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JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY , THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT HOME

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

Part 2

THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT • 7

A Riley parade entry for 1973. Annually Greenfield, Indiana holds a Riley Festival to honor Riley on the weekend of his October birthday. This includes an event where school children bring flowers to place on the Riley statue on Friday and a parade on Saturday with many other events. It is the second largest community festival in Indiana ranking only behind the Indianapolis "500" Festival on Memorial Day weekend in Hoosier attendance.

By the time of Riley's death, he was highly revered with celebrations of his birthday all across America. His poetry was sung in America's voice.

In describing the affect of Riley's death upon the nation, Meredith Nicholson, author and Editor of the Indianapolis NEWS from 1885 to 1897, wrote, "On a day in July, 1916, thirty-five thousand people passed under the dome of the Indiana capitol to look for the last time on the face of James Whitcomb Riley. The best-loved citizen of the Hoosier commonwealth was dead, and laborers and mechanics in their working clothes, professional and business men, women in great numbers, and a host of children paid their tribute of respect to one whose sold claim upon their interest lay in his power to voice their feelings of happiness and grief in terms within the common understanding. The very general expressions of sorrow and affection evoked by the announcement of the poet's death encourage the belief that the lines that formed on the capitol steps might have been augmented endlessly by additions drawn from every part of America."

The incredible path of Riley's life which led to this outcome is the story that follows.

How did the public perceive such a poet?

The answer seems that James Whitcomb Riley was taken mainly as a humorist and entertainer in his time.

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"Riley" was fun. He dealt in the healing influence of laughter and humor. He was Riley at play as a mischievous comic, "dialect singer" and enter­tainer. This was the perception of Riley from his days on the lyceum circuit when his "lectures" to great public audiences all around the country were managed by the great James Redpath and his Boston Redpath Bureau and by the successor "manager" Major James B. Pond of New York and his agency. Being a popular lyceum speaker gave Riley huge access to the American public in the Post-Civil War era. This was, of course, an age before elec­tronic media. Folk went out to public lecture halls for entertainment in those days instead of watching televisions in their homes.

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The father of young Riley was a lawyer of large practice, who used, in moments of deep thought, to regard this boy as the worst case he ever had. This may have been the

reason that, in time, he insisted on his reading law, which the boy really tried to do; but, finding that political

economy and Blackstone didn't rhyme, he slid out of the office one hot, sultry afternoon, and ran away with a patent

medicine and concert wagon, from the tail end of which he was discovered by some relatives in the next town, violently abusing a brass drum. This was a proud moment for the boy; nor did his peculiar presence of mind entirely desert him till all the country fairs were over for the season. Them afar off, among strangers in a strange State, he thought it would be fine to make a fly­ing visit home. But he couldn't fly. Fortunately, in former years he had pur­loined some knowledge of a trade. He could paint a sign, or a house, or a tin roof - if some one else would furnish him the paint - and one of Riley's hand-painted picket fences gave rapture to the most exacting eye. Yet, through all his stress and trial, he preserved a simple, joyous nature, togeth­er with an ever widening love of men and things in general. He made friends, and money, too - enough. at last, to gratify the highest ambition of his life, namely, to own an overcoat with fur around the tail of it. He then groped his way back home, and worked for nothing on a little country paper that did not long survive the blow. Again excusing himself, he took his sappy paragraphs and poetry to another paper and another town, and there did better till he spoiled it all by devising a Poe poem fraud, by which he lost his job; and, in disgrace and humiliation shoe-mouth deep, his feelings gave way beneath his feet, and his heart broke with a loud report. So, the true poet was born.

Of the poet's present personality we need speak but briefly. His dress is at once elegant and paid for. It is even less picturesque than all-wool. Not liking hair particularly, he wears but little, and that of the mildest shade. He is a good speaker - when spoken to - but a much better listener, and often

 A Riley Advertisement with his own last name spelled out. Do you see the characters spelling out the name? (Neg.C7180, IMCPL-Riley Collection, Indiana Historical Society.)

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longs to change places with his audience so that he also may retire. In his writings he probably shows at his best. He always tries to, anyway. Knowing the manifold faux pas and "breaks" in this life of ours, his songs are sympa­thetic and sincere. Speaking coyly of himself, one day he said: "I write from the heart; that's one thing I like about me. I may not write a good hand, and my 'copy' may occasional­ly get mixed up with the market

reports, but, all the same, what challenges my admiration is that humane peculiarity of mine - i.e., writing from the heart - and, therefore, to the heart "

More about this side of Riley "the humorist" and the public perception of the man will follow, but I take the biographer's prerogative of focusing on what I find the most revealing about James Whitcomb Riley first.

Riley's final resting place at Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, the highest point of land in the Hoosier capitol. This is as close to a shrine of the Hoosier people as one will find in Indiana. (From the Barton Rees Pogue glass positive collection.)

A "TWINTORETTE"
IN THE MORNING PAPER

To know about this enigmatic figure of the American frontier, humor and kenotic feeling³), it would have helped to open up a Hoosier newspaper, The Indianapolis Saturday HERALD," on August 24, 1878. The citizens of Indiana found one of the strangest writings in all of literature on its page 6.

What was it?

The piece called itself a "Twintorette." What was that?

It was embedded in a column calling itself: "Respectfully Declined" Papers of The Buzz Club, number IV. What was

THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT • 11

the Buzz Club? Who wrote it? The piece had a cast as a play does. Was it a play?

Time revealed that the author of "The Flying Islands of the Night" was the young Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, very early in his career and long before fame settled upon him. In this "flight" lies the answer to Riley's poetry of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness, and self-control, the kenotic categories of expression of the spirit of the "Christ Hymn.¹"

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The two-person cast of The Flying Islands Of The Night

James Whitcomb Riley

Nellie Millikan Cooley

Riley as Krung                             Riley as Amphine

Riley as Crestillomeem                         Riley as Jucklet

Riley as Spraivoll                            Nellie as Dwainie

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