By the time Riley's biographical poem "The Flying Islands of the Night" was revised thirteen years after its first publication and placed into book form in 1891, Riley chose to add another beloved from his life to join the cast with his deceased true love "Dwainie," Nellie Millikan Cooley.
This was AEO, Riley's mother. The name derives from the centered letter "E," the abbreviated first letter of his mother's name surrounded by the Greek alpha and omega substitutes signaling his mother meant to him the beginning and end of his love.
The tombstone of James Whitcomb Riley's mother, Elizabeth Riley, at Greenfield, Indiana's Park Cemetery reflects that she lived from 1823 until 1870, "the year the mother died." Her grave on a hill overlooks Brandywine Creek meandering through the Hoosier landscape, the same "crick" on which was James Whitcomb Riley's "Old Swimmin' Hole" was located to the north near the old "National Road." Her name was Elizabeth Marine before she married Reuben Riley and bore James Whitcomb Riley as her third child. We can elaborate more upon the life of Riley's beloved mother. Elizabeth's family had come to America to avoid persecution in Europe. This seems to be the case with most of our ancestors which is why I find it so hard to understand how any American can have prejudice toward any member of another church, creed or race. Elizabeth's Marine (or Merine) grandparents were Welch Quakers who came to America when Quakers were being persecuted in England. The Marine grandmother's family had fled to England to avoid Protestant persecution in France. Their son, John, married Elizabeth's mother, Fanny. They were living on the border between North Carolina and South Carolina, near Rockingham, when Elizabeth, their tenth of eleven children, was born. When Elizabeth was only two, her parents left North Carolina broke. By the time the family fled over the Blue Ridge Mountains and into Indiana, their total resources were a wagon pulled by a single horse. Elizabeth's parents became pioneer settlers of a Randolph County farm. At this place, Elizabeth became acquainted with Johnny Appleseed personally and had listened to the tales he told the pioneer children. Most people know of Johnny Appleseed's quaint habit of wearing a cooking pot for a hat and for planting apple trees wherever he went, but not everybody remembers that Johnny was also a gospel carrying preacher. Elizabeth believed him when he said you grow old on earth but you grow young again in heaven. You can find traces of Johnny's preachings in the poetry of James Whitcomb Riley, Elizabeth's son. As a child Elizabeth went to school obediently to her parents' wishes, but she enjoyed most wandering through the Hoosier woods. Her father tried to turn part of his farm into a town called Rockingham after the town in North Carolina he had fled. The project failed and the platted town remains farmland to this day except for what was to be the town cemetery without stones in one of whose graves rests Elizabeth's mother, Fanny. After her mother died, the Marines moved to a settlement on Cabin Creek near the Mississinewa River. At a Fourth of July picnic in 1843, Elizabeth met Reuben Riley. There was an Indian trail between the creek Elizabeth lived on and the one where the family of Reuben Riley resided, Cabin Creek. After the two, Elizabeth and Reuben, met at the picnic, it is said this trail got worn down by Reuben's use. In Feb. 1844,Elizabeth married Reuben in a beautiful pioneer wedding performed by the local Methodist preacher. Pioneer Indiana was not so backwoodsy and crude as many think. Elizabeth wore a long white veil, white kid gloves and shoes, and a pale pink silk dress. She was a truly beautiful woman. Elizabeth and her new husband left for Greenfield five months after the wedding to settle in Greenfield. In the year 1844, Greenfield was a settlement of about 300 people. The legislature had only "created" Hancock County 16 years before. The town was mainly cabins and a few frame houses and businesses around the "public square." The Riley Home, then a cabin, was on the West edge of Greenfield and the Hoosier woods was behind it. Elizabeth Riley was said to be gentle, kindly, sympathetic, tolerant, and patient. She and her son were on the same wave length at all times. Both were poetic, imaginative. If one saw fairies in their walks through the woods the other saw them too and each wove fanciful stories. Both were dreamers to live above the sordid impoverishment of their daily lives. She was the only one who fully recognized his talents and visualized the heights he could attain. Some have stated Elizabeth Riley was over-solicitous of James Whitcomb Riley. They note that on September 4, 1851, when he was two, his older sister, Martha Celeste died and that as sometimes happens after a child's death, the mother becomes extra extra careful about the next child. What is clear is that Riley leaned heavily upon his mother's sympathetic encouragement and understanding and love and clung to her as strongly as he clung to his goal of being a writer. She was necessary to his very existence. He wished his success for her. Then one day she died. The death of his mother gave Riley a deep abiding sympathy and pity for those who suffered bereavement and he wrote
SINCE MY MOTHER DIED (1879)
"Since my mother died, my face
Knows not any resting-place,
Save in visions, lightly pressed
In its old accustomed rest
On her shoulder. But I wake
With a never-ending ache
In my heart, and naught beside,
Since my mother died. ...
What was her legacy to the boy? A psychologist of my century, Jerome Kagan, teaches that an intelligent person is not necessarily creative but a creative person is generally intelligent with creativity based on three key characteristics: they have a mental set to search for the unusual, they take delight in generating novel ideas and they are not unduly apprehensive about making mistakes. A creative person is one whose life is not subject to humiliation upon failure. The caregiver has given such a person great freedom to try, to succeed, and to fail. High- risk solutions can be tried without fear of their potential. This describes Elizabeth Riley's strategy for her son, James Whitcomb Riley. She encouraged each of the three characteristics. Elizabeth Riley was the source of the poet's strength and courage as well. In Riley's "Poem of the Seven Faces" comes the confession of a "face" of a character who is not one of the "Flying Islands" of the cast. The faces of the poems are those vivid recollections that confront Riley's life every day and often drive him into the relief of intoxication. The "Second Face" of the poems speaks of someone other than one of Riley's play-characters representing a fragmentation of himself. This "Second Face" says of Crestillomeem, Riley's alcoholic self: I knew her - long and long before High AEo2 loosed her palm and thought: "What awful splendor have I wrought To dazzle earth and Heaven, too!" Elizabeth Riley, Riley's mother who died in the midst of the poverty stricken years when Riley was 20, confesses from her seat in heaven that her departure has precipitated Riley's initial descent into alcoholism. From heaven, AEo can only be horrified at Riley in the throes of Crestillomeem. Riley's mother was with him as a living presence throughout his life as the poem acknowledges. Jucklet In one strange phase he spakeAs though some spirited lady (AEo1) talked with him. - Full courteously he said: "In woman's guise Thou comest, yet I think thou art, in sooth But woman in thy form. - Thy words are strange And leave me mystified. I feel the truth Of all thou hast declared, and yet so vague And shadow-like thy meaning is to me I know not how to act to ward the blow Thou sayest is hanging o'er me even now."
And then, with open hands held pleadingly, He asked, "Who is my foe?" - And o'er his face A sudden pallor flashed, like death itself, As though, if answer had been given, it Had fallen like a curse. 1. AEo, Riley's mother, now dead tries to caution him against his drunken lifestyle.
A letter is preserved which Riley wrote as an old man to a child, James L. Murray, confirming his mother was still very much in his thoughts. Dear Little Boy, -No-sir-ee! I couldn't write verse when I was nine years old like you. But, as you do, I could get verses "by heart," for speeches at School - only I always got pale and sick and faint when I tried to speak `em - and my chin wobbled, and my throat hurt, and then I broke clean down and cried. Oughtn't I been ashamed of myself? I bet you ain't goin' to cry - in the Second Room of the A Grade! I was sorry to hear your mother died when you were only one year old. My mother is dead, too; and so I wouldn't be surprised if your mother and my mother were together right now, and know each other, and are the best friends in their World, just as you and I are in this. My best respects to your good father and teachers all. Every your friend, James Whitcomb Riley
Riley's finest set of complete works was published 1915 with dedication to his mother as the Elizabeth Marine Riley Edition. Original watercolors are inserted as illustrations in many of the limited edition of 150. From George Richman, a Hancock County historian we learn that Riley's mother was a "woman of rare strength of character, combined with deep sympathy and a clear understanding." Others recalled her as being a gardener and a writer of verse. Speaking to his nephew and secretary, Edmund Eitel, Riley commented on the death of his mother when asked about it and after a long period of silence. "Sometimes I think mentality is developed by such things. Some terrible experience comes and worries and worries you until your mind seems stretched like the head of a drum. Well, you bear up bravely, and say to yourself, I can stand just this - but no more. Then some greater horror comes and turns the screws and turns the screws until you feel that your mind is surely strained to breaking...and so on, and so on, and if it doesn't break, it becomes very strong. " The same Edmund Eitel added, " Riley's mother, Elizabeth) alone understood the boy, Riley, and sympathized with him. Riley said, "I was her child in color of hair and eyes, in heart and soul. I worshiped her, and to see her in poverty and suffering was agony for me -and a mother so worthy of the best!" Riley's mother probably did not know of his great love of Nellie Cooley in real life, but Riley imagined she must know of it from her vantage in heaven. She would also know of her son's great anguish at Nellie's departure from Greenfield and then death. After the death of Nellie Cooley, great sadness must have stroked Riley's life. Nellie did not outlive her husband, George, so that Riley might rush to Illinois, find her a widow with children, marry her and bring her back to Indiana to find happiness in the way envisioned in the 1974 poem, "Farmer Whipple-Bachelor." The only memory Riley had was of his stolen love with Nellie as a married woman. This relationship might otherwise have been a sordid affair except that Riley knew that the "mother's heart" of Elizabeth understood his needs and situation and approved it.
He writes of this in his autobiographical poem's Act II when speaking to the dead spirit of Nellie, he says: "Amphine Then, Thou lovest! - O my homing dove, veer down And nestle in the warm home of my breast! So empty are mine arms, so full my heart The one must hold thee, or the other burst. Dwainie (Throwing herself in his embrace) AEo's own hand methinks hath flung me here; O hold me that He may not pluck me back!" Riley felt his mother must have understood how much he needed Nellie. Her "own hand" encourages the relationship.