CHAPTER VIII
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
BECAUSE Gene Stratton-Porter cares for the truth that is in her, she is the most widely read and most widely loved author in America to-day, with the probable exception of Harold Bell Wright. She is absolutely sincere in all her work, she is in dead earnest, she does not care primarily for money, but for certain ideas and ideals. Let no one underestimate the tremendous power that is hers because of these things, let no one underestimate her hold upon millions of readers; let none undervalue the influence she has exerted and continues to exert, an influence always for good, for clean living, for manly men, for womanly women, for love of nature, for sane and reasonable human hopes and aspirations, for honest affection, for wholesome laughter, for a healthy emotionalism as the basis and justification of humble and invaluable lives.
If Mrs. Porter has egoism it is the sort of egoism that the world needs. It is nothing more or less than a firm and sustaining belief in one’s self, in the worth of one’s work, and is bred of a passionate conviction that you must always give the best of yourself without stint. Is it egoistical to believe that? Is it self-centeredness to be proud of that? Is it wrong, having set the world the best example of which you are capable, to call it to the world’s attention? You will not get the present reporter to say so! You will get from him nothing but an expression of his own conviction that while literature, æsthetically viewed, may not have been enriched by Mrs. Porter’s writings, thousands, yes, tens of thousands of men and women have been made happier and better by her stories. And that just about sweeps any other possible accomplishment into limbo!
The secret of Mrs. Porter’s success is sincerity, complete sincerity; doing one’s best work and doing it to the top of one’s bent. It is not a question of art. There is no art about it. The finest literary artist in the world could not duplicate her performance unless he were a duplicate of her. It’s not a literary matter at all; the thing has its roots in the personality, in the mind and heart and nervous organization of the writer. If you could be a Gene Stratton-Porter you could write the novels she writes and achieve just the success she achieves, a success which is improperly measured by earnings of $500,000 to $750,000 from her books, a success of which the true measure can never be taken because it is a success in human lives and not in dollars.
The best evidence of this—for there will be doubters—is the story of her life, very largely told in her own words, published in a booklet by Doubleday, Page & Company in 1915. The booklet, for some time to be had on request, is now out of print. In what follows it is drawn upon freely and almost to the exclusion of anything else.
“Mark Stratton, the father of Gene Stratton-Porter, described his wife, at the time of their marriage, as a ‘ninety-pound bit of pink porcelain, pink as a wild rose, plump as a partridge, having a big rope of bright brown hair, never ill a day in her life, and bearing the loveliest name ever given a woman—Mary.’ He further added that ‘God fashioned her heart to be gracious, her body to be the mother of children, and as her especial gift of Grace, he put Flower Magic into her fingers.’”
There were twelve children. Mrs. Stratton was “a wonderful mother.” She kept an immaculate house, set a famous table, hospitably received all who came to her door, made her children’s clothing. Her great gift was making things grow. “She started dainty little vines and climbing plants from tiny seeds she found in rice and coffee. Rooted things she soaked in water, rolled in fine sand, planted according to habit, and they almost never failed to justify her expectations. She even grew trees and shrubs from slips and cuttings no one else would have thought of trying to cultivate, her last resort being to cut a slip diagonally, insert the lower end in a small potato, and plant as if rooted. And it nearly always grew!”
She was of Dutch extraction and “worked her special magic with bulbs, which she favored above other flowers. Tulips, daffodils, star flowers, lilies, dahlias, little bright hyacinths, that she called ‘blue bells,’ she dearly loved. From these she distilled exquisite perfume by putting clusters at time of perfect bloom in bowls lined with freshly made, unsalted butter, covering them closely, and cutting the few drops of extract thus obtained with alcohol. ‘She could do more different things,’ says the author, ‘and finish them all in a greater degree of perfection, than any other woman I have ever known. If I were limited to one adjective in describing her, “capable” would be the word.’”
Mark Stratton was of English blood, a descendant of that first Mark Stratton of New York, who married the beauty, Anne Hutchinson. He was of the English family of which the Earl of Northbrooke is the present head. He was tenacious, had clear-cut ideas, could not be influenced against his better judgment. “He believed in God, in courtesy, in honor, and cleanliness, in beauty, and in education. He used to say that he would rather see a child of his the author of a book of which he could be proud, than on the throne of England, which was the strongest way he knew to express himself. His very first earnings he spent for a book; when other men rested, he read; all his life he was a student of extraordinarily tenacious memory. He especially loved history: Rollands, Wilson’s Outlines, Hume, Macaulay, Gibbon, Prescott, and Bancroft, he could quote from all of them paragraphs at a time, contrasting the views of different writers on a given event, and remembering dates with unfailing accuracy.” The Bible he knew by heart, except for the Old Testament pedigrees. This is a literal statement of fact. He traveled miles to deliver sermons, lectures, talks. He worshiped humanity and all outdoors. Color was a prime delight. “‘He had a streak of genius in his makeup, the genius of large appreciation,’” says Mrs. Porter. He reveled in descriptions of personal bravery.
“To this mother at forty-six, and this father at fifty, each at intellectual top-notch, every faculty having been stirred for years by the dire stress of civil war, and the period immediately following, the author was born,” on a farm in Wabash county, Indiana, in 1868. “From childhood she recalls ‘thinking things which she felt should be saved,’ and frequently tugging at her mother’s skirts and begging her to ‘set down’ what the child considered stories and poems. Most of these were some big fact in nature that thrilled her, usually expressed in Biblical terms.”