Aside from husband, home, and family, Mrs. Porter’s life interest seems to have been that great reservoir of natural wonders, viz., the Limberlost Swamp immediately south of Geneva. The swamp, where a man named Limber became lost and was never found, was said to serve as a refuge for evil persons. This heavily-forested, water-soaked, primitive region harbored wildlife of great variety in its dark and treacherous bogs.
Mrs. Porter became interested in the bird life of the bogs and developed a skillful technique of photographing it. She was happiest clad in hip boots and knickers, exploring the swamps of the Limberlost. In her home she kept innumerable specimens of swamp life. Love birds, canaries, and parrots were likewise her companions. At first she was lured by birds, but flowers and insects soon thrust themselves upon her.
When her only child, Jeanette, entered school, Mrs. Porter found time to practice writing in secret. She submitted some of her nature pictures to RECREATION, and was soon a staff member of the magazine. Her first check for sixteen dollars was spent for photographic equipment, as were her later earnings; in two years she had invested about fifteen hundred dollars.
At this time, she switched from RECREATION to OUTING and wrote under the tutelage of Caspar Whitney, editor of OUTING. One of the short stories she wrote under his direction was published in METROPOLITAN, then a leading national publication. Meanwhile she continued her researches in nature in the Limberlost.
Mrs. Porter’s love for wild creatures influenced her strongly against the ruthless tactics of hunters and plunderers. One winter day, during a trip to the woods to feed the birds, she discovered the broken and frozen body of a cardinal lying in the road, left by the hunter who had slain it in target practice. “Song of the Cardinal,” a short story inspired by the incident, was submitted to CENTURY. The editor replied that he liked the story but would urge her to expand it into a full-length novel, which she did in a month of intensive work. Original illustrations depicting the life of the birds portrayed in the story accompanied the book, which met immediate approval when it came off the press in 1905. It also met acceptance in other lands, and during its vogue, was published in seven languages.
SONG OF THE CARDINAL, her first large-scale publishing success, began the controversy over the authenticity of Mrs. Porter’s natural history. Some critics disputed the nature facts set forth in the book. Although characters were sometimes composites, all of Mrs. Porter’s books and stories were autobiographical and were based upon true incidents. This fidelity to life contributed toward the success of her efforts.
FRECKLES, one of her best-known works, had its beginning when Mrs. Porter saw a beautiful black vulture feather fall from the sky. Accompanied by her husband, she traced it to a nearby nest in a hollow log in the swamp and began the very disagreeable task of surveying the scene. However, perseverance and disregard for the presence of the foul-smelling carrion on which the vulture fed, enabled them to observe and photograph the nesting of these creatures through the incubation period to the final emergence of the young from the shell. The book intertwined this episode with the life of a Scotch logger, a great deal of wood lore, and the epochal character of Freckles. It was published amid great acclaim in 1904, and during the next ten years, sold 670,733 copies. Eventually sales reached more than a million copies in America and five hundred thousand in Great Britain.
The popularity of FRECKLES was so great that Mrs. Porter published a sequel to it in 1909, GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. This work, illustrated by one hundred pictures, gave her world fame. Again, nature lore supplements the story in a most unique fashion.
LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL accepted articles on birds in 1904 and 1905, for by this time Mrs. Porter was an accepted writer for the masses. Her novels included a great deal of nature lore. This proved rather unpalatable to some at first, but eventually was accepted as Mrs. Porter’s way. This was the period of deep and abiding interest in nature writings stimulated by Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, John Burroughs, Ernest Seton Thompson, and Luther Burbank. Their works, together with the new interest in the conservation of natural resources, gave the literature of nature a continuing impetus. Mrs. Porter’s writing was a thread in this substantial pattern.
AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW, issued in 1909, had a balanced ration of nature lore and romance. BIRDS OF THE BIBLE, also published in 1909, was a very scholarly work and required a great deal of research. It was by no means decisively popular, but is interesting and replete with illustrations—some of which were collected abroad with painstaking care.