It will not be supposed that Mrs. Porter fails to raise up a champion in her heroine’s hour of need. All along we have been in touch, in close touch, with Jason. We knew him as a boy, apparently the washerwoman’s son. We know him as a young man, springing to Mahala’s relief. There is no real reason why, in such a situation and with two such principal characters, Mrs. Porter should not work miracles. She does.... Of course her point is that the virtue, goodness and courage of Mahala and Jason earn their own ample rewards; and the thousands who are reading The White Flag will accept this as so.
Books by Gene Stratton-Porter
1903 The Song of the Cardinal
1904 Freckles
1907 What I Have Done With Birds
(republished, 1917, as Friends in Feathers)
1908 At the Foot of the Rainbow
1909 A Girl of the Limberlost
1909 Birds of the Bible
1910 Music of the Wild
1911 The Harvester
1912 Moths of the Limberlost
1913 Laddie
1915 Michael O’Halloran
1916 Morning Face
1918 A Daughter of the Land
1920 Homing With the Birds
1921 Her Father’s Daughter
1922 The Fire Bird
1923 White Flag
Euphorbia appeared as a serial in Good
Housekeeping: January, February, March
numbers, 1923.
Sources on Gene Stratton-Porter
Gene Stratton-Porter, A Little Story of Her Life and Work. This is the booklet, now out of print, published some ten years ago by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY, based upon the long self-account written by Mrs. Porter and prepared by Eugene F. Saxton.
“An American Bird-Woman.” Anonymous article in CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL (London and Edinburgh. New York: International News Company), Part 46, October 1, 1914: page 636.
Private Information.
17. Poetry and Plays
i
IF you look at the poets as they move in their procession before your eyes, you will see that each is dressed after the manner of his age—the Elizabethans in starched ruffs; the men of the Eighteenth Century in knee-breeches; the men of today in Homburg hats. And if you listen to their verses you will hear that each composes, too, after the manner of his age. For there have been fashions in poetry as there have been fashions in dress, and you can tell the period of a poem not only by the name and date of the poet but by the style and flavour of the poetry.” From this thought J. F. Roxburgh has written “a beginner’s introduction to English poetry” with the charming title, The Poetic Procession. His brief review of the poets from the Elizabethans to the men now writing is felicitous enough. But although I am sure his intention in the sentences quoted was not literal, the image of present-day poets in Homburg hats is very disconcerting. Don Marquis has probably worn one, thus inviting the visitation of insurance agents. But I am sure some of his poems have been written with the wind blowing through his hair. Such poems as “The Name,” in his Dreams and Dust, for example, or those “Premonitions” in his Poems and Portraits. It is as difficult to say, with Marquis, where the humourist stops in his poetry and the thinker steps in as to mark the same exit-entrance in the man’s prose. Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady and Famous Love Affairs and a part of Poems and Portraits are supposed to belong to Marquis the jester; but, of the second-named book, which part? “The man who has laughed lest he should weep, the clown of the seven times broken heart” is Richard Le Gallienne’s apt characterisation of Marquis. I am not sure that “The Tom Cat” in Poems and Portraits is a bit less “serious” than such a poem as “Inhibition” in the same collection.