One of the great Hoosier authors of the early 20th century
was Gene Stratton-Porter. Her literary career began its ascent at the turn of
the century and continued until her death in 1924 when her limousine was hit by
a streetcar in Los Angeles.
Always a trailblazer, she had moved to Los Angeles
from her beloved Indiana
for health reasons and because she had become so popular that she had formed a
movie studio and production company to bring her characters from books such as Laddie, Freckles and A Girl of the
Limberlost to life on film. At the peak of her popularity it is estimated
that she had more than 50 million readers enjoying her romantic novels,
magazine articles, and her studies of nature and wildlife.
An avid reader, photographer, and lifelong scholar on
conservation and ecology, with the income that she earned from her writings,
Mrs. Stratton-Porter enjoyed developing native gardens and natural areas on her
northeastern Indiana properties—most famously her Cabin in the Wildflower
Woods. In one of her last books, Tales
You Won’t Believe, published in 1925, Mrs. Stratton-Porter related a
wonderful little story about the white strawberries sent to her from the garden of General Lew Wallace.
In relating her story, Mrs. Stratton-Porter’s great admiration
for Wallace is evident. As her books and her interests in wild flower gardening
became known, people from all over the country and, in fact, the world sent her
clippings, cuttings, seeds, and plants for her gardens. She wrote: “...perhaps the greatest thrill of the entire collection came when I received a
packet containing half a dozen wild strawberries, guaranteed to bear white wild
strawberries from the home grounds of General Lew Wallace.” These plants held special meaning for her as
she knew Wallace was a great flower lover and he himself had found them in the
woods near his home. Mrs. Stratton-Porter had visited the home and she knew of
Wallace’s magnificent trees—especially the Beeches “...which grew for the
General in the most elaborate manner, truly lordly Beeches with wide-spreading
arms of gray moleskin, great velvet trunks and branches almost sweeping the
ground.”
Mrs. Stratton-Porter took great care in personally
planting these special gifts—searching her property for just the right soil,
light, moisture and shade. She had read and practically memorized The Fair God and Ben-Hur and fairly worshipped Wallace. For many years the
strawberries grew and flourished. Then in 1914, a very long and cold winter
severely damaged her garden. Among the plants that did not return in the spring
of 1914 were the beloved white strawberries. General Wallace had died by 1914
and Mrs. Stratton-Porter considered approaching Wallace’s son for one more
plant—hoping that the cold winter had not destroyed the original beds. But time
got away from Mrs. Stratton-Porter and fate intervened.
One of her large Beech trees that she had been trying to
save also died in the cold winter of 1914 and had to be taken down. After
cutting the tree it was discovered that even the roots were rotted and hollow.
Squirrels had been using them to hide their winter stores. Mrs. Stratton-Porter
and her staff filled the hole left by the beech, smoothed the soil and moved on
to other tasks. A year later, Mrs. Stratton-Porter was passing through the
woods near where the Beech tree had been and was dumbfounded when she
discovered a big circular bed of wild white strawberries spreading over every
inch of ground that the Beech had occupied.
After much pondering Mrs. Stratton-Porter came to the
conclusion that the squirrels must have been feeding on the white strawberries
and sowed the seeds throughout the roots and soil of the old Beech tree. When
the tree was gone, the soil smoothed, and sun and rain reached the ground,
Wallace’s white strawberries returned with a vigor she had never seen in her
original beds. As she recorded, “Nature returned to me my lost gift from the
wildings of the great general.” Given Wallace’s love of his Beech trees, there
was some poetry for Mrs. Stratton-Porter in knowing that the loss of her Beech
tree gave new life to the General’s strawberries that she so valued. Sadly,
after all the pleasure these little plants brought both the General and Mrs.
Stratton-Porter, the white wild strawberries seem to have disappeared from both
the grounds of the Wallace Study and from the Cabin in the Wildflower Woods—but
as any gardener knows, hope springs eternal and we will be keeping an eye out
for these tasty treasures for seasons to come.
*Information in this post is from an article by Joann
Spragg.
