May 11, 2012 This summer I finally got around to doing something I’ve been meaning to do for the past 40 years or so. I read a book. Cover to cover. Which isn’t all that surprising, I suppose, given that I do love to read. But this book was a little out of the<\/p>\n
ordinary. Sometime in the early 1970s, my folks’ next-door neighbor gave me a book she said I’d like. Being all of 10 years old at the time, and an avid reader, I had no reason to doubt her and accepted the gift with all the graciousness a fourth grader could muster. Then I sat down to read it.<\/p>\n
Make that try to read it.<\/p>\n
This book, though written in English, seemed really hard to follow. The protagonist’s name was Elnora, a name I’d never heard of; she talked funny; she wore a “brown calico collar,” a “skirt of generous length,” “high, heavy shoes,” a ribbon in her hair and a hat on her head.<\/p>\n
To a kid whose other choices in reading included Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys and assorted field guides, this new book, which actually was quite old, just didn’t make the cut. And so, up on the shelf it went.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I pretty much forgot about it, though not the neighbor that gave it to me. Grandma Merrick, as we called her, was a remarkable woman. She lived much of her life on a farm in Elburn and told great stories of what life was like in the early 1900s\u2014how gas engines made farming easier; how her husband tried to teach her how to drive by letting her steer from the passenger seat; and how an accident eventually claimed one of his hands, which he replaced with a simple hook. (Although I never met her husband, Stanley, I did get to see his hook every time I visited. Someone had thought it a good idea to keep the hook, and hung it inside a glass dome, the kind usually used to display a pocket watch. To my 10-year-old self, that was cool with a capital C.)<\/p>\n
Wise, perceptive and resilient\u2014she lived to be 106–Grandma Merrick knew me probably better than I knew myself. She knew that her goofy little neighbor, the one that was always chasing after snakes and bugs and such, would like a book about a girl who, though she dressed differently and talked differently, did many of the same things.<\/p>\n
And you know what? Grandma Merrick was right.<\/p>\n
The book I just finished reading is A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter. A naturalist-novelist, Stratton-Porter topped the best seller charts back at the turn of the 20th Century with books like Limberlost, which wove together diverse themes like love and relationships\u2026and moths.<\/p>\n
Elnora Comstock, Limberlost’s heroine (who perhaps not so coincidentally shares a name with another prominent naturalist of the time, Anna Botsford Comstock) earns the money she needs to go to school by capturing moths, mounting them and selling them to collectors.<\/p>\n
Sure, there are other elements to the plot, including a group of what we would now call “the popular girls,” and a love interest named Philip. But what really intrigued me was Stratton-Porter’s descriptions of moth species\u2014luna, cecropia, polyphemus, catocala… They were all there, with accounts that included not only the adult phase but also explanations of their caterpillars and cocoons.<\/p>\n
In fact one species, Eacles imperialis, the imperial moth, plays a key role in the story’s climax. Two thirds of the way through the book the antagonist, the scheming and insincere Edith Carr, appears at a gala wearing a dress designed to look like an imperial, which was a species Elnora had spent most of the book trying unsuccessfully to capture:<\/p>\n
“The soft yellow robe of lightest weight velvet fitted her form perfectly, while from each shoulder fell a great velvet wing lined with lavender, and flecked with embroidery of that colour in imitation of the moth,” Stratton-Porter describes. “Miss Carr was positive that she would be the most beautiful, and most exquisitely gowned woman present. In her heart she thought of herself as ‘Imperialis Regalis,’ as the Yellow Empress.”<\/p>\n
I know, it sounds corny, especially in this day and age. But that’s what makes Limberlost so absorbing. It provides a glimpse back into a time that’s long gone, and many scenes are set in a place that, once almost gone, is now being brought back through ecological restoration\u2014the Limberlost Swamp in eastern Indiana.<\/p>\n
I’m hoping to find more works by Stratton-Porter, and next on my list is a book with a most interesting, if somewhat long-winded, title: What I Have Done with Birds: Character Studies of Native American Birds Which, Through Friendly Advances, I Induced to Pose for Me, or Succeeded in Photographing by Good Fortune, with the Story of My Experiences in Obtaining Their Pictures.<\/p>\n
Archive.org (an awesome Internet library) has a neat on-line version that will do until I can find an actual copy of the 1907 book.<\/p>\n
I just hope it doesn’t take another 40 years to get around to reading it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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