Speaker 1: Rose had no magic and she knew it.
Speaker 2: Rose was a hack, but a lot of hacks are
Speaker 2: really successful.
Speaker 3: She was a complicated lady.
Speaker 4: My friend Rose is very divisive. You either love her
Speaker 4: or you don't like her at all.
Speaker 1: I find her just so despicable.
Speaker 5: Most of my personal reaction is to feel sorry for Laura.
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, this was her companion.
Speaker 3: She was a bit rhemian, and she just didn't think
Speaker 3: like everybody else did. She's just a kind of louvishly
Speaker 3: talented but incredibly frustrating personality.
Speaker 6: It is amazing the bad mouthing that goes on fifty
Speaker 6: years after her death. I am so disgusted with that,
Speaker 6: because I think Rose was a heroic woman.
Speaker 7: Laura Engels Wilder and her husband Almonzo had one living
Speaker 7: child named Rose. If you only know Rose from the
Speaker 7: Little House in the Perry Books, you don't know much.
Speaker 7: In the first decades of the twentieth century, Rose Wilder
Speaker 7: Lane was one of the most successful and controversial freelance
Speaker 7: writers in the country.
Speaker 5: Rose was such a famous writer in her time. She
Speaker 5: was so popular.
Speaker 7: Rose is the reason Laura, a middle aged farm wife,
Speaker 7: picked up a pen and started writing about eggs Rose
Speaker 7: told her to well.
Speaker 2: They'd had a symbiotic relationship related to writing for many,
Speaker 2: many years. Rose would write her mother and suggest stories
Speaker 2: that she should work up for the Missouri Ruralist or
Speaker 2: some other Kansas or Missouri newspaper.
Speaker 7: Rose was also the one who encouraged her mother to
Speaker 7: do more than write articles about farm life. Rose pushed
Speaker 7: Laura to write the Little Housebooks and was integral to
Speaker 7: the process.
Speaker 3: She was wrapped up so closely in pushing her mother
Speaker 3: to do this riting, in editing and revising and getting
Speaker 3: the books published. She has just woven into the whole
Speaker 3: story in ways that you cannot ignore.
Speaker 7: And it was Rose, the world famous writer, scared of
Speaker 7: being eclipsed by her mother's success, who overcome with jealousy
Speaker 7: and resentment, almost derailed the entire Little House series before
Speaker 7: it even got started. Behind the cozy, wholesome sweetness of
Speaker 7: the Little House Books is a raging mother and daughter
Speaker 7: relationship that is the stuff of soap operas and tabloid
Speaker 7: talk shows.
Speaker 3: I mean, people in Mansfield still there's still memories about
Speaker 3: this hanging around in Mansfield history. That's how big a
Speaker 3: deal it was.
Speaker 1: But how did it get to this point.
Speaker 7: As far as Little House readers know, Rose only appears
Speaker 7: in the First four Years, last and least well known
Speaker 7: of the books. As the title suggests, the First four
Speaker 7: Years covers Laura's first four years of marriage twelve monso
Speaker 7: Rose arrives in the second year, a happy and healthy baby.
Speaker 7: She's named after the prairie roses Laura loves so much.
Speaker 7: A Rose in December was much rarer than a Rose
Speaker 7: in June. Christmas was at hand, and Rose was a
Speaker 7: grand present. It's a sweet, loving description that comes in
Speaker 7: the middle of a very odd, off putting book. Unlike
Speaker 7: the rest of the Little House series, the First four
Speaker 7: Years is not an enjoyable read.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: Jarring, and I remember that same feeling reading it as
Speaker 3: a kid, like what is this? Where did this come from?
Speaker 7: It's jarring because the First four Years is an unedited manuscript.
Speaker 7: It was never meant to see the light of day.
Speaker 7: It was nevertheless published after both Laura and Rose had died.
Speaker 7: And yet the First four Years might be the most
Speaker 7: pivotal book in the Little House series, written by Laura
Speaker 7: in the aftermath of an epic implosion in Laura and
Speaker 7: Rose's relationship. It eventually launched a decades long conspiracy theory
Speaker 7: over the authorship of the Little House books. If you
Speaker 7: look at all the available information, and you look at
Speaker 7: Laura's writing, and you look at Rose wilder Lane's writing,
Speaker 7: Rose wilder Lane wrote the books. Rose is woven into
Speaker 7: the Little House creation story in ways you can't ignore.
Speaker 7: However you feel about her, there's no question that more
Speaker 7: than Laura's editors, more than Garth Williams, who later illustrated
Speaker 7: the books, Rose is responsible for the Little House series.
Speaker 7: But who was she really? In the first part of
Speaker 7: this two part episode, we're going to meet Rose wilder Lane.
Speaker 7: Where did she come from? What was her life like?
Speaker 7: How did she become her mother's greatest collaborator and underminer?
Speaker 7: Buckle up, I'm Glennis McNichol, and this is part one
Speaker 7: of Rose wilder Lane. The thing about Rose wilder Lane
Speaker 7: is her life story is the stuff of Hollywood, and
Speaker 7: the fact she hasn't been given the Hollywood treatment is
Speaker 7: a bit strange when you consider how much Hollywood Love's adventure,
Speaker 7: drama and scandal like any classic American tale of Rose
Speaker 7: had humble small town beginning the Ingles home.
Speaker 8: Everyone, this is the last house built by Charles Ingles.
Speaker 9: He built this house.
Speaker 8: In eighteen eighty seven and the family moved in on
Speaker 8: Christmas Eve.
Speaker 7: Emily and Iron De Smet, South Dakota, a tiny town
Speaker 7: on the eastern side of the state, surrounded by rolling farmland.
Speaker 7: Dasmet is the setting of the last five Little House books,
Speaker 7: and we're touring the Ingles home. It's a beautiful two
Speaker 7: story house not far from De Smet's main street. At
Speaker 7: some point it was inhabited by all of the Ingles
Speaker 7: except for Laura, who was already married to Almonzo by
Speaker 7: the time Charles built this house.
Speaker 8: This is a photograph of Laura had al Manzo shortly
Speaker 8: after they were married in eighteen eighty five. They had
Speaker 8: their daughter Rose on December fifth of eighteen eighty six,
Speaker 8: and then their luck kind.
Speaker 1: Of ran out for a little while.
Speaker 7: It was during this difficult time for the Wilders that
Speaker 7: Rose lived here in this house.
Speaker 8: Amanda Laura coughed diphtheria, which was a very common disease
Speaker 8: at the time. While they were recovering their daughter, Rose
Speaker 8: stayed here with her grandparents, and the original bedroom upstairs
Speaker 8: became Rose's room.
Speaker 7: Despite the short time she spent here Rose featured prominently
Speaker 7: in our tour. Even from stories about her as a baby,
Speaker 7: evidence of her strong personality is present.
Speaker 4: This is a photograph of Rose when she was young.
Speaker 8: If you look closely, you'll see that she's wearing a
Speaker 8: ring in this photograph.
Speaker 4: The photographer did not want her to.
Speaker 8: Be wearing this ring, so whenever he would pose her
Speaker 8: for her portrait, he would have her hand cover up
Speaker 8: the ring, But whenever he would go behind the sheet
Speaker 8: to take the photo, she would always switch her hands back.
Speaker 9: Even as a child, she.
Speaker 4: Was very strong willed and independent.
Speaker 8: She grew up in to be quite the strong willed,
Speaker 8: independent adult.
Speaker 7: Because so little known about Rose outside her minimal presence
Speaker 7: in the books, the truth of Rose's early years can
Speaker 7: come as quite a shock to readers who only know
Speaker 7: her as the sweet baby Laura wrote about. But Rose
Speaker 7: was a force of nature and her story is at
Speaker 7: least as wild as Laura's, if not more so. I
Speaker 7: talked Joe through her basic bio.
Speaker 4: Well walk me through, just walk me through her early
Speaker 4: childhood and her life, And just like wrote, I want
Speaker 4: to hear about Rose before she became Rose.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: So, she was born in eighteen eighty six, in Dismet,
Speaker 7: South Dakota, which we've been to because that's where Laura lived.
Speaker 7: Laura was only nineteen when she got pregnant. They'd only
Speaker 7: been married. Her and Almonzo had seven babies babies having babies,
Speaker 7: Her and Almondo had only been married for one year.
Speaker 7: Shortly after Rose was born, Laura Almonzo get diphtheria. Almonzo
Speaker 7: has a stroke. He's partially paralyzed. Their crops fail, they
Speaker 7: lose their house, they lose all their money.
Speaker 5: Laura has a.
Speaker 7: Baby boy who dies a few weeks after birth. Their
Speaker 7: house burns down. Like it's a very traumatic early childhood.
Speaker 7: They were very poor, right poor. They're so poor that
Speaker 7: for her whole life, Rose had terrible teeth. She was
Speaker 7: very resentful of that. She's a very very smart kid,
Speaker 7: like she's very smart from a young age. And right
Speaker 7: around the age of eight, they see an advertisement for
Speaker 7: the Ozarks, the Land of Apples, and they decide to
Speaker 7: move to the Ozarks. So they take the you know,
Speaker 7: they go to the Ozarks with one one hundred dollars bill.
Speaker 7: They get to the Ozarks and buy this land. But
Speaker 7: it's called Rocky Ridge because it's full of rocks, and
Speaker 7: it takes years to clear and years to be self sufficient.
Speaker 7: They're deeply, deeply poor. Rose is dressed in I wouldn't
Speaker 7: say rags, but she's not dressed well, and she's so
Speaker 7: aware of this when she she goes to school, the
Speaker 7: class discrepancy of how smart she is and how poor
Speaker 7: she looks. And sometime in high school she's so advanced
Speaker 7: that her mother sends her off to live with Eliza Jane,
Speaker 7: Almonzo's sister. As much as Rose hated Mansfield and resented
Speaker 7: her mother and adored her father, she always wanted to
Speaker 7: leave Mansfield. She could never help. She was always coming back.
Speaker 7: She was always coming home. She went to high school
Speaker 7: with Eliza Jane comes back. But there's some sense, and
Speaker 7: of course these things are hard to gauge, but there
Speaker 7: is some sense in Caroline Fraser's book that Rose may
Speaker 7: have been I mean, I'm using loaded words here, but
Speaker 7: these are the words that I think would have been
Speaker 7: attached to her at the time. She was like perhaps
Speaker 7: a little promiscuous, that she, you know, liked boys and
Speaker 7: was maybe a little risky for I mean, my god,
Speaker 7: can you imagine what small town Ozarks would like fun
Speaker 7: Rose and Laura had an extremely fraught relationship from very
Speaker 7: early on because as a mother, I imagine there's a lot
Speaker 7: of guilt in not being able to provide your daughter
Speaker 7: with certain things or not knowing how to handle her.
Speaker 5: And Laura was a teen mom. They're so poor.
Speaker 7: She's got a husband with a disability, Laura's been working
Speaker 7: since the age of nine, and she has a daughter
Speaker 7: who is a lot to handle. So we know from
Speaker 7: Laura writing about herself that she had a temper. She
Speaker 7: was very candid about that when she wrote about her
Speaker 7: childhood in the Little House series, and she was headstrong,
Speaker 7: and I think you see that in Rose. You see
Speaker 7: that sort of aggressiveness in the controlling nature. Caroline Fraser's
Speaker 7: book Prairie Fires, she writes extensively about Rose, and Caroline writes,
Speaker 7: you know, yes, Laura had a temper, but Laura was
Speaker 7: willing to acknowledge that temper. But Laura was able to
Speaker 7: recognize her laws and Rose seemed unable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I imagine them butting heads. Right. You have these
Speaker 4: two strong, ambitious, smart, ahead of their time women who
Speaker 4: you know, I could already see it happening with my
Speaker 4: own daughter, Like when you have these two strong personalities.
Speaker 4: I think it becomes very difficult.
Speaker 7: Rose, which I think we can both relate to, got
Speaker 7: the hell out of Mansfield, Missouri as soon as she could.
Speaker 7: She met a man called je Lette Lane, Like, this
Speaker 7: is the least surprising thing. A man named je Let Lane.
Speaker 7: He's a confidence man, which man is a con man.
Speaker 7: They were married for technically they were married for a while,
Speaker 7: and they had a tumultuous marriage. They were, you know itinerant,
Speaker 7: always trying to pull together con scam might be probably
Speaker 7: cons funds, Yeah, probably cons. And Rose became pregnant and
Speaker 7: then had a still birth, and a very very difficult
Speaker 7: still birth that made it impossible for her to have
Speaker 7: children after that, and was ill for quite some like
Speaker 7: in the hospital for quite a long time, and eventually
Speaker 7: their marriage falls apart. She goes to San Francisco on
Speaker 7: her own and read about nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 4: Not how old was she then?
Speaker 7: She would have been in nineteen fifteen, she would have
Speaker 7: been almost thirty. She falls for divorce, which in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 7: even in San Francisco, is scandalous.
Speaker 1: Not a small thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And right around this time, you know, Rose is
Speaker 7: alone in San Francisco and she writes Laura this incredibly
Speaker 7: endearing letter and asking Laura to come to San Francisco
Speaker 7: and visit her. She says, dearest Mama Bess, which is
Speaker 7: what she called Laura her whole life, because Almonzo called
Speaker 7: Laura Bess, and so the fact that Rose includes her
Speaker 7: first name sort of is like she sees her mother
Speaker 7: as a bit of a contemporary, even from a young age.
Speaker 7: But dearest Mama Bess, I simply can't stand being so
Speaker 7: homesick for you anymore. You must plan to come out
Speaker 7: here in July or at latest August. You've simply all
Speaker 7: cap got to. I can send you five dollars a
Speaker 7: week to make up for what you will lose in chickens,
Speaker 7: et cetera.
Speaker 1: By the trip.
Speaker 4: I think that's sweet.
Speaker 1: It is sweet.
Speaker 7: And also knowing that in so many of Rose's journals
Speaker 7: she wrote with deep resentment over giving her parents money.
Speaker 7: It's like she is internally conflicted about how much she
Speaker 7: loves and needs them, like her mother, particularly like they're
Speaker 7: so intertwined they cannot separate from each other even in
Speaker 7: their worst moments. Their lives are so connected and they
Speaker 7: need each other so badly. Anyway, Roses in San Francisco,
Speaker 7: she gets divorced, she gets a job at the San
Speaker 7: Francisco Bulletin as a secretary, but then her talents are
Speaker 7: noticed almost immediately, and she gets moved up into an
Speaker 7: editor position. And then she gets moved up into a
Speaker 7: reporter position and starts going out and reporting stories.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's amazing, Yeah yeah yeah wow. So what kind
Speaker 4: of newspaper was that? Was that, say, the New York
Speaker 4: Times or the New York Post.
Speaker 7: Well, this is still the heyday of yellow journalism, right,
Speaker 7: and many newspapers at that time encouraged a degree of
Speaker 7: salaciousness and exaggeration.
Speaker 4: Scandal and scandal cells.
Speaker 7: Scandal, And you know, into this world arrives Rose, who
Speaker 7: it turns out, has an enormous talent for taking a
Speaker 7: kernel of truth and turning it into a fantastic tale that.
Speaker 4: Is maybe or maybe not true.
Speaker 5: Right, Like, there's a.
Speaker 7: Very tenuous connection and she was really really good at it.
Speaker 7: And again it's easy in hindsight to be like, oh,
Speaker 7: that's very shoddy journalism. But having survived both of us
Speaker 7: on the blogosphere and entabloid papers in your case, it's
Speaker 7: like she's a single woman supporting herself in a city.
Speaker 4: That's not easy, not an easy city.
Speaker 7: No, and she's supporting two aging parents who are financially unstable.
Speaker 7: You know, in Missouri, it's like, if you're good at this.
Speaker 4: Lean in, lean in. And she leaned right, she leaned, and.
Speaker 1: She was very good. You know, she's so good at that.
Speaker 7: She immediately starts pitching these biographies of you know, Herbert Hoover,
Speaker 7: who is a politician, then and Charlie Chaplin and Jack London,
Speaker 7: and pitches them to publishing houses and to their relatives
Speaker 7: and in one case to Charlie Chaplin himself.
Speaker 1: I think, as like.
Speaker 7: Highly researched, respectable biographies, and they participated. And then these
Speaker 7: so called biographies get published and they are less by biographies,
Speaker 7: then fantastical tales with one or two facts in them
Speaker 7: and a number I think Jack London's widow sued her,
Speaker 7: Charlie Chaplin tried to sue her. Herbert Hoover was like,
Speaker 7: wanted to distance himself from her, He wanted nothing to
Speaker 7: do with her. Henry Ford's widow was furious. But the
Speaker 7: thing about all that that stands out to me is
Speaker 7: that she was not apologetic. It's not like she was like, oh,
Speaker 7: you caught me. She was like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 7: I wrote a great book. It makes you look fantastic.
Speaker 4: She sounds amazing to me. I stand by my earlier statement.
Speaker 4: I think Rose sounds like a lot of fun.
Speaker 9: She also sounds like she could have worked at Cocker.
Speaker 9: All of the things she's doing again feel very relatable
Speaker 9: and very modern, and she was very good at it.
Speaker 7: And she is definitely making questionable decisions. But by the
Speaker 7: early twenties, she's making bank They paid so highly, and
Speaker 7: she was so good at these. She moved into short
Speaker 7: story writing, which in the twenty for magazines was very profitable.
Speaker 7: She started traveling, like she traveled to Albania, She hiked
Speaker 7: the mountains by herself. She was all over Europe after
Speaker 7: the war. She was in Paris in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 7: with that crowd.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, good Paris. Time, good Paris.
Speaker 7: She was in her forties, and she apparently she apparently
Speaker 7: attended an orgy as an observer. We don't think she participated,
Speaker 7: but again.
Speaker 1: Who knows.
Speaker 4: We don't know, We don't know.
Speaker 7: Again, our sense of this too, Caroline Fraser writes, like
Speaker 7: our sense of her in these time periods are sometimes
Speaker 7: coming from her sort of colleagues, many of whom are
Speaker 7: not nice about her. And we both know writing about
Speaker 7: women who strong personalities is a very tenuous business.
Speaker 4: History is not kind to strong women.
Speaker 7: But colleagues are not kind to strong women like no,
Speaker 7: And again, Rose was a very difficult person, and she
Speaker 7: had very questionable views on a number of issues. You know,
Speaker 7: in hindsight, we see her as this incredibly adventurous, talented
Speaker 7: woman who's traveling around Europe, you know, after the war.
Speaker 7: She's in Albania, she's hiking in the mountains by herself,
Speaker 7: and she's in Paris and it's so enviable. But Rose
Speaker 7: herself was so ashamed of the poverty that she'd been
Speaker 7: raised in, and it was something she carried with her
Speaker 7: her whole life, which is, I think, something to remember,
Speaker 7: like these things from childhood that we carry don't just
Speaker 7: go away.
Speaker 1: And she wrote in her journal like Rose is.
Speaker 7: A big diary keeper, which is how we know a
Speaker 7: lot of this, right, We know a lot of this
Speaker 7: from Rose's own diary, so you have to sort of
Speaker 7: read it, read between the lines.
Speaker 1: From time to time.
Speaker 7: She's not the most reliable narrator, as we've established, but
Speaker 7: she She wrote in her diary in the late twenties
Speaker 7: and said, I would change places with any young woman
Speaker 7: with intelligent, simple, harmonious parents, good health, and a cultured background.
Speaker 7: And I mean, we know this, but we all know
Speaker 7: from social media that you're drawn to the depiction of
Speaker 7: the thing you feel you don't have. And it's so
Speaker 7: clear that Rose desperately wanted to not have come from poverty,
Speaker 7: to have been better educated, to have had parents who
Speaker 7: she felt should have been more loving to her.
Speaker 4: I feel that really hard, though, because I grew up
Speaker 4: with parents who were both a hot mess, and all
Speaker 4: I wanted growing up was stability. And so that line
Speaker 4: that she writes and the guest, I would have traded
Speaker 4: with any girl who had a stable home and who
Speaker 4: had the things that I didn't have. And I think
Speaker 4: that it made me a massive striver as an.
Speaker 5: Adult and someone who has a great deal of stability.
Speaker 4: Now you exactly, yeah, Yeah, who built stability because I
Speaker 4: did not have it as a child.
Speaker 7: Rose definitely craves stability throughout her life, and for a
Speaker 7: long time she had the funds to achieve it, but
Speaker 7: at every turn Rose managed to undermine herself, making an
Speaker 7: endless series of bad financial decisions just when she got
Speaker 7: closest to getting the thing she wanted. But nothing would
Speaker 7: compare to what Rose did when she returned to Mansfield,
Speaker 7: Missouri in the late nineteen twenties. Rosa spent her entire
Speaker 7: life trying to get away from Rocky Ridge, and now
Speaker 7: she was back, and the first thing she did was
Speaker 7: use her money to build her parents a new house,
Speaker 7: a house that neither Laura or Almonza wanted or needed.
Speaker 7: This house would become the setting of the most explosive,
Speaker 7: damaging decision Rose ever made, one her mother Laura never
Speaker 7: got over.
Speaker 10: I think it's this.
Speaker 11: Wilder rock house nine hundred.
Speaker 7: Feet remember Laura's house Rocky Ridge in Mansfield, Missouri, are
Speaker 7: designed to her own specifications, right down to the height
Speaker 7: of the kitchen counter.
Speaker 1: Well up the hill, there's another house, the Rock House.
Speaker 1: I love this house.
Speaker 4: I don't want to live in this house.
Speaker 1: These windows.
Speaker 2: Rose built this as a little, uh retiredment home before
Speaker 2: her parents.
Speaker 7: The Rock House cost eleven thousand dollars to build, close
Speaker 7: to two hundred thousand dollars in today's money, and became
Speaker 7: a metaphor for Rose's relationship with her parents. After childhood
Speaker 7: of severe poverty. Rose wanted them to have something beautiful
Speaker 7: and expensive, proof of her success and value in the world.
Speaker 10: To me, it looks like such a glamorous house, these
Speaker 10: Florida ceiling windows and the armed doors and the casement windows.
Speaker 4: It's so.
Speaker 1: Like it could be in a Hollywood film.
Speaker 7: No expense was spared, and was there electricity in the house?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Rose brought down the electricity at her own expense.
Speaker 10: From what I recall, I don't think very many houses
Speaker 10: in this part of the state had access to electricity.
Speaker 1: Is that now.
Speaker 2: Most of them didn't get electricity until the forties. But
Speaker 2: and it cost her three thousand dollars, which in those
Speaker 2: days is my way.
Speaker 7: For those wondering, three thousand dollars in nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 7: is the equivalent of fifty three thousand dollars in today's money.
Speaker 7: So Rose built her dream house, insisting it was also
Speaker 7: her parents' dream house and the best thing for them.
Speaker 7: But neither Laura nor Almonzo particularly wanted to live there.
Speaker 7: They had built Rocky Ridge to their own specifications. Still,
Speaker 7: Rose was a big personality, and Laura and Almonzo could
Speaker 7: never seem to say no to her. So up the
Speaker 7: hill they went to live in the Rock House and
Speaker 7: down into Rocky Ridge, a place she'd spent most of
Speaker 7: life trying to escape. Went Rose. Then the market crashed.
Speaker 7: This hit the Wilder family hard. Rose lost all of
Speaker 7: her money and all of Laura's money that she'd invested
Speaker 7: for them.
Speaker 11: It was a.
Speaker 7: Brutal loss and through the family back into the financial
Speaker 7: chaos and insecurity they'd spent their entire lives trying to
Speaker 7: climb out of.
Speaker 6: In nineteen thirty one, their brokerage firm collapsed.
Speaker 1: This is Bill Anderson. He's written aboutlawa extensively.
Speaker 6: Rose had encouraged her folks to invest, and she was
Speaker 6: heavily invested. And that's when they really were faced with
Speaker 6: what are we going to do now? Financially?
Speaker 1: Rose is a single woman.
Speaker 7: Even before the Rock House, she'd been helping her parents
Speaker 7: out financially for a long time. Now, in addition to
Speaker 7: herself and her parents, there were two houses and no money.
Speaker 7: Add to this the guilt she felt over losing her parents' money,
Speaker 7: and it was all too much. Throughout her life, Rose
Speaker 7: had suffered bouts of depression. We know from Rose's diaries
Speaker 7: that she often escaped gooted Laura for everything that was
Speaker 7: wrong in her life. In one entry that was typical
Speaker 7: of this resentment, Rose wrote, it is amazing how my
Speaker 7: mother can make me suffer. How she hates it that
Speaker 7: I'm her sole source of support, Implicit in every syllable
Speaker 7: and tone, the fact that I've failed, fallen down on
Speaker 7: the job, been the broken read. The picture Rose pains
Speaker 7: of herself in her journals is that of a woman
Speaker 7: who runs on martyrdom and bitterness, and is incapable of
Speaker 7: accepting any love shown to her by Laura. The curious
Speaker 7: thing is that she's sincerely reaching for some kind of
Speaker 7: companionship with me. She's trying to be friends. She wants
Speaker 7: genuine warmth, sympathy. She has not the faint notion of
Speaker 7: what she's doing to me, But underneath there's not a
Speaker 7: trace of generosity in her. For most of her adult life,
Speaker 7: Rose had insisted on supplementing her parents' finances and resented it.
Speaker 7: But in the aftermath of the financial crash, it was
Speaker 7: Rose who was completely overcome, And it was at this
Speaker 7: moment that Laura, a person who'd been through many severe
Speaker 7: ups and downs in her life, sat down and wrote
Speaker 7: her memoir Pioneer Girl. You will remember from our last
Speaker 7: episode about the writing of the Little House Books that
Speaker 7: Laura initially wrote her memoir Pioneer Girl for adults, but
Speaker 7: that when Rose took it to her publishing contexts, it
Speaker 7: didn't sell. Rose then reworked it as a young children's story,
Speaker 7: and that did get some attention, and then Laura and
Speaker 7: Rose took that and reworked it into Little House in
Speaker 7: the Big Woods, and boom. Laura's editor called the result
Speaker 7: a book No Depression Can Stop. While that was happening,
Speaker 7: Rose was writing too, working on something that she hoped
Speaker 7: might be a bestseller all her own, well.
Speaker 1: Sort of her own.
Speaker 7: Here's where things get absolutely insane.
Speaker 1: Here's what happens.
Speaker 7: Laura sells A Little House in the Big Woods in
Speaker 7: nineteen thirty two to great excitement. She works with Rose
Speaker 7: on Edits for Big Woods to ready it for publication.
Speaker 7: At the same time Rose is helping Laura, she is
Speaker 7: also secretly writing a novel tw to let, The Hurricane Roar,
Speaker 7: which she sells to the Saturday Evening post Let. The
Speaker 7: Hurricane Roar is about a couple, Charles and Caroline. They
Speaker 7: are homesteaders in South Dakota who live in a dugout
Speaker 7: on wild Plum Creek. Charles plays the violin, They have
Speaker 7: a baby, Their crops are destroyed by grasshoppers. Charles has
Speaker 7: to walk hundreds of miles east to find work. Caroline
Speaker 7: survives a blizzard alone in the house. Does any of
Speaker 7: this sound familiar? Laura's parents' names are Charles and Caroline.
Speaker 7: Laura lived in a dugout on Plum Creek. Hurricane is
Speaker 7: basically a mesh of stories from Laura's own childhood, which
Speaker 7: Rose knew Laura intended to utilize in future books, mixed
Speaker 7: with facts from Laura's early marriage to alm Monzo.
Speaker 1: No really.
Speaker 7: At the same time Laura was celebrating the publication of
Speaker 7: Big Woods, Rose wrote a novel based on her mother's
Speaker 7: life and sold that under her own name to The
Speaker 7: Saturday Evening Post, which serialized it. The crazier thing is
Speaker 7: that Rose may have done it without her mother's permission
Speaker 7: or even Laura's knowledge.
Speaker 11: We cannot know with one hundred percent accuracy if Rose
Speaker 11: wilder Lane wrote Let the Hurricane Warren's Secret, but it
Speaker 11: looks very very likely that she did, and I actually
Speaker 11: think it was a little bit more insidious than that.
Speaker 7: Up until nineteen thirty two, Rose had never shown any
Speaker 7: interest in writing about the pioneer life. She'd been asked
Speaker 7: to you by various editors, but had never been excited
Speaker 7: by the idea until she and her mother tried to
Speaker 7: sell Pioneer Girl to the Saturday Evening Post. As you'll remember,
Speaker 7: Rose told her mother that Pioneer Girl was rejected, but
Speaker 7: that might not have been the whole truth. Apparently, after
Speaker 7: turning it down, the Saturday Evening Post may have reconsidered.
Speaker 11: Lane's literary agent got back in touch with her and said, Hey,
Speaker 11: I've heard from the Saturday Evening Post and they are
Speaker 11: interested in a nonfiction serial about the Pioneer days and
Speaker 11: they wanted me to get in touch with you, but
Speaker 11: now they're interested in Pioneer Girl. Apparently Lane never told
Speaker 11: her mother that, and so you know, Saturday Evening Post ultimately,
Speaker 11: of course, bought Let the Hurricane Roar. It was published
Speaker 11: in the fall of nineteen thirty two, and then shortly
Speaker 11: after the book was published, Lane left Rocky Rich Farm
Speaker 11: on an extended trip back east.
Speaker 12: I want to get this straight, so let me recap
Speaker 12: for a second. After Little House in the Big Woods.
Speaker 12: Rose started writing her own novel, which was a fictionalized
Speaker 12: version of her parents, Laura and al Manzo's marriage, but
Speaker 12: she changed the names to Laura's parents, Charles and Caroline,
Speaker 12: and she did this all without telling her mom she
Speaker 12: was doing it.
Speaker 7: Yes, I'm nodding my head emphatically, like we're on a
Speaker 7: talk show right now and you're Oprah and we're like
Speaker 7: what the whole audience is like, what, Like, doesn't it
Speaker 7: feel like we're on some crazy talk show?
Speaker 4: It feels more Jerry Springer tonight.
Speaker 1: It totally feels Jerry.
Speaker 5: This is a Jerry Springer episode.
Speaker 7: Imagine doing that to your mother. So like Rose is
Speaker 7: simultaneously spends her life trying to get away from Mansfield
Speaker 7: and her mother, and yet spends her life also writing
Speaker 7: about her mother or like stealing her mother's stories. It
Speaker 7: is a Jerry Springer show.
Speaker 4: It is, And her mother didn't even know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like crazy.
Speaker 7: Eventually Laura did find out, and she didn't take the
Speaker 7: news well. According to Laura's biographer Caroline Fraser, Laura found
Speaker 7: out about the deception dring a get together in her
Speaker 7: own home with Rose present when Rose's friend, not knowing
Speaker 7: it was a secret brought out copies of the advanced
Speaker 7: advertisements for Hurricane. The advertisements were illustrations of Charles and Caroline,
Speaker 7: Laura's beloved parents, as dashing Hollywood esque figures, gazing into
Speaker 7: the future, as if they had been cast in some
Speaker 7: larger than life screen epic romance. Laura was stunned and confused.
Speaker 7: According to Rose's own journals, Laura wanted to know why
Speaker 7: her parents were in Dakota as a young couple. Here's
Speaker 7: Emily and I re enacting the conversation as Rose recorded
Speaker 7: it in her journal.
Speaker 5: Why do they place it in the Dakotahs?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 5: The names aren't right, what names Charles and Caroline? They
Speaker 5: don't belong in that place at.
Speaker 7: All, Rose internally, in her head, my mother has effectively
Speaker 7: destroyed the simple perfection of my pleasure. Perhaps the most
Speaker 7: extraordinary part of Rose's version is Rose pretending that she
Speaker 7: had no idea why the story she had written was
Speaker 7: written in the ways she'd written it. Rose liked to
Speaker 7: claim she hadn't told Laura about Hurricane because her mother
Speaker 7: never cared about her writing. But even if there were
Speaker 7: a shred of truth to this statement, why had Rose
Speaker 7: chosen to use the names Charles in Caroline, to use
Speaker 7: the details of Laura's childhood that Rose knew were sacred
Speaker 7: to her mother and also knew that her mother planned
Speaker 7: to use in future books.
Speaker 11: Wilder felt betrayed, and why wouldn't you feel betrayed?
Speaker 1: Here's Pamela Smith Hilligan.
Speaker 11: I don't think she ever knew that the Saturday Evening
Speaker 11: Post had again been interested in Pioneer Girl. I don't
Speaker 11: think she ever knew that. But she did feel betrayed
Speaker 11: because the main characters don't let the Hurricane row are
Speaker 11: named Charles and Caroline. He plays the fiddle, she's quiet
Speaker 11: and restrained. There were all kinds of episodes lifted directly
Speaker 11: from Pioneer Girl. The whole book really comes directly from
Speaker 11: Pioneer Girl. So she felt betrayed.
Speaker 7: It's difficult to know Laura's exact feelings on this because
Speaker 7: she did not keep a journal, but there's a lot
Speaker 7: of evidence that the hurricane incident caused a huge rift
Speaker 7: between Laura and Rose. According to Caroline Fraser, the implosion
Speaker 7: between the mother and daughter was so spectacular people in
Speaker 7: Mansfield still speak about it today.
Speaker 3: There's still memories about this hanging around in Mansfield his story.
Speaker 3: That's how big a deal it was.
Speaker 7: It all sounds cataclysmic. How could this have happened? How
Speaker 7: could these two ever work together again? As was everything
Speaker 7: to do with Laura and Rose, there are multiple theories,
Speaker 7: and as always, because Laura herself never kept a record
Speaker 7: of her own feelings, all these theories are guesswork. For instance,
Speaker 7: did Rose go behind her mother's back and steal her
Speaker 7: story for adult audiences and her own glory, or were
Speaker 7: the two women in on this together and maybe Laura
Speaker 7: was just surprised by the details of that story. It
Speaker 7: was Hurricane just more proof of the confused, messy overlap
Speaker 7: of these two women's person non professional lives. Or was
Speaker 7: this just the biggest example yet of Rose's self destructive behavior?
Speaker 7: And most importantly, how did all this impact the Little
Speaker 7: House series, most of which had yet to be written.
Speaker 7: Like all epic stories that are told over and over again,
Speaker 7: details can get murky. This is especially true of Laura
Speaker 7: and Rose, and because we have no version of Laura's side,
Speaker 7: there's some debate whether Rose was deceiving Laura when she
Speaker 7: wrote Let the Hurricane Roar, or whether Laura knew what Rose.
Speaker 1: Was up to and was just upset by some of
Speaker 1: the details.
Speaker 7: There are some scholars who don't think Hurricane was a
Speaker 7: huge deception on Rose's part. The family did need the money,
Speaker 7: and writing was basically the family business by this point.
Speaker 2: From what I've been able to determine, Wilder knew that
Speaker 2: Rose was going to fictionalize part of her autobiography. I
Speaker 2: don't think that was a surprise to Laura.
Speaker 7: Bill Anderson agrees with this theory.
Speaker 6: I don't really think it was sneaky. This was a
Speaker 6: family that was severely hurt by the depressions. Laura and
Speaker 6: al Manzo and Rose were in this together in that
Speaker 6: they were sharing the stories, Rose was modifying them, making
Speaker 6: them publishable, and as a team they were able to
Speaker 6: keep themselves out of poverty.
Speaker 7: Still, most scholars are in agreement that Laura was appalled
Speaker 7: by the way Rose fictionalized her family stories.
Speaker 2: I think the surprise was that she didn't take the
Speaker 2: Pioneer Girl so much as she took her mother's and
Speaker 2: her father's story and confused it with Carolyn and Charles.
Speaker 2: Wilder's first reaction to this story is, what are they
Speaker 2: doing there? That's not right? Those people weren't there in
Speaker 2: that time period.
Speaker 7: Whatever Rose and Laura's agreement, if there even was one,
Speaker 7: Rose writing Hurricane the way she did did damage to
Speaker 7: an already fraught relationship. It was the most public display
Speaker 7: so far of a long shimmering resentment Rose had felt
Speaker 7: towards her mother since childhood.
Speaker 3: You know, it was kind of an expression of Rose's
Speaker 3: you know, passive aggression of her trying to get back
Speaker 3: at her mother for things that had happened. There were
Speaker 3: all these kind of old resentments and old assumptions. You know,
Speaker 3: Rose was always saying, you know, she won't let me
Speaker 3: grow up. She doesn't, you know, see me as an adult.
Speaker 7: The Hurricane incident, it's obvious that that childhood resentment was
Speaker 7: now being mixed with some intense professional envy.
Speaker 11: I think she was the kind of writer who projected
Speaker 11: this image of self confidence, and yet she was well
Speaker 11: aware of her own limitations. And I do think, based
Speaker 11: on what I've seen in the editorial correspondence between the two,
Speaker 11: that on the one hand, Lane discounted her mother's work.
Speaker 11: On the other hand, she knew that her mother was
Speaker 11: becoming a best selling writer, and I think Lane did
Speaker 11: feel a sense of rivalry with her mother, so all
Speaker 11: of that was enormously complicated.
Speaker 7: We can only guess at Laura's feelings over this, however
Speaker 7: enraged or hurt she might have been. We have no
Speaker 7: record of it from her, but we do know for
Speaker 7: a fact what she did. Laura did what she always
Speaker 7: did in the face of calamity. She got to work.
Speaker 7: Nancy tistag Koople believes Laura's way of coping with Rose's
Speaker 7: deception was to get down on paper, even just for herself,
Speaker 7: what had actually happened in those difficult early years of
Speaker 7: her marriage to Almonzo.
Speaker 2: Her objection, I believe, was to the confusion that Lane
Speaker 2: added to the story. And that's why I think she
Speaker 2: wrote the First four Years, because she wanted to get
Speaker 2: her own story down the way it happened, at least
Speaker 2: in her mind, and not the way Lane would fictionalize it.
Speaker 7: This small act of testimony would end up complicating both
Speaker 7: Laura and Rose's legacy in ways neither of them could
Speaker 7: have foreseen. Laura's account of the worst years of her
Speaker 7: life would eventually be published as the First four Years
Speaker 7: and launch a decade long conspiracy theory over authorship of
Speaker 7: the entire Little House series. But in the meantime, the
Speaker 7: writing of the Little House series needed to go on,
Speaker 7: and it was this necessity that may have saved Rose
Speaker 7: and Laura's relationship.
Speaker 3: It is surprising that they were able to kind of
Speaker 3: continue on together with the books.
Speaker 7: That's Caroline Fraser and in Prairie Fires, she writes there
Speaker 7: may have been another reason Laura was able to forgive Rose.
Speaker 7: After Laura discovered the hurricane deception, Rose plunged into such
Speaker 7: a prolonged state of depression that Laura was worried about
Speaker 7: her mental state and even feared for Rose's life. Laura's
Speaker 7: anger may have been cut short by real concern over
Speaker 7: her daughter's survival.
Speaker 3: I think Laura did have a really hot temper. I
Speaker 3: think she knew it. She admitted it. You know, al
Speaker 3: Manzo knew about it, he talked about it. But I
Speaker 3: think she could also you know, analyze herself later and say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I need to apologize for this. I think
Speaker 3: she did apologize for some of the ways, you know,
Speaker 3: in which she hurt wrote. And Laura could also just
Speaker 3: be very sweet, you know. I mean, she had a
Speaker 3: sweetness to her character and a generosity of spirit, which
Speaker 3: is really admirable.
Speaker 7: Whatever the reason Laura and Rose's collaboration on Farmer Boy
Speaker 7: is what saved their relationship. By this point, in nineteen
Speaker 7: thirty three, Rose had left home, possibly to escape her
Speaker 7: shame and Laura's wrath, and was on an extended research
Speaker 7: trip in upstate New York. Although their relationship was still strained,
Speaker 7: we can see from letters that their collaboration was beginning
Speaker 7: to reignite.
Speaker 1: Here's Pamela smith Hill again.
Speaker 11: While she was away in New York, she sent postcards
Speaker 11: back to her mom and visited Malone, New York, and
Speaker 11: Wilder was already beginning. She had already written a draft
Speaker 11: of Farmer Boy, but Lane sent back postcards, she said,
Speaker 11: descriptions of Malone, New York. And so by the time
Speaker 11: that they're reunited at Rocky Rich Farm and the holidays
Speaker 11: are over, they began to work on another version of
Speaker 11: Farmer Boy.
Speaker 7: Farmer Boy, Laura's follow up to Big Woods was based
Speaker 7: on Almonzo's life. The first draft she and Rose turned in,
Speaker 7: completed in the terrible aftermath of the Hurricane Deception, was
Speaker 7: turned down. Laura and Rose received this news just as
Speaker 7: Hurricane was publishing, which must have added salt to the
Speaker 7: already terrible wound. One of the issues with Farmer Boy
Speaker 7: is that Laura was writing about something she hadn't directly experienced,
Speaker 7: and it showed she and Rose had to come back
Speaker 7: together and do it again. Here's Pamela smith Hill again.
Speaker 11: I think Farmer Boy apparently was the project that healed
Speaker 11: the rift between the two of them, because they worked
Speaker 11: on that together, and then by the time that Farmer
Speaker 11: Boy was accepted, something had triggered Wilder to think bigger
Speaker 11: about her work, and really they collaborated throughout the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 11: not just on the Little House series, but even on Freeland.
Speaker 7: Freeland is Lane's second novel, and it again pulls from
Speaker 7: Laura and Almans's experience, as well as Laura's parents, Charles
Speaker 7: and Carolines. Rose may have learned her lesson this time, though,
Speaker 7: since the main characters are named David and Nettie, a
Speaker 7: young couple who take up the offer of Freeland and
Speaker 7: Dakota Territory.
Speaker 11: In nineteen thirty seven, when Lane was working on Freeland,
Speaker 11: which comes directly from material out of Pioneer Girl, Wilder
Speaker 11: was working on By the Shores of Silver Lake. They
Speaker 11: were writing sometimes the same scene similar characters, and at
Speaker 11: this point they were talking about it back and forth openly.
Speaker 11: We have editorial correspondence.
Speaker 7: In nineteen thirty seven, the Saturday Evening Post paid Rose
Speaker 7: thirty thousand dollars to serialize Freeland. That's more than six
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars in today's money. That's more than the
Speaker 7: biggest freelance magazine writer makes today. Freeland also seemed to
Speaker 7: mark the end of the push and pull struggle over
Speaker 7: who had to write to what parts of whose story.
Speaker 1: So by the.
Speaker 2: Late nineteen thirties they had pretty much sorted out how
Speaker 2: they were going to go forward.
Speaker 7: Rose was now permanently living away from Mansfield and Laura
Speaker 7: was gaining confidence in her own writing. Their collaboration continued,
Speaker 7: but it was mostly by letter correspondence now, which perhaps
Speaker 7: eased some of the intensity.
Speaker 1: Of their relationship.
Speaker 7: After Rose's departure, Laura and Almonzo returned to their own
Speaker 7: dream house, Rocky Ridge Farm, where Laura wrote each day
Speaker 7: in her specially built writing book with a view of
Speaker 7: the garden. Each successive Little House Book was a great
Speaker 7: success and brought increasing financial stability to both mother and daughter.
Speaker 7: And yet the most surprising part of this intense collaboration
Speaker 7: was still to come. No one involved could have foretold
Speaker 7: its long and complicated legacy, which eventually reached all the
Speaker 7: way to Hollywood and nearly made it to the White House.
Speaker 7: We're still feeling the effects of Rose and Laura's extraordinary
Speaker 7: relationship today in ways you may be shocked to discover.
Speaker 7: That's next week in Part two of Rose Wilder. Lane
Speaker 7: Wilder is written and hosted by Me, Glennis McNichol. Our
Speaker 7: story editors our Joe Piazza and Emily Meronoff. Our senior
Speaker 7: producer is Emily Meronoff. Our producers are Mary Do, Shina
Speaker 7: Ozaki and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip.
Speaker 7: Sound design and mixing by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 1: Our scene in.
Speaker 7: Additional music was composed by Alise McCoy. We are executive
Speaker 7: produced by Joe Piazza, Nikki Tor, Ali Perry and Me.
Speaker 7: If you're enjoying Wilder, please consider rating and reviewing us
Speaker 7: on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: It actually helps us out quite a lot.
Speaker 7: Thank you to the Laura Ingles Wilder Memorial Society in Dismet,
Speaker 7: South Dakota, and the Laura Ingles Wilder Historic Home and
Speaker 7: Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, and a special shout out to
Speaker 7: Caroline Fraser, whose book Prairie Fires is the mother load
Speaker 7: on Rose and Laura's relationship. Thank you, as always to
Speaker 7: CDM Studios. Please see our show notes if you want
Speaker 7: to know more about the people we interviewed, the places
Speaker 7: we visited, the books we mentioned. You can also find
Speaker 7: our contact and go there If you want to write
Speaker 7: to us with your own thoughts and questions. Follow us
Speaker 7: on Instagram at Wilder Underscore podcast and on TikTok at
Speaker 7: Wilder Podcast, where you can see behind the scenes footage
Speaker 7: from all our travels. Thank you for listening. We'll see
Speaker 7: you next week.
Speaker 5: Like sand through the hour glass, so those the houses