8 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

While we must be true to Riley's autobiographical understanding of his own life, we shall expand the activities of Riley as Amphine to include those other persons for whom he showed affection - correspondents and friends -particularly the many close friends who bore such close camaraderie with Riley.

Among his closest friends during his teenaged years and early twenties were the members of the Adelphians theatrical troupe. The Adelphians began as a band of musi‑

cians in 1868 during a political campaign. The group purchased a band wagon manufactured locally and while its driver, James Cox, maneuvered the bandwagon in political parades, the uniformed band members, William Davis, Ed Millikan, War Barnett, Thomas Carr, Charles

John Guymon, Fred Hafner, Emsely Wilson, Hiram Riley and Riley's brother John played rousing musical numbers. Riley and his friends, Clint

Hamilton and Fred Beecher, also occasionally played in this band. Later in Riley's life, in 1890, Riley composed a poem about his days as a musician in the Adelphians or sometimes called the Davis Brother's Band as follows:

Sense I moved then to Kansas, of course I see a change, A-comin' back, and notice things that's new to me and strange; Especially at evening when yer new band—fellers meet, In fancy uniforms and all, and play out on the street -

...What's come of old Bill Lindsey and the Saxhorn fellers - say? I want to hear the old band play.

What's come of Eastman, and Nat Snow? And where's War Barnett at? And Nate and Bony Meek; Bill Hart; Tom Richa'son and that Air brother of him played the drum as twic't as big as Jim;

And old Hi Kerns, the carpenter - say, what's become o' him? I make no doubt yer new band now's a competenter band,

And plays their music more by note than what they play by hand, And stylisher and grander tunes; but somehow - anyway,

Sich tunes as "John Brown's Body" and "Sweet Alice," don't you know; And "The Camel Is A-Comin'," and "John Anderson, My Jo"; And a dozent others of 'em - "Number Nine" and "Number 'Leaven" Was favor-rites that fairly made a feller dream o' Heaven.

When "Lilly Dale," er "Hazel Dell," had sobbed and died away ...I want to hear the old band play.

Yer new band ma'by beats it, but the old hand's what I said -It allus `peared to kind o' chord with somepin' in my head; And, whilse I'm no musicianer, when my blame' eyes is jes'

Nigh drowned out, and Menz'ry squares her jaws and sort o' says Size won't ner never will fergit, I want to jes' turn in

And take and light right out o' here and git back West ag'in And stay there, when I git there, where I never hut" to say I want to hear the old band play.

About two years later, in April 1870, many of the members of the old Adelphians or Davis Brothers Band decided to put on entertainments at the Old Masonic Hall in Greenfield. They called their club "The Adelphi" and

themselves "The Adelphians." The group became best known for dramatic performances which continued for several years. James Whitcomb Riley and his beloved Nellie Millikan, later Mrs. George Cooley, were very prominent in these productions. Other members of the Adelphians were Lee 0. Harris, George Carr, War Barnett, A. Ford, Nellie's brothers Ed and Jesse, George B. Cooley, 0. N. Ridgeway, John Skinner, H. McGruder, Clint Hamilton, Angie Parker, Mary Dille, and Kate Geary and others from time to time. Riley commonly painted backdrops and produced the stage scenery used in the plays. The group seems to have continued until about 1875, mainly being active in the Christmas seasons and winters.

The Adelphians' combined talents produced entertainments and plays for several years in Greenfield. Most were given at the Old Masonic Hall catycornered from the Bradley Methodist Church. I detail an early program for one from Nov. 28, 1869, calling itself

Greenfield, Indiana's Masonic Hall built in 1854 where many Riley entertainments were performed. Greenfield's former Presbyterian Church since replaced by a new building in 1906, is in the background. (From the Barton Rees Pogue glass positive collection.)

There was a general musical introduction followed by "The Great Moral and Domestic Drama of the Chimney Corner." If James Whitcomb Riley developed stage presence and dramatic and comical stage skills someplace, it came from living and breathing on his hometown's stage.

Adolescence became the time when Riley learned enough about characters to be able to play the parts he later assumed. His character types were a wide number of persons many from the world of literature and art. He spent more time reading Dickens at Tom Snow's and read poetry such as Keats, Herrick, Tennyson, Longfellow and Poe. Snow had bought fragments of the old township library and Jim borrowed Lives of Eminent Painters and Sculptors. He poured over the work and life patterns of artists.

At 20, Riley was into theatrical plays, chewed tobacco, loved the girls, and possessed neither skill nor job. He played Solomon Probity, in

November, 1869, of that year in "Chimney Corner." In playing this part, Riley followed Jimmy Rarden, an old man, around town for a week, watching him sit and stand, walk and talk. He constructed the fireplace for the set and had a good time. In that one year, from Dec. 26 through the holidays at the end of the year, this group put on "Child of Waterloo," "The Rough Diamond," "More Blunders Than One," "Charles the XII," "The Obstinate Family," "Box and Cox," and "Grandfather Whitehead." James Whitcomb Riley took a part in every one of these many plays and in many he had the leading part.

Although Riley's adolescence was not notable for being happy in his life, it was perhaps the most important epoch in the respect that during this time Riley learned to live life by acting out play characters. This came about through Riley's experiences as an actor in plays and productions in his

Riley in one of his favorite roles-an "old man" - at center - stage at the Greenfield Masonic Flail. Greenfield, Indiana.

hometown of Greenfield, Indiana. The Christmas season of 1869, his troupe presented seven plays. "Child of Waterloo" written by Lee 0 Harris was the first one.

Riley sharpened his awareness of play acting by attending plays wherever he happened to wander. We know he attended plays at White's Hall while at Marion in 1872.

The entertainments in those days were mostly local productions. Few traveling companies journeyed through the Midwest. Townspeople put on

the plays as the enterprising among them conceived and did them. Riley was a major actor in his adolescent years. He kept on acting when he left the stage and continued on and on, doing the parts, throughout his life. He memorializes his most important parts in his great autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night."

The early experiences of acting contributed materially to Riley's later success. Booth Tarkington, says, "In Mr. Riley's 'platform career,' during those years when he went about the country "reading," his poems he saw with his eyes, and heard with his ears, what people thought of him.

"Never any other man stood night after night on stage or platform to receive such solid roars of applause for the 'reading' of poems - and for himself.

"He did not read his poems; he did not recite them either; he took his whole body into his hands; as if were, and by his wizard mastery of suggestion left no James Whitcomb Riley at all upon the stage. Instead, the audience saw and heard whatever the incomparable comedian wished them to see and hear. He held literally unmatched power over them for riotous laughter or for actual copious tears and no one who ever saw an exhibition that power will forget it - or forget him." Remember Greenfield as it was then a village, twenty miles away from Indianapolis, but still very isolated. There were no libraries and no telephones and no autos for quick transportation and so in Greenfield a group composed of the school teachers and others joined in literary groups to share experiences. Books and magazines were passed alon^g, with may comments on their margins. The ones James Whitcomb Riley passed added thumbnail sketches of the characters. A former city resident, Mrs. Charles E. Cox, formerly Emma Cooley, Nellie's daughter, remembered one on "Mrs. Weatherbee's Quilting Part" a story by Alice Carey included in the old "Clovernook Sketches."

Perhaps the medium most attuned to Riley as Amphine was raw art of which his sign painting was a commercial variant. It is said he loved to draw from childhood. When he was 5, he drew valentines and is said to have written verses on them for his friends for which his mother praised him greatly. Little of this survives.

In an "approved" sketch of his life, Riley gave his nephew, Edmund Eitel, information for the following account.

"Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, young Riley turned his back on the little schoolhouse and for a time wandered through the different fields of art, indulging a slender talent for painting until he thought he was destined for

the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a few weeks," he says, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring thousands over the back seat of a Gold Chariot. In a dearth of comic songs for the banjo and guitar, I had written two or three myself, and the idea took possession of me that I might be a clown, introduced as a character-song-man and the composer of my own ballads.

My father was thinking of something else, however, and one day I found myself with a 'five-ought' paint brush under the eaves of an old frame house that drank paint by the bucketful, learning to be a pointer. Finally, I graduated as a house, sign and ornamental painter, and for two summers traveled about with a small company of young fellows calling ourselves 'the Graphics,' who covered all the barns and fences in the state with advertisements."

Another possibility he explored was working as a printer and working in the village print-shop and a later ambition was acting, encouraged by the good times he had in the theatricals of the "Adelphian Society of Greenfield.'"'In my dreamy way," he afterward said, "I did a little of a number of things fairly well - sand, played the guitar and violin, acted, painted signs and wrote poetry. My father did not encourage my verse-making for he thought it too visionary, and being a visionary himself, he believed he understood the dangers of following the promptings of the poetic temperament. I doubted if anything would come of the verse- writing myself."

Many stories survive of a possible love affair of James Whitcomb Riley with Clara Bottsford, a teacher and poet in her own right who once lived with the Riley family in "The Seminary" and went on to teach and write much poetry. Her sister, Lotta M. B. Cooper, has written a book documenting this relationship called CLARA LOUISE. She commences her account with the statement: "It is well known in Greenfield and Hancock County that James Whitcomb Riley and Clara Louise Bottsford were at one time lovers for some years." The connections are numerous and can be seen in the very subject matter of Riley poetry. Clara Louis Bottsford and Riley were said to be seeing each other when she was teaching near the "Little Town of Tailholt" and was living in the family of "My Old Friend, William Leachman."

"The dark-eyed girl had overflowing vitality, and unbounded enthusiasm for the things she liked, and the attraction grew to be the love of the poet's life, and of hers, the living, ardent expression of which lasted through a period of nearly eight years, in which they walked and talked, and read and sang, and laughed together. They read the poets endlessly, it seemed to us, and much history and mythology. In this time, too, the poet's father loaned the girl books and talked to her about them...

It is impossible for strangers to know, to see, or to feel the personal charm of a poet in his youth and intimate associations. This poet was also a musician as the Troubadours were so. He played the guitar and sang with fine effect the old love songs.

We lived, a group of young people in the midst of an acre of trees, where had been our father's and mother's home, (Biographer's note: Clara Louise's parents died much earlier and shortly after they purchased a farm along Sugar Creek in Hancock County, Indiana, in 1860. The Bottsford children, with Clara Louis as the eldest and her father's administratrix, stayed on the farm and raised themselves.) On summer nights with the moon shining through the branches, the soft air vibrated with tenderness as he sang:

Another of the Riley's favorite songs she recalls was "Juanita:" "Nita, Jaunita, let me linger by thy side,

The courtship was open and admitted, though unannounced. The family were included or disregarded as it might happen, she being the oldest. It was not a matter of moment to the pair who sat with them, or didn't, though the youngest brother spent much time with them; he was a lovely boy and a favorite with both...

...I think it was along here that he tried lecturing, giving entertainments, but he suffered from a disability which in his day was common to temperamental men and plainer ones as well. (Biographer's note: alcoholism.)

...About this time it was that the young brother one day, having gone part way with Mr. Riley to the railroad station, came close to the grown-up sister and said almost in a whisper, "You don't know what he said to me. He said the one thing in all the world he wanted was to succeed at something so that you and he could be married."

(Clara Louise) answered, smiling, "And was it news? I've known that for a long time."

In all poetic justice, they should have married and been happy; but poesy was never known to take account of that which men call justice, and the element of chance, which so sore afflicts mankind may be to the gods, opportunity. Who knows.

Time went on and lengthened out. Success seemed no nearer. With discouragement and uncertainty, the poet's propensity for following Bobby Burns (Biographer's note: alcoholism) in his best known characteristic grew stronger and finally brought the end of the love story."

What do we know of this alleged lover? Miss Clara Louise Bottsford was a native of Johnson County and moved to Sugar Creek Township when she was a child. Her parents, E.S. and Lorinda Bottsford, died within one year of each other leaving an orphaned family of seven children including Clara Louise, one child having died earlier. Clara Louise taught in the schools of Greenfield and boarded in the home of Reuben A. Riley where she met and was allegedly courted by James Whitcomb Riley. The Bottsford daughters and sons kept the farm home, living there in the summer and teaching in the winter, until the youngest was grown up. John H. Binford, author of the first HISTORY OF HANCOCK COUNTY, knew her in the first normal school of the county and as superintendent of the Greenfield graded schools licensed her to teach. She first wrote with a nom de plume in the county papers, then in FRANK LESLEY MAGAZINE, CHIMNEY CORNER, and The New York LEDGER and then, after 1882, wrote over her own signature in the Indianapolis JOURNAL and HERALD, Chicago INTER-OCEAN, New York SUN, and other metropolitan newspapers.

Across the brink where sorrow tried To drown within the amber tide; Because the looks, whose ripples kissed The trembling lids through tender mist, Were dazzled with a radiant gleam -Because of this I called her "Dream."

Because the roses growing wild About her features when she smiled Were ever dewed with tears that fell With tenderness ineffable;

Would tincture death's myrrh-bitter stream To sweetness - so I called her "Dream."

That seemed, beneath her strange control, To smooth the plumage of the soul And calm it, till, with folded wings, It half forgot its flutterings,

Because I saw her, in a sleep As dark and desolate and deep And fleeting as the taunting night That flings a vision of delight To some lorn martyr as he lies In slumber ere the day he dies -Because she vanished like a gleam Of glory, do I call her "Dream."

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

In 1950, a folk-recollection of Riley and his connection with Clara Bottsford is found in the pamphlet THE PRINCE AND PRINCE'S LAKES by Joan Lattimore. When the area of Johnson County, Indiana, south of Indianapolis where Clara Bottsford's family once lived, was being devel‑

oped and lakes were created, the developer, Howard Prince, published a newsletter for the residents called "Prince's Lakes News" that contained the following article.

"Some may have wondered what we intended to do with the old house at the entrance across from our administration building. Frankly there have been many other things more urgently in need of immediate attention that this.

However we do intend to repair this old house and paint it up, but we do not intend to radically change its appearance on account of its historical background.

We are informed by Mrs. Earl Wilks who used to live in this house, that a second cousin of hers, Clare (sic) Louise Bottsford was the fiancee of James Whitcomb Riley and the inspiration for his poem "An Old Sweetheart of Mind."

Mrs. Wilks says that Riley courted her cousin and became engaged to her here at this old house. On the day they were to be married he came to the house intoxicated and she broke off the engagement. Later on they began going together again and again became engaged. On the day set for the wedding he again came intoxicated and this time Miss Bottsford broke off the engagement for good.

Mrs. Wilks informs us that Riley then made the statement that he would never marry, which vow we all know he kept...-

Greenfield folk considered Clara to be Riley's mistress for many years. The relationship continued sporadically for the later years after the departure of Nellie Cooley for Illinois in 1875 until 1883. In that year, responding to his sister Mary's insistence, Riley allegedly made arrangements for a quiet wedding to Clara and hired a minister and a church in Indianapolis. Clara turned

Clara Bottsford, Riley's fiancee, who refused to marry him because of his alcoholism.

down this offer. Later she married a bartender and her last years were lived without notoriety.

This strange development is recorded in the autobiographical poem as Cresti llomeem indicates how she will foil Riley's attempts at love by shriveling him up so that she marries another man whose sire Riley knows. This situation is detailed in the "expanded" 1892 version of the poem in which Riley refers to his loss of a "princess."

She went - nor yet returned. -Was it not strange? -She would be wedded to an alien prince

The morrow midnight - to a prince whose sire' I once knew, in lost hours of lute and song, When he was but a prince - I but a mouth

To lees² most ultimate of stammering sobs And maudlin' wanderings of blinded breath.

I. When Clara married her bartender, Riley knew his sire, "red eye." Clara Bottsford was allegedly lost to Riley because of his alcoholism. "Sire" is a catchword of Riley's referring to one who exercises dominion or rule, one's lord or sovereign, the business of alcohol in this context.

2. A lee is a place of protection or resting place. Possibly the lee was a tavern where both Clara's new husband and Riley shared alcohol.

3. A term used to refer to a stage of drunkenness in which one is tearful and effusively sentimental.

After the Clara Louise episode, it appears that Riley gave up any hope of marriage. There is no record of any later offer of marriage. His women friends after Nellie are "dreams." He means this proabably literally as well as sarcastically. He sometimes addresses "hopefuls" just that way. They really are dreaming if they think they are going to marry James Whitcomb Riley! He admits his feeling of futility about love in his introductory letter to Elizabeth Kahle of Feb. 21, 1879, "...I am a young man and unmarried. I write sentimental verses occasionally, simply because I don't believe in love and am anxious to convince myself of my error, possibly - I don't know why else."

Riley associated with many other women in many different respects. Some are as literary correspondents, some are "Nellie" or "Clara" substi‑

tutes or hopefuls. Another one written to at the same time as Elizabeth Kahle was Ella Wheeler, an eligible woman for marriage, correspondent and

poet of Wisconsin. Unfortunately, when Riley met her in Wisconsin when he went there with his friend Rev. Myron Reed on a hunting trip in June 1880 both were disgusted with each other.

How strange Riley's relationships with these "literary lovers" was! For example, during the months Riley was living in Anderson, sharing an apartment with his friend, James McClanahan, and dating a lawyer's sister, Kate Myers who he called "Kit," he was also writing Elizabeth Kahle "love letters" in Pennsylvania and Ella Wheeler "love letters" in Wisconsin. While Riley was going with Kit to picnics, dances and parties, and composing his poems, as he did in bed at night next to Jim

McClanahan in the double bed they shared, Riley was also writing letters of great romantic intention to "My dearest friend," Elizabeth Kahle. Riley's correspondence with Elizabeth went on three years before Riley even met her and after he did their relationship cooled to ice.

Neither Elizabeth Kahle nor any of the other literary correspondent companions could be the "soul partner" that Nellie Cooley was so they all faded away into fantasy holding on tightly to letters written to them by Riley preserved with great hope for later publication. In this category we find "love letters" to Ella Wheeler, Edith Thomas, Evaleen Stein, and many others. Some of the latter are known through self- promoted "gossip" as that of Elizabeth Fisher Murphy, a married lady in Delphi who for years claimed to have been Riley's lover when he visited Dr. Smith in Delphi. She was another self-promoting "Old Sweetheart of Mine" candidate too.

Since James Whitcomb Riley never married, his various courtships - none resulting in marriage - have been highly debated. Who did he really love?

I believe "The Flying Islands of the Night" pretty much answers the question. His hope for married love in the traditional sense in home and family was destroyed because his "partner chosen for him in heaven," Nellie Cooley, was already married.

Elizabeth Kahle, Riley's Pennsylvania correspondent of his late 20's to whom Riley worte revealing letters-sometimes called 'love letters." The relationship was literary and after Elizabeth first met Riley three years later, the relationship cooled and Elizabeth quickly remarried another suitor without telling Riley.

" A spirit writing" on slate of a Riley poem allegedly written by Riley to his friend, Elizabeth Kahle, a year after Riley died. Elizabeth was a spiritualist who happened to be at a seance held by a Professor Pierre L.A.O. Keller when she requested a message from her friend of former years, James Whitcomb Riley, and asked that he be summoned to give her a last poem to add to his correspondence to her to make a book. Elizabeth wanted the title of this last poem to be "After Death." During a subsequent seance, the writing of this poem allegedly appeared by Riley's "crossed over" spirit.

Perhaps due to impotency from his alcoholism and with the exception of occasional intimacies, Riley seems to have concentrated more socially on making friends with men and women than with investing in romantic dalliances.

One measure of his success in making friends is found in his work for the Kokomo Saturday TRIBUNE when Riley was its Home Editor in 1879. As such Editor, Riley rounded up literary contributions for the newspaper from among his friends. Here is a list of those who wrote poetry for Riley for an issue of December 27th, 1879: Maurice Thompson, Lee 0. Harris, Mary H. Krout, Sarah T. Bolton, Louise V. Boyd, Emily T. Charles, Frank Mayfield, Asa Burrows, M.E. Harmon, H.W. Taylor, Mrs. O.B. Hewitt, Luther G. Riggs, W. J. Lampton, Dan L. Paine, H.S. Taylor, B.S. Parker, D,M. Jordan, Clara Louise Bottsford, John W. Tindall, John N. Taylor, Horace P. Biddre, Frank Winter, Celeste M.A. Winslow, Lilla N. Custhman, L.E.F.R. with prose by Mary Dean, Margret Holmes, Mary A. Cornelius,

Mrs. T.C. Vickrey, J.P. Charles, W.C. Cooper, Dr. P. Baldwin, Mary F. Tucker, R.H.J., Mary H. Catherwood, Amy E. Dunn, "Christie," N.L. NBraffett. Kittie Knox, Willard G. Nash, Smith Griffith, and "G.P." Riley had many, many friends who wrote pieces for him to publish.

Riley sought out friends. One was Meredith Nicholson. Nicholson's verses had been picked up in a Cincinnati newspaper as Riley discovered. Riley investigated to find where Nicholson worked and went to meet him. When they met, Nicholson was employed in a law office where he copied legal documents, ran errands, and scribbled verses in his spare time. Nicholson says, "He was the most interesting as he was the most amusing and the most lovable man I have known.- Some of Nicholson's other comments about Riley should be recorded. They point out how peculiar was this fellow Riley to his friends. "(Riley) was always curious as to the origin of any garment or piece of haberdashery displayed by his intimates, but strangely secretive as to the source of his own supplies. He affected obscure tailors, probably because they were likelier to pay heed to his idiosyncrasies than more fashionable ones. He once deplored to me the lack of attention bestowed upon the waistcoat by sartorial artists. This was a

garment he held of the highest importance in man's adornment." Nicholson adds, "He inspired affection by reason of his gentleness and inherent kindliness and sweetness. The idea that he was convivial person, delighting in boon companions and prolonged sessions at table, has no basis in face. He was a domestic, even a cloistral being; he disliked noise and large companies; he hated familiarity, and would quote approvingly what Lowell said somewhere about the annoyance of being clapped on the back. Riley's best friends never laid hands on him; I have seen strangers or new acquaintances do so to their discomfiture."

Riley and Nicholson liked to loaf together at a common bookstore where once Riley noted many copies of a Nicholson book. Later when Nicholson returned he learned that Riley had furtively purchased seventy-five of them

Hautie Tarkington, courted by Riley, later Mrs. Ovid Butler Jameson. In her brother's, Booth Tarkington's autobiography is the entry, "(Riley's) manner with my sister, like hers with him, was of the liveliest mock coquetry: they were having a tremendous affair in which their was nothing-nothing but gaiety."

to distribute widely to friends. Riley often did that for authors he i ked . He was beloved within the literary community because he boosted others careers.

In the course of time, Riley's fame as a poet and platform speaker brought him recognition from many of the best writers of his era. They wrote him letters that he was glad to answer in his inimitable style and through correspondence and personal contacts there was established a lasting friendship with such writers as Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, John Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling, William Dean Howells, John Hay, William Lyon Phelps and many others.

James Whitcomb Riley had a phenomenal gift of making and keeping friends. One of his oldest was John Skinner. Riley and Skinner knew each other from school days on through Riley's years of early great alcoholism. In fact they lived together more often than not when Riley was not off wandering on some nomadic escapist venture.

Riley knew Skinner as a train dispatcher in Butler, Indiana during later years, but in the former years, both shared living in Room Eleven in the Dunbar House, a hostelry. The basis of the arrangement began in teenaged years. Skinner and Riley were both "printer's devils" for the rival newspapers of Greenfield. Their job was to "roll" the presses with printer's ink.

This connection with newspapers, as lowly as it was, was the starting point for each to become interested in newspaper work. In their final year of "graded" school, in 1870, both undertook editorial supervision of the "Criterion," the Greenfield school newspaper. The two edited this newspaper there in the room at the Dunbar House working through the night to put out its issues.

Riley had a genius for friendship and bound his friends to him with 'hoops of steel' as his secretary, Marcus Dickey, once said. To some extent the phrase would be better put as with "hoops of red eye." Riley's closest friends were almost always those whose indulgence approached his own. Almon Keefer and Clint Hamilton share Riley's inscriptions in the records of the Greenfield Mayor's Court for public intoxications. His closest friend of his wandering days, Jim McClanahan was hopelessly alcoholic and eventually died after a binge of exposure. Even Charles Holstein, into whose house Riley moved at 528 Lockerbie Street, was initially Riley's friend from being a drinking companion. Riley was a prolific letter writer and in consequence there are several collections of letters written to various friends, each correspondence revealing some one of the many diverse sides of his

Strangely, and in conflict with the obvious strength of his many friendships, Riley apparently believed he had more enemies than friends. He wrote in a letter to Elizabeth Kahle on February 21, 1879, "I have many friends, but more enemies, and can scarcely tell which I most enjoy - for

really enjoy being hated by some people. I am cynical in a marked degree, and disagreeable at time, I most frankly admit. Socially I move in the best circles, - not, -perhaps, because I was 'to the manor born,' but because -because - well, I recite dialectic poems acceptably, sing comic songs and make funny faces, all of which seems to please everybody but myself, for when I seem the happiest is when I feel the most like crying - though there are times I could take the whole world in my arms, and love it as I would a great, fat, laughing baby with a bunch of jingling keys..."

Riley apparently believed he had friends only so long as he was entertaining and funny. This is not a man who is comfortable with who he really is.

Riley certainly loved his family and particularly his sisters. His greatest tenderness was extended to those who were vulnearable as was his sister Mary. Riley was very tender-hearted towards his sister, Mary, as she thought, to make up for the lack of a mother's care in growing up. He earned very little at first, but after Mary was grown and married and moved to Chicago, and other places, Here is a letter Riley wrote to his sister while on a platform tour:

Your last letter, just read, seems as though some rainy Sunday at our dear old home. I had spit on my hands and written it myself. You take a Riley, for instance, and mix him up with a Marine - and Lord! - don't we make a comhination!..As to your doctor's doleful prognostications, I know the profession too well to believe a word of it. All you want is some decided change and sensible care of yourself...Anyway in the world, and I am now, comparatively wealthy, that I can serve you, my Mother's dearest child, don't you know how it would please me who have done so little good and in so poor a way?

When I neglect you, writing - it's because only I've neglected everybody else and everything else in this final struggle to get some good green dollars sucked into the bank - enough at least that I can lie down and die without

folk's tearin' out the tail-gate of my bed for a headstone. And now at last I'm accumulating money, nothing would better please me than for you to enjoy any share of it you choose. Have been thinking very seriously of buying the old original home at Greenfield, if I can get it. How would you like that - to go back there and live? Or any other place in your fancy I could supply or help to ....

'So I want you to feel utterly secure in the love of a brother now so better able than ever before to prove myself so, without stint of material wealth, as wealth of affection.

Riley was compassionately tender together with an inimitable sense of humor that never deserted him even during the strain of years of greatest struggle. Crestillomeem was his "pressure valve" when tenderness and humor failed.

Riley's own alcoholism placed him in sympathetic relationships with others who greatly influenced his writing both in character and subject matter. Especially the "intoxicatese" of such people was a well-spring of humor and source of "golden lines." Old Sport, William Stafford, provided a persona for the John Walker series. John W. Campbell was another gentleman who Riley liked to imitate with friends. He was a rural Hancock farmer but had a penchant for coming in to town to get drunk and chat with friends in the bars of Greenfield. Campbell was a hunter on land he owned in Arkansas. Riley enjoyed his amusing stories about his exploits as a hunter down on his Arkansas reserve. When he was intoxicated, the Greenfield boys, including Riley, would taunt him, "When are you going to Arkansas?" The kindly old farmer sometimes replied, "I'll be ready to strike out when the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock." This was repeated in Riley's story telling and eventually became the -golden line" in his famous Benjamin Johnson poem of that name.

Perhaps we should detail James McClanahan's life who we have mentioned incidentally earlier. Let us see what happened to him. He was Riley's sign painting "partner" from Riley's early twenties.

Jim McClanahan was born May 5, 1855 in Indiana. His father was T.J. McClanahan, a Marylander, as was his mother Harriet Settor. James McClanahan appears to have considered Anderson his domicile all his tragic life. He however leaves few traces. He shows up in the Emerson's City Directory of Anderson of 1876-7 listed as a "traveling agent" with a room

at the corner of Bolivar and Jackson. Not until the 1891-2 city directory does he re-appear, this time as James "McClenehen" residing in a house at 84 W, 9th Street. No intervening or later city directory lists him at all. His obituary is on page one of the newspaper not because he was notable but because he was connected with the life of James Whitcomb Riley, then world-famous.

A wife, May McClanahan, was indicated on his death certificate at the Madison County (Indiana) Health Department. She is listed as deceased. The obituary had said she was dead thirty years. Unfortunately no record of her exists anywhere. Wherever she slipped away, it made insufficient splash to be recorded.

too hard to speculate that a similar end to - EXPIRES AT HOSPITAL
James Whitcomb Riley might have occurred.

were tearing down the sheds. Police were • body was removed to^*Sells Mos.' mor•

notified and the patrol wagon and Patrolman made today and Mr. Riley will be ad.

jail. There it was discovered that the man was City Park_• formerly the fair ground.

very ill and he was transferred to St. John's were enxtd and with^the thehopatrolollWIl•

rade beginning thirty years before, had been had Isis in thii shode. formerly use.I

passed out there in a ramshackle building, and 'Wednesday afternoon when he Ices

probably been trying to live there, sick for at 3. "e, he ys&to had been as ill withoutws striade to spesT–whcp •

least since the prior Wednesday. One suspects xed
alcoholism had drained his will to live. The

building had formerly been the animal show barn of the Madison County Fair where livestock were exhibited until the place had been turned into a

city park. Jim McClanahan had had no food and been exposed to the weather there and when found and arrested could hardly speak and soon lapsed into unconsciousness before dying.

The medical records of that admission show that a doctor first saw him on the Saturday of his death, July 26 at 3:10 P.M. He was brought to the hospital from the jail in an ambulatory condition where he had been taken after a vagrancy arrest. At first there was no room for him at the hospital, but he was taken to Ward 2 of the hospital eventually. The only thing noted about him is that he was 58 and died the next day at 2 A.M. apparently without any treatment by the hospital staff. The hospital records do not reflect he was an alcoholic. The doctor's note says, "Ailment. Supposed to be overcome by heat and hunger." The man's death certificate at the Madison County Health Department gives the cause of death as "Exhaustion following acute alcoholism." /s/ Dr. Elmer S. Albright. Death Record CH9, page 23. Undertaker Earl Sells then took over.

McClanahan had apparently been married to someone whose name escaped mention in his obituary - although it shows up in the death certificate as "May" - probably because she had died thirty years before, around the time he and James Whitcomb Riley had become friends, and he had never re- married. His rambling, nomadic life had included the times with "Baby" and no doubt others.

We can trace Jim McClanahan and James Whitcomb Riley through the years with Doc McCrillus and the year after the McCrillus summer together. They both were members of a group called the Graphics who painted signs along with Will Ethell, who would move to Washington, D.C. This sign painting consortium would give Riley cause to travel all over the State of Indiana mainly painting barns and fences in the countryside and buildings in many cities and towns.

The path of McClanahan diverged after these ventures with Riley and Ethell and the Graphics characters whose lives we will soon explore. James Whitcomb Riley went into writing. Will Ethell went into business. McClanahan had no such enterprising design and took whatever odd jobs he could find. He must have been very dispirited. He mainly worked about hotels, barber shops or livery barns cleaning up.

Throughout the years, Riley contributed to Jim's income although McClanahan always maintained that he had never asked his soon-to-become wealthy friend for even a cent of charity.

before McClanahan's miserable death. Anderson had held a week-long "Made in Anderson" Week honoring James Whitcomb Riley. The city could rightfully claim that Riley was their product. He had really begun his serious writing at that place. During one of the entertainments of the week, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. T.N. Stilwell, Riley insisted that he must see James McClanahan, his friend from the Doc McCrillus medicine show days and the Graphics capers. Half an hour later, it is said the Jim McClanahan was brought to Riley from a hotel office where he was working.

What a strange meeting this must have been. Riley was by this time nationally prominent many times over, wealthier than any other writer in America, obviously fawned over and highly reputed. McClanahan would have been almost the antithesis. One can imagine the man, alcoholic and unshaven, someone who doesn't raise his eyes from the ground very often. Death was probably in those eyes even then.

The two drew apart from the crowd of Riley well-wishers and spent the next minutes together again as they had been thirty years before. They said their good-byes. As Jim left Jim, it was recalled that McClanahan had given a wave. That was the last time they would ever see each other. (I should note that the last name of Riley's intimate friend is spelled in many ways in many accounts often within the same reference. I have stuck to the spelling "McClanahan" although I find it spelled McClannahan or M'Clanahan or M'Clannahan. Apparently he was considered so nondescript that he was not even worth having a consistently spelled last name.)

Riley chose not to attend the funeral of this traveling companion of his youth who he had helped support over the years. There is absolutely no clue on which to speculate why. What can we really know about the man. Jim McClanahan, or whatever his name really was? We know that he was Riley's traveling companion with Doc McCrillus during his first summer away from home. We also know in the next years he and Riley formed a partnership to paint signs and barns and that both later became members of "The Graphics" about which more will come later. All of this is unfortunately very little.

The shadowy and illusive Jim McClanahan seems to have existed in history only as a friend and traveling companion to James Whitcomb Riley and then fallen back into the obscurity of a man who took odd jobs cleaning horse stables, being a handyman, sweeping up barber shops, painting from time to time, or performing maintenance at Anderson hotels. He apparently lived where he could, if he could afford it, and in his last years, anywhere

with even scanty shelter such as the abandoned animal barn at the Madison City Park where he was found after a bout with intoxication which cost him his life.

This man may not have lived much of a life and certainly his life is not celebrated in many ways. But it certainly is in the poetry of James Whitcomb Riley.

An' nen - of our hired girl says he can -He milks the cow' fer `Lizabuth Ann. ‑

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! W'y, the Raggedy Man -he's ist so good, He splits the kindlin' ⁴an' chops the wood; An' nen he spades in our garden', too, An' does most things 'at boys can't do. -He dumbed clean up in our big tree An' shooked a' apple' down fer me - An"nother 'n' too, fer 'Lizabuth Ann - An"nuther 'n' too, fer The Raggedy Man. ‑

Pick' roast' rambos' from a' orchurd-tree, on to take the stinger from a bee out of

An' et 'ern - all ist roast' an hot! - Vawter. An' it's so, too! - 'cause a corn-crib got

On "The Smoot Farm," 'bout four mile from town On "The Smoot Farm"! Yes - an' the hired han' `At worked there nen 'uz The Raggedy Man! ‑

He'll he our "horsey," an "haw" an' mind Ever'thing 'at you make him do -An' won't run off - 'less you want him to! I drived him wunst way down our lane

An' he got skeered, when it `menced to rain, An' ist rared up an' squealed and run Purt' nigh away! - an' it's all in fun! Nene he skeered ag'in at a' old tin can...

An' The Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes, An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes: Knows 'bout Giunts, an Griffuns, an' Elves,

An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers the'rselves: An', rite by the pump in our pasture-lot 8, He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got, `At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' can Turn into me, er `Lizabeth Ann!

An' wunst, when The Raggedy Man come late, An' pigs ⁹ist root' thru the garden-gate, He 'tend like the pigs 'uz bears an' said, "Old Bear-shooter'll shoot 'em dead!" An' race' an' chase' `em, an' they'd ist run When he pint his hoe at 'em like it's a gun An' go "Bang!-Bang!" nen 'tend he stan' An' load up his gun ag'in! Raggedy Man!

To git more money, an' lef' us there -And Robbers is ist ¹⁰thick ever'where: An' nen - ef we all won't cry, fer shore -The Raggedy Man he'll come and "splore

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

The Castul-Halls," an' steal the "gold" -An' steal us, too, an' grab an' hold An' pack us off to his old "Cave"! - An'

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! The Raggedy Man - one time, when he Wuz makin' a little bow-'n'-orry " fer me, Says "When you're big like your Pa is, Air you go' to keep a fine store like his ‑

Er what air you go' to be, goodness knows?" An' nen he laughed at Tizabuth Ann,

1. Every home needed a well for water obtained by hand pump, sole source of water for drinking, cooking and washing. Grooming horses was a daily task. Draft horses were the tractors and vehicle motors of the nineteenth-century.

2. A hull calf raised as a steer was sometimes kept or "fed out" by a family to provide meat for the family.

3. Every morning and evening, a family's cow had to be milked in the late Nineteenth Century. Each family commonly kept a cow, even those in the towns, in a barn or shed behind the home. The ordinary breed was a Shorthorn, a dual purpose breed good for both milk and beef.

4. Most homes kept "kitchen" gardens in the mid-Nineteenth Century. With the exception of sugar. coffee and tea, most food that a family ate was raised at home.

5. Apples were a fruit staple. They were eaten fresh, kept in cellars (precursors of basements), sometimes canned, or dried for use in pies.

6. Kindling are finer strands of wood or material to initially take flame to start a fire. Keeping a good supply of firewood was a year-round task and a woodlot was in most Hoosier backyards.

7. Rambo refers to a large cooking apple and apple variety that has a coat streaked with red.

8. From early Spring, domestic animals no longer had to be fed hay and grain but could be sustained on grass in pasture- lots.

9. Pigs were tended by men and boys in the Hoosier gender scheme of division of chores. Black and white Poland China pigs were the most popular Hoosier breed in the Nineteenth Century, a breed originated in southwest Ohio during the mid-Nineteenth Century.

11. Pioneer children played "settler ,and Indian" with the how and arrow being the Indian weapon of choice.

characters that Riley had known. I think one of them was Jim McClanahan. Another was a man who had worked for Walter Smoot, a farmer near Greenfield, whose name is lost. The "Raggedy Man" is the archetypical good-hearted handyman and helper of every child or vulnerable person one seems to find in Riley's poetry. He is warm, hale, friendly, even if he is also worthless by worldly criterion of wealth or family reputation people. He is a Riley invention who entertains us with lack of sophistication on the way the world has passed him by or driven him down, lacking ambition to overcome the temptations of the world, such as alcoholism. But down deep we know such people are us, could have been us, or might be us.

Bumbling, good-for-nothing, Jim McClanahan is worth a shout of joy about life, not because he is someone who we are better than, but because we know in the scheme of things to the vulnerable ones of this world does God show equal favor as to any other.

Riley came to laugh at himself for ever having anything to do with the odd temperance speaker, Luther Benson. That was a great failing on the part of Riley. Luther Benson gave Riley to be able to deal with Crestillomeem after the death of Nellie Cooley as Riley clearly was unable to do before. In fact, Riley came to actively mock this American temperance figure. One of his platform sketches became "Benson Out-Bensoned." In this sketch, Riley made himself into a sadly laughable caricature of a "floudering drunken do gooder." The sketch was not well-received at the time and there is no record of its content which survives.

Who was Luther Benson? His life spanned the years 1847-1898, and he was a temperance movement figure. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA, 1899, gives this record of the man's life:

"Any biography of this man is necessarily a record of one of the greatest triumphs ever achieved by mortal in his life-and-death struggle with abnormal appetite. This appetite was undoubtedly inherited from his maternal grandfather and was fostered and strengthened by the customs of the day, spirituous liquors being kept and freely used by every family. Luther Benson was one of a family of nine children, seven of whom were boys. His father, John Harley Benson, was born Mar. 2, 1802... In 1835 he left Kentucky with his family and located in Rush County, Ind... Here his son Luther, destined to become so singularly distinguished, was born Sept. 9, 1847, and grew to manhood assisting with the work of his father's farm. He obtained the rudi‑

ments of an education in two little log school-houses- one standing by a stream called Hood's Creek, the other on the site of the present Amnion's mill. When sixteen years of age he began attending school at the little village of Fairview...His education was completed at Moore's Hill College near Cincinnati, after which he began the study of law; but the time had come when the onward current of his expanding young life was to receive a fearful check and its sweet and wholesome waters be turned to bitterness. His passion for drink had come upon him; and although he afterward entered college, his attendance was of short duration. Henceforth his best efforts must be expended in fighting the fiend that threatened his destruction. Of his moral sense and moral stamina his later years of triumph gave abundant proof; but that triumph came only after a long season of misery and humiliation to himself, his family and friends.

On Jan. 21, 1877, he experienced a profound revulsion to his manner of life and determined to raise above his weakness. This seeming conversion occurred at Jeffersonville, Ind., and was the forerunner of his permanent conquest of a few months later at Fowler, although a period of relapse to his pitiful thralldom intervened. During the ten years prior to this time he had been engaged in the practice of law, a vocation to which in some ways he was admirably adapted, having, when not under the influence of liquor, a logical intelligence and eloquent flow of language. He had begun his legal studies in the office of Hon. John S. Reid, at Connersville, and had subsequently opened one on his own account at Rushville, where he practiced with good success until, himself released from the tyranny of strong drink, he felt impelled to devote his remaining days to the rescuing of like victims. Imbued with the moral courage of a lofty purpose, the chosen scene of his first lecture was Raleigh, whose inhabitants had been eye-witness to his most reckless dissipations. After this he proceeded from one to another of the principals towns of Indiana until, within three years, he had delivered nearly five hundred lectures in his home State. Subsequently he made a tour in the East...his efforts meeting everywhere with much appreciation and enthusiasm...

In 1883 or 1884 Mr. Benson received the Democratic nomination for Congress from the Sixth District, but in a manly letter declined the nomination, not wishing actively to enter into political life...In 1884 Mr. Benson was married to Anna C. Slade. His domestic life was made beautiful by a wealth of affection, and his death which occurred June 21, 1898, was deeply and widely deplored...

Not only with oral eloquence did Mr. Benson labor for the cause of temperance; he toiled with pen as well. FIFTEEN YEARS IN HELL is the significant title of a book of which he is the author and which has had a phenomenal sale throughout the country; and Mrs. Benson holds for publication the manuscript of her husband's autobiography, completed shortly before his death..."

One of those who read this autobiography was James Whitcomb Riley. The life of Luther Benson must have seemed so similar to his own at the time.

James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Luther Benson," was written in 1878 at approximately the same time as the composition of "Flying Islands" which it parallels in many respects. "The Flying Islands of the Night" is Riley's autobiography just as the one Riley was reading of Luther Benson's.

Poor victim of that vulture curse 2 That hovers o'er the universe, With ready talons quick to strike In every human heart alike, And cruel beak to stab and tear In virtue's vitals everywhere, -You need no sympathy of mine To aid you, for a strength divine Encircles you, and lifts you clear Above this earthly atmosphere.

And yet I can but call you poor, As, looking through the open door Of your sad life, I only see

I see a happy home grow dark And desolate - the latest spark Of hope is passing in eclipse -The prayer upon a mother's lips Has fallen with her latest breath In ashes on the lips of death -1 see a penitent who reels,

Commanded "Peace; be still!" the flood That rolled in tempest-waves of blood Within you, fell in calm so sweet

With brightest hope and faith, and filled Your thirsty soul with joy and peace And praise to Him who gave release.

Luther Benson wrote Riley a letter of encouragement upon hearing of Riley's alcoholism. Riley went to meet him. Benson was Riley's age and like Riley, a bachelor. In November, 1877, Riley toured Northern Indiana for a short time with Luther Benson and then returned to Greenfield with a copy of Benson's autobiography which he studied and pondered.

As his biographer, I would have to say that Riley was greatly informed about the alcoholics confessional genre of writing from his experience with Luther Benson. The friendship with Benson continued. Before his winter tour of 1884 commenced, Riley had to borrow money because he was no longer employed by the Journal. He went to Luther Benson to borrow $80. He gave him a note which Riley never repaid. In Jan. 1888, Riley went to Luther Benson's home to give readings for his guests. Benson wrote out that the $80 he loaned him before was repaid. Riley did say he would repay him

"when he got ahead.^- After Riley's success, Benson sued Riley for the $80 in 1892 except Riley had kept the paper showing the debt repaid and produced it in court. Benson lost.

How closely Riley could feel about a friend is revealed in a letter to Charles Philips.

I wrote you last evening, requesting especially, that you should answer me to-night, and looked certainly for a reply - for you have never failed me. But there was none. I can not tell you the depth of my disappointment and anxiety- for all evening I have gone about with a strange feelin^g, of heaviness, and last it has grown intolerable and I have just risen from my sleepless bed to write you this. In my letter of last evening I fear I unintentionally wounded you, and that you are "striking back" with silence. I wrote hurriedly, I know, but it was with the very warmest feeling of brotherly regard. What I said, I distinctly said for the effect of force more than elegance, but it was not meant to hurt -neither was it as I thought an undue license in one as warmly interested in you as your own true character compels me to be. When I like any one, perhaps it is my fault to enter too deeply into their personal affairs, or, in other words - am inclined to meddle with matters that do not concern me. If I have done this with you, I earnestly ask you to regard it as an insane burst of affection, for at worst it is that. I don't think you understand my real nature. I have thought different at times, but as I write, I fear with a regret there is no name for, that like the grand majority, you misjudge me. I do not blame you if you do, only it hurts, my dear friend, just to wade on through existence as I do with no one soul of all the world's wide millions that well see me as I am. I try very hard to laugh down this idea of mine that I am being eternally misinterpreted. but every fresh experience only seems more firmly to fix and rivet the truth of it within me. When I tell my friend I love him, I love him. There is no play in the grooves of my affection. And when a friend slides in my heart he fits there and the bony hand of Death can not jostle him. Maybe I do you wrong to doubt the strength of your regard, but I want such giant strengths of friendship that sometimes I think my own will never be matched here - that it is more than I could ask or expect. In any instance I am what I am. God made me so, and if I do not pass for my full value here, Heaven will be brighter compre‑

Tomorrow I go down to Indianapolis. I may not hope to see you then as I desired; but wherever you are through life and death fell always that my love is with you.

Such a letter betrays such deep emotion the mood is nearly romantic. Who would Riley write such a letter to? Who is this man Charles Howard Philips? He was a young man like Riley who Riley had met during his Graphics wandering days. His biography was published along with his death notice in the Kokomo TRIBUNE when Charles Philips died at the young age of 25. It read: "Charles Howard Philips, Born June 6th, 1856 Died November 5th, 1881, Age 25 years, 4 months, 29 days. His death resulted from consumption, after a severe attack of typhoid fever. For over a year he had been an invalid, traveling North and South, hoping for a healthful climate. His death was quiet and painless. Philips was an accomplished journalist. Three years before his death, he married Kate Kennedy October 17, 1878 who died in Florida in the Spring 1880. The mother lingered and eventually died from complications of the birth. The child, a daughter, Kate, died during the summer of 1881, just weeks before Charles Philips' death. He had received a common school education until the age of 13 when he began doing editorial work and typesetting on his father's newspaper. He became a partner in the Kokomo TRIBUNE his family's newspaper when the father died in July 1878."

One wonders if the above letter is simply "fawning" to gain a position on the Kokomo TRIBUNE. We do know Riley as a man desperate for fame. We also know that Philips was Editor of the Kokomo TRIBUNE who eventually placed Riley in charge of his Kokomo TRIBUNE column, "Home Department."

As thy frank eyes were clear Through every smile and tear Of pleasure and distress.

And fired with fervor caught Of thy proud sire, who fought His way to fame, and taught Its toilsome way to thee.

Yea, as our cheeks are stained With tears, and our souls pained And mute, thou hast attained Thy high reward in Heaven!

Riley's poem was in the genre of "In Memoriam" poems of the time. Another example of the type is one by Frank Winter in the Kokomo TRIBUNE of November 12, 1881 titled "In Memoriam. Charles Howard Philips."

November's chilling winds had come. The _.falling leaves on hill and dale: Gave Nature a sad look at home

Had sought the guilded halls of Fame; Thro' joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, Had won himself an honored name.

Riley's great feeling toward friends is reflected in the feeling of blessedness as we find in a roughly contemporaneous poem "To H.S.T." with the subheading, "The Morgue, Midnight, July 3, 1879." This poem was published in the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD in Riley's "Poetical Gymnastics" column of July 12, 1879.

Your last "God bless you!" as the train That brought you snatched you back again Into the unknown land.

"God bless me?" Why, your very prayer Was answered ere you asked it there, I know - for when you came to lend Me your kind hand, and call me friend,

Here is a poem of a friendly visit to Riley that provides us a picture of Riley friends and friendliness. This friend who we know was H.S. Taylor, an author, came from Illinois to Greenfield, where the "Morgue" was located, shook Riley's hand three times, first to greet him, then to congratulate him, and then with a farewell blessing. The handshakes give us to know the substance of the visit. We do not need to hear the conversation.

The importance to a biography of Riley from this poem derives from its climaxing thought. With friends behind him, Riley was confident God was blessing his poetic activity. Riley did not even need to know others were thinking kindly of him. His work was a product of hopes for his success by others. He felt the power of friendship as an energy. We do not speak of the

direction of the "push." Riley simply knew his audience of well-wishers appreciated him. The thrill of this recognition presaged his resolution of what to do with himself. His immersion into kenotic poetry followed. Perhaps the spotlight of fame nudged him into a humbling response. Support of friends encouraged him to take his poetry out from narrative and romantic themes and into a realm of desperate illusion as we found in "Flying Islands" where Riley gained the self-vision of his personal fragmentation that permitted self-conversation and dialogue.

Riley and Eugene V. Debs were very friendly in the days when Riley was employed at the "Indianapolis Journal" and Debs was Terre Haute's elected city clerk, state legislator and union organizer. In 1880 Debs arranged three Riley appearances in Terre Haute sponsored by the Occidental Literary club. Often Debs would close an issue of his union's (then called a "Brotherhood") magazine, BLF MAGAZINE with a Riley poem, including one called "Terry Hut," in which Riley describes Debs as a man "as warm a heart that ever beat Betwixt here and the Mercy Seat." This was many years before Debs was incarcerated during the Pullman labor strike, ran for President on socialist tickets or became a cause celebre by being incarcerated for ten years upon conviction under the American "Espionage Act" in 1918 for speaking in Canton, Ohio about the relationship between capitalism and the First World War, the uneven burden of the war on workers, and the injustice of the government's loyalty program.

Riley knew Debs as an active Terre Haute citizen rather than a labor unionist, a radical and a militant fighter against the social order of his time. He was a kindly soul, had a heart of gold, and he appeared to Riley mysteriously. Riley never thought of him as a politician although Debs was a Socialist candidate for President of the United States several times, but he did admire the character and loved the man. Riley's poem "Regardin' Terry Hut," is about Debs. In fact it is "Debs." Riley exercises his kenotic discernment to describe how Debs can live in Terre Haute, Indiana feeling the way he does about an American society which does not credit its conscience with concern for the worker, the poor and the socialist agenda for the vulnerable.

Much has been said of Riley's friendship with Debs but not a great deal of effort, excepting mutual admiration, was expended on maintaining the early warm friendship in latter years when the two took divergent paths. Riley supported his friend when he was incarcerated as a result of the Pullman strike and no doubt would have stood by him during his incarceration from a conviction in the "red scare" period following Riley's death. I am not aware of a single instance in which Riley violated a bond of friendship formed during his own early vulnerable life. The press of fame caused him not to be able to cultivate many potential friendships or preserve earlier ones. Turning his back on a friend was not in Riley's nature.

Riley's friendship with Dr. Wycliffe Smith went back many years. It began when Riley delivered a lecture at Delphi. After the lecture, Riley walked the streets alone until he saw a stranger ahead and asked him for a match. It was Dr. Wycliffe Smith. "Come up to my office, but up the stairs," the doctor said. Turning into a dark stairway, he did so. Riley followed and the two men, Riley and "Doc" Smith, were soon getting acquainted. The

poet sat in the doctor's office where the Riley with his friend Dr. Wycliffe Smith of

and found each other's acquaintance worth survivor of a family of smallpox victims treated

cultivating. Many considered Dr. Smith to His given name was Joseph. Riley "escaped- be gruff and plain-spoken, but he was from his life as a high profile author and lecturer

trodden and poor. Dr. Smith suggested Riley "rest awhile" in Delphi and they would take trips into the country. The two, poet and physician, began a long friendship whereby the two rambled through Carroll county, usually on horseback. They became a familiar sight, both riding along in Prince Albert coats and plug hats. Dr. Smith rode his stallion, "Dexter," and Riley rode his mare, "Hanky Panky.^- Many of the poems of the Riley poetry volume called "Green Fields and Running Brooks" depict Carroll County and arose from Riley's jaunts with Dr. Smith.

One of Dr. Smith's memorable deeds was his effort to save a Delphi family from death by smallpox. He fought the battle alone, but was unable to do more than save one child, Joe Sneathon, whom he practically adopted. The boy became known as "Smallpox" Sneathen. A famous picture of the boy with Riley and Dr. Smith was taken by the two on a lark.

While riding with Dr. Smith, the poet met a Deutschman named Herr Weiser and wrote a poem commemorating him on August 18, 1884. The two were often visiting the fascinating man, an old gunsmith, on his thickly wooded farm.

Herr Weiser! - Threescore years and ten, -A hale white rose of his countrymen, Transplanted here in the Hoosier loam, And blossomy as his German home -As blossomy and as pure and sweet As the cool green glen of his calm retreat, Far withdrawn from the noisy town Where trade goes clamoring up and down, Whose fret and fever, and stress and strife, May not trouble his tranquil life!

Through the orchard ways of his quaint abode. Tether the horse, as we onward fare

With lumps of ripeness and lush delight, Till the stream, as it maunders on till dawn, Is powdered and pelted and smiled upon. Herr Weiser, with his wholesome face, And the gentle blue of his eyes, and grace of unassuming honesty,

And what though the toil of the farm be stopped And the tireless plans of the place he dropped, While the prayerful master's knees are set In beds of pansy and mignonette And lily and aster and columbine, Offered in love, as yours and mine? -What, but a blessing of kindly thought, Sweet as the breath of forget-me-not! -What, but a spirit of lustrous love White as the aster he bends above! -What, but an odorous memory

Of the dear old man, made known to me In days demanding a help like his, - As sweet as the lift of the lily is ‑

At Delphi, Riley often was seen at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Fisher Murphy. She was a grand person who adopted three daughters and lived to be 92. She and Riley were said to be lovers.

Dr. Smith one time persuaded Riley and Bill Nye to come to the small town of Delphi. Riley cancelled other engagements to accommodate the request of his friend. When they arrived in town, they were surprised to find Doc Smith had plastered the town with huge yellow posters saying his friend was going to be at the opera house that night. The evening was one of the more memorable ones in Delphi history. Riley introduced Nye as follows: "This entertainment, is composed of a poet and a lyre. I am the poet." With a nod at Nye, the entertainment began.

Riley came to adopt Delphi as a second home. When Walter Whistler, a Carroll county youth who was with the Greeley expedition to the North Pole, died and was returned to Delphi for burial, Riley went "home" to

Delphi for the funeral. In the meantime, Dr. Smith was hired by the family to perform an autopsy. Without food, the polar exploration party reportedly agreed to cannibalism to survive on the basis of the drawing of lots. When a name was drawn, the party would use that person's body for food. The grandparents had heard this rumor and wondered if their grandson's name had been drawn. Dr. Smith performed the autopsy and upon opening the metallic casket found unmistakable evidence that the boy had in fact been the victim of cannibalism.

The friendship of Dr. Smith and Riley lasted until the doctor got killed at a roadway intersection with the Wabash railroad, west of Delphi. A train struck his buggy which he was sharing with a little Filipino boy, Francisco Sousa, who Dr. Smith brought home with him from the Spanish-American war. Riley was so touched by the death of his physician friend that he wrote a tribute to him, "The Noblest Service.^- In the poem, Riley lauded him saying, "universal good he dreamed and wrought..."

Two of Riley's friends in Lafayette were Evaleen Stein, a poet and artist fourteen years his junior, and her brother, Orth Stein. Some have linked Riley romantically with Ms. Stein. He not only wrote her but also attended a literary banquet in her honor at Purdue in 1907. Riley perhaps met her at one of his two stage appearances at Lafayette or when he performed at the opening of a rollerskating rink there in 1885. The connection with Ms. Stein's brother Orth Stein is less clear. Orth Stein was a brilliant illustrator and writer of fiction. Unfortunately he was also a white collar criminal leaving a trail of bad checks and confidence games from Baltimore to San Jose. He had also shot and killed a man in a fight over a woman in Kansas City in 1882. How Riley and the roving Orth Stein were in contact no one knows but when Orth Stein died of consumption in 1901 at a New Orleans hotel, an autographed book of Riley poems lay at his bedside. It was "Poems Here at Home" and Riley's written inscription bears a hauntingly beautiful and mysterious message intended to be personal and special:

There is a novel of pleasant reading by Meredith Nicholson called THE POET published in 1914. The poet of the book is clearly a representation of James Whitcomb Riley, the friend of the author. The novel opens with a child, Marjorie, in dejected play. The poet sees her and says, "The lonesomeness of that little girl over there is becoming painful...I can't make out whether she's too dressed up to play or whether it's only shyness.- The child's father, Miles, turns out to be a securities dealer who the poet knew earlier in his life as an aspiring artist. The father gave up art to become wealthy in business. This broke up his family. His wife, Marian, the mother of Marjorie, left him because she could not stand the fanatical "money-grubber" that he had become. Marjorie, the child, was withdrawn. Her nurse commented to the poet, "She's always like that...and you can't do anything with her."

Maybe most people would not even bother. But Nicholson's "poet" is not an ordinary man. He orchestrates visits to the father, Miles, and mother, Marian, and forces each to recall their obligation to the child. Marian presses on with divorce proceedings. Fate intervenes when a securities issue Miles is involved in is found to be fraudulent. Though Miles makes good all losses, he is broken financially. When his pursuit of money fails, he finds the strength to seek a return to his former happier life as an artist with his reunited family, his wife, Marian, and his child. The poet has been the kind counselor, reconciler and sound adviser about life and morality throughout the alienating period of their lives.

The "friend in deed" is really the true life picture of James Whitcomb Riley as one sees him in the eyes of his friends. This was the caliber of the man as his friends perceived him. Nicholson knew this "helper" Riley from experience. Nicholson was having little luck getting his first work recognized when Riley, already established in 1890, wrote the editor, Charles Warren Stoddard this praise of Nicholson: "By this time you doubtless have his first book of verse, wherein he says such things as though God some new hymn had writ and whispered it from star to star."

George Ade, a Hoosier humorist and dialectician, spoke at a Memorial Services for Riley at the Indiana Society of Chicago, October 29, 1916.

"Riley shrank from idle and promiscuous friendships. He selected for his confidences those who met him fairly and acknowledged the brotherhood without protesting the same. He made his own ratings and never consulted the social register. He loved to sit into the night talking with Benjamin Harrison, a former President and his great friend. Also he was given to long and intimate confabulations with a negro barber who showed a devouring interest in the stories brought to him by Riley. These stories concerned a certain Frank who lived at Fortville, Indiana; also his wife, Minnie, a most courageous and resourceful character. Frank and Minnie were of the adventurous sort; taking many railway journeys, adopting unusual trades and professions and overcoming all sorts of adverse circumstances. Of course, they had no existence except in the bubbling imagination of Riley but he continued the fascinating serial year after year. An author's best reward is one good listener and Riley gave reams of manuscript to the spell-bound colored brother. Just three days before he died, Riley sat in the barber chair and told how Frank had gone to the Mexican border with one of the Indian regiments and was in charge of the cook tent and having his own troubles with tarantulas and bandits. Think of a man sixty-seven years old delightedly weaving these make-believe yarns, just for the satisfaction of pleasing an humble audience. That was Riley.

But how he could get under cover and stay under cover when his canny instinct told him that some one was trying to exploit him or exhibit him. He was the best platform entertainer of his time, always idolized by the public and yet he dreaded these public appearances and always suspected that he was about to fail and disappoint his audience. Once I heard him say "Every morning when I wake up the first thought that comes to me is, 'This is the day they get on to me."'

He was the best story-teller I ever heard because his character impersonations were vivid and accurate and convincing beyond all belief. Henry Irving (a famous contemporary English actor) was right when he said that Riley would have been one of the few truly great character actors of the English speaking stage. Take his well-known verses, "Good bye, Jim, take keer of yourself." I have heard them recited by Sol Smith Russell, Maurice Barrymore and David Warfield (the most noted contemporaneous American actors) and they put into their renditions the skill of the trained reader - every trick of the actor's trade and each gave to the reading the strength and warmth of a genuine personality, but after you heard Riley recite those won‑

Riley at the famous Fairbanks "Tea Party." II is well known that alcohol did not sit well %sill) President Theodore Roosevelt. When Rossevelt came to Indianapolis on May 30, 1907, his Hoosier Vice-President, Charles Fairbanks hosted a lawn party at his mansion unaware that his household employee found the punch had no alcohol in it and had gone to the Columbia Club and returned to "spike it." Roosevelt was furious. When the press learned of this, Fairbanks was dubbed "Cocktail Charlie," and it is said failed to win renomination the following year as a result. The irony was that Fairbanks was a strict prohibitionist. Seated guests are (1.,-12): Mrs. John N. Carey, Dr. Mary A. Spink„James Whitcomb Riley, Sen. Albert J. Beveridge, Gov. J. Frank Hanly, Vice-Pres. Charles W. Fairbanks, President Theodore Roosevelt, Cornelia Cole Fairbanks, James A. Hemingway, Rear Admiral George Brown. Standing fifth from the left is Meredith Nicholson.

derful verses which reveal the real Hoosier - saturated with sentiment but ashamed to be sentimental - and you felt the lump coming into your throat and your eyes began to blink, you knew that our friend had gifts and graces which 1 really believe were not given to nay other man of his generation."

Riley loved to visit George Ade at his home, "Hazelden" at Brook in Newton County. During those visits Riley most enjoyed napping to rest and meditating in the shade of a giant hickory tree there. It is said when the old hickory tree finally died and had to be removed Riley stopped visiting saying the place wasn't the same home without its meditating tree.

In his very last years, and particularly after his 1910 stroke, Riley spent much time re-visiting the places in his life where he had known love and friendship of former days. His automobile, a "Peerless" gave him this opportunity. He took daily rides in this automobile which he purchased in 1911 and most often when his chauffeur would ask him the question, "Where do you want to go?" Riley answered, "Let's go to Greenfield."

As your biographer completes this short recount of Riley's life as Amphine, the starkness of it strikes me to the core. Where is there justice in the facts? Where is there equity in life? Was it necessary that Riley should truly find comfort only with a woman already married? Is there justification in his later love of so many in affectionate regard and expression? We sim‑

ply have no answer except to recall that love and justice concepts are bafflingly conflicting always.

Nellie Cooley (Dwainie) and Elizabeth Riley (AEo) were not the only two "dead souls" with whom Riley lived and communicated. There were many stories of others. Riley was firmly commited to the belief in ministrations from the spirit world.

One story had to do with Robert Louis Stevenson, Riley's friend and fellow author. When Stevenson died, the publisher of his books wrote Riley and asked him to prepare an appreciation. Riley readily complied. In a few days a very liberal check came in the mail from the publisher. Riley returned it saying he could not possibly accept a check for paying a tribute to so dear a friend. The the publishers wrote hack that they would like to send Riley Stevenson's books in appreciation. Riley wrote back to accept the gesture providing the books were of a modest binding. But the books never came. Riley wondered and wondered what had happened to them. Then on his birthday, they arrived. Bright and early on that morning an expressman came whistling up the walk and delivered them. Riley commented to many people that he was sure his friend had had the delivery delayed until his birthday to give the gift special meaning.

Another dead friend who intervened in Riley's life was fellow author and reader Eugene Fields. Riley had written a memorial poem about Fields when he died. A joint friend, the opera singer Francis Wilson, sent Riley a book of Fields's poems and asked Riley if he would inscribe his memorial poem to Fields inside and return it to his hotel in Cincinnati. Riley did so. Then the book was lost. The opera singer wrote Riley if it was recovered to send it to another address but of course Riley could not do so. About a year later, the opera singer was in Chicago and went into a bookstore that Riley was not aware of. The bookstore manager recognized Wilson and said he had a package for him. It was the Fields poetry inscribed by Riley. When Riley was informed of this he thought nothing of it. "Eugene Fields did that," he said.

Another member of his cast of "dead souls" who lived with Riley after their deaths was his long time lyceum partner, Bill Nye. Every time Riley's luggage was missing while Riley was traveling by train - which was almost always- Riley would dismiss it as Bill Nye pulling another trick on him.