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The World According to Rose Wilder Lane

Posted on by Sandra Hume

Dear Rose,

I like you. In many ways, I think you’re fabulous. You’re so much fun to be around—a tremendous storyteller, always good for a joke (and not always a clean one!). I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone with such a delightful combination of worldliness and down-home simplicity. And I’m so impressed with everything you’ve accomplished in your life … your writings, your travels, your caretaking (though the Turner boys …well, all’s well that ends well I suppose), and most importantly your maintenance of spirit. People only think they have convictions until they meet Rose Wilder Lane.

But that book? On the Way Home? Published after your mother’s death? I have only one question.

What were you thinking?

Don’t misunderstand me. I think it was lovely that you decided to publish this very early writing of your mother’s. What a wonderful piece of history to have, a record of her family’s final move, the journey across the Midwest to the place they’d live the rest of their lives. And yes, it was thoughtful of you to bookend the journal with settings beginning in De Smet and ending in Mansfield.

But I repeat: what were you thinking?

Really, the beginning is all right, though it gives me a strange feeling to read your reaction to your mother’s attempt at brightening a dreary situation when she said living in the big house in De Smet was like camping. She was just a mother trying to make sure her daughter didn’t worry, wasn’t she? Not to mention the way you talked about her and your father’s diff-theer-i-a. Not that your phrasing wouldn’t fit in perfectly in a piece of fiction. Your observations were always so severely pointed. But it was the wrong place, I think.

Still, neither of those issues is so important in the grand scheme.

I’m really talking about the ending. Rose, I don’t get it. You spend more than half the amount of pages as your mother’s entire record on your epilogue. This is useful, of course—how nice to have your mother’s story put in context. And some of it I dearly love. Such a way with words you have. Your description of your mother’s preparation to head to the bank to sign the papers buying the piece of land she and your father finally found in Mansfield is exquisite, and so exciting to a Little House reader: putting on her black wedding dress, brushing and plaiting her beautiful long hair that extended to her heels, fluffing her bangs, whistling “Oh Susanna,” perching her black sailor hat atop her head.

But putting things in context isn’t all you do. Essentially, you use these pages to tell your own stories.

The first story is about your parents’ missing $100 bill. It’s all the money they have in the world, and they were going to use it as a deposit on the land they found. And it’s misplaced. Your parents are understandably upset. This is what you write:

Suddenly [Laura] thought, hoped, asked, Had I taken it myself, to play with?

NO! I felt scalded. She asked, Was I sure? I hadn’t just opened the desk sometime, for fun? My throat swelled shut; I shook my head, no. “Don’t cry,” she said automatically. I wouldn’t cry, I never cried, I was angry, insulted, miserable, I was not a baby who’d play with money or open that desk for fun, I was going on eight years old. I was little, alone, and scared. My father and mother sat there, still. In the long stillness I sank slowly into nothing but terror, pure terror without cause or object, a nightmare terror.

I’m not saying what you wrote isn’t true. You were there; you know what happened. (Or at least you know what you remember.) You just seemed to make some interesting choices. I can’t quite figure out why you said what you did—and left out what you left out.

Later on, you detail how your father cuts a slab of salt pork to give to a needy man with a hungry family, and you quote your mother crying out at the gesture: “Manly, no! We’ve got Rose.” “He paid no attention,” you write.

While the reader is still left wondering why you included this information about your father, making us think, well, not very highly of him, you move on. Even though the money is thankfully found and the land purchased, your family is still destitute so your father tries to sell some lumber he has cut. He comes home, finally, very late on the day he went out to sell it. He’s exhausted, and you meet him at the wagon and find out he sold it. You run in to tell your mother (whom you say “snaps” at you that of course she’s glad! when you ask her, isn’t she glad?) and then run out again to your father.

I pranced out, to tell my father how glad she was. And he said, with a sound of crying in his voice, “Oh, why did you tell her? I wanted to surprise her.”

You say such things, little things, horrible, cruel, without thinking, not meaning to. You have done it; nothing can undo it. This is a thing you can never forget.

Rose. Why? Why on earth would you include such words about your parents who have passed away? Why do you have the desire to tarnish them both in print through the eyes of a seven-year-old? Particularly your mother, who is loved and cherished the world over as the little girl who grew up on the prairie. Are you really that bitter in your 70s? About something that happened over half a century ago?

And why do it in her book? It’s almost like you were capitalizing on the wide audience of Little House readers to present your mother not as Laura, but as the person you saw and wanted everyone else to see, the person you didn’t always agree with, who wasn’t always “Laura Ingalls,” the Little House character. But in what was essentially a companion Little House book, all I was left with was an overwhelming sense of disrespect.

I can’t help but wonder: What good did writing that do you? Moreover, what good did publishing it do? It seems to me you had a chip on your shoulder that you could never quite get rid of. Your portrayal of your parents feels like … well, it feels like payback.

Payback for what, I couldn’t say.

But you do write so well, Rose. In a manner completely different from your mother. You truly were one of the country’s great writers of the 20th century. No one can ever take that away from you, not even the angelic legacy of your mother.

Sincerely,
A fan, reader, and friend

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There’s Gotta Be More …

Posted on by Amy Lauters

I don’t remember how old I was, but I  remember the heat of sun, blazing down on my young skin, soaking into me, as I frantically licked a freezer pop to keep it from melting in an icky, sticky mess on my hands and arms. I’d almost reached the bottom when the yell came up the hill: The bookmobile is coming!

I already had read every one of Laura’s books I could find, and had begged for copies for my birthdays, Christmas, and any other occasion I could think of. But I still held out hope that there would be just one more book. Maybe two. Or three. But just one more?

On this day, visiting my cousins in Madison, Wis., I had just learned about the bookmobile, and how it visited the suburban neighborhoods to make it easier for kids to get their hands on new books. I ran down to the street with Nicole, Sara, and Tracy–my sister-cousins and my sister–to see what the bookmobile lady had in her truck.

There she was: “my” Laura, along with most of her books. No Plum Creek this time. But, wait: what’s this?

“On the Way Home”?

I squealed out loud. My Aunt Bonnie, who’d come down to the curb behind us, said, “Did you find something, Amy?”

“I haven’t ever, ever read this one!”

Because I didn’t live in Madison, I didn’t have a library card. Aunt Bonnie must have checked it out for me, because I was allowed to take the book into the house, immediately sitting down and cracking open the cover.

Rose spoke to me about the trip from De Smet to Missouri, about those days in the wagon, and the heat, and the dust, and the panic. She set the scene brilliantly, and then, Laura spoke to me from the pages. She had a different voice than I was used to. It seemed much more adult, much more like my mom’s or my aunts’, but it was unquestionably hers.

I read it straight through for the rest of the visit, withdrawn from the family’s play, knowing that I would have to leave the book behind when we left.  But the thrill I felt then remains the thrill I feel now when I see something new, something I don’t have, something that Laura or Rose knew and loved and shared.

Can there be just one more?

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Happy Mothers’ Day!

Posted on by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The older we grow the more precious become the recollections of childhood’s days, especially our memories of mother. Her love and care halo her memory with a brighter radiance, for we have discovered that nowhere else in the world is such loving self-sacrifice to be found; her counsels and instructions appeal to us with greater force than when we received them, because our knowledge of the world and our experience of life have proved their worth.

The pity of it is that it is by our own experience we have had to gain this knowledge of their value, then when we have learned it in the hard school of life, we know that mother’s words were true. So, from generation to generation, the truths of life are taught by precept and generation after generation we each must be burned by fire before we will admit the truth that it will burn.

We would be saved some sorry blunders and many a heart-ache if we might begin our knowledge where our parents leave off instead of experimenting for ourselves, but life is not that way.

Still mother’s advice does help and often a word of warning spoken years before will recur to us at just the right moment to save us a misstep. And lessons learned at mother’s knee last thru life.

But dearer even than mother’s teachings are little, personal memories of her, different in each case but essentially the same — mother’s face, mother’s touch, mother’s voice…

Excerpt from “Mother, A Magic Word,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published in the Missouri Ruralist, September 1, 1921.
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Bill Anderson and Dean Butler in Green Bay, Wisconsin in August

Posted on by Beyond Little House

Heritage Hill State Historical Park, a living history museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, will be holding a special Laura Ingalls Wilder Day on August 1, 2009. William Anderson and Dean Butler will be the special guests, and the day will be dedicated to Little House-themed activities and Laura and Almanzo look-a-like contests.

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Caroline Ingalls: Everyone’s Ma

Posted on by Rebecca Brammer

Caroline Quiner Ingalls was the beloved mother of five children during her lifetime, but through the writings of her daughter Laura Ingalls Wilder, she has become dearly loved as “Ma” to thousands of children through the decades.

Let’s honor Ma this Mother’s Day weekend by sharing a cherished memory of her, or of her influence on your life. Perhaps it was a lesson taught, a kindness shown, or an example modeled. Maybe a moment she made you smile, or a character trait you admire in her.

I’ll go first.

I often think of the verse that Ma penned in Laura’s autograph album in Little Town on the Prairie:

If wisdom’s ways you wisely seek,
Five things observe with care,
To whom you speak,
Of whom you speak,
And how and when and where.

And it was more than pretty words — it seems evident from the tribute her daughter paid her in her characterization that Caroline Ingalls lived these words.

Unfortunately, the reason I often reflect on this saying is because I haven’t followed its advice… but I figure if I just keep reminding myself of this ever-so-wise truth, eventually it will sink in, right?

Your turn.  Please share your memory of Ma in the comments below.

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Experiencing the Music of the Little House Books

Posted on by Rebecca Brammer

When I was very small, I loved to listen to my mother read me the Little House books. But one thing frustrated me: the frequent use of song lyrics. Occasionally a song would be familiar, such as Yankee Doodle or Pop Goes the Weasel, and we could sing along together, but so often we were left with dull lyrics. Words that seemed so lifeless without their accompanying tunes.

When I was a little older, I discovered The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook, by Eugenia Garson. I was blessed to have a piano teacher who believed her students would be more motivated to practice if they played songs of their own choice instead of following through a sequence of lesson books, and so week by week I learned to play the songs of the Little House books. Knowing the tunes changed everything. Those lyrics came alive and added a new dimension to my Little House experience. Those songs formed a connection between my world and Laura’s, and through them I felt as if I was a mere step away from the merriness created by Pa’s fiddle on those nights so long ago.

Learning many of the songs of the books only created within me an insatiable desire to know more of them. After all, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook only contained about half of the songs included in the Little House series. Over the years, I was able to locate the music for more songs, but one particular song — the one I wanted most to learn — eluded me.

But first Pa played for Laura and Mary. He played their very favorite song, and he sang it. Laura liked it best of all because Pa’s voice went deep, deep, deeper in that song.

”Oh, I am a Gypsy King!

I come and go as I please!

I pull my old nightcap down

And take the world at my ease.”

Then his voice went deep, deep down, deeper than the very oldest bullfrog’s.

“Oh,

I am

a

Gyp

sy

KING!”

They all laughed. Laura could hardly stop laughing.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder, in Little House on the Prairie

That song just sounded like so much fun! A number of years ago, I was bemoaning my failed attempts at learning this particular song to a group of friends online, when one said, “Why, I had that song in my music book when I was a child. I still have the book. I’ll send it to you.” I waited anxiously as the days passed by and turned into weeks. The book never arrived. We both contacted our post offices, but they weren’t able to locate the package. Of all the packages to be lost!

And then along came Dale Cockrell with Pa’s Fiddle Recordings — just imagine my excitement when I discovered that his second CD, The Arkansas Traveler, contained The Gypsy King! Now when I read Little House on the Prairie to my little niece, I can sing The Gypsy King and she and I can laugh together as we try to make our voices sound like bullfrogs.

As welcome as these musical CD collections are, however, they aren’t the only project Dale Cockrell, who is a professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University, is up to. I recently had the pleasure of reading a draft of the introductory essay to The Ingalls-Wilder Family Songbook, and I can tell you that you’ll want to start saving your pennies now for this fabulous publication which is coming our way in 2010.

The Ingalls-Wilder Family Songbook is part of a 40-volume collection being published by MUSA (Music of the United States of America, a project of the American Musicological Society), designed to bring together musical notation and scholarly interpretation to expand the legacy of American music for both study and performance.  The book will feature a scholarly essay on the role of music in the Little House books, the songs themselves, as well as critical study of the music. Extensive research has gone into this project and the sources for the music were carefully examined using a set of strict criteria to provide the most accurate and complete Little House Songbook possible.

So if you’ve ever felt inclined to tap your foot to the tune of Pa’s fiddle, or dance with the Ingalls girls by the warm glow of firelight or out under the stars, be watching for this outstanding songbook sometime next year. And yes, we’ll keep you posted.


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Should Little House Be Banned?

Posted on by Laura Welser

I’m not sure which came first. Was my interest in American History the reason for falling in love with the Little House books, or did the Little House books drive my need to learn more about American History? At any rate, my fascination with American History led me to have a profound respect and admiration for the Native American people.

Over the last few years, I have read more and more about how the Little House books should be banned or censored because of their depiction of Native American people. I cannot speak from the perspective of a Native American, but as someone who has read each of Laura’s stories so many times for so many years, I have a different opinion.

I honestly feel that my respect for Native Americans has come from their portrayal in the Little House books. I can see where the negative feelings come from, but in me, Laura spurred a desire to learn more. As a matter of fact, this is also the reason I chose to own and show Appaloosa Horses, a breed that was developed in America by the Nez Perce Indians.

I have always felt that Pa and Laura genuinely respected the Native Americans. I never once considered them “savages.” The feelings of Ma and some of the others really came about as a result of events that had occurred in their past. I remember feeling great sympathy for the Native Americans because I knew that they were fighting a losing battle for their land. Laura is simply writing from her own point of view as a person who experienced it in the way that she did. You are reading her feelings.

There are many tragic events that have shaped our history. We cannot change the past, but we can learn from it. Banning one, or all, of the Little House books because they told the story of one family’s experiences also will not change history. It would, however, close a door that was opened for me many years ago.

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Lazy, Lousy Reprise

Posted on by Sandra Hume

With apologies, rather than write a brand-new post I’m going to revisit Eliza Jane. With such insightful, sophisticated comments, it seems a shame not to.

Dawn wrote:

Is it possible that it was just true? That she was annoying and meddling? Maybe they didn’t see it as defamation because maybe (who knows) they used to talk about that horrible school experience and heck, maybe Eliza Jane would say, “I know, I was AWFUL!”

This is possible. When I translate that to real life, though, it makes me think that if I were friendly enough with a family member that we could all jokingly admit how awful she was, isn’t it safe to assume we’re in a better place now? And why not redeem her and make her a more likable character? Although, yes, as has been pointed out, it’s fiction–with all the characteristics of good fiction. Yet I keep coming back to Farmer Boy, which at the time was a standalone book, just like Big Woods was meant to be. At this juncture, the EJ she presented as a character was annoying, yes, but in a big-sisterly way. And you ended up warming to her by the end of the book (especially after Mother Wilder dressed her down about the sipping from the teacup).

Ah well. We can just go round and round, can’t we?

Then Kim and Wendy, and later Dr. Laura, point out the story arc about Eliza Jane and how it worked better in the story to have “Eliza Jane stay Eliza Jane,” especially as Nellie was added into the mix to complicate matters. (Hey! Maybe Laura manufactured this whole EJ thing because the only real-life conflict she had to draw on to make a good story was the “child bride” angle–the fact that Almanzo was a man in his twenties going after a teenager! Ya think? … OK, just kidding. Sort of.)

I particularly enjoyed so much of what Wendy said; lots of viewpoints I hadn’t considered are in her comment.

Tracy, thanks for reminding us about Free Land. I’ll have to go revisit that and remind myself of the EJ character there as well.

Dr. Laura also brings up Rose’s misery in Crowley and the fact that she was embarrassed by her circumstances—which (this is me talking here) she never did quite get over and seemed to carry a love-hate relationship with her whole life. Interesting to consider as well.

The most fascinating comment to me was Diana Birchall’s. She brought up some issues I had not considered at all. For example:

Laura the writer actually shows some moments of sympathy for Eliza: remember how young Laura felt in her first term of teaching school, when the recognition came to her that this was how Miss Wilder, who failed to teach the school in De Smet, felt. And she determines not to let that happen; it’s a maturing moment. Eliza actually taught Laura by bad example.

Thanks for reminding me of these moments of sympathy; I hadn’t thought of them.

Heck, I’ll just bring two entire paragraphs of Diana’s comment to the forefront. She digs in here so well her comment could be a full blog post on its own:

If your question, then, is why did Laura send Rose for education to a woman she disliked so much, there may have been some good reasons. Rose at that age was, I gather, an almost unprecedented handful. She writes she was experimenting with sex at an early age. She ate up all the learning available to her in a stunningly short time. She was wild. She was headstrong. Laura, who had been brought up by Ma and learned how to curb herself, how to behave, how to conform, how to be a lady, and Almanzo, who probably left the “hen” department to his wife, doubtless were at their wits’ end knowing what to do with this out-of-control girl. And they had few options. Rose was bursting to get off the farm and out into the world. She was an uncontrollable force. They had no money. What to do with her? It’s not a stretch that they might have thought, “Send her to Eliza. Eliza is strong-minded enough to deal with her, plus she can offer her more education than we can. Let her try.” I would imagine Eliza was used as a kind of desperate, “tough love” school. After all, Laura knew that Eliza would be a decent teacher (”She is a good scholar. She knows what is in the books”), and might, at best, provide an educational opportunity and some discipline for Rose. It’s the kind of thing you do when you’re beside yourself with a problem child who’s too much for you!

And Laura herself actually learned a lot from Eliza, even if it was only by negative example. (”If wisdom’s ways you wisely seek…”) Maybe she wanted Rose to get a dose of that, to show her what could happen when a strong minded woman didn’t have good judgement. Laura may have seen Eliza all over again in Rose, and wanted to show her the dangers – consciously or unconsciously. But I bet she knew what she was doing, all right.

Laura and Almanzo at their wits’ end: “Send her to Eliza. Let her try.” I love it! I also love the idea of Eliza as a valuable negative example, both to Laura the character, and with the real-life (possibly) hope that Rose would see the dangers of being strong-minded without good judgment.

And Eliza Jane as Rose’s reform school! What a unique way to look at it. Thank you, Diana—so much food for thought.

I have another issue to bring up about On The Way Home and some problems have with Rose, but mercy! I think it will have to wait until next time. Who knew I’d have so many comments on the comments. Thanks to everyone for such a lively discussion!

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It’s Finally Spring

Posted on by Amy Lauters

When Laura comes down to breakfast on the first of May after the long, hard winter, she comes down singing, and Pa teases her: ”So you’re to be the Queen of May, are you?”

Those of us who live in the upper Midwest know exactly how Laura felt that first day of May, a sunny, warm day with a train coming, and the promise of summer in the air after a cold, snowy, endless winter. The bliss of sunshine, soaking into bare skin finally uncovered after months in sweaters and long underwear, helps us imagine ourselves as bulbs in the ground, stretching toward the light to bloom for spring.

The Long Winter was, and still is, one of my favorite of Laura’s work. My young imagination dwelt on the endless days of grinding wheat, feeding a family with little but squashed grain, holed up together with no one else for company, staving off the boredom and hunger and fear with little but books and music. I could perfectly hear the winds howling, and I could feel the bitter isolation of a family that had pulled together to deal with it. Ma’s fear when Pa left the shelter of that family to help sustain it by hauling hay becomes palpable as the girls take turns viewing the northwest sky to spot the clouds that could mean death for their only provider.

It’s no wonder, then, that as the family has safely made it through those moments, and those long months of deprivation, hunger, fear, and fatigue, that Laura comes down singing as May sunshine beckons.

I review that promise every spring, when ice clears itself from the lakes, and the snow drifts that pile up against my doors and line my driveway melt off into puddles and streams that make traversing the lawn a muddy pleasure. I watch eagerly for the signs of iris and tulips and daffodils pressing their leaves up through the soil toward sun that we’ve all been denied for so long, stretching to the light to bloom.

And in the first week of May, as I grade stacks of final exams and clear end-of-year reports from my desk, I can look out my window and see the promise of summer in the rituals of spring.

It does make me feel like singing.

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Need Some Home Decorating Advice? Just Ask Laura.

Posted on by Laura Ingalls Wilder

As someone has said, “Thoughts are things,” and the atmosphere of every home depends on the kind of thoughts each member of that home is thinking.

I spent an afternoon a short time ago with a friend in her new home. The house was beautiful and well furnished with new furniture but it seemed bare and empty to me. I wondered why this was until I remembered my experience with my new house. I could not make the living room seem homelike. I would move the chairs here and there and change the pictures on the wall, but something was lacking. Nothing seemed to change the feeling of coldness and vacancy that displeased me whenever I entered the room.

Then, as I stood in the middle of the room one day wondering what I could possibly do to improve it, it came to me that all that was needed was someone to live in it and furnish it with the everyday, pleasant thoughts of friendship and cheerfulness and hospitality.

We all know there is a spirit in every home, a sort of composite spirit composed of the thoughts and feelings of the members of the family as a composite photograph is formed of the features of different individuals. This spirit meets us at the door as we enter the home. Sometimes it is a friendly, hospitable spirit and sometimes it is cold and forbidding.

If the members of a home are ill-tempered and quarrelsome, how quickly you feel it when you enter the house. You may not know just what is wrong but you wish to make your visit short. If they are kindly, generous, good-tempered people you will have a feeling of warmth and welcome that will make you wish to stay. Sometimes you feel that you must be very prim and dignified and at another place you feel a rollicking good humor and a readiness to laugh and be merry. Poverty or riches, old style housekeeping or modern conveniences do not affect your feelings. It is the characters and personalities of the persons who live there.

Each individual has a share in making this atmosphere of the home what it is, but the mother can mold it more to her wish. I read a piece of poetry several years ago supposed to be a man speaking of his wife and this was the refrain of the little story:

“I love my wife because she laughs,
Because she laughs and doesn’t care.”

I’m sure that would have been a delightful home to visit, for a good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing. And this woman was the embodied spirit of cheerfulness and good temper.

Let’s be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day for our own family than we have to steal the purse of a stranger. Let us be as careful that our homes are furnished with pleasant and happy thoughts as we are that the rugs are the right color and texture and the furniture comfortable and beautiful!

“Thoughts are Things,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Published in the Missouri Ruralist, November 5, 1917.
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