toward marches and patriotic pieces, with a heavy larding of popular tunes. When the temperatures cooled, benefit concerts moved into the opera house, and people were charged fifteen or twenty-five cents to help with expenses. Sometimes the women of the community organized chicken-pie suppers to raise money for the band. A band, many people realized, not only provided enjoyable diversion and promoted local pride but also constituted a moral force in the community. An article by H. O. Rounds in the Mirror stated the point succinctly, “I know when my son is in a band room practicing under a competent leader six nights a week, that he is far from leaning over a pool table, standing at the bar, or playing cards, for the band is an antidote for these allurements.”9
Just like band concerts, entertainment and activities at the opera house were reminiscent of the past. Blind Boone, who was famous throughout the Midwest for his piano playing, packed the opera house when he came to town in January 1912. Mostly, however, the troupes and performers who graced Mansfield's stage were less memorable, such as the “marvelous Willard,” a magician among whose feats was “the catching of bullets in his teeth fired from a shot gun by a committee selected from the audience,” and the Johnston Vaudeville Company, containing eight big acts and “some of the best acrobats in this section of the country,” including one billed as “the human monkey.” As with many of the programs that appeared in town, this one was advertised as “a clean moral show.”10
Before World War I, the opera house remained the social center of the community, drawing people out to enjoy visiting performers of character readings, music, and dramatic recitals. Lyceum series imported a variety of educational speakers and entertainment specialties for the benefit of the locals. Hometown talent performers probably outnumbered these outside acts, however. The opera house provided the setting for high school class plays and graduation ceremonies, locally performed operettas, youth piano recitals, New Year's Eve watch parties, union Thanksgiving church services, political rallies, and election-night poll watching. By 1913 movies had invaded the opera house. As time passed, their frequency increased, while other types of entertainment gradually dwindled. While the contents of the movies, in many cases, reinforced traditional values and beliefs (such as a 1915 two-reeler titled The Persecution of the Christian Martyrs from the Crucifixion of Christ to the Death of Nero), their ultimate impact was to introduce alien and often contradictory values and habits of thought that undermined tradition and localism.11