11 Riley Bio

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.COM

"Where we celebrate the child in us all"

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT
by Thomas Earl Williams with primary illustrations by Katherine Kuonen and the great assistance of Robert Tinsley with Riley artifacts, Copyright, 1997, Thomas Earl Williams

When Riley slipped down the stairs from his father's law office having decided to skip out "for his own reasons", he observed Dr. Townsend at the town square bowing and introducing himself on a little back platform, stet‑

son hat lifted, frock coat flapping and hair and beard trimmed to make him appear like a double to General U.S. Grant. Behind him were three young men wearing linen dusters each playing two musical instruments playing martial music interspersed with loud organ recitals of hymns from an organ within the wagon. That night a "free concert" was promised "at early- candlelite." Riley talked his way into this crew and left Greenfield with "the glittering cavalcade" without saying good-bye to anybody.

The Wizard Oil Co. left Greenfield for Fortville and places beyond with Riley on board and several young men. The boys laughed at his stories and enjoyed his drawing, calling him "Little Man." He taught them new songs and did blackboard illustrations for Doc Townsend who he called "Doxy." The Wizard Oil co. boys arrived in town about noon announcing their presence with great showers of music. Then the boys would distribute handbills and Doc Townsend would lecture on his medicines afternoon and evening. In the evenings, by torchlights, Riley would entertain too. He did original recitations, impersonations, and readings of poetry. When there was a week-long county fair, the Wizard boys would stay in town the whole week and participate in the parades and fair entertainments. The boys being exciting and mysterious vagabonds had many girls chasing them. Riley's depression about Greenfield was lifted. A "rainbow" was in the sky. The times were never dull. By October the group reached Lima, Ohio, where Townsend resided and kept his laboratory. The group made Lima the center for the last flings around Ohio before winter set in. Riley made many friendships and was invited often to read his poems. While Townsend spent the days making his medicines, Riley was living in the Townsend home and preparing new advertising. Riley kept no regular schedule. He is remembered by the child of Doc Townsend as studying Buckles' HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION and deToqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA during this period. A few weeks before Christmas, Riley decided to return back home to Greenfield.

During the "dark half of 1875 after Riley "ran" from the Kemmer lynching, Riley wrote relatively little poetry. Nellie's departure from Greenfield as well as his own were horribly wrenching events. He escaped from Crestillomeem with Doc Townsend and his ridiculous "patent medicine"

While James Whitcomb Riley was on the run from Greenfield, his mind yet returned to his life there. Here is a letter Riley wrote to his equally mischievous friend, John Skinner from Lima, Ohio October 7, 1875 during this "dark half' of the year of the Kemmer lynching: "After my long waiting your letter came at last "I tho't this place without an equal in regard to its "increase in crime", but I must knock under for the present to old Greenfield. A saloon keeper was shot here last week and no particular stir made about it, nor the man missed...Day before yesterday we were furnished an entire 'change of program' by our funny man -the one you know. They had a warrant for him and he run (sic) like a little man-the whole town ran after him. They wore him out at last and bro't him up a-standin'". He had seduced a girl here - a Miss Vananda - and not having compromise money enough, or a hankering after prison wall -he did what he ought to have been man enough to do without compulsion -married her. She is fifteen and he eighteen and both in the family way. By the way there is a slashin' lot of girls here, and they do hold a man off too "party". I have only made the acquaintance of two or three, and they're the very ones I didn't care to know, but I will make it Hot for 'em shortly: I'm handling "wires" now that'll fetch 'ern. "Confound my time" "I stand in" with the best men of the town, and am rapidly growing in public favor - I'll be out in hook form yet. I wish you were here to room with me at the bobbiest little boarding house in the world - everything is perfect even to the old girl, "the hostess." She wears a crutch, but I don't know how many of her legs are off. She capers under the jocund patronymic of "Aunt Jane" - everybody calls her that, so if she Aunt Jane who is she? Speaking of Boarding

Houses - how's the Test House? I would like to strike old 13 to-night with its exchanged bed - I need something of that kind now, but I shall not excite your sensitive nature with visions of "sweet faces, rounded arms and bosoms prest to little harps of gold" not waken in the drowsy channels of your inmost soul, the fire of "Kisses sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned

To Mrs. Test give my especial regards, and thank her for remembering me so kindly. Tell Minnie I could be happy once again could I hear her one plaintive melody. I think of you often, and of the rare old times we had, and I still nurse a hope that we may have a grand Rehearsal of them again. Say to Angie that she haunts me (a casual romantic interest)..." Yours truly, Jim Give my love to George and Nell - not forgetting Jesse and Nett.

after the Kemmer hanging. Riley was never far from newspaper reporting. Earlier in the year that Kemmer was hung Riley had edited and contributed to the Greenfield COMMERCIAL and NEWS. After those newspapers folded, Riley did occasional assignments for what had been the rival newspaper, the Hancock DEMOCRAT. Minnie Belle Mitchell, wife of its later editor, recalled, Riley spending hours in the office of the Hancock DEMOCRAT where William Mitchell, the kindly old editor, sensing Riley's genius, would share with him a corner to write. The editor gave him assignments such as reporting current events or social events or writing advertisements for the local columns. Sometimes these would end up "rhymed."

One can imagine that Riley may have contributed or written the Hancock DEMOCRAT article detailing the events of the lynching of Kemmer. If he witnessed the events, he might have lived precariously. The perpetrators would have known his name. When other detailed versions of the incident

- less favorable to the action - began being leaked to other newspapers, Riley might well have felt the heat of suspicion directed at him.

At first he admits "dying of loneliness" striking Fortville after he joined the group at Greenfield. He must have had to leave very quickly and desperately. Then things changed for the better.

"I am having first rate times considering the boys I am with - they, you know, are hardly my kind, but they are pleasant and agreeable...We sing along the road when we tire of talking, and when we tire of that and the scenery, we lay ourselves along the seats and "dream the happy hours away", as blissfully as the time-honored "baby in the sugar trough." "I made myself thoroughly solid with "Doxy" (a playful patronymic I have given the proprietor) by introducing a blackboard system of advertising, which promises to be the best card out. I have two boards about 3 ft. by four, which - during the street concert - I fasten on the sides of the wagon and letter and illustrate during the performance and throughout the lecture. There are dozens in the crowd that stay to watch the work going on that otherwise would drift from the fold during the dryer portion of the Doctor's harangue. Last night at Winchester I made a decided sensation by making a rebus of the well-known lines from Shakespeare: ‑

with a life sized bust of the author, and at another time, a bottle of Townsend's Cholera Balm on legs, and a very hland smile in its cork, mak‑

ing the "Can't come it" gesture at the skeleton, Death, who drops his scythe and hour-glass and turns to flee. Oh: I'm stared at like the fat woman on the side-show banner...-

After the lynching incident, the poet's small hometown went into a period of great anguish and self-scrutiny. Should the law condone the lynching? Obviously it had to since all of the county had either participated in it or done nothing about it. The attention of the State was focused on what the lynch mob had done. Self-righteously believing it had done the "right thing," the town drew its collective energy into internally defending its action. Any criticism within the town was dealt with. Anyone who claimed the town should not have lynched an "untried" man was suspicious. Folk closed ranks against all dissenters. No one from the town was supposed to even talk to outsiders. We find an Editorial in the Hancock DEMOCRAT on July 15th condemning the fact that someone has "broken" the code of silence about the conspiracy to hang Kemmer and talked to the Indianapolis newspapers.

This Editorial demands the Indianapolis JOURNAL to "surrender" the name of the Greenfield "traitor" who provided their information. The goal is to ensure that "all respectable people might not be contaminated by the presence and society of this moral leper."

Shortly after this Editorial we find Riley making a desperate departure from Greenfield on a medicine wagon similar to his departure escapade with Doc McCrillus after his mother's death.

Not only did Riley leave after the lynching of Kemmer, but also Riley's married friend, Nellie Cooley, soon left Greenfield.

Riley's poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," went through many edi‑
tions and changes over Riley's life but in the 1892 book of it appeared
Riley's addition of the lines about the "airy penalty" when a fellow fell "up"
to heaven. Riley viewed death as "dropping upward." SEE: "Death," com‑
posed contemporaneously with "The Flying Islands of the Night": "My
breath bursts into dust - I can not cry - I whirl - I reel and veer up overhead,
And drop flat-faced against - against - the sky - Soh, bless me! I am dead!"
As I drove by the long abandoned site of the county fairgrounds of the
1870's in this year as the 20th century closed, I could hardly imagine that I
was looking at the place where masked men had lynched a black man for
allegedly raping a white woman. But it was true. What is now a cornfield
on Morristown Pike just south of the lane leading back to the Greenfield

Country Club was once the Hancock County Fairgrounds, a scene of proud livestock shows and country entertainment. The deed from Samuel Milroy to the "Hancock Agricultural Society" was given March 9, 1863 and is recorded in Deed Record V, page 165 in the Office of the Recorder of Hancock County, IN. The eight acre tract served as the county fairgrounds during the 1860's and 1870's.

On this site a "Floral Pavilion" had been built by the society for the ladies to display their floral bouquets, gardening produce and canning at the fair. Unfortunately this pavilion had burned in 1871 and was a ruins - but still standing - shortly after midnight June 26, 1875. On that date and at that time, the "old" Floral Pavilion achieved its most notorious use. It was around a joist of this building in ruins that the mob of masked men threw a cotton rope to hang the Negro man named William Kemmer. The rope was fashioned into a noose at its end tightly coiled around the black man's throat.

The scene must have been eerie indeed as the men approached the fairgrounds that night. The hanging party came to the place surrounding a spring wagon drawn by a gray horse in which the Negro man who had been plucked out of the Hancock County Jail lay. According to observers the only

light came from torches and oil street lamps "confiscated" by the mob as it rode through town in disciplined order. The night was pitch black.

It seems impossible that the scene with bound man being fitted for hanging and piteously begging for his life in the midst of close to two hundred masked men is now merely a field filled with corn stubble since the crops have been harvested.

On U.S. 40 outside of Greenfield to the East on the north side, in a field across the road from what was the old County Home, or "Infirmary" between 400 and 500 East, there appears a strangely inappropriate stand of tall trees in the middle of a field. These trees represent a graveyard without markers of any kind. It was once the place where the county poor were taken to be buried into anonymity. William Kemmer, the lynched Negro, is buried here at some unknown place in this solitary and isolated site. He was buried with the noose with which he had been lynched still around his neck.

Riley must have often felt like the last child of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.

LINES ON HEARING A COW BAWL
IN A DEEP FIT OF DEJECTION, ON THE
EVENING OF JULY 3, A.D. 1879

That lifts the listener's hair as it swells past, And pour in turbid currents down the lane.

Slow trails the meat-rind' o'er the listless saw; The chickens roosting o'er him on the beam

The smoke-house door bangs once emphatic'ly Then bangs no more, but leaves the silence filled

Most melancholy cow, and sing of thee
Full-hearted through my tears, for, after all,

I. meat-rind, a humorous description of the appearance of a beef cow. Rind is skin in reference to an animal.

2. The image is of chickens swaying their heads into an arch as do the coots, birds which stiffly arch their necks prior to a dive into waters to fish.

3. "Kine" is an old plural form of the "cow," a substitute for the word "cattle." Riley employs paronomasia. His play on the word for "kine" is humorously intended to suggest "kind" as in the expression "How kind (thoughtful, pleasant) of you:-

No flight of fancy is needed to recognize the boy at the woodpile as Abraham Lincoln, the "log-splitter." The poem simply describes how Abraham Lincoln might have felt in contemplation of the 4th of July in the year 1879.

Riley clearly indicates the place where his poem is composed. It is "The Morgue," the name he gave to his second floor paint shop in downtown Greenfield, Indiana . The place of the poem is thus Greenfield in racial turmoil. Greenfield was not a happy place for Riley during the years immedi‑

ately following the Kemmer lynching. The Sheriff who had offered so little resistance, a prosperous farmer of Brandywine Township born in 1840, was elected just the year prior to the lynching, and was re-elected the year later. He did not seek re-election in 1878, but supported his deputy,

William H. Thompson, who was elected that year. Greenfield's mood was out of kilter with Lincoln's vision of a free American nation.

Blacks were treated in Greenfield, as elsewhere, literally as "cattle." We read from an account by George Knox, Greenfield's famous black barber of Riley's epoch of an incident of the kind to which Riley may refer in 1879 while the country was still reeling under the impact of the American Civil War.

Reconstruction of the South was a primary need in those days since the economy there had been based upon the intolerable system of slavery. But what of the blacks from the South? Many migrated north. In this year the four o'clock train arrived in Greenfield with a car load of blacks. Riley's good friend and benefactor George Knox said, "I shall not forget as long as I live, the sensation the news made in the city (Greenfield) and the querulous and anxious and frequently condemnatory looks that were leveled at me from all sides." Knox was approached by a "colored man" (Knox's words) coming with an envelope to the barbershop having been directed there somehow. He handed Knox the envelope and said he had "twenty seven head.^- The letter was addressed to someone named Jones that Knox did not know. When Knox asked him what he meant by "twenty seven head," the man indicated he meant a wide assortment of ages of black folk.

Knox recalled that when he got to the depot a large and angry crowd were gathering. "The excitement was reaching fever heat." The black folk were in desperate circumstances. Some were barely clothed. All were homeless and hungry.

^—The Morgue," in Greenfield, Indiana. On the second floor was Riley's paint shop where he painted signs, composed poetry and often slept. Much of "The Flying Islands of the Night" was composed in this den.

also talked to a white Christian storekeeper of the town who provided food for the destitute homeseekers. None of this went over very well with Greenfield and this store keeper's store was burned shortly afterwards.

What can be done about the dejected singing of the cattle, as the blacks were treated in Riley's hometown? Who would listen to the bawl of one of the kine? Who could speak up for the lynched Kemmer? Lincoln could not. He was dead and "in a dream." Those of tender and disposing sensibilities realized the bawl was a song of the nation. The shame of it comes from the juxtaposition of the "portentous sound"..."awful" on the day before Fourth of July holiday, the day when America celebrated its national independence, values and worth.

Riley's third great encounter with Crestillomeem was his most serious and resulted in delirious experiences. The great expression of the encounter was the writing of Riley's autobiographical piece, "The Flying Islands of the Night." The immediate event causing this delirious flight into fancy was the death of Nellie Cooley, Riley's great encourager. Whereas earlier encounters had been episodic and at generally increasing levels, Riley's alcoholism following Nellie's death was so pronounced that Riley was physically unable to work and deemed himself "ill" which generally meant suffering such serious depression and alcoholism that he often could not leave his bed.

When Nellie Cooley died, Riley truly lost his true soul-partner. Only to Riley and her family was Nellie's death so devestating. So strange it is that there is no record of her death in Belleville, Illinois, the county seat where she died. Nor is there any record of her burial in Greenfield where her body was brought for final rest on July 29, 1878. Riley's writing of her is our only written proof of the dates of such things.

The young poet's reaction to this bereavement, his grief and sense of loss, is expressed in her obituary which Riley wrote and had published in the Hancock DEMOCRAT.

Died, at Belleville, Illinois, July 27, 1878, Nellie M. Cooley, wife of George B. Cooley. Interred at Greenfield, her old home, July 29, 1878. Her life was like a dreamy summer day, made up of bright things only. Warm depths of azure skies, where merry birds, afloat on waves of sunshine, poured out their sweetest songs, and so baptized the world with sweetest melody: where morning walked the dewy paths that led through Nature's fairest haunts, and laid her shining hand on all things loveable; where meadowlands lay basking in the sun and clover-blossoms shook their fragrance out on every passing breeze and flavored all the air with sweetness and delight; where the laughing brook

leaped from its shady hiding-place, low-nestled in among the cool grasses growing in the dusky woods, and, while the lilies leaned their wondering face o'er the brink, and the weeping willows trained their slender hands within the wave, went loitering along its winding way, and babbling limpid music as it went.

Her life was like a dreamy sunny day; and, as always was her wish, on such a day she laid aside the weary task of life, and out across "the all-golden afternoon" she walked on and on into her Father's open arms, and where fell upon her

Cooley, in song together at this organ with Riley playing happiest angel. the violin. A scene in the Riley birthplace, Greenfield,

Nellie Millikan at 16 (1862) when James Whitcomb Riley knew her before her marriage to George Cooley. (Neg. C7172, IMCPL-Riley Collection, Indiana Hisorical Society.)

maiden's hope, a woman's charity. Her heart was soundless in its depths of love; her soul was boundless in its breadth of nobleness; she wore the bond of Friendship loyally, and ever held a gracious hand of welcome to distress. Her home was Joy's abiding place, and Patience, Peace and Love walked ever at her side, as now they walk, appareled in the raiment of the Lord's approving smile, and waiting with her loved ones lingering here.

And the lonesome light of summer through the open door-way falls, But it makes no laugh in the parlor - no voice in the vacant halls.

It finds no queenly presence blessing the solitude With the gracious benediction of royal womanhood

It finds no willowy figure tilting the cage that swings With the little pale canary thatfilrgets the song he sings.

No face at the open window to welcome the fragrant breeze,• No touch at the old piano to waken the sleeping keys.

The idle book lies open, and the folded leaf is pressed Over the half-told story while death relates the rest.

The light steals into the corner where the darkest shadows are, And sweeps with its golden_, fingers the strings of the mute guitar.

And over the drooping mosses it clambers the rustic stand And over the ivy 's tresses it trails a trembling hand

But it brings no smile from the darkness - it calls no face from the gloom ‑

Where the weary voice goes wailing through the empty aisles of prayer. And the hands reach out through the darkness for the touches we have known

When the folded eyes were gleaming with a glory God designed To light a way to Heaven by the smiles they left behind

Was Riley's attachment romantic? We can only speculate about such things. Why did Riley never mention such a thing if that was his feeling and he truly loved her?

To a Nineteenth Century American, honor required giving respect to a married person as such. Honor required one to regard married people as inviolably matched. In private Riley might love Nellie dearly, but his sense of honor did not permit him to break up their marriage. In addition, Riley seems to have loved Nellie's husband almost as much as Nellie fraternally.

After Nellie's death, honor seemed to Riley much less of an excuse for not having Nellie in his life. His dedication quotation to a later edition of "The Flying

"Dwianie's" currently unmarked grave. According to cemetery officials, the grave of Nellie Millikan Cooley is in a small row of lots purchased by her husband George when Greenfield, Indiana first opened its Park Cemetery. Only the resistance to a probe of pea gravel placed around the wooden coffins in those days permitted its location by a cemetery ground crew. I placed my jacket on the spot.

Islands of the Night" berates honor as "A thynege of wychencref, an idle dreme..." This comes from Thomas Chatterton's "AElla," lines 536-7 where a frustrated "other man" contemplates the situation of a betrothed woman taken by a friend. Riley was equally frustrated by honor which kept Nellie Cooley from his arms. George Cooley was his friend.

This death of his beloved shortly before the writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night" is represented in "Wraith- Song of Spraivoll" at the commencement of Act III of "The Flying Islands of the Night." A "wraith" has a 1500's sense of an immaterial spectral appearance of a living being, portending the person's death. Here, Riley the poet, is close to death from alcoholism depressed over the death of his beloved Nellie Cooley. Spraivoll, the poet's poetic self, bemoans his despair at the situation of Riley having lost Nellie to the hand of death.

Of gentle hands on brow and hair. -The lack of this once pained me much, And so I have a care.

That beat the dead boughs where ye cling, And old dead nests beneath the eaves -

And life and hope,^• and so I sing: In all the graveyard of my heart Love is the deadest thing!

There is a recollection of Minnie Belle Mitchell about Riley with Nellie and her family.

"James W. Riley was in his early teens when the Millikan family came from the east and settled in Greenfield. Mrs. Millikan, a widow with three sons and two daughters, brought with her Greenfield's first piano. Because young Riley possessed another gift, a talent for music, he was at once attracted to the family, especially to the younger daughter, Nellie, who not only played the piano, but also that sentimental instrument, the guitar.

Bud was intrenched into the Millikan family. He and the youngest son, Jesse, established an intimate friendship which grew with each year until the latter's death.

But the lad's friendship for Nellie was different. She was a gay, vivacious, fun-loving girl and young woman. Her music delighted him. She

shared in the boys' games, helped young Riley with his studies and laughed sympathetically at his wild antics and mimicry. She was the personification of a satisfying friend and enough older than him to exercise a sister's prerogative of advising, criticizing and rebuking him when the need arose.

The intimacy and freedom of the Millikan home established in those early days remained unchanged on through Nellie's courtship and marriage to George Cooley, who shared in the family's affectionate regard for the sixteen year-old lad.

All through the years of the young poet's diligent writing and struggle for recognition, Nellie remained his staunch friend and critic. Her standards were high. She not only encouraged and praised his poetic efforts but she chided him at times when a passing weakness turned his faltering steps away from his coveted goal. She, with a mother's intuition, sustained him with her impelling faith in his ultimate success and started him again upon the upward grade.

The happy times with the Millikans did not end, however, with Nellie's marriage. She and her husband with young Bud and Jesse attended the dancing club which was an integral part of all social gatherings and they were always the life of the crowd. Bud and Nellie also led in charade parties which finally developed into parlor dramatics. Later young Riley, with a group of friends, organized a dramatic club known as "The Adelphians." It was in this organization that he found his greatest pleasure - he was a born actor. The years he had spent in character study and mimicry stood him well in hand and the Cooleys and other intimates formed an enviable cast.

In 1875, Mrs. Millikan's family and the Cooleys moved to Illinois. There were later two small children in the Cooley family. The frequent letters that were exchanged, especially Nellie's bright, encouraging ones, cheered the young poet in a way, yet his loneliness was great. An intimacy extending over many years could not be broken without a pull at heart strings. Finally after three years absence, the faithful friend whose love and interest was much like that of a mother, passed away at Belleville, Illinois, on July 27,

Riley's response to Nellie's death was a lapse into even more continuous intoxications with attendant occasional deliriums. Riley's call for Crestillomeem (his alcoholism) to take over his life is found in his autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," where Riley admits:

That Riley was parted with Nellie he had come to accept. That he was consigned never to live with Nellie was never accepted. Her death sealed that fact. It literally "cocooned" him. He took to the night only as a place where he might function away from people.

In another part of the poem, Crestillomeem, Riley's alcoholism, acknowledges that but to achieve fame can Riley choose to live and avoid suicide.

If his debauched nature can put an end to the reputable "Krung", then the triumph of debauchery will be complete and Riley must succumb to utter despair and suicide.

With the death of Nellie Cooley, Riley faced a bleak future. There would never be the affection or essential signs of love, the expectation of embrace and kiss or physical affection. Gone was the great "backer." This lack generated great anxiety. The goal of happiness becomes unattainable. If one is of a great loving nature, the expression of it becomes frustrated. The anger must be released. When the death is of one's great soul-partner there is no one with whom to express the depth of the separation. Nellie was this soul-partner of Riley.

Without Nellie to encourage him he was like "The Singer" of his poem of that name:

To rest him from his toil. - Death's Angel, like a vast eclipse, Above him spreads her wings, And /fans the embers of his lips To ashes as he sings.

Nellie was dead and after her death, fame seemed meaningless. Who could share Riley's joy with the polish of a word or turn of a phrase or being published? Death takes the triumph out of success.

Riley's reputation was also a terrible problem now that he was falling deeper into addiction.

1. Intoxication is a crime in Indiana as James Whitcomb Riley came to know from being convicted of it.

2. Dridular is a prohibitionist agitator. The word is suggestive of a "dry dealer" in "intoxicatese" or the opposite of alcohol dealing.

"0 what is Life at last," says you, 'At woman folks and man ,folks, too, Cain's oncomplainin, worry through?

"An' what is Love, 'at no one yit At's monkeyed with it kin lbrgit, Er gh`s fat on remember,/ hit?

"An' what is Death?" - looky hyur - Ef Life an' Love don't suit you, sir, Hit's jes' the thing yer lookin' feri

In 1879. Riley, considering himself as Jucklet of his play, composed "A Toast of Jucklet's," in similar Chattertonian bawd to his writing in "The Flying Islands," "To the Wine-God Merlus"

And laughter-streaming eyes, thou iffiest up The heart of me like any wassail-cup,

And from its teeming brim, in foaming drips, Thou Howes/ all my cares. I cry to thee Between the sips.. - Drink long and lustily; Drink thou m ripest joys, my richest mirth, My maddest staves of wanton minstrelsy,• Drink every song I've tinkered here on earth With any patch of music,. drink! and be Thou drainer of my soul, and to the lees Drink all my lover-thrills and ecstasies; And with a final gulp - ho! ho! - drink me, And roll me o'er thy tongue eternally.

Actually, in the poem itself, Crestillomeem is the Riley "self" who enchants Riley into alcoholism and delirium tremens. ("At present doth the King (Riley) lie in a sleep Drug-wrought and deep as death - the after-phase of an unconscious state...") The poem is in the ostensible form of a "play," because this most fanciful of Riley's poems is a "play" on his life. It is writ‑

ten as a takeoff of a 15th century play such as Thomas Chatterton, the fantastic forger- boy would have written and passed off as play of the non-existent monk Rowley. It probably owes its form more to the gloom Poe fitted into his "Scenes from Politian." But Riley's "play" is not dreamish humorous or despairing however clever and entertaining or dishonest as a forgery on life it might be or as it may appear or be. "The Flying Islands of the Night" is boldly delirious-appropriate to Riley's hellish perception of his existence without ordinary love.

Riley intimately knows this cast member, Crestillomeem, a pushy, slutty lady-this possibly mannish cross-dressing queen of a fantasy horror show who slurs words and lurks behind him ready to take over his life at every juncture. She is the foil of a W.C.T.U. crusader of Riley's late Nineteenth Century era, a type of personality who has haunted Riley and hunted him out for persecution as a youth to ridicule him and call him a "no-good" in his adolescence, to drive him under and sign a pledge not to drink. The fact is Riley's "Crestillomeem" is on the other side of the issue of alcoholism but just as determined a lady as any temperance "bitch." "Crestillomeem" wants Riley drunk and delirious. She doesn't want him writing poetry. She likes him suicidal. She is the reincarnation of the poison that Thomas Chatterton took when his forgeries became known. Crestillomeem wants Riley dead if not drunk and insists he sign a "pledge" to stay drunk just as her "purer" W.C.T.U. counterparts want Riley to sign a pledge to abstain from alcohol! Will Riley sign on to alcoholism's "Murphy" pledge? His autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night" tells us.

She wants him to die as did Thomas Chatterton, the poet whose life was such a fascination to Riley - the boy who ditched an apprenticeship in the law, wrote forgeries, but then committed suicide horribly through taking arsenic rather than face life after exposure of his forged poems. Following the condemnations of Riley for forging "Leonainie," Riley must have considered the same course of suicidal action.

Riley was afflicted with terrible suicidal depression as well as alcoholism. This is not beyond expectation. Creative writers are much more often afflicted by disabling personality traits as well as alcoholism, and writers are more than twice as likely to have affective disorders as other high achievers according to the recent psychiatric study by the British Psychiatrist Felix Post in his article, "Verbal Creativity, Depression and Alcoholism," in the BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY 1966.

Riley's life demanded he find an answer to his dilemma about seeking fame as a poet.

So came Riley's "Declaration of Independence" from prior American poetry, particularly that of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This conclusion was announced in a letter to the editor carried in the Kokomo TRIBUNE of April 5, 1879. The letter was signed by Riley's nom de plume John Walker. The letter to the newspaper was entitled, "USE AND ABUSE OF THE POETIC THEME."

"Poetry," said Johnson, "is the next best thing to prose." And in my belief had Johnson lived on until the present day and age, that utterance would now read, "Poetry is the next best thing to nothing."

The poetry of to-day is altogether too lush - too "sobby," I may say; too much sap, and not enough timber, you understand. It's just as refreshing, perhaps, to those who never use it as it ever was; but to those who liked myself have the smoldering embers of poetic fire forever gasping the fuel true genius alone can supply, the poetry of to-day only serves to smother and depress the flickering flames that otherwise would leap up roaringly, and illuminate the whole heart like a torch-light procession.

Poets who will persist in writing the poetry of to-day ought to be bucked and gagged, and rolled up like a ball of stale pop-corn and thrown out of the car-window of modern advancement. And yet how many unfettered hands do we daily see lifted in this most unholy practice.

Nor is the Press of our land wholly guiltless of lending furtherance to this most crying wrong; for it not only passively submits to these constantly recurring atrocities of rhyme, but - indirectly it may be - it aids and abets the evil by publishing and reproducing the very "poems" which otherwise would drop at once into the famishing oblivion which pants for them in vain. Where is the boasted justice of our broad Republic? Where is the Red-eyed Law we boast of? And "where, may I ask, is the Grand Jury of our land?"

This train of thought has been most painfully inflicted on my mind by a recent "poem," still going the rounds of the press, entitled "The Chamber Over the Gate," and openly claimed by its author, Henry W. Longfellow.

Now, personally, I have nothing but the kindliest feeling toward Mr. Longfellow, but. in justice to the demands of the strictly literary element of

Howard county, and Kokomo in particular, I must affirm that the really "suggestive and inviting theme he has selected, has not only met with neglect at his hands, but positive abuse. Yet like the thousands like it that are daily flaunted in our faces by the public press, it is copied, reproduced, and duplicated till the path of progress is literally strewn and choked with the rank dead leaves of poetical ruin and literary woe.

I cannot comment at length upon a subject so glutted with disaster and so bleared and bloated with the highwires of distress, but I will add, by way of admonition to Mr. L. that an author, and poet in particular, cannot be too cautions in his encroachments on the public weal. There are, I am frank to admit, certain points in "The Chamber over the Gate" that would warrant me in advising Mr. L. to continue, for a time at least, in the exercise of his poetical inclinations, but even this advice I must withhold, unless, indeed, the audacious aspirant will curb his ambition, and adopt in future for each succeeding effort of his pen, a fresh nom de plume. This, in a measure, would advance anything of worth he might chance to produce, while it would shield him as well from the pain and humiliation he must necessarily feel in reading such criticisms as the one my duty now calls on me to lay before the world. And now that I have gone so far in pointing out this glaring discrepancy, and directing at least one wandering upon his pilgrimage to the Great Perhaps, it becomes my further duty to illustrate, both to the unfortunate poet, and to my many admirers, the real principle involved in the poetical management of the theme he has so ruthlessly distorted and abused.

I subjoin a hastily arranged though mainly perfect copy of the poem as it should be treated by a master hand.

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Riley never forgot that the African-American barber of Greenfield. George Knox. employed him and provided the little money Riley had to live on as an adolescent.

Faces of Hoosiers Riley would have known. From the author's Ora Myers glass
negative collection of Hancock County, Indiana subjects.

Here is something very new in the life of James Whitcomb Riley. Yes, he wanted to be a poet. He had always wanted to be a poet. Yet his life had driven him into despair, confused depression and alcoholism. Poetry was going to save him if anything could. Here would be his fun as well as his life itself.

To find his voice it was necessary for him to transform poetry itself. This meant first and foremost to break awayfrom the mainstream "Longfellow-type romantic" poetry which he had previously most admired.

He wrote poetry as "Old Sport" wrote doggerel for awhile. This was Riley's John Walker poetry. "Who is Old Sport?" "Old Sport" was where Riley was coming from.

Let us first consider the "elevated" poetry of America's poet laureate prior to Riley's advent. "The Chamber Over the Gate" was a poem of the elderly Longfellow written October 30, 1878. Longfellow wrote it to accompany a letter of condolence written to a Protestant "Bishop" of Mississippi, Rev. Duncan C. Green, whose son had died in Greenville, Mississippi serving victims of an outbreak of yellow fever.

In the chamber over the gate That old man hesitate - Watching and waiting there To swoop down unaware?

There is neither there nor here, There is neither soon nor late, In that Chamber over the Gate, Nor any long ago

From the ages that are past The voice sounds like a blast Over seas that wreck and drown, Over tumult of traffic and town,• And from ages yet to be

Somewhere at every hour The watchman on the tower Looks forth, and sees the fleet Approach of 'the the huriying feet Of messengers, that bear The tidings of despair,

The light goes out in our hearts,- In the Chamber over the Gate We sit disconsolate.

There is neither here nor thar. There is neither soon nor late In that chamber over the gate Nor any long ago

In dreams of the van shed past The voice comes like a blast Over the window-sill

Thou hears it howling still. And in nightmares yet to be Will its echoes tackle thee

He goes forth from the door Who shall return no more.• With him the flower pot goes And the boot a spector throws From the chamber over the gate Where the old man /ies in wait

That tis a common grief Bringeth but slight relief:• Her's is the bitterest loss-For the old man is the boss -And forever the cry must be.• Would I had fled with thee

Ours is the bitterest loss, Ours is the heaviest cross; And forever the cry will be "Would God I had died for thee,

Riley turns the Longfellow subject matter over to a humble life situation. John Walker does not know a noble father who grieves for a deserving son. John Walker knows a boy who must leave of his home because of an impaired father. He knows this boy to be thrown out of his house with a flower pot and boot thrown out after him to make sure he goes on his way and knows he can't come home. This, according to Riley, would be a much more likely scenario for the writing of a poem about a "chamber over the gate."

In his late twenties, Riley is abandoning Longfellow as a trusted guide to American life and throwing his support to the weltershung of his fellow alcoholic "Old Sport."

John C. Walker, the pseudonym which Riley used here, was "Old Sport" according to his friend and biographer, Minnie Belle Mitchell. The John Walker poems were done in imitation of an alcoholic "corduroy" poet whose real name was William Stafford. She says of him, "The boys about town called Bill Stafford "Old Sport." When sober he sold a patent sieve from door to door, but when he was drinking, "Old Sport" made verses which were the merest doggerel. He would sing to the tune of a weird old Irish song. While thus engaged he would sit bent over on a box outside a store with arms crossed tight, legs dangling and head down, making these rhymes and singing them dolefully. Sometimes his rhymes were of a local nature, again they would soar into the realm of imagination and become weird and

mournful. "Old Sport" was, indeed, a favorite character for Mr. Riley to imitate when in a jolly crowd. The poet would make up his own doggerel and sing it to the same Irish tune and every little while would say under his breath in "Old Sport's" same cracked voice, "God - what a doleful tune!" The following is an example of "Old Sport's" artful rhyming ‑

Mitchell believes this very doggerel inspired Riley's first John C. Walker poem as published in the Kokomo TRIBUNE called "Tom Johnson's Quit."

Riley's Bible reading was well known. I find the references to John, the apostle of humility, and Riley's assumption of the name Johnson ("John's son") so often more than coincidence.

We do not find this character in Riley's poetry to even have a first name in Riley's use of the appellation in "Use and Abuse of the Poetic Theme."

In Riley's contemporaneous "Buzz Club," we find another use of the name Johnson. It is a boy who everyone seems to condemn, but who finds peace in being John's son despite the humility the condition has had on his life.

The world is turned ag'in me, And people says, "They guess That nothin' else is in me But pure maliciousness." I git the blame for doin' What other chaps destroy, And /list a-goin' to ruin Because I'm "Johnson's Boy"

That ain't my name - I'd ruther They'd call me lke or Pat. -But they 'veforgot the other -And so have I, for that! I reckon it's as handy,

In Wisdom Is wise employ, And I'll bet you half a dollar He'll say its "Johnson Bny."

Folks don't know how I suffer In my uncomplainin' way! They say I'm gittin' "tougher" And "tougher" every day.

Was a-shoutin' out for joy And some one shook the winder He prayed for "Johnson's Boy"

I'm tired o' bein' follered By farmers every day And then o' bein' collared For coaxin' hounds away. Hounds always plays me double -It's a trick they all enjoy To git me into trouble

swell the song sonorous As I clap my wings for joy, And sail off on the chorus -

From the author's Ora Myers glass negative collection of Hancock County, Indiana subjects.

How strange it is that the self-professed victim here, the boy, is always associated with dire events? Can we believe him when he says he is always the victim of circumstances? How strangely necessary it is that he continue to profess his innocence. Is it credible that he is charged with causing tragic happenings on so many occasions just because he is Johnson's boy? Did he kill the boy he was skating with? We certainly do wonder. Riley employs antistrophe in repeating Johnson's Boy at the end of each stanza so that the whole weight of the horribles seems to rest upon the boy's shoulders in reality

The point seems to be the redemption that nevertheless comes later because the boy has hope for redemption as John's son.

Life is not, even for the Riley of Crestillomeem, without the hope of redemption to a son of John. Riley uses this name Johnson so frequently it must have had special significance to him. We remember that eventually it will be his poems under this name that betoken his finest kenotic poetry, these being the poems of Benjamin Johnson of Boone. Then again when his life is depicted on the Broadway stage in New York, Riley suggests his character be called "Jim Johnson." "Ways is devius.." to the creative Riley as he says in his poem to William Leachman.

Then we find the groping with alcoholism a major subject in James Whitcomb Riley's poetry. Can we see here a step into redemption through kenoticism?

We laughed, of course - 'caUse Tom, you know, Has spied more whisky, boy an' man, And seed more trouble, high an' low,

Than any chap but Torn could stand.• And so, says I, "He's too nigh dead Fer Temper'nce to benefit!"

We all liked Tom, an' that was why We sort o' simmered down agin, And ass the feller ser'ously

At made my heart git up an' git ‑
But Lord./ - to hear 'em shout that way! ‑

From the author's Ora Myers glass negative collection of Hancock County, Indiana subjects.

And listened - kin hear him yit, His voice a-wobblin' with his chin, -"Tom Johnson quit!"

Riley places the character of "Old Sport" through the mental gymnastics of abstinence of alcohol. In the same Mayor's Court docket book where one finds Along with James Whitcomb Riley's arrest for Public Intoxication in Dec. 1878, one finds many, many arrests of William Stafford for the same thing. Those dates of arrest are followed up by incarcerations for public intoxication because "Old Sport" had to "lay out his fines." (One got credit for fines on a per diem basis of incarceration if one didn't have the money to pay the fine.) It seems clear that Riley from the late 1870's and at least until his turn into kenoticism delves into the life of shamed alcoholics like himself to not only explore what intoxication and the life causing it but also how a poetry of such a man might be written. Riley's poetry changes subject matter and also technique with flights into ellipse, "intoxicatese" orthography and diction, and imaginative dissembling such as one finds in "The Flying Islands of the Night."

I do find that Riley always seemed to come to identify with those who, I ike himself, suffered public shame by public intoxication arrests to include friends like Clint Hamilton, Luther Benson, Almon Kiefer and even Riley's friend John Mitchell, whose wife was Minnie Belle Mitchell, the author and biographer of Riley whose intimacy with the facts of his life are so very helpful. In fact it almost seems to be a necessity that one be an alcoholic for Riley to dedicate a book of his poetry to the person. It is a very rare volume of Riley's poetry that is not dedicated to an alcoholic.

Riley realized there is nothing about God's love which bars any alcoholic or anyone else from being a child of the gentle and beloved John.

1. There simply is not enough information to determine a more formal diagnosis of what Riley's situation was regarding alcohol use at the time of the writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night." Did the writing occur while Riley was alcohol dependent or withdrawing from alcohol use? Was his condition one of dementia rather than delusion? Did he suffer hallucinosis or a spot of amenstic disorder? Was he alcohol dependent at all or merely a "poor little lamb, out on a spree, doomed from here to eternity." We just don't know. He might have been having fun with us by just spoofing being drunk as he says he was when writing "The Flying Islands of the Night" in the dialogue of the Buzz Club members. We just don't know. I close my DSM-III-R with a violent thud.

The finest of the "Crestillomeem" Riley's works were his Buzz Club papers. They were a "fun" series with taunts at the temperance prudes from

if the members were not under the influence during the meetings themselves. The Buzz Club consisted of something like an alcoholic's support group in which each of the three members would try to better himself by

producing something of literary merit. The results were semi-comical but oddly beautiful pieces of writing and poetry and stand-up comedy or drama

in varying degrees of "intoxicatese," of which "The Flying Islands of the Night," has proven to be the most cryptic yet enchanting.

The pieces were published in the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD as follows: Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club No. I, May 11, 1878;

Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club No. II, June 15, 1878; Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club No. III, July 6, 1878; Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club No. IV, August 24, 1878;

Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club No. V, September 28, 1878; and Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club No. VI, November 16, 1878.

The first of the series opens with an explanation that the club, originally of twenty-five members, is now down to three and one of the members, Mr. Clickwad, moves that the club be disbanded and "I shall insist upon either a

second or a duel...As Sancho Panza says...in God's name let us abandon the enterprise while we have enough members left to vote. If it runs this way

gives us to know the members of this club are simple drunks. We are not given to expect much but grammatical inconsequence and intoxicated incon‑

sistency in expression by the group. Occasionally, we are not entirely disappointed.

Crestillomeem is at work. She is the poet who writes in the sing-song -intoxicatese" of dissyllabic iambs. The gentlemen of the Buzz Club are at

an unrepentent antitheticalAlcoholics Anonymous meeting drunk. Mr. Clickwad delivers the first poem we encounter in the series:

For the sake of sin alone. And with fondly_, lse embraces Did I weave my mystic laces Round their horror stricken faces

And I smiled to see them weeping, For to see an insect weeping, Sadly, sorrowfully weeping,

Fattens every spider's mirth; And to note a fly's heart quaking, And with anguish ever aching Till you see it slowly breaking

That / drank of it like wine And my mortal soul engages That no spider on the pages

Round my web in wild delight; Till with _.fierce ambition burning, And an inward thirst and yearning I hastened my returning

Riley continues, "There was a wild, unearthly light in Mr. Clickwad's eyes as he closed the poem and glared defiantly upon his hearers."

We have heard a mock delirium tremens vision in lyric trimeter. The next member, Mr. Plempton, continues with his own as a stand-up narrative. He "dreams" he is in a deserted banquet hall all alone. A feast was on the table and he was very hungry. There were chickens roasted, fried and broiled, dumplings and peach cobblers, pies etc. Whenever he tried to eat anything it became alive. He harpooned a fat apple dumpling and it squealed like a pig when he stuck it. He then took a chicken leg and all the chickens on the feast table got up and fluttered away. Even the chicken from whom he had wrenched the leg got up and hopped away on its remaining leg while the other chickens screamed at him, "He's got the chicken leg." He defiantly tried to eat it, but it was as steel and the fowl laughed at him, "He can't eat it. He can't eat it." Mr. Plempton says he then swallowed it metallic though it was after which the chicken on one leg hopped over to him and told him he had "swallowed a navy revolver, loaded with mugs to the sluzzle." Any movement and it would go off. The jelly then asked him if he had "any lit‑

tle earthly matters to clear up.^- Trembling, all Mr. Plempton could do was pray, "Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me;\Bless thy little lamb tonight" - to which the Jelly replied, "Oh, what a little lamb!" and later while Mr. Plempton was praying Jesus to keep him safe, the jelly shrieks, "Time's up, Make ready! Take aim! Fire!" The shot that got Mr. Plempton also wounded the jelly, who murmured, "A random shot, but we can at least die together.

The final member delivers a more metered piece, again in fantasy, ".../Dreamer, say, will you dream of love\That lives in a land of sweet perfume,\ Where stars drip down from the skies above\ln molten spatters of bud and bloom..." To cries of "Splendid," the meeting adjourns with them all going out for a bottle of burgundy at Mr. Hunchley's. So ends our first acquaintanceship with the antithetical Buzz Club.

In the second Buzz Club meeting, we learn what degenerate reprobates the members are. The subject upon which each is to produce a literary piece is childhood. The example of Mr. Clickwad will suffice. He leads off with an incident in which he was tricked by a child who he is trying to entice to sit on his lap. While visiting in Terre Haute Clickwad is taken into a drawing room to await the coming of a friend he wishes to meet when a sweet-faced little girl peeps in. Clickwad asks her name and she says, "I'm mama's yitty angel.'"'Ah!" I exclaimed rapturously, "and you are a little angel, to be sure!" And then telling her of my passionate love for little angels, "I patted my knee with a most seductive air." The little girl takes a nickel to come closer but won't sit on his lap for that because another gentleman "divs me one-five-two mucher'n that." Eventually she will sit on his lap for all of his money and plays with his possessions, sticking her doll down his vest. Eventually while trying to open his watch, she strikes herself on the head and rushes off to return with mother yelling this man tried to kill her. When he got up to defend his honor, the legs of the doll protruded from his vest.

There is only "The Flying Islands of the Night," offered by Mr. Clickwad, in the fourth episode.

In the fifth episode, where imitations were to be undertaken, two lengthy pieces are presented: "An Idyl of the King" is told by Mr. Plempton on the order of Tennyson. (The title is Old Hec's Idolatry as found in Riley's Complete Works, Biographical Edition.) Then Mr. Hunchley reads his

The sixth episode contains Mr. Bryce's imitation of an old man reciting "Farmer Whipple - Bachelor" followed by Mr. Clickwad's offering.

Clickwad tells the group at this last meeting, that he intends to quit drinking after the evening and its drunken party afterward.

Riley's "intoxicatese" becomes childlike, fantastic and "Lewis Carrollish" in "A Wrangdillion." Riley would have been particularly joyish in finding a writer such as Carroll along about the time this poem was written since Carroll was a "truant" name for the real author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

He sinks to the dregs in the dead o' the night, And he shuffles the shadows about

The poet of wanderings in the American life of Indiana and Ohio over the last seven years since his mother's death, with the experiences of its ways, began recording his personal views driving him into alcoholism into a figurative speech appropriate to his condition. And yet the world- for a time- did not care to see what he was doing to be able to drive him into conformity and banality. While the influence of Charles Dickens was very pronounced not just in Riley's point of view but also in his life plan, the English poet, William Blake, and of course Riley's preinacarnation self, "Edgar Allan Poe," seem to me to be the most important writers to Riley's career as Crestillomeem.

I am not taking Riley's writing career step-by-step. Nevertheless, chronologically, Riley was aware of "inspired spiritualism" in poetry from an early age. I attribute Riley's study of William Blake for encouragement as the great freeing verse. Blake's poetry best adapted to a poetry of tremens-inspired visions such as "The Flying Islands of the Night," to spiritually inspired poetry such as Riley's greatest poetry, his kenotic poetry, and finally to his imaginative poetry of the variety commonly called Riley's children's poetry.

As we have noted, delirium is an essential feature of alcohol withdrawal. "The Flying Islands of the Night" seems a delirium account. While Riley sank into great alcoholism after the death of his mother and to escape Greenfield again after the Kemmer lynching with another medicine man, this time Doc Townsend, he does not appear to have grown delirious from these experiences. We find evidence of delirium tremens only after the death of Nellie. Delirium tremens often comes very quickly as within a week after withdrawals. It consists of marked autonomic hyperactivity, with tachycardia and sweating. This is "delirium tremens," or "tremens," as referred to in the Buzz Club papers. The associated feature of tremens are vivid hallucinations. Delusions and agitated behavior accompany these deliriums. A more modern diagnostic description is organic alcohol hallucinosis which is described in the American Psychiatry Associations "DSM III-R" as "The essential feature of this disorder" in which vivid and persistent hallucinations develop shortly (usually within 48 hours) after cessation of or reduction in alcohol ingestion by a person who apparently has Alcohol Dependence. The hallucinations may be auditory or visual. The auditory hallucinations are usually voices and, less commonly, unformed sounds such as hissing or buzzing. In the majority of cases, the content of the hallucinations is unpleasant and disturbing...The voices may address the person

directly, but more often they discuss him or her in the third person." In discussing delirium, the note is made that "The duration of an episode of Delirium is usually brief, about one week; it is rare for Delirium to persist for more than a month." Recovery is usually complete although a more stable organic mental disorder may result. Diagnostic Criterion are reduced ability to maintain attention to external stimuli, disorganized thinking, rambling, irrelevant, or incoherent speech, and the occasional perceptual disturbance, illusion, misinterpretation, hallucination, disorientation to time, place, or person, and episodic memory impairment.

Crestillomeem is the Riley suffering from alcoholism, its delusions, and tremens upon withdrawal. She is the ranting bitch that schemes at his success or composure as a poet. She also is a person with remarkable powers of assessment who seems to see Riley the most clearly of all of his fragmented selves. She is not the "essential Riley." She is however his nightmare of himself.