Speaker 1: Last Week on Daughter Dearest Rosewelder.
Speaker 2: Lane was the only living child of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Speaker 2: and her husband Almonzo. She was born in South Dakota
Speaker 2: in eighteen eighty six, when Laura was nineteen years old.
Speaker 2: Much like Laura, Rose grew up in abject poverty. Unlike Laura,
Speaker 2: Rose was able to get an education and in the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties went on to become one of the most
Speaker 2: successful freelance writers in the country. In the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: Rose lost all her money in the stock market crash.
Speaker 2: She then began to collaborate with her mother on what
Speaker 2: would become the first book in the Little House series,
Speaker 2: Little House in the Big Woods. At the same time
Speaker 2: Rose was helping Laura, Rose was secretly writing her own
Speaker 2: book based on Laura's life, called Let the Hurricane Roar.
Speaker 2: Rose secretly sold this book to the Saturday Evening Post,
Speaker 2: and when Laura realized her daughter's deception, this non surprise
Speaker 2: caused a huge rift in their relationship, a rift that
Speaker 2: was only overcome when Rose and Laura were forced to
Speaker 2: revise Farmer Boy together, the second.
Speaker 1: Book in the Little House series.
Speaker 2: Laura was so disturbed by Rose using her story and
Speaker 2: then weirdly combining it with the story of Laura's parents,
Speaker 2: Charles and Caroline. That sometime in the early thirties, shortly
Speaker 2: after Big Woods was published, Laura sat down and wrote
Speaker 2: down her own account of what had happened. She wrote
Speaker 2: it for herself and never meant it for publication. We
Speaker 2: know this book today as the First four Years. This
Speaker 2: is where our story picks up. It's an important moment
Speaker 2: and one that would forever warp Laura and Rose's legacies,
Speaker 2: but they'd never know it. The truth is, the First
Speaker 2: four Years is arguably the reason we are still talking
Speaker 2: about Rose today, and not just because she's in it.
Speaker 2: It's publication after bo both Laura and Rose's death led
Speaker 2: people to start asking the question still being asked by
Speaker 2: some today, if this writing was so different from the
Speaker 2: rest of the series? Did Laura actually write the Little
Speaker 2: House Books?
Speaker 3: If you look at all the available information, and you
Speaker 3: look at Laura's writing, and you look at Rose wilder
Speaker 3: Lane's writing, Rose wilder Lane wrote the books.
Speaker 2: We know that Rose and Laura had a complicated, tumultuous, intense,
Speaker 2: codependent relationship.
Speaker 4: I can only say that Rose wilder Lane and Lauren
Speaker 4: Goes Wilder's relationship was complicated, and you know all mother
Speaker 4: daughter relationships are complicated, but it was fraught with an
Speaker 4: additional layer of professional rivalry.
Speaker 1: But how intertwined was their creative process.
Speaker 3: I think she said, Mom, tell me the stories, and
Speaker 3: then she wrote them down.
Speaker 1: She made up some stuff, she made it cozy.
Speaker 5: It's impossible to leave her out. She has just woven
Speaker 5: into the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore.
Speaker 2: There are other people woven into this story who also
Speaker 2: can't be ignored. A decade after her death, Laura Ingelswilder's
Speaker 2: entire legacy landed in the hands of a man she'd
Speaker 2: never met, a man who almost immediately sold it to
Speaker 2: Hollywood and then turned around and used the proceeds to
Speaker 2: make a run for president of the United States on
Speaker 2: the Libertarian ticket, which brings us right back to the
Speaker 2: first four years. It was this man, Rose's heir who
Speaker 2: discovered the first four years in some of Rose's papers.
Speaker 6: After mis Laine's death in nineteen sixty eight came the
Speaker 6: discovery of the manuscript that she never published the first
Speaker 6: four years. So Roger, being the heir, took that manuscript
Speaker 6: to Harper and Rowe and Ursula Nordstrom immediately wanted.
Speaker 2: To publish it, and thus was launched one of the
Speaker 2: literary world's great conspiracies. Decades later, people are still asking
Speaker 2: the question did Rose write the books herself or was
Speaker 2: she just her mother's very heavy handed editor. How much
Speaker 2: of Rose's political ideology ended up woven into Laura's story.
Speaker 2: How is Little House connected to the libertarian movement? And
Speaker 2: is Rose responsible for funding the education of two of
Speaker 2: the most powerful right wing operatives in America. That's coming
Speaker 2: up on part two of Daughter Dearest, Politics and Rose.
Speaker 2: I'm Glennis McNicol and this is Rose Wilder Lame.
Speaker 1: Let's begin in the early nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: As you will recall from our last episode, Laura has
Speaker 2: just finished writing Little House in the Big Woods. Rose
Speaker 2: has secretly written and sold Let the Hurricane Roar, using
Speaker 2: facts from Laura's life and childhood, but changing them around
Speaker 2: in confusing ways. Upon discovering this deception, Laura is understandably
Speaker 2: upset with Rose, but she's also confused, and it's this
Speaker 2: confusion that leads her to straighten out the facts of
Speaker 2: the story for herself. Nancy tis dad Coople, editor in
Speaker 2: chief of the Pioneer Girl Project, believes when Laura read
Speaker 2: Hurricane and saw how her parents' story had been reworked
Speaker 2: using details of her own life, she sat down and
Speaker 2: wrote The First four Years.
Speaker 7: Her objection, I believe, was to the confusion that Lane
Speaker 7: added to the story, and that's why I think she
Speaker 7: wrote the First four Years because she wanted to get
Speaker 7: her own story down the way it happened, at least
Speaker 7: in her mind, and not the way Lane would fictionalize it.
Speaker 2: Keep in mind the timing of that writing, because here's
Speaker 2: where we're going to leap forward all the way to
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, which is the year the First four
Speaker 2: Years is published. Rose has been dead for three years.
Speaker 2: As everyone who owns the Yellow Little House on the
Speaker 2: Prairie box set knows, the First four Years is positioned
Speaker 2: as the last book in the Little House series. The
Speaker 2: issue is there was nothing in the First four Years
Speaker 2: publication that alerted readers to the fact that it may
Speaker 2: have been written before the other books in the series
Speaker 2: and not as their conclusion. Nor was the reader made
Speaker 2: to understand that neither Rose nor Laura had ever intended
Speaker 2: the First Four Years to see the light of day.
Speaker 7: As Wayne told Harper's in the sixties, A books not
Speaker 7: ready for publication. I thought my mother had destroyed it.
Speaker 7: It was never intended to be published as the first
Speaker 7: four years is jarring. The tone is completely different from
Speaker 7: the rest of the books. As a child, I believed
Speaker 7: all the books had emerged straight from Laura's head, and
Speaker 7: this made the first four years especially shocking.
Speaker 2: Where had my Laura gone? This new Laura was cynical
Speaker 2: and angrier. Nothing in this world felt safe or appealing.
Speaker 2: Here's Laura's biographer, Caroline Fraser.
Speaker 5: It's so different and kind of disappointing in some regards,
Speaker 5: and to an adult who's studying Laura, it's an invaluable
Speaker 5: document because it shows her struggling to incorporate the worst
Speaker 5: moments of her life in a way that would fit
Speaker 5: in with the uplifting narrative the arc of the series.
Speaker 2: It's definitely easier as a grown up to understand the
Speaker 2: first four Years as a first draft, something that was
Speaker 2: never intended for publication, written by Laura for herself as
Speaker 2: a way to keep her own memory separate from Rose's
Speaker 2: fictionalization of them. And it's also easier to understand why
Speaker 2: Laura dropped it the subject matter was too unbearable. In
Speaker 2: the first four years of their marriage, Laura and Almonzo
Speaker 2: lost multiple crops, they went into enormous debt, they lost
Speaker 2: an infant son, Almonza was handicapped by diphtheria, and their
Speaker 2: home burned down, all before Laura turned twenty two. Can
Speaker 2: you blame her for not wanting to revisit that She.
Speaker 5: Just couldn't do it. I mean, there just was no
Speaker 5: way that she could do it, And I think she
Speaker 5: thought about it after she had finished the series in
Speaker 5: nineteen forty three. She definitely thought about returning, probably to
Speaker 5: that manuscript and trying to work it up into a
Speaker 5: completed sequel to the series. But also I think there
Speaker 5: just wasn't any way to write about her adult experiences
Speaker 5: as an adult in a way that would have been
Speaker 5: acceptable to a children's audience.
Speaker 1: But that's not how the publishers presented the.
Speaker 2: First four years, and the difference between this and the
Speaker 2: previous books inevitably led to questions, how could the writing
Speaker 2: be so different? Where was the Laura we knew and
Speaker 2: loved from all the other books. Decades later, someone would
Speaker 2: try to answer this question. It's at this point that
Speaker 2: Rose's story starts to loop back and forth in time.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 2: Right now, we're going to jump forward all the way
Speaker 2: to nineteen ninety three, when a man named William Holtz
Speaker 2: published a biography of Rose called Ghost in the Little House. Holtz,
Speaker 2: a University of Missouri professor, felt Rose had not received
Speaker 2: her due for her impact on American culture and politics,
Speaker 2: and when about rectifying that Ghost in the Little House
Speaker 2: remains the only full biography of Rose, and Rose was
Speaker 2: absolutely deserving of her own biography. But Holtz's description of
Speaker 2: Laura and her and Rose's relationship left readers aghast. Holtz
Speaker 2: referred to Laura throughout the book sarcastically and demeaningly as
Speaker 2: Mama Bess, Rose's pet name for her mother, and seemed
Speaker 2: to take on Rose's view that all the hurdles in
Speaker 2: Rose's life were indeed Laura's fault. In Holtz's view, Laura
Speaker 2: was an exacting and unloving mother and Rose was a
Speaker 2: deeply sympathetic and beleaguered daughter. But the real shock was
Speaker 2: the seven page appendix, which laid out Holtz's argument that
Speaker 2: it was Rose who.
Speaker 1: Had written the books at the time.
Speaker 2: Ghost in the Little House was published, The public's understanding
Speaker 2: of Laura was almost entirely the product of the books
Speaker 2: and the hit television show to the world. At that point,
Speaker 2: Rose was perennially a small child. Now Here was this
Speaker 2: hearpy mother and her silently toling daughter. The book inevitably
Speaker 2: land like a bomb in the little houseworld, and lo,
Speaker 2: a full blown conspiracy was born. Part of the reason
Speaker 2: the conspiracy was able to flourish so well was that
Speaker 2: a sort of vacuum of information had always existed around
Speaker 2: Laura's authorship of the books. During her lifetime, Rose had
Speaker 2: relentlessly insisted that her mother had done all of this
Speaker 2: work on her own. And it's hard to gauge how
Speaker 2: involved Rose actually was because Laura didn't keep a journal,
Speaker 2: and for a long time their collaboration happened in person.
Speaker 2: All we really have to go by are some letters
Speaker 2: of correspondence between the mother and daughter. So when Holtz
Speaker 2: pressed on the unlikeliness of a sixty five year old
Speaker 2: woman penning these masterpieces without help, and then used Rose's
Speaker 2: letters and journal entries to back up the argument that
Speaker 2: Rose had been a collaborator, the theory began to take
Speaker 2: root that Rose was the true author because there was
Speaker 2: very little to counter it.
Speaker 1: So who actually wrote the Little House Books? Laura or Rose?
Speaker 2: From an obsessively researched twenty twenty three viewpoint, it seems
Speaker 2: clear that the answer probably lies somewhere between the two,
Speaker 2: much closer to Laura than to Rose. Caroline Fraser believes
Speaker 2: there are absolutely scenes written by Rose in some of
Speaker 2: the books, including some of the scenes that stand out
Speaker 2: to readers as especially political, like the Fourth of July
Speaker 2: scene in Little Town on the Prairie, where Laura includes
Speaker 2: a speech about the glorious fourth and how most of
Speaker 2: the people there are trying to pull themselves up by
Speaker 2: their bootstraps. She then reprints the entirety of the Declaration
Speaker 2: of Independence, which I must tell you is deeply confusing
Speaker 2: to me as a child in Canada, and follows this
Speaker 2: with Laura's desire to say amen at the end of
Speaker 2: the reading.
Speaker 5: I think that we can identify, you know, based on
Speaker 5: manuscript evidence and and also style, we could certainly identify
Speaker 5: certain scenes, you know, the famous Fourth of July scenes
Speaker 5: in Farmer Boy and Little Town. I think it is
Speaker 5: that she clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself her
Speaker 5: own voice into writing.
Speaker 2: Fraser also thinks that Rose and Laura may have brought
Speaker 2: different strengths to the books, including the fact that Rose
Speaker 2: may have been more talented at writing dialogue than her mother.
Speaker 5: You can see Rose, I think you can hear her
Speaker 5: in some of the dialogue. You know, she was quite
Speaker 5: gifted at doing that, compared to her mother, who I
Speaker 5: think that was a really hard thing for Laura to
Speaker 5: reconstruct natural dialogue, especially at the beginning. So you can
Speaker 5: see their contrasting styles coming through, where Rose was bringing
Speaker 5: this kind of sense of stability and safety and sort
Speaker 5: of gentleness us to the stories, some of which is
Speaker 5: quite necessary, I think. But in other moments you can
Speaker 5: see Laura's vision, which was a much you know, more stark,
Speaker 5: more plain, more confrontational, a little bit almost you know,
Speaker 5: like this was the way it was. This, This is
Speaker 5: how hard it was to live this life. That's Laura.
Speaker 1: There's also the fact we have Rose's own writing to
Speaker 1: go by. We know what Rose's authorship looks like. Here's
Speaker 1: Pamela smith Hill.
Speaker 4: Rose weather Lane's writing is it's very distant, it's very
Speaker 4: kind of turgid prose. She uses lots of abstract rather
Speaker 4: than concrete vocabulary. When you read Freeland and Let the
Speaker 4: Hurricane War, it's almost as if Rose weather Lane is
Speaker 4: trying too hard. They don't have that sense of effortless
Speaker 4: artistry that the Little House Books have. And then there
Speaker 4: are passages in both of those books where she basically
Speaker 4: plagiarizes her mother's Pioneer Girl text. So she'll take a
Speaker 4: description from Pioneer Girl, an eloquent, beautiful description of a
Speaker 4: pioneer sunset that is lyrical and poetic, and she will
Speaker 4: PLoP it into the middle of Let the Hurricane War
Speaker 4: and Freeland, But she uses abstract vocabulary, and it's kind
Speaker 4: of clumsy and sophomoric. So I think there are things
Speaker 4: we can never know about the chemistry between Lauren Goswilder
Speaker 4: and Rose Wilder Lay. But the idea that Rose Wilder
Speaker 4: Lane is singly responsible for the Little House Books doesn't
Speaker 4: hold water when you look at her own writing.
Speaker 2: Both Nancy Tysdad Coopele and Caroline Fraser agree it's almost
Speaker 2: impossible to credit Rose with authorship.
Speaker 7: I believe Rolas was just really a brilliant editor.
Speaker 8: I think she was an editor and she was an agent,
Speaker 8: and people don't really understand the extent to which editors
Speaker 8: and ancients shape people's writing and how they tell their stories.
Speaker 8: Their goal, for the most part is to help people
Speaker 8: tell their story the best way possible, and that's what
Speaker 8: Lane is doing.
Speaker 5: They both contributed a lot, but Laura was the person
Speaker 5: who wrote the books. You know, Rose was an editor.
Speaker 5: She was certainly a heavier editor than most people might conceive,
Speaker 5: but that also is not unheard of.
Speaker 2: Whatever her limitations as a writer were, there's no question
Speaker 2: Rose was an exceptional editor. Even Laura's official editor, Ursula Nordstrom,
Speaker 2: once remarked that the only manuscripts that ever came to
Speaker 2: her perfectly formed were that of Laura's and shark Arlette's
Speaker 2: web author E. B.
Speaker 9: White.
Speaker 2: Laura herself always recognized this as one of Rose's strengths.
Speaker 2: In a letter, she once told her daughter, I am
Speaker 2: glad you like my use of words and my descriptions,
Speaker 2: but without your fine touch, it would be a flop.
Speaker 5: I think to people who don't have that experience with publishing,
Speaker 5: that may be a shock, but it's certainly a factor
Speaker 5: in many works. But you know, I'm not one of
Speaker 5: those people who thinks that the book should be by
Speaker 5: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Now, I don't
Speaker 5: think that's That's not how it works.
Speaker 8: In my opinion, the story is Wilder's voice, that child
Speaker 8: like wonder that the world is Wilder's and it is
Speaker 8: laying that is helping her shape this.
Speaker 2: So, Joe, as a reasonably objective observer, knowing all this,
Speaker 2: what are your thoughts now on who wrote the Little
Speaker 2: House Books?
Speaker 10: It sounds to me like Rose is the editor that
Speaker 10: all of us would love to have, That she is engaged,
Speaker 10: that she is hands on, and not just hands on,
Speaker 10: but that she's getting her hands dirty in a manuscript,
Speaker 10: which I personally think is very important for an editor.
Speaker 10: But I will lean towards given all of the information
Speaker 10: that we have, and will lean towards Laura writing the
Speaker 10: books and Rose editing.
Speaker 2: I agree, Rose just sounds like the editor you dream of,
Speaker 2: you know, who really understands what you're after and helps
Speaker 2: you get there. But we also know what Rose's books
Speaker 2: look like, and there's no magic in them, like all
Speaker 2: of this magic is clearly coming from Laura.
Speaker 1: And I also, just on a very basic level, I.
Speaker 2: Find it really difficult to imagine that Laura at age
Speaker 2: sixty five would be like, Okay, Rose, here are my stories.
Speaker 2: That's one thing, but please feel free to sign my
Speaker 2: name to this and then send me out in the
Speaker 2: world as a liar.
Speaker 1: Because that's like, that's a lot.
Speaker 10: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: Why would do either of them try to execute that
Speaker 2: on a very very practical level, And why would Laura
Speaker 2: be out there taking credit for something that wasn't her work.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's also something about the first four
Speaker 2: years that reminds me of the Harper Lee book Go
Speaker 2: Set a Watchman.
Speaker 10: Yes, yes, that's exactly what I've been thinking this entire time.
Speaker 10: This smells of ghosts at a Watchman. I think we
Speaker 10: need to explain how this actually came about.
Speaker 2: So Ghost Set a Watchman was It turns out the
Speaker 2: original draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that Harper Lee
Speaker 2: turned into her editor, and her editor said, no, pull
Speaker 2: out this part where you're a kid and turn that
Speaker 2: into a book which came out as To Kill a Mockingbird.
Speaker 1: Which is an American classic, which is an American classic.
Speaker 2: Decades later, after harper Le's death, find ghost at a
Speaker 2: Watchman and republish it as a new undiscovered book with
Speaker 2: very little framing of how this book exists and why?
Speaker 2: And everyone read it and was like, what is this?
Speaker 2: Why is Atticus a racist? Where's this unwieldy, terrible book
Speaker 2: coming from? And it launched a lot of questions over well,
Speaker 2: did Harperley actually write to Colon Mockingberg? But I think
Speaker 2: the same thing happened, which is they found an original,
Speaker 2: unpublished draft, published it without context, and all it did
Speaker 2: was lead to more questions.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly.
Speaker 10: It goes at A Watchman, much like the first four
Speaker 10: Years was never supposed to see the light of day.
Speaker 10: And there's a reason that these books sat in the drawer,
Speaker 10: and then there's a reason, of course that.
Speaker 1: They were later published.
Speaker 10: And I think that that reason is money, money, money.
Speaker 2: Money, money, money, and also the deceptiveness of publishing it
Speaker 2: is like a new book, Like if they'd been published
Speaker 2: within the context they were written, that could be fascinating
Speaker 2: from research purposes, but published.
Speaker 1: As like here's a new book, it's like, well what
Speaker 1: is this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough, go said A Watchman has a ton of
Speaker 2: politics in it too that were really questionable. And I
Speaker 2: think what we're headed into after the break is like
Speaker 2: how much of Rose's questionable politics are in Laura's books.
Speaker 2: As a kid, the Little House Books felt like a
Speaker 2: story of family, hard work, and adventure. As an adult,
Speaker 2: it's easier to see there might be another message beneath
Speaker 2: all the coziness.
Speaker 4: I loved that this was her story, and I loved
Speaker 4: that it came from her memories.
Speaker 2: That's politics. Writer Rebecca Traster. She loved The Little House
Speaker 2: Books growing.
Speaker 11: Up, and I think especially growing up with my own
Speaker 11: mom and her sister, who had these memories of a
Speaker 11: rural life that was so distant from anything that anyway
Speaker 11: that I lived in the.
Speaker 1: Suburbs, like, I really valued that kind of.
Speaker 7: Storytelling about you know, remember how we used to do things.
Speaker 2: Coming back to them as a grown up, she was
Speaker 2: less concerned about the authorship question of the books than
Speaker 2: the politics she found there. Politics that sounded an awful lot.
Speaker 4: Like Rose, she was just manipulating her mother's memories to
Speaker 4: serve her own political purposes.
Speaker 2: There are many people who consider Little House to be
Speaker 2: a libertarian fantasy, and one of the main reasons for
Speaker 2: this is that Rose, in later life became a strident
Speaker 2: voice in the libertarian movement. But how did she get
Speaker 2: there and how much of the politics people claim to
Speaker 2: see in Little House are actually hers, and how much
Speaker 2: are actually Laura's.
Speaker 4: The fact that Rose's politics shapes these books is really
Speaker 4: important to understanding American history.
Speaker 2: These days, we understand complicated to be a word we
Speaker 2: attached to any woman who was living outside her culturally
Speaker 2: prescribed role. But Rose really was very complicated. She was
Speaker 2: incredibly smart and talented in a time and place that
Speaker 2: did not reward or support women for being so. She
Speaker 2: suffered debilitating bouts of depression before we understood it to
Speaker 2: be a disease. She'd been divorced, She'd lost a child,
Speaker 2: She'd traveled widely. She made a lot of money and
Speaker 2: was very bad at managing it. For all the financial
Speaker 2: support she gave her parents, they were often supporting her.
Speaker 2: She had no living children but repeatedly adopted sons. And
Speaker 2: she had increasingly extreme political views. These last two are
Speaker 2: key and dominate the legacy of Little House in bizarre ways.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the increasingly extreme political views. Rose had
Speaker 2: always had strong beliefs largely rooted in the triumph of
Speaker 2: the individual over the government. You can see this theme
Speaker 2: reoccurring in her stories of Jack London and Herbert Hoover
Speaker 2: and later in the novels about her parents, especially her father.
Speaker 2: But during the depression, these beliefs hit a fever pitch.
Speaker 2: Rose loathed FDR and Eleanor. In a number of letters
Speaker 2: she wished them both dead and volunteered to do the killing,
Speaker 2: which was not unusual for her time and place. As
Speaker 2: Pamela smith Hill notes.
Speaker 4: We do know that the Wilders opposed the New Deal.
Speaker 4: They were not great fans of FDR. But almost everybody
Speaker 4: in Wright County, Missouri at that time, almost everybody in
Speaker 4: southern Missouri at that time, was opposed to the New Deal,
Speaker 4: So in that sense, it wasn't unusual.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty five, at the height of the depression,
Speaker 2: Rose's rants, until now mostly contained to letters, moved onto
Speaker 2: the pages of the Saturday Evening Post. Rose had left
Speaker 2: Rocky Ridge at this point, though was still deep in
Speaker 2: edits with Laura for on the Banks of Plumb Creek.
Speaker 2: The essay she wrote for the Saturday Evening Post was
Speaker 2: titled Credo. It argued for individual liberty, and to some
Speaker 2: extent it argued in support.
Speaker 1: Of fascist regimes.
Speaker 2: Rose leaned on her travel experience in communist Russia to
Speaker 2: make the argument that the new Deal was leading to
Speaker 2: a terrible future for the country. Many of the personal
Speaker 2: anecdotes she included to make this argument were not surprisingly total.
Speaker 1: Fiction, but people loved it. The essay was a hit.
Speaker 2: Herbert Hoover, now former President, who had long tried to
Speaker 2: disassociate himself from Rose, called for a million copies to
Speaker 2: be printed. Creto was reissued as a pamphlet and would
Speaker 2: become a foundational document in the libertarian movement, which was
Speaker 2: then still in its infancy. It also signaled a shift
Speaker 2: for Rose into political commentary, which she would increasingly lean
Speaker 2: into for the rest of her life. Readers of Rose's
Speaker 2: novels Let the Hurricane, Roar, and Freeland will not have
Speaker 2: to guess at her politics. She includes them with a
Speaker 2: heavy hand. But the question that plagues Little House readers
Speaker 2: is how much of Rose's politics are in the Little
Speaker 2: House series, and perhaps more importantly, did Laura share these beliefs.
Speaker 1: The answer is yes to an extent.
Speaker 5: It's quite clear in letters that she wrote to Rose
Speaker 5: that she just accepted kind of unquestioningly a lot of
Speaker 5: Ros's crazier assertions and conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: That's Caroline Fraser again.
Speaker 5: They certainly shared at the beginning of FDR's push for
Speaker 5: the New Deal. They share this dismay and ultimately contempt
Speaker 5: for New Deal policies for FDR, especially for Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 5: I mean Eleanor Roosevelt somehow came in for the worst
Speaker 5: of much of what they had to say.
Speaker 2: Certain scenes in the books, like the Fourth of July
Speaker 2: scene we mentioned earlier, have always stood out, and as
Speaker 2: a kid with no knowledge of American history or politics,
Speaker 2: it was jarring to go from the day to day
Speaker 2: experience of the Ingles family to these broad ruminations on
Speaker 2: the idea of America.
Speaker 4: When you look at a book like Little Town on
Speaker 4: the Prairie with the big Fourth of July episode and
Speaker 4: the speech that rosewelder Lane clearly inserted into that manuscript,
Speaker 4: that seems to sound very libertarian in its focus. No
Speaker 4: wonder people have assumed that Wilder may have shared her
Speaker 4: daughter's politics. On the other hand, if you look at
Speaker 4: children's books from this period, and you remember that that
Speaker 4: Little Town on the Prairie was published as the world
Speaker 4: was about to descend into war, you find the same
Speaker 4: patriotic themes, the same patriotic ideas that come filtered through
Speaker 4: books like Johnny Tremaine and caddy Woodlawn.
Speaker 12: So I think, in.
Speaker 4: Part because the Little House Books have endured as some
Speaker 4: of these other books haven't, we read into them perhaps
Speaker 4: more of Rose's politics than we should have.
Speaker 2: Perhaps the most useful evidence in this argument is Rose's
Speaker 2: own writing. We talked about Freeland in the last episode,
Speaker 2: Rose's second novel, based largely on the early years of
Speaker 2: her parents' marriage and their life in Dkota Territory. This
Speaker 2: was the novel Laura was okay with Rose writing, unlike
Speaker 2: Let the Hurricane Roar, which Rose wrote in secret. Caroline
Speaker 2: Fraser describes Freeland as straight prop ganda. It contains lines
Speaker 2: like living is never easy, that all human history is
Speaker 2: a record of achievement in disaster, and that our great
Speaker 2: asset is the valor.
Speaker 1: Of the American spirit.
Speaker 2: Freeland is not a good book, and while it was
Speaker 2: successful at the time of publication, the only reason we
Speaker 2: still know about it is its association with Laura and
Speaker 2: the Little House series. Had Laura wanted The Little House
Speaker 2: Books to be overtly political, she certainly had that option. Instead,
Speaker 2: she was always more focused on sticking to the daily
Speaker 2: details of life and family.
Speaker 5: She didn't publicize it in no way that Rose did.
Speaker 5: I mean Rose made at her life's work to publicize
Speaker 5: these ideas in any way that she could. Laura didn't
Speaker 5: seem to be interested in doing that.
Speaker 1: But Rose promoted the opposite.
Speaker 2: She wanted people to believe the libertary message was implicit
Speaker 2: in the Little House Books. She wanted people to understand
Speaker 2: them as a libertarian fantasy, which is part of the
Speaker 2: reason why she insisted the books were true. The details
Speaker 2: of the ingles survival on the prairie supported her ideology.
Speaker 5: Well, there's this whole period after her mother's death when
Speaker 5: she becomes quite adamant about insisting that everything in the
Speaker 5: books is true and that the books represent an argument
Speaker 5: for her political stance. You know that they're an argument
Speaker 5: for self reliance, that they're a monument to hard work
Speaker 5: and you know, pulling yourself up by your bidstraps.
Speaker 2: The Little House Books are tied into libertarian politics for
Speaker 2: more reasons than this. Let's go back to Rose's early
Speaker 2: years as a journalist. For much of her life, starting
Speaker 2: in the early nineteen twenties, Rose traveled widely.
Speaker 1: More than once.
Speaker 2: Rose took it upon herself to financially support some of
Speaker 2: the young people she met on her travels, often young men,
Speaker 2: though not always.
Speaker 1: Here's Reverend Nicholas Enman.
Speaker 2: He's the director of the Laura Ingleswilder Home and Museum
Speaker 2: in Mansfield, Missouri.
Speaker 12: She was always finding people in different parts of the
Speaker 12: world and embracing them and encouraging them something that she
Speaker 12: paid for their educations. She just had that surrogate mother
Speaker 12: grandmother role for so many people.
Speaker 2: Later in life, Rose took on a young man named
Speaker 2: Roger Lee McBride. In nineteen thirty eight, Rose relocated to Danbury, Connecticut,
Speaker 2: where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Speaker 2: A few years later, in the mid nineteen forties, Rose
Speaker 2: met McBride.
Speaker 1: He was a teenager at the time.
Speaker 13: Rose was an extraordinary person. I met her when I
Speaker 13: was seventeen and she was about sixty.
Speaker 2: Here's McBride describing meeting Rose for the very first time
Speaker 2: in an interview he gave in the early nineties for
Speaker 2: a television show called All About Kids.
Speaker 13: My father was an editor of the Reader's Digest and
Speaker 13: had condensed one of the books she wrote in later life.
Speaker 13: He thought she was fascinating and could teach me a lot,
Speaker 13: and I had the same kind of curious mind about
Speaker 13: affairs and ideas that Rose in fact had, and she
Speaker 13: recognized that.
Speaker 2: Rose and McBride established an immediate connection, one that would
Speaker 2: also remain for the rest of her life.
Speaker 13: I used to hitchhike from our home in New York
Speaker 13: near the Digest to her then farm in Connecticut, small
Speaker 13: farm on Saturdays, and oh weeder gardens and help clearer
Speaker 13: sheds out and stuff like that in the afternoon. In
Speaker 13: the evening, she'd cook her famous chicken pie for me,
Speaker 13: and we would talk until one or two in the
Speaker 13: morning about all the things that a seventeen year old
Speaker 13: wanted to ask an older, wiser person, stories about everybody
Speaker 13: she knew, from Jack London to Herbert Hoover, and her
Speaker 13: opinions about events in the world and theories and so on,
Speaker 13: And in the end she adopted me informally is her grandson.
Speaker 13: I used to call her Grandma, and it's still a
Speaker 13: little strange for me to call her Rose, because I am.
Speaker 13: She was a riveting person in a greater influence on
Speaker 13: me than everybody else in my life put together. During
Speaker 13: the formative.
Speaker 2: Stages, McBride also strongly shared Rose's libertarian views. He would
Speaker 2: later say he was fascinated by her mind Here's Bill Anderson.
Speaker 6: Because Rose was such a proponent of conservative politics and
Speaker 6: anti New Deal procedures, she looked upon any young person
Speaker 6: that she met as someone that she could show the
Speaker 6: other side of the coin to as far as governmental
Speaker 6: doings such as the New Deal.
Speaker 2: During the time McBride knew Rose, she grew in prominence
Speaker 2: in the libertarian movement.
Speaker 1: William F.
Speaker 2: Buckley would later refer to Rose as one of the
Speaker 2: three Furies of modern libertarianism, along with Einrand and Isabel Patterson.
Speaker 2: In the mid nineteen fifties, Rose donated money little House
Speaker 2: residual money to fund a free market academy in Colorado called.
Speaker 1: The Freedom School.
Speaker 2: The school had been started by a businessman inspired by
Speaker 2: Rose's writing. The Freedom School was attended by Charles and
Speaker 2: David Coke, the billionaire brothers who funded the Tea Party
Speaker 2: movement and have been widely credited for pushing the Republican
Speaker 2: Party towards its more extreme right wing. In nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: David ran for president on the libertarian ticket. Both Coke
Speaker 2: brothers claim to have been heavily influenced by the teachings
Speaker 2: of the Freedom School. So how does Roger Lee McBride
Speaker 2: factor into all this? I think it's important to pause
Speaker 2: at this point and remember Rose is not a young
Speaker 2: woman anymore. She hasn't been for quite some time. When
Speaker 2: Laura died in early nineteen fifty seven, Rose was already
Speaker 2: seventy and she needed help managing. She needed help managing
Speaker 2: her mother's estate, she needed help managing the Little House estate.
Speaker 1: She needed help.
Speaker 2: Managing her own correspondences, and she increasingly leaned on McBride,
Speaker 2: now out of law school, to fill this role for her,
Speaker 2: and then envisioned that he would continue to do so
Speaker 2: after her death.
Speaker 6: Because Missus Lane knew that with her death the family
Speaker 6: line would be completed, she designated Roger Lee McBride to
Speaker 6: handle all the business of the Little House books. And
Speaker 6: after Missus Lane's death in nineteen sixty eight came the
Speaker 6: discovery of the manuscript that she never published the first
Speaker 6: four years.
Speaker 2: In the fall of nineteen sixty eight, the age of
Speaker 2: eighty one, shortly before she was set to start out
Speaker 2: on a three year world tour, Rosewelder Lane died in
Speaker 2: her sleep.
Speaker 6: Since there were no descendants of Laura and l Manzil
Speaker 6: Wilder other than Rose, it was a responsibility to have
Speaker 6: some successor appointed to handle the big business of the
Speaker 6: Little House books.
Speaker 2: So Rose dies, Laura is already dead. None of Laura's
Speaker 2: sisters had any children. There are no direct family heirs
Speaker 2: to the legacy of these now classic children's books, and
Speaker 2: because of this, the rights to Little House in the
Speaker 2: Prairie land squarely in the hands of Rose's sole appointed heir,
Speaker 2: Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 13: When she died, she left me her estate, which of
Speaker 13: course included her mother's, with the expectation that carry out
Speaker 13: a number of commitments she won and carried out after
Speaker 13: her death.
Speaker 2: That's right, the rights to Little House on the Prairie,
Speaker 2: Laura's entire now beloved life story and life's work, landed
Speaker 2: in the hands of a man she'd never met, who
Speaker 2: bore no real to her whatsoever. McBride took his responsibility seriously,
Speaker 2: yet he's also the reason so much conspiracy exists around
Speaker 2: Laura and Rose.
Speaker 1: Remember the first four years.
Speaker 2: The ninth book in the series, the one that was
Speaker 2: published after Laura's death and was so jarring to readers, Well,
Speaker 2: this is how it gets published.
Speaker 13: I found the manuscript to the first four Years, the
Speaker 13: last of Laura's books, amongst Rose's papers, and I edited.
Speaker 2: That one shortly after inheriting everything Little House. McBride discovers
Speaker 2: the manuscript for the first four Years in Laura's papers
Speaker 2: and sends it directly to her publishers.
Speaker 6: So Roger veloped a good rapport with the editor Ursula Nordstrom,
Speaker 6: and after missus Lane's death in nineteen sixty eight came
Speaker 6: the discovery of the manuscript that she never published the
Speaker 6: first four years. So Roger, being the heir and the
Speaker 6: person that tended to Little House business, took that manuscript
Speaker 6: to Harper and Rowe by that time, and Ursula Nordstrom
Speaker 6: immediately wanted to publish it. So that was the first
Speaker 6: of the additional Wilder writings that Roger offered to Harper
Speaker 6: and Rowe and to a very very interested reading audience
Speaker 6: who cried more and more and more they wanted more
Speaker 6: to read written by Laura Ingles Wilder.
Speaker 2: The legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who had overseen
Speaker 2: the publication of the Little House books since the late
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, is initially thrilled and then somewhat puzzled by
Speaker 2: the book, still, despite some misgivings, she publishes it. This
Speaker 2: is nineteen seventy one. Then in nineteen seventy three, McBride
Speaker 2: takes Little House to Hollywood and sells the option to
Speaker 2: a TV executive named Ed Friendly. We're going to talk
Speaker 2: at lengths about how the television show came to be
Speaker 2: in a future episode, but the short version is Little
Speaker 2: House on the Prairie. The TV version was immediately a
Speaker 2: huge hit and vastly increased the amount of money McBride
Speaker 2: was now making from the Little House copyright. Money he
Speaker 2: took and used to launch a run for president on
Speaker 2: the Libertarian ticket in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 14: This year, perhaps as never before, millions of Americans are
Speaker 14: looking for an alternative to the candidates of the two
Speaker 14: traditional parties. Consider the ideas of Roger McBride. He may
Speaker 14: be the alternative you're looking for. Roger L. McBride, Libertarian
Speaker 14: Party candidate for President of the United States.
Speaker 6: He was very dedicated to a list of requests that
Speaker 6: Rose made that he carry out after her death, and
Speaker 6: carrying on her libertarian philosophy, which he holdheartedly adhered to,
Speaker 6: led him to this bit for the presidency. He had
Speaker 6: no ideas that he would ever win, but of course
Speaker 6: he wanted to get libertarianism individualism before the American public.
Speaker 2: McBride is not surprisingly a divisive figure in the Little
Speaker 2: House world. He was very involved in the establishment of
Speaker 2: the Little House sites and generous with his time. When
Speaker 2: we were on the road last summer going to all
Speaker 2: the houses, this was apparent. The McBride name came up frequently,
Speaker 2: like when we first encountered Rose's possessions in the Ingles
Speaker 2: House in Desment.
Speaker 9: Since Rose was famous during her lifetime, we have many
Speaker 9: more of her belongings. This marbletop dresser belonged to her,
Speaker 9: as well as the chamber pot and the commode. Wow
Speaker 9: the McBride's they did come to see us, Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 9: We have photos of him walking through the house, pointing
Speaker 9: and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, very lucky.
Speaker 5: The things that were Roses in here, were they always
Speaker 5: here or.
Speaker 4: Were they donated by the McBride.
Speaker 9: They were donated by the McBride's.
Speaker 1: So this would have been Rose's.
Speaker 2: Many people involved with the houses are aware of the
Speaker 2: fraught aspect of his politics. They're grateful for his support.
Speaker 2: Here's Reverend Inman from the Wilder Home in Mansfield, Missouri.
Speaker 7: Again.
Speaker 12: I mean, he was such an interesting person himself, no
Speaker 12: his political career, that he was involved here at the
Speaker 12: Wilder Home, you know, in helping give so many items
Speaker 12: to different historic sites, to spread Missus Wilder's legacy out
Speaker 12: so much to the Hoover Library, you know, I think
Speaker 12: he really did. He was a good custodian to make
Speaker 12: sure those things were preserved.
Speaker 2: But in preserving Rose's memory and giving her her due
Speaker 2: in Little House History, McBride also inadvertently led to the
Speaker 2: real explosion of the authorship controversy. When William Holtz, the
Speaker 2: author of Ghost and Little House, the nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: biography of Rose we talked about, started researching the book.
Speaker 2: Holts went to McBride for his approval and support to
Speaker 2: access Rose's records. McBride willingly gave it. He wanted Rose
Speaker 2: to get her due. Holtz failed to mention, however, his
Speaker 2: entire authorship argument, and when McBride read the published book,
Speaker 2: he was shocked and dismayed and asked the Laura sites
Speaker 2: to pull it from their shelves. He said the book
Speaker 2: can only serve to disappoint children who read Little House.
Speaker 2: Instead of fueling authorship debates, McBride gave Rose her own
Speaker 2: chapter of the story.
Speaker 1: Before his death.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, McBride took it upon himself to
Speaker 2: launch an entire children's book series about Rose, into which
Speaker 2: he strongly wove his and Lane's political philosophies of libertarian independence.
Speaker 13: I thought, gee, I know Rose well enough and have
Speaker 13: all these stories she told me and verbally and in
Speaker 13: writing that I can write about her as a seven
Speaker 13: year old girl and growing up to seventeen and get
Speaker 13: it pretty well right. So the Trouble publishers encouraged me
Speaker 13: to do it, and took me three years to do.
Speaker 13: But I've done it.
Speaker 2: The spinoffs, called The Rose Years are marketed as an
Speaker 2: extension of Laura's original series, though to put it mildly,
Speaker 2: they lack the cultural impact of Little House. But where
Speaker 2: does that leave us with the original Little House series?
Speaker 2: They've certainly been wielded on behalf of the libertarian idea,
Speaker 2: but can they themselves be considered a libertarian fantasy?
Speaker 1: The answer itself changes with time.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I just get interested, like under
Speaker 3: a microscope.
Speaker 1: How the different generations see it.
Speaker 2: That's Lizzie Skernick. She teaches the Little House Books and
Speaker 2: a children's literature class at NYU.
Speaker 3: And of course you have the generations where they're like,
Speaker 3: this is a libertarian fantasy. Then you have the generations
Speaker 3: that are so interested in like how it depicts privation,
Speaker 3: you know, so the books have so many aspects to them.
Speaker 2: The truth is the Little House Books may be less
Speaker 2: a libertarian fantasy than Laura creating a fantasy version of
Speaker 2: her childhood.
Speaker 1: But how much of a fantasy.
Speaker 2: The only way to answer that question is to take
Speaker 2: a look at what was actually going on in Laura's
Speaker 2: life versus what she decided to include in the books.
Speaker 2: And that's where we're going next week. We're going to
Speaker 2: fact check Little House and go to some of the
Speaker 2: places Laura could not bear to revisit in her writing.
Speaker 2: Wilder is written and hosted by me Glennis McNichol. Our
Speaker 2: story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meroanoff. Our senior
Speaker 2: producer is Emily Meroanoff. Our producers are Mary do, Sina Ozaki,
Speaker 2: and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip. Sound
Speaker 2: design and mixing by Amanda ro Smith. Our scene in
Speaker 2: additional music was composed by Elise McCoy. We are executive
Speaker 2: produced by Joe Piazza, Niki tor, Ali Perry and Me.
Speaker 2: If you're enjoying Wilder, please consider rating and reviewing us
Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: It actually helps us out quite a lot.
Speaker 2: Thank you to the Laura Ingles Wilder Memorial Society in Dismet,
Speaker 2: South Dakota, and the Laura Ingles Wilder Historic Home and
Speaker 2: Museum in Mansfield, Missouri. And a special shout out to
Speaker 2: Caroline Fraser, whose book Prairie Fires is the mother load
Speaker 2: on Rose and Laura's relationship. Special thanks to the Hennepin
Speaker 2: County Library for the recording of Roger Lee McBride and
Speaker 2: to the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center for
Speaker 2: the recording of Roger Lee McBride's presidential campaign. Thank you
Speaker 2: to CDM Studios. Thank you Kathleen for being my emotional
Speaker 2: support system. Please see our show notes if you want
Speaker 2: to know more about the people we interviewed, the places
Speaker 2: we visited, the books we mentioned. You can also find
Speaker 2: our contact info there If you want to write to
Speaker 2: us with your own thoughts and questions. We're going to
Speaker 2: be including listener responses in our final episode. If you
Speaker 2: have thoughts on Wylder or the Little House series, please
Speaker 2: send us a voice memo to wow podcast at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com. Follow us on Instagram at Wilder Underscore podcast,
Speaker 2: and on TikTok at Wilder Podcast, where you can see
Speaker 2: behind the scenes footage from all our travels.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.