I’ve been studying the existing handwritten manuscript for On the Banks of Plum Creek the past few days. Laura called it Wild Plum Creek, and there were two parts: “Part I, On the Right Bank,” and “Part II, On the Left Bank.”
What I’ve noticed most is how Laura punctuates conversation…. incorrectly! She makes the same mistakes through the entire manuscript. For example:
Hullo Bright,” Pa said to him! And how are you Pete, old fellow,” he asked the other as he slapped him gently on the hip?
“Better get back out of the way Laura ’till I see how these cattle act. We’ve got to take them to the creek to water.” Pete and Bright led nicely and soon they had drunk their fill and were back in the stable.
“Pa!” Laura asked as they went back to the dugout house? Pa! Did Pet and Patty truly want to go back west?”
“Yes Laura! Don’t worry about them,” Pa exclaimed!
It’s a little painful to read after a while.
The thing is, Laura has no trouble with punctuating conversation in the manuscripts for Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, or Little House on the Prairie, which came before this one. And you’d think that even if the earlier book manuscripts are later versions while the Plum Creek draft is an early version, Laura surely would have learned how to punctuate conversation while writing or copying examples so many times in the previous manuscripts, right?
Btw, Big Woods seems to be a “close to perfect” manuscript while Farmer Boy is quite different, but fairly polished. Little House on the Prairie is a nightmare! Jumbled pages and sentences that trail off to nothingness, and crossed-out words and phrases galore! (There’s also a cute story about a dancing rabbit that Laura tried and tried to include in LHP but Rose must have had her way about that one…) I have nothing to base this on other than gut feelings, but it seems to me that Laura tried to write LHP after BW and just… couldn’t… so she started FB because she could use pretty much the same formula used in BW.
The later manuscripts handle conversation punctuation correctly, in case you wondered. Why in the world is Plum Creek the odd man out?
And I have a grammar announcement of my own to make. After pondering plurals for decades, I finally broke down and looked something up in a grammar text, because spelling isn’t the only stupid thing about words, you know. Punctuation is weird too (just think about the use of its and it’s). From now on, I’ll know what I’m doing when writing the plural of numbers or letters, words used as words, and acronyms: they require an apostrophe… if you wish!
In the 1880′s/1800s (Chicago Manual of Style says no apostrophe), Laura taught school.
Did you make three A’s and two B’s?
You used too many and’s/ands in that sentence.
How many C.D.’s do you own?
“You’ll never learn any younger!” exclaimed Pa.
[UPDATE] And of course, grammar is like spelling because there are always exceptions to the rule and rules that aren’t rules but are really just choices. Grammar is hard. But you’ve got to admit that there’s something weird about Laura’s crazy punctiation in the Plum Creek manuscript when it doesn’t happen in the other manuscripts!
