Home

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 8

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

Warner, Jesse Millikan, The Adelphian band in horse-drawn wagon.

Isaac Davis, John Davis,

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

208 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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:

THE OLD BAND (1890)

It's mighty good to git back to the old town, shore,

Considerin' I've b'en away twenty year and more.

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,

I want to hear the old band play.

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.

And when the boys `ud saranade, I've laid so still in bed

I've even heerd the locus' blossoms droppin' on the shed

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

A MPHINE • 209

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

A GRAND ENTERTAINMENT

THE PROCEEDS OF ONE EVENING'S
PERFORMANCE TO BE GIVEN TO

—THE POOR

THE OTHER ASIDE FROM EXPENSES

fhomas Carr, "Tuba Tom" of the Adelphian Band.

21 0 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

WILL GO TO THE BENEFIT OF —THE GREENFIELD CORNET BAND

General Manager, J. W. Riley

Stage Manger, Lee 0. Harris

Leader of Orchestra, I.R. Davis.

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

AMPHINE • 2 1 1

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

2 1 2 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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

AMPHINE • 2 1 3

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."

Her sister writes:

214 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

"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:

"Unloose the snood that you wear, Jeanette,

Let me tangle a hand in your hair, my pet,

For the world to me holds no daintier sight

Than your brown hair veiling your shoulders white.

Than your brown hair veiling your shoulders white."

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

Nita, Juanita, be my own fair bride."

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...

"Jim" liked to do caricature, too, and when he sang:

"If there's any girl here wants a kiss from me

She'll find me as young as I used to be."

...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.)

AMPHINE * 215

...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.

The following poem has been popularly said to have been inspired by her:

"DREAM" (1878)

Because her eyes were far too deep And holy for a laugh to leap

2 1 6 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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;

Because her lips might spill a kiss That, dripping in a world like this

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

Because I could not understand The magic touches of a hand

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,

And, nestled in her palm, did seem

To trill a song that called her "Dream."

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‑

AMPHINE      217

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.

-BELOVED HOOSIER POET LOST FIANCEE

AT HISTORIC HOUSE NEAR ENTRANCE."

"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...-

Later it was decided the house should be torn down.

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.

2 1 8 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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 strangely went

Astray one moonset from the palace-steps ‑

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

For him to lift up sippingly and drain

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‑

AMPHINE • 2 1 9

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.

220 ¨ THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

" 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.

Iris after death - the mortal struggle done, -

`Tis after death - the new life just begun,‑

That rays effulgent from the Land of Light

Whose dawn ne'er knows the shadows of a night,

Past distant suns whose dreamy mists display

That winding belt we call the Milky Way

Shoot down the starry depth to thy lone soul

And light is journey toward the onward goal,

James Whitcomb Riley

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,

A-,)

7_. 1           /Loa _eti,1₁,, r..0-1,/ IPLk

NetkoA,                                                                            Pr

.0⁾⁴¹¹"^. C^iA).10E4.-" Sk^y.                             ot61-*      ()'lw ^r71.12¹'

-               emj„,

⁽4.)^g4z4,1¹V^u-n044:u_../                             6.',4,k.0 -Litt

01.0_14.7^.CL, AL

AMPHINE ¨ 22 1

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.

Who were some of his closest friends?

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."

222 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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

AMPHINE • 223

lovable nature.

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:

Oskaloosa, Iowa

March 25, 1889

My Dear Sister Mary:

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

224 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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.

As ever, with tenderest love, your bro.,

Jim

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

AMPHINE 225

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.

According to his obituary in the Anderson

HERALD of Sunday morning, July 27, 1913, ^(flEATH^.li fS

James McClanahan was found dying in theM'CLANAHAN

Anderson City Park and expired at

Anderson's St. John's hospital the evening of           ,NTIMATZ FRIZNO dr JAMBS

July 26th, just before midnight. He died at 58          WHITCOMB                         D.

:RILEY FOUND. !WINO IN CITY PARK.

leaving only two half sisters. It does not seem

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

Two Half•SIsters Only Surviving Rea‑

The newspaper article relates, "In a dying          tIves—Ineldent of Riley'. Recant

Vtalt Recalled.

condition Mr. McClanahan was found lying in

a shed in the City Park, formerly the fair                      McClanahan. ago SS, intimate

friend_of James Whitcomb Riley since

ground,                                                                        ago

round, yesterday afternoon by workmen who        years , died                       botortrIllt

their sign paintinged _s days about thIrtY midnight at St. John's hospital. The

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

gun. Funeral arrangements will he

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

.,sod of the death of htn old friend.

Beeman took Mr. McClanahan to the county            In • dying condlifon Mr.irelannk

ban was found lying In s^r

 shed In the

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

yesterday afternoon by workmen who wet., te•rt _notIfI       Are:,r1              d.. Pee

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

Fen Patrolmen Beeman teak Mr. Mo.

hospital."                                                                Clannahan to the c.BUDIY 1^.11. "ore

la WAS discovered that theiman WAS very III and he was transferredto

Apparently Jim McClanahan, Riley's corn-        St. John'. hospital.

In Shed Since Wednesday.

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

It I. thought that Hr. Mertarinnhan fur exhibition of live stock, since

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

.                  in City Park. Since that time
thoght'

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

226 • THE POET As FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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.

The parting of the intimate friends is described from just the prior month

A MPHINE • 227

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