Laura now spent most of her time at Rocky Ridge reading, sewing, playing solitaire, and puttering around the house. The parlor usually remained dark, since she lived mostly in the kitchen, the dining room, and her bedroom. She still did some sewing, crocheting, and embroidering, but as she grew feebler, she was able to work at them less and less. Her little kitchen was always neat, but then there was not much to untidy it. She told Nava Austin, the librarian, that reading and playing solitaire were her livelihood. She liked to have the radio on, but she never owned a television set. She enjoyed reading detective stories and other light fare, but her preferred form of fiction was westerns. Luke Short and Zane Grey were favorites of hers. As she explained to Nava Austin, “People probably wonder why this is my type of reading, but they are easy to hold, and I just enjoy them.”32
Every Wednesday she dressed up and rode into town to do her grocery shopping and stop by the library to pick up some new books. She and Nava would chat for a while, and sometimes Laura told her stories about what things had been like in the old days. She especially enjoyed talking about Mary. Afterward, she would drop by the newspaper office for a chat with the editor or by the bank if she had any business to do there and then walk to Daisy Freeman's or perhaps go for tea with an elderly friend. Then she would have lunch at Owens Cafe or some other restaurant. Once, when she received an unexpected five-hundred-dollar royalty check in the mail, she invited Nava to come along and have lunch with her at the café. When the librarian replied that she probably should stay and tend to the books since the library did not close during the lunch hour, Laura volunteered to order shrimp dinners for the two of them and have them ready and waiting so that Nava would not have to take too much time off from her job.33
Laura's driver on these weekly excursions was Jim Hartley, who ran a taxi service in town. After finishing her lunch, Laura asked him to drive her through the countryside or perhaps to some nearby town. She especially enjoyed taking the picturesque road down to Ava. On Sundays she frequently had Hartley drive her to Mountain Grove to a restaurant called Frederick's on the east side of town. He would join her for dinner and then drive her home. In 1954 she bought a new Oldsmobile, which she had him keep in his garage since she could not drive it herself. Once when Rose was back for a visit, she took a series of pictures of her mother getting in and out of the car and being driven around in it. When Jim Hartley died in 1954, Laura was distraught. Virginia Hartley, his daughter-in-law, went to comfort Laura, took over as Laura's driver, and became someone on whom Laura could depend when she needed help. The two of them drove to Mountain Grove on Sundays or maybe to Cabool or some other town for dinner.34
The year that Laura celebrated her eighty-seventh birthday, there were two parties for her in Mansfield, and cards and letters poured in from all over. She was not able to answer all of her letters anymore and usually preferred not to talk to enthusiastic fans who sometimes stopped by the house to catch a glimpse of her. She did appreciate the accolades and honors heaped upon her, however. In 1954 the American Library Association inaugurated the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, honoring authors who had made lasting and important contributions to children's literature. Fittingly, she was designated the first recipient of the award, which was a medal designed by Garth Williams. Explaining why she would be unable to attend the ceremonies in Minneapolis, she noted, “Being 87 years old with a tired heart I have to avoid excitement even if pleasant.”35
Even as her body grew weaker, her mind remained engaged. Almanzo had lived past ninety, and she said she wanted to, too. But realizing that she could not live forever, she began giving some of her mementos to people who were close to her. To Nava Austin she gave her family Bible, which she had received from her father and mother at the time of her marriage. In it were some clippings and obituaries, including one of her and Almanzo's infant son, who had died in 1889 soon after birth. It was a surprise to Nava to read about it, because Laura had never talked to her about him. Laura explained her purpose in disposing of some of her keepsakes, “I'm giving things to people that I think they will enjoy and take care of.”36
Even now she retained a sense of adventure. Rose, who generally came back yearly to spend several months at Rocky Ridge with her mother, invited her to return with her to Danbury to visit there for a while. It was Laura's first plane ride, but she was willing to try it for a chance to see the place where Rose had been living for the past two decades. The girl her father had called his little “flutterbudget” had observed transportation evolve from the horse and buggy to jet airplanes.37
On February 10, 1957, just three days after her ninetieth birthday, Laura died. When Rose had arrived the previous Thanksgiving to visit, she immediately realized that Laura's health had taken a drastic turn for the worse since the last time she had seen her. Soon it became necessary to transfer her to a hospital in Springfield, where doctors diagnosed the problem as diabetes. Then, for a while, her condition improved. Within a few weeks’ time Rose was reporting to friends, “She looks and feels better than she has for years.” The day after Christmas she took her mother back home to Rocky Ridge.38
Rose's earlier report proved overoptimistic, however, and Laura's condition again began to deteriorate. The daughter said later that these were “the most harrowing and exhausting weeks of my life.” Two local women volunteered to take turns staying up at night with her at the farmhouse so that one of them could be there to help, if she was needed. On Sunday, February 10, the night Laura died, it was Virginia Hartley's turn to be on duty. When the end came, it was with a mixture of dread and relief that Rose responded to it. The mother who had brought her into the world, who had loved her, smothered and controlled her, and who had depended heavily upon her had caused both pain and joy. Now she was gone. It was like a heavy burden had been lifted from her.39
Laura was a prominent enough personage to rate an article in the New York Times, on page 27, on her death, but the compositors somehow substituted Mansfield, Ohio, for Mansfield, Missouri, in the Associated Press wire story's dateline. The headline, “LAURA I. WILDER, AUTHOR, DIES AT 90,” may have been the only instance when she was ever referred to as “Laura I.,” but otherwise the story did get things right: she was an author. Prairie girl, student, schoolteacher, wife, mother, farmer, club member, churchgoer, farm-loan officer, failed political candidate, moralist—she was all of these. But most of all, Laura Ingalls Wilder, as she came affectionately to be known after the publication of her first book in 1932, was a writer. “Writer of the ‘Little House’ Series for Children Was an Ex-Newspaper Editor,” noted the Times in its subheadline.40
From the age of forty-four, mainly in articles for the Missouri Ruralist, Wilder discovered her true vocation: writing commentaries and stories that had a point or a moral to them. Whether in nonfictional form or as autobiographical fiction, the words that she wrote were purposeful. Not always did she herself live up to the elevated standards that she upheld; she even admitted her imperfections and her nonconformist nature in her writings. For her, the ideal was as important as—even more important than—the real. In creating a persona for herself—as a beloved children's book author—she came to realize the wisdom of the saying that a person should be careful with regard to what she pretends to be, for ultimately she becomes that person. The Laura Ingalls Wilder that the world came to know was both better and worse than the image conjured up by many of her readers and celebrators over the years. Not nearly the perfect “nice old lady” who wrote those “wonderful books” that won so much acclaim, she could be selfish, mean-spirited, and narrow-minded, like anybody. In that sense, she was not as good as her image suggested. But by the same token, she was well aware of the frailties of human nature and realized that in her own life she partook of them, too. Her observations about people and her keen psychological insights were supplemented by an abiding religious faith that trusted God to make ultimate judgments and issue his just rewards. Combined, these provided her with the tools that made her stories more than
mere recountings of hardship and adventure. They provided her with the basis for genuine insight and wisdom. Reflected first in her Missouri Ruralist articles, these insights later came garbed in fictional form in her novels. In that sense, her writings were more profound than they are often given credit for. With the help of her daughter, Rose, who took already good writing and added luster to it, she became one of America's greatest children's authors.
Her success was not without a cost, though. The tangled relationship between mother and daughter was clearly crucial to the success of Laura Ingalls Wilder as a published author. Without Rose's help and encouragement, there would have been no “Laura Ingalls Wilder” as we know her today, only a sprightly, energetic Ozarks farm woman and sometime farm-newspaper writer known as “Mrs. A. J. Wilder.” But then without her mother and the attentions that she lavished upon her daughter, there would have been no “Rose Wilder Lane,” either. Both—in the end—found it hard to live with each other, but both also depended heavily upon each other. It was a symbiotic relationship of personalities extremely different in some senses but profoundly similar in others. Both achieved degrees of success far above the ordinary; both encountered disappointments, too.
With their lives so integrally intertwined, it was no wonder that Rose responded to her mother's death with a sense of relief. Funeral arrangements quickly were made. Final rites were conducted at the Mansfield Methodist church on Wednesday, February 13, at two o'clock. Rev. Walter Brunner conducted the service, and six men from town served as pallbearers. Rose afterward appeared as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Rather than seeming to be devastated by her mother's death, the psychological release it brought with it left her almost buoyant. Her only wish seemed to be to get away from Mansfield as quickly as possible.41
Her mother's estate, when it was inventoried in county probate court by her friend and executor N. J. Craig, totaled $77,814.42, including $9,866 in corporate stocks, $36,000 in U.S. Savings Bonds, and an attributed value of $30,000 in the copyrights of her eight novels. In addition to her will, Laura had left a letter, written on July 30, 1952, for Rose to read upon her death. “Rose Dearest,” she had written, “when you read this letter I will be gone and you will have inherited all I have.” It went on to instruct her on how to dispose of her books, jewelry, china, and some of her other things. “My love will be with you always,” Laura finished, signing the note, “Mama Bess (Laura Ingalls Wilder).”42
Notes
The following abbreviations are used in the notes:
LIW
Laura Ingalls Wilder
AJW
Almanzo J. Wilder
RWL
Rose Wilder Lane
Lane Papers
Rose Wilder Lane Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa
“Pioneer Girl”
Wilder's handwritten draft of her unpublished autobiography, written in 1930 (microfilm copy at State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia)
Wilder's handwritten drafts of her eight novels are located in the following places:
State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia (microfilm; originals are located at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Association, Mansfield, Missouri):
“Little House in the Big Woods”
“Farmer Boy”
“Little House on the Prairie”
“On the Banks of Plum Creek”
“By the Shores of Silver Lake”
Detroit Public Library, Rare Book Room:
“The Long Winter”
“These Happy Golden Years”
Pomona, California, Public Library:
“Little Town on the Prairie”
All of the books were published in New York by Harper and Brothers and Harper and Row. References in the notes are to the revised editions, illustrated by Garth Williams, published in 1953. Original publication dates for the books were:
Little House in the Big Woods, 1932
Farmer Boy, 1933
Little House on the Prairie, 1935
On the Banks of Plum Creek, 1937
By the Shores of Silver Lake, 1939
The Long Winter, 1940
Little Town on the Prairie, 1941
These Happy Golden Years, 1943
The First Four Years, 1971
Introduction
1. William Holtz, The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 230, 302, 313, 375, 379–85; see also William Holtz, “The Ghost in the Little House Books,” Liberty 5 (March 1992): 51–54, and William Holtz, “Ghost and Host in the Little House Books,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 29 (fall 1996): 41–51.
2. Rosa Ann Moore, “Laura Ingalls Wilder's Orange Notebooks and the Art of the Little House Books,” in Children's Literature (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1975), 4:105–19; Rosa Ann Moore, “Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: The Chemistry of Collaboration,” Children's Literature in Education 2 (autumn 1980): 101–9; William T. Anderson, “The Literary Apprenticeship of Laura Ingalls Wilder,” South Dakota History 13 (winter 1983): 285–331; William T. Anderson, “Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: The Continuing Collaboration,” South Dakota History 16 (summer 1986): 89–143; Caroline Fraser, “The Prairie Queen,” New York Review of Books 41 (December 22, 1994): 38–45.
1. Pioneer Girl, 1867–1879
1. New York Times, February 8, 1867.
2. Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); John F. Stover, The Life and Decline of the American Railroad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), chap. 3.
3. Pepin County Press, June 2, 1860, March 1, 1862.
4. LIW, Little House in the Big Woods, 1–2; Durand Times, December 12, 1865.
5. Robert F. Fries, Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin, 1830–1900 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1951), 7–8, 20–23, 78–82; Charles E. Twining, Downriver: Orrin H. Ingram and the Empire Lumber Company (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1975), 28–29, 105–6; Malcolm Rosholt, Lumbermen on the Chippewa (Rosholt, Wis.: Rosholt House, 1982); John N. Vogel, Great Lakes Lumber on the Great Plains: The Laird, Norton Lumber Company in South Dakota (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), esp. chaps. 5–6.
6. Everett N. Dick, The Sod-House Frontier, 1854–1890 (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1937); Robert V. Hine, Community on the American Frontier: Separate but Not Alone (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980); Richard A. Bartlett, The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier, 1776–1890 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
7. Donald Zochert, Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder (New York: Avon, 1977), 12–14; John C. Hudson, “Two Dakota Homestead Frontiers,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 63 (December 1973): 448; Gerald W. McFarland, A Scattered People: An American Family Moves West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 49.
8. On the Yankee migration, see John C. Hudson, “Yankeeland in the Middle West,” Journal of Geography 85 (September–October 1986): 195–200; Carleton Beals, Our Yankee Heritage: New England's Contribution to American Civilization (New York: David McKay, 1955); Stewart Holbrook, The Yankee Exodus: An Account of Migration from New England (New York: Macmillan, 1950); and Lois K. Mathews, The Expansion of New England (New York: Russell and Russell, 1909).
9. Ruth Bunker Christiansen, American and Royal Ancestors of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Frederic, Wis.: Sally Gustafson, 1984), 5–6; Notes from Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, Inc., Pepin, Wis. 3 (December 1978): 3; Zochert, Laura, 2.
10. Zochert, Laura, 3–5, 10; Elisha Keyes, “Early Days in Jefferson County,” Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin 11 (1888): 416–34; John Henry Ott, ed., Jefferson County, Wisconsin, and Its People (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1917), 1:36–69.
11. Zochert, Laura, 6–8.
12. Ibid., 8–9; William T. Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 21–22.
13. Zochert, Laura, 11–12; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 23–24.
14. Zochert, Laura, 12–14; Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 24.
15. Robert C. Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), 248; Richard N. Current, The History of Wisconsin, vol. 2, The Civil War Era, 1848–1873 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976), 335; Notes from Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society (Pepin) 3 (June 1978): 3 and 4 (June 1979): 3; Zochert, Laura, 18. The enlistment files and muster rolls of Hiram and James Ingalls in Co. E, 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery (Nos. 1149 and 1150) are located in the National Archives.
16. Zochert, Laura, 15; Pepin County History Book Committee, Pepin County History (Dallas: Taylor, 1985), 29; Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, comp., History of Buffalo and Pepin Counties, Wisconsin (Winona, Minn.: H. C. Cooper Jr., 1919), 959; Durand Times, December 12, 1865.
17. Curtiss-Wedge, comp., History of Buffalo and Pepin Counties, 960, 1005–7; Pepin County History Book Committee, Pepin County History, 28–29; Pepin County Press, June 2, September 8, 1860, August 3, 1861; Pepin Independent, June 11, 1858.
18. Durand Times, September 26, 1871. Long litigation preceded a court decision in 1867, which confirmed the removal. Curtiss-Wedge, comp., History of Buffalo and Pepin Counties, 962.
19. Curtiss-Wedge, comp., History of Buffalo and Pepin Counties, 1007–8.
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