Guest post by Eddie Higgins
Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. I know this from watching It’s a Wonderful Life. In Laura land however, the double strings of Prince and Lady’s sleigh bells mean the joy of a trip home – and the cautious beginning of a romance, since Almanzo has decided to step up his courting under the cunning guise of a favour to Pa, fetching Laura home for the weekend.
This is just about my favourite chapter, and I think it’s one that you appreciate more as an adult – or someone who has left home – than you can possibly do as a child, when the idea of leaving home doesn’t mean much, or it’s something way in the future. All week Laura has been steeling herself to the thought of having to spend the weekend at the Brewsters, tempered by a tiny hope she hardly dares to allow herself that Pa might come to her rescue. Instead it’s Almanzo – he may not be on a white charger, but Prince and Lady and the new cutter are so much more practical for prairie travel. As a romantic ploy, it’s a master-stroke.
Laura’s already dismissed school a little early (I know she says the storm is getting worse, but even so, can’t help feeling you aren’t supposed to quit work just because your ride home has turned up) and Clarence dashes outside to admire Almanzo’s horses while Laura sorts out Ruby’s wraps (just so we know she is still conscientious), and then they set off. They have to stop at the Brewsters’ so Laura can pick up her things and drop off the dinner pail, and Almanzo shows some disgust. (Harsh from the man who advocated constant eating to save on doing the dishes in Long Winter.) But I suppose it shows Laura and Almanzo are in synch about the Brewsters, and Laura isn’t inclined to waste time thinking about the Brewsters. Then they are off. The conversation they have on the way home is so sweet. Laura is in the Flutterbudget ‘speak before thinking’ mode that Pa counselled her against, realises it, resolves to do better, and then does it again straight away. The cutter is 26 inches wide at the bottom, which I just measured as half the width of the desk I’m sitting at typing this. Tight squeeze!
Then all of a sudden she is HOME and the really good stuff starts (isn’t “Ma’s smile lighted her whole face” a lovely expression?). Here’s why I love this chapter: it’s the perfect expression of the unspeakable joy of returning to the haven of the ‘homefolks’ from the terrors of the big wide world. There really is nothing like going away to make you appreciate home. Everything is as it was – the house, the family, Kitty, the news from Mary, school and the town, the food, the fiddle music – yet different, because Laura is seeing it with new eyes, having had her first, not very pleasant, taste of fending for herself. I feel like I’ve come home myself when I read this, and my own throat aches a little along with Laura.
After a perfect evening, Laura wakes up still noticing all those little things which make the happy home: everyone says good morning, pleasant talk at the table, and even the housework. Laura’s meaning to put a brave face on the time she’s having at the Brewsters’ but she confesses to Carrie, who (in a bit of a Jane Austen moment) can only suggest marriage as a solution. Laura’s firmly on the page of wanting to stay at home forever (and just in case anyone is reading along for the first time I’m not saying a word about how that pans out).
Next Laura pops out into town to see Mary Power and find out where the town class is up to, while her wash water heats. Laura finds she even likes the town now, and I give a little cheer for Gerald Fuller, as he lifts his cap to her – as does Mr Bradley (does anyone else find themselves paying more attention to the minor characters as we do the readalongs? I find I’ve become very fond of Mr Bradley), and calls Laura “Miss Ingalls”. “Laura felt very grown up”. I love this, though I’m not quite sure why exactly. I suppose Laura gets a flash of seeing herself as others see her – in a grown-up job, therefore a grown-up. And, as we find out in a moment, with a beau, according to Mary Powers, much to Laura’s embarrassment and denial. “Everything is simple when you are alone, or at home, but as soon as you meet other people you are in difficulties,” she says, in a sudden entry into the second person. Quite! On the other hand, the Almanzo situation does give the chance for a little crowing over Nellie Oleson, slightly to Mrs Powers’s disapproval.
Back home, washing, redoing her hat, ‘talking all the time with Ma and Carrie and Grace’ and Laura is still musing on the truth of appreciating something more when you have less of it. Now there’s only Sunday morning left, which means best clothes, church – and Ida, who is the only other person apart from Carrie to whom Laura confides her dislike of teaching. Laura uses the idle time during Reverend Brown’s ‘stupid’ sermon (is it just me, or is Laura getting a little more curt now she’s a grown-up?) to muse on the passage of time, and growing up generally. And, with the return to school imminent, she’s now worrying about managing the school, and Clarence in particular. So now Laura has learnt the Friday ‘hurrah I don’t need to think about work for two days’ feeling and the Sunday ‘oh no, back to work tomorrow’ feeling. While enjoying Sunday lunch, Laura’s joy lets the cat out of the bag to Pa that she is not enjoying staying at the Brewsters’. His advice is to keep a stiff upper lip – about which there is more to come in the next chapter.
Finally, it’s time to go back to school. Pa baffles Laura and Ma by delaying starting – he and Almanzo have clearly been plotting. The feminist in me feels I should object to this, but I love the way Pa acts as unofficial sponsor of Almanzo’s courting efforts. I wonder exactly how that particular conversation went. Finally Almanzo arrives and Laura is off back to school in a further jingle of sleigh bells. I never actually noticed before that the chapter doesn’t just begin with sleigh bells, it ends with them as well. A weekend of joy with sleigh bell bookends. I like that.
I’ve noticed this time that Pa (except for spelling down the whole town) really hasn’t been the hero since, oh, the start of the Long Winter. Almanzo gives her and Carrie directions when they are lost, saves the town from starvation, wins the July 4th horse race, and keeps Laura from being late to school when she picks up her namecards – all way more important than spelling.
Again, when Pa’s saying “Some say my horses aren’t as young as they used to be,” I think Almanzo must have used that line. And Pa thinks that his horses aren’t really the issue as much as his suddenly grown-up daughter.
I think I injected myself into Laura with Ruby’s wraps. It’s not so much that she’s being conscientious, but she’s calming herself down before she greets Almanzo by saying something stupid/embarrassing.
I wonder if Almanzo settled on Laura because no-one else was small enough to fit into the cutter. (26 inches? My desk chair is about 20 inches wide. The ride must’ve been … intimate….)
And I still find myself a bit uneasy with Pa’s approval of the situation. While 15 year olds were, perhaps, a bit more ‘mature’ in the 1880′s than they are now, and wide age gaps were more common … a 25 year old courting a 15 year old still makes me squirm. (And yes, I know the age gap was narrowed in the books.)
26 inches at the foot – I assume a V shape of some sort to be more aerodynamic for the horses to pull; but still the ride must have been snug. Of course after seeing the dimensions of the dugout; everything was smaller at that time.
I loved reading this, Eddie…and re-noticing all the little details you mentioned that had always appealed to me in this chapter. I always remember the lightbulb moment I had the first time I read it, identifying with Laura when she states that she never liked the dryness of flour on her hands–I have always hated that, too. Wow…Laura and I really are just alike! I thought when I first read it–soul sisters born almost exactly 100 years apart! (Of course, I’m operating on memory here–that passage about the flour is in this chapter, right? I’ll confess that I didn’t reread it now and don’t have the book at hand…)
This is indeed a chapter to swell the heart.
It is interesting that Almanzo does become more and more the hero; it’s subtle, so I didn’t clearly pick up on that for many years.
It was customary to ask the father’s permission to court his daughter, of course, but I wonder if most men tried to come up with an “excuse” like that (the horses). I think I’d prefer it if he just admitted he liked my daughter. As someone with an older husband, that part doesn’t bother me, although 15-16 is a little young. There is doubt about Laura teaching at 15 in real life.
I know Laura was small, and Almanzo was a small man; still, 26″ does seem a bit small, doesn’t it? Especially with full crinolines and petticoats. I suppose she just held her satchel on her lap the entire way.
Fashions at the time called for fairly narrow skirts with bustles for the truly fashionable, so her skirts wouldn’t have been TOO full.
This chapter helps rescue our Laura from the misery of the Brewster home, and how I would love to be the fly on the wall when Almanzo talked Pa into letting him go pick up Laura on Friday afternoon. We know that the bit about Pa’s horses was a mere premise, and it is certain that Pa knew that, for Almanzo had already seen Laura home from church during the revival meetings in LTOTP. So the conversation about Almanzo’s courting Laura must have occurred back then, and we recall Pa telling Ma that he would “trust Almanzo anywhere”. Besides, where was Almanzo going to take Laura in a prairie winter!
I enjoy Pa teasing on Sunday afternoon saying that “some folks worry about my horses”. I think he knew that Laura was not going to rush off and be married any time soon, but here was a man Pa could approve of.
Eddie, I loved your comments about the bookend sleighbells!
I have always loved this chapter!
This is so great. Thanks for this post, Eddie. I really wonder about that conversation between Pa and Almanzo as well. Was it because they were already friends (which we saw in TLW) and Pa “approved” of Almanzo. Had A noticed Laura and asked P if it would be okay if he could court her? Was this common in DeSmet because of the ratio between men and women? The age difference is interesting – interesting enough to hide in the fictional versions. Remember in the novels, he’s only a few years older, maybe five?
LauriOH, keen observation on Pa no longer being the hero. I looked Wilder’s P.O.V. shifts in TLW, and it is the first time she really takes us away from Laura’s perspective into Almanzo’s head. It works as a plot device in the novel, but I wonder if this was part of a different strategy…
I noticed it while I was reading Melissa Gilbert’s book. She noted how as the show progressed ML would take lines away from “Caroline” and give them to himself so that he was the center of the episode. In a more true show or the books, the story changes from a parent/child to a girl/boy as the girl matures and starts her own family. You can see that here – Laura’s glad to see her family but she’s also pretty happy to see Almanzo, Mary Power, and even Mr. Bradley. She didn’t come home “just” to hear fiddle music, but to see how she was keeping up with her classes (and okay to escape the Brewsters.)
One thing I see in all of the books is that the only other perspective you get besides Laura’s is Almanzo’s. Of course, because she had him with her to ask what went on during the ride in TLW to get the wheat, or when Almanzo and Royal were making pancakes, or the “wheat in the wall”. I kind of wish she had put in even a short snippet of Almanzo asking Pa if he could court Laura. Oh, well, it is fun to speculate!
The line in this chapter about people saying good morning really making the morning good is the very reason I say “Good morning” to my children every day.
This is my favorite weekend in all of the Little House books. Love your summary, Eddie.
[I tried to reply to this once already but having a few internet problems - sorry if two replies suddenly appear!] Anyway, it was something like this: I love the way you get new insights from the readalong comments – I never really thought about the transfer of hero status from Pa to Almanzo before. But it’s setting things up nicely so the reader is already cheering for Almanzo by the time Laura decides she’s interested. It is very gradual though – after the heroics of the wheat trip, Almanzo defers to Pa in how the wheat should be divided up, and Pa ‘bests’ Almanzo guessing about the stored seed wheat, for example. I don’t know why but I don’t see Almanzo being that direct with Pa about fetching Laura home – in my head he’s talking about Pa’s horses, and Pa is twinkling away knowing what’s really in his mind but playing along.