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

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT
by Thomas Earl Williams with primary illustrations by Katherine Kuonen and the great assistance of Robert Tinsley with Riley artifacts, Copyright, 1997, Thomas Earl Williams
Part 9

CRESTILLOMEEM
DRUNKENNESS AND DELIRIUM
TREMENS AS A LADY TRYING TO
RUIN RILEY'S LIFE

BOOKMARK FOR RILEY'S FOUR GREAT ENCOUNTERS WITH CRESTILLOMEEM
BOOKMARK FOR THE FIRST FOLLOWING THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE POET'S MOTHER

250 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

CRESTILLOMEEM
DRUNKENNESS AND DELIRIUM TREMENS AS A LADY
TRYING TO RUIN RILEY'S LIFE

In the Preface we first met Crestillomeem.' She is the naggy depression and drunkenness that threatens Riley. She is Riley's "Queen." She has taken charge of him in his late 20's when "The Flying Islands Of the Night" was written. Riley calls her his "Second Consort" in the later "book" editions of the poem. His first and foremost "Consort" was his beloved "soul-mate" Nellie who died shortly before the poem was first composed.

1. We remember her name is an elision of "crestfallen" (dejected), "ill" and "me" backwards and forwards.

Crestillomeem is the Riley who goes crazy about life sometimes and becomes a

binge              drinker

before pulling himself out. She is also the scary tremens and tor-porous deliriums

of alcoholism. These are, of course, the vision of Riley's great autobiographical poem "The Flying Islands of the

Night 9, Crewstillomeeem is the nasty Queen of Riley's life try­ing to destroy its meaning and hope for success.

Riley in the clutches of "Crestillomeem." A court record of a Riley arrest and convic­tion of public intoxication in Greenfield. Indiana, the poet's hometown, on Dec. 27, 1877, within the few months prior to writing "The Flying Islands of the Night."

CRESTILLOMEEM • 251

Crestillomeem is one of Riley's "Flying islands." Flying Islands are Riley's lives in the poem. They are not a singular island. Riley, with great insight, knew himself as an archipelago afloat in "red eye" whiskey at the time of the writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night." All of the islands make up Riley's conception of his own life as a man in great alienation act­ing through life as a cast of players. Riley was a great enough actor to get by with this. He simply was not a single "himself."

Islands are lonely images. They are by themselves and don't have "con­nections." Riley must have felt so very, very lonely at times to take upon himself this representation of himself in his imagination. I suspect this loneliness was the cause for becoming Crestillomeem at times. Most often, Riley retreated to Greenfield when he fell under Crestillomeem's spell and "waited her out" among friends and family.

We see Riley using this depressed and sometimes drunken aspect of him­self most often in his John C. Walker poems which we will discuss later in this book. For now, we might want to get a taste of how this persona wrote poetry:

JOHN GOLLIHER'S THIRD WOMERN ' (1879) (From the Kokomo Saturday TRIBUNE of Dec. 27, 1879)

I'm               - not adzac'ly in the old-maid kindo way 0' sayin' things onpleasant 'cause there're plenty sich to say: -

'Ner cause I am a womern 'ats tuck sich manly part

In Tempernce institutions as to spile her womern's heart:-

But I 'low 'at married people, as a rule, all has their sheer 0' troubles and vexations. - Yet theyr're one example here 'At some folks find confusin' - seein's how they used to say John Golliher's third womern wouldn't be alive today!

You see, John's ben a drinker - jest a SOAKER thue and thue!­As his daddy was afore him, and his old grandaddy, too! - W'y. the Golliher's, I reckon, of you'd stand 'em in a row, Would make a string o' drunkards clean from here to Jericho.

John was drunk at his first weddin', But his wife had made her brags

252 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

She'd have him, drunk or sober, ef she had to dress in rags,-And thems the kind o' clothin' she dome to 'fore she died, And laid 'em down forever, thanking God, and saisfied.

John's sobered up a little after that; and found a place

For the little girl still left him - like her mother in the face;

And fer-well, a year and better, he kep' straight enough, I guess Til he met a widder womern 'at upset him more or less.

He was warned agin the womern -she was warned agin the man,-And ef that won't make a weddin', w 'y there're nothin' else 'at can! And when THAT couple married, they was some 'at even bet The widder would out-last him, hut - John's a-livin yet!

Things was might bad, I tell you, at that funeral o'hern!- No serous indications o' very deep concern‑

Except the tears 'at Mary his grow'd-up dorter shed

Fer the crazy wretch with tremans howlin' there beside the dead!

W'y the preachers worked their sermints out o' that!- and women wrung Their empty hands in meetin! and shouted, cried and sung:

And little sleepy childern was shuck awake to pray,

With "Golliher'll git ye fer neglectin' that-away!"

They was no one else to 'tend him, so I staid there -more on Account of Mary's feelin's than fur any keer o' John, ‑

Fer that fust thing, when he rallied so's he knowed me, I- says- I-"I'm mighty feered the chances is you aint a-goin' to die!"

O I said it! and I meant it! and was jest a stoopin' down

To bathe the feller's forred when he whispered, with a frown,‑

"Don't, then! I'll DIE - A DRUNKARD! and the womern who can say As mean a thing as that is, ortn't tetch him! GO A WA Y!"

It was afterwards 'at Mary told me she was peekin' thue The kitchen-door, and saw me, knelln'- like I used to do In public meetins' - on'y, the prayer, she said was more Full o' lovin' stren'th 'an any 'at she'd ever heerd afore.-

CRESTILLOMEEM • 253

And, rainy, I reckon the girl's opinion was

About as nigh pefection as they git 'em now - because, Her father he forgive me- quit his drinkin'- and is- Well, John Golfiber's third womem ain't got nuthin' else to tell.

I. This poem parenthetically points out the difficult life of women in Riley's day. Life was literally a woman-killer. A man might marry the first time for love, resulting in several chil­dren. To bring up the children, he might marryseveral more times "for convenience." Riley describes housework of women in "My First Womern:"

"Ter I'm allus thinkin' - thinkin' Of the first one's peaceful ways. A bilin' soap and singin' of the Lord's amazin' grace.

-And I'm thinkin' of her constant, Dyin' carpet-chain and stuff And a makin' up rag carpets,

When the floor was GOOD ENOUGH!

And I'm allus thinkin' of her reddin' up around the house; Er cookin fer the farm hands; er drivin' up the cows.

- And there she lays out yander By the lower medder fence. W'y they ain't no sadder thing

Than to think of my first women), and her funeral last spring."

Crestillomeem's spell on Riley really wasn't so humerous as John C. Walker portrayed. She brought about Riley's depression or was at least a product of it. But she is also a uniquely important person in the life of James Whitcomb Riley because she impels him through dialogue to see her as a

consequence to him if he does not pursue the only other goal for his life that James Whitcomb Riley could imagine more powerful - the lust for fame (another figure in Riley's imaginative self-life who Riley thinks of as an equally clearly defined "flying island" named Krung. We shall meet Krung later on in this book. The happy result of it all was, however, to allow Spraivoll, yet another character, to sing poetically. This conforms to the common description of alcohol as "the great exciter of the Yes function in people."

It was about himself as the sinful persona dominated by his alcoholic Crestillomeem that Riley's 1878 poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," was written in the turmoil of one of his greatest periods of intoxication and tremens and possible concern over impotency.

In the "Flying Islands of the Night," Riley knows that Crestillomeem, his alcoholism, is constantly beckoning him. She seeks to destroy him and even

254 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

seek his death. Crestillomeem demands Riley toe her line and meet her demands. She invites him to imprison himself in the tower of servitude to alcoholism and its fantasies. We read:

"The Queen (Crestillomeem)

Impatiently awaits his Majesty

And craves his presence in the Tower of Stars,

That she may there express full tenderly

Her great solicitude."

In alcoholics' confessional genre literature the curse of alcohol manifest in a person, here Crestillomeem in James Whitcomb Riley, always leads to self-destructive behavior. As the great temperance mediator Luther Benson states in Fifteen Years in Hell, "(to go out on an alcoholic spree) "is to quench the light of ambition, to crush hope, entomb joy, lay waste the pow­ers of the mind, neglect duty, desert the family and commit in the end sui­cide."

In the poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," Riley is able to cast her off. In reality Riley never was able to fully subdue his alcoholism. Riley's capacity to physically love was probably affected by Crestillomeem. One suspects that impotence was her legacy, possibly manifest about the time he began writing "The Flying Islands of the Night" and after the death of Nellie Cooley, the only woman Riley had loved as a soul-mate.

The Crestillomeem character of Riley's fragmented life is "roughly" ref­erenced in verse in James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Luther Benson" con­temporaneously written with "Flying Islands" as the poem's subtitle says, "After reading his autobiography." The poem describes alcoholism as the "vulture curse, That hovers o'er the universe, With ready talons quick

to strike In every human heart alike." Benson's autobiography, Fifteen Years in Hell, like Riley's play/poem, marks how Benson was wasted in alcohol addiction, reformed,and went on to "lecture" extensively throughout Indiana and the nation as a temperance speaker. The parallel to the move­ment of the acts of "Flying Islands" is pronounced as is the eventual progress of Riley's own life...although Riley's"cause" was not temperance but the spread of humanistic and "kenotic" themes. His dependency makes of his dissolute and alcoholic nature the relationship of something wedded to him as a queenly wife as well as curse. Possibly "Flying Islands" was originally intended as an extensive farcical account of the life of Benson, based on Benson's autobiography, in the nature of Riley's comical imitation of Benson on the platform called "Benson Out-Bensoned" but if so Riley's

CRESTILLOMEEM • 255

realization that the alcoholic addiction was similar to his own probably changed the story line and the play\poem into Riley's own autobiography. Benson does not seem to be remembered much these days, but his book Fifteen Years in Hell describing his alcoholic years was a national best‑

seller in the 1880's.

A major event in Riley's life must have been his first encounter with tremens from his alcoholism. This was the most dispiriting aspect of play with himself as Crestillomeem. I am informed that such tremens come only to one of lengthy and alcoholic lifestyle.

Riley admits his writing is "under the influence" in his Sixth and Final episode of the Buzz Club Papers in which series "The Flying Islands of the Night" appears. When writing "The Flying Islands" the author was stated to be under the "baleful influence of intoxicants...driving reason from her Throne." The work is the product of "old crime."

Riley was, of course, notorious for using pseudonymous names for his writings. The ostensible writer of the original "The Flying Islands of the Night" is Mr. Clickwad, a member of the "Buzz Club" whose poetry is deliberately questioned in the very first of the "Respectfully Declined" Papers of the Buzz Club. Another member asks: "The gentleman who has just favored us," said Mr. Plempton, "is a weird cuss, but if he'll pardon my curiosity I should like to inquire if he was ever troubled with the tremens?" The answer is obvious. "The Flying Islands of the Night," appearing in the fourth installment of the "Respectfully Declined" series, is introduced as Mr. Clickwad's work.

Riley knows of the tremens. He experienced them. He also wrote of them in such prose accounts as "Jamesy" where he refers to them as "jim jams." At one point in that short narrative appears the following colloquy which might relate to one of James Whitcomb Riley's own experiences:

"Liable to what?" said I

"Liable to jilt keel over - wink out, you know - cos he

has fits, kindo jim jams. I^. guess. Had a fearful old matinee

with him last night! You see he comes all sorts o' games on

me, and I have to put up for him - cos he's got to have

whisky, and if we can on'y keep him about so full he's a

regular lamb, but he don't stand no monkeyin' when he wants

whisky, now you bet!.."

Riley must have felt enraged because intoxication was not supposed to have such a down side! As Riley's teenaged years dawned alcohol use was

256 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

only beginning to questioned. When Riley was 11, a newspaper article pub­lished in the Hancock DEMOCRAT of July 3, 1861 stated, "It was at one time generally believed that the use of alcoholic liquors was positively nec­essary and beneficial to all men...Physicians recommended such beverages and regular daily rations of rum were provided in all armies and navies. These notions are still entertained by many persons, and very generally there is a want of correct information on the subject. It is very common for sol­diers of all classes to indulge in the use of alcoholic beverages...By close observation and many experiments, it has been found that the tissues and the blood of drunkards, as well as those who continually tipple in beer and whisky, but do not get drunk, are generally in a state of degeneration. Alcohol passes into the blood and retards the elimination of waste and inju­rious matter from the body and thus tends to produce disease, especially fever..." The effects of alcohol were obviously unclear in Riley's time.

Eventually, Riley came to see his alcohol addiction to personify the activ­ity of a person he called Crestillomeem and took her vision of himself as his own to see what it meant. This was done in "The Flying Islands of the Night." Crestillomeem never left Riley but came to become a pretty much subdued lady except for many private but also a few highly publicized inci­dents such as one recurrence in Louisville, Kentucky in February 1890 which caused the breakup of his stand-up comedy partnership with Edgar Nye.

Crestillomeem did not produce poetry. Riley wrote no poetry when he was in delirium. Crestillomeem did, however, provide the delirious subject matter of a small body of very important poetry to a biographer. She gave Riley "An Adjustable Lunatic" with its vision of a lover in another dimen­sion whose ethereal connectedness is an otherwise mad man's only touch with reality.

FANTASY (1878)
(FROM "AN ADJUSTABLE LUNATIC")

(a poem written by a fictional author in a Riley sketch, a man who subse­quently committed suicide within the story line and who described himself as "an adjustable lunatic" by profession. The sketch from which this poem derives portrays the writer of "Fantasy" as a penniless bachelor, the owner of a painting of a mysteriously enchanting woman in his room.

The poem reveals an impossible romantic attachment so real and yet so

CRESTILLOMEEM • 257

imaginary that it severs the man from his senses. As a biographer, I find the story bears relation to Riley's relationship with his married friend, Nellie Cooley, so recently dead at the time of its writing.)

And on my hearing fell a storm

Of gusty music, sadder yet

Than every whimper of regret

That sobbing utterance could form,

And patched with scraps of sound that seemed Torn out of tunes that demons dreamed,

258 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

And pitched to such a piercing key, It stabbed the ear with agony; And when at last it lulled and died, I stood aghast and terrified.

I shuddered and I shut my eyes

And still could see, and feel aware Some mystic presence waited there;

And staring, with a dazed surprise,
I saw a creature so divine

That never subtle thought of mine May reproduce to inner sight So fair a vision of delight.

A syllable of dew that drips

From out a lily's laughing lips Could not be sweeter than the word I listened to, yet never heard. -For, oh, the woman hiding there Within the shadows of her hair, Spake to me in an undertone

So delicate, my soul alone

But understood it as a moan

Of some weak melody of wind

A heavenward breeze had left behind.

A tracery of trees, grotesque

Against the sky, behind her seem Like shapeless shapes of arabesque

Wrought in an oriental screen; And tall, austere and statuesque

She loomed before it - e'en as though

The spirit-hand of Angelo

Had chiseled her to life complete,

With chips of moonshine round her feet.

And I grew jealous of the dusk,

To see it softly touch her face,

As lover-like, with fond embrace It folded round her like a husk:

A brewery ad which commonly was hung on tavern walls in Riley's epoch.

CRESTILLOMEEM • 259

But when the glitter of her hand Like wasted glory, beckoned me,

My eyes grew blurred and dull and dim -My vision failed - I could not see ‑

I could not stir - I could but stand,
Till, quivering in every limb,

flung me prone, as though to swim The tide of grass whose waves of green Went rolling ocean-wide between My helpless shipwrecked heart and her Who claimed me for a worshiper.

And writhing thus in my despair,

I heard a weird, unearthly sound,

That seemed to lift me from the ground

And hold me floating in the air.

I looked, and lo! I saw her bow

Above a harp within her hands;
A crown of blossoms bound her brow,

And on her harp were twisted stranc Of silken starlight, rippling o'er With music never heard before By mortal ears; and, at the strain, I felt my Spirit snap its chain

And break away, - and I could see It as it turned and fled from me

To greet its mistress, where she smiled To see the phantom dancing wild And wizard-like before the spell Her mystic fingers knew so well.

What is it? Who will rightly guess          A cartoon of Riley's era. If it be aught but nothingness

That dribbles from a wayward pen

To spatter in the eyes of men?

What matter! I will call it mine,

And I will take the changeling home

And bathe its face with morning-shine,

260 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

And comb it with a golden comb

Till every tangled tress of rhyme

Will fairer be than summer-time; And I will nurse it on my knee

And dandle it beyond the clasp

Of hands that grip and hands that grasp Through life and all eternity!

Something like this vision became Act II of Riley's great delirious, auto­biographical play\poem "The Flying Islands of the Night." The other subject matter is in such poetry as "Quitting California." The poem is not, of course, about the State of California at all, but rather about a brand name of whiskey. While one is led by the poem to believe that the poem's writer is becoming temperate and giving up alcohol, the poem playfully concludes that the writer is merely changing to another brand of cheap whiskey and not giving up whiskey at all.

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Crestillomeem's friends.

CRESTILLOMEEM • 261

ON QUITTING CALIFORNIA (1879)

0 rare old drink, the oldest, strongest far Of which the house can boast,

Whose guardian, smiling, betteth at the bar On who can drink the most -

How art thou conquered - tamed in all the pride Of average beauty still!

How brought, 0 painter of the human hide, To know thy master's will!

No more the shallow goblet is baptized Until it overflows;

No more thy liquid blushes are capsized, And succored by the nose.

For now the wild oats thou ^past helped to till In pain are harvested,

And, as the boss presents his little bill, The gleaner droops his head.

Yet at thy shrine shall thousands kneel again Beneath thy mystic spell;

0 mother-in-law of great and mighty men, Thou do'st thy mission well!

Thy newer children shall restore the right I force you to resign

And future years yield up an appetite, Perchance as wild as mine.

Though order, justice, social law shall scowl On all the works reveal,

And art and science shake their heads and howl With unabated zeal,

The marble, shaken from its glassy sheath,

262 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

Shall twirl and palpitate

For those of fiery eye and potent breath Who take their whisky straight.

The cornless cob shall drain its warmest blood -The still its blackest lees,

And all transfusive percolations flood

Thy swollen arteries,

Till "Tremens," as he hides himself away Within thy depths, shall wink

As victims pour him down from day to day At fifteen cents a drink.

When Mr. Clickwad is finished his friends congratulate him at least on agreeing to quit alcohol. Mr. Clickwad denies this intent and admits that he is only quitting the one brand indicated. He remains an unrepentant alco­holic which is his nature.

While the poetry of Crestillomeem is small in volume, Riley considered it his personal record of the hell of his life and treasured it inordinately. One finds his poem "The Flying Islands of the Night" being published again and again from 1878 to the end of his life. None of the printings was popular. Most contained changes as Riley considered and reconsidered its autobio­graphical cryptic subject matter. The poem came to have a strange life of its own because of its beautiful lyrics and of course authorship by the famous James Whitcomb Riley.

Riley simply hid himself in this poem. No one except possibly his alco­holic brother Hum (who died three years after "The Flying Islands of the Night's" composition) and friend, Dr. Frank Hays, knew the poem was a delirium.

Why?

Among the reasons why Crestillomeem was not a visible presence was Riley's later popularity and commercial posture. But another reason was that Crestillomeem lurked within his soul. Riley couldn't account for this him­self. His vision of life included a simple belief that ultimately life was inex­plicable. When his father died, Riley had engraved on the Riley family marker in the little Greenfield cemetery where he was buried, "God is his own interpreter and will someday make things clear." Riley's alcoholism

CRESTILLOMEEM • 263

like his father's death was a part of life that God alone understood. Nevertheless there was an expectation that it fit in with some greater plan.

Crestillomeem was Riley in his uneasiness about his alcoholism. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, declared uneasiness was the cen­tral human motive. Riley was constantly in a state of uncertainty about him­self. His incentive to survive despite his alcoholism required great mental work, emotionality and activity. After a person's biological needs are satis­fied, time and energy are next spent in a narrow space of mind bounded on the right by boredom and ordinarily on the left by terror of the bizarre. Riley often lived in this region of the bizarre and actually knew it as a comfort. He often lived in the nurture of Crestillomeem. Others have commented that Riley's "weakness" was even beneficial. Rev. Finley Sapp, minister of a Greenfield Protestant Church from 1904-1906 and knew Riley, has written: "James Whitcomb Riley touched the heart of humanity as only a few have. "Jim" was really more `"ligious" when "lit up" a little, than most of the saints at camp meeting." (From page 54, A HISTORY OF THE GREEN-FIELD CHRISTIAN CHURCH, Dorothy June Williams).

So who is Crestillomeem? She is the one whose life is explained in The Flying Islands as an entourage of faces. She is the soul breaking apart in Riley's "Poem of Seven Faces." In tremens deliriums, Riley encounters faces swarming around him telling him all about Crestillomeem.

CRESTILLOMEEM'S
STORY IN A CHORUS OF SWARMING FACES

264 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

To dazzle earth and Heaven, too!"

1.     AEo is Elizabeth, Riley's mother, who died when he was twenty. The E is her initial sur­rounded by the alpha and omega representing the scope of Riley's affection for her from beginning of life to end. Riley idolized his mother causing deep agony upon her death and Riley's initial need for consolation and escape in alcoholism.

Third Face

I knew her - long ere Night' was o'er -Ere, AEo yet conjectured what

To fashion Day of - ay, before

He sprinkled stars across the floor Of dark, and swept that form of mine

E'en as a fleck of blinded shine, Back to the black were light was not.

2.   Night is related to the past in the alcoholics confessional genre of literature such as "The Flying Islands of the Night." SEE: Benson, Fifteen Years in Hell, (night as a black, unlight­ed past).

Fourth face

Ere day was dreamt, I saw her face Lift from some starry hiding-place

Where our old moon was kneeling while She lit its features with her smile.

Fifth Face

I knew her while these islands' yet,

Were nestlings - ere they feathered wing,

Or e'en could gape with them or get Apoise the laziest-ambling breeze;

Or cheep, chirp our, or anything!

When time crooned rhymes of nurseries Above them - nodded, dozed and slept,

And knew it not, till, wakening.

The morning stars agreed to sing

And Heaven's first tender dews were wept.

CRESTILLOMEEM • 265

3.     Riley's fractured lives are the "flying" islands, disassociated "play/cast" entities, of the poem.

Sixth Face

I knew her when the jealous hands Of Angels set her sculptured form Upon a pedestal of storm

And let her to this land with strands Of twisted lightnings.

Seventh Face

4.   After his mother's death and then Nellie's death, Riley fell to pieces and launched a life of abandonment to alcoholism supported by meager casual employments.

RILEY'S FOUR GREAT ENCOUNTERS
WITH CRESTILLOMEEM

There were four great encounters Riley had with Crestillomeem. Each led to a new era in Riley's life and the crises were closer together in years in his 20's than later on. Each proved devastating and led to great life changes for the sensitive poet. The first occurred as Riley was faced with the death of his mother on Aug. 9, 1870 when Elizabeth Riley died of heart disease. Riley

266 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

floundered after this and eventually took to the road with a traveling miracle medicine show of Doc McCrillus.

After returning to his home to settle down, a second event occurred when he was in his 20's which thoroughly unsettled him. This was a "black lynching" by a band of masked Hancock County men who broke into the Greenfield jail to drag a presumably innocent black man out for his date with

a rope at the local fairgrounds. Riley again left his hometown for a sec­ond trip with a traveling medicine show, this time the one of Doc Townsend.

Again returning to Greenfield

after a time, he learned of the death of his soul-mate he most loved, Nellie Cooley, and after writing her obituary and burying her back in Greenfield, he again entered into a period of great despondency resulting in his eventu­al move to Indianapolis to work for a newspaper there.

It was after this third great "depressing" circumstance that Riley wrote his autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night."

By this time, Riley was brought in contact with kenotic teachers and was taking to the platform. His great Benjamin Johnson of Boone poems were written during a period of recovery.

The fourth great onset of depression culminated in 1890 when Riley could not take the strain of constant platform touring any longer and was found drunk and with the "shakes" in public. This ended Riley's lyceum cir­cuit days as they had been. The event did however usher in a gentler time when Riley wrote most of his annual books and became "The Children's Poet." We will examine each of these periods of Riley's great bouts with Crestillomeem in turn before getting into his great poetry written as Spraivoll of the play/poem "The Flying Islands of the Night."

CRESTILLOMEEM • 267

CRESTILLOMEEM'S FIRST GREAT ENCOUNTER
WITH RILEY AFTER THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER

At what point in Riley's life he became severely depressed we do not know. His experience with alco­hol tells us nothing about this. We remember Riley was from a Hoosier Deutsch family. The Hoosier Deutsch were very lenient in regard to alcohol use.

The Hoosier Deutsch were a very industrious

Among the most prominent places of business in Riley's hometown were

farming people in central taverns. The most famous, the Gooding Tavern. located across the street Indiana. Their farms, dis- from the Courthouse, was frequented not only by townspeople but by trav‑

elers such as former President Martin VanBuren and Presidential candi‑

tinguished because their date Henry Clay.

farm houses were often

built in the middle of their land rather than along the roads, were very pros­perous. Nothing was wasted. Whiskey was made from their excess corn crops and all of their holidays and weddings involved great drinking of whiskey.

Deutsch-run taverns were in every locale where the Deutsch settled in Indiana and were places of common social and even family gathering. Whiskey was kept in homes and children were given it for medicinal reasons at the drop of a hat. Riley no doubt had tasted corn whiskey or "red eye" on many, many occasions as a child. In adolescence we hear of Riley's drunk­en times with friends.

Riley once admitted, "I've went more (miles) so's to come back by old Guthrie's still-house where minors got liquor providing we showed him that Old folks sent for it from home."

The occasions were social and the stories from these times are humor­ous. One night when John E. Davis, met "Uncle" Billy Davis (not related) and Riley, Davis got his nickname "Durbin." The three were "whooping" it up on Greenfield streets. They had just stopped in at a Deutsch tavern in Greenfield, the "Last Chance," but found it closed for the night. Riley led

268 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

the three to another place to get a drink, a water pump that Riley sighted. According to Davis, "Riley grabbed hold of the pump handle, clapped me on the back and said, "I want you to meet Mr. Durbin. Now Mr. Durbin, I want the boys to have all they want. It's on the house, boys."" Davis continued, "We drank water and pumped and drank again. And ever since, they've called me after a kind of pump manu­factured in those days known as the Durbin pump." Davis also mentioned another story. As a boy, Durbin said, Riley "always had a pocket­ful of poems even when we swam down on the Brandywine. I've seen him turn somersaults, recite a poem, and then jump clean over the muddy bank into the swimmin' hole. He knowed all of Charles Dickens' works by

The Riley family lot at Park Cemetery, Greenfield, Indiana as it appeared in

1997. The exact grave in which the poet's mother lies is unknown since there this period in Hancock arc no records of such things kept by the' cemetery at the early date of County in which a young Elizabeth's death. Riley's infant sister Celeste and brother Hum are buried to

the left of the large Riley stone. Brother John and his wife Julia are buried man riding home one

immediately behind.                                                                                                               night     slightly     "bout'

John Davis one of Riley's pals as a

heart." As a boy, "Uncle" Davis said Riley was- young man. His nickname was n't much of a swimmer but preferred to loiter in "Durbin.^- Friends called Riley and him

the "49'ers" from the year of their birth.

the shade while the other swam. "We'd go in nat‑

ural and many's the time we'd tie each others clothes into knots and throw
mud at each other. He used to make up poems down there and recite them
to us while we swam around. There were some dandies all right. There's
one of them I'll never

forget. I only wish it could be printed."

After Riley quit school at 16, he appar­ently fooled around with alcohol. The casual atti­tude toward drinking by the young men of the time is revealed by a story contemporary with

CRESTILLOMEEM • 269

bonized" looked at the moon with great contempt and said, "You needn't be so proud, Madame Moon. You are full once a month and I every night."

In any case, Riley was familiar with alcohol use even before his first great encounter with Crestillomeem.

THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER CAUSED RILEY'S
FIRST GREAT PERIOD OF INTOXICATION

The death of Riley's mother Elizabeth was publicly announced in the Hancock DEMOCRAT of Thursday morning, August 11, 1870 as follows:

SUDDEN DEATH

On Tuesday morning last our citizens were much astounded to hear that Mrs. Elizabeth Riley, wife of Capt. R.A. Riley, of this place, had died very suddenly and unexpectedly that morning, about half past seven o'clock, of heart disease. Some time during the latter part of the night, she felt unwell and got up from her bed without awak­ing any of the family. In a short time Capt. Riley was aroused by someone falling on the floor. He soon discovered that it was his wife who had fallen as if in a swoon. The alarm was given and the neighbors and physician sent for. No serious danger was at the time apprehended, but toward daylight she begun to grow worse and died as we have stated above. She was buried in the new cemetery on yesterday morning. A large

number of our citizens were present at the funeral services, conducted by Rev. J.W. Lacy, and all sympathized deeply with the bereaved family. We tender our condolence to our friend, Capt. Riley, and his bereaved and afflicted children. In the death of the one they loved so well, we can truth­fully say that she was a kind and good woman and that is the best epitaph that can be written upon the tomb of a departed wife and mother.

Brother John wrote in his diary of that day, "What shall we do with Jim now that mother is dead?"

The answer was that nothing on this earth could console Riley except

Elizabeth Marine Riley, the mother of the poet.

270 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

alcohol.

Riley was very "tied to his mother's apron strings."

Here is a little poem Riley wrote that shows his depth of affection for his mother remembered even in his older age.

She laughs an' tells him all I said,

An' grabs me up an' pats my head;

An' I hug her, an' hug my Pa

An' love him purr nigh as much as Ma.

Riley's secretary, Marcus Dickey, has recorded how Riley recollected his reaction to his mother's death. "The bereavement caused a complete change in his life. It sent him into the world to make his own   g, livin and in numer-

_

ous ways it was a forlorn road he had to travel. A few hours after her death he walked alone through a cornfield to a favorite retreat south of the railroad to an old clearing. "I was alone," he said, "till as in a vision I saw my moth­er smiling back upon me from the blue fields of love - when lo! she was

CREST1LLOMEEM • 271

young again. Suddenly I had the assurance that I would meet her somewhere in another world. I was gathering the fruit of what had been so happily impressed on me in child­hood. I had seen that the world is a stage. Now I saw that the universe is a stage. Another cur­tain had been lifted. My mother was enrap­tured at the sight of new scenery. It was the dream of Heaven with which 'Johnny Appleseed' had impressed my mother in the Mississinewa cabin."

The first thing Riley did after his mother died was to go to Rushville to sell Bibles with some man unknown in history. Reuben Riley was very skeptical about this enterprise and

did not know the Bible salesman Riley had James Whitcomb Riley about age 20 when

his mother. Elizabeth. died. (Neg. C7I70,

taken off to Rushville with. On December 19, IMCPL-Riley           Collection.         Indiana

Historical Society.)

1870 we find the father writing to the son,

"I have been patiently waiting for a letter from you and have received none. Scarcely an hour passes without my thinking of you and wondering how you are getting along? how you are doing? how you are managing? I have had much more experience in the world than you. It is all important that you associate with none but those of good character, that you be self-reliant and aim high and suffer no stain to attach to your conduct. I would like to coun­sel and advise with you. Please write me fully and confidently, and all rea­sonable assistance in my power I will render..."

"It turned out," said Riley, "that citizens of Rushville had all the Bibles they needed; they had not time to read those they had." Soon Riley was back in Greenfield apprenticed to Almon Keefer's uncle, John Keefer, a painter by trade. Reuben paid for the apprenticeship. Soon Riley was armed with a Number 5 paint brush and a bucketful of paint under the eaves painting houses in Greenfield. Riley worked at painting houses for two summers while he learned the more delicate art of painting signs. Eventually Riley rented a paint shop above a drugstore which he called the "Morgue" and slept there much of the time because he did not want his family to see how intoxicated he often became.

The Editor of Century Magazine, Hewitt Hanson Howland, claimed Riley's life was dominated by two fears, the fear of life and the fear of death.

272 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

"From my earliest recollection of him, he would, on the death of a friend, take on an added air of confidence, almost of gaiety. 'You can't make me believe he isn't around here somewhere,' he would say, 'probably listening to us now and chuckling over our distress.^— I thought of him then as whistling in the dark; today we'd call it defensive mechanism. But by what­ever name, Riley always gave the departed the best of the bargain." The death of his mother left him outside her physical presence ut with the hope that she was still with him and had gone right on living.

When Riley wrote poetry he was in a way still participating in an activ­ity with his mother. Riley told Hamlin Garland in an interview that he got his verse-writing from his mother's family, the Marines. A characteristic of the whole family was their ability to write rhymes, but all unambitiously. "They wrote rhymed letters to each other, and joked and jim-crowed with the Muses." This family love of poetry was the legacy of the poverty strick­en mother to her son. She had nothing else to give him.

After the mother's death, poverty in the Riley home continued to render life there miserable. Riley's brother, Hum, and sisters remained. The period was one of great privation. Reuben Riley was not a good provider at any time following his very brief Civil War service. Riley's younger brother gives evidence of this in a brief plaintive letter to brother John who left home to live and earn an income in Indianapolis. Riley's brother, Hum at 13, wrote his brother John.

"Dear Brother,

I want you to send me a cap if you pleas (sic) by tomoro (sic) evening. I have none but one old one and it is not fit to wear to the festival a cheap one will do so it looks well.

Yours truly,

/s/ Hum

The boy hadn't funds to wear the cap that the other boys had.

Another letter from Riley himself to his brother, John explains Riley's poverty.

July 14, 1871

Dear Bro.:

Yesterday morn I failed to write to you - I found "the folks" all well - that is, "on their pins," but all pretty blue and no wonder. There is no one to help May, who still continues to "gaze in vacancy" the greater part of the time.

CRESTILLOMEEM • 273

I "waked" her for a little time yesterday by reading a sketch or two from Dickens. Father is chief-cook-and bottle washer. I was going to say but Hum washes the dishes. Father has to go to the court house and be fined $10 for contempt of court. John, I tell you, our noble House is on the wane -everything is going - going - the same old carelessness marks our "progress."

...I am going to work for Harris in a day or two. Father, I guess don't want to get, or keep a girl to assist May - economy, you know. I've been laughing forced laughs and dancing forced jigs till I'm about gone up - they don't appear to take - it will take a deeper trick - "simulating" happiness, to be a success.

Augustus and Marie were up last evening and Dora from Pendleton - we had a pleasant time in our front parlors - the kitchen door open and father with his sleeves rolled up to his knees, getting supper for his clamor of offspring who ate crackers and water for dinner - maybe I don't talk right- I can't say other way -Your affectionate bro. Jim.

Elva May Riley, at four­teen, took the mother's place in the family. Harris was Riley's school master. In his schoolhouse in Lewisville, Riley and Harris spent half the night studying the poet‑

The Reuben Riley family bible on display at Greenfield birthplace.

ry, especially Tennyson, and Photo courtesy of Roger Looney, staff of Greenfield Daily Reporter.

This bible legally establishes Riley's date of birth.

writing verse.

The first poems were printed in Greenfield in local newspapers about this time. Riley wrote them under the name Edyrn, taken from Tennyson's IDYLLS OF THE KING.

Although Elva May Riley assumed the role of the mother of the bereaved family, the younger crippled child, Mary, was left in great inconsolable sor‑

274 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

row by the death of her mother.

Following Elizabeth's death, Riley took to the habit of coming to his sis­ter Mary's side at night after she had been put to bed to recite Tennyson and Longfellow. Both came to know some of these poems by heart and she remembered her brother particularly tried to emulate the musical cadence of the "The Lady of Shalott". She recalled him as loving Keats best of all, but "he did not repeat those poems to me as a girl."

Mary and Riley formed a special bond during this period. Often Riley came home to the Riley homestead drunk and the little girl came down to assist him get to his room.

Throughout the remainder of his life Riley considered his sister, Mary, as a special charge and supported her and her daughter, Leslie, financially through many travails. Born during the Civil War, Sister Mary suffered from spinal meningitis and was 15 years younger than Riley. His financial help kept her in a rather expensive standard of living. She and her daughter, Lesley. lived in Paris, France, for many years dependent upon the assistance of the poet who gladly provided whatever resources were needed. Riley did this in memory of his mother as well as out of love for his sister. His sister's life was as shattered by Crestillomeem as was his own.

Eventually, still in grief at his mother's death, Riley left Greenfield, his boyhood home, in May 1872, when he was twenty-two by joining the trav­eling medicine show of Dr. Samuel Brown McCrillus. As the Twentieth Century ends, we can hardly imagine such a wild and strange event as the appearance in town of a medicine show. But to the folk of Greenfield and the little towns of Indiana in the decade following the Civil War, the com­ing of a patent medicine wagon offered an occasion for fun and excitement.

Dr. McCrillus was not just a "doctor" who made his own prescription in Anderson - the one principal remedy for almost every illness to hear him tell it - McCrillus' European Balsam - he was also an entertainer back in the days when folk with that duo proclivity would take to the roads and sell medicine at medicine shows.

Imagine yourself in the Greenfield of the decade after the Civil War. Supper is over and the women are busy with a sinkful of dishes and the chil­dren are finishing their chores for the day. The men are out on the front porches having an after-dinner chaw of tobacco. Only the buzz of a persis­tent fly breaks the lazy silence of the warm summer evening.

Suddenly, this halcyon scene is broken by a near-deafening blast of a trumpet. The Greenfield folk rush out of their houses to see what is going

CRESTILLOMEEM • 275

on.

Down State Street from the direction of Anderson come a pair of matched, plumed horses pulling a gaily decorated wagon. It is painted in gaudy reds and blues and is embellished with curlicues in gold. Is it a cir­cus wagon? No.

Even so all the kids of the town, cheering and pushing to get

close, rush toward it and cir­cle it as it heads down to the cour­thouse square.

Dr. McCrillus has brought his

Your author could not find a photo of either a Dr. McCrillus or a Dr. Townsend patent medicine show to medicine show wagon but an example of the type is pictured from Minnesota at the turn

Greenfield once ^{of the} century'

again as he did every year during this era.

We would all know him. Dr. Samuel Brown McCrillus is one of the most notable men in this part of Indiana. He has made sure he is well known by hiring an "advance man" to paint his advertisements for his patent medicines in Greenfield on every available barnside, post and rock.

Dr. McCrillus sits on the wagon seat, dignified and smiling, and he waves his hat to the men and bows and lifts his hat in a mannerly way to the ladies along the way. He is a great humanitarian who takes the tributes of the crowd in stride. After all not everyone has curing the sicknesses and ail­ments of folk in their hearts like the good Quaker doctor.

After encircling the town square, Dr. McCrillus stops his bright wagon and climbs down. Soon he is joined by the young man with him, Jim McClanahan, who will present an evening performance on the tailgate of the wagon in the flickering late summer light along the Greenfield downtown Main Street.

Frequent commercials were interjected into the entertainments. Dr. McCrillus would signal for silence and a hush would encompass the crowd. "Friends and neighbors, " he would say, "let's get one thing clear at the beginning. I don't want your money. I have come to Greenfield to help you." He really meant it. Then he would give his 19th Century hard sell, a pitch

276 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

for "McCrillus European Balsam" and it worked, probably unlike the med­icine itself.

One observer of this has recorded Dr. McCrillus's standard introduction of himself, as follows: "I have been engaged in the medicine business ever since I can recollect. I made pills by the day when only a boy of ten years. For the past thirty-eight years, I have been engaged in putting up what is known as Dr. McCrillus' popular standard remedies, European Balsam, Tonic Block Purifier, Oriental Liniment, and Hoarhound Expectorant. They are sold by druggists. I could offer thousands of genuine certificates, but I am willing to leave the great public to judge of their merits. I have adopted for my special use a trade mark, whereby the public may be protected against fraud and imposition. Relief has been obtained by thousands of suf­ferers by the use of my medicines and they in turn have recommended them to others. In this way, I am making living advertisements for myself and medicines. Be sure the name of Dr. S.B. McCrillus, Anderson, Indiana, is on every bottle, otherwise it is a fraud." (As found in the Madison County Historical GAZETTE of October, 1979.)

Dr. McCrillus worked all winter making pills and preparing his tonic in his laboratory. Then in the summer he would pack them all up in a bright wagon driven by his two sorral horses and travel all over Central Indiana putting on these little shows to cause people to congregate.

When Doc McCrillus left Greenfield on this occasion, he took James Whitcomb Riley with him.

When James Whitcomb Riley left Greenfield at the age of twenty-two to join a traveling patent medicine show, he had not just hooked up with a sim­ple charlatan. Doc McCrillus was a patent medicine manufacturer who believed in his products and traveled around Indiana in the summers ped­dling his cures with vim and vigor. The Doc would give wondrous programs from his wagon to extol the virtues of his many cures. Somehow he also kept open a little medicine shop on the south side of Anderson's public square during this era according to the EMERSON AND WILLIAMS ANDERSON CITY DIRECTORY of 1876-77.

In a way, Riley was lucky that Doc McCrillus took him on. Jim Riley tried to talk his way into the good doctor's traveling miracle medicine show on the basis that he could do a good public relations job. Riley had experi­ence painting signs - Riley's dad apprenticed him to a Greenfield signmak­er at an early age to keep the boy from being a juvenile delinquent - and he told Doc McCrillus he would advance to the next towns on the circuit and

CRESTILLOMEEM • 277

make signs for his show. The problem is that Doc McCrillus already had one sign painter, a young man named James McClanahan also from the doc­tor's hometown of Anderson.

The more Riley talked though, the more the doctor felt favorably inclined to include the young man in his travels. Like many others, Doctor McCrillus knew Reuben Riley, Jim's dad, and knew his father, a lawyer, was a good showman in his own way. Then he asked Riley to see some of his signs. Riley sighted him to a bridge where he had painted an eagle and a flag. With the boy's father's permission, James Whitcomb Riley was off on his first adventure away from Greenfield and home.

Doc McCrillus's visit to Greenfield was the first of the patent medicine man's stops in the summer of 1872. Actually, the Doc took his two Jims back to Anderson and to his home at 3 East Lincoln Street there on its his­toric brick street that still remains after the Greenfield trip to prepare for the entertainments for the rest of the summer. Jim Riley and Jim McClanahan learned to perform many acts together. Riley had brought with him his gui­tar and banjo along with his natural gift of wit and novelty. The program would provide a forum for Doc McCrillus to spiel out his philosophic approach to his patent medicines, then the three would sing a trio and other entertainments would follow. In this summer, Riley became a comedian and give recitations and also sang, as well as went on ahead of the medicine show to the oncoming towns to paint signs advertising the show to come.

It is a shame that Doctor McCrillus has faded into such obscurity as a his­torical figure. No obituary of him survives. We only know that he was born in Dubois County on June 27, 1830 and died at the age of 70 in Anderson on Feb. 12, 1901. His wife was from Southern Indiana. Her name was Helen Coningore and the two married in 1861 in Paoli. The doctor's parents were Aaron Bailey and Sarah (nee Brown) McCrillus. We know from the stan­dard Dubois County Histories of the Nineteenth Century that Dr. Samuel McCrillus was educated in a pioneer school - his only education that I could uncover-in the front room of a "Professor Cheaver on the southeast corner of the public square of Jasper, and was elected as the first Auditor of Dubois County before he was twenty-one under Indiana's Second Constitution, before migrating to Anderson in 1861 for some unknown reason and taking to patent medicine manufacture. Medical School anywhere is not in his resume. I suppose he had learned as Auditor of Dubois County that to be a medical doctor in this period of history one only had to register as such with the County Auditor where you wished to be an M.D. Among the places his

278 • THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

children settled was Wilkinson, in Hancock County.

This was the man who would spirit James Whitcomb Riley away from Greenfield and offer him the chance to become an entertainer and meet many characters.

None of this may particularly sound like a background experience for a young man who would help define what an American home and its life would involve. But James Whitcomb Riley was a young man who "itched" to move right then.

Whether he knew it or not, James Whitcomb Riley was on a quest to understand the meaning of his life as well as to understand his Greenfield home where he had lived in his youth, a home whose coup he had now flown. His quest would cause him to write extensively and famously and he would explore every element of what others might think were elements of his dream. Strangely he would never have a home such as he would for­mulate as an ideal for his readers and I isteners.

In a newspaper interview about tak­ing on James Whitcomb Riley to join his patent medicine show, Doc McCrillus once said, "This patent medicine business was not organized then like it is today." (I suppose he meant after the passage of laws like the Pure Food and Drug Act regulating what could be sold as "drugs.") "I did as big a business as any one. All of us then had great, fine wagons and would load up with our medicines and drive from town to town. We would carry a sign painter along and as we jogged from place to place would stop and paint signs on fences or barns. I would take part of the pay for the medicines

Riley with sign he painted in his early 20's taken by in paint,      traveling churn John 0. Hoover of Lafayette.

"We got to Greenfield...(His "sign

painter," James McClanahan was present at this interview too)... "and when I was over at the drug store, Jim McClanahan, who was my painter, scraped up an acquaintance with this fellow Riley, who was a red-head, sorry-look‑

CRESTILLOMEEM • 279

ing young fellow."

"Yes, (McClanahan said,) Doc had gone over to the drug store and I had let down the back and was looking over the supply of paint when this feller Riley came up and commenced to talk to me. He told me he was a painter, too. I sized him up and shot hack - 'Yes, I see as how you're a blin' painter,' and I pointed out some green paint on his clothes - the green that we used to daub the blinds with. That was the worst thing you could say to a painter, and Riley blushed and said that he could paint more than blinds and houses and he pointed out a sign or two. When Doc came back to the wagon I told him the young fellow wanted to go with us, that he had paint‑

ed those signs; and that he said he could play the guitar and the fiddle - Riley never liked the word fiddle. Doc took him on to help me out and to help him in his lectures. Riley was a fast painter and his lettering was good, and he helped McCrillus entertain the crowds in the street.^- (From a newspaper interview found in loose papers at the Indiana University library at Indianapolis.)

It is easy to say that Riley's career began on Doc McCrillus's gaudy "show wagon." The entertainments that Riley performed to gather crowds for Doc McCrillus were the start of his public career as a showman him­self...and entertainer from the stage.

After his death, a contemporary American author of Riley's, Hamlin Garland, would say of him, "...in truth his success did not come so much in print as through his own reading of his lines from the platform. He had in him something of the minstrel. He possessed notable power to charm and move an audience, and everywhere he spoke he left a throng of friends. To hear him read - or recite - "A Song of the Airly Days" was to be moved in a new and unforgettable way. His vibrant individual voice, his flexile lips, his droll glance, united to make him at once poet and comedian - comedian in the sense which makes for tears as well as for laughter." (From

The "trade mark^- of Doe Sameul McCrillus. (From the Barton Rees Pogue glass positive collection.)

280 • THE POET As FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

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