OTHER WOMEN

     There was an earlier love interest of Riley than Nellie

Cooley that we should speak of.

     Adda Rowell was Riley's first romantic interest in his

teens. The year was 1868. Adda was 16 when her family moved

to Greenfield, arriving in town shortly after the Civil War.

John Rowell, the father, was a New Englander and he was

accompanied by his wife, a son, Edward, and the beautiful

daughter, Adda. Riley was nineteen and fresh from an

apprenticeship with John Keefer, the village sign painter.

According to the memoir of Minnie Belle (Alexander) Mitchell,

Riley had not before had an "affair of the heart" before

Adda. Mitchell remembers, "Little Adda Rowell slipped easily

into the social life of the village. She attended parties,

shared in charades and tableaux, attended plays in the old

Masonic Hall where the Riley youth displayed his unusual

histrionic talent and, as a crowning glory, she heard him

play the trap drum in the old Adelphian Band."

I repeat the account of this romance in the words of

Mitchell who witnessed the events.

"All through the gay glad summer, young Riley worshiped

at the shrine of winsome Adda, singing, rhyming and absorbing

from her the art of playing the guitar. They had long walks

down by Brandywine Creek, loitering in shady places and with

Adda's little sunbonnet handing by a string...

At that early period a culvert made of rough hewn stone

spanned a small brook which intruded through the heart of the

village. Its low graceful arch was topped on either side by

broad stone balustrades which provided sets for weary

travelers, as well as trysting place for lovers. It was,

indeed, a beautiful spot and a favorite resort of Bud's since

it was an integral part of the old road which his father had

glorified in his stories of early pioneer days. So the old

stone culvert easily lured Bud and the fair Adda still with a

smile in her eyes, to its broad sides where the moonlight

tunneled its way through borders of willow reeds and fell

benignly upon the lovers.

The guitar, of course, shared in the scene and the lovers

played and sang, she exchanging her eastern melodies for the

lad's "Lilly Dale," "Sweet Belle Mahone," "Laurena," "Sweet

Genevieve" and other songs of the day." Mitchell accounts

this romance one from May, when Adda arrived in Greenfield,

to Autumn. She recalls Riley re-naming Adda as the "Airy

Fairie Lillian" and being very desperately in love with her.

The romance ended in the fall when John Rowell took

his family from Greenfield to go to the Northwest. Riley and

Adda exchanged letters for a time. Riley's were sometimes in

rhyme.

Eventually Adda married and became Adda Barber living in

Oregon and their letters ceased. She was later widowed with

two daughters. Riley's last letter to Adda, written in 1906,

just ten years before his death, was addressed in care of her

brother, Edward, in Michigan. It contained two books, volumes

of "Rhymes of Childhood," so Riley must have found out his

Adda had two children, with the following inscription, "For

Mrs. Adda Rowell Barber, From her old Hoosier friend and

fellow townsman of the days of our youth at Greenfield,

Indiana, where Jess and Nell and Alice were living - now,

alas, long gone. James Whitcomb Riley."

Even though he returned often to Greenfield, and

apparently to Nellie Cooley, Riley did not feel constrained

from seeking the company of many young women in the places he

visited.

The recollections of James Whitcomb Riley by friends and

letters support the probability that Riley, like many other

unsettled young men of his time and ours, expressed his

sexuality "on the run."

From every town where Riley traveled in his early days

of his twenties and as he traveled from town to town painting

signs and composing poetry on the sly, there seems to be a

legend about an eligible young lady "left behind."

An example comes from when Riley lived in Peru, Indiana

earning his way as a sign painter. An acquaintance, A.

William Neff, recalled a casual love affair Riley had while

there. This was in the year 1872. Riley's partner named

"Smith" was also a resident. They set up their shop on the

second floor of a two story building over a livery stable

owned by John and Ben E. Wallace located on East Third Street

between Broadway (the main street of Peru) and Wabash Street.

The business prospered and they became known in the

community. Soon Riley became interested in a young woman

named Catherine Musselman, an Irish girl. The year before,

she had gone to live with the Neffs and lived there about

five years. Riley dated her and called at the Neff residence

on the corner of East Third and Wabash only half a block from

his workshop. Most of his evenings in Peru were spent in her

company and usually at the Neff home.

Another recollection of Neff's should be recorded. A.

William Neff remembered Riley spending rainy days painting

signs and pictures very skillfully. A few years young than

Riley, Neff remembered spending time watching him point and

he was also Riley's messenger boy to take messages to

Catherine. Eventually, Riley gave Neff several pictures as

he painted them which remain in Peru and have been exhibited

from time to time. One of the scenes was a farm scene with a

young couple in a hay field with arms intertwined, the girl

with a rake in her left hand the boy holding a hay fork,.. In

the background was a cabin and dense woods. The boy was

kissing the girl and a caption read, "Making Hay While the

Sun Shines." Another picture was the head of a beautiful

school girl in a low cut blouse, large white beaded necklace

and wide brimmed hat. The picture was painted on poplar

board and has "Riley and Smith" on the top for signature. It

is believed they are on display at the Miami County

Historical Museum.

While in Peru, it is remembered that Riley belonged to a

social club known as the Academy Club of Peru. The club was

composed of young men and had a dancing room and club room on

the third floors of adjoining buildings at Second street and

Broadway connected by a doorway. The club employed Riley to

paint and redecorate the rooms. Riley frescoed the club room.

Eventually, Riley simply up and left. Catherine had no

more explanation than anyone else. Eventually a letter came

to Catherine and in it was a poem, "The Little Town of

Tailholt," which Riley had just written and sent to her.

Catherine Musselman was saddened at his departure. She was

not the only one left behind. All the rest joined her in this

situation.

Another recollection of Riley from roughly the same

period - but a little later - has him at South Bend.

In South Bend, Riley worked for Major Blowney who was a

painting contractor and had a number of men in his

employment. As Henry Pershing remembers it, there were always

many girls hanging around in Blowney's shop talking to the

boys while they worked. Riley liked to talk if there was

anyone to listen while he painted signs in the shop. Riley

was considered a "jolly short of fellow and everybody liked

him; in fact, he was regarded by everyone as a hail fellow,

making friends easily." In particular an incident is recalled

in which Riley was sitting after his lunch holding a

newspaper in his hand, while the fellows were eating their

lunch, he read to them. On this occasion, Riley began to read

out loud so all could plainly hear him giving all the details

about a disastrous fire over in Mansfield, Ohio, where the

house of a "Henry Bronson" was burned to the ground and how

the owner was barely saved by the firemen from a terrible

death in the burning building. Riley read it with all the

details of how Mr. Bronson was carried out by the firemen,

when up jumped Jim Bronson, one of Riley's fellow workers who

had been sitting in the circle listening, exclaiming, "My

God, that's my father." Riley's reading had produced the

affect desired and that was what he wanted and they all had a

good laugh when Riley told them he was simply making it up as

he went along. Riley had the reputation of being quite a

joker. Jucklet was in Riley's heart.

Henry Miller, a friend working at Blowney's with Riley,

does not remember Riley paying much attention to the girls in

South Bend. When he called on the daughters of a Mrs. Harper,

a prominent family in South Bend society, Miller reports that

Mrs. Harper was not impressed enough with him to permit her

girls to see Riley.

He was apparently not, at least in South Bend, Indiana,

a steady lover.

It is possible that Riley's sexuality was expended on

casual sexual acquaintances both before and after the writing

of "The Flying Islands of the Night." The record from

"before" is far the greater.

A letter of McClanahan preserves the casual nature of

the casual morality practiced by at least that close friend.

The letter is addressed to Riley from McClanahan in

Ackley, Iowa, and is dated February 25, 1876. McClanahan is

with a woman he calls "Baby." She has been sick. "I'm blue

as hell to night." He says "Baby" is taking all his "sugar."

He mentions things were fine when Baby was working and paying

bills. Then in August, 1876, Mack is writing Riley from

Dearborn Street in Chicago, sans "Baby." Then in December he

is over with Doc. Townsend traveling with another medicine

show. He says he doesn't feel well. In fact he feels like

someone "after taking a few drops of Dock's balsam tonight

while I am smoking a `bald head.'" Such was the life of the

best friend of Riley's early 20's.

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 musicians 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, 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 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 band'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 Mem'ry squares her jaws and sort o'

says

She won't ner never will fergit, I want to jes' turn in

And take and light right out o' here and git back West ag'in

And stay there, when I git there, where I never haf' 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 O. Harris, George

Carr, War Barnett, A. Ford, Nellie's brothers Ed and Jesse,

George B. Cooley, O. 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

WILL GO TO THE BENEFIT OF

--THE GREENFIELD CORNET BAND --

General Manager, J. W. Riley

Stage Manger, Lee O. Harris

Leader of Orchestra, I.R. Davis.

There was a general musical introduction followed by

"The Great Moral and Domestic Drama of the Chimney Corner."

If James Whitcomb Riley developed stage presence and

dramatic and comical stage skills someplace, it came from

living and breathing on his hometown's stage.

Adolescence became the time when Riley learned enough

about characters to be able to play the parts he later

assumed. His character types were a wide number of persons

many from the world of literature and art. He spent more time

reading Dickens at Tom Snow's and read poetry such

as Keats, Herrick, Tennyson, Longfellow and Poe. Snow had

bought fragments of the old township library and Jim borrowed

Lives of Eminent Painters and Sculptors. He poured over the

work and life patterns of artists.

At 20, Riley was into theatrical plays, chewed tobacco,

loved the girls, and possessed neither skill nor job. He

played Solomon Probity, in November, 1869, of that year in

"Chimney Corner." In playing this part, Riley followed Jimmy

Rarden, an old man, around town for a week, watching him sit

and stand, walk and talk. He constructed the fireplace for

the set and had a good time. In that one year, from Dec. 26

through the holidays at the end of the year, this group put

on "Child of Waterloo," "The Rough Diamond," "More Blunders

Than One," "Charles the XII," "The Obstinate Family," "Box

and Cox," and "Grandfather Whitehead." James Whitcomb Riley

took a part in every one of these many plays and in many he

had the leading part.

Although Riley's adolescence was not notable for being

happy in his life, it was perhaps the most important epoch in

the respect that during this time Riley learned to live life

by acting out play characters. This came about through

Riley's experiences as an actor in plays and productions in

his hometown of Greenfield, Indiana. The Christmas season of

1869, his troupe presented seven plays. "Child of Waterloo"

written by Lee O Harris was the first one.

Riley sharpened his awareness of play acting by attending

plays wherever he happened to wander. We know he attended

plays at White's Hall while at Marion in 1872.

The entertainments in those days were mostly local

productions. Few traveling companies journeyed through the

Midwest. Townspeople put on the plays as the enterprising

among them conceived and did them. Riley was a major actor

in his adolescent years. He kept on acting when he left the

stage and continued on and on, doing the parts, throughout

his life. He memorializes his most important parts in his

great autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the

Night."

The early experiences of acting contributed materially

to Riley's later success. Booth Tarkington, says, "In Mr.

Riley's `platform career,' during those years when he went

about the country "reading," his poems he saw with his eyes,

and heard with his ears, what people thought of him.

"Never any other man stood night after night on stage or

platform to receive such solid roars of applause for the

`reading' of poems - and for himself.

"He did not read his poems; he did not recite them

either; he took his whole body into his hands; as if were,

and by his wizard mastery of suggestion left no James

Whitcomb Riley at all upon the stage. Instead, the audience

saw and heard whatever the incomparable comedian wished them

to see and hear. He held literally unmatched power over them

for riotous laughter or for actual copious tears and no one

who ever saw an exhibition that power will forget it - or

forget him." Remember Greenfield as it was then a village,

twenty miles away from Indianapolis, but still very isolated.

There were no libraries and no telephones and no autos for

quick transportation and so in Greenfield a group composed of

the school teachers and others joined in literary groups to

share experiences. Books and magazines were passed along

with may comments on their margins. The ones James Whitcomb

Riley passed added thumbnail sketches of the characters. A

former city resident, Mrs. Charles E. Cox, formerly Emma

Cooley, Nellie's daughter, remembered one on "Mrs.

Weatherbee's Quilting Part" a story by Alice Carey included

in the old "Clovernook Sketches."

Perhaps the medium most attuned to Riley as Amphine was

raw art of which his sign painting was a commercial

variant. It is said he loved to draw from childhood. When he

was 5, he drew valentines and is said to have written verses

on them for his friends for which his mother praised him

greatly. Little of this survives.

In an "approved" sketch of his life, Riley gave his

nephew, Edmund Eitel, information for the following account.

"Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, young Riley

turned his back on the little schoolhouse and for a time

wandered through the different fields of art, indulging a

slender talent for painting until he thought he was destined

for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various

musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until

finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a

few weeks," he says, "I had beat myself into the more

enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel

with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring thousands

over the back seat of a Gold Chariot. In a dearth of comic

songs for the banjo and guitar, I had written two or three

myself, and the idea took possession of me that I might be a

clown, introduced as a character-song-man and the composer of

my own ballads.

My father was thinking of something else, however, and

one day I found myself with a `five-ought' paint brush under

the eaves of an old frame house that drank paint by the

bucketful, learning to be a pointer. Finally, I graduated as

a house, sign and ornamental painter, and for two summers

traveled about with a small company of young fellows calling

ourselves `the Graphics,' who covered all the barns and

fences in the state with advertisements."

Another possibility he explored was working as a printer

and working in the village print-shop and a later ambition

was acting, encouraged by the good times he had in the

theatricals of the "Adelphian Society of Greenfield.""In my

dreamy way," he afterward said, "I did a little of a number

of things fairly well - sand, played the guitar and violin,

acted, painted signs and wrote poetry. My father did not

encourage my verse-making for he thought it too visionary,

and being a visionary himself, he believed he understood the

dangers of following the promptings of the poetic

temperament. I doubted if anything would come of the verse-

writing myself."

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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:

"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.)

...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

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."

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 developed 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 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 Crestillomeem 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 sire1

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 maudlin3 wanderings of blinded breath.

1. 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" substitutes 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.

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 O.

Harris, Mary H. Krout, Sarah T. Bolton, Louise V. Boyd, Emily

T. Charles, Frank Mayfield, Asa Burrows, M.E. Harmon, H.W.

Taylor, Mrs. O.B. Hewitt, Luther G. Riggs, W. J. Lampton, Dan

L. Paine, H.S. Taylor, B.S. Parker, D,M. Jordan, Clara Louise

Bottsford, John W. Tindall, John N. Taylor, Horace P. Biddre,

Frank Winter, Celeste M.A. Winslow, Lilla N. Custhman,

L.E.F.R. with prose by Mary Dean, Margret Holmes, Mary A.

Cornelius, Mrs. T.C. Vickrey, J.P. Charles, W.C. Cooper, Dr.

P. Baldwin, Mary F. Tucker, R.H.J., Mary H. Catherwood, Amy

E. Dunn, "Christie," N.L. NBraffett. Kittie Knox, Willard G.

Nash, Smith Griffith, and "G.P." Riley had many, many friends

who wrote pieces for him to publish.

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 to distribute widely

to friends. Riley often did that for authors he liked. 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 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 I

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 pelase ever7body

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 thoguht, 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

combination!..As to your doctor's doleful prognostications, I

know the profession too well to believe a word of it. All you

want is some decided change and sensible care of

yourself...Anyway in the world, and I am now, comparatively

wealthy, that I can serve you, my Mother's dearest child,

don't you know how it would please me who have done so little

good and in so poor a way?

When I neglect you, writing - it's because only I've

neglected everybody else and everything else in this final

struggle to get some good green dollars sucked into the bank

- enough at least that I can lie down and die without folk's

tearin' out the tail-gate of my bed for a headstone. And now

at last I'm accumulating money, nothing would better please

me than for you to enjoy any share of it you choose. Have

been thinking very seriously of buying the old original home

at Greenfield, if I can get it. How would you like that - to

go back there and live? Or any other place in your fancy I

could supply or help to ....

`So I want you to feel utterly secure in the love of a

brother now so better able than ever before to prove myself

so, without stint of material wealth, as wealth of affection.

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.

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Perhaps we should detail James McClanahan's life who we

have mentioned incidentally earlier. Let us see what happened

to him. He was Riley's sign painting "partner" from Riley's

early twenties.

Jim McClanahan was born May 5, 1855 in Indiana. His

father was T.J. McClanahan, a Marylander, as was his mother

Harriet Settor. James McClanahan appears to have considered

Anderson his domicile all his tragic life. He however leaves

few traces. He shows up in the Emerson's City Directory of

Anderson of 1876-7 listed as a "traveling agent" with a room

at the corner of Bolivar and Jackson. Not until the 1891-2

city directory does he re-appear, this time as James

"McClenehen" residing in a house at 84 W, 9th Street. No

intervening or later city directory lists him at all. His

obituary is on page one of the newspaper not because

he was notable but because he was connected with the life of

James Whitcomb Riley, then world-famous.

A wife, May McClanahan, was indicated on his death

certificate at the Madison County (Indiana) Health

Department. She is listed as deceased. The obituary had

said she was dead thirty years. Unfortunately no record of

her exists anywhere. Wherever she slipped away, it made

insufficient splash to be recorded.

According to his obituary in the Anderson HERALD of

Sunday morning, July 27, 1913, James McClanahan was found

dying in the Anderson City Park and expired at Anderson's St.

John's hospital the evening of July 26th, just before

midnight. He died at 58 leaving only two half sisters. It

does not seem too hard to speculate that a similar end to

James Whitcomb Riley might have occurred.

The newspaper article relates, "In a dying condition Mr.

McClanahan was found lying in a shed in the City Park,

formerly the fair ground, yesterday afternoon by workmen who

were tearing down the sheds. Police were notified and the

patrol wagon and Patrolman Beeman took Mr. McClanahan to the

county jail. There it was discovered that the man was very

ill and he was transferred to St. John's hospital."

Apparently Jim McClanahan, Riley's comrade beginning

thirty years before, had been passed out there in a

ramshackle building, and probably been trying to live there,

sick for at least since the prior Wednesday. One suspects

alcoholism had drained his will to live. The building had

formerly been the animal show barn of the Madison County Fair

where livestock were exhibited until the place had been

turned into a city park. Jim McClanahan had had no food and

been exposed to the weather there and when found and arrested

could hardly speak and soon lapsed into unconsciousness

before dying.

The medical records of that admission show that a doctor

first saw him on the Saturday of his death, July 26 at 3:10

P.M. He was brought to the hospital from the jail in an

ambulatory condition where he had been taken after a vagrancy

arrest. At first there was no room for him at the hospital,

but he was taken to Ward 2 of the hospital eventually. The

only thing noted about him is that he was 58 and died the

next day at 2 A.M. apparently without any treatment by the

hospital staff. The hospital records do not reflect he was an

alcoholic. The doctor's note says, "Ailment. Supposed to be

overcome by heat and hunger." The man's death certificate at

the Madison County Health Department gives the cause of death

as "Exhaustion following acute alcoholism." /s/ Dr. Elmer S.

Albright. Death Record CH9, page 23. Undertaker Earl Sells

then took over.

McClanahan had apparently been married to someone whose

name escaped mention in his obituary - although it shows up

in the death certificate as "May" - probably because she had

died thirty years before, around the time he and James

Whitcomb Riley had become friends, and he had never re-

married. His rambling, nomadic life had included the times

with "Baby" and no doubt others.

We can trace Jim McClanahan and James Whitcomb Riley

through the years with Doc McCrillus and the year after the

McCrillus summer together. They both were members of a group

called the Graphics who painted signs along with Will Ethell,

who would move to Washington, D.C. This sign painting

consortium would give Riley cause to travel all over the

State of Indiana mainly painting barns and fences in the

countryside and buildings in many cities and towns.

The path of McClanahan diverged after these ventures

with Riley and Ethell and the Graphics characters whose lives

we will soon explore. James Whitcomb Riley went into writing.

Will Ethell went into business. McClanahan had no such

enterprising design and took whatever odd jobs he could find.

He must have been very dispirited. He mainly worked about

hotels, barber shops or livery barns cleaning up.

Throughout the years, Riley contributed to Jim's income

although McClanahan always maintained that he had never asked

his soon-to-become wealthy friend for even a cent of charity.

The parting of the intimate friends is described from

just the prior month before McClanahan's miserable death.

Anderson had held a week-long "Made in Anderson" Week

honoring James Whitcomb Riley. The city could rightfully

claim that Riley was their product. He had really begun his

serious writing at that place. During one of the

entertainments of the week, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. T.N.

Stilwell, Riley insisted that he must see James McClanahan,

his friend from the Doc McCrillus medicine show days and the

Graphics capers. Half an hour later, it is said the Jim

McClanahan was brought to Riley from a hotel office where he

was working.

What a strange meeting this must have been. Riley was by

this time nationally prominent many times over, wealthier

than any other writer in America, obviously fawned over and

highly reputed. McClanahan would have been almost the

antithesis. One can imagine the man, alcoholic and unshaven,

someone who doesn't raise his eyes from the ground very

often. Death was probably in those eyes even then.

The two drew apart from the crowd of Riley well-wishers

and spent the next minutes together again as they had been

thirty years before. They said their good-byes. As Jim left

Jim, it was recalled that McClanahan had given a wave.

That was the last time they would ever see each other.

(I should note that the last name of Riley's intimate friend

is spelled in many ways in many accounts often within the

same reference. I have stuck to the spelling "McClanahan"

although I find it spelled McClannahan or M'Clanahan or

M'Clannahan. Apparently he was considered so nondescript that

he was not even worth having a consistently spelled last

name.)

Riley chose not to attend the funeral of this traveling

companion of his youth who he had helped support over the

years. There is absolutely no clue on which to speculate why.

What can we really know about the man, Jim McClanahan, or

whatever his name really was? We know that he was Riley's

traveling companion with Doc McCrillus during his first

summer away from home. We also know in the next years he and

Riley formed a partnership to paint signs and barns and that

both later became members of "The Graphics" about which more

will come later. All of this is unfortunately very little.

The shadowy and illusive Jim McClanahan seems to have

existed in history only as a friend and traveling companion

to James Whitcomb Riley and then fallen back into the

obscurity of a man who took odd jobs cleaning horse stables,

being a handyman, sweeping up barber shops, painting from

time to time, or performing maintenance at Anderson hotels.

He apparently lived where he could, if he could afford it,

and in his last years, anywhere with even scanty shelter such

as the abandoned animal barn at the Madison City Park where

he was found after a bout with intoxication which cost him

his life.

This man may not have lived much of a life and certainly

his life is not celebrated in many ways. But it certainly is

in the poetry of James Whitcomb Riley.

THE RAGGEDY MAN (1890)

O The Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa;

An' he's the goodest man ever you saw!

He comes to our house every day,

An' waters the horses1, an' feeds 'em hay;

An' he opens the shed - an' we all ist laugh

When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf2;

An' nen - ef our hired girl says he can -

He milks the cow3 fer 'Lizabuth Ann. -

Ain't he a' awful good Raggedy Man?

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

W'y, the Raggedy Man -he's ist so good,

He splits the kindlin'4 an' chops the wood;

An' nen he spades in our garden5, too,

An' does most things 'at boys can't do. -

He clumbed clean up in our big tree

An' shooked a' apple6 down fer me -

An' 'nother 'n' too, fer 'Lizabuth Ann -

An' 'nuther 'n' too, fer The Raggedy Man. -

Ain't he a' awful kind Raggedy Man?

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

An' The Raggedy Man one time say he,

Pick' roast' rambos7 from a' orchurd-tree,

An' et 'em - all ist roast' an hot! -

An' it's so, too! - 'cause a corn-crib got

Afire one time an' all burn' down

On "The Smoot Farm," 'bout four mile from town -

On "The Smoot Farm"! Yes - an' the hired han'

'At worked there nen 'uz The Raggedy Man! -

Ain't he the beatin'est Raggedy Man?

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

The Raggedy Man's so good an' kind

He'll be our "horsey," an "haw" an' mind

Ever'thing 'at you make him do -

An' won't run off - 'less you want him to!

I drived him wunst way down our lane

An' he got skeered, when it 'menced to rain,

An' ist rared up an' squealed and run

Purt' nigh away! - an' it's all in fun!

Nene he skeered ag'in at a' old tin can...

Whoa! y' old runaway Raggedy Man!

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

An' The Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes,

An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes:

Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves,

An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers the'rselves:

An', rite by the pump in our pasture-lot8,

He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got,

'At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' can

Turn into me, er 'Lizabeth Ann!

Er Ma, er Pa, er The Raggedy Man!

Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man?

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

An' wunst, when The Raggedy Man come late,

An' pigs9 ist root' thru the garden-gate,

He 'tend like the pigs 'uz bears an' said,

"Old Bear-shooter'll shoot 'em dead!"

An' race' an' chase' 'em, an' they'd ist run

When he pint his hoe at 'em like it's a gun

An' go "Bang!-Bang!" nen 'tend he stan'

An' load up his gun ag'in! Raggedy Man!

He's an old Bear-Shooter Raggedy Man!

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

An' sometimes The Raggedy Man lets on

We're little prince-children, an' old King's gone

To git more money, an' lef' us there -

And Robbers is ist10 thick ever'where:

An' nen - ef we all won't cry, fer shore -

The Raggedy Man he'll come and "splore

The Castul-Halls," an' steal the "gold" -

An' steal us, too, an' grab an' hold

An' pack us off to his old "Cave"! - An'

Haymow's the "cave" o' The Raggedy Man! -

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

The Raggedy Man - one time, when he

Wuz makin' a little bow-'n'-orry11 fer me,

Says "When you're big like your Pa is,

Air you go' to keep a fine store like his -

An' be a rich merchunt - an' wear fine clothes? -

Er what air you go' to be, goodness knows?"

An' nen he laughed at 'Lizabuth Ann,

An' I says "'M go' to be a nice Raggedy Man!"

I'm ist go' to be a nice Raggedy Man!

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

1. Every home needed a well for water obtained by hand

pump, sole source of water for drinking, cooking and washing.

Grooming horses was a daily task. Draft horses were the

tractors and vehicle motors of the nineteenth-century.

2. A bull calf raised as a steer was sometimes kept or "fed

out" by a family to provide meat for the family.

3. Every morning and evening, a family's cow had to be milked

in the late Nineteenth Century. Each family commonly kept a

cow, even those in the towns, in a barn or shed behind the

home. The ordinary breed was a Shorthorn, a dual purpose

breed good for both milk and beef.

4. Most homes kept "kitchen" gardens in the mid-Nineteenth

Century. With the exception of sugar, coffee and tea, most

food that a family ate was raised at home.

5. Apples were a fruit staple. They were eaten fresh, kept in

cellars (precursors of basements), sometimes canned, or dried

for use in pies.

6. Kindling are finer strands of wood or material to

initially take flame to start a fire. Keeping a good supply

of firewood was a year-round task and a woodlot was in most

Hoosier backyards.

7. rambo refers to a large cooking apple and apple variety

that has a coat streaked with red.

8. From early Spring, domestic animals no longer had to be

fed hay and grain but could be sustained on grass in pasture-

lots.

9. Pigs were tended by men and boys in the Hoosier gender

scheme of division of chores. Black and white Poland China

pigs were the most popular Hoosier breed in the Nineteenth

Century, a breed originated in southwest Ohio during the mid-

Nineteenth Century.

10. just

11. pioneer children played "settler and Indian" with the

bow and arrow being the Indian weapon of choice.

As all of Riley's poems are, "The Raggedy Man" is a

composite of many characters that Riley had known. I think

one of them was Jim McClanahan. Another was a man who had

worked for Walter Smoot, a farmer near Greenfield, whose name

is lost. The "Raggedy Man" is the archetypical good-hearted

handyman and helper of every child or vulnerable person one

seems to find in Riley's poetry. He is warm, hale, friendly,

even if he is also worthless by worldly criterion of wealth

or family reputation people. He is a Riley invention who

entertains us with lack of sophistication on the way the

world has passed him by or driven him down, lacking ambition

to overcome the temptations of the world, such as alcoholism.

But down deep we know such people are us, could have been us,

or might be us.

Bumbling, good-for-nothing, Jim McClanahan is worth

a shout of joy about life, not because he is someone who we

are better than, but because we know in the scheme of things

to the vulnerable ones of this world does God show equal

favor as to any other.

Let us turn our attention to Luther Benson.

Riley came to laugh at himself for ever having anything

to do with the odd temperance speaker, Luther Benson. That

was a great failing on the part of Riley. Luther Benson

gave Riley to be able to deal with Crestillomeem after the

death of Nellie Cooley as Riley clearly was unable to do

before. In fact, Riley came to actively mock this American

temperance figure. One of his platform sketches became

"Benson Out-Bensoned." In this sketch, Riley made himself

into a sadly laughable caricature of a "floudering drunken do

gooder." The sketch was not well-received at the time and

there is no record of its content which survives.

Who was Luther Benson? His life spanned the years 1847-

1898, and he was a temperance movement figure. THE

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY OF INDIANA, 1899, gives this record

of the man's life:

"Any biography of this man is necessarily a record of one of

the greatest triumphs ever achieved by mortal in his

life-and-death struggle with abnormal appetite. This

appetite was undoubtedly inherited from his maternal

grandfather and was fostered and strengthened by the customs

of the day, spirituous liquors being kept and freely used by

every family. Luther Benson was one of a family of nine

children, seven of whom were boys. His father, John Harley

Benson, was born Mar. 2, 1802... In 1835 he left Kentucky

with his family and located in Rush County, Ind... Here his

son Luther, destined to become so singularly distinguished,

was born Sept. 9, 1847, and grew to manhood assisting with

the work of his father's farm. He obtained the rudiments of

an education in two little log school-houses- one standing by

a stream called Hood's Creek, the other on the site of the

present Ammon's mill. When sixteen years of age he began

attending school at the little village of Fairview...His

education was completed at Moore's Hill College near

Cincinnati, after which he began the study of law; but the

time had come when the onward current of his expanding young

life was to receive a fearful check and its sweet and

wholesome waters be turned to bitterness. His passion for

drink had come upon him; and although he afterward entered

college, his attendance was of short duration. Henceforth his

best efforts must be expended in fighting the fiend that

threatened his destruction. Of his moral sense and moral

stamina his later years of triumph gave abundant proof; but

that triumph came only after a long season of misery and

humiliation to himself, his family and friends.

On Jan. 21, 1877, he experienced a profound revulsion to

his manner of life and determined to raise above his

weakness. This seeming conversion occurred at Jeffersonville,

Ind., and was the forerunner of his permanent conquest of a

few months later at Fowler, although a period of relapse to

his pitiful thralldom intervened. During the ten years prior

to this time he had been engaged in the practice of law, a

vocation to which in some ways he was admirably adapted,

having, when not under the influence of liquor, a logical

intelligence and eloquent flow of language. he had begun his

legal studies in the office of Hon. John S. Reid, at

Connersville, and had subsequently opened one on his own

account at Rushville, where he practiced with good success

until, himself released from the tyranny of strong drink, he

felt impelled to devote his remaining days to the rescuing of

like victims. Imbued with the moral courage of a lofty

purpose, the chosen scene of his first lecture was Raleigh,

whose inhabitants had been eye-witness to his most reckless

dissipations. After this he proceeded from one to another of

the principals towns of Indiana until, within three years, he

had delivered nearly five hundred lectures in his home State.

Subsequently he made a tour in the East...his efforts meeting

everywhere with much appreciation and enthusiasm...

In 1883 or 1884 Mr. Benson received the Democratic

nomination for Congress from the Sixth District, but in a

manly letter declined the nomination, not wishing actively to

enter into political life...In 1884 Mr. Benson was married to

Anna C. Slade. His domestic life was made beautiful by a

wealth of affection, and his death which occurred June 21,

1898, was deeply and widely deplored...

Not only with oral eloquence did Mr. Benson labor for

the cause of temperance; he toiled with pen as well. FIFTEEN

YEARS IN HELL is the significant title of a book of which he

is the author and which has had a phenomenal sale throughout

the country; and Mrs. Benson holds for publication the

manuscript of her husband's autobiography, completed shortly

before his death..."

One of those who read this autobiography was James

Whitcomb Riley. The life of Luther Benson must have seemed so

similar to his own at the time.

James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Luther Benson," was written

in 1878 at approximately the same time as the composition of

"Flying Islands" which it parallels in many respects.

"The Flying Islands of the Night" is Riley's autobiography

just as the one Riley was reading of Luther Benson's.

LUTHER BENSON (1878)

(After reading his Autobiography)

Poor victim of that vulture curse1

That hovers o'er the universe,

With ready talons quick to strike

In every human heart alike,

And cruel beak to stab and tear

In virtue's vitals everywhere, -

You need no sympathy of mine

To aid you, for a strength divine

Encircles you, and lifts you clear

Above this earthly atmosphere.

And yet I can but call you poor,

As, looking through the open door

Of your sad life, I only see

A broad landscape of misery,

And catch through mists of pitying tears

The ruins of your younger years,

I see a father's shielding arm

Thrown round you in a wild alarm -

Struck down, and powerless to free

Or aid you in your agony.

I see a happy home grow dark

And desolate - the latest spark

Of hope is passing in eclipse -

The prayer upon a mother's lips

Has fallen with her latest breath

In ashes on the lips of death -

I see a penitent who reels,

And writes, and clasps his hands, and kneels,

And moans for mercy for the sake

Of that fond heart he dared to break.

And lo! as when in Galilee

A voice above the troubled sea

Commanded "Peace; be still!" the flood

That rolled in tempest-waves of blood

Within you, fell in calm so sweet

It ripples round the Savior's feet;

And all your noble nature thrilled

With brightest hope and faith, and filled

Your thirsty soul with joy and peace

And praise to Him who gave release.

1. Alcoholism, which curse struck Riley too.

2. This poem could almost be an outline of "The Flying

Islands of the Night."

Luther Benson wrote Riley a letter of encouragement upon

hearing of Riley's alcoholism. Riley went to meet him. Benson

was Riley's age and like Riley, a bachelor. In November,

1877, Riley toured Northern Indiana for a short time with

Luther Benson and then returned to Greenfield with a copy of

Benson's autobiography which he studied and pondered.

As his biographer, I would have to say that Riley

was greatly informed about the alcoholics confessional

genre of writing from his experience with Luther Benson.

The friendship with Benson continued. Before his winter tour

of 1884 commenced, Riley had to borrow money because he was

no longer employed by the Journal. He went to Luther Benson

to borrow $80. He gave him a note which Riley never repaid.

In Jan. 1888, Riley went to Luther Benson's home to give

readings for his guests. Benson wrote out that the $80 he

loaned him before was repaid. Riley did say he would repay

him "when he got ahead." After Riley's success, Benson sued

Riley for the $80 in 1992 except Riley had kept the paper

showing the debt repaid and produced it in court. Benson

lost.

How closely Riley could feel about a friend is revealed

in a letter to Charles Philips.

The Morgue, midnight, August 15, 1879

Dear Charles,

I wrote you last evening, requesting especially, that

you should answer me to-night, and looked certainly for a

reply - for you have never failed me. But there was none. I

can not tell you the depth of my disappointment and anxiety-

for all evening I have gone about with a strange feeling of

heaviness, and last it has grown intolerable and I have just

risen from my sleepless bed to write you this. In my letter

of last evening I fear I unintentionally wounded you, and

that you are "striking back" with silence. I wrote

hurriedly, I know, but it was with the very warmest feeling

of brotherly regard. What I said, I distinctly said for the

effect of force more than elegance, but it was not meant to

hurt -neither was it as I thought an undue license in one as

warmly interested in you as your own true character compels

me to be. When I like any one, perhaps it is my fault to

enter too deeply into their personal affairs, or, in other

words - am inclined to meddle with matters that do not

concern me. If I have done this with you, I earnestly ask you

to regard it as an insane burst of affection, for at worst it

is that. I don't think you understand my real nature. I have

thought different at times, but as I write, I fear with a

regret there is no name for, that like the grand majority,

you misjudge me. I do not blame you if you do, only it

hurts, my dear friend, just to wade on through existence as I

do with no one soul of all the world's wide millions that

well see me as I am. I try very hard to laugh down this idea

of mine that I am being eternally misinterpreted, but every

fresh experience only seems more firmly to fix and rivet the

truth of it within me. When I tell my friend I love him, I

love him. There is no play in the grooves of my affection.

And when a friend slides in my heart he fits there and the

bony hand of Death can not jostle him. Maybe I do you wrong

to doubt the strength of your regard, but I want such giant

strengths of friendship that sometimes I think my own will

never be matched here - that it is more than I could ask or

expect. In any instance I am what I am. God made me so, and

if I do not pass for my full value here, Heaven will be

brighter comprehending it.

Tomorrow I go down to Indianapolis. I may not hope to

see you then as I desired; but wherever you are through life

and death fell always that my love is with you.

J. W. Riley

Such a letter betrays such deep emotion the mood is

nearly romantic. Who would Riley write such a letter to?

Who is this man Charles Howard Philips? He was a young man

like Riley who Riley had met during his Graphics wandering

days. His biography was published along with his death

notice in the Kokomo TRIBUNE when Charles Philips died at the

young age of 25. It read: "Charles Howard Philips, Born June

6th, 1856 Died November 5th, 1881, Age 25 years, 4 months, 29

days. His death resulted from consumption, after a severe

attack of typhoid fever. For over a year he had been an

invalid, traveling North and South, hoping for a healthful

climate. His death was quiet and painless. Philips was an

accomplished journalist. Three years before his death, he

married Kate Kennedy October 17, 1878 who died in Florida in

the Spring 1880. The mother lingered and eventually died

from complications of the birth. The child, a daughter,

Kate, died during the summer of 1881, just weeks before

Charles Philips' death. He had received a common school

education until the age of 13 when he began doing editorial

work and typesetting on his father's newspaper. He became a

partner in the Kokomo TRIBUNE his family's newspaper when the

father died in July 1878."

One wonders if the above letter is simply "fawning"

to gain a position on the Kokomo TRIBUNE. We do know Riley as

a man desperate for fame. We also know that Philips was

Editor of the Kokomo TRIBUNE who eventually placed Riley in

charge of his Kokomo TRIBUNE column, "Home Department."

At Philips' untimely death, Riley published a poem in

memoriam:

CHARLES H. PHILIPS (1881)

Obit November 5th, 1881

O Friend! There is no way

To bid farewell to thee!

The words that we would say

Above thy grave to-day

Still falter and delay

And fail us utterly.

When walking with us here,

The hand we loved to press

Was gentle, and sincere

As thy frank eyes were clear

Through every smile and tear

Of pleasure and distress.

In years, young; yet in thought

Mature; thy spirit, free,

And fired with fervor caught

Of thy proud sire, who fought

His way to fame, and taught

Its toilsome way to thee.

So even thou hast gained

The victory God-given -

Yea, as our cheeks are stained

With tears, and our souls pained

And mute, thou hast attained

Thy high reward in Heaven!

Riley's poem was in the genre of "In Memoriam" poems of the

time. Another example of the type is one by Frank Winter in

the Kokomo TRIBUNE of November 12, 1881 titled "In Memoriam.

Charles Howard Philips."

November's chilling winds had come.

The falling leaves on hill and dale:

Gave Nature a sad look at home

And told our hearts a deathly tale.

A noble man, tho' young in years,

Had sought the guilded halls of Fame;

Thro' joys and sorrows, hopes and fears,

Had won himself an honored name.

(three further stanzas.)

Riley's great feeling toward friends is reflected in the

feeling of blessedness as we find in a roughly

contemporaneous poem "To H.S.T." with the subheading, "The

Morgue, Midnight, July 3, 1879." This poem was published in

the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD in Riley's "Poetical

Gymnastics" column of July 12, 1879.

TO H.S.T.

Friend of a wayward hour, you came

Like some good ghost, and went the same;

And I within the haunted place

Sit smiling on your vanished face,

And talking with - your name.

But thrice the pressure of your hand -

First hail - congratulations - and

Your last "God bless you!" as the train

That brought you snatched you back again

Into the unknown land.

"God bless me?" Why, your very prayer

Was answered ere you asked it there,

I know - for when you came to lend

Me your kind hand, and call me friend,

God blessed me unaware.

Here is a poem of a friendly visit to Riley that

provides us a picture of Riley friends and friendliness.

This friend who we know was H.S. Taylor, an author, came from

Illinois to Greenfield, where the "Morgue" was located, shook

Riley's hand three times, first to greet him, then to

congratulate him, and then with a farewell blessing. The

handshakes give us to know the substance of the visit. We do

not need to hear the conversation.

The importance to a biography of Riley from this poem

derives from its climaxing thought. With friends behind him,

Riley was confident God was blessing his poetic activity.

Riley did not even need to know others were thinking kindly

of him. His work was a product of hopes for his success by

others. He felt the power of friendship as an energy. We do

not speak of the direction of the "push." Riley simply

knew his audience of well-wishers appreciated him. The thrill

of this recognition presaged his resolution of what to do

with himself. His immersion into kenotic poetry followed.

Perhaps the spotlight of fame nudged him into a humbling

response. Support of friends encouraged him to take his

poetry out from narrative and romantic themes and into a

realm of desperate illusion as we found in "Flying Islands"

where Riley gained the self-vision of his personal

fragmentation that permitted self-conversation and dialogue.

Riley and Eugene V. Debs were very friendly in the days

when Riley was employed at the "Indianapolis Journal" and

Debs was Terre Haute's elected city clerk, state legislator

and union organizer. In 1880 Debs arranged three Riley

appearances in Terre Haute sponsored by the Occidental

Literary club. Often Debs would close an issue of his

union's (then called a "Brotherhood") magazine, BLF MAGAZINE

with a Riley poem, including one called "Terry Hut," in which

Riley describes Debs as a man "as warm a heart that ever beat

Betwixt here and the Mercy Seat." This was many years before

Debs was incarcerated during the Pullman

labor strike, ran for President on socialist tickets or

became a cause celebre by being incarcerated for ten years

upon conviction under the American "Espionage Act" in 1918

for speaking in Canton, Ohio about the relationship between

capitalism and the First World War, the uneven burden of the

war on workers, and the injustice of the government's loyalty

program.

Riley knew Debs as an active Terre Haute citizen rather

than a labor unionist, a radical and a militant fighter

against the social order of his time. He was a kindly soul,

had a heart of gold, and he appeared to Riley mysteriously.

Riley never thought of him as a politician although Debs was

a Socialist candidate for President of the United States

several times, but he did admire the character and loved

the man. Riley's poem "Regardin' Terry Hut," is about Debs.

In fact it is "Debs." Riley exercises his kenotic discernment

to describe how Debs can live in Terre Haute, Indiana feeling

the way he does about an American society which does not

credit its conscience with concern for the worker, the poor

and the socialist agenda for the vulnerable. He says no town

"beats old Terry Hut!"

"It's more'n likely you'll insist

I claim this 'cause I'm predjudist,

Bein' born'd here in old Vygo

In sight o'Terry Hut; but no,

Yer clean dead wrong! - and I maintain

They's nary drap in ary vein

O'mine but what's as free as air

To jes' take issue with you there! -

`Cause, boy and man, fer forty year,

I've argied ag'inst livin' here..."

Much has been said of Riley's friendship with Debs but

not a great deal of effort, excepting mutual admiration, were

expended on maintaining the early warm friendship in latter

years when the two took divergent paths. Riley supported his

friend when he was incarcerated as a result of the Pullman

strike and no doubt would have stood by him during his

incarceration from a conviction in the "red scare" period

following Riley's death. I am not aware of a single instance

in which Riley violated a bond of friendship formed during

his own early vulnerable life. The press of fame caused him

not to be able to cultivate many potential friendships or

preserve earlier ones. Turning his back on a friend was not

in Riley's nature.

Riley's friendship with Dr. Wycliffe Smith went back

many years. It began when Riley delivered a lecture at

Delphi. After the lecture, Riley walked the streets alone

until he saw a stranger ahead and asked him for a match. It

was Dr. Wycliffe Smith. "Come up to my office, but up the

stairs," the doctor said. Turning into a dark stairway, he

did so. Riley followed and the two men, Riley and "Doc"

Smith, were soon getting acquainted. The poet sat in the

doctor's office where the two talked over many worldly things

and found each other's acquaintance worth cultivating. Many

considered Dr. Smith to be gruff and plain-spoken, but he was

every inch a man, and friend of the downtrodden and poor.

Dr. Smith suggested Riley "rest awhile" in Delphi and they

would take trips into the country. The two, poet and

physician, began a long friendship whereby the two rambled

through Carroll county, usually on horseback. They became a

familiar sight, both riding along in Prince Albert coats and

plug hats. Dr. Smith rode his stallion, "Dexter," and Riley

rode his mare, "Hanky Panky." Many of the poems of the Riley

poetry volume called "Green Fields and Running Brooks" depict

Carroll County and arose from Riley's jaunts with Dr. Smith.

One of Dr. Smith's memorable deeds was his effort to

save a Delphi family from death by smallpox. He fought the

battle alone, but was unable to do more than save one child,

Joe Sneathon, whom he practically adopted. The boy became

known as "Smallpox" Sneathen. A famous picture of the boy

with Riley and Dr. Smith was taken by the two on a lark.

While riding with Dr. Smith, the poet met a Deutschman

named Herr Weiser and wrote a poem commemorating him on

August 18, 1884. The two were often visiting the fascinating

man, an old gunsmith, on his thickly wooded farm.

HERR WEISER (1884)

Herr Weiser! - Threescore years and ten, -

A hale white rose of his countrymen,

Transplanted here in the Hoosier loam,

And blossomy as his German home -

As blossomy and as pure and sweet

As the cool green glen of his calm retreat,

Far withdrawn from the noisy town

Where trade goes clamoring up and down,

Whose fret and fever, and stress and strife,

May not trouble his tranquil life!

Breath of rest, what a balmy gust! -

Quit of the city's heat and dust,

Jostling down by the winding road,

Through the orchard ways of his quaint abode. -

Tether the horse, as we onward fare

Under the pear trees trailing there,

And thumping the wooden bridge at night

With lumps of ripeness and lush delight,

Till the stream, as it maunders on till dawn,

Is powdered and pelted and smiled upon.

Herr Weiser, with his wholesome face,

And the gentle blue of his eyes, and grace

of unassuming honesty,

Be there to welcome you and me!

And what though the toil of the farm be stopped

And the tireless plans of the place be dropped,

While the prayerful master's knees are set

In beds of pansy and mignonette

And lily and aster and columbine,

Offered in love, as yours and mine? -

What, but a blessing of kindly thought,

Sweet as the breath of forget-me-not! -

What, but a spirit of lustrous love

White as the aster he bends above! -

What, but an odorous memory

Of the dear old man, made known to me

In days demanding a help like his, -

As sweet as the life of the lily is -

As sweet as the soul of a babe, bloom-wise

Born of a lily in Paradise.

At Delphi, Riley often was seen at the home of Mrs.

Elizabeth Fisher Murphy. She was a grand person who adopted

three daughters and lived to be 92. She and Riley were said

to be lovers.

Dr. Smith one time persuaded Riley and Bill Nye to come

to the small town of Delphi. Riley cancelled other

engagements to accommodate the request of his friend. When

they arrived in town, they were surprised to find Doc Smith

had plastered the town with huge yellow posters saying his

friend was going to be at the opera house that night. The

evening was one of the more memorable ones in Delphi history.

Riley introduced Nye as follows: "This entertainment, is

composed of a poet and a lyre. I am the poet." With a nod at

Nye, the entertainment began.

Riley came to adopt Delphi as a second home. When Walter

Whistler, a Carroll county youth who was with the Greeley

expedition to the North Pole, died and was returned to Delphi

for burial, Riley went "home" to Delphi for the funeral. In

the meantime, Dr. Smith was hired by the family to perform

an autopsy. Without food, the polar exploration party

reportedly agreed to cannibalism to survive on the basis of

the drawing of lots. When a name was drawn, the party would

use that person's body for food. The grandparents had heard

this rumor and wondered if their grandson's name had been

drawn. Dr. Smith performed the autopsy and upon opening the

metallic casket found unmistakable evidence that the boy had

in fact been the victim of cannibalism.

The friendship of Dr. Smith and Riley lasted until the

doctor got killed at a roadway intersection with the Wabash

railroad, west of Delphi. A train struck his buggy which he

was sharing with a little Filipino boy, Francisco Sousa, who

Dr. Smith brought home with him from the Spanish-American

war. Riley was so touched by the death of his physician

friend that he wrote a tribute to him, "The Noblest Service."

In the poem, Riley lauded him saying, "universal good he

dreamed and wrought..."

Two of Riley's friends in Lafayette were Evaleen Stein,

a poet and artist fourteen years his junior, and her brother,

Orth Stein. Some have linked Riley romantically with Ms.

Stein. He not only wrote her but also attended a literary

banquet in her honor at Purdue in 1907. Riley perhaps met her

at one of his two stage appearances at Lafayette or when he

performed at the opening of a rollerskating rink there in

1885. The connection with Ms. Stein's brother Orth Stein is

less clear. Orth Stein was a brilliant illustrator and writer

of fiction. Unfortunately he was also a white collar criminal

leaving a trail of bad checks and confidence games from

Baltimore to San Jose. He had also shot and killed a man in

a fight over a woman in Kansas City in 1882. How Riley and

the roving Orth Stein were in contact no one knows but when

Orth Stein died of consumption in 1901 at a New Orleans

hotel, an autographed book of Riley poems lay at his bedside.

It was "Poems Here at Home" and Riley's written inscription

bears a hauntingly beautiful and mysterious message intended

to be personal and special:

And the sense caught through the music

Twinkles of dabbling feet;

And glimpses of faces in covert green

And voices faint and sweet;

And back from the lands enchanted

When my earliest mirth was born,

The trill of a laught was blown to me,

Like the blare of an elfin horn.

There is a novel of pleasant reading by Meredith

Nicholson called THE POET published in 1914. The poet of the

book is clearly a representation of James Whitcomb Riley, the

friend of the author. The novel opens with a child, Marjorie,

in dejected play. The poet sees her and says, "The

lonesomeness of that little girl over there is becoming

painful...I can't make out whether she's too dressed up to

play or whether it's only shyness." The child's father,

Miles, turns out to be a securities dealer who the poet knew

earlier in his life as an aspiring artist. The father gave

up art to become wealthy in business. This broke up his

family. His wife, Marian, the mother of Marjorie, left him

because she could not stand the fanatical "money-grubber"

that he had become. Marjorie, the child, was withdrawn. Her

nurse commented to the poet, "She's always like that...and

you can't do anything with her."

Maybe most people would not even bother. But Nicholson's

"poet" is not an ordinary man. He orchestrates visits to the

father, Miles, and mother, Marian, and forces each to recall

their obligation to the child. Marian presses on with divorce

proceedings. Fate intervenes when a securities issue Miles is

involved in is found to be fraudulent. Though Miles makes

good all losses, he is broken financially. When his pursuit

of money fails, he finds the strength to seek a return to his

former happier life as an artist with his reunited family,

his wife, Marian, and his child. The poet has been the kind

counselor, reconciler and sound adviser about life and

morality throughout the alienating period of their lives.

The "friend in deed" is really the true life picture of

James Whitcomb Riley as one sees him in the eyes of his

friends. This was the caliber of the man as his friends

perceived him. Nicholson knew this "helper" Riley from

experience. Nicholson was having little luck getting his

first work recognized when Riley, already established in

1890, wrote the editor, Charles Warren Stoddard this praise

of Nicholson: "By this time you doubtless have his first book

of verse, wherein he says such things as though God some new

hymn had writ and whispered it from star to star."

George Ade, a Hoosier humorist and dialectician, spoke

at a Memorial Services for Riley at the Indiana Society of

Chicago, October 29, 1916.

RILEY'S STYLE OF FRIENDSHIP

"Riley shrank from idle and promiscuous friendships. He

selected for his confidences those who met him fairly and

acknowledged the brotherhood without protesting the same. He

made his own ratings and never consulted the social register.

He loved to sit into the night talking with Benjamin

Harrison, a former President and his great friend. Also he

was given to long and intimate confabulations with a negro

barber who showed a devouring interest in the stories brought

to him by Riley. These stories concerned a certain Frank who

lived at Fortville, Indiana; also his wife, Minnie, a most

courageous and resourceful character. Frank and Minnie were

of the adventurous sort; taking many railway journeys,

adopting unusual trades and professions and overcoming all

sorts of adverse circumstances. Of course, they had no

existence except in the bubbling imagination of Riley but he

continued the fascinating serial year after year. An

author's best reward is one good listener and Riley gave

reams of manuscript to the spell-bound colored brother. Just

three days before he died, Riley sat in the barber chair and

told how Frank had gone to the Mexican border with one of the

Indian regiments and was in charge of the cook tent and

having his own troubles with tarantulas and bandits. Think

of a man sixty-seven years old delightedly weaving these

make-believe yarns, just for the satisfaction of pleasing an

humble audience. That was Riley.

But how he could get under cover and stay under cover

when his canny instinct told him that some one was trying to

exploit him or exhibit him. He was the best platform

entertainer of his time, always idolized by the public and

yet he dreaded these public appearances and always suspected

that he was about to fail and disappoint his audience. Once

I heard him say "Every morning when I wake up the first

thought that comes to me is, `This is the day they get on to

me.'"

He was the best story-teller I ever heard because his

character impersonations were vivid and accurate and

convincing beyond all belief. Henry Irving (a famous

contemporary English actor) was right when he said that Riley

would have been one of the few truly great character actors

of the English speaking stage. Take his well-known verses,

"Good bye, Jim, take keer of yourself." I have heard them

recited by Sol Smith Russell, Maurice Barrymore and David

Warfield (the most noted contemporaneous American actors)

and they put into their renditions the skill of the trained

reader - every trick of the actor's trade and each gave to

the reading the strength and warmth of a genuine personality,

but after you heard Riley recite those wonderful verses which

reveal the real Hoosier - saturated with sentiment but

ashamed to be sentimental - and you felt the lump coming into

your throat and your eyes began to blink, you knew that our

friend had gifts and graces which I really believe were not

given to nay other man of his generation."

Riley loved to visit George Ade at his home, "Hazelden"

at Brook in Newton County. During those visits Riley most

enjoyed napping to rest and meditating in the shade of a

giant hickory tree there. It is said when the old hickory

tree finally died and had to be removed Riley stopped

visiting saying the place wasn't the same home without its

meditating tree.

In his very last years, and particularly after his 1910

stroke, Riley spent much time re-visiting the places in his

life where he had known love and friendship of former days.

His automobile, a "Peerless" gave him this opportunity. He

took daily rides in this automobile which he purchased in

1911 and most often when his chauffeur would ask him the

question, "Where do you want to go?" Riley answered, "Let's

go to Greenfield."

As your biographer completes this short recount of

Riley's life as Amphine, the starkness of it strikes me to

the core. Where is there justice in the facts? Where is there

equity in life? Was it necessary that Riley should truly find

comfort only with a woman already married? Is there

justification in his later love of so many in affectionate

regard and expression? We simply have no answer except to

recall that love and justice concepts are bafflingly

conflicting always.

RILEY WITH OTHER SPIRITS

Nellie Cooley (Dwainie) and Elizabeth Riley (AEo) were

not the only two "dead souls" with whom Riley lived and

communicated. There were many stories of others. Riley was

firmly commited to the belief in ministrations from the

spirit world.

One story had to do with Robert Louis Stevenson, Riley's

friend and fellow author. When Stevenson died, the publisher

of his books wrote Riley and asked him to prepare an

appreciation. Riley readily complied. In a few days a very

liberal check came in the mail from the publisher. Riley

returned it saying he could not possibly accept a check for

paying a tribute to so dear a friend. The the publishers

wrote back that they would like to send Riley Stevenson's

books in appreciation. Riley wrote back to accept the gesture

providing the books were of a modest binding. But the books

never came. Riley wondered and wondered what had happened to

them. Then on his birthday, they arrived. Bright and early

on that morning an expressman came whistling up the walk and

delivered them. Riley commented to many people that he was

sure his friend had had the delivery delayed until his

birthday to give the gift special meaning.

Another dead friend who intervened in Riley's life was

fellow author and reader Eugene Fields. Riley had written a

memorial poem about Fields when he died. A joint friend, the

opera singer Francis Wilson, sent Riley a book of Fields's

poems and asked Riley if he would inscribe his memorial poem

to Fields inside and return it to his hotel in Cincinnati.

Riley did so. Then the book was lost. The opera singer wrote

Riley if it was recovered to send it to another address but

of course Riley could not do so. About a year later, the

opera singer was in Chicago and went into a bookstore that

Riley was not aware of. The bookstore manager recognized

Wilson and said he had a package for him. It was the Fields

poetry inscribed by Riley. When Riley was informed of this he

thought nothing of it. "Eugene Fields did that," he said.

Another member of his cast of "dead souls" who lived

with Riley after their deaths was his long time lyceum

partner, Bill Nye. Every time Riley's luggage was missing

while Riley was traveling by train - which was almost always-

Riley would dismiss it as Bill Nye pulling another trick on

him. Friends from the other world helped Riley avoid

loneliness and despair.