JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.COM

"Where we celebrate the child in us all"

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY: "THE HOOSIER POET" Thomas E.Q. Williams, ©2006, originally published as the 150th birthday biography of James Whitcomb Riley entitled, James Whitcomb Riley: The Poet as Flying Islands of the Night © 1999 Thomas Williams.

 

                       A WAYWARD SONG

 

     The pen of “The Hoosier Poet,” James Whitcomb Riley, produced the most genuine and humble of American poems. Their resonances caused America to consider him the chief poet of his time in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. During this period all of America knew of the Riley poetry of frontier American farm families, Hoosier cricks and corn shocks...and children. He might have been the last truly popular poet America has had.

     Through James Whitcomb Riley we know of hardy and yet tenderly vulnerable American pioneers of the West huddled together in a richly experiential yet poor earthly life. James Whitcomb Riley wrote songs for them to keep up their courage. With the way the world was aflame with disease hardship and hunger in the West, the early Americans of this place really needed the Riley poetry to lift their spirits. As America matured and entered the Twentieth Century, the influence of Riley grew and James Whitcomb Riley became an icon of a home soil poet.

     Some consider Riley as the voice of a new people. This folk was the confused remnant from the great American Civil War. After this deadly conflict pitting friend against friend, America's spirit needed direction and lifting very badly.

     Others connect James Whitcomb Riley only with the light-hearted and happy poetry of the later years of his life. James Whitcomb Riley really was a much beloved person and his poetry was heartening. He came to be known as the

"Children's Poet." His humanism, caring and depiction of the "heart" in children was captured in such

poems as "Little Orphant Annie."

 

                 LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE (1885)

 

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,

An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,

An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an'

sweep,

An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an-

keep;

An' all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,

We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun,

A-listenin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,

An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you

             Ef you

                  Don't

                      Watch

                          Out!

...

 

     It does not hurt to think of James Whitcomb Riley this

way. He was America's poet for children of his time as his

friend Rudyard Kipling was the poet for the children of the

British Empire.

     But Riley was so much more complicated than that. He

was an enigmatic creative genius. It is almost impossible to

learn about him or explain his life because he so completely

related to his age that he can hardly be separated from it.

We do know that Riley's life was not all joyous. He also felt

deeply wrenching despair. When James Whitcomb Riley was

suffering his deepest anguish about his life in the

Nineteenth Century, he fell into depression and occasional

alcoholism and knew great dejection for many reasons.  This

was primarily when he was a homeless young man in his

twenties.

     Riley did not arise to his most popular acclaim until

after his depression was brought under control-although never

fully conquered. Around Riley's thirtieth birthday, he

started building on the faith that helped him survive. He

began singing American versions of the "Christ Hymn" in

poetry. These were songs of hope and courage for living

humbly.

     The great poetry of James Whitcomb Riley, and those

poems, particularly his early "Benjamin Johnson of Boone"

poems, which made Riley the most famous poet of his time,

were frontier American "Christ Hymn" masterpieces.

 

          TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN (1882)

 

Fer forty year and better you have been a friend to me,

Through days of sore afflictions and dire adversity,

You allus had a kind word of counsul to impart,

Which was like a healin' `intment to the sorrow of my hart.

 

When I buried my first womern, William Leachman, it was you

Had the only consolation that I could listen to -

Fer I knowed you had gone through it and had rallied from the

blow

And when you said I'd do the same, I knowed you'd ort to

know.

 

But that time I'll long remember; how I wundered here and

thare-

Through the settin'-room and kitchen, and out in the open

air-

And the snowflakes whirlin', whirlin', and the fields a

frozen glare,

And the neghbors' sleds and wagons congergatin ev'rywhare.

 

I turned my eyes to'rds heaven, but the sun was hid away;

I turned my eyes to'rds earth again, but all was cold and

gray;

And the clock, like ice a-crackin', clikt the icy hours in

two -

And my eyes'd never thawed out ef it hadn't been fer you!

 

We set thare by the smoke-house - me and you out thare alone-

Me a-thinkin' - you a-talkin' in a soothin' undertone -

You a-talkin' - me a-thinkin' of the summers long ago,

And a-writin' "Marthy - Marthy" with my finger in the snow!

 

William Leachman, I can see you jest as plane as I could

then;

And your hand is on my shoulder, and you rouse me up again;

And I see the tears a-drippin' from your own eyes, as you

say:

"Be rickonciled and bear it - we but linger fer a day!"

 

At the last Old Settlers' Meetin' we went j'intly, you and me

-

Your hosses and my wagon, as you wanted it to be;

And sence I can remember, from the time we've neghbored here,

In all sich friendly actions you have double-done your sheer.

 

It was better than the meetin', too, that nine-mile talk we

had

Of the times when we first settled here and travel was so

bad;

When we had to go on hoss-back, and sometimes on "Shank's

mare,"

And "blaze" a road fer them behind that had to travel thare.

 

And now we was a-trottin' 'long a level gravel pike

In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you like -

Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmern-folks behind,

A-settin' in theyr Winsor-cheers in perfect peace of mind!

 

And we pinted out old landmarks, nearly faded out of sight: -

Thare they ust to rob the stage-coach; thare Gash Morgan had

the fight

With the old stag-deer that pronged him - how he battled fer

his life,

And lived to prove the story by the handle of his knife.

 

Thare the first griss-mill was put up in the Settlement, and

we

Had tuck our grindin' to it in the Fall of Forty-three -

When we tuck our rifles with us, techin' elbows all the way,

And a-stickin' right together ev'ry minute, night and day.

 

Thare ust to stand the tavern that they called the

"Travelers' Rest,"

And thare, beyent the covered bridge, "The Counterfitters'

Nest" -

Whare they claimed the house was ha'nted - that a man was

murdered thare,

And burried underneath the floor, er 'round the place

somewhare.

 

And the old Plank-road they laid along in Fifty-one er two -

You know we talked about the times when the old road was new:

How "Uncle Sam" put down that road and never taxed the State

Was a problem, don't you rickollect, we couldn't dimonstrate?

 

Ways was devius, William Leachman, that me and you has past;

But as I found you true at first, I find you true at last;

And, now the time's a-comin' mighty nigh our jurney's end,

I want to throw wide open all my soul to you, my friend.

 

With the stren'th of all my bein', and the heat of hart and

brane,

And ev'ry livin' drop of blood in artery and vane,

I love you and respect you, and I venerate your name,

Fer the name of William Leachman and True Manhood's jest the

same!

 

     By the time of his death, James Whitcomb Riley's

folklore and poetry had come to personally represent

America's vision of itself in humility and redemption. How

this could happen is not only strange but close to miraculous

considering the temperance forces at work in America at the

same time as Riley's years of great popularity. One would

have thought they would have teamed up against Riley because

of his occasional very public bouts of intoxication. They

never did. Riley's "affliction" (alcoholism) was forgiven

him because the age needed to be reassured by the re-singing

of the humble message of the "Christ Hymn."

     By the time of Riley's death, he was highly revered with

celebrations of his birthday all across America. His poetry

was sung in America's voice. In describing the affect of

Riley's death upon the nation, Meredith Nicholson, author and

Editor of the Indianapolis NEWS from 1885 to 1897, wrote, "On

a day in July, 1916, thirty-five thousand people passed under

the dome of the Indiana capitol to look for the last time

upon the face of James Whitcomb Riley. The best-loved citizen

of the Hoosier commonwealth was dead, and laborers and

mechanics in their working clothes, professional and business

men, women in great numbers, and a host of children paid

their tribute of respect to one whose sold claim upon their

interest lay in his power to voice their feelings of

happiness and grief in terms within the common understanding.

The very general expressions of sorrow and affection evoked

by the announcement of the poet's death encourage the belief

that the lines that formed on the capitol steps might have

been augmented endlessly by additions drawn from every part

of America."

     The incredible path of Riley's life which led to this

outcome is the story that follows.

     How did the public perceive such a poet?

     The answer seems that James Whitcomb Riley was taken

mainly as a humorist and entertainer in his time.

     "Riley" was fun. He dealt in the healing influence of

laughter and humor. He was Riley at play as a mischievous

comic, "dialect singer" and entertainer.  This was the

perception of Riley from his days on the lyceum circuit when

his "lectures" to great public audiences all around the

country were managed by the great James Redpath and his

Boston Redpath Bureau and by the successor "manager" Major

James B. Pond of New York and his agency. Being a popular

lyceum speaker gave Riley huge access to the American public

in the Post-Civil War era.  This was, of course, an age

before electronic media. Folk went out to public lecture

halls for entertainment in those days instead of watching

televisions in their homes.

     A "popular" picture of James Whitcomb Riley comes to us

from the promotional literature about him.  Called "The

Autobiography of James Whitcomb Riley," it was not really

written by Riley at all but rather "in fun" by Edgar Wilson

Nye, Riley's great platform partner during the 1880's.  It is

quoted here clothed in Nye's humor:

            AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

                     Written by Himself

                  Through Edgar Wilson Nye.

     The unhappy subject of this sketch was born so long ago

that he persists in never referring to the date.  Citizens of

his native town of Greenfield, Ind., while warmly welcoming

his advent, were no less anxious some few years ago to "speed

the parting guest." It seems, in fact, that, the better they

came to know him, the more resigned they were to give him up.

He was ill-starred from the very cradle, it appears.  One

day, while but a toddler, he climbed, unseen, to an open

window where some potted flowers were ranged, and while

leaning from his high chair far out, to catch some dainty,

gilded butterfly, perchance, he lost his footing and, with a

piercing shriek, fell headlong to the gravelled walk below;

and when, an instant later, the affrighted parents picked

him up, he was - a poet.

    The father of young Riley was a lawyer of large practice,

who used, in moments of deep thought, to regard this boy as

the worst case he ever had.  This may have been the reason

that, in time, he insisted on his reading law, which the boy

really tried to do; but, finding that political economy and

Blackstone didn't rhyme, he slid out of the office one hot,

sultry afternoon, and ran away with a patent medicine and

concert wagon, from the tail end of which he was discovered

by some relatives in the next town, violently abusing a brass

drum. This was a proud moment for the boy; nor did his

peculiar presence of mind entirely desert him till all the

country fairs were over for the season.  Them afar off, among

strangers in a strange State, he thought it would be fine to

make a flying visit home.  But he couldn't fly. Fortunately,

in former years he had purloined some knowledge of a trade.

He could paint a sign, or a house, or a tin roof - if some

one else would furnish him the paint - and one of Riley's

hand-painted picket fences gave rapture to the most exacting

eye. Yet, through all his stress and trial, he preserved a

simple, joyous nature, together with an ever widening love of

men and things in general.  He made friends, and money, too -

enough, at last, to gratify the highest ambition of his life,

namely, to own an overcoat with fur around the tail of it.

He then groped his way back home, and worked for nothing on a

little country paper that did not long survive the blow.

Again excusing himself, he took his sappy paragraphs and

poetry to another paper and another town, and there did

better till he spoiled it all by devising a Poe poem fraud,

by which he lost his job; and, in disgrace and humiliation

shoe-mouth deep, his feelings gave way beneath his feet, and

his heart broke with a loud report.  So the true poet was

born.

     Of the poet's present personality we need speak but

briefly.  His dress is at once elegant and paid for.  It is

even less picturesque than all-wool.  Not liking hair

particularly, he wears but little, and that of the mildest

shade.  He is a good speaker - when spoken to - but a much

better listener, and often longs to change places with his

audience so that he also may retire.  In his writings he

probably shows at his best.  He always tries to, anyway.

Knowing the manifold faux pas and "breaks" in this life of

ours, his songs are sympathetic and sincere.  Speaking coyly

of himself, one day, he said: "I write from the heart; that's

one thing I like about me. I may not write a good hand, and

my `copy' may occasionally get mixed up with the market

reports, but, all the same, what challenges my admiration is

that humane peculiarity of mine - i.e., writing from the

heart  - and, therefore, to the heart."

     More about this side of Riley "the humorist" and the

public perception of the man will follow, but I take the

biographer's prerogative of focusing on what I find the most

revealing about James Whitcomb Riley first.

 

            A "TWINTORETTE" IN THE MORNING PAPER

 

     To know about this enigmatic figure of the American

frontier, humor and Incarnation Theology ("kenoticism"3), it

would have helped to open up a Hoosier newspaper, The

Indianapolis Saturday HERALD," on August 24, 1878. The

citizens of Indiana found one of the strangest writings in

all of literature on its page 6.

     What was it?

     The piece called itself a "Twintorette." What was that?

     It was embedded in a column calling itself:

"Respectfully Declined" Papers of The Buzz Club, Number IV.

What was the Buzz Club?  Who wrote it?  The piece had a cast

as a play does. Was it a play?

     Time revealed that the author of "The Flying Islands of

the Night" was the young Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley,

very early in his career and long before fame settled upon

him. In this "flight" lies the answer to Riley's poetry of

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness, and self-control, the kenotic categories of

expression of the spirit of the "Christ Hymn."

 

1.  The whole "Christ Hymn" is as follows:

     "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ

Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery

to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and

took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the

likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he

humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the

death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted

him, and give him a name which is above every name: That at

the name of Jesus every knee should bow..."

2. The first Incarnation theologians of the Nineteenth

Century were the Germans: Thomasius, its founder, Neander,

Dorner, Van Oosterzee, Pressense, Schneckenburger, Liddon,

Uhlhorn, Edersheim, soon joined by such as J.P. Lange, and

C.A. Ross. A primary text of the German inception is found in

the Nineteenth Century lectures of Alexander Bruce, D.D,

in THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST and R.J. Cooke's THE INCARNATION

AND RECENT CRITICISM. A more recent work (1965) is Claude

Welch, GOD AND INCARNATION IN MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMAN

THOUGHT.  An easy-to-read introduction to the subject is

found in the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, ed.

by F.L. Cross under "Kenotic theories." Interesting

variations of Incarnation Theology appeared concurrently in

Germany such as Hegel's conception that the Incarnation was

manifest in the human race in general and not in individuals.

Even at the theological level, Incarnation Theology engaged

the age's social Darwinism. SEE: Herbert Spencer's SYNTHETIC

PHILOSOPHY, "First Principles," part 1, in which God is seen

as an unknown and unknowable substratum of all phenomena

rather than one known through human appearance.  These should

get started someone interested in Nineteenth Century theology

such as became expressed popularly by James Whitcomb Riley's

poetry. None of course explains the phenomenon of the

Incarnation because, as theologian Edward Towne says, "What

is a mystery if it can be dissolved away in an explanation?"

3. "Kenoticism" is a more technical name for Incarnation

Theology of the Nineteenth Century. It is an idea of

"emptying out oneself." It derives from the Greek adjective

"kenos" - the adjective used in the Philippian's "Christ

Hymn" to describe Jesus's act of casting off pride, advantage

and power to find satisfaction in a humble life.

 

 

 

               THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

 

     Marcus Dickey, the secretary of James Whitcomb Riley

once wrote, "It was not the habit of the Hoosier Poet to

explain.  Again and again his friends saw him as through a

glass darkly.  At times he took conspicuous pride in

concealing his thought and his way of doing things.  My

assumptions concerning him remained assumptions.  The more

his friends sought to know his history the more capriciously

he concealed it."

     In the cryptic poem that follows Riley revealed his own

life in the form of an autobiography with himself in his

various "soul-selves" as the cast except for the woman who

was his great encourager and "soul partner."

 

   JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY: THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE

NIGHT: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO RILEY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM

 

    It is a simple fact that James Whitcomb Riley tended to

write out of his own experiences. There is not a single poem

where Riley's fantasies are not based on some projection out

of his life. Riley's prodigious imagination used himself

always to create his poetry.

    If this is so, where does Riley's "The Flying Islands of

the Night" fit in? It is certainly obscure at places. It

stands out so in the body of his poetry like a sore thumb

because of its length as well as its oddity.

    The only answer appears to be that Riley made it obscure

for a reason. It was the most "personal" poem he ever wrote.

The poem describes the groping of his own soul. It is the

last rush of the madness from his impetuous youth.  Then

Riley sheltered his soul from criticism by obscuring his

poetic expression of it.

    Riley's autobiographical poem (from age 28-but revised

at intervals) originally contained two great themes and a

minor one. The most important was Riley's "dark play" on his

own dire alcoholism. The language is a combination of Middle

English spiced with American folklore, and "intoxicatese"

creating a fantastic and wildly "astronomically" extravagant

imagery. The origins of all of this will be explained later.

     For now we need only remember Riley's fear of his

alcoholism as its most basic theme. Riley portrays himself

"married" to alcoholism personified as the "nasty" Queen

Crestillomeem.  Riley is first introduced as his minstrel

self called Jucklet.  This is Riley's "survival self" at the

soul level.  Jucklet has to live "underground" and he can

only "peep out" when Crestillomeem permits.

     Riley lived by his wits and was often penniless during

the period of his "minstrel wandering" twenties. Now he had

begun consoling himself from tragic events in his life with

overuse of alcohol. This poem tells us of the outcome of all

of this.  You will be very surprised.

     In "The Flying Islands of the Night" Riley must

experience the effects of alcoholism. The "night" in the

title is a reference to alcohol addiction.  Riley's

contempary of the related book FIFTEEN YEARS IN HELL, Luther

Benson, says:"...From time to time until I tried to break the

terrible chain...of intemperance, my life was one long,

hopeless, blank, black night." Riley's alcoholism was his

night too.  He feared himself sinking into a "night" of

depression, delirium and madness.

     The second great theme is Riley's groping for salvation

from his alcoholism. As his mind turns to recollections of

loving encouragement and true friendship he has known, he

remembers Nellie Millikan Cooley, a married friend, who has

just died in Illinois critical days before the poem was

written. Nellie is the only other character in the original

play which is not a Riley "personified personality

breakdown." Nellie is "Dwainie" who tells the fearfully

drunken Riley she will continue to encourage him and love him

even though she is now dead.

     How can this be? Another surprise is in store!

     The version of "The Flying Islands of the Night"

which follows was the original one. In a later expansion of

the original play for a book, Riley adds his mother,

Elizabeth as "AEo" as an encourager along with Nellie.

Dwainie will eventually convince Riley in the poem that she

is still encouraging him in spirit and this gives Riley the

strength to produce the Godly poetry of "Spraivoll," the

"tune fool" of Riley's cast of self-characters.

     A minor comical but tragic theme is the "Murphy"

pledge that temperance ladies were requiring young men to

sign at the time the play was written. This pledge committed

a person not to drink intoxicants. Riley had recently seen

how futile such a pledge was and enjoyed harpooning it.

His brother, Hum (Reuben Alexander Humboldt Riley), took one

as revealed in this letter to brother John Riley, in 1877:

"... within the last few days, on the evening of the 4th of

July, I commenced a work that will in time make me more money

than any other work I could engage in. I think it is the most

honorable work a young man can engage in. I celebrated the

4th in a better way than I ever did before. On that morning I

signed the Murphy Pledge and have been at work ever since in

that great cause and hope before a great while to bring a

great many more into the ranks and try and bring the cause to

a great and glorious end. We have already taken in some of

the boys such as Jim Walsh, John Huley, John Skinner and his

father and many others to (sic) numerous to mention. When I

went up to take the pledge Father Wilson kissed me and told

me to stick to it. I told him I would try..."

     Hum couldn't make it. Disastrous drinking soon followed.

The Murphy pledge was a joke. Signing a pledge proved not a

real commitment to anything. Hum became an alcoholic so

severely that often he would disappear without word requiring

his family to try to locate him wherever they could find him.

In this same year Riley was dealing with his own alcoholism

he saw what alcoholism was doing to his brother Hum. A letter

contemporaneous to Riley's "The Flying Islands of the Night,"

reads:

 

Friend "Meeks" --

     Hum left on noon train to-day and as he was "full", and

none of us knew where he started for, we are all greatly

distressed.  He went east, and it has occurred to me that

possibly he had gone to see you -- thence this letter of

inquiry. And now, dear Jim tell me if he is with you, and if

so I charge you, with all earnestness, do what you can to

keep him from whisky - for he is killing himself and breaking

all our hearts at home.  He is good, and wouldn't act as he

does could he realize what he is doing -- and I trust and

believe that you will do all in your power to turn him from

it.  I tried to see him before he went, and was at the depot,

but he slipped me somehow.  I wanted to tell him that if he

got hard up to write to me for money -- I will raise it if he

needs it, and if you see him you must tell him so for me.  If

he is not with you try to find him along the line by

telegraphing, and I will compensate you for your trouble.  It

may be that he has not gone far, but let me know at once if

you know anything of him.

                        Very truly yours

                                J.W. Riley.

     Hum's fitful life continued. We know he was in

Indianapolis in Feb., 1881, and wrote sister Mary to send him

"his things" by express train in a telegram of Feb. 25th.

Hum died November 24, 1881 at 5 a.m. at age 25 from severe

hemorrhage of the bowels according to the Riley family Bible

at the Riley Birthplace in Greenfield, Indiana.  Someone

noted underneath the entry "typhoid fever," but the suspicion

is a complication of alcoholism. Hum's funeral was apparently

on the Friday following. Hum isn't mentioned thereafter in

family correspondence.

     Crestillomeem got his younger brother and now the

alluring siren was after James Whitcomb Riley!

     The version of "The Flying Islands of the Night" which

follows is the first one published. The poem seems an

excellent point of departure for a biography of the poet's

life. I apologize if "The Flying Islands of the Night" is

sometimes hard to follow.  Riley wrote it that way to cause

it to be mysterious and secretive to protect his very fragile

ego. Just remember that Riley was all the characters in the

cast that follows except "Dwainie."

     Only a creative genius might conceive of himself in such

an odd but imaginative way.  This was James Whitcomb Riley.

     His poem continues into Three Acts which we will examine

in greater detail as an aid in unraveling the knot of his

life - a chapter per character at a time.

     Perhaps we should allow Riley to introduce his own

autobiography as he did at his "Buzz Club" newspaper

article - through Mr.  Clickwad - one of the fictional

members-who says of the piece: "This is an affliction,"

continued Mr. Clickwad, unrolling an enormous manuscript,

"too great for me to bear alone, and I ask your succor and

assistance as humbly and earnestly as ever beggar asked for

alms."

 

              THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT.

                       A Twintorette.

 

Dramatis Personae1

KRUNG.........................King of the Spirks

CRESTILLOMEEM..........................The Queen

SPRAIVOLL..........................The Tune Fool

AMPHINE.............................Son of Krung

DWAINIE.............................Of the Wunks2

JUCKLET....................................Dwarf

CREECH,      )

             )........................Nightmares

GRITCHFANG,  ) Counselors, Courtiers, Etc.

 

1. The names of the characters have loosely evocative

associative qualities. Krung is Riley's triumphant public

reputation- or his hopes about it, a sober and rational

personality in responsibility, success and empowerment. It is

Riley as Cronus (or "Kronus"), the Titan, and "King."

Spraivoll is the poetic "tune-fool" Riley. It is Riley the

"Christ hymn" poet. The aspect of poetry has the feminine

gender, as Calliope, the muse of poetry was feminine. Amphine

evokes Riley as a lover like Amphion, son of Zeus and

Antiope, who, in Greek legend, built Thebes by music of lute

which he played so melodiously that the stones danced into

walls and houses. Riley played the guitar and violin for

romantic purposes. Dwainie is his inspirational friend,

recently deceased at the time of the first writing of "The

Flying Islands," Nellie Millikan Cooley, wife of George B.

Cooley.  "Dwainie" suggests the Old English word "Dwine"

meaning waste away.  Nellie was recently dead when "The

Flying Islands" was first written in August 1878.  Riley

shared the author Thomas Chatterton's fascination with old

English sounding names.  Chatterton's writings were major

inspiration for this poem. "Jucklet" the dwarf is Riley as

self-admitted prankster but also Riley's survival self since

Riley can only survive by his wits. The name evokes juggler

from the Latin joculator, a jester, or joker in the Middle

Ages. Jugglers of those days accompanied minstrels and

troubadours and added entertainments to musical performances,

e.g. sleight of hand, antics, feats of musing prowess and a

staple of tricks.  The form is in the diminutive just as

Riley was small. The nightmares suggest interior aspects of

creed for Creetch and dreads of novel encounters or

depressive events where Riley is "greenhorn" and engaged or

bitten as by fangs as Gritchfang. That the names are not

entirely imaginative, but rather referential and elliptical

is supported by some evidence. The poet in his 1898 edition

of "The Flying Islands" added a footnote to additions to

"Spirk and Wunk Rhymes," saying, "So, too, in numberless

other aspects, must the reader's fancy freely-play- even as

the writer frankly confesses his own has done,- in such

particulars, for instances, as fancying the "ont-l-dawn-bird"

of the Flying Islanders is our nightingale; their "trance-

bird" our humming-bird; their "echo-bird" our mocking-bird,

etc., etc., ad infinitum."

2. A wunk is a Hoosier folklore figure. It is not what it

appears to be. It is like a ghost that can take on outward

appearance at night of anything or anyone it wishes to.

                            ACT I

SCENE - THE FLYING ISLANDS Scene I. - Spirkland at Moondawn -

Interior of the King's Court - A star burns dimly in the dome

above the throne- Enter Crestillomeem.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          The throne is throwing wide its gilded arms

          To welcome me. The throne of Krung! Ha! ha!

          Leap up, ye lazy echoes, and laugh loud!

          For I, Crestillomeem, the queen - ha! ha!

          Do fling my richest mirth into your mouths

          That ye may fatten ripe with mockery!

          I wonder what the kingdom would become

          Were I not here to nurse it like a babe,

          And dandle1 it beyond the silly reach

          Of sycophants and serfs.  Ho! Jucklet, ho!

          `Tis  time my twisted warp of nice anatomy

          Were here to weave away upon our web -

          Of silken villainies.  Ho! Jucklet, ho!

1."Dandle" is something like dangle and handle

mixed up.

(Lifts a secret door to the pave, and drops a star-bud

through the opening.  Enter Jucklet.)

                          JUCKLET.

          Spang sprit1! my gracious queen, but thou hast

               scorched

          My left ear to a cinder, and my head

          Rings like a ding-dong on the coast of death!

          For, patient hate! thy hasty signal burst

          Full in my face as thitherward I came;

          But though my lug2 is fried to a crisp, and my

          Singed wig stinks like a little sun-stewed wunk,

          I stretch my fragrant presence at thy feet,

          And kiss thy sandal with a blistered lip.

1. "Sprit" is Chatterton's representation of the verb for

"gives spirit" at "AElla," 2.1332. Chatterton, living in the

century prior to Riley, wrote poetry which he fraudulently

claimed was written by a monk named Rowley of the 15th

Century. Chatterton sold these forgeries for income.  The

poetry was actually rather good and came to be much admired

by Riley. There was no such monk as Rowley, of course, and

Chatterton killed himself with arsenic at the age of 17 when

his deception was discovered.

2. The external ear in this use.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Hold! rare-done fool, lest I may call the cook

          And bake thee brown! How fares the king by this?

                          JUCKLET.

          I left him sleeping1, but uncorked his nose,

          And o'er the odorous blossom of his lips2

          I squeezed the tinctured sponge, and felt his pulse

          Come staggering back to regularity.

          And four hours hence his highness will awake

          and Peace will take a nap.

1. The setting is Riley sleeping off intoxication which

becomes subject to delirium in Act II, with recovery in Act

III.

2. "Liquor breath."

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Ha! what mean you?

                          JUCKLET.

          I mean that he suspects our knaveries.

          Some traitor spy is burrowed in the court

          Whose unseen eye is ever focused fine

          Upon our actions, and whose hungry ear

          Eats every crumb of counsel that  we drop

          In these our secret interviews -for he -

          The king - thro' all his talking-sleep to-day

          Has jabbered of intrigue, conspiracy,

          And treachery and hate in fellowship,

          With dire designs upon his royal self,

          To oust him from the throne.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          He spoke my name?

                          JUCKLET.

          I never hear him speak but that thy name

          Makes melody of every sentence.  Yes, -

          He thinks thou art as true to him as thou

          Art fickle, false and subtle! O how blind,

          and lame and deaf and dumb, and worn and weak,

          And faint and sick, and all-commodious

          His dear love1 is!

1. Riley's love of alcohol.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Wilt thou wind up thy tongue

          Nor let it tangle in a knot of words!

          What said the king?

                          JUCKLET.

          He said: "Crestillomeem -

          O that she knew this great distress of mine!

          For she would counsel with me, and her voice

          Would flow in limpid wisdom o'er my wounds,

          And, like an ointment, lave my hidden grief,

          And heal my bleeding heart;" and so went on

          Spinning the web of love in which he lies

          Bound hand and foot and buzzing helplessly.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          And did he drop no hint of his distress,

          And how, and when, and whence his trouble came?

                          JUCKLET.

          He spoke as the tho' some woman talked with him -

          Full courteously he said: "In woman's guise

          Thou comest, yet I think thou art indeed

          But woman in thy form; they words are strange,

          And I am mystified! I feel the truth

          Of all thou hast declared, and yet so vague

          And shadow-like thy meaning is to me,

          I know not how to act to ward the blow

          Thou say'st is a hanging o'er me even now."

          And then, with open hands held pleadingly,

          He asked, "Who is my foe?" and o'er his face

          A sudden pallor flashed like death itself,

          As tho' if answer had been given it

          Had fallen like a curse.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          I'll stake my soul

          `Tis Dwainie1, of the Wunks, who peeks and peers

          With those fine eyes of hers in our affairs,

          And carries Krung,  in some disguise, these hints

          Of our intent! See thou that silence falls

          Forever on her lips, and that the sight

          She wastes upon our secret action blurs

          With gray and grisly skum that shall for aye

          Conceal us from her gaze while she writhes blind

          And fangless as the fat worms of the grave.

          Here, take this tuft of downy druze, and when

          Thou comest on her, fronting full and fair,

          Say "Sherzham!" thrice, and fluff it in her face.

1. Nellie Millikan Cooley, Riley's beloved married friend,

who died shortly before the publication of this piece.

 

                          JUCKLET.

          Thou knowest little magic, O, my queen,

          But all thou dost is very excellent.

          And now for Amphine - he, too, doubtless, has

          Been favored with an outline of our scheme.

          And I would kick my soul all over hell

          If I might juggle his fine figure up

          In such a shape as mine.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Then this: if thou

          Canst ever find him bent above a flower,

          Or any blooming thing, and thou canst slip

          Behind and reach it first and touch it fair,

          And with thy knuckle strike him on the breast,

          Then his fine form will shrink and shrivel up

          As warty as a toad's  - so hideous

          Thine own will seem a marvel of rare grace,

          Tho' idly speakest them of mystic skill

          `Twas that which won the king for me - `twas that

          Bereft him of his daughter1 ere we had

          Been wedded for a month; she strangely went

          Astray one morning from the palace steps;

          And when the dainty vagrant came not back

          And all the spies in Spirkland in her quest

          Came straggling empty-handed home again

          Why, then the wise king wiped his rainy eyes

          And sagely tho't the little toddler strayed

          Out to the island's edge and tumbled off.

          I could have set his mind at ease on that;

          I could have told him when she tumble off.

          I tumbled her, and tumbled her so far

          She tumbled in another land, from which

          But one charm known to art can tumble her

          Back into this.

1. Spraivoll, Riley's poetic self, in this delirium tremens

attack from alcoholic binge.

                          JUCKLET.

          Ay, true enough, perhaps!

          But dost thou know that rumors float about

          Among thy subjects of thy sorceries?

          And if my counsel is worth aught to thee,

          Then have a care thy charms do not revert

          Upon thyself!

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Ha! ha! no fear of that

          While Krung remains -

(She pauses abruptly, and a voice of exquisite melody is

heard singing.)

                           VOICE.

          When kings are kings, and kings are men -

               And the lonesome rain1 is raining -

          O who shall rule from the red2 throne then,

          And who shall wield the scepter when -

               When the winds3 are all complaining?

 

          When men are men, and men are kings -

               And the lonesome rain is raining -

          O who shall list as the minstrel sings

          Of the ermine robes and the signet rings

               when the winds are all complaining?

 

1. Rain most often refers to God's judgment on sinners in

frontier American poetry. Such imagery often derives from

scripture in this case possibly Ez. 38.22.

2. Red is the color of sin in frontier American Protestant

folklore. This probably derives from Isaiah 1.18.  The sin in

this use would be the overuse of alcohol.

3. The wind is often a depiction of the operation of the Holy

Spirit within the world in the same folklore tradition. John

3.8. In light of the imagery of Spraivoll's initial poem, we

would suspect the answer to the poem's question is no one.

 

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Whence flows that sweetness, and whose voice is

          that?

                          JUCKLET.

          The voice of Spraivoll if mine ears are tuned.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          And who is Spraivoll, and what song is that she

          sings?

                          JUCKLET.

          Spraivoll, the Tune Fool is she called

          By those who meet her in her nightly rounds.1

          She comes from Wunkland, as she so declares,

          And has been roosting round the palace here

          For half a moon.

1. Riley only wrote poetry at night.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          And pray, where is she perched?

                           JUCKLET

          Under some dingy cornice1, like enough.

          She is no woman, tho' - and yet, indeed

          She is licensed idiot, and drifts

          About as restless, and as useless, too,

          As any lazy breeze in summertime.

          I'll call her forth to greet your majesty -

          Ho! Spraivoll! Ho! my plumeless bird, flit here!

1. Riley was writing most of his poetry at this time in a

place he called the "Morgue," an upstairs space in row office

buildings in downtown Greenfield, Indiana.

(From behind a group of statuary Spraivoll enters.)

                    SPRAIVOLL. (Singing1)

          Ting-along aling-ting!  Tingle-tee!  Ting-aling,

          aling-ting! Tingle-tee!

          The world runs round and round for me;

          Wind it up with a golden key

          Ting-aling, aling-ting! Tingle-tee!

1. Spraivoll's songs contain ellided and unintelligible

words because, we remember, Riley cannot write poetry

while he is intoxicated as he is in Acts I and II.  Spraivoll

does much better in Act III when she is "herself" or rather

Riley "himself."

                          JUCKLET.

          Who art thou, woman, and what singest thou?

                    SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

          What sings the breene1 on the wertling-vine2,

               And the tweck3 on the bamner-stem4?

          The song they sing is the same as mine,

               And mine is the same to them.

1. Probably a brown wren. Under Chatterton's "Rowley"

technicalities, any word that can take a terminal "e"

does so.  Riley's poem has elements of Chatterton "takeoff."

2. Wert, wyrt, wairt, wurt, wort (as in liverwort) refers

to a herb in Middle English.  A "wertling-vine" is possibly

a herb-vine.

3. Probably suggestive of a "twaddling" (or silly) "peck" or

"woodpecker" although the "tw" might refer to the Middle

English twecche (twitch).

4. A "bamner-stem" is possibly a "runner bamboo stem" or some

such.

                          JUCKLET.

          Your majesty may be surprised somewhat,

          But Spraivoll cannot talk; her only mode

          Of speech is melody; and thou might'st put

          The gifted fool a-thousand questions, and

          In full return, receive a thousand songs,

          Each set to different tunes - as full of naught

          As space is full of emptiness.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          A fool?

          A fool, and with a voice so strangely sweet?

          A fool?

                          JUCKLET.

          Ay, warranted! Around the world

          She walks unrivalled, and a queen of fools -

          Eh, Spraivoll?

                    SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

          O, Aye! Tho' Spirkland has grown great

               In foolish ways, I ween

          Her greatest fool will intimate,

               He bows to me as queen.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          So! my Jucklet finds his peer!

          Come hither woman, and be not afraid,

          For I like fools so well I married one.

          And since thou art a queen of fools, and he

          A king, why I've a mind to bring you two

          Together in some way.  Canst use thy tongue

          in such a wise thy hearer can but list?

                    SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

          If one should ask me for a song

               And I should answer, then my tongue

          Would twitter, trill and troll along

               Until the song was done.

 

          Or should one ask me for my tongue,

               And I should answer with a song,

          I'd trill it till the song was sung

               And troll it all along.

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Thou art indeed a fool, and one I think

          To serve my purpose well.  Give ear to me!

          And Jucklet, thou go to the king and wait

          His waking; then repeat these words: "The queen

          Impatiently awaits his majesty,

          And craves his presence in the Tower of Stars,1

          That she may there express all tenderly

          Her great solicitude and" - there, say this:

          "So much she bade,  and drooped her glowing face

          Deep in the shadows of her unbound hair,

          And with a flashing gesture of her arm

          Turned all the moonlight pallid, saying, "Haste!"

1.  A "tower of stars" is the prison of his hopes for

success. In Riley's personal symbolism, a tower is a place of

bondage where one is made a prisoner. SEE: Contemporaneous

Riley letter to the Cooleys and his beloved married friend,

Nellie Cooley, dated October 28, 1877 "...take me your

prisoner and `fasten me down forever in the round tower of

your heart; and I'll never murmur for release till heaven

dawns thro the gates." In Riley imagery, stars have to do

with success. In a letter to his brother John of Nov. 16,

1874, Riley states, "In those dark hours (of drifting while a

sign painter), I should have been content with the twinkle of

the tiniest star."

                          JUCKLET.

          And would it not be well to hang a pearl

          Or two upon thy silken lashes?

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Go! (Jucklet disappears.)

          Now fool, I'll furnish thee a topic for

          A song: A woman once, with angel in

          Her face and devil in her heart, had cause

          To breed confusion to her sovereign lord,

          And work the downfall of his haughty son -

          The issue of a former marriage, who

          Inspired her hatred from the very first;

          Thro' her the king is haunted with a dream

          That he is soon to die, and so prepares

          The throne for the ascension of the son.

          The woman now has won the husband's love,

          And by her craft and wanton flatteries

          Sways him to every purpose but the one

          Most coveted. And so, to serve that end

          She would make use of thee, and if thou dost

          Her will as her good pleasure shall direct.

          Why, thou shalt sing at court, and thy sweet voice

          Shall woo the echoes of the listening throne.

          At present does the king lie in a sleep

          Drug-wrought and deep as death - the after-phase

          Of an unconscious state in which each act

          Of his throughout his waking hours is so

          Rehearsed in manner, motion, deed and word

          Her spies may  tell her of his very tho't,

          And should he come upon the throne to-night

          Where his wise counselors sit waiting him,

          Then has she cause to think her purposes

          Will fall in jeopardy; but if he fail,

          Thro' any means, to lend his presence there,

          Then, by a former mandate, is his queen

          Empowered with all sovereignty to reign

          And work the royal purposes instead.

          Therefore the queen has set an interview

          With him that will occur at noon to-night -

          One hour ere the time the throne convenes -

          And with her thou shalt go, and lie in wait

          Until she signal thee to sing, and then

          Shalt thou so work upon his mellow mood With that

          unearthly magic of thy voice -

          So dazzle all his serious tho't with dreams -

          The queen may, all unnoticed, slip away,

          And leave thee singing to a throneless king.

                    SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

            And who shall sing for the haughty son

               While the good king droops his head?

            And will he dream when the song is done

               That a princess fair lies dead?1

1. If he is drunk, can he forget about his dead friend,

Dwainie (Nellie) recently deceased?

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          The  haughty son has found his "song" sweet curse

          And may she sing his everlasting dirge!

          She comes from that near-floating land of thine,

          And with her fairer skin and finer ways,

          Has caught the prince between her mellow palms And

          stroked him flutterless. Didst ever hear

          Of Dwainie, of the Wunks?

                   SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)1

               Ay, "Dwainie! My Dwainie!"

                 The lurloo2 ever sings,

               A tremor in his flossy crest

                 And in his glossy wings,

               And "Dwainie! My Dwainie"

                 The winnow welvers call,

               But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

                 And answers not at all.

 

               The teeper3 twitters "Dwainie!"

                 The tcheucker4 on his spray

               Teeters up and down the wind

                 And will not fly away;

               And "Dwainie! My  Dwainie:"

                  The drowsy oovers5 drawl;

               But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

                  And answers not at all.

 

               O Dwainie! my Dwainie,!

                  The breezes hold their breath;

               The stars are pale as blossoms,

                  And the night as still as death;

               And "Dwainie! My Dwainie!"

                 The fainting echoes fall;

               But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

                  And answers not at all.

 

1. A poem of Riley's anguish over his separation from his

great soul-mate, Nellie Cooley, so recently deceased.

Spraivoll, Riley's poetic self, cannot reach Nellie; only

Amphine, Riley's manifestation of love, can as we will soon

discover.

2. Dwainie (Nellie Cooley) is evoked to Riley by an alluring

but hidden spirit. "Lurloo" is a name in intoxicated

onomatopoeia through formation of allegorical qualities

rather than from animal sounds. The name probably derives

from the archaic form "lure" in the sense of an enticement or

allure and the loo which suggests a masking of an appearance

as in the loo or mask a woman wore to avoid tanning her

complexion. The fantastic bird creatures of "Dwainie" are

spirits, a common Riley catachresis extending the obvious

"bird" word into a proper poetic, as in "Song of the Rain."

3. Something which "tees" draws, tugs, pulls. Such a spirit

twitters about Dwainie.  Possibly a tree-toad which is said

to "twitter" in Riley's poem "A Treat Ode" of roughly

contemporaneous time. ("Scurious-like!" said the tree-toad, -

\"I've twittered for rain all day...")

4. A tcheucker has the intoxicatese onomatopoeic ring of a

squirrel's call.

5. oover suggests a compaction of "owl hooting overhead"

giving its "hooooooooot."

 

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          A melody ecstatic, and thy words

          Altho' so meaningless, seem something more -

          A vague and shadowy something, eerie-like,

          That makes me catch my breath all tremulous,

          But save thy music! Come, that I may make

          Thee ready for thy royal auditor. (Exeunt).

 

 

                           ACT II

Scene 2. - A garden of Krung's palace, screened from the moon

and lighted with star flakes.  An arbor, near which is a

table spread with a repast. A fountain, near which Amphine

sits thrumming a trentoraine.1

1. "Thrumming" is like strumming with his thumb. Trentoraine,

is probably something like a "trembling instrument sounding

like rain" or some such, most likely Riley's guitar with

which he entertained Nellie on many evenings in his early

twenties.

                          AMPHINE.

          O warbling strand of silver, where, oh where

          Hast thou unraveled that sweet voice of thine,

          And left its silken murmurs quavering

          In spasms of delight? O golden wire,

          Where hast thou spilled thy precious twinkerings

          What thirsty ear ear has drained thy melody

          And left me but a wild, delirious drop

          To tincture all my soul with vain desire?

          O, Trentoraine, how like an empty vase

          Thou art - whose clustering blooms of song have

          drooped

          And faded, one by one, and fallen away

          And left to me but dry and tuneless stems,

          And crisp and withered tendrils of a voice

          Whose thrilling tone, now like a throttled sound

          Lies stifled, faint, and gasping all in vain

          For utterance. (Enter Dwainie1, unperceived)

          O empty husk of song,

          If deep within my heart the music thou

          Hast stored away might find an opening,

          A fount of limpid laughter would leap up

          And gurgle from my lips, and all the winds

          Would revel round me riotous with joy;

          And Dwainie in her beauty would lean o'er

          The battlements of night, and like the moon,

          The glory of her face would light the world,

          For I would sing of love,

1. Riley's beloved - and dead - Nellie appears in spirit.

Riley elsewhere calls her his "truest friend on earth, or now

in heaven" in a letter to Nellie's daughter, Mrs. Emma Cox,

on April 10, 1885.  He adds, "God bless us always with the

sweetness of her memory!"

          DWAINIE. (Concealed.) And she would hear,

          And reaching overhead among the stars

          Would scatter them like daisies at thy feet.

                          AMPHINE.

          O voice, where art thou floating on the air?

          O angel-soul, where art thou hovering?

                          DWAINIE.

          I hover in the zephyr of thy sighs,

          And tremble lest thy love for me shall fail

          To buoy me thus forever on the breath

          Of such a dream as heaven envies.

                           AMPHINE

          Then

          Thou lovest! O my angel, flutter down

          And nestle to the warm home of my breast

          So empty are my arms, so full my heart

          The one must hold thee or the other burst.

                          DWAINIE.

(Throwing herself in his embrace.)

          I think the hand of God has flung me here;

          O hold me that he may not pluck me back.

                          AMPHINE.

          So closely will I hold thee that not e'en

          The hand of death shall separate us.

                          DWAINIE.

                             So,

          May sweet death find us, then, that, woven thus

          In the corolla of a ripe caress,

          We may drop light, like twin plustre-buds1,

          On Heaven's star-strewn lawn.

1. Buds which are purely lustrous.

                          AMPHINE.

          So do I pray,

          But tell me, tender heart, as thou dost love,

          Where hast thou loitered for so long?

          For I have ordered merl1 and viands to be brought

          For our refreshment here, where all alone

          I might sip with thee words as well as wine.  Why

          hast thou kept me so athirst, for I

          Am jealous of the very solitude

          In which thou walkest. (They sit at table.)

1. Merl is an alcoholic beverage, probably wine, and named

after a fictional character of Riley poetry. SEE: Riley's

poem of 1879, "To the Wine-God Merlus" (the "God" of "drink"

who "blowest all my cares.")

                           DWAINIE

          Nay, I will not tell,

          Since, if I did a thousand questions more

          Would vex our interview with idle tho't

          And speculation vain. Let this suffice -

          I talked with one who knew me long ago

          In dreamy Wunkland,1 talked of mellow nights And

          long, long hours of golden olden times

          When love lay like a baby in my arms.

          And life was like a tinkling toy.  We talked

          Of all the past, ah, me, and all the friends

          That now await my coming and we talked

          Of many, many things, so many things

          That I forget them all in dreams of when,

          With thy warm hand clasped close in this of mine

          We walk the floating bridge that spans the gulf

          Between this isle of strife and gloom, and doubt,

          And my most glorious realm of joy and peace,

          Where summer-night reigns ever, and the moon

          Hangs ever ripe and lush with radiance

          Above a land were roses gloat on wings

          And fan their fragrance out so lavishly

          The winds dive out of heaven to bathe in it.

1. Earthly life.  In Hoosier folklore, Wunkland persons are

those who have been "wunks" on earth, personalities or selves

or souls within shapes and sizes of humanity for homes.

                           AMPHINE

          O empress of my listening soul, talk on,

          And tell me all of that rare land of thine,

          For even tho' I reigned a peerless king

          Within mine own, I think I could fling down

          My scepter, signet, crown and royal robes,

          And so walk naked down the path of life,

          If at the dwindling end my feet might touch

          Upon the shores of such a land as thou

          Dost paint for me.  O tell me more of it,

          And tell me if thy sister-woman there

          Is like to thee - but nay! for it thou didst

          These foolish eyes would not believe - but thou

          Canst tell me of thy brothers.  Are they great,

          And can they grapple with God's arguments,

          And cipher out the problems of the stars?

                          DWAINIE.

          Aye, they have leaped all earthly barriers.

          `Twas Wunkland's son1 that voyaged round the moon,

          And talked with Mars, and buckled Saturn's belt;

          `Twas Wunkland's son that bent the rainbow

          straight.

          And walked it like a street, and so returned

          To tell us it was made of hammered shine,

          Inlaid with strips of selvedge2 from the sun,

          And burnished with the rust of rotten stars.

          `Twas Wunkland's son who comprehended first

          All grosser things, and took the world apart

          And oiled its joints with new philosophies;

          For now our goolores3 say, below these isles

          A million million miles are other worlds -

          Not like to ours, but round, as bubbles are,

          And like them, ever reeling on thro' space,

          And anchorless thro' all eternity;

          Not like to ours, for our isles,4 as they say

          Are living things that fly about at night,

          And soar above, and cling, throughout the day

          Like bats, beneath the rafters of the skies:

          and I myself have heard, at dawn of moon,

          A liquid music filtered thro' my dreams,

          As tho' a thousand trilling voices pent

          In some o'erhanging realm, had spilled themselves

          In streams of melody that trickled thro'

          the chinks and crannies of a crystal pave

          Until the wasted juices of harmony,

          slow-leaking o'er my senses, drowned my soul

          With ecstacy divine.  And afferhaiks5

          Who scour our coasts on missions for the King,

          Declare our island's shape is like the zhibb's6

          When lolling in a trance upon the air,

          With open wings upslant and motionless.

          O such a land it is - so all complete

          In all wise habitants, and knowledge, lore,

          Arts, sciences, perfected government -

          In kingly wisdom, worth and majesty -

          So furnished forth in all things lovable,

          O Amphine, love of mine, it lacks but thy

          Sweet presence to make it a Paradise.

1. Riley seeks the soul within as rendering those in earthly

bodies as "wunks" and the earth as we know it as "wunkland."

Persons in the "beyond" will have activities including

universal explorations, musical enjoyments, ministerial

functions for God, etc.

2. Variant spelling of selvage, an edge of woven material

which prevents ravelling out of the weft.

3. Probably an ellipse of "good lores" or "best books."

4. Riley confirms to us that "The Flying Islands" are lives

that he lives at night.  These are himself in fragmented

souls or selves.

5. A haik is worn by an Arab explorer into the deserts. It is

an outer cloth. "Afferre" is Latin meaning "to conduct

inward." Afferhaiks may refer to functionaries in the

universal sphere.

6. An inventive creature of Riley's vivid imagination

possibly striped as a zebra and thus "ribbed" or some such.

                 (Takes up the Trentoraine.)

          And shall I tell thee of the home1 that waits

          For thy glad coming, Amphine? Listen, then -

1. After describing the people of the "beyond" and their

activities, Dwainie now tells Riley of the land itself in

song in an imaginative fanciful vision in which Riley and

Nellie can live together. Dwainie gives Amphine to know that

their "heaven" is a garden-party.

                            SONG

          A palace veiled in a gleaming dusk;

               Warm breaths of a tropic air,

          Drugged with the odorous Marzhoo's1 musk

               And the perfumed cynchottaire2; Where the

          trembling hands of the lilwing's3 leaves

               The winds caress and fawn,

          As the dreamy starlight idly weaves

               Designs for a damask4 lawn.

 

          Densed in the depths of a dim eclipse

               Of palms in a flowery space,

          A fountain leaps from the marble lips

               Of a girl with a golden vase

          Held atip on a curving wrist,

               Drinking the drops that glance

          Laughingly in the gleaming mist

               Of her crystal utterance.

 

          Archways looped o'er blooming walks

               That lead thro' gleaming halls;

          And balconies where the tune-bird talks

               To the tipsy waterfalls.

          And easements gauzed with a filmy sheen

               Of a lace that sifts the sight,

          While a ghost of bloom on the haunted screen

               Drips with the dews of light.

 

          Weird, pale shapes of sculptured stone,

               And marble nymphs agaze

          Ever in fonts of amber sown

               With seeds of gold, and sprays

          Of emerald mosses ever drowned,

               Where glimpses of shell and gem

          Peer from the depths as round and round

               The nautilus nods at them.

 

          Faces blurred in a mazy dance

               And a music wild and sweet,

          Spinning the threads of a mad romance

               That tangles the waltzer's feet:

          Twining arms, and warm swift thrills

               That pulse to the melody,

          Till the soul of the dancer dips and fills

               In the wells of ecstacy.

 

          Eyes that melt in the quivering ore

               Of love, and the molten kiss

          Bubbling out of the hearts that pour

               Their blood in the molds of bliss;

          `Tis worn to a languor slumber-deep,

               The soul of the dreamer lifts

          A silken sail on the gulfs of sleep,

               And into the darkness drifts.5

1. Possibly an ellipse of "martyrs of the Hoosiers" or such.

2. "Sin-choked air" or such.

3. Possibly "Littlest winged cupid" kind of thing.

4. A lawn of ornamental variegated pattern as is damask.

5. What kind of place is Riley heading as Dwainie tells him

his destination?  Is this overblown, sensation-sated place

described with bawdy house parlor accouterments a delirium-

evoked description of where Riley is really heading due to

his alcoholism, i.e. hell?

(The instrument falls from her hands; and Amphine in a gust

of passionate delight, embraces her.)

                           AMPHINE

          Thou art not all of earth, O angel one!

          I do not wonder me those eyes of thine,

          Have peeped above the very walls of Heaven!

          What hast thou seen there? Hast thou looked on God!

          And did he fling as bright a smile as thine

          Back to thee as he beckoned thee within?

          And tell me, didst thou meet an angel there

          Alinger at the gates, nor entering

          Till I, her brother, joined her?1

1. Riley's sister, Martha Celestia, born February, 1847,

died as a baby in 1851, two years after Riley was born.

                           DWAINIE

          Why, hast thou

          As sister dead? Truth, I have heard of one

          Long lost to thee - not dead?

                           AMPHINE

          Of her I speak.

          She strayed away from us long, long ago,

          But I remember her - wondering eyes

          That seemed as tho' they ever looked on things

          We could not see, as haply so they did,

          For she went from us all so suddenly,

          So strangely vanished, that I of times think

          She found a pathway leading back to God,

          And bent her steps therein and slipped away

          Unseen of earthly eyes.

                           DWAINIE

          Nay, do not grieve

          Thee thus, O loving heart! Thy sister yet

          May come to thee in some sweet way the fates

          Are planning, even while thy tear-drops fall;

          so calm thee while I speak of thine own self.

          And I have listened to a whistling bird

          That pipes of waiting danger. Did'st thou note

          No strange behavior of thy sire of late?

                           AMPHINE

          Ay, he is silent, and he walks as one

          In some deep melancholy, or as one

          Asleep.

                           DWAINIE

          And does he never speak with thee,

          Nor ask thy counsel?

                           AMPHINE

          Once he stopped me on

          The palace stairs, and whispered, "Lo! my son,

          thy reign draws near - prepare!" and so passed on

          And vanished like a ghost - so pale he was.

                           DWAINIE

          And didst thou never reason on this thing?

          Nor ask thyself "What dims my father's eye,

          And makes a sullen shadow of his form?"

                           AMPHINE

          Why, there's a household rumor that he dreams

          Death lurks forever at his side, and soon

          Will signal him away.1  But Jucklet says

          Crestillomeem has said the leeches say

          There is no cause for serious concern;

          As so I am assured it is nothing more

          Than childish fancy; so I laugh, ha! ha!

          And wonder, as I see him gliding past,

          If ever I shall waver as I walk

          And stumble o'er my beard, and knit my brow,

          And o'er the dull mosaics of the pave

          Play checkers with mine eyes.2 Ho, ho! Ah,ha!

1. A possible subtle hint of a Riley suicide plan if he

cannot get himself together enough to write poetry. SEE: the

contemporary poem in Hoosier dialect, "Lines to an Onsettled

Young Man." ("An' what is Death?" - W'y, looky hyur -\ Ef

Life an' Love don't suit you, sir, \Hit's jes' the thing yer

lookin' fer!"). At this point, Riley's poetry contains the

theme of the relief from life that comes with nihilation.

SEE the 1879 poem "Death," with its final line "Soh, bless

me! I am dead!"

2. Riley is in a stupor and the fears he will die while

intoxicated in tremens if he cannot come to.  His intoxicated

self, Crestillomeem, however, doesn't deter him from alcohol

consumption. Riley notices himself tumbling about glancing in

distraction as do checkers jumping about on a board, square

by square.

                       DWAINIE (Aside)

          How dare I tell him? Yet, I must - I must?

                           AMPHINE

          Why, art thou, too, grown childish, that thou canst

          Find crazy pleasure talking to thyself,

          And staring frowningly with eyes whose smiles

          I need so much?

                           DWAINIE

          Nay, rather say their tears, poor thoughtless

          prince!

                           AMPHINE

          What mean you?

                           DWAINIE

          Why, I mean, one hour agone,

          The queen, thy mother -

                           AMPHINE

          Nay, say only "queen!"

                           DWAINIE

          The queen, one hour agone, as so I learn,

          Sent message craving audience with the king

          At noon to-night, within the Tower of Stars.

          Thou knowest one hour later that the throne

          Convenes, and that the king has set his seal

          Upon a mandate that proclaims the queen

          Shall there preside if he do not appear.1

          And therefore she, as I have been apprised,

          Connives to hold him absent purposely

          That she may claim the vacancy - for what

          Covert design I know not, but I know

          It augurs danger to you both.

1. If Riley can't get over his alcoholism, he will consign

himself to a life as an alcoholic under Crestillomeem's

control.

                           AMPHINE

          I feel

          Thou speakest truth, and yet how know you this?

                           DWAINIE

          Ask me not that; my lips are welded close,

          And more - since I have dared to speak, and thous

          To listen - Jucklet is accessory,

          And even now is plotting for thy fall -

          But, passion of my soul, think not of me,

          For nothing but sheer magic was avail

          To work me harm; but look thee to thyself!

          For thou art blameless cause of all the hate

          That rankles in the bosom of the queen.

          So have thine eyes about thee, that no step

          May steal behind thee ever - for in this

          Unlooked of way thy enemy will come.

          This much I know, but for what fell intent

          And purpose dire I dare not even guess;

          So look thee, night and day, that none may come

          Upon thee from behind.

                           AMPHINE

          And thou, O precious heart!

          How art thou guarded, and what shield hast thou

          Of safety?

                           DWAINIE

          Fear thou not for me at all;

          Possessed am I of wondrous sorcery -

          The gift of holy magic at my birth,

          My enemy must face me as he comes

          And I will know him at one utterance,

          And then I may disarm him tho' he be

          A giant and of thrice a giant's strength,

          But hist! What wandering minstrel comes this way?

                  VOICE (In the distance.)

               The drowsy eyes of the stars grow dim;

               The wamboo roosts on the rainbow's rim,

                    And the moon is a ghost of a shine:

               The soothing song of the crool1 is done,

               But the song of love is a sweeter one,

                   And the song of love is mine.

               Then wake! O wake!

               For the sweet song's sake,

               Nor let my heart with the morning break!

1. Crooning oriole or some such.

                           AMPHINE

          Some serenader, but what does he in

          The gardens here at glare of noon? Let us

          Conceal ourselves within the bower and watch.

                      (They go within.)

                  VOICE. (Drawing nearer.)

               The mist of the morning, chill and gray,

               Wraps the night in a shroud of spray,

                    The sun is a crimson blot:

               The moon fades fast, and the stars take wing;

               The comet's tail is a fleeting thing,

                    But the tale of love is not,

               Then, wake! O wake!  For the sweet song's

               sake, Nor let my heart with the morning break.

                      (Enter Jucklet.)

                           JUCKLET

          Ho! ho! what will my dainty mistress say

          When I shall stand knee-deep in the wet grass

          Beneath her window, and with upturned eyes

          And swaying head, and all-melodious tongue

          Out-lolling like the clapper of a bell,

          Fling her a song like that?  I wonder now

          If she will not put up her finger thus,

          And say, "Hist! heart of mine! the angels call

          For thee!" Ho! ho! Or will her  blushing face

          Light up her dim boudoir, and from her glass

          Flare back to her a flame upsprouting from

          The red-hot socket of a soul whose light

          She tho't long since had guttered out - Ho! ho!

          Or, haply, will she chastely bend above -

          A parian phantom with its head atip,

          And twinkling fingers dusting down the dews

          That glitter on the tarpysma vines

          That riot round her casement, gathering

          Their blooms to pelt me with, as I below

          All winkingly await the fragrant shower?

          Ho! ho! how jolly is this thing of love!

          But how much richer, rarer, jollier

          Than all the loves is this rare love of mine!

          Why, my sweet mistress does not even dream

          I am her lover; for, to tell the truth,

          I have a way of wooing all my own,

          And waste no speech in creamy compliment,

          And courtesies all gaumed with winy words.

          In fact, I do not woo at all. I win!

          How is it now the old duct glides off?

                            SONG1

            How is it you woo? and now answer me true, -

              How is it you woo and you win?

            Why, to answer you true, - the first thing to do

              Is simply, my dear, to begin.

 

            But how can I begin to woo or to win

              When I don't know a Win from a Woo?

            Why, cover your chin with your fan or your fin

              And I'll introduce them to you.

 

            But what if it drew from my parents a view

              With my own in no manner akin?

            No matter, - your view is the best of the two

              So I hasten to usher them in.

 

            But stay! Shall I grin at the Woo or the Win?

              And what will he do if I do?

            Why, the Woo will begin with "How pleasant it's

            been"

              And the Win with "Delighted with you."

 

            Then supposing he grew very dear to my view?

              I'm speaking, you know, of the Win?

            Why, then you should do what he wanted you to,

              And now is the time to begin.

 

            The time to begin? O then usher him in -

              Let him say what he wants me to do!

            He is here - he's a twin of yourself, - I am Win,

              And you are my darling - my Woo.

1. An amusing song-poem of courtship and marriage in which

Jucklet contemplates his hope of marriage with Dwainie

(Nellie, already married of course.) One who "woos" is an

object of courtship and one who "wins" gets married.  When

Jucklet says, "I am win" he is expressing his confidence that

he can become a groom. The phrase is found in an early 1971

Riley courtship poem, the "Unexpected Result," as a "casual"

phrase for the ritual of courtship and marriage.  ("...If I

were you/ I'd marry that woman, that's what I'd do,/ As

certain as one and one make two!/ Or ain't you much on the

marry now?/ Well, she's a mighty fat take anyhow!"/ "Well

now, you can bet she ain't so slow,/ Hang it!  I won't play

off on her so!/ Where's my overcoat?  I'm going to go!/ And

you needn't sit up till I come in,/For I am right on the

`woo' and the `win!'")

 

          That song I call most sensible nonsense;

          And if the fair and peerless Dwainie were

          But here with that sweet voice of hers, to take

          The part of "Woo," I'd be the happiest "Win"

          On this side of futurity! Ho! ho!

                DWAINIE. (Aside to Amphine.)

          What means he?

                          AMPHINE.

          Why he means that throatless head

          Of his needs further chucking down between

          His ugly shoulders!

           (Starts forward, Dwainie detains him.)

                          DWAINIE.

          Nay, thou shalt not stir!

          See; now the monster has discovered our

          Repast, so let us mark him further.

                          JUCKLET.

          What!

          A roasted wheffle and a toe-spiced whum1 -

          Tricked with a larvey and gherghling's tail

          And, sprit me2! wine enough to swim them in!

          Now I should like to put a question to

          The guests, but as there are none, I direct

          My interrogatory to the host:

          Am I behind time?

1. A "wheffle" is probably something like a waffle and a

truffle mix and a "whum" a wheat bun or some such.

2. Give me spirit.

           (Showing humbly.) Then I can but trust

          My tardy coming will be overlooked

          In my most active effort to regain

          A gracious tolerance by service now:

          Directing the attention to the fact

          That I have brought my appetite along,

          I can but feel - ahem! that further words

          Would be a waste of time.

    (Sits at table, pours out wine, and eats voraciously)

          There was a time

          When I was rather backward in my ways;

          But somehow, as I think I have outgrown

          The nice, shy  age, wherein one makes a meal

          Of two estardles and a fork of soup.

          Hey, Sanaloo; but my starved stomach stands

          With mouth agape, awe-stricken and aghast

          Before the rich profusion of this feast;

          So will I lubricate it with a glass of merl

          And coax it on to more familiar forms

          Of fellowship with these delectables.

          (Pours out wine and holds up the goblet.)

          Mine host - thou of the viewless presence and

          Hush-haunted lip - thy most imperial,

          Ethereal, and immaterial health!

          Live till the sun dries up, and comb thy cares

          With star-prongs till the comets fizzle out

          And fade away and fall and are no more!

              (Drinks and refills the goblet.)

          And if thou wilt permit of the remark, -

          The gleaming shaft of spirit in this wine

          Goes whistling to its mark, and full and fair

          Zipps to the target center of my soul.

          Why, now, I am the veriest gentleman

          That ever buttered woman with a smile,

          And let her melt and run, and drip and ooze

          All over and around a wanton heart;

          And if my mistress bent above me now,

          In all my hideous deformity,

          I think she would look over, as it were,

          The hump upon my back; and so forget

          The kinds and knuckles of my crooked legs

          In this enchanting smile, that she would leap

          Love-dazzled, and fall faint and fluttering

          Within these open, all-devouring arms

          Of mine! Ho! ho! and yet Crestillomeem

          Would have me blight my dainty mistress with

          This feather from the Devil's wing, but I

          Am far too full of craft to spoil the eyes

          That yet shall pour their love like nectar out

          Into my own, and I am far too deep

          For royal wit to wade my purposes.

                          DWAINIE.

          What can he mean.

                          AMPHINE.

          I will rush forward and

          Tear out his tongue, and slap it in his face!

                          DWAINIE.

          Nay, nay! It's what he says!

                          JUCKLET.

          How big a fool -

          How all magnificent an idiot -

          I would be to blight her, when I have power

          To crush the only object that now lies

          Between her love and mine! Ho! ho! ho! ho!

          I wonder, when she sees the human toad

          Squat at her feet, and cock his filmy eyes

          Upon her, and croak love, if she wilt not

          Call me to tweezer him with two long sticks,

          And toss him from her path - O, ho! ho! ho!

          Hell bend him o'er some blossom quick, that I

          May have one brother in the flesh! (Nods drowsily.)

                      DWAINIE.  (Aside)

          Ha! See!

          Look, Amphine, he grows drunken; bide a spell

          And I will vex him with my sorcery1;

          Then will we leave him, for the hour draws on

          When all our arts and strategies must needs

          Be called in action.

1. The spirit of Nellie and her faith in Riley's poetic

possibility invests Jucklet, Riley's survival personality,

with awareness that his drunkenness may kill him.

 

Jucklet yawns drowsily, stretches, and gradually sinks at

full length on the sward.1  Amphine and Dwainie come forward.

Amphine is about to place his foot contemptuously upon the

sleeper's breast, but is held back by Dwainie, who motions

him to turn away and hide his face; this time, she unbinds

her hair, and throwing it forward over her face, and bending

till it trails the ground she lifts to the knee her dress,

and so walks backward round the sleeper, crooning to herself

an incoherent song.2 Then pausing, letting fall her dress,

and rising to full stature, waves her hands above the

sleeper's face, and runs to Amphine, who turns about and

looks upon her wonderingly.

1. A grassy surface.

2. A song of reminder of her faith in Riley which will soon

combine with the terror of dementia tremens from his

alcoholism to reform Riley and wake him out of the poem's

delirium.

                          DWAINIE.

          Now shalt thou look on

          Such misery as thou hast never dreamed.

(As she speaks a chorus of unearthly voices is heard chanting

to strange discord.)

                            CHANT

          When the fat moon smiles

               And the comets kiss,

                    And the Spirkland elves rejoice,

          The whanghoo twunkers1

               A tune like this,

                    And the nightmare nips the royce2:

1. "whanghoo twunkers" is possibly an ellipse for a wailing

spirit evoking a "twang" or "plunk" sound.

2. Possibly an ellipse for "royal arse."

(As these words die away, a comet-freighted with weird

shapes, dips from the sky, and trails near the sleeper's

feet, while from it two nightmares, Creech and Gritchfang,

alight; the comet hisses, switches its tail and disappears,

while the two goblins hover over Jucklet, who stares at them

with starting eyes and horribly comforted features.)

                   CREECH (To Gritchfang.)

          Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

          Flutter your wings like your grandmother does,1

          Tuck in your chin, and wheel over and whir

          Like a dickerbug fast in the web of the wurr,

          Reel out your tongue and untangle your toes,

          And rattle your claws o'er the bridge of his nose;

          Tickle his ears with your feathers and fuzz,

          And keep up a hum like your grandmother does.

(Jucklet moans and clutches at the air convulsively.2)

1. In Middle English mythology, the "nightmare" was

a female monster supposed to settle upon people and animals

in their sleep producing a feeling of suffocation or great

distress from which the sleeper vainly tries to free one's

self. The grandmother of nightmares would be the ultimate

ancestral nightmare herself.

2. An account of Riley's "survival self" in tremens.

                    AMPHINE (Shuddering)

          Most horrible! See how the poor worm writhes!

                           DWAINIE

          But good will come of it, a far voice sings.

                   GRITCHFANG (To Creech.)

          Let me dive down in his nostriline caves,

          And keep an eye out as to how he behaves;

          Fasten him down while I put him to rack,

          And don't let him flops from the flat of his back.

(Shrinks to minute size, disappears in the sleeper's nose,

          and calls gleefully from within:)

          Lo! I have bored thro' the floor of his brains,

          And set them all writhing with torturous pains;

          And I shriek out the prayer as I whistle and whizz,

          I may be the nightmare that my grandmother is!

(Appears, and assuming former shape, crosses to Creech, and

they dance on the sleeper's stomach in broken time to

chorus.)

                           CHORUS

          Whing! whang! so our ancestors sang,

          And they guzzled hot blood and blew up with a bang;

          But they ever tenaciously clung to the rule

          To only blow up in the hull of a fool -

          To fizz and explode like a cast-iron toad

          In the cavernous depths where his victuals were

          stowed -

          When chances were ripest and thickest and best

          To burst every button-hole out of his vest.

(They pause, float high above, and fussing together into a

ponderous iron weight, they drop heavily upon the chest of

the sleeper, who moans piteously.)

                 AMPHINE (Hiding his face.)

          Ah! Heavens! take we hence!

(Dwainie leads him off, looking backward as she disappears

and waving her hands.)

                   CREECH (To Gritchfang.)

          Zipp! Zipp! Zipp! Zipp!

          Sting his tongue raw and unravel his lip:

          Grope, on the right, down his windpipe, and squeeze

          His liver as dry as a petrified flea's.

         (Gritchfang bows, shrinks and disappears.)

          Throttle his heart till he's black in the face,

          And bury it down in some desolate place,

          Where only remorse in her agony lives

          To dread the advice that your grandmother gives.

(The sleeper struggles convulsively, while the voice of

Gritchfang calls from within.)

          Ho! I have clambered the rounds of his ribs,

          And riddled his lungs into tatters and dribs;

          And I turn up the tube of his heart like a hose

          And squirt all the blood to the end of his nose;

          I stamp on his stomach, and caper and prance,

          With my tail tossing round like a boomerang lance,

          And thus may success ever crown my intent

          To wander the way that my grandmother went.

(Appears, falls hysterically in Creech's outstretched arms.

They dance and chorus.)

                           CHORUS

          Whing! Whang! so our ancestors sung.

          And they snorted and pawed, and they hissed and

          they stung,

          And they took a terrific delight in their work

          On the fools that they found in the lands of the

          Spirk.

          And each little grain of their powders of pain

          They scraped up and pestled again and again,

          And they mixed it  in doses for gluttons and sots

          Till they strangled their dreams with abdominal

          knots.

(The comet again trails past, upon which the nightmares leap

and disappear. Jucklet staggers to his feet, glares

frenziedly about him, and with a wild, unearthly howl of

agony, rushes off.)

 

 

                           ACT III

Scene I. - Court of Krung -The royal ministers and counselors

in session - Crestillomeem, in royal attire presiding - She

signals to herald on her right, who steps forward - Blare of

trumpets, greeted with loud murmurings and tumult from

without.

                           HERALD.

          Hist, ho! Ay,ay!  Ay,ay!  Her majesty,

          The all glorious and ever gracious queen

          Crestillomeem, to her most loyal, leal1

          And right devoted subjects, greeting sends -

          Proclaiming, in the absence of the king,

          Her royal presence, as by him empowered

          To sit upon the throne in sovereign state

          And work the royal will. (Confusion)

          Hist, ho! Ay,ay!  Ay,ay!

          And be it known, the king, in view of his

          Approaching dissolution -

          Hath decreed The reading of this royal document.

1. A Middle English word meaning "true."

(Sensation among the counselors, etc. within and wild tumult

without; cries of "Long live the king!" and "Down with the

sorceress!")

(Unrolls a scroll with royal seal attached.  Sensation in

court - wild tumult without, and cries of "Plot!"

"Conspiracy!" "Down with the Queen!" "Down with the

sorceress!")

                   CRESTILLOMEEM. (Wildly)

          Bring me the traitor-knave who dares to cry

          "Conspiracy!"

(Wild confusion without - sound of rioting, and a voice, "Let

me be taken!" Enter officers, dragging Jucklet, wild-eyed and

hysterical.)

                 CRESTILLOMEEM. (Starting.)

          Why bring you Jucklet here?

                          OFFICER.

          Because `tis he who cries "conspiracy!"

          And who incites the mob without with cries

          Of "Plot" and "Treason!"

                       CRESTILLOMEEM.

          Ha! Can this be true?

          I'll not believe it! Jucklet is my fool,

          But not so great a fool that he would tempt

          His sovereign's ire.  Let him be freed.  Come here,

          My Fool.

                      JUCKLET. (Wildly)

          Thy fool? Ho! ho! Why, thou art mine!

(Confusion.  Cries of "Strike down the traitor!")

                          JUCKLET.

          Back! all of ye! I have not waded Hell

          That I should fear your puny enmity!

          But I will give you proof of what I say.

(Presses toward the throne, hurling his opposers left and

right.  Crestillomeem sits as tho' stricken speechless,

waving him off, while Jucklet folds his arms and stands

before her.)

                  JUCKLET. (To the throng)

          Lo! do I here defy her to lift up her voice

          And say this is a lie that Jucklet speaks.

(The queen motions to officers, who, unperceived, close

behind Jucklet.)

          And further - I pronounce the document1

          That craven herald there holds in his hand

          A forgery - a trick - and dare the Queen

          Here in my listening presence to command

          Its utterance.

 1. Probabaly an anti-temperance Murphy pledge to remain

 alcoholic rather to remain sober.

         CRESTILLOMEEM. (Wildly rising to her feet)

          Hold, hireling! traitor! fool!

          The Queen thou dost in thy mad boasts insult

          Will utter first thy doom.

 (Jucklet is seized from behind, and hurled, face upward on

 the dais at her feet, while a minion, with a drawn sword

 pressed against his breast, stands over him.)

          Ere we proceed

          With graver matters let this demon-knave

          Ben sent back home to Hell. Give me the sword -

          The insult has been mine - so even shall

          The vengeance be!

(As she bends forward with the sword, Jucklet, with a super

human effort frees his hand and with a sudden motion, and an

incoherent muttering, flings something1 at the queen, who

staggers, dropping the sword, and with her arms tossed wildly

aloft, totters forward and falls prone upon the pave.  In the

confusion following, Jucklet mysteriously disappears, and as

the bewildered and awe-stricken courtiers lift the fallen

queen, a clear and piercing voice is heard singing.)

1. Sobriety which will change Riley from Crestillomeem's

influence in drunkenness to Krung a respectable person in

society.

                           VOICE.

          The pride of noon must wither soon,

               The dusk of death must fall;

          Yet out of darkest night the moon

               Shall blossom over all.

(For an instant a dense cloud envelops the throne, then

slowly lifts, discovering Krung seated in royal state, with

Jucklet in the act of presenting the scepter to him.  Blare

of trumpets, and chorus of courtiers, ministers, heralds,

etc.)

                           CHORUS.

          All hail! All hail! All hail! Long live the King!

                           KRUNG.

          Thro' God's great providence, together with

          The intervention of an angel whom

          I long ago tho't lost to earth and me,1

          Once more, as your sovereign, do I greet

          And tender you my blessing.  Until late

          I have been subject of the baleful spells

          And witcheries2 of this poor woman here3

          Who grovels at my feet, blind, speechless, and

          So stricken with a curse herself designed

          Should light upon hope's fairest minister.

          Remove her from my sight.

1. Nellie.

2. Intoxication.

3. Crestillomeem, Riley's drunken self.

(As the queen is led away Spraivoll appears in royal attire.

She kneels and kisses the king's hand; in return he kisses

her upon the brow, and lifts and seats her at his side.1)

1.  Spraivoll, Riley's "versifier" self can now write

humble poetry.

          Behold in this sweet woman here my child, who,

              when a babe,

          The cold, despicable Crestillomeem -

(He bows his head within his hands and shudders)

          By spells

          And wicked necromancies spirited

          To some strange real, where, happily

          A Wunkland princess1 found her, and undid

          The spell by a most potent sorcery2

          She doth possess, God-given, to right wrong.

          Lo! let the peerless princess now appear!

1. "Dwainie-Nellie."

2. The power of encouragement and love.

(He lifts his scepter, and a gust of melody, unearly

beautiful, sweeps through the court.  The star above the

Throne drops slowly downward, bursting like a bubble on the

scepter-tip, and issuing therefrom Amphine and Dwainie, hand

in hand, full at the feet of Krung, who bends above them with

his blessing, while Jucklet capers wildly round the

group.)

                          JUCKLET.

          Ho! ho! but I could shriek for very joy -

          For tho' fair Amphine even now bends o'er

          A blossom, I, ho! ho! have no desire

          To meddle with it, since with but one eye

          I slept the while she backward walked around

          Me in the garden.

(Amphine laughs gaily, Jucklet blinks and leers, and Dwainie

bites her finger.)

                           KRUNG.

          Peace! good Jucklet, peace!

          For this is not a time for juiceless wit -

          Tho' I have found restored to me my life -

          Tho' I have found a daughter, I have lost

          A son - for Dwainie, with her sorcery,

          Will, on the morrow, carry him away.1

1. Riley's bond with Nellie causes his "lover-self" to go

live with Nellie in her grave or perhaps heaven as her

"soulmate."

 

SOME COMMENTS ON THE POEM FROM THE TIME OF ITS FIRST

PUBLICATION

 

     Riley never talked about the substance of the poem.

There is an account of a Riley acquaintance of the time,

Minnie Belle Mitchell, who was in her brother-in-law, George

F. Hauck's Greenfield Grocery in 1878 when the Saturday

HERALD arrived with "The Flying Islands" in it.  Riley's

brother, Hum, working in the store as a clerk received the

newspaper from the paper carrier and spread it out on a

counter. While she and Hum were reading it, Riley and his

friend Frank Hayes came into the store. Minnie Belle

remembers saying to Riley, "It's wonderful, simply

marvelous," with her teen-age exuberance. She continued,

"It's beautiful to look at too, but do you know, I can't

understand a word of it - I don't know what it's all about."

     She adds, "My extravagant remarks were followed by an

explosion of laughter from the three young men, and I knew

instantly that I had said the wrong thing and my face was

scarlet."

     Riley's autobiographical poem was a lark to him at the

time. He was "Thomas Chatterton" putting forth a prank poem

but without so serious an intent as to try to make any money

out of a Middle English "forgery" as Chatterton had tried.

     Riley eventually replied, "Well, Minnie Belle, I have to

confess-I don't know what that poem is all about myself. If

was given to me, you know." Riley was not about to tell his

young friend that it was a soul journey while he was

intoxicated.

     The public was just as confused about "The Flying

Islands of the Night" as was Minnie Belle Mitchell.

     The Kokomo TRIBUNE published the following about "The

Flying Islands of the Night" on September 26, 1878. Our young

friend, J.W. Riley, has covered himself all over with glory

by his "The Flying Islands of the Night" recently published

in the Indianapolis HERALD.  Never since the days of Poe has

there been such a fanciful piece of versification written.

It is so unique and purely original that any attempt to

describe it or criticize it would result in a miserable

failure. It must be read to be appreciated.  Mr. Riley has

been before the public but for a short time, but in that time

his poems have placed him at the head of the poets of the

West.  For sublimity, originality, conception and purity of

diction, Mr. Riley ranks the leading literary lights of the

state. His sonnet on the death of Mr. Philips was one of the

grandest concepts that was ever penned. Christ hears the

wailing of the tired soul, and reaching down from Heaven,

takes him by the hand and helps him up.  We are pleased to

learn Mr. Riley's engagements to lecture are numerous and

financially his prospects are bright."

     Yes, but what about the subject matter?

     The poem was really a play. The play was about

Riley's life. The strange thing about it was that Riley was

all the characters except for Dwainie.

 

                THE FLYING ISLANDS AS THEATER

 

     There is something like the great Shakespearian

explanation that "All the world's a stage" in Riley's

autobiographical poem.

     Riley loved to act and was considered a great actor in

his time.

     We might digress to talk about Riley and the theater in

his life. Riley was a great actor. We have the testimony of

other actors to confirm this. Riley played in the soul-roles

he described in his poem.

     At a dinner given in London for Riley by Sir Henry

Irving, the great Nineteenth Century actor of England, with

Coquelin, the great actor of France present, Coquelin

remarked to Irving upon hearing Riley, "This Monsieur Riley

has by nature what you and I have spent twenty years to

acquire." This remark was made on Riley's famous summer trip

of 1891 through Scotland to see Robert Burns' "wee cot" that

ended up in London.

     Riley was a great American actor as well as poet.  He

lived in a play cast of himself on the stage of his soul.

 

 

          ALCOHOLIC'S CONFESSIONAL GENRE LITERATURE

 

     What about the plot?

     Who would have guessed that Riley's genius had produced

the most novel use of a purely American genre in all of

literature.

     Riley had transformed the Alcoholic's Confessional Genre

of literature into poetry. He had come close to strangling

it. He used it absurdly. Literature had never seen such a

mischievous minstrel as Riley before.

     One of the most original aspects of Riley's writing of

"The Flying Islands of the Night" was the use he made of the

Alcoholic's Confessional Genre. In that genre generally, an

alcoholic describes himself as a despicable alcoholic.  Then

along comes a "saving soul" or perhaps the "agent of

salvation." It is a special person to the doomed alcoholic

who pleads to the deranged intoxicated person and inspires

them to escape their drunkenness while in tremens or delirium

of one sort or another. Presto! The alcoholic is saved and a

"new person."

     This genre was very popular in Riley's time when great

temperance movements swept the country.  However no other

poet made even the slightest use of the genre. Nor does it

appear that any other author followed Riley's lead in

applying it to autobiographical poetry. "The Flying Islands

of the Night" is really a very complex puzzle. Once we see

that Poe's "Scenes from Politian" and mock Thomas Chatterton

trumpery were sources of form and language, then we must look

to the movement of Riley's piece. Alcoholic's Confessional

Genre literature provides that more dominant influence.

     The key to the genre is an initial description of

alcoholic "hell" followed by the saving influence of somebody

and then a final scene where sobriety triumphs.  In Riley's

autobiographical use of the genre, the spirit of the dead

Nellie Cooley, his married inspiration of days gone by, is

the saving force. Later, during his revisions for subsequent

publications, Riley adds his mother's love as AEo as a saving

force too.

     Riley's triumph is that of Krung in achieving great fame

and respectable status.

     We find the alcoholic's confessional genre in the prose

of Luther Benson's FIFTEEN YEARS IN HELL. In that book, which

Riley was reading at the time he wrote "The Flying Islands of

the Night," Benson describes the following sequence in his

life in which his mother saves him. "My wild revel was

protracted for days out of dread of the awful sorrow and

remorse that I knew must surely come on my getting sober.  My

mother appeared to me in my troubled dreams, and talked to me

as in life.  Many times in my slumber, and in my waking

fancies did I see her pale, troubled face, with her pitying

eyes looking on me as from that bed of pain and death, and at

such times I reached out my hands toward her in mute pleading

for forgiveness, forgetting or not knowing that she was

dead."

     Riley looked on Benson with awe and reverence. But was

he for real? Was he just another "charlatan" with a product

to sell - piety and salvation - as did Docs McCrillus and

Townsend sell "miracle cures." Luther was someone of national

significance as can be seen in two representative press

reports of his time.

     From the Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) GAZETTE:

     Luther Benson, Esq. of Indiana, has just closed one of

the most powerful temperance lectures ever delivered here.

The house was one solid mass of people, with not one spare

inch of standing-room. For nearly two hours he held the

audience as any magic. At the close a large number signed the

pledge, some of them the hardest drinkers here.  The people

are so delighted with his good work that they have secured

him for another lecture Wednesday evening."

     From the Manchester (New Hampshire) PRESS:

     "Smyth's Hall was completely filled, seats and standing

room at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, with an audience which

came to hear Luther Benson.  The officers of the Reform Club,

clergymen and reformed drunkards occupied seats upon the

platform. Mr. Benson is a native of Indiana, and says he was

a drunkard from six years of age. He was within three months

of graduation from college when he was expelled for

drunkenness. Then he studied for a lawyer, and was admitted

to practice, being drunk while studying and drunk while

engaged in a case.  At length he reduced himself to poverty,

pawning all he had for drink. At length he started to reform

and though he had once fallen he was determined to persevere.

Since his reformation two years ago, he gave temperance

lectures. He is a young man, a powerful, swinging sort of

speaker, with a good command of language, original with

peculiar intonation, pronunciation and idioms, sometimes

rough, but eminently popular with his audiences.  He spoke

for an hour and a half steadily, wiping the perspiration from

his face at intervals, taking up the greater part of his

address with his personal experience.  He said he had

delirium tremens several times, once for fifteen days, and

gave an exceedingly minute and graphic description of his

torments. A number of men signed the pledge at the close of

the meeting. Among them was one man, who sat in front of the

audience and kept drinking from a bottle he had evidently in

a spirit of bravado, but at the conclusion of the address he

signed the pledge, crying like a child."

     In another example of the genre, THIRTY-THREE YEARS A

LIVE WIRE, the autobiography of John T. Hatfield, another

reformed alcoholic and incidentally a childhood friend of

James Whitcomb Riley who went on to lecture on holiness, the

Act II stage (the saving agency) is referred to as an

"Anointing." Instead of a "Dwainie" as with James Whitcomb

Riley or a "doting mother" as with Benson, Hatfield's

inspiration is Christ.

     Riley was as much aware of Hatfield's writing in the

genre as he was Benson's.

     As to their boyhoods together, Hatfield writes, "James

Whitcomb Riley and myself were boys together.  We were in the

same class at school, and at the same "swimming hole," since

made famous in one of Mr. Riley's poems.  During the Civil

War we marched the streets together with tin pans for drums

and broomsticks for guns.  Little did passers-by imagine, as

they cast indifferent glances at us little dust-begrimed

urchins out in the road playing soldier, that, in the coming

years, little Johnnie Hatfield would bless his country as

John T. Hatfield, "The Hoosier Evangelist," and little Jim

Riley would be known the world over as James Whitcomb Riley,

"The Hoosier Poet."

     Hatfield held revivals country-wide as a primary speaker

of the American "Holiness movement" and founded a religious

college in Pasadena, California.

     From his boyhood memorials, he says,

"My father, in those days, frequently kept a bottle of "Old

Kentucky Rye" in the cupboard and its contents were offered

to both children and guests.  This custom of the home had

something to do in kindling to great intensity my appetite

for strong drink, and at the age of twenty years I was

frequenting saloons and seeking companionship among the vile,

soul-destroying influence  of saloon life.  (Biographer's

Note: This crowd probably included James Whitcomb Riley.)

Like a meteor in the night I was fast going down, and nothing

less powerful than the mighty attraction of heavenly

gravitation could reverse my hellward course and draw me to

the heights of noble Christian manhood.  Thank God, the Holy

Spirit interposed, the blood of Christ was supplied, and my

young life was transformed from a disgraceful career of

drunken profligacy to one of eminent usefulness in the cause

of the Lord Jesus Christ."

     Strangely enough, James Whitcomb Riley's life passage

had the same result.

     An anointing incident which saves Hatfield from his

life of sin is described as occurring at a typical Midwestern

camp-meeting of the period. Hatfield says, "People who

witnessed the scenes of that day declared that they saw

flashes of Divine light appear over the congregation as wave

and wave of heavenly power descended upon the assembly of

thousands." After the meeting, Hatfield went to a farmer's

home exhausted and went to bed, but couldn't sleep until "I

again closed my eyes and there appeared before me a vision.

I saw a silver horn lined with gold, the large end resting

upon my breast.  It appeared to be many feet in length from

the large end to the mouthpiece which appeared to be quite

small. I looked up from the large end, and had never held

anything so indescribably beautiful. Suddenly the opening at

the small end was darkened and there appeared a halo of

light, which seemed to envelop a fast-approaching figure.  As

nearer and nearer the lovely vision approached, I soon

recognized the central figure as that of Jesus and the

beautiful halo proved to be a band of bright, shining angels.

All the angels were singing and such exquisite tones cannot

be described, neither can they be compared to any

earthly melodies. In a short time, Jesus stood close beside

me, and looked down upon me with an expression that, in

clearer tones than words, spoke of tenderest love, then He

disappeared.  At the same time I felt a sensation in my

throat as though I was swallowing something. Then the horn

passed away, the angels disappeared and the music ceased.  I

opened my eyes and then closed them again, hoping that the

vision would appear one more, but I waited and listened in

vain." The call was for Hatfield to preach just as James

Whitcomb Riley's call from his deceased Dwainie was

inspiration for him to write poetry and recite it from the

lyceum circuit stages around the country.

     Whether Riley was intoxicated while writing "The Flying

Islands of the Night" is unknown. There is this possibility.

Recent study by Mark Brunke and Merv Gilbert in "Alcohol and

Creative Writing" in PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORTS (1992,71, 651-658)

found that alcohol facilitates creative writing and

specifically the use of novel figurative language. The

testing of the hypothesis had intoxicated persons write brief

stories or streams of consciousness, all of which were

fictional. There were significantly more novel tropes while

intoxicated than sober. Subjects also wrote significantly

more words when intoxicated. There is obviously very marked

used of figurative language and novel trope use in "The

Flying Islands of the Night." Nevertheless, the writing bears

great sense as an autobiographical exposition under the

circumstances of its writing. Whether Riley wrote the piece

while intoxicated is debatable but unnecessary to know for

its value in this biography.

     We cannot fully explore "The Flying Islands of the

Night" in this preface to the life of the most important of

the late Nineteenth Century American poets, James Whitcomb

Riley. We must however confirm its autobiographical nature as

the basis of this biography. Crestillomeem, Krung, Jucklet

and others are the self-visualization which Riley embodied in

his wonderfully "astronomically" impossible vision of self-

alienation and personality fragmentation he called "The

Flying Islands of the Night" which will govern the biography

to follow.

     Why bother with such an impossible person?

     There may be other reasons for a study of Riley -

and some of them will be explored - but ultimately the

very mix of his personality, and the eventual triumph of

his poetic self, "Spraivoll," (usually) was brought about by

an intervening instrumentality of spirituality that I find so

compelling it must be written about. At its point of greatest

flourish, this aspect of Riley became transforming to Riley's

poetry as well as literally "saving" him from Crestillomeem.

At its very best the quality in his life became kenotic

poetry.  Kenotic poetry is the finest poetry of Post-Civil

War American literature and Riley wrote its greatest singing

verse. The reason it is the finest poetry of the period is

that it connected ecstatically with the American soul and

expressed its song.

     Some mention of the obscure kenotic theological movement

originating in Germany must be interwoven into this account

and also its odd peripatetic journey into the American mid-

continent where Riley wrote his poetry.  This will come with

a discussion of Riley as Spraivoll later on in this

biography.

     But for now let us meet Riley as a cast of himself

as he knows himself to be at the level of his soul.

     There is simply no way of accounting for the life of

James Whitcomb Riley without meeting his dialoguing "self-

cast" play partners.  We will introduce them in the chapters

that follow and see how their individual lives were lived.

 

 

                           JUCKLET

 

          HOW CAN RILEY SURVIVE IT ALL? - JUCKLET,

    A MINSTREL WHO ANSWERS THE CALL WITH MISCHIEF IN MIND

 

     Among the play characters Riley sees himself playing

in his autobiographical "The Flying Islands of the Night,"

is Jucklet, the mischievous "jongleur," dialect singer, story

teller and Riley's survival self. It would be a grave mistake

to consider this Riley "self" as some sort of happy idiot.

Jucklet kept his eyes open and his genius was searching out

American life.

     Jucklet was probably the role that people enjoyed the

most about Riley. Some of his clever shenanigans, such as his

"blind painter" act when he was wandering around Indiana as

an itinerant house and sign painter, are firmly lodged in

American folklore.

                   THE BLIND PAINTER PRANK

     The "blind painter" prank occurred in August, 1872 with

his traveling friends- also itinerant craftsmen or vagrants

calling themselves "The Graphics" - who knew of Riley's

genius for mimicry. The group decided to have some fun with

the town folk of Peru, Indiana.  The young men hinted around

town that a "blind sign painter" was outside trying to paint

a sign on a building.  Soon half the town came out to

witness. How could a blind man paint a sign? Riley assumed

the patient, weary look of a blind man, groping about and

upsetting a can of paint, whereupon his associates jeered him

and made terrible fun of him. Then another would say, "Look

at that poor blind man.  Isn't it a shame the way folks make

fun of him!" In the meantime, Riley climbed the ladder,

fumbled for a few minutes, and, at last, without laying out

the letters, as a sign painter customarily did, he produced a

beautifully done free-hand sign on the side of the building

while his friends laughed and poked each other below. In the

meantime, people chirped, "He isn't blind! How could he do

that if he were blind!" while the Graphics solemnly insisted,

"Oh, yes he is!" This Riley, the "blind sign painter," was

classic Jucklet.

               THE VOICE FROM THE CELLAR PRANK

     My favorite prank performed by Riley was done with John

Hoover in a small town in the heat of summer of 1874. Bill

Moore, hot and fat, plodded the main street which was baking

in a scorching sun. In front of the dry goods store, a

pleading voice reached his ear. "Bill, help, Bill! Lift up

the cellar door. I am trapped in the cellar. I can't see in

here!" Bill put his hands under the cellar door and tugged

and pulled and teased but the cellar door failed to move when

along came another person, Lee Trees.  Lee was wearing a new

white suit and was the town "dandy." "Lee, Lee.  Help!" the

voice called out from the cellar. "Please lift up the cellar

door. I'm in here and I can't get out."  Both men pulled and

tugged and teased. Dripping with perspiration they went

inside the dry goods store and came out with candles to look

through a window into the dark cellar. They saw that the

cellar door was locked with chains from the inside. When they

went back into the dry goods store, the merchant scratched

his head and rocked on his heels and said he didn't know how

anyone could get down there in the first place.  Then, from

next door in the hardware store, they heard James Whitcomb

Riley and John Hoover laughing hysterically and holding their

sides.  Upon further investigation they found Riley holding a

hose the other end of which went through an iron grating and

down into the cellar. The voice from the cellar door came

from the lips of James Whitcomb Riley in the hardware store

through the hose. Jucklet was just having some fun.

              TAKE RADWAY'S READY RELIEF PRANK

     I should add that Riley himself was not simply pranking

playing Jucklet, he was also surviving in the character role.

Sometimes the two mixed. There is a story of Jucklet, while a

young man traveling through the countryside painting signs.

On a new gate between Kennard and New Castle, Riley noticed a

farmer had displayed on its top board: "What will you do to

be saved?" With no one in sight, Riley painted underneath it,

"Take Radway's Ready Relief!" This was a common laxative of

the time. Some days later, he passed the same farm and on the

bottom board the farmer had added, "And prepare to meet thy

God!"

 

     Jucklet was also a poet. His greatest writing is found

in the "Poetical Gymnastics" series and "Respectably Declined

Papers of the Buzz Club" series published originally in the

Indianapolis Saturday HERALD. This body of Riley's work

represents Riley in unburdened creativity and mischievous

orientation. In these great series, Riley writes the poem "On

Quitting California." No, this poem is not about moving away

from the great Pacific coastal state. It is about giving up a

"California" brand of cheap "red-eye" whiskey. Riley is

quitting a crummy brand -not giving up alcohol entirely.

     Cleverness and humor are marks of Jucklet. Jucklet is

the usual story teller.  There seems to be an easy, casual

and honest relationship between Riley and Jucklet.

     Occasionally one finds Jucklet lapsing into the "dots"

and "disses" of his native Hoosier Deutsch culture. Here is

one of Riley's stories from his "Buzz Club" writings.

 

   UNAWANGAWAWA; OR, THE EYELASH OF THE LIGHTNING (1878).

 

     It was the noble red man, from the land of the setting

sun, in company with some half dozen members of his tribe,

under management of "Captain Rigby Knowles," who, as the big

bills went on to state, had been "nine years a captive among

the wild, untutored wanderers of the western wilderness," and

was now "a missionary, disseminating knowledge, and the

advantages of education, to his dusky brothers, as well as

enlightening the civilized world regarding the manners and

customs of the poor Indian."

     They were billed to show "for one night only," at the

one church in our little village, the Thursday evening prayer

meeting having been postponed for their accommodation, and

"the clergy" complimented.  I shall never forget their visit

to our school that afternoon, for I was then a lad of ten or

thereabout; so I leave you to infer the aching sense of my

own inferiority as they stalked stoically into the school

room, in full bloom of war-paint, wampum, bead moccasins and

feathers, and headed by the  redoubtable "Captain Rigby

Knowles" himself, looking, for the world, like an enlarged

facsimile of the "Daniel Boone" in Monteith's geography, only

excepting the melancholy and the deceased deer at his feet.

     The arithmetic class, in fractions, hurried to its seat,

and the silence of death fell upon the room, while the

blanched faces of the "scholars" contrasted vividly with

those of their tawny visitors as "the famed interpreter and

guide," after a wheezy conversation with the teacher, in

which the latter only nodded his head submissively at every

proposition - seized suddenly hold of a stalwart warrior, and

with the bloodcurdling remark of "Pombee steel-ah da be-bee

wah-wah!" or words to that effect, wheeled him before us with

the following introduction:

     "He iss a big chief.  He come to make some talk wiss

you.  He iss a much, heap, smart man.  He will make you big

Injun speech dot you don't could understand, and den we told

you w'as he say.  He no talk white talk.  He on'y talk much

very Injun. He talk Choctaw - he talk Mohawk - he talk

Chippavay - he talk effry all style of Injun talk, on'y he no

talk white talk.  He iss awful smart!  Me talk, like big

chief, effry all style of Injun-talk, on'y me talk United

States also.  He iss - O, he iss awful smart, big, very,

posted Injun gentlemans.  Now he iss go to speak big Injun

speech, unt den I say it explain, so dot you know wass he

say." Then, turning to the big chief, he touched him off with

the following fuse: "De ah-ghee-ghah bee-gah wah-way!" at

which the chief at once opened fire in deep, lazy guttural,

accompanying the utterance with that facial contortion

indicative of an acute attack of cholera morbus.  This

incoherent mastication had occupied but a brief interval of

time when the interpreter jerked the tail of the warrior's

shawl, and with a spasmodic "Chow," and a "Ching-ching," he

stopped as abruptly as a German music-box.  The interpreter

explained:

    "He say dot you must oxcuse him - dot he don't know he

was go to speak.  He say dot he ain't much fix on the de

subjec', but dot he try to drop some small, leedle, few

remarks dot come to hiss mind." Then, prodding the big chief

between the shoulders with a rigid thumb, the noble red man

lumbered off again in a complexity of verbal chow-chow that

put the listener's ears on edge, and thrilled the speculative

fancy with a nameless dread, as the ever-widening stream of

conglomerated eloquence dashed into savage meaning, fiercely

defined by gestures that swung invisible war-clubs, hurled

tomahawks, and manipulated the gory scalping-knife.  And it

was sometime before the fearless interpreter could check this

impassioned burst. He had jerked at the tail of the warrior's

shawl like a school-boy at the string of a limber-jack, and

with pretty much the same result.  The "scholars" were wild-

eyed, and pale with fright.  The teacher had one leg thrown

carelessly over the window sill, and with an air of careless

indifference was pruning his trembling nails with the big

blade of his knife, while the girls in actual terror

hid their pallid faces behind their desk-lids, and pencils

and pen-holders rained from their places, some, piercing with

their barbed points the floor, stood bolt upright and

quivered with affright.  It was a critical moment for us all;

but the daring interpreter, with a presence of mind worth a

Van Amburg, threw open his blouse, disclosing a magic

something lurking in an inner pocket which the savage reached

for with a pacified "Ugh! give some, me dry up!" while the

small boys whispered they bet it was a pistol! They bet he'd

killed lots o' Indians! They bet he wasn't afraid!, etc. etc.

And so we listened with unusual interest as the interpreter

explained:

     "You mustn't don't get sceert: he won't hurt noting.  He

wass on'y yoost say dot he for hissef iss sorry dot he don't

gone to school when he wass been a leedle childrens like you.

But he say when he was leedle like dot, he roll unt dumble in

de grass, unt go mitout hiss clothes, unt kick hiss heels

like a jaybird.  He say dot he not got some advantages

ober he would gone to school now off he wass a leedle boy

wonce.  He was yoost told you how he wass a leedle poor Injun

boy, unt don't gone to Sunday school. He say when he wass

leedle, heap, awful naughty Injun boy he wass one time play

mit hiss leedle brutters mit seesters in de big wasser, unt

he want to comed out unt dey wont let um, unt sling um wiss

mud, unt dot make um heap-much-brave, so dot he kill um unt

scalp um. Den when he goned home his folks dey said: "Where

iss your leedle brutters unt seesters?" Unt he say: "Dey at

de swimmin-hole." Unt when gone to found um, dey all was

scalped unt dead, unt dey hands cut off, unt dey nose cut

off, unt dey ears unt eyes cut off. Den hiss folks say: "Who

wass done it?" Unt he say: "I don't could lied about it; I do

it wiss my leedle hatchet!"  Unt den his folks dey say:

"Dot's goot! Dot boy will been on de war-path ober he been

twelf moons of age!" Unt den he say dot make um feel like big

warrior, so dot he can't wait, unt got impulsiff, unt kill

also de rest of his folks, unt gone on de war-path unt kill

heap-much of ladies unt gentlemens.  But he say dot he won't

done it now - dot he iss sorry cos off he would a saved his

leedle brutters unt seester he would took um to Sunday school

wiss um. "Ugh gee bebah wah-wah!" This concluding sentence of

the interpreter, abruptly addressed to the warrior, evidently

conveyed to him instructions to simmer down, and close his

peroration in some conciliatory and complimentary fashion,

for the noble savage smiled like a genial hippopotamus, and

thumped his breast like a bass drum.

     His remarks now seemed to be particularly addressed to

the fairer portion of his audience, and his gesticulation at

was so palpably indicative of love and affection the big

girls blushed and giggled, and the small boys whistled aloud.

Only once did he cause a tremor of trepidation to thrill the

bosoms of his gentle auditors, when in a triumphant burst he

tossed his arms aloft, an, with a glory of inspiration

lighting up his dusky features, gave vent to the impassioned

utterance, "Shoot-pop-bang!"  and then, shortly after, he

drew his shawl tightly about him, slapped his chest so

vehemently it jarred a feather from his head-gear, and, with

the pompous exclamation, "Me big chief, wah!" he folded his

arms, and stood stoical and silent.

     The interpreter, quivering with an inward paroxysm,

after prefacing the interpretation with the chuckling

observation, "Bet you don't know whas he say!" went on in

this wise"

     "Well he say dot he would like to marry a few off you

girls.  You notice he hold up hiss hand like dot?  Well, dot

mean five; he say he would like to marry five off you girls.

You notice he hold up de also both hands? Well, dot mean dot

he would have ten wife - off de both kind - five injun, unt

five white squaw.  He say he tink dot make things lifely off

his domestics unt hiss leedle quiet wigwam.  He say dot off

you marry him he make you all a good husband, unt dot he took

you to de land of de setting sun, where you to do nothing -

only yoost work.  He say he will done all de huntin' hisself,

unt dot he will "shoot-pop-bang," like he say, de mussrat unt

possum, unt cath um by the tail unt bring um home; den all

you had to done wass build de fire, unt peel um, unt cook

yoost a leedle, unt he will eat um. Den he say he will give

you all de rest. He say you will suit de climate - he say it

iss so healdy dot you live more as a hundred years old off

you gone wiss him once, unt a tree don't fall on you.  He say

it iss so healdy out dere dot hiss grandpa iss livin' yet,

unt he iss over four tousand year old, unt ain't a gray hair

in his head. He say dey also no hair in his head. He say he

chaw tobacker all hiss life unt don't hurt um.  He say he is

healdy dot you wouldn't know um off you see um. He say dot

you got in for fifteen cent, unt de leedle children's five

cent tonight at de meetin' house."

     As Spraivoll's friends are ministers, primarily Myron

Reed and Robert Burdette, or fellow kenotics such as Lew

Wallace author of "Ben Hur," as Crestillomeem's are fellow

alcoholics such as James McClanahan, Clint Hamilton, and

Luther Benson, as Krung's friends are establishment figures

such as Dr. Wycliffe Smith, Booth Tarkington and Benjamin

Harrison, Jucklet's friends are the mischievous and daring

nonconformists and "funsters" such as John Skinner, Bill Nye

and Mark Twain.

     Here is an incident that reveals how Riley as Jucklet

often mischievously made his way through life before he

became famous minstrelizing. The incident is one recalled by

Minnie Belle Mitchell.

                   TRIP TO CHARLOTTESVILLE

     "The struggle and disappointments endured by the Hoosier

poet in his effort to arouse public interest in his poems

would have discouraged fainter hearts.  But each succeeding

failure made him more determined to carry on. He had for some

time been reading his poems at home and church entertainments

and social gatherings (from his early twenties). Public

offerings at first failed completely.

     Then another opportunity presented itself when the

trustee of the Charlottesville one-room school came to

Greenfield and Riley saw his chance to offer a public

entertainment there.  After Riley explained to the school

trustee his plan, the trustee appeared interested. The fellow

not only have his consent to the enterprise, but agree to

have the schoolhouse warm and lighted and to see that a large

audience would greet him.

     Thinking this would be fun, Riley and his friend and

roommate, John Skinner, prepared a variety show with a few

guitar numbers and reading of poetry by Riley.

     Charlottesville was eight miles east of Greenfield and

the two young men in their twenties, never doubting that a

full house would mean a big income, ordered a horse and buggy

from Greenfield's liveryman, a Mr. Morgan. The only problem

was that the only road to Charlottesville was a toll road at

the time. To get there a tollgate had to be passed and

neither Riley nor Skinner had any money to get through.

When the two reached the tollgate, they got the toll gate

keeper to agree to await payment until they returned with

their receipts from the entertainment.

     The two arrived at Charlottesville and went to the

schoolhouse but found it dark. Everyone in Charlottesville

was in bed. The two drove their team to the trustee's home

and found him in bed too. He forgot his promise to broadcast

publicity about the entertainment. He did, however, get up

and go open the schoolhouse. About a dozen people were

rousted up. The collection to pay for the show at the end of

the program amounted to only thirty-five cents.  The trustee

said he and his family should not have to pay.

     The two boys were in a quandary since they had to pay

the tollgate keeper to get home and the liveryman.

     When the two reached the tollgate, they found the

tollhouse was dark - the tollgate keeper was in bed and the

pole across the road was tied down. There was just one thing

to do. John Skinner got out and cut the rope and up flew the

pole from across the road. Then he got back in and the two

flew down the road towards Greenfield as if chased by

bandits.

     When the two got to the livery stable, Riley found a

boy in charge. Riley as Jucklet, ever resourceful, asked the

boy if he could change a twenty dollar bill. The boy said

"No," and told them young men they would have to pay for the

horses in the morning when Mr. Morgan was there.

     Then the two returned to their lodgings at the Guyman

Inn in Greenfield where they spent their "take" from the

entertainment on cheese and crackers sinking behind the

potbelly stove in the tavern office. While they were

relaxing, there was a great knocking on the tavern door,

and the irate tollgate keeper came in, fuming and swearing.

He asked the night clerk if he had heard a rig pass by the

tavern traveling at high speed.  The clerk said he didn't

remember any such thing and then listened as the tollgate

keeper told his tale of somebody running the tollgate and

probably driving on to Indianapolis. He said, "I think I know

who they were. Two young men looking awful suspicious went

through earlier and said they would pay on their way back

through. They were wearing white collared shirts and looked

like city fellers."

     As Riley and Skinner slumped deeper and deeper into

their chairs on the other side of the stove, the clerk

confirmed that young men like that were probably city

"fellers" as the tollgate keeper left."

     Getting started as a poet and platform artist was made

much easier for Riley because, as Jucklet, he appreciated and

enjoyed mischief and the occasional humor of the perverse.

     There is something to be said that Riley's Jucklet

character has the good humor and sense of fun of his Hoosier

Deutsch ancestors. Central Indiana is sometimes referred to

as the land of the "Hoosier Deutsch." Riley was predominantly

of Hoosier Deutsch cultural influence. Riley's father,

Reuben, spoke Deutsch in his boyhood home and did not learn

to speak English until after his childhood even though he

came from Irish roots. Riley's ancestors kept alive many of

the old folktales and stories of their lives.  Few of these

Deutsch tales survive. I myself preserved one in a book

called THE WILD BULL OF BLUE RIVER.

     The records are very, very scant about the hardy Deutsch

settlers of Central Indiana. Their language was once spoken

on the street corners of Greenfield. Cultural influences

discouraged it. For example, in Riley's own Bradley Methodist

Church of Greenfield, Indiana those who spoke German were

consigned to the back of the church since it was deemed only

the English speaking Methodists could derive benefit of the

English sermons. Balconies were built in some such churches

so that the Deutsch might see what was going on at the altar

since they could not be expected to understand the service

verbally. The Deutsch language was slowly lost in Indiana

until the time of the First World War.  In fact Deutsch was

made illegal in Greenfield schools by an ordinance of the

Greenfield City Council during World War One and was rarely

spoken after that.

     One of the Deutsch poems was preserved by Riley. It was

called "Lullaby," and was published in Riley's famous column

in the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD called "Poetical

Gymnastics" in 1879. Its subtitle says "From the German." It

has never been included in Riley's COMPLETE WORKS apparently

because Riley translated it and it was not an original

composition.  Riley did write another "Lullaby" but it was

not his Hoosier Deutsch translation.

 

                   HOOSIER DEUTSCH LULLABY

 

     Leedle dutch baby haff gome to town!

     Jabber and jump till der day goes down;

     Jabber unt schpluter, unt blubber unt phizz

     Vot a dutch baby dees lannsman is!

     I dink dose mout vas leedle too vide

     Obber you laugh fon dot also-side;

     Haff got blenty of deemple unt vrown?

     Hey, leedle dutchman gome to town.

 

     Leedle dutch baby, I dink me proud

     Obber your fader can schquall dot loud

     Ven he vos leedle dutch baby like you,

     Unt yoost don'd gare like he always do;

     Guess ven dey vean id on beer you bet

     Dots der reason he don'd vean'd yet -

     Vot you said off he drink you down,

     Hey, leedle dutchman gome to town.

 

     Leedle dutch baby, yoost schquall avay -

     Schquall fon breakfast till gisterday:

     Better you all-time gry unt shoud

     Dan schmile me vonce fon der coffin oud!

     Vot I gare off you keek my nose

     Downside-up, mit you heels unt toes -

     Downside-up, or sideup-down

     Hey! leedle dutchman gome to town.

 

     Riley enjoyed being a Hoosier Deutschman as we can tell

from this recollection of one of their poems. The Hoosier

Deutsch were a playful, happy people who enjoyed life as well

as industry.  They were wanderers. Jucklet sprang from

predominantly Deutsch culture although not entirely from

Deutsch roots.

     Andrew A. Riley, Irish grandfather of James Whitcomb

Riley, was born in Bedford County, Pennsylvania in a Deutsch

speaking community. Andrew's parents were Rebecca Harvey,

born July 11, 1769 in England who died in Montgomery County,

Ohio on Sept. 7, 1849, and James (or John "William") Riley

born 1752 in Torsnagh, Cork, Ireland who died in Bedford,

Pennsylvania before 1820. The source of this pedigree is

listed in the acknowledgements. James Riley had married

Rebecca Harvey about 1775 at Reading Berks, Pennsylvania.

     Andrew was the second child. The firstborn was Samuel

Riley, born 1790. After Andrew came James Anderson Riley,

born 1796 who died in Nov. 1840; Isaac Riley, born about

1800; Henry Riley, born about 1803; George Washington Harvey

Riley, born Dec. 19, 1807 who died May 22, 1868; Sarah Riley,

born about 1810 in Pennsylvania who married George Roudebush;

and Mary Ann Riley, born 1813 who died in 1887.

     Andrew's wife, Margaret Slick, was the daughter of John

Slick born about 1769, the son of Philip Slick born about

1740 in Germany, and Elizabeth Wilson. Andrew A. Riley and

Margaret Slick were married in Bedford, Pennsylvania, but the

Family Bible gives no date. It must have been around 1820

since they started West soon after that date. They stopped

first near Cincinnati, Ohio and then at Richmond and finally

located on a farm a short distance southeast of Windsor in

the western part of Randolph county on what was later known

as the Joshua Swingley farm, with Andrew remaining there and

running a tavern until the time of his death about November

29, 1840. He was also the local justice of peace for Stoney

Creek Township until 1837 according to the bond records of

the county. The farm was on a knoll along Stoney Creek.

Coming to frontier Indiana was a daring family trip.  During

the 400 mile journey from Pennsylvania, Andrew sold all of

his belongings for $30 except a horse, a "carry-all" and some

clothing.  He and his older sons walked while the mother and

daughters rode in the wagon. Reuben Riley was one of those

sons who walked. He was the fifth in a family of 14 children.

During this westward trek, the family lived in the open,

building campfires in the woods at night. In the Allegheny

foothills, their fare was slight. When they reached Randolph

County, Indiana, they were able to find a bounty of food from

wild deer, black bear, squirrels, wild turnkey and wild

vegetables growing along Stoney Creek.

     Andrew and Margaret had the following children: Sarah

Ann Riley, born about 1815 who married Tom D. Shepherd; Job

Harvey Riley, born about 1816; John Sleek Riley (Dr.) born

Dec. 12, 1817; Reuben (the poet's father) born June 2, 1819;

Andrew Pinckney Riley, born 1820 who married Elizabeth Cline;

James Anderson Riley born about 1821; George Washington

Harvey Riley born about 1823 who married Emma C. Nex; Joseph

Sleek Riley, born about 1824; Benjamin Frank Riley born about

1826 who married Elizabeth Patterson; and Martin Whitten

Riley born about 1828 who married Elizabeth Dodson.

     Andrew's agricultural labor produced large crops and one

winter it is said he helped save a tribe of starving Miami

Indians by loading their ponies with corn. In another time of

scarcity, a stockman offered him 75 cents a bushel for his

corn, but he chose to sell it to needy neighbors for 25 cents

a bushel. Shortly before his death, Andrew said, "I have

never intentionally wronged any man. I have not been vulgar

or profane. I have tried to do right. I do not fear to die."

     Not all Hoosiers could say the same.

     Reuben Riley reached Hancock County, Indiana, within

a few scant years of the departure of the last native

Americans from Indiana. Many were wrenched away in a horrible

episode in Indiana history. The last of the Potawatomi, those

who had not accepted "white folks ways" or left before were

rounded up and removed by the county militiamen of Indiana

called up to state service for that purpose by the Governor

in 1838.

      These native Americans were forced to take the infamous

"Trail of Death" out of Indiana during September of that

year.

       A militia officer, General Tipton, was placed in

charge of the roundup of the Hoosier Indians.  Many tried

to escape into the woods but were arrested and made

prisoners. Indian children were left in the woods by parents

in the hope that they, at least, might be able to stay in the

native lands if they could survive. Many stories exist of

such children being adopted by "white European" families when

they were discovered.

      No sad story stopped General Tipton. He was not cruel

but he knew what the Hoosier Governor's orders were and that

was to round up the remaining Indians and get them out of the

state.  Here is an excerpt of one of his written accounts,

"Many of the Indian men were assembled near the chapel when

we arrived, and were not permitted to leave camp or separate

until matters were amicably settled and they had agreed to

give peaceable possession of the land sold by them." If

Indians had weapons, these were taken away.

     Squads of militia fanned out to collect the remnants of

the tribes who had refused to move out of Indiana by that

time.

     By September, Tipton had gathered the last 859 which

contained many old people and young. One of the Catholic

missionaries, Father Petit, who had lived with the tribes

describes his final Christian worship service since he was

not permitted to go on the Trail of Death. "At the moment of

my departure I assembled all my children to speak to them for

the last time. I wept, and my auditors sobbed aloud. It was

indeed a heartrending sight, and over our dying mission we

prayed for the success of those on their way to the new

hunting grounds. We then with one accord say, `O Virgin, we

place our confidence in thee.' It was often interrupted and

but few could finish it. After the Indians were sequestered,

the soldiers were under orders to burn and destroy the huts

and cabins of the Indians to erase temptation to return to

Indiana.

     When the Indian march order was given on the early

morning of September 4th. The weather was very hot and dry.

The ordinary sources of water were dried up by then and

malaria started infecting the Indians because water supplies

were stagnant. The native Americans were marched single file

on foot to cross Indiana, Illinois and the Mississippi.  Few

made it.  Even by the time they reached the pioneer

settlement at Logansport many died. Their camp there was

described as "a scene of desolation; on all sides were the

sick and dying." The militiamen too were getting sick and

many were permitted to return to their homes. The few Indians

with Indian ponies were compelled to give them up for these

departing militiamen to return to their families.

     On the way through the Wabash Valley, the suffering

increased so much that General Tipton relented and allowed

the Indians to call for Father Petit to come to them. Despite

his own delicate health the good father went and says, "On

Sunday, September 16, I came in sight of my poor Christians,

marching in a line, and guarded on both sides by soldiers who

hastened their steps. A burning sun poured its beams upon

them, and they were enveloped in a thick cloud of dust.

After them came the baggage wagons into which were crowded

the many sick, the women and children who were too feeble to

walk...  Almost all the babies, exhausted by the heat, were

dead or dying. I baptized several newly-born happy little

ones, whose first step was from the land of exile to heaven."

Soon the militiamen tired of walking and chose to ride in the

baggage wagons forcing the Indian women and children out to

walk and die all the quicker.

     Many stories remain. There is one of a hundred year old

Indian woman, the mother of a Chieftain, who pleaded with her

tribe to put her to death in Indiana. She knew she had no

hopes of surviving a long trek and wished to be buried in the

land of her ancestry. The tribe refused the old woman's wish

to kill her. She was buried along the trail four days later.

Not a single baby made the trip.

     The Hoosier people live with the memories of their

history. These memories mix with those of the settlers

like Andrew Riley who came to Hoosier forests.

     There are no records of Andrew's death in the Family

Bible and his date of death in 1840 is derived from the

records in the Randolph County probate court records of that

date. A Dr. Dynes was the attending physician during Andrew

Riley's last illness. Dr. Dynes made daily calls for some

days prior to November 20, 1840. His itemized claim filed

against the estate shows a charge each day up to and

including November 19th for a call and medicine left.  On the

20th day a charge is made for just the call - no medicine.

This was the doctor's last call so Andrew probably didn't

need the doctor anymore. Andrew Riley was buried on the farm

where he lived.

     In the probate court order book of Randolph County, vol.

2, page 139 is this entry:

     "Be it remembered that on the fifteenth day of December

in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and

forty; letters of administration of all and singular the

goods and chattels, rights, credits, monies and effects which

were of Andrew Riley late of Randolph County in the State of

Indiana, deceased, was granted by George W. Monks, clerk of

the probate court in and for said county to Reuben A. Riley,

he, the said Reuben A. Riley, having first filed bond in the

sum of fifteen hundred dollars with Lewis Remmel and Smoot

securities and he was duly affirmed as such administrator."

     Reuben Riley's authority to handle his father's estate

was later revoked by this entry:

"In the matter of Reuben A, Riley, administrator of the

estate of Andrew Riley, deceased. It appearing to the

satisfaction of the court, from the affidavit of Margaret

Way, late Margaret Riley, widow and relict of said Andrew

Riley, that the said Reuben A. Riley has emigrated to and is

now a citizen of Iowa Territory.  It is ordered and adjudged

by the court that the letters of administration heretofore

granted by the clerk of this court to the said Reuben A.

Riley, on the estate of said deceased, be and the same are

hereby revoked and nulled and made void. Whereon on

application of the said Margaret, it is further ordered by

the court that administration de bonis non of said estate is

hereby committed to Thomas W. Reece, and thereupon said

Thomas W. Reece appears in open court and accepts said

appointment and files bond in the sum of twelve hundred

dollars, with William Dickson and George W. Smithson as his

securities."

     What became of Margaret?

     Margaret (Slick) Riley remained Andrew's widow for only

about a year and a half and then in March 1842 she married

Thomas Way. Little is known about this arrangement.

Eventually Margaret moved from the Windsor neighborhood to

Greenfield, Indiana, as a single woman, and lived near her

son Reuben Riley until 1868. She died October 3, 1884 at the

home of her son Dr. A.J. Riley in Muncie. The funeral notices

were sent out under the name of Margaret Riley. The notice

read: "Mrs. Margaret Riley was born in Bedford County, Pa.

October 23rd, 1793, died at the home of her son, Dr.  A.J.

Riley in Muncie, Indiana, Monday evening, Oct. 3rd, 1884,

aged 87 years, 11 months, and 10 days.  Her funeral will take

place tomorrow, Wednesday, October 5th at the grave yard near

Windsor, Randolph County, at 2 o'clock P.M. The funeral

cortege leaving Muncie at 8 o'clock A.M.  The funeral

services will be conducted by Rev. F.D. Simpson. The friends

of the family are invited." The dates have to be wrong

because if correct she died at 90.

     The burial places of Andrew and Margaret Riley are in

the Clevenger Cemetery about a mile south of Windsor. The

exact spots are no longer locatable. The lettering of the

stones is mostly erased in this cemetery, vegetation has

overgrown it and most tombstones are broken or at least half-

buried.  Windsor might well have become the birth home of

James Whitcomb Riley. Reuben Riley owned a lot there and was

licensed to practice law there in 1842 but Riley's stay was

short and he sold his lot in Windsor to Andrew West on August

18, 1842.

     After his father's death, Reuben had gone to a prairie

village in Iowa, been admitted to the bar there, but had only

achieved a very limited practice.  He subsequently returned

to Randolph County. He was tall, black eyed and considered to

be an eloquent debater.

     Reuben Riley became re-acquainted with Elizabeth Marine

at a Fourth of July gathering in Neeley's Woods, near

Windsor, in 1843 after his return from Iowa.  The occasion

was a grand barbecue of pigs, an ox and five lambs.  Reuben

danced with Elizabeth and the two were said to have decided

to get married instantly.

     Reuben Alexander Riley and Elizabeth (Marine) Riley,

parents of the poet, were married March 15, 1844 at Union

Port, Randolph county, by Rev. Thomas Leonard, minister of

the Methodist church. Elizabeth's brother Jonathan and Emily

Hunt stood up for the two. Elizabeth wore a pale pink silk

wedding dress with a long white veil and white kid gloves and

shoes. Her "in-fair" dress was of gray poplin, and she wore a

leghorn bonnet when she rode away with Reuben the next day.

They went immediately to Greenfield and occupied a log cabin.

The marriage license of Reuben A. Riley and Elizabeth Marine

was issued by the Clerk of the Randolph Circuit Court on the

18th of Feb. but they were not married until about a month

later, March 15, 1844.

     Elizabeth Marine Riley's father was John Marine. In the

Riley family Bible she spells his last name M-E-R-I-N-E. John

Marine's father was Jonathan Marine and his mother was Mary

Charles who lived in the Carolinas.  Mary Charles Marine died

in Wayne County, Indiana, and was buried in Randolph County.

Jonathan Marine was buried in the New Garden churchyard about

nine miles from Richmond.  Mary Charles Marine lived to be

ninety-six years old.

     Elizabeth was the tenth in a family of 11 children and

a descendent of persecuted French Huguenots and English

Quakers. She claimed birth in Rockingham, North Carolina in

1823.

     Probably Reuben's first work was on his father's farm

and in his tavern. Reuben Riley became the school teacher in

the little one-room schoolhouse at the east end of Union Port

on the south side of the road. Soon after marriage the Rileys

went to Greenfield to Hancock county to make their future

home.

     Greenfield was at that time a little village of a few

scattered log houses with puncheon floors and oil paper

windows. Reuben Riley was said to have built the log cabin

and equipped it with furniture which he had made. The main

advantage of the site was that it was located on the

National Road that stretched from Cumberland, Maryland

across country to the trails to the Pacific Coast.

     It was here in their original log cabin that their six

children were born. The Riley children were John Andrew

Riley, born Dec. 11, 1844 who married Julia Wilson and died

Dec. 11, 1911; Martha Celestia Riley, born Feb. 21, 1847;

James Whitcomb Riley, born Oct. 7, 1849 and died July 22,

1916 in Indianapolis, Indiana, Elva May Riley born Jan.  1856

and died in 1909 in Indianapolis, Indiana; Humboldt Alexander

Riley born Oct. 15, 1858 and died Nov., 1887; and Mary

Elizabeth Riley born Oct.  27, 1864 who married and divorced

Frank C.  Payne and died in 1936.

     There is speculation that James Whitcomb Riley's genius

came from John Marine, the probable father of Elizabeth and

an outstanding character in the early history of Randolph and

Delaware counties. John Marine loved poetry and, like his

famous grandson, was said to have written his autobiography

in rhyme. He also was said to write and write. He wrote a

book, now lost, on religion urging all Christians to unite.

He also wrote sermons in verse and delivered them to

Methodist camp meetings. None of these works survive. John

had lost his modest fortune speculating in weaver-sleighs two

years after Elizabeth's birth and came to Indiana.

     James Whitcomb Riley was one of those many great men who

have been unusually fond of their mothers.  There was the

artist Whistler whose most famous work was a portrait of his

mother.  Then there was George Washington. No matter how far

his surveying took him from Virginia, he kept in touch with

Mary Washington.  To this list, we must add James Whitcomb

Riley whose primary love was Elizabeth Marine Riley, his

lovely mother. His first poem was a valentine written to his

mother.

     As a child, she had come in a one-horse buggy with her

parents the 700 miles from North Carolina to Indiana.  They

came over the Cumberland Gap, the usual route through the

Allegheny Mountains.  Then on through the endless forests

where all sorts of wild animals lurked.  There were about 400

in their party which finally found its way to Randolph County

Indiana. The party found only wilderness without any

inhabitants or built up places or village.

     After brief stops at New Garden and one or two points in

Wayne County, he settled with his family in Randolph County

and built a cabin on a high bank of the Mississinewa River a

few miles below Ridgeville and a mill nearby.

     James Whitcomb Riley thought that his mother had led an

ideal life as a young person.  The Marine cabin was on the

banks of a beautiful stream, called by an Indian name, the

Mississiniwa River.  She had grown to become a beautiful

young woman.  One of Elizabeth's interests was discovering

new things.

     The Marines were flat boat builders, millers and poets.

John laid out the defunct town of Rockingham on the

Mississinewa and advertised lots in verse. It did no good.

The town failed to attract settlers.

    John also was a preacher and teacher.  He advocated the

union of all churches, a dangerous thing to do in those days.

He and the poet's grandmother, Margaret Riley, were leaders

in the camp meetings of Randolph and Delaware Counties.

     William A. Thornburg, an elderly neighbor who remembered

the Marines living nearby, told Marcus Dickey, an early Riley

biographer, that "Elizabeth Marine was remarkably pure-

minded. I never saw anyone so beautiful in a calico dress.

She loved to wander along streams and wander in the green

woods. She was always seeing things among the leaves."

Elizabeth met Johnny Appleseed who planted apple cores among

the settlements and liked to listen to listen to his accounts

of his wanderings and his views on Christianity one of which

was that folk do not die but "go right on living."

    Every boy has an early determination - a first one - to

follow some exciting profession, once he grows up to man's

estate, such as being a policemen or a performer on the high

trapeze. Riley was not interested in these nor in being

the "People's Laureate," but the Greenfield baker, had his

fairy godmother granted his "boy-wish."

     Here is how Riley remembered his "wish" in his later

life.

 

                "AN IMPETUOUS RESOLVE" (1890)

 

              When little Dickie Swope's a man,

                 He's going to be a sailor;

               And little Hamey Tincher, he's

                   A'going to be a Tailor;

              Bud Mitchell, he's a'going to be

                  A stylish Carriage-Maker;

               And when I grow a great big man

                  I'm going to be a Baker.

              And Dick will buy his sailor-suit

               Of Hame; and Hame will take it

                And buy as fine a double rig

                  As ever Bud can make it;

          And then all three'll drive round for me,

                And we'll drive off together

              Slinging pie-crust along the road

                    Forever and forever.

 

To Riley, running a bakery "seemed the acme of delight,"

using again his own expression. Happiness was "to manufacture

those snowy loaves of bread, those delicious tarts, those

toothsome bon-bons.  And then to own them all, to keep them

in store, to watch over and guardedly exhibit. The thought of

getting money for them was to me a sacrilege. Sell them?  No

indeed.  Eat `em - eat `em, by tray loads and dray loads!  It

was a great wonder to me why the pale-faced baker in our town

did not eat all his good things.  This I determined to do

when I became owner of such a grand establishment.  Yes, sir.

I would have a glorious feast.  Maybe I'd have Tom and Harry

and perhaps little Kate and Florry in to help us once in a

while.  The thought of these playmates as `grown up folks'

didn't appeal to me. I was but a child, with wide-open eyes,

a healthy appetite and a wondering mind.  That was all.  But

I have the same sweet tooth to-day, and every time I pass a

confectioner's shop, I think of the big baker of our town,

and Tom and Harry and the youngsters all."

     As a child, Riley often went with his father to the

courthouse where the lawyers and clerks playfully called him

"Judge Wick, Jr." Here as a privileged character he met and

mingled with the country folk who came to sue and be sued,

and thus early was exposed to the dialect, the native speech,

the quaint expressions of his "own people."  How frontier

folk spoke took firm root in the fresh soil of his young

memory.

     Why was he called "Judge Wick, Jr.?"

     William Wick was Circuit Judge of Hancock County from

1850 to 1853. It was during his tenure, James Whitcomb Riley

came to have the nickname, "Judge Wick, Jr." The nickname

came about when Reuben Riley made James Whitcomb Riley, about

four years old, a suit of clothes identical in style and

cloth to that worn by the Judge.  The boy was given to wear a

long swallowtail coat and matching trousers. When Riley

first wore that outfit going with his father to court, he

earned the name "Judge Wick, Jr." The judge gave him this

name. It stayed with Riley through early adolescence when he

hated it so much no one dared call him it anymore. While

his father was in court, the poet listened and played in the

back or in the window sills where he could see what was going

on while cases were being tried.

     At about this time, he made his first poetic attempt in

a valentine which he gave to his mother. Not only did he

write the verse, but he drew a sketch to accompany it,

greatly to his mother's delight, who, according to the best

authority, gave the young poet "three big cookies and didn't

spank me for two weeks. This was my earliest literary

encouragement."

     1856 was a critical year for the Riley family. It was

the year Reuben Riley joined his friend Oliver P. Morton is

forming a new political party in Indiana. Then, as the 1860

presidential election loomed, Reuben was an Indiana delegate

at the Chicago convention that nominated Lincoln for the

Presidency.  After this convention, Reuben arrived home in

the middle of the night to announce what had happened at the

Chicago convention. Abraham Lincoln, the "Emancipator," had

been nominated in part through Reuben's efforts in the

Indiana delegation. Hancock County did not share Reuben's

enthusiasm for Lincoln. Lincoln failed to carry Hancock

County in the crucial 1860 election. Nevertheless, much of

the rest of Indiana was solidly in the majority for Lincoln

as was the tier of Northern states sufficient to elect

Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. Reuben Riley was named a

Lincoln "elector" to vote Indiana's selection of Lincoln for

electoral college purposes.

     Before throwing in his lot with Oliver Morton and

Abraham Lincoln, Reuben Riley had been Hancock County

Prosecutor in 1844, Representative in the Indiana Legislature

in 1845 (Reuben was the youngest member of the state

legislature at the time) and 1848, published a newspaper, The

INVESTIGATOR in Greenfield for six months in 1847, was

prominent in the county Democratic conventions since 1845,

and in 1852 became Greenfield's first mayor. This in effect

made him a judge and enforcer of the city's ordinances,

mainly against things such as assaults and batteries.

 

 

     What did Riley remember of his earliest days in the

log cabin at Greenfield? He recalled the first time the

family had a night lamp. Here came Reuben Riley bringing home

a lamp and chimney in one hand and a bottle of coal oil in

the other. The family tinkered with it the whole evening.

Riley said, "To us it gave forth marvellously lustrous

light..I was then reading the "Arabian Nights," wholly

enraptured with that magic story, and had come to the tale of

the Wonderful Lamp and the cry of new lamps for old.  Well,

the smell of that coal oil became associated in my mind with

Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, and to this day I cannot

smell coal oil without recalling the old delights of the

story and feeling myself lying prone on my stomach reading,

reading, and reading by the hour."

     A story survives of how Riley wandered after older boys

toward the "Ole Swimmin' Hole" before he could swim. His

father learned of this and ran toward the crick in a great

panic. Upon arriving at the banks, his worst fears were

realized. Riley was out in the middle splashing in the water.

Only after Reuben jumped in and got out to save his son did

he discover the poet was in no danger. He had been holding on

to a submerged root that extended out from a huge tree.

     What about Riley's dismal school record?

     Mrs. Neill's was the first to try. She did not teach in

a free public school, but rather a private pay one. The

school began in the early Spring. Mrs. Neill had no

experience as a teacher but enrolled students after

advertising in a local Greenfield newspaper, "Mrs. Neill will

open school at her residence on Monday next. This lady has

had much experience and will, no doubt, render good service."

Mrs. Neill taught as a mother would rather than as a formal

teacher. She encouraged good behavior for a week by hanging a

bright silver dollar around the scholar's neck until the good

behavior stopped. Mrs. Neill did not tolerate either lying or

tattle-telling. Lying resulted in getting one's mouth washed

out with lye soap and tattle-telling earned wearing a

card with "tattle tale" in large letters.  If a child was

restless she took the child into her kitchen and gave him a

cookie from the cookie jar or if thirsty permitted the child

to go to the well and drink from a yellow gourd from a bucket

drawn up with its cool water. All drank from the same gourd.

On Friday afternoons she passed out small cardboard rings

with holes in the center and brought out a box of colored

yarn.  The yarn was drawn in and out of the hole until filled

and then the children had fluffy, colored balls to take home

for the weekend. If a child fell asleep she took the child

into her sitting room to a pallet beside her blind husband

who sat on a rocker day in and day out rocking monotonously.

     After attending Mrs. Neill's school, Riley went on to

attend the Greenfield Academy in the late 50's. The school

was first taught by a Greenfield Presbyterian Minister, Rev.

David Montfort to supplement his salary. Reuben Riley was the

secretary of this school. At the Academy, Riley was not

comfortable. He didn't join "gangs" very easy because the

boys did robust things that required more stamina than he

had. He always lost in races.  He sometimes went off by

himself in depression.  Reuben Riley wished his son to be

more of a competitor. It is not believed Riley was able to

rise above the Primary Department because of his difficulty

with mathematics. Later in 1861, the Greenfield Academy moved

to the Methodist Church where Lee O. Harris became the

teacher after he got back from 90 days service. Then this

private church-housed school ceased to operate because of the

Civil War. Lee O. Harris had enlisted in the Fifth Indiana

Cavalry for a three year term. During this period, Riley is

recalled as being truant in school, but it was more anti-

social than anti-intellectual. He was said to be a persistent

truant and to go off by himself into the woods.

     Probably recalling this period, Riley wrote of truanting

"Out to Old Aunt Mary's in his later days:"

 

                OUT TO OLD AUNT MARY'S (1884)

 

Wasn't it pleasant. O brother mine,

In those old days of the lost sunshine

   Of youth - when the Saturday's chores were through,

   And the "Sunday's wood" in the kitchen, too,

   And we went visiting, "me and you,"

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's? -

 

"Me and you" - And the morning fair,

With the dewdrops twinkling, everywhere;

   The scent of the cherry-blossoms blown

   After us, in the roadway lone,

   Our capering shadows onward thrown -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's!

 

It all comes back so clear to-day!

Though I am as bald as you are gray, -

   Out by the barn-lot and down the lane

   We patter along in the dust again,

   As light as the tips of the drops of the rain,

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

The few last houses of the town;

Then on, up the high creek-bluffs and down;

   Past the squat toll-gate, with its well-sweep pole,

   The bridge, and the "the old 'baptizin'-hole,'"

   Loitering, awed, o'er pool and shoal,

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

We crossed the pasture, and through the wood,

Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood,

   Where the hammering "red-heads" hopped awry,

   And the buzzard "raised" in the "clearing"-sky

   And lolled and circled, as we went by

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

Or, stayed by the glint of the redbird's wings,

or the glitter of song that the bluebird sings,

   All hushed we feign to strike strange trails,

   As the "big braves" do in the Indian tales,

   Till again our real quest lags and fails -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's. -

 

And the woodland echoes with yells of mirth

That make old war-whoops of minor worth!...

   Where such heroes of war as we? -

   With bows and arrows of fantasy,

   Chasing each other from tree to tree

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's!

 

And then in the dust of the road again;

And the teams we met, and the countrymen;

   And the long highway, with sunshine spread

   As thick as butter on country bread,

   Our cares behind, and our hearts ahead

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's. -

 

For only, now, at the road's next bend

To the right we could make out the gable-end

   Of the fine old Huston homestead - not

   Half a mile from the sacred spot

   Where dwelt our Saint in her simple cot -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

Why, I see her now in the open door

Where the little gourds grew up the sides and o'er

   The clapboard roof! - And her face - ah, me!

   Wasn't it good for a boy to see -

   And wasn't it good for a boy to be

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's? -

 

The jelly - the jam and marmalade,

And the cherry and quince "preserves" she made!  And the

   sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear,

   With cinnamon in 'em, and all things rare! -

   And the more we ate was the more to spare,

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's!

 

Ah! was there, ever, so kind a face

And gentle as hers, or such a grace

   Of welcoming, as she cut the cake

   Or the juicy pies that she joyed to make

   Just for the visiting children's sake -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's!

 

The honey, too, in its amber comb

One only finds in an old farm-home;

   And the coffee, fragrant and sweet, and ho!

   So hot that we gloried to drink it so,

   With spangles of tears in our eyes, you know -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

And the romps we took, in our glad unrest! -

Was it the lawn that we loved the best,

   With its swooping swing in the locust trees,

   Or was it the grove, with its leafy breeze,

   Or the dim haymow, with its fragrancies -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

Far fields, bottom-lands, creek-banks - all,

We ranged at will. - Where the waterfall

   Laughed all day as it slowly poured

   Over the dam by the old mill-ford,

   While the tail-race writhed, and the mill-wheel roared -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

But home, with Aunty in nearer call,

That was the best place, after all! -

   The talks on the back porch, in the low

   Slanting sun and evening glow,

   With the voice of counsel that touched us so,

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

And then, in the garden - near the side

Where the beehives were and the path was wide, -

   The apple-house - like a fairy cell -

   With the little square door we knew so well,

   And the wealth inside, but our tongues could tell -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

And the old spring-house, in the cool green gloom

Of the willow trees,  - and the cooler room

   Where the swinging shelves and the crocks were kept,

   Here the cream in a golden languor slept,

   While the waters gurgled and laughed and wept -

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

And as many a time have you and I -

Barefoot boys in the days gone by -

   Knelt, and in tremulous ecstasies

   Dipped our lips into sweets like these, -

   Memory now is on her knees

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's -

 

For, O my brother so far away,

This is to tell you - she waits to-day

   To welcome us: - Aunt Mary fell

   Asleep this morning, whispering, "Tell

   The boys to come"...And all is well

     Out to Old Aunt Mary's.

 

     Some think that "Aunt Mary" was "Aunt Rachel Loehr," the

relative of Almon Keefer, an older neighbor boy as the "Aunt

Mary." Riley visited her often as a vagrant child escaping

his poverty-stricken adolescent home.  The Loehr and Riley

families visited each other as well. Minnie Belle Mitchell

provides an idealized picture of Riley's youth going to Aunt

Rachel's as follows:

     "...the three boys, Bud, John and Hum with Almon Keefer

would go to Aunt Rachel's alone, walking the entire distance,

loitering along country roads....cutting through time land,

playing games of make-believe, giving Indian and catbird

calls and gathering hackberries and haws along the way.  But

all weariness disappeared when Aunt Rachel's home was reached

and they were welcomed...The country home...had its gourd

vine climbing to the roof...  It had its windless well, its

little spring house where the milk and butter and all sorts

of good things were kept cool and fresh.  There hollyhocks

at the windows and a swing hung from an apple tree. And after

the children had taken their usual bareback rid on the old

mare, slid down he hay stack, and had visited the traps where

robber rabbits and foxes were caught...Aunt Rachel would call

them to dinner. The boys recalled the wild scramble to the

well for the hasty washing of hands and faces, the "jellies,

jams and marmalades," the usual cherry cobbler or custard pie

with plenty of milk to drink.

     The poem is nominally written to Riley's brother, John,

which helps to date its first writing. Riley used an original

four stanzas for "Old Aunt Mary's" from the letter in his

early platform appearances.

     New stanzas were added over the years. In a special

edition of the poem in 1904, the poem was completed with

twelve additional stanzas.

     Riley's great poetic characters were all "composites."

There were actually many "Aunt Mary's." Aunt Mary was a

"character type" of warm-hearted persons who cared for

children. Possibly a new such person contributed every time

Riley revised the poem which was often.  Additionally every

time an older person died, she seems to have been eulogized

by obituary and funeral sermon as the kindly "Aunt Mary" of

Riley's poem if Riley had only a remote connection to the

decedent.

     One version of how the poem "Out to Old Aunt Mary's"

happened to be written has Riley and friend, "Haute"

Tarkington, later Mrs. Ovid Butler Jameson, preparing to

accompany Haute's little brother, Booth, who lived at

Indianapolis, on a week-end visit with the grandparents and

his Aunt Mary.  Sunday came and with it, the prospect of a

visit to Aunt Mary but it had to be postponed.  On hearing of

this disappointment Booth began to cry over the unexpected

failure of his plan. This suggested a theme for the poet,

who, with his characteristic genius wrote one of his best

poems  -"Out to Old Aunt Mary's." The poem was first

published in the Indianapolis JOURNAL and later revised.

This Mary was Mary Tarkington Alexander and she lived in

Greensburg, Indiana.  Her portrait shows a warmly "pudgy"

faced woman with friendly eyes, wide smile a close cropped

white hair in a matronly gown.  She was a person any child

wanted to embrace in a hug. Among other candidates of

"aunt's" were "blood" aunts in Mooresville and Martinsville,

Indiana. The family of Riley's mother, the Marines, were very

close. Riley visited their families often as a child,

adolescent and in his later years.

     When a childhood friend heard Riley recite the poem in

later years, he noted that the poem had changed and wrote

Riley to enquire about it after which the following letter

was returned:

                            Ann Arbor, Mich. Oct. 29, 1893

 

(Dear Clint Hamilton:)  This, as I read it in public, is the

"completion" of "Old Aunt Mary's." By joining these four

stanzas, at fifth one of printed form, thereafter following

in order as here written until last stanza of printed is

reached  - then using that still as closing stanza.  Keep

this copy, so hastily done, in your possession.

 

     The jelly - the jam, and the marmalade,

     And the cherry and quince "preserves" she made! -

          And the sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear,

          With cinnamon in 'em, and all things rare!

          And the more you ate was the more to spare,

               Out to old Aunt Mary's!

 

     And then, in the garden, near the side

     Where the bee-hives were, and the path was wide, -

          The apple-house, like a fairy cell,

          With the little square door we knew so well -

          And the wealth inside but our tongues could tell -

               Out to old Aunt Mary's!

 

     And the old spring-house, in the cool green gloom

     Of the willow trees, - and the cooler room

          Where the swinging shelves and crocks were kept,

          Where the cream in a golden languor slept,

          Where the waters gurgled and laughed and wept -

               Out to Old Aunt Mary's!

 

     And as many a time have you and I

     Barefoot boys in the days gone by -

          Knelt, and with tremulous ecstacies

          Dipped our lips into sweets like these, -

          Memory now is on her knees

               Out to old Aunt Mary's!

                           Very truly your old friend,

                           - James Whitcomb Riley

      Here is Riley's picture of a life lived meaningfully

in service to others.

     Riley's niece by marriage, Harriet Eitel Wells

remembered Riley telling her this incident from his schooling

as she related in the Indianapolis STAR of October 7, 1934.

When Riley's teacher asked him once where Christopher

Columbus went on his second voyage, Riley asked his teacher

who was Christopher Columbus?  Then Riley admitted he didn't

know where the fellow went on the first trip. Math went in

one ear and out the other. Riley's math teacher once

commented "He doesn't know which is more - Twice ten or Twice

Eternity."

     Riley was Jucklet in his early schooling. He was an

errant scholar and traveler even before he got Riley into

mischief in many other ways.  He loved fun. As a scholar,

Riley knew how to slide a piece of wood under the old school

clock and get it out of plumb so it ran faster, shortening

the school hours which seemed far too long. This way Riley

caused his school to be dismissed early from time to time

pleasing the other pupils, especially his `swimmin'-hole'

buddies. Riley was often a hero of his schoolmates. If caught

on any of his pranks, he took his "licking" like a boy

should, and did not try to lay the blame on someone else.

     William B. Davis recalls it was in the winter of `59

that he first saw and met Jim Riley.  He was in the rear of

the old music hall at Greenfield working on a horizontal bar.

"He was the  quickest fellow  - boy -that I ever saw. He was

just like a squirrel going round and round in a cage.  He was

10 years old then - and he could turn either backward or

forward." Riley often went out to the Davis's farm because

Reuben kept his horse there.

     There is another incident about Riley's schooling of

this period. Inside his big geography and held down under a

rubber band, Riley frequently had a copy of Longfellow's

poems which he read surreptitiously. When Riley's

instructor, Lee O. Harris passed up and down the aisles

between the rows of desks and came near Riley's desk, he

always pretended not to see the book of poems.  How it would

delight this old professor to know that toward the end of

this little pupil's life he would receive so many college

degrees that he would remark he would have to stop writing

poetry so as to remember his degrees.

     When the Greenfield Academy fizzled out due to the Civil

War, Riley went to study at the home of Rhoda Houghton

Millikan who arrived in Greenfield in 1862 and opened a

school in her home. Rhoda Millikan was the daughter of a

Superior Court Judge and a native of Vermont.  She was a

cultured, educated lady and possessed many talents.  She was

the widower of a man who had left his family in Ohio to

prospect for gold in Calfornia during the "gold rush." The

husband never returned leaving Rhoda Millikan to raise five

children - two girls and three boys. She taught school to

make ends meet.

     Riley practically moved into the Millikan home. One of

the daughters was Nellie Millikan who was "Dwainie" of "The

Flying Islands of the Night." Nellie was slightly older than

Riley and enchanted him with her playing of the piano and

guitar.  One of the boys, Jesse, became Riley's best friend.

     Rhoda Millikan's family were readers and had many books.

They were musical and both girls played and sang.

     Riley held the mother in great esteem. She had a bright

schoolroom, pictures which she painted on the walls, and

wooden benches for the students to sit on.  She kept hanging

jars filled with garden flowers in summer and in winter,

parlor ivy and wandering jew trailed about. The woods were

visible from her back yard to offer shade for a recess

playground.

     She directed Riley's studies along the lines of his

interest, art, literature and poetry.  Riley was memorizing

verse she discovered.  She gave him prominent parts in Friday

afternoon exercises and allowed him to recite poems he

memorized from his mother.

     Mrs. Millikan - who was an artist - began a Saturday

afternoon class in painting and drawing. Riley became a pupil

and found he could draw almost anything and easily became her

star pupil.

     An incident from Riley's adolescence in Mrs. Millikan's

school survives.

     As a young self-conscious teen, Riley's face was covered

with freckles and he was called "Spotted Face" by friends.

As an adolescent he became very conscious of these.  He tried

many things, buttermilk, vinegar and salt and was often

washing his face with lye soap. He took an old custom

seriously and prayed for May to wash his face in its due

which he was told would get rid of them.  One day his mother

sent him to the store to get sugar for 50 cents and he bought

a bottle advertised "A sure cure for freckles, - Balm of a

thousand flowers" instead. He charged the sugar, went home to

deliver the sugar, and stopped at a deserted barn to coat his

face with the Balm of a Thousand Flowers without reading the

instructions.  When he arrived at school, Ms. Millikan was

angry and while the schoolmates laughed took him from the

room to look at his face as yellow as a pumpkin. The Balm was

supposed to be washed off almost immediately after being put

on. His face was stained for several days and when it came

off the freckles and also a layer of skin came with it. He

never again had freckles.

     There really is no play character from Riley's

autobiographical poem "The Flying Islands of the Night" who

relates to Riley's adolescence except Nellie Millikan Cooley,

"Dwainie," in Riley's life. This reflects the great

unhappiness and poverty Riley knew as an adolescent.

     Riley was not a happy teenager. He ascribed his lack of

a social life to a "poor start" from those days. He claimed

frustration from the very first. When he wished to escort his

first sweetheart to a party, Riley said he dressed very

carefully and knocked at his first love's door.  Her father

opened it, eyed him critically and demanded: "What you want,

Jimmy?"

     When Riley said, "Come to take Bessie to the party,"

the father snorted, "Humph! Bessie ain't goin' to no party;

Bessie's got the measles!"

     Riley knew very well she didn't.

     As the Civil War came to a close, Greenfield reopened

the Academy. In fact, Reuben Riley was chosen as the

president of the public meeting called to plan its operation.

This school began in 1866 and ran a fourteen week session.

Riley started this school but attended in a very haphazard

manner. He was truant as much as he was present.  During one

such truancy, his father beat him severely.  It did not help.

Riley quit school at sixteen.

     After Riley was a drop out, his reputation in Greenfield

slipped lower and lower. The other boys weren't to be around

him. In a youthful letter to a friend who has been told to

stay away from him, the sixteen year old Riley comments,

"Your father forbids your associating with me. Well, with his

understanding of my character, he did what was right.  Well,

so long as he thinks me a mean boy, just so long you must

abide his law, for he thinks it for your good.  Sometime,

maybe, I can show him my real character..."

     Riley did not attend another school for several years

but he was present on January 26, 1870 when Greenfield opened

its first public school with 236 students. The school ran

from January to May. Lee O. Harris was one of the teachers.

Riley distinguished himself as an editor of one of the two

school newspapers, his being The CRITERION.

     Meredith Nicholson, Riley's friend in later life and

noted American author, believes that Riley "would

have been injured rather than benefited by an ampler

education.  He was chiefly concerned with human nature, and

it was his fortune to know profoundly those definite phases

and contrasts of life that were susceptible of interpretation

in the art of which he was sufficiently the master."

     Riley's education best came from riding his horse

about the American woods and towns and from contacts with

the popular culture of America itself.

     Riley's first employment was as a decorator of the

shaving mugs that ornamented and did service to the customers

of the barbershop of a black barber of Greenfield, George

Knox. Knox says he received "35 cents per mug, for which

there never was a time he did not seem duly grateful and

appreciative.  ...during five years, in return for the many

services rendered in the line of his trade (painting), I kept

him "shaven and shorn" without price or remuneration save as

he paid me in the manner indicated above."

     We remember that Riley lived in a poverty stricken home

after his father was discharged from the Civil War as a

disabled man. The sting of poverty never left Riley. As

an old man, he refused to take change from any newsboy

after buying a newspaper and when asked about this he

explained that he remembered when he was that age when "coins

were scarce."

     Knox has written, "I nicknamed (Riley) Mr. Jones and we

played at imagining that he was a rich farmer of eccentric

ideas, and fixed impressions of his importance and standing

as a tiller of the soil. I would frequently say to him:

"Well, Mr. Jones, how does it happen that you are in town so

late today," and he would reply in the dialect of the Hoosier

farmer, accompanied with the peculiar nasal twang that have

made his recitations famous - "Wal, I kum into town to-day,

intendin' to go right back as soon as possible, and what did

they do but pop me on the jury first thing. I put up at the

tavern  and there was so much noise about I couldn't sleep,

so I got up about 4 o'clock this mornin' and  bought me a

cegar - two fer five you know  - they last longer. I kum over

to git a shave; how much do you ask for a shave, George." I

would say ten cents.  "Now, that's too much; I'll give you

five cents  for a shave." etc., etc."

    George Knox remembered the neighbors "sneered at him

(Riley), (spoke) derisively of him and declared him no good."

 

 

 

     Riley escaped into literature to avoid his wretched

poverty as a teenager. He read more out of school than in.

He came to love the literature of Charles Dickens most of

all. Jucklet seized upon Dickens even though Dickens was not

known for his poetry but rather for his prose. Meredith

Nicholson, commented: Riley "knew his Dickens thoroughly, and

his lifelong attention to "character" was due no doubt in

some measure to his study of Dickens's portraits of the

quaint and humorous."

     Early in his schooling, Riley ran away when Dickens's

"The Death of Little Nell" was read. "It was a matter of

eternal wonder to me, how the other children could go strong-

voiced and dry-eyed through those tragedies that almost broke

my heart," he once said.

 

                    DEATH OF LITTLE NELL

(From McGUFFEY'S ECLECTIC READER)

              She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm,

          so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon.

          She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God,

          and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had

          lived, and suffered death.  Her couch was dressed

          with here and there some winter berries and green

          leaves, gathered in a spot she had used to favor.

          "When I die, put near me something that has loved

          the light, and had the sky above it always." These

          were her words.

               She was dead.  Dear, gentle, patient, noble

          Nell was dead. Her little bird, a poor, slight

          thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed,

          was stirring nimbly in its cage, and the strong

          heart of its child mistress was must and motionless

          forever!  Where were the traces of her early cares,

          her sufferings, and fatigues?  All gone.  sorrow

          was dead, indeed, in her; but peace and perfect

          happiness were born, imaged in her tranquil beauty

          and profound repose..."

     A strange thing happens when we read about the life of

Charles Dickens. It begins to sound like Riley's.

     We review the facts of the life of Charles Dickens,

1812-1870, to note the great parallels of the lives of

Jucklet and him. Dickens was born in Portsmouth, but spent

nearly all his life in London. It would turn out that Riley,

born in Greenfield, would spend most of his adult life in

Indianapolis.

     Dickens's father was a conscientious man, but lacked

capacity for earning a livelihood. This reminds one of

Riley's father. In consequence, Dickens's youth was much

darkened by poverty as was Riley's. Dickens began his active

life as a lawyer's apprentice; but soon left this employment

to become a reporter. Riley did the same.  Dickens followed

this employment from 1831-1836.  Dickens's first book was

entitled, "Sketches of London Society, by Boz." This was

followed, in 1837, by the "Pickwick Papers," a work which

suddenly brought much fame to the author.  His other works

followed with great rapidity, and his last was unfinished at

the time of his death. Riley's books of poetry were very

popular from the first and Riley kept on writing them. He

wrote on and on and on.

     Dickens visited America in 1842, and again in 1867.

During his last visit, he read his works in public in the

principal cities of the United States. This was what Jucklet

came to have in mind for Riley to do.

     The resources of Dickens' genius seemed exhaustless. He

copied no author, imitated none, but relied entirely on his

own powers.  He excelled especially in humor and pathos.  He

gather materials for his works by the most careful and

faithful observation.  And he painted his characters with a

fidelity so true to their different individualities that,

although they sometimes have a quaint grotesqueness bordering

on caricature, they stand before the memory as living

realities. His writings present very vividly the wants and

sufferings of the poor and encourage kindness and

benevolence.

     Finally, somehow, despite his poverty-striken youth,

Dickens came to great fame and, when he died, was honored

with burial in Westminster Abbey, London.

     Here was a live route for Riley to follow.

     Riley's life parallels that of Dickens. I think this is

intentional. Riley looked to Dickens as a role model. Out of

such devotion, Riley gave to America figures as compelling as

Dickens did for his Englishmen.

     Dickens gave to England "Little Nell," while Riley

gave to America "Little Haly" of "On the Death of Little

Mahala Ashcraft" (1882).

 

"Little Haly! Little Haly!" cheeps the robin in the tree;

"Little Haly!" sighs the clover, "Little Haly!" moans the

bee;

"Little Haly! Little Haly!" calls the killdeer at twilight;

And the katydids and crickets hollers "Haly!" all the night.

 

The sunflowers and the hollyhawks droops over the garden

fence;

The old path down the garden walks still holds her

footprints' dents;

And the well-sweep's swingin' bucket seems to wait fer her to

come

And start it on its wortery errant down the old beegum.

...

 

     Riley took from Dickens the impetus to get close to his

own people in order to reflect them in his writing.

     Riley learned from Dickens in the novel way that Riley

did things. He made a play about Dickens' characters and got

his chums to act them out in their lives in Greenfield.

The shoeshop of Thomas Snow was "base." In fact, the cobbler,

a recent immigrant from England who knew his Dickens, was the

"stage manager." The adolescent boys mixing it up with Riley

in this Dickens "life production" of Riley's called

themselves the "Fagan Club."

     Occasionlly, things got out of hand as when the Fagan

Club members acted as Fagan's thieving band of children and

literally stole everything they could "pickpocket." It

was fun and Riley was learning how to become Dickens. They

did not get caught often enough to get thrown in jail.

     As the years continued, Riley probed the perimeters of

Dickens's precedents.

     To be as Dickens was, Riley felt it necessary to write

publicly at every opportunity.  This included writing letters

to the editor of newspapers. In 1873 A friend in Mooresville,

A.W. Macy, suggested Riley write a letter from Anderson to

the Mooresville paper about his life in Anderson and Riley

did so. Doc Marigold was the name Riley used in a

correspondence letter published in the May 8, 1873 issue of

the Mooresville ENTERPRISE. In one of Dickens' short stories

a vendor of cheap articles was named "Doc Marigold. "Riley's

letter was written at Anderson, April 24, 1873.

"Dear ENTERPRISE: I have ben intending to write you a letter,

but have deferred it from day to day until I could bestow

more attention to it than has been at my command for some

time.  I have not been still in one place long enough to

write my "John Hancock" in a legible manner on hotel

registers; and now that I have at last "found a level, I am

not certain that I can interest you; for I know so little of

general importance that, was there nothing else to write

about, my little would be as brief as the tail of Tam

O'Shanter's mare.

     Anderson is a very handsome little city of about five

thousand inhabitants - good people, speaking generally,

though, of course, "It takes all kinds of people," etc ...

     The Methodist church is in strong power here; and noble

and energetic ministers and members are doing great and good

work.  The leading business men here are principally workers

in the church - as I believe they are in every thriving

place. it the city has one flaw it is its Courthouse - that

looks really lost and out of place and uncomfortable,

surrounded as it is with beautiful business blocks..."

    In keeping with the scheme of Dickens to write of what

he knew, Riley studied the Hoosier landscape very carefully

and noted its many moods. Jucklet kept his eyes open if he

was going to have Riley survive as a writer.

      The strained mind of the adolescent Riley saw in

the life of Dickens not just a man, but the range of

characters that Dickens was able to portray. Possibly out of

this observation, Riley began to create his own characters,

those he could see around him.  Some of them were even

promising "selves" for roles for him to become.

    During Riley's twenties, Jucklet also very much liked

hoaxes. Riley was familiar with practically all of such

literature of every age. The Jucklet in him chose out the

fantastic and weirdly amusing from it. One can imagine Riley

overjoyed at coming across Poe's great hoax writing called

"The Balloon Hoax." Riley no doubt wondered if the American

public of 1878 would appreciate the sensational as had Poe's

reading public.  Poe's "The Balloon-Hoax" opened with the

headline: "ASTOUNDING NEWS BY EXPRESS, VIA NORFOLK! - The

Atlantic Crossed in Three Days! - Signal Triumph of Mr.

Monck Mason's Flying Machine! -Arrival at Sullivan's Island,

near Charlestown, S.C., of Mr.  Mason...in the Steering

Balloon, Victoria..." This was of course impossible in Poe's

day but the fun of concocting a hoax as Poe had done no doubt

played on Jucklet's mind. Riley was determined to outdo Poe!

     Riley's poetry came to bear the mischievousness of

Jucklet.

 

            WHAT SMITH KNEW ABOUT FARMING (1871)

 

There wasn't two purtier farms in the state

Than the couple of which I'm about to relate; -

Jinin' each other - belongin' to Brown,

And jest at the edge of a flourishin' town.  ...

(Smith, a rich town merchant with no knowledge of agriculture

decides to buy one, live in the country "where the air is

free" and take up farming, disastrously from a financial

point of view.)

...

Mr. Smith found he was losin' his health

In as big a proportion, almost, as his wealth;

So at last he concluded to move back to town

And sold back his farm to this same Mr. Brown

At very low figgers, by gittin' it down.

Further'n this I have nothin' to say

Than merely advisin' the Smiths fer to stay

In their grocery stores in flourishin' towns

And leave agriculture alone - and the Browns.

 

     There is something to be said about simply surviving.

As James Whitcomb Riley grew to maturity, it was obvious

that he was not going to survive easily. He was simply not

born to be a domineering, noticeable person. Riley was a

"shrimp" of a boy and man. He was not physical. He was not

some macho study either. Most women took one look at him and

said good-bye.

     There is a letter Riley's friend, Nellie Cooley, wrote

to him after she moved to Illinois. In the letter, Nellie

tells him she has heard from a friend that Riley "has gone to

the dogs." To which she replies that she "raved" about him as

loyal Nellie always did. Nellie was the exception as she

always was for Riley. Perhaps total loyalty and friendship

blinded her.

     Only by his wits did Riley survive.  Riley needed to

play Jucklet badly. As alcoholic as he was becoming, his wits

remained. Some part of Riley needed to deal with his ever-

increasing dependence upon alcohol.

     How does an alcoholic survive?

     Riley acknowledges in his autobiographical poem, "The

Flying Islands of the Night," that he did it by relying upon

his mischievous minstrelsy persona he calls Jucklet. Jucklet,

in the autobiographical poem, is the "tool" of Crestillomeem

for survival purposes.  However, when Riley understands he

must be sober for some reason or another, he turns to his

Jucklet role.  When it comes to survival, Jucklet takes over

the transformative role in the poem, "The Flying Islands of

the Night." When it is necessary to "ditch" Crestillomeem,

his dependency on alcoholism, Jucklet defies Crestillomeem

and takes over.

     From the third act of "The Flying Islands of the Night,"

we find the following:

 

"(General sensation within, and growing tumult without, with

  wrangling cries of "Plot!" "Treason!" "Conspiracy!" and

  "Down with the Queen!". "Down with the usurper!" Down with

  the Sorceress!")

 

                   Crestillomeem (Wildly)

                  Who dares to cry

"Conspiracy!" Bring me the traitor-knave!

 

(Growing confusion without - sound of rioting, - Voice, "Let

me be taken! Let me be taken!" Enter Guards, dragging Jucklet

forward, wild-eyed and hysterical - the Queen's gaze fastened

on him wonderingly.)

 

                        Crestillomeem

Why bring ye Jucklet hither in this wise?

 

                            Guard

O Queen, 'tis he who cries "Conspiracy!"

And who incites the mob without with cries

Of "Plot!" and "Treason!"

Crestillomeem (Starting)

 

              Ha! Can this be true?

I'll not believe it! - Jucklet is my fool,

But not so vast a fool that he would tempt

His gracious Sovereign's ire.  (To guards) Let him be freed!

 

(Then to Jucklet, with mock service)

 

Stand hither, O my Fool!

 

                     Jucklet (To Queen)

 

                    What! I, thy fool?

Ho! ho! Thy fool? -ho! ho! Why, thou art mine!"

 

     Jucklet is not merely the survival force at work within

Riley's alcoholism, but also Riley's savior.  Riley saw

his wit and capacity to be humorous and to "minstrelize"

as a pathway to salvation from his alcoholism and to get by.

     Riley's father sought out a more concrete way of getting

by for his son when he arranged that Riley take up house and

sign painting.

     The former slave George L. Knox recalled, "One evening

as I sat in my (barber) shop I heard three men talking. They

seemed very much interested in their boys. One suggested that

the carpenter's trade would be a good trade for his son to

learn, another thought the painter's a good trade. The

parents of the three boys finally concluded that they would

have their sons learn the painter's trade. The men were

Captain (Reuben) Riley, Morris Pierson and Mr. Lipskin. It

seemed strange to me to hear these white men talk of putting

their boys out to learn trades, as where I came from (the

South) white boys did not have to work.  The boy who was most

indulged and petted and did the least was thought the most

of. I wondered why three men took such an interest in their

boys, as I thought to teach the white boys to work was out of

the question. One of the boys who was to learn painter's

trade was James Whitcomb Riley, now the Hoosier Poet, another

Wm. Pierson, now Dr. Pierson of Morristown, and the other

Harry Lipskin.  They all learned their trade from a man by

the name of Kiefer who could paint all kinds of pictures. He

was thought quite an artist by the people of Greenfield. Some

of the boys were more successful in their trade than the

others.  Young Riley seemed the most apt. He could drawn

anything and would take up his pencil and a piece of paper

and make a perfect picture of anything he wanted to.  The

boys, when they were out of the shop (Keefer's) would come to

my place of business to lounge and idle the time away.  James

Whitcomb used to come quite often.  He seemed different than

the other boys and did not choose his associates from among

the boys, but the men, such as Dr.  Milligan, Ed Milligan and

others.  The other boys would keep coming, and bother me more

or less, while young Riley would come around, but seldom

bothered me or got in the way.  I said to him one day, "J.W."

I always called him that "you can come around to the shop

when you desire; I like to have you; you are not like the

other boys." He gradually became a frequent visitor at my

place."

     When we think of Riley in his twenties, we think of

Riley traveling around Indiana living as a wanderer. He often

returns to Greenfield, his hometown, but he rarely stays.

He has learned to be a painter. Employments are casual and

transitory. He paints a barn or a sign to earn enough money

to go someplace else.

     What kind of signs was Riley painting?

     In the Post-Civil War Era, it was customary for every

merchant to have his windows ornamented with a neatly worded

sign done in different colors and always in a sort of scroll

design with many fancy letters, mostly in script. An example

of one is recorded by Henry Miller, a retired merchant who

painted with Blowney's at South Bend, Indiana, at the same

time James Whitcomb Riley did. A Riley sign in South Bend was

at George Muessel's grocery store on the two lower lights of

each window which consisted of four large panes and on the

two lower ones he painted the following signs: "G.C.

Muessel-queensware and crockery," and on the other two panes,

"G.C.  Muessel -groceries and provisions." The sign was done

with Riley's usual flourish and many colored paints.

     Riley stayed where he could. He grew a long red

mustache. The pace is quick. Riley needs money so he travels

from town to town in search of painting jobs.  He returns to

Greenfield as we know he did in February, 1873 but then heads

back to Anderson where he and his friend, Jim McClanahan

branch out into the Graphics, named after the NEW YORK

GRAPHIC MAGAZINE, a periodical popular with designers.  The

Graphics consist of no less than three but sometimes more

living on craftsmanship services offered to residents of the

Indiana towns they pass through.  These gentlemen lived

freely and easily.

     The Graphics did many odd-jobs.  Frank Spear dressed

silk hats while Riley painted signs. Others of the Graphics

and what happened to them were remembered in an Anderson IN

Morning HERALD article on the death of Frank Spear of Jan. 4,

1895.  Edward Lemon committed suicide in a newspaper office

at Nellsville, Wisconsin. Jim McClanahan, who Riley called

"The Poor Man's Friend," lived in Anderson. He subsequently

died of exposure after being found drunk. Will Ethell was an

artist of prominence and Turner Wickersham ended up in Kansas

City.

     Life with the Graphics was an "off and on" employment

for Riley for four years - from 1873 until the Spring of

1877. The Graphics modus operandi for making a living was

worked out slyly and mischievously. They would dress

fashionably and enter a town and entertain especially the

girls and get contracts to make signs from merchants.  Farm

wives along the roads would give them pies. They would then

survive having the fun of it all while they travelled

together. In this journey, Riley found his way to South Bend,

Indiana in July 1873, where the Graphics disbanded for a

time and each went his own way until reforming again the next

Spring.  Riley stayed in South Bend for several days. One of

Riley's most famous projects was the making of a mural about

the progress of South Bend that took two weeks to finish. In

1873, After five weeks, Riley heard his father married again

to a Quaker woman from a farm near Pendleton.  In November,

1873 Riley went back to Anderson to work for Doc McCrillus

but went home to Greenfield shortly afterwards to see his

father and meet his father's new bride. Riley stayed in

Greenfield in late 1873 to help start up a theatrical troop,

the Adelphians, to put on plays in Greenfield during the

winter. Lee O. Harris, Riley's old teacher, was still in

Greenfield and they worked together on theatricals. Riley

continued to write during this period of time and sent a poem

to the Danbury Connecticut NEWS published in its February 25,

1874 issue. Originally the concept of painting advertising

signs outside the stores, on barns, fences, or prominent

places was profitable.  Sign painting was a new medium. As

the group traveled around Indiana, Jim McClanahan was able to

bring in many new jobs.  New helpers were brought in.  The

Graphics made great profits. Soon, however, new advertising

"firms" sprang up.  Competition grew fierce.  New jobs became

scarce and profits were just a memory.  The business of "The

Graphics" dwindled away until nothing when in the spring of

1877 Riley and McClanahan returned to Anderson insolvent

where they knew they had room and board at least in Mother

McClanahan's household.

     Riley was a witty and companionable associate.  The

"Ho!", often repeated as "Ho!  Ho!" or Ha!, etc., in the

autobiographical poem "The Flying Islands of the Night" is an

identifier of Jucklet, the "minstrel" Riley persona.  Perhaps

it likens Riley "To the Wine-God Merlus" of a poem of that

name subtitled, "A Toast of Jucklet's" wherein the "Ho!  Ho!"

represents Jucklet's state when "the jolly god, with kinked

lips and laughter-streaming eyes," has "liftest me up."

      As Riley's years with the Graphics ended, he wrote

his "Craqueodoom" for the Anderson DEMOCRAT of June 1, 1877.

In the newspaper world there was great consternation.  What

did it mean?  Craqueodoom" was exchanged with other

newspapers and reached other audiences.

 

     The Crankadox leaned o'er the edge of the moon

          And wistfully gazed on the sea

     Where the Gryxabodill madly whistled a tune

          To the air of "Ti-fol-de-ding-dee."

     The quavering shriek of the Fly-up-the creek

          Was fitfully wafted afar

     To the Queen of the Wunks as she powdered her cheek

          With the pulverized rays of a star.

 

     The Gool closed his ear on the voice of the Grig,

          And his heart it grew heavy as lead

     As he marked the Baldekin adjusting his wing

          On the opposite side of his head,

     And the air it grew chill as the Gryxabodrill

          Raised his dank, dripping fins to the skies,

     And plead with the Plunk for the use of her bil

          To pick the tears out of his eyes.

 

     The ghost of the Zhack flitted by in a trance,

          And the Squidjum hid under a tub

     As he heard the loud hooves of the hooken advance

          With a rub-a-dub-dub-a-dub-dub

     And the Crankadox cried, as he lay down and died,

          "My fate there is none to bewail,"

     While the Queeen of the Wunks drifted over the tide

          With a long piece of crape to her tail.

 

     At Kokomo, the Editor Oscar Henderson published not only

the poem but also two queries to the poet as to the meaning.

William Croan, Riley's Editor at the Anderson DEMOCRAT,

passed the queries along to Riley who went on to draft a

reply subsequently published in "The DISPATCH."

     Riley's reply was evasive and mysterious.

     "Although in endeavoring to reply to the above query, I

feel that I place myself in rather a peculiar position, I can

but trust, in so doing, to escape the incessant storm in

inquiries haled so piteously upon me since the appearance of

the above mentioned poem - of whatever it is.

      As to its meaning - if it has any I am as much in the

dark, and as badly worried over its incomprehensibility as

anyone who may have inflicted himself with a reading of it;

in fact more so, for I have in my possession now not less

than a dozen of similar character; and when I say they were

only composed mechanically, and without apparent exercise of

my own thought, I find myself at the threshold of a fact that

over which I cannot pass.

     I can only surmise that such effusions emanate from long

and arduous application - a sort of poetic fungus that

springs from the decay of better effort. It bursts into being

of itself, and in that alone from the decay of better effort.

It bursts into being of itself, and in that alone do I find

consolation.

     The process of much composition may furnish a curious

fact to many, yet I am assured that every writer of either

poetry or music will confirm the experience I am about to

relate.

     After long labor at verse you will find there comes a

time when everything you see or hear, touch, taste, or smell,

resolves itself into rhyme, and rattles away until you can't

rest.  I mean this literally.  The people you meet upon the

streets are so many disarranged rhymes, and only need proper

coupling.  The boulders in the sidewalks are jangled words.

The crowd of corner loungers is a mangled sonnet with a few

lines missing.  The farmer and his team an idyl of the road,

perfected and complete when he stops at the picture of a

grocery and hitches to an exclamation point.

     This is my experience and at times the effect upon both

mind and body is exhausting in the extreme. I have passed as

many as three nights in succession without sleep - or at

least without mental respite from this tireless something

which

          "Beats time to nothing in my hand

           From some old corner of the brain."

 

     I walk, I run, I writhe and wrestle with it, but I

cannot shake it off. I lie down to sleep and all night long

it haunts me.  Whole cantos of incoherent rhyme dance before

 me, and so vividly at last I seem to read them as from a

book.  All this without will power of my own to guide or

check; and then secure a stage of repetition - when the

matter becomes rhythmically tangible at least, and shapes

itself into a whole of sometimes a dozen stanzas, and goes on

repeating itself over and over till it is printed indelibly

in my mind.

     This stage heralds sleep at last, from which I wake

refreshed and from the toils of my strange persecutor; but as

I have just said, some senseless piece of rhyme is printed on

my mind and I go about repeating it as though I had committed

it from the pages of some book.  I often write these jingles

afterward, though I believe I never could forget a word of

them.

     This is the history of the "Craqueodoom." This is the

history of the poem I give below.  I have theorized in vain.

I went gravely to a doctor on  one occasion and asked him

seriously if he didn't think I was crazy.  His laconic reply

that he "never saw a poet that wasn't." is not without

consolation.

     I have talked with numerous writers regarding it, and

they invariably confirm a like experience, only excepting the

inability to recall these Gypsy changelings of a vagrand

mind."

     Riley's father thought his son was out of his mind

for traveling with the Graphics and no doubt writing such

strange poetry as "Craqueodoom," and got him home to learn

lawyering.

     Reuben Riley was a lawyer who taught many others

to become lawyers in the county seat of Greenfield. We find

in the county histories of Hancock County many members of the

Hancock County Bar Association admitted on his motion.

     On many occasions we find James Whitcomb Riley drawn

to his father's law office. Now came one of those times. The

father's hope no doubt was that James Whitcomb Riley was

apprenticing himself for the law. The fact was simply the

opposite.

     While the father was away, Riley wrote poetry or fiddled

around drawing funny pictures in his father's somber

lawbooks. In the back of Riley's mind must always have been

the expectation that he might return to finish apprenticing

as a lawyer to take over his father's law practice. Mainly, I

believe, he preferred his writing and was also rebellious

against the law and order lawyering upheld.  There are those

in the legal profession who attempt to move the recalcitrant

legal system into another posture usually failing miserably.

Riley took a wider road toward humanitarian lifework.

    Reuben A. Riley himself was a product of the legal

apprenticeship system and was admitted to the Hancock County

Bar after reading in Randolph county. Upon moving to

Greenfield, Reuben was admitted to the Hancock Bar on motion

of R. M. Cooper August 19, 1844.  The Motion of Reuben to

admit his son as a qualified reader in his office never came.

     Lawyers admitted to the Hancock County Bar on the Motion

of Reuben Riley included Gustavus N. Moss, August 18, 1845;

William P. Davis, August 10, 1847; Nimrod Johnson, August 10,

1847; Michael Wilson, August 10, 1857; William R. Hough,

August 10, 1857; Joseph R. Silver, May 26, 1859; William H.

Pilkinton, February 15, 1860;  Brayan C. Walpole, February

1860; Oliver P. Gooding, August 15, 1865;  Augustus W. Hough,

February 13, 1866; W.W. Kersey, February 13, 1866; John H.

Popps, August 21, 1866; Prestly Guymon, February 15, 1867;

Matthias M. Hook, February 15, 1867; W.S. Denton on June 4,

1877; Richard A.M. Black, October 15, 1877; Samuel B. Waters,

March 26, 1878; William C. Barrett, June 13, 1881, etc.

     Since the party who moved the admission of the bar

member was most often the master of the apprentice, it can be

seen how active Reuben Riley was in educating new lawyers in

Greenfield.  He didn't get the job done with his son.

     And so Riley's life in his twenties went...never very

seriously...mostly as Jucklet truanting about in carefree

poverty with friends.

     Eventually, Riley settled down at Anderson, Indiana

to write for a newspaper, the Anderson DEMOCRAT. Riley

had taken odd jobs with newspapers before, but the Anderson

DEMOCRAT offered him the steadiest work and the chance for a

journalism career. We will note what happened to this

position with the story of "Leonainie."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Riley's play character Jucklet deviously arranged for

Riley to come to great fame in the way that the scheming,

ludicrous minstrelsy of this character would do such a thing:

through a "hoax" more outrageous than any "hoaxer" had ever

"pulled" before.

     In July, 1877, shortly after Riley had composed the poem

"Leonainie" and shortly after poetry he had sent to an

Eastern magazine for publication had been rejected, Riley

spoke with anguish to friends.  He angrily proposed the

theory that his poetry was rejected by national publications

in the Eastern cities simply because his name was unknown,

not because his poetry was not good enough.

    To prove the theory, Riley proposed to pass off his poem

"Leonainie" as one written by Edgar Allan Poe.  His

hypotheses was that the poem would be immediately successful

because its author was known to fame.

     Riley's friend, William H. Croan, Junior Editor of

Riley's newspaper, the Anderson DEMOCRAT, and a journalist

from the competing Anderson newspaper, William Kinnard of the

Anderson Herald, together with Mrs. D.M. Jordan, a

contributor to the Richmond "Independent" were the initial

conspirators about the project. The three decided on

the Kokomo DISPATCH as the newspaper to approach about

initially printing the hoax poem. Riley wrote the Editor of

that paper, Oscar Henderson, the following letter:

                  Office of

          The Anderson DEMOCRAT

Todiman and Croan             Anderson, Indiana July 25, 1877

    Proprietors

Editor DISPATCH - Dear Sirs:

    I write to ask a rather curious favor of you.  The dull

times1 worry me, and I yearn for something to stir things

from their comatose condition. Trusting to find you of like

inclination, I ask your confidence and assistance.

     This idea has been haunting me: - I will prepare a poem

- carefully imitating the style of some popular American poet

deceased, and you man "give it to the world for the first

time" thru the columns of your paper, - prefacing it, in some

ingenious manner, with the assertion that the original MS.

was found in the album of an old lady living in your town -

and in the handwriting of the poet imitated - together with

signatures etc. etc. - You can fix the story - only be sure

to clinch it so as to defy the scrutiny of the most critical

lens.  If we succeed, and I think sheer audacity sufficient

capital to assure that end, - after "working up" the folks,

and smiling over the encomiums of the Press, don't you know;

we will then "rise up William Riley,2" and bust our literary

bladder before a bewildered and enlightened world !!!

     I write you this in all earnestness and confidence,

trusting you will favor the project with your valuable

assistance.  It will be obvious to you why I do not use our

paper here. Should you fall in with the plan, write me at

once, and I will prepare and send the poem in time for your

issue of this week. Hoping for an early and favorable

response, I am,

                               Very truly yours, J.W. Riley

1. Some might argue the times were not so dull. At the time

of this letter, America was in the midst of a crippling and

bloody railroad strike from Illinois to the Atlantic Coast,

Indiana's current Senator and former Civil War Governor,

Oliver Morton, was seriously ill. In Utah, Brigham Young, the

founder of the Morman Church, was dying. Then, too, the

Russians and Turks were in a desperate war.

2. The expression "rise up William Riley" was a reference to

"Riley songs," old English or Irish ballads preserved by

mountaineer bards of Tennessee and Kentucky. One began "Rise

up, William Riley, you must appear this day\ The lady's oath

will hang you, or else will set you free..."

 

     The Editor of the Kokomo DISPATCH wrote back the

following:

                     The DISPATCH Kokomo, Ind., July 23, 1877

J.W. Riley,

My Dear Sir:

     Your favor of this date is just received.  Your idea is

a capital one and is cunningly conceived.  I assure you that

I "tumble" to it with eagerness.  You are doubtless aware

that newspaper men, as a rule, would rather sacrifice honor,

liberty, or life itself, than to deviate from the paths of

truth - but the idea of getting in a juicy "scoop" upon the

rural exchanges, causes me to hesitate, consider, yea,

consent to this little act of journalistic deception.  Yes,

my dear Riley, I am with you boots and soul.  But hadn't I

better forestall the poem by a "startling announcement" or

something of the sort one week before its publication?  The

public would then be on the tip-toe of expectancy, etc.  I

merely offer this as a suggestion.  We would hardly be able

to publish the poem, if of any great length, this week.  Copy

is well in for Thursday's issue now, same some local

paragraphs.  Send copy as soon as you can and we may print

next week.  If you like, you may also write the preface as

you have indicated.  Perhaps you could do better than I.  I

enclose this letter in a plain envelope to disarm suspicion.

Let me hear from you.  Fraternally,

"Mum's the word."                   J.O. Henderson

 

       Riley read the Henderson letter and communicated its

good news to Croan and Kinnard and wrote to the out-of-town

member of the conspiracy, Ms. Jordan, as follows:

                             Anderson, Ind. July 25, 1877

Dear Friends:

     I write - not in answer to your letter, for I haven't

time to do that justice now - but to ask of you a very

special favor.

     I have made arrangements with the editor of the Kokomo

DISPATCH that he shall publish the poem "Leonainie," under

the guise of its being the work of Poe himself. Henderson is

to invent an ingenious story of how the original manuscript

came into his possession, and when it appears with a hurrah

from the DISPATCH, I shall copy and  comment upon it in the

DEMOCRAT - in a way that will show that I have no complicity

and I want you to review it, if you will, favorably, in the

Independent - I don't want you to really admire it - but I do

want you to pretend to, and eulogize over it at rapturous

length, and as though you were assured it was in reality the

work of Poe himself - as the DISPATCH will claim.  Our object

is to work up the "Press" broadcast if possible, and then to

unsack the feline, and let the "secret laughter that tickles

all the soul" erupt volcanically.  The "Ring" around the

literary torpedo as it now lies includes but four persons,

including yourself, and it must be the unwavering resolved of

every member to hold the secret safely fastened in the bosom

quartette till time shall have ripened the deception, and the

slow match had reached the touch-hole of success.

     Now will you do this for me at once, for I shall not be

thoroughly happy till the answer which I believe, in your

great kindness, you will give, reaches me.

     How are you, anyway? Happy, I trust, as I am to sign

myself

                             Your friend, J.W. Riley

 

     Riley also replied to Henderson:

                             Anderson July 26, `77

Dear Henderson:

    Your letter did me good, and as I am something of an

enthusiast, I am more than ever assured of the ultimate

success of our detour. You ask me to fix up the story, and

although I have two or three in crude design, I think it will

be better, since the poem is to be unearthed at Kokomo, that

you manufacture it to suit the surroundings; beside, were I

to do it, the trick might be betrayed in some peculiarity of

composition - no matter how trifling; for if the ruse

succeeds at all, it will certainly receive most rigid

scrutiny, and that too of a keenness that will probe to

deepest limits.  No, I think you will concede the propriety

of weaving that fabric on your own loom, I will make

suggestions, however, which you may use or ignore as they may

be adapted to your surroundings, "In time of peace prepare

for war" - that is get ready for afterclaps - or in other

words fix a firm foundation.  I would get some old woman,

we'll say who does washing, or something of that sort, and if

she hasn't got an old album, she's got an old book of some

kind from which can be torn a blank leaf.  Tell her frankly

that you want to create a little sensation, and ask her to

assist you by saying - should anyone inquire of her as to the

truth of it - "that there some poetry written in the book,

and that you had noticed it, and asked where the book come

from, and she had said it was a book her grandmother used to

have; then you had asked her if you mightn't tear out the

poetry and print it, and she had acquiesced." Or, - hunt out

an old wood-sawer, or an old chap who lives alone, and give

him a good send off of some kind - swear him, and then tear a

leaf from some old book of his - or if he hasn't got an old

book, get him one and let him say "his mother gave it to him

fifty year ago - that he don't know where she got it, only

that he'd heard her say a young feller about twenty stayed at

their house one night, and acted strange like, and looked

pale, and paced the floor till morning, and the book was in

his room, and when he went away she found the poetry written

in it and signed simply E.A.P." -for I have selected Poe to

imitate from.  And now can you find anything in these

suggestions you can utilize - or does not your own fancy

suggest a better plan.  think.  there are a thousand ways,

select the most feasible, and nip it at once - taking care to

make it anything but complicated or sensational, -and right

here while I think of it: You will be called on to produce

the M.S. - say simply that you have sent it to W.D.  Howells,

of The Atlantic," or some other eminent critic for

inspection; and if Will Siddell is in your office, let him

into it, and he can have seen it, and set from it - but don't

let too many know it - only a very few in whom you can repose

every confidence.

     And now my dear Henderson, I have worried you enough.  I

turn the whole thing over to you - feeling you will get all

out of it there is in it.  When you publish it, I will copy

and review it in a manner that shall evince most thoroughly

that I have no complicity with it; and do not be surprised if

I exhibit, in what I shall have to say, a covert jealousy of

the "DISPATCH" - I'll do anything to throw unfavorable

comment out o' gear. It might be well, as you suggest, to

prepare the people for it in some startling way.  Do nothing

tho' without mature deliberation.  Copy the poem with every

care and don't omit a mark, for I have taken every precaution

to imitate the most minute characteristics of the erratic

original.  Write me that this is received O.K. and what you

think  of it. Another thing, preserve our correspondence.

Yours                    J.W. R.

 ---  LATER ---It might be  well for you to refresh yourself

     in Poe history - for such material cannot fail to be of

most effective service in the "tangled web we weave." By such

a course you will be enabled to locate the old lady at whose

house the wild-eyed stranger stayed and penned the "Matchless

lines;" and also to most minutely describe the poet's

chirography.

     Write me at once - if only a line, for I am interested.

                             J.W.R.

     "State that the original M.S. has not a single word

crossed out, nor sign of erasure - and is copied exact in all

particulars.

Henderson received Riley's letter that same day and had

Will Siddell, his head type-setter, set up the poem

"Leonainie" in type and strike off a galley proof to enclose

with a letter to Riley reading as follows:

 

The DISPATCH

J.W. Riley                       Kokomo, Ind., July 27, 1877

 

My Dear Sir:

     Your favor and poem received yesterday.  Your suggestion

is good.  Will publish poem next Thursday.  It is really Poe-

tical in every word and line - a superbly written and

matchlessly conceived poem  It certainly would not detract

from Poe's transcendental genius to father the fugitive.   I

assure you it is withal a marvelous and rare creation,

honoring you and the State as well.  Have not yet matured my

story but will have it in due time. Have you any additional

suggestions?  We have your "Kalamazoo1" Sargeant a left-

handed dig in the ribs this week in the DISPATCH, but do not

wish to antagonize the DEMOCRAT.  Can't you favor us with a

poem written over your own signature, sometime "when you have

nothing else to do?" Our readers are quite well acquainted

with "Riley the Poet," already.

                       Fraternally,

                             J.O. Henderson

1. "Kalamazoo" was the nickname of a baseball player named

Sargeant who played for the Anderson baseball team and was

called a notoriously "dirty player" in another article in the

Kokomo DISPATCH.

Riley responded to Henderson's letter as follows:

                          OFFICE OF

                    THE ANDERSON DEMOCRAT

Todiman and Croan           Anderson, Indiana, July 30, 1877

      Proprietors

 

Dear Henderson:

 

Your letter has furnished me special pleasure, as it

indicates that you are sanguine of success. You ask if I have

any more suggestions; None I believe - unless it be to say

that the typographical form of the poem is faulty in the

regard of architectural construction; tho' doubtless you have

already remedied the defect, i.e. - it is not properly

indented.  Have you noticed? If not, repair if this reaches

you in time.  Nothing more - only "Courage, Courage, Mon

Comrade!" We'll drive `em bald-headed I'm sure.  Yours, J.W.

                                    Riley

      The Kokomo DISPATCH printed the following story in its

issue of August 2, 1877, at the top of the fourth column of

editorial page 2:

   POSTHUMOUS POETRY---"A Hitherto Unpublished Poem of the

                 Lamented Edgar Allan Poe -

         Written on the Fly-Leaf of an Old Book now

            in Possession of a Gentleman in this

                            city

 ---The following beautiful posthumous poem from the gifted

pen of the erratic poet, Edgar Allan Poe, we believe has

never before been published in any form, either in any

published collection of Poe's poems now extant, or in any

magazine or newspaper of any description; and until the

critics shall show conclusively to the contrary, the DISPATCH

shall claim the honor of giving it to the world.

     That the poem has never before been published, and that

it is a genuine production of the poet who we claim to be its

author, we are satisfied from the circumstances under which

it came into our possession, after a thorough investigation.

Calling at the house of a gentleman of this city the other

day, on a business errand, our attention was called to a poem

written on the back fly-leaf of an old book.  Handing us the

book he observed that it (the poem) might be good enough to

publish, and if we thought so, to take it along.  Noticing

the initials E.A.P., at the bottom of the poem it struck us

that possibly we had run across a "bonanza," so to speak, and

after reading it, we asked who its author was, when he

related the following bit of interesting reminiscence:  He

said he did not know who its author was, only that he was a

young man, that is, he was a young man when he wrote the

lines referred to. He had never seen him, himself, but had

heard his grandfather, who gave him the book containing the

verses, tell of the circumstances and the occasion by which

he, the grandfather, came into possession of the book.  Hs

grandparents kept a country hotel, a sort of wayside inn, in

a small village called Chesterfield, near Richmond, Va. One

night, but before bed-time, a young man, who showed plainly

the marks of dissipation, rapped at the door and asked if he

could stay all night, and was shown to a room.  That was the

last they saw of him.  When they went to his room the next

morning to call him to breakfast he had gone away and left

the book, on the fly-leaf of which he written the lines given

below.

     Further than this our informant knew nothing, and, being

an uneducated, illiterate man, it was quite natural that he

should allow the great literary treasure to go for so many

years unpublished.

     That the above statement is true, and our discovery no

canard, we will take pleasure in satisfying any who care to

investigate the matter.  The poem is written in Roman

characters, and is almost as legible as print itself, though

somewhat faded by the lapse of time.  Another peculiarity in

the manuscript which we notice is that it contains not the

least sign of erasure or a single inter-lineated word.  We

give the poem verbatim - just as it appears in the original.

Here it is:

                          LEONAINIE

 

          Leonainie - angels named her;

             And they took the light

          Of the laughing stars and framed her

             In a smile of white:

                And they made her hair of gloomy

                Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy

                Moonshine, and they brought her to me

             In the solemn night.

 

          In a solemn night of summer,

             When my heart of gloom

          Blossomed up to meet the comer

             Like a rose in bloom;

                All the forebodings that distressed me

                I forgot as joy caressed me --

                (Lying joy that caught and pressed me

             In the arms of doom!)

 

          Only spake the little lisper

             In the angel-tongue;

          Yet I, listening, heard her whisper, -

             "Songs are only sung

                Here below that they may grieve you -

                Tales are told you to deceive you -

                So must Leonainie leave you

             While her love is young."

 

          Then God smiled and it was morning,

             Matchless and supreme;

          Heaven's glory seemed adorning

             Earth with its esteem:

                Every heart but mine seemed gifted

                With the voice of prayer, and lifted

                Where my Leonainie drifted

             From me like a dream.

     The next morning Henderson sent Riley a copy of the

story of the hoax clipped from the DISPATCH with a letter:

                        The DISPATCH

Dear Riley:                       Kokomo, Ind.  Aug. 3, 1877

     We published the poem yesterday. The net-work enveloping

the old book, ignorant possessor, etc., you will observe, has

been altered materially, for the best, we think. We have our

man, a Mr. Hurd, formerly of Va. all posted, primed, etc.

The ruse works.  Our people think it the "finest poem" Poe

ever wrote.  Those best acquainted with him declare

"Leonainie" to be Poe-tical in every detail.  It is success

here. We have sent marked copies to Cincinnati, Indianapolis,

Boston, New York, Chicago, and Louisville papers. Also to the

Monthlies - Atlantic, Harpers, Scribners, etc. The thunder of

their voices will soon be reverberating through the length

and breadth of the commonwealth.  Do you want any extra

copies of the DISPATCH If so, will send you.  What do you

think of it?  How are you pleased with it, etc. Answer.

Fraternally,

                        J.O. Henderson

     Riley received Henderson's letter the same day it was

written and immediately did two things to avoid suspicion of

himself.  He composed a squib for insertion in that days

"DEMOCRAT" August 3, as follows:

     The Kokomo DISPATCH of yesterday "startles the nation

and the hull creation" by publishing a posthumous Poe poem

clamorously claiming the honor of its first presentation to

the world.  Lack of space prevents us from further remark;

but we will say, however, that of all the Nazareths now at

large, Kokomo is the last from which we would expect good to

come."

     Secondly, Riley wrote Henderson a post-card, purposely

worded to convey a message if read by the curious at Anderson

or Kokomo, as follows:

                         Anderson, Ind. August 3, 1877

Editor DISPATCH

Kokomo, Ind.

Dear Sir:

     Some literary thug has gobbled our DISPATCH containing

your Poe discovery.  Please send me two or three extra

copies.  What does it mean?  Are you in earnest? I would like

to enter into a correspondence with you regarding it, for

even though you be the victim of a deception I would be proud

to know your real author.  Do I understand from your

description that the manuscript is written like printed

letters? Write me full particulars and I will serve you in

response in any way in my power.  Very truly, J.W. Riley

     The next day, Riley wrote another letter:

                        Anderson Aug. 4, 1 `77

Dear, dear Henderson - and I've a notion to call you darling,

-

                              Your Leonainie

introductory is superb, and as for the leading paragraph, a

neater, sweeter lie was never uttered.  I fancy Poe himself

leans tiptoe o'er the walls of Paradise and perks an eager

ear to listen and believe.  There may be a feature or two

open to attack, but that's at it should be, for once the

excitement of controversy started, a thousand hydra-headed

critics will rise up in its behalf - if only to be contrary.

     I am well pleased; and especially grateful for the

evident interest you bestow upon it.  Let me caution you

again to guard the imposition with most jealous care.  Let no

one know it - not even your mother-in-law, if you possess so

near and dear a relative.  Nor would I seem over-anxious to

convince unbelievers, for they will strive to run you thro'

the gauntlet on that very point; - excuse me for useless

suggestions, but I am so fearful of detection a shadow scares

me, and I find myself

              "Like one that on a lonesome road

               Doth walk in fear and dread,

               And having once turned round walks on

               And turns no more his head,

               Because he knows a frightful fiend

               Doth close behind him tread."

     And so, dear Henderson, walk with me, "and the devil may

pipe to his own" till our designs shall have ripened into the

fullest bloom of victory, - then we'll have our day.

     I sent you a postal yesterday which will understand and

use perhaps to advantage.  And now let me post you in regard

to those who are assistants in the deception, - for you might

be approached by persons claiming to be into the secret

falsely, and by so doing catch you off guard.  Mrs. D.M.

Jordan, of the Richmond INDEPENDENT, and Mr. Kinnard here, of

the HERALD, are the only ones outside yourself and DEMOCRAT

who know of it.  The former - Mrs. J. - will be of greatest

value to the success of the scheme, and the latter -Mr.

Kinnard - in his way, will be no less effective and valuable.

So now you are fortified on that point, and all you have to

do is smile inwardly, "and with a lack-luster, dead blue eye"

await the unfoldings of it at least a curious future.

     I believe I have said as little and as much as now is

necessary: but you must write  me in the meantime, and keep

me lubricated with the oily experience which I can but fancy

will be yours.  Send extra papers.

     I shake your hand in silence and in tears; and in the

language of Artemus Ward, - "I am here; I think so.  Even of

those." J.W. Riley

     The fact was also that another person knew of the

conspiracy. Riley also told his roommate, Jim McClanahan

of all the details.

     On Monday, Riley wrote Henderson again:

                     Anderson, Ind. Aug. 6

Dear Henderson:

     This from the Indianapolis NEWS of the 4th is rather

pointed.  Yet i trust it will not have the effect of

discouraging you in the least.  We can't expect the public to

gulp it whole, you know; for they are bound to suspect the

"worm" contains a hook. "Patience and shuffle the cards!" The

singular reticence of the other dailies may auger good - or

bad - time only will disclose; and bear in mind no critic has

as yet pronounced  upon it.  We will give them "a long pull -

a strong pull, and a pull all together," and in the meantime

let me assure you that my ardor is not in the least dampened.

     "Mrs. Jordan's review will soon prod them, and your

humble servant's likewise, and should you receive letters or

coms., select quotations etc. etc., and publish good and bad

alike, in order to show your willingness to abide by the

public decision - in a measure at least.  I find it necessary

for surrounding circumstances, to claim in my review that you

may perhaps be the victim of a clever deception, and also to

rend the tender fabric of the poem to some extent.  I do this

for the double purpose of directing the attention from your

complicity, and to draw attention from my own; and although I

evidently strive to condemn the poem, I indirectly furnish

more praise than blame - but you understand.  Let nothing

discourage you, I shall not.  I shall watch carefully for any

new points, and in case I "drop" on anything, will alter

criticism to suit the public appetite.

     Write me if any new developments - write anyhow, and

tell me you are not discouraged.  Yours fraternally, J. W.

                               Riley

 --- LATER ---In case my review of the poem should cause any

     public comment to its detriment, I will furnish you with

a private letter in which I will express the belief that the

poem is certainly genuine, and you may answer my article by

reproducing it - see?

     It will be well, perhaps, for you to give me a slur of

some kind this week - in response to our notice in last

issue.  Make it hot - call us jealous, etc. etc.

     I notice Harding of the HERALD steps round it as

carefully as he would a torpedo.  If he'd only bit I could

die resigned.

     I have examined two or three here with regard to it -but

they're wary, and don't want to commit themselves.

     Our best literary man says its a GRAND thing, and reads

it like a Murdoch.  Prof. Hamilton pronounces it a fine

thing, but thinks it yours.  He knows you, and is almost

satisfied that it is your composition.  This is all "fruit"

for me, you know, and after an interview of this character, I

generally "wind up" my face and let it "run down" the other

way.  I notice that it worries `em, and that's a good sign -a

good sign! Another feature, - everybody would like to believe

- they want to the worst way, and all we have to do is to

exercise proper policy; and as the old man has it "We study

to please."

     Let nothing shake your first convictions, and although

we eventually cry Peocavi, the "euchered" public will be

forced not only to forgive, but render homage.

     And now whatever you do, write to me - Write, and keep

me informed as to the welfare or the dangers attending our

orphan venture - Very truly, J.W. Riley

     The Indianapolis NEWS item referred to by Riley read,

"The Kokomo DISPATCH publishes for the first time a poem said

to have been written on the fly-leaf of an old book, by Edgar

Allan Poe. The poem bears no internal evidence of such

paternity." The Harding referred to is Reverend George C.

Harding, owner and editor of the Indianapolis Saturday

HERALD, one of Indiana's most distinguished editors. The

Saturday HERALD commented, "The Kokomo DISPATCH prints what

it claims to be an unpublished poem of Edgar A. Poe."

 

     Henderson replied to Riley's letter, saying: THE

                          DISPATCH

 

Dear Riley:                    Kokomo, Ind., Aug. 7, 1877.

     Your very kind letter was received yesterday.  I admire

your zeal and join you heartily in the hope of ultimate

success. Our people here believe the poem a "true bill." The

TRIBUNE folks have interviewed me and I believe I succeeded

in "stuffing" them to the muzzle.  They feel a trifle jealous

of our journalistic "scoop" - hence their reticence.  That's

their way. If they doubted the genuineness of the story or

poem, they would stand on their hind legs and howl furiously.

Please send us every extract or notice of the poem you find

in the prints with the name of the paper in which you find

it.  Next week perhaps we will publish all "comments of the

press" etc. concerning it.  This week will be too early to

hear from them.  Be sure to send me Mrs.  Jordan's notice.

We don't get the INDEPENDENT.  I will keep you posted. Do the

same with me. Write. Fraternally, J.O.  Henderson

     On August 9th, the Kokomo DISPATCH published an item

stating "Our Edgar Allan Poe poem, published in last week's

DISPATCH, is creating quite a flutter over the country.  The

literary critics are giving it the closest scrutiny."

Henderson continued to risk his professional prestige and

that of his newspaper in participating in this hoax.

 

 

     The same day, he wrote Riley as follows:

THE DISPATCH Dear Riley:                 Kokomo, Ind. Aug. 9,

1877.

     The dawn of success is breaking, and every day brings us

fresh evidence of ultimate triumph. Glory! The N.Y. HERALD of

last Friday, Aug. 5, is before me and it has nibbled. It

republished the entire article from The DISPATCH, comments on

poem and credits it to The DISPATCH; so did The N.Y. SUN last

Tuesday.  The Rochester UNION-SPY (Ind.) also publishes the

entire article.  Soon we shall hear its thunder reverberating

through the length and breadth of the Union! It is a success.

The plot or story that we told in introducing the poem seems

to somewhat disarm criticism.  Think of the N.Y. HERALD, the

grandest journal in Christendom, gulping it down! Riley,

your fame is assured! You are destined to become a second

Thomas Chatterton! Shake!

     I am sanguine and overjoyed for your sake.  I feel that

the poem has merit that should place it in the front ranks of

poetry in America. Hail, conquering hero!  Fraternally, J.C.

                                   Henderson

P.S. The reticence of the Cincinnati papers is strange

indeed.  I sent them all copies.  Keep on the lookout and

write me every paper that refers to it.  J.C.H.

    The only comment of the New York HERALD was in its

headline: "EDGAR ALLAN POE - An Indiana Journal Professes to

Have Exhumed a Hitherto Unpublished Poem - Inscription on an

Old Fly-Leaf." The New York SUN published a condensed version

of the DISPATCH story and the complete poem, but without any

headlines or comments.

 

     Riley wrote Henderson a letter the same day with this

letterhead:

                   ---WILLIAM R. MYERS ---

                          ---------

                ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR AT LAW

                COLLECTIONS MADE A SPECIALTY

 

          "All claims entrusted to his care will be

        attended to without fear, favor or affection.

                 Anderson, Ind. Aug. 9, 1877

Dear Henderson:

     The JOURNAL this morning "nibbles," and other papers

will zip it - in consequence the J. will be forced to

champion the poem.  I can't tell you how sanguine of success

I now am.  I can only exclaim, in the delirious eloquence of

the gifted Poe, -

 " W H O O P ! " A steady nerve is all that is now required.

     Keep me informed of any new phases.  I will send you

Richmond paper when it appears.

     Have only time to write this. Yours, J.W. Riley

 

     The next day, Riley wrote to Henderson again:

                             Anderson, Aug. 10

Dear Henderson:                 -- 1877 --

 

     I presume you have seen New York SUN of the 7th., and

Cincinnati GAZETTE of yesterday - both got it - bad! The SUN

reproduces a portion of your editorial, and the poem entire,

but ventures no comment of its own.  The GAZETTE heads

article "An Old Poem by Poe." It must surely bring some

critic to the fore ere long.

     I have written my review in a way that will be apt to

awaken a reply from some quarter, and I shall mark the

article and ship it to the four winds.

     Why don't you write? I hope you are not losing faith, or

becoming "tired now and sleepy too" - for - God bless us - we

are certainly at the very threshold of success! I am eager

for the fray.  That the poem has merit is established, you

see, and all we have now to do is "Hold the Fort!" till our

own good time, and in the meantime aggravate controversy from

every possible quarter.  Can't you come over and see me.  If

we could talk for one square hour we could make ourselves

believe it! That's what we want -  is to get together -Come

over to-night or tomorrow - or Sunday - anytime that will

suit you - only come. Yours "Till death us do part." J.W,

                             Riley

     That same day Riley finished his review of "Leonainie"

for publication in his own newspaper, The Anderson DEMOCRAT.

As the day progressed, Riley's review was set up in type,

placed in the form and was waiting press time when Riley

decided to withdraw it from that day's issue. He then added a

section to Henderson's letter before mailing:

                        --- LATER ---

I have "weakened" at the last moment.  I have been afraid of

my review, - I mean the effect of it - Is it right or wrong?

I have withheld it from this issue.  I will be sure I'm right

before I go ahead.  I send proof of it for your inspection.

Examine carefully - mark what new points may strike you -

suggest - etc. etc., and I'll hash it over for next issue -

`Twill be better maybe for the delay: tho' I much regret that

I am not better assured of the success of the article.  You

know the object of it all - now criticize it impartially, and

tell me how I may improve it.  I do wish you would come over

- Come, in god's name if possible.

                                  Yours etc.  J.W. Riley

     Riley's request that Henderson come to Anderson should

be put into perspective. Henderson was a co-owner of the

Kokomo newspaper and Riley was an Associate Editor of his,

merely an employee.  Henderson simply couldn't leave his

newspaper to come to Anderson.

     Both the Anderson HERALD and DEMOCRAT were published on

Fridays.  Kinnard when he learned of the "Leonainie" story in

the DISPATCH of August 2d then wrote the following for his

newspaper, The HERALD:

     "We expect a rhapsody of jealous censure from the

jingling editor of the sheet across the way, and shall wait

with the first anxiety ever experienced for the appearance of

the DEMOCRAT.  We look for an exhausting and damning

criticism from Riley, who will doubtless fail to see

"Leonainie's" apocryphal merit, and discover its obvious

faults.  As it is, we were led to believe "Leonainie," to

quote from Riley, is a "superior quality of the poetical

fungus, which springs from the decay of better thoughts." No

doubt our young friend Riley will belittle this poem and say

it is not the work of Poe.  But it is Poe, and Poe's best

manner."

     At the last minute, Riley decided to publish his review

of the poem and stopped the press, already printing that

week's issue, to make room for his review.  This did not

endear Riley to the press foreman. The review reads as

follows:

                   THE POET POE IN KOKOMO

     An alleged important literary discovery was announced by

The Kokomo DISPATCH in its issue of last week, in which the

following extract from a lush and juicy article occurs:

(Riley repeated the full Kokomo DISPATCH article and poem,

"Leonainie.")

     We frankly admit that upon first reading the article, we

inwardly resolved not to be startled; in fact we resolved to

ignore it entirely; but a sense of justice due - if not to

Poe, to the poem - has induced us to let slip a few remarks.

    We have given the matter not a little thought; and in

what we shall have to say regarding it, we will say with

purpose far superior to prejudicial motives, and with the

earnest effort of beating through the gloom a path-way to the

light of truth.

     Passing the many assailable points of the story

regarding the birth and late discovery of the poem, we will

briefly consider first - IS POE THE AUTHOR OF IT?

     That a poem contains some literary excellence is not

assurance that its author is a genius known to fame, for how

many waifs of richest worth are now afloat upon the literary

sea whose authors are unknown and whose nameless names have

never marked the graves that hid their value from the world;

and in the present instance we have no right to say, -"This

is Poe's work - for who but Poe could mould a name like

LEONAINIE?" and all that sort of flighty flummery.  Let us

look deeper down, and pierce below the glare and gurgle of

the surface, and analyze it at its real worth.

     Now we are ready to consider, - IS THE THEME of the poem

one that Poe would have been likely to select?  We think not;

for we have good authority showing that Poe had a positive

aversion to children, and especially to babies.  And then

again, the thought embodied in the very opening line is not

new - or at least the poet has before expressed it when he

speaks of that "rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name

Lenore," and a careful analysis of the remainder of the

stanza fails to discover a single quality above mere change

of form or transposition.

     The second verse will be a more difficult matter to

contest; for we find in it throughout not only Poe's peculiar

bent of thought, but new features of that weird facility of

attractively combing with the delicate and beautiful, the

dread and repulsive - a power most rarely manifest, and quite

beyond the bounds of IMITATION. In fact, the only flaw we

find at which to pick, is the strange omission of capitals

beginning the personified words "joy" and "doom." This,

however, may be an error of the compositor's, but not

probably.

     The third stanza drops again. True, it gives us some new

thoughts, but of very secondary worth compared with the

foregoing, and is such commonplace diction the Poe-

characteristic is almost entirely lost.

     The first line in the concluding stanza, although

embodying a highly poetical idea, is not at all like Poe; but

rather so UNLIKE, and for such weighty reasons we are almost

assured that the thought could not have emanated with him.

    It is a fact less known than remarkable that Poe avoided

the name of the Deity.  Although he never tires of angels and

the heavenly cherubim, the word God seems strangely

ostracized.  That this is true, one has but to search his

poems; and we feel we are safe in the assertion that in all

he has ever written the word God is not mentioned twenty

times. In further evidence of this peculiar aversion of the

poet's, we quote his utterance, -

          "`Oh, Heaven! oh, God!

           How my heart beats in coupling those two words."

    The remainder of the concluding verse is mediocre till

the few lines that compete it - and there again the Poe-

element is strongly marked.

     To sum up the poem as a whole we are at some loss.  It

most certainly contains rare attributes of grace and beauty;

and although we have not the temerity to accuse the gifted

Poe of its authority, for equal strength of reason we cannot

deny that it is his production; but as for the enthusiastic

editor of the DISPATCH,  we are not included, as yet, to the

belief that he is wholly impervious to the wiles of a

deception.  J.W. Riley

 

Paul Henderson, the author and compositor of this

series of letters, newspaper articles and background of

notes, calls this review by Riley "a masterpiece of subtle

chicanery.  Setting the scene with his sly reference to the

poem's merit: "...a sense of justice due - if not to Poe - to

the poem," Riley had the impudence to refer to his own pet

theory: "...that a poem contains some literary excellence is

not assurance that its author is a genius known to fame!""

Riley then analyzes the poem revealing his own great

knowledge of Poe's style as well as acclaiming his own poem

as one "of grace and beauty."

     The next day, Riley wrote Henderson:

                             Anderson, Aug. 11 `77

Dear Henderson:

     "I wrote you yesterday that I would not publish my

review this week, but receiving a letter from a literary

friend in Indianapolis, enclosing "Leonainie," I stopped the

press in time to insert my article for benefit of more

notable exchanges at least.  I think it was best, for my

criticism will do everything to throw them from the agent.

And now do you think it will be a good idea for me to write

you a "put up" letter, praising the poem and expressing a

belief in its genuineness? Write me at once - or come over.

Id' come to you - but can't possibly leave work out before

me.

                             Yours in the bonds -J.W. Riley

"Will send Richmond papers as soon as they appear."

     Henderson then wrote Riley a letter on the next Monday

afternoon:

  THE DISPATCH Dear Riley:                    Kokomo, Ind.,

Aug. 13, 1877.

     Your two letters Saturday received.  I would like to

visit you ever so well but can't get away for two weeks at

least.  My brother and partner has gone to Baltimore, Md.,

and per consequence I am tied at home.  Have you seen notice

in N.Y. WORLD, TRIBUNE, POST; Chicago TRIBUNE, INTER-OCEAN,

Cincinnati papers, COURIER JOURNAL? I am saving all notices

and will publish them this or next week.  Your notice in

DEMOCRAT is capital; so is HERALD'S, but it sounds like you

all over.

     Our plot is developing rapidly.  The ball is now fairly

in motion and will not stop until it reaches every State in

the Union. No article was ever published in a "country" paper

in the State that has had such a run as this has and will

have.  The end is not yet.  I am anxious to see The ATLANTIC,

SCRIBNER'S MONTH, etc.  They are the critics.  Send me all

extracts you find.  Get WORLD'S if possible. We do not get

the paper here.  Would be happy to receive a visit from you

if only for one night.  Fraternally, J.O. Henderson

     It should be noted that the two had not yet figured out

how they would release the secret of the hoax.

     It should also be noted that we know Riley was at the

point of physical collapse at this point in his life. He was

both writing and editorializing at his regular work for The

DEMOCRAT and trying to cope with the strain of his hoax.

     On Wednesday morning, the Editor of The DEMOCRAT, Croan,

sensing Riley's near breakdown, suggested that Riley go to

Kokomo to work out a definite plan. He could take the

Panhandle railroad connection at 1:20 P.M. and get to Kokomo

a couple of hours before Henderson's newspaper went to press.

A problem was the manuscript on the fly-leaf of an old book.

Croan suggested he take a book with him to Kokomo and

selected out of a small book-case beside his desk an

Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary with a blank fly-leaf.  Croan

also knew of a facsimile of Poe's handwriting from a back

issue of Scribner's Magazine. Croan went to see a friend he

knew who kept back issues of Scribner's and found the

facsimile poem in the September 1875 issue by tracing through

the annual index of the previous December.  The poem was

"Alone" and was said to have been written when Poe left West

Point in 1829 - at about the time Riley would have been about

twenty.

     Riley needed a forger and knew where to find one in an

artistic friend of his. Riley went to see his friend Sam

Richards at his boarding house but Sam had gone to

Indianapolis and wasn't due back until late that night.

Riley left a note with the boarding house owner to be given

to Richards the minute he returned to Anderson and then went

to see his Graphics friend, Will Ethel. Riley didn't want to

buy the "pale ink of a bluish tinge" himself and needed a

friend to buy it for Sam to use on his forgery which Ethel

did.

     The next morning, Sam Richards came to The DEMOCRAT

office. Riley gave him the book with the fly-leaf, his own

copy of "Leonainie" and the bottle of ink from Will Ethel.

He also gave him the facsimile poem of Poe's as a model.

Riley said he had to have the poem on the flyleaf by 1:20 to

take to Kokomo. Initially, Richards tried to do the job at

The DEMOCRAT office but Riley hovered over him so he couldn't

do it and said he was going to take it back to his own room

to work on. Riley agreed but said he was coming up to see how

he was doing in an hour.  When Riley went, Richards said he

was still practicing on Poe's handwriting and wasn't going to

do it without "perfection."  Meanwhile Riley was pacing

around because he had to make a train to Kokomo with the

forgery at

1:20.

     After Riley left, Richards went back to work.  He showed

up at Riley's office at The DEMOCRAT to say he had not been

able to get more than the first verse done on the fly-leaf.

Although Riley was taken aback and very disappointed, a

coincidence happened. A compositor of Henderson's own

newspaper, the DISPATCH, happened to be visiting Riley's

newspaper to talk to a friend who was a pressman there.  The

man, Will Siddell, had come to Anderson to see his sick

mother and decided to stop in for a visit. When Riley learned

of this he decided not to go to Kokomo until the next day but

instead to have this Will Siddell tell Henderson about the

forgery. Will Siddell took notes that would permit Henderson

to write up the forgery document for his next issue. Riley

told him about the Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary, the pale,

blueish ink on both sides of a single sheet, or fly-leaf,

taken from the back of the book, writing remarkably clear,

can be read as easily as print, though dimmed by time and

exposure.  Riley told Siddell to make sure Henderson knew he

himself would be over with the forged document on the next

day's train.

     On the next morning, Thursday, August 16th, Henderson

got a letter from a Boston publisher and sent Riley a letter

about it. Henderson's letter was hasty because he wanted

Riley to have it that day. This meant he had to post it on

the 9:35 "Panhandle" train to Anderson for Riley to get it at

about 1:00 P.M. when the train would arrive at Anderson.

     Henderson knew something must be done. Disastrous

exposure of the hoax would surely follow if no manuscript was

in his hands.

  THE DISPATCH J.W. Riley                     Kokomo, Ind.,

Aug. 16, 1877

     I have just received a letter from WM. F. GILL & CO.,

Publishers, at Boston, requesting me to forward original MSS,

of our Poe's poem. Mr. Gill has just written and published a

"Life of Poe" and writes that he has the MSS. of his "Bells."

He says he can identify his MSS beyond cavil and such

identification would be of value to me.  I send you his

letter and notice of his book which please return to me at

once.  What shall I write him! Where is original MSS? Notices

still come in - latterly from the South, Baltimore, etc.

Send me all your clippings.  I will need them by Friday or

Saturday to publish in next week's DISPATCH - outside.  I

would like to see you but can't leave office until my brother

returns.  "Nothing succeeds like success," and this is a

success. Watch "Monthlies" closely. Write.  Fraternally, J.O.

                                 Henderson.

     Henderson then had his office boy take the letter to the

train for dispatch to Anderson. Later that day, Will Siddell

arrived from Anderson with Riley's message that he would be

over the next day with the forged poem and its description.

Based on Siddell's notes, Henderson edited in the description

to a previously written article for his newspaper as follows:

     "The furor over our discovery of Poe's remarkable and

hitherto unpublished poem - the sweet and beautiful

"Leonainie," is just not in its insipiency.  The poem is

traveling like wild-fire all over the country, and the ablest

critics in the land have leveled their lenses upon it.  If we

have been the victim of a deception, we are as willing

as anybody to know it.  We believe in the paternity of the

poem and can await with complacency the verdict of the

reading public.  The original MS., together with the book

from which the leaves were torn, are now in our possession.

The book is one of an old edition of "Ainsworth's

Dictionary," considerably time-worn.  The poem is written in

pale ink of blueish tinge on the fly-leaf taken from the back

of the book.  The chirography is remarkably clear and can be

read as easily as print.  Of course it is somewhat dimmed by

time and exposure.  It is written on both sides of a single

leaf.  The MS will be sent East  to critics for examination

and judgment.  The poem is indeed remarkable, and its

accidental discovery is a valuable contribution to American

literature."

     Henderson slipped up here by saying he had the MS. "now"

since in the original announcement he stated he took the MS

into his possession which would have been two weeks previous.

     Another article in the same DISPATCH newspaper edition

was an "out and out" lie. Referring to the Friday previous,

Henderson wrote the enclosed article for publication:

     J. W. Riley, the Hoosier poet, was in the city last

Friday, and of course called at the DISPATCH office.  He is a

bright, sparkling conversationalist, and a more excellent

elocutionist. Riley writes rhymes as easily as he writes

prose.  He is probably the ablest poet in Indiana.  He is

considerably "shook up" over our Poe's poem discovery.  While

he shakes his head in seeming doubt, it is evident that he

believes "Leonainie" to be worthy of Poe.  While here he

examined the original MS., and a perplexed expression o the

countenance told he was considerably worried over it, if not

entirely "at sea".

     Later that same Thursday, Richards brought Riley the

completed forgery of the poem on the fly-leaf.  It was a

beautiful piece of work identical with the facsimile of Poe's

writing from Scribner's. Riley showed the forgery to Croan

and both agreed that Riley could spend Friday night in

Kokomo, perhaps with Charley Philips, the Editor of the rival

newspaper to the DISPATCH. Then Riley said he would go

down to Greenfield to spend the weekend with his family.

     The next afternoon, Friday, Riley got on the 1:20

"Panhandle" train to Kokomo carrying the old Dictionary

wrapped in brown paper with "Leonainie" on its fly-leaf.

Once in Kokomo, Riley took a round-about path to the DISPATCH

office which was on the second floor of the Kokomo "opera

house" block on Railroad Street at the North-West corner of

Court House Square, facing the Square.  He did this to avoid

being seen by his good friend, Charles Philips, whose Kokomo

TRIBUNE office was also on Railroad Street. When Riley

arrived at the office, he met Henderson for the first time.

The session was a "great time" with both laughing gleefully

and with great chuckles at how everyone was deceived.

     Later the two however began to argue about how to bring

closure to the hoax. Riley proposed that Charles Philips of

the Kokomo TRIBUNE, Henderson's great rival, be contacted and

that the hoax be revealed through that newspaper. Henderson

exploded. He did not like the plan and told Riley that he was

the one who would have to live in the town after the hoax was

over. The two agreed to think of another plan. Henderson

asked Riley to spend the night since there was no train back

to Anderson that night, but Riley declined. He was going to

see his friend Charles Philips and anticipated spending the

night there as he had on many occasions.

     When Riley looked up Charles Philips at the TRIBUNE

office, Charley asked him what he was doing in Kokomo. Riley

said he came to see the "Leonainie" MS. Riley told Charley

that he saw it and Henderson kept it in his office safe.

Riley further said the poem certainly sounded good enough for

Poe. Then Riley spent the night at Charles Philips home.

While staying in Kokomo, Riley wrote his Anderson girlfriend,

Kit Myers, saying:

Dear Kit:                   Kokomo, Ind. August 18, 1877

     I write to tell you how happy I am, and yet how

miserable; happy that I find my pet schemes here in such

lovely working order, and miserable that I can't tell you

about them verbally - never mind - I'll have whole cantos to

tell you when we meet again, and soon.

     I have only time now to write you these few words, for

I'm to take a jaunt this morning thro' Ko-ko-mo, the new way

of saying it - behind the laziest horse the market affords.

The eds. of both papers are making a lion of me, which you,

knowing my weakness, will accept as the best of reasons for

my present blissful condition and brevity of letter talks.

     Write to me at once, won't you, at Greenfield, for I

will be there Monday at the fartherest. Love to all my

friends, and for yourself, the warmest love of `Mr. Riley'

     From that day's Kokomo TRIBUNE, Charles Philips had

written the following personal:

     J.W. Riley, of the Anderson DEMOCRAT,  the author of the

strange and fantastical poem, "Craquedoom," published in

these columns several weeks ago, is in the city, and gave us

a pleasant call last evening.  Riley is becoming well-known

throughout the country for his original compositions and he

has a bright future before him.

     Riley left for Greenfield on late Saturday afternoon. He

was so close to complete physical exhaustion that his short

holiday extend to nearly two weeks in Greenfield.

     The next Monday, August 20th, was a critical day in the

life of the "hoax." Metcalf, Kinnard's partner at the

Anderson HERALD had learned that Riley wrote "Leonainie" from

a person he called a "young man" and came into the HERALD

office to see Kinnard. He was determined that they should

expose the hoax. Kinnard was forced to tell Metcalf that he

knew of the hoax and could not reveal it in their newspaper.

Despite every argument, Kinnard refused to budge. The news

spread around Anderson, however, that Riley was the author of

"Leonainie." When Riley's Editor, Croan, heard the rumors he

wrote Riley that he needed to get back to Anderson, but this

day Riley had decided to go to Indianapolis to visit his

friend, George Harding, Editor of the Indianapolis Saturday

HERALD.  During the visit, Riley told Harding of seeing the

"poe" manuscript.  Riley was trying to build up discussion of

the "manuscript."  This visit did result in a the following

notice in The Indianapolis Saturday HERALD:

     The HERALD was favored on Monday last with a call from

one of Indiana's favorite poets - Mr. J.W. Riley, of the

Anderson DEMOCRAT.  Mr. Riley had just returned from a trip

to Kokomo, where he had gone for the purpose of investigating

the authenticity of the alleged Poe poem, discovered by the

editor of the Kokomo DISPATCH.  Mr. Riley  reports favorably

to the honesty of the claim put forward by the editor of the

DISPATCH. Whatever may be the facts, he firmly believes in

the authenticity of the poem and guards it with jealous care.

The book, on the fly leaves of which the poem is written, is

kept under double lock and key, and it was only by tearful

pleading that Mr. Riley was permitted a sight of it.  The

discoverer stood uneasily by while Riley studied the faded

manuscript, and heaved a great sigh of relief when the

precious volume was once more locked up in the safe."

On Tuesday, Metcalf still could not convince his partner that

the Anderson HERALD should expose the hoax and so he wrote

the full details of the hoax to Charles Philips of the Kokomo

TRIBUNE. Apparently he decided that if his newspaper couldn't

benefit by exposure of the hoax, he would give the benefit of

it to another newspaper, the Kokomo TRIBUNE. Also Metcalf did

not tell his partner Croan that he had written the letter.

      At this point it should be mentioned that the poem

"Leonainie" had traveled from coast to coast and particularly

in the press of the East. Once the publicity about the poem

had reached the East, it was re-published from the great

Eastern newspapers of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and

Baltimore to those newspapers that fed on their exchanges.

Between August 2d and August 25th, 1877, the Kokomo DISPATCH

story with the "Leonainie" poem in it was reprinted in at

least thirty-five cities in seventeen of the nation's then

thirty-eight states exclusively of Indiana.  Literally, from

Boston to Portland, Oregon, from New York to San Francisco,

from Philadelphia to Richmond and Savannah, from Chicago to

Nashville, the poem "Leonainie" was printed. Not one of the

newspapers in any of these places accompanied the article

with editorial comment. Most tellingly however was the fact

that not one of the newspapers also believed that Edgar Allan

Poe had actually written "Leonainie." Not one was fooled.

     From the New York EVENING POST of August 7th, '...a

poetic sin has been laid at (Poe's) door..."

     From the Philadelphia COMMONWEALTH of August 8th,

"...The gin mills of Maryland and the Old Dominion never

turned out liquor bad enough to debase the genius of Poe to

the level of these wretched verses..."

     From the New York WORLD of August 8th came the

suggestion that a renegade of young men in a boisterous

literary club called "The Perforators" were probably behind

the hoax.

     From the Baltimore AMERICAN of August 9th, "...The

unfortunate poet (Poe) was no doubt guilty of many

indiscretions, but it is hard to suppose that in his most

eccentric mood he could ever have penned such wretched

doggerel as that which is now attempted to be fastened on him

under the name of "Leonainie..."

     From the Brooklyn DAILY EAGLE of August 9th, "The

composition is wild enough to have been written under the

influence of Egyptian or Terre Haute whiskey, and possesses,

therefore, what an eminent journalist of this city defines as

a local flavor..."

     From the Philadelphia PRESS of August 9th, "...If Poe

wrote it, he probably intended to call it `La Inane.'"

     From the Nashville DAILY AMERICAN of August 10th, "(Poe)

will surely pay his respects to the scalp of the Indiana man

who brought it out."

     From the Richmond ENQUIRER of August 10th, "It is fair

to presume that the discoverer of `Poe's Unpublished Poem'

wishes that he had kept his secret..."

     From the New York DAILY GRAPHIC of August 15th, "Set

your nonsense to music and announce that it is copied from

Edgar A. Poe's lost memorandum book, and it will travel from

the South Pole to Symme's Hole and excite the wildest

enthusiasm."

     From the Denver ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS of August 16th,"...

Now we can easily imagine the ebon darkness of the maiden's

hair, but the `bloomy moonshine' of her eyes is what troubles

us. Were they white eyes, shining in the night?"

     From the Detroit FREE PRESS of August 16th, "...`Bloomy

moonshine.' One sees that kind best while hanging on to the

lamp post."

     From the Oakland DAILY TRANSCRIPT of August 19th comes

the thought that "Leonainie" should have been signed "Pooh!'

instead of with the initials E.A.P.

     Nevertheless, in almost every account there is the

statement of the hoax that the poem "fooled even William

Cullen Bryant." This singular misstatement comes from the

fact that Bryant, even though in his eighty-third year at the

time, still wrote regular reviews and probably wrote the one

for the New York EVENING POST.

 

 

     The "grand expose" appeared on Saturday morning. It

was written in the Kokomo TRIBUNE, the rival newspaper of

Henderson's DISPATCH. The article was written by the doughty

owner and fire-eating senior editor of the TRIBUNE,

Theophilus C. Philips, who had been anxious for some time to

"take down" Henderson, who he called the fresh "collegiate

boy editor." On page four of the August 25th TRIBUNE appeared

the following headline:

                          LEONAINIE

                             ---

                    EXPOSE OF A CONTEMP-

                        TIBLE FRAUD.

                             ---

                   A RISING YOUNG MAN IN A

                       SMALL BUSINESS.

                             ---

                  A KOKOMO NEWSPAPER, SEEK-

                 ING FAME, SUCCEEDS IN COV-

                  ERING ITSELF WITH INFAMY.

                             ---

                  THE MOST ASTOUNDING LYING

                         ON RECORD.

     The columns of this paper are witnesses that we have

attributed to young J.W. Riley, of Anderson, or rather of

Hancock County, talent beyond one of his age and experience.

We regret sincerely to expose him in a piece of fraud that

will let him down many notches in the estimation of his

former friends.

     A few weeks ago, after writing and re-writing the poem,

`Leonainie,' imitating the style of Poe, he conceived the

idea that if he could get it out upon the world as Poe's

production and afterwards establish himself as the author, he

would make a world-wide fame at one jump.  But the effort to

reach fame by such a deception shows that his talent is more

than ever balanced by his lack of moral perception and mother

wit.  Having concocted his plans, he looked about for an

obscure paper in which to bring out the poem, for the more

obscure the paper the less likely that the fraud would be

suspected.  Mr. Riley found in The DISPATCH,  of this city, a

willing tool, a paper anxious for fame and unable to reach it

by climbing in the regular way.  It was a bold attempt.  If

it succeeded all would be well, and they, the young man,

author and editors, in the exuberancy of their youth, never

dreamed but that the deception would take like wild-fire.  As

the verdant young man who picks up a pair of boots in a store

and takes them away without paying for them, only to be

caught and sent to jail, these youths attempted a bold trick,

but one as gauzy as bobinet.

     But to come to the story: Mr. Riley put "Leonainie" into

the hands of The DISPATCH. On August 2d, inst., they

published it under head-lines and the positive statements,

that they believed it written by Poe. They pledged their

honor to the truth of all they said in regard to it.

     After it was out, under the direction of Mr. Riley,

copies of The DISPATCH were sent to all the leading

newspapers, magazines, and authors of the country.  The

answer that was returned just about crushed Mr. Riley.  The

DISPATCH did not seem aware of its misery, but actually

paraded the criticisms in its columns, changing some of them

that pronounced positively against the fraud, so as to make

them read like quasi endorsements.  Those who saw the

criticisms must have noticed that everybody who had

intelligence and discernment recognized the fraud, while a

few inexperienced persons, who probably never read Poe, waxed

enthusiastic over the poem.  Mr. Riley himself wrote a

criticism in which he admitted some of the lines were,

indeed, Poeish.

     But the worst of the story is yet to come.  One of the

eastern publishers to whom the paper, containing the poem was

addressed, wrote the editors of The DISPATCH  to send them

the original manuscript, saying they were familiar with the

lamented poet's chirography, etc., and they offered to pay

all expenses, and to faithfully return the same to Kokomo.

Here was a dilemma.  The DISPATCH folks decided at once what

they would do.  They sent a letter to Anderson with a

request.  There, a very old copy of Ainsworth's dictionary

was procured and an expert penman placed the poem on the fly-

leaf in writing as near like Poe's as possible, a recent

number of Scribner's Monthly containing a facsimile of the

poet's chirography.  Mr. Riley carried that book to this

city, himself, on Friday of last week for the purpose of

having it forwarded east.

     Much might have been written about this attempt at a

swindle but we have only sorrow and pity for all concerned

and are willing to let the matter rest.  Every honorable

person will be astonished that such a trick should have

been attempted.  Had Mr. Riley published the poem as his own

it would have given him additional credit, for it is really

good for a young man just beginning a literary course.

Hereafter, whatever he writes, no matter how good, will go

out at a discount, and no poem bearing his name will be

incontrovertible with pure literary currency.  Had the

DISPATCH published `Leonainie' without the flourish of so

many trumpets, it might have crawled out of its present

position by announcing the poem as quiet joke.  But it has

placed it in one scale and its honor, reputation, classical

knowledge and truthfulness in the other.  `Great literary

treasure,' for the present, farewell. We  know exactly

what The DISPATCH and Mr. Riley will say; we know the

testimony they will adduce. When they are through, we shall

puncture their bubble again.

     P.S. Since J. Oscar first got the old book from a

gentleman in this city, whom he says is `unlearned and

illiterate' and had Riley's `Leonainie" place on a fly-leaf,

how does it happen that a second old Ainsworth had to be

procured at Anderson in order to have a copy sent East?

     Boys, how do you feel? Have you sent Gill a copy yet?

Never mind, this week's TRIBUNE will suit him as well.

     J.W. Riley hit the nail on the head when he selected The

DISPATCH as a paper willing to pledge its brains and honor to

a falsehood and swindle, but we are surprised that he didn't

know there was another paper here smart enough to gather in

every point of the attempted fraud.  Poor boys, we really

feel sorry for them.

     Also in this issue of The TRIBUNE was another bite:

"`Leonainie,' poor girl, has already fallen into the arms of

doom...`Leonainie' has evaporated into `bloomy

moonshine.'" "...It was with tears in his eyes that J.W.

Riley told us he `had come all the way from Anderson to see

that manuscript of Poe's(?) poem, but he was afraid J. Oscar

wouldn't let him look at it." " ...`The angels framed

`Leonainie' in a smile white, but the boys lay her out on the

fly-leaves of two old dictionaries" "...For silly, lying,

verdant deception, and gauzy smartness, the `Leonainie' fraud

beats anything we ever saw..."  "The comments on `Leonainie,'

which The DISPATCH editors published this week are a total

`give-away' for that paper, one of the extracts have been

garbled and remodled until the editors have manufactured

indorsements out of burlesque paragraphs."

     This is the article which the Editor of the DISPATCH,

Henderson, saw as he read the Saturday morning rival

newspaper.  He wasted little time and went down to the Court

House Square and then over to the rival newspaper to Talk to

Charley Philips.  Philips greeted him derisively and

Henderson acknowledged that the joke on him.  He confirmed

the truth of the statements in The TRIBUNE and then said it

was fun while it lasted. Philips did tell Henderson that a

letter from Anderson two or three days before gave him the

details of the hoax. Henderson tried to find out who wrote

the letter but Philips would only say the writer was "young

man" who was a most intimate friend of Riley.

     Henderson wrote Riley upon his return to the newspaper

office.

                      Aug. 25, `77

                      ------------

                            "Saturday, 10 A.M.

Dear Riley:

     The Tribune of this city, this morning, published the

enclosed Expose of `Leonainie.' They tell me that they never

`tumbled' until they received a letter from a gentleman at

Anderson the other day `exposing' the poem.  They say the

`exposer' is a young man - a most intimate friend of yours.

It is Mr. K., I presume.  You see they seem to think they

have earned a place in glory for their `expose.' What shall

we do? Of course, we must explain the matter next Thursday -

but how? In order to scoop The TRIBUNE again, would it not be

well to acknowledge the poem, plea manly and turn the joke on

them? In this wise: Say that J.W. Riley is the father of the

poem; that he selected The DISPATCH as the proper medium

which he would send his poem to the world; he selected The

DISPATCH on account of its high merit as a weekly paper, its

well known literary tastes, and above all, its wide-extended

circulation; that we entered into the plot and helped to play

the ruse merely as a clever journalistic coup de main, that

the poem is worthy of Longfellow, Poe, etc.; praise it and

you very highly; say that you had a half dozen men as

witnesses, with three more at Anderson, of the genuineness of

the poem; that you and I arranged with a friend in Anderson

to write to The TRIBUNE under cover of secrecy and `expose'

the ruse, knowing that they would do it heartily and with all

their soul, hoping thereby to `get even' with The DISPATCH;

that thus we made a cat's-paw out of The TRIBUNE and

accomplished our end, etc. - and then take a hearty laugh

over the ruse, The TRIBUNE'S dilemma, etc. What say you,

Riley? Don't you think it a capital idea? You know we

must`fess up' next Thursday anyway. Let us turn the laugh.

Write me immediately. If you please you may also write or

block out reply to TRIBUNE and I will compare with mine.  Do

this at once and write me. I would like very much to have a

poem from you, over your own signature written for The

DISPATCH. It would help us to pacify the public mind and

extricate ourself from the charge of duplicity, etc. Please

write something for The DISPATCH  as soon as possible. I feel

that much is due the paper, don't you? Our readers would

laugh heartily over the little ruse, forgive us for our part,

and love you the more when they should read a poem openly by

you in The DISPATCH. I would suggest that you write a parody

or something after the style of `Leonainie,' poking fun at

The TRIBUNE and `exposing' the `Expose' of `Leonainie.' Such

a poem would come in capitally.  Write me at once.

                           Fraternally, J.O. Henderson

     Riley received the letter in Greenfield on Monday,

August 27, 1877. He remained in Greenfield instead of going

back to work in Anderson because he was unable to control his

drinking or depression. He did however walk to the Greenfield

post office where he found Henderson's letter with The

TRIBUNE's expose. He read it after he got back to the Riley

home at the Seminary. He also read The Indianapolis JOURNAL

editorial of that day stating:

     The Kokomo TRIBUNE , of Saturday, exposes a fraud on the

part of The DISPATCH  of that city, and J.W. Riley, the poet

of the Anderson DEMOCRAT.  Some time ago The DISPATCH claimed

to have found in that city, on the fly-leaves of an old book,

a poem by Edgar A. Poe, hitherto unknown, which it published

under the title `Leonainie.' The TRIBUNE claims that this was

written by J.W. Riley for the purpose of enabling him to

achieve a little reputation, by claiming the authorship after

the prose had pronounced a favorable verdict.  But the

favorable verdict was not awarded, and now the whole plot, in

all of its littleness, is exposed.  The facts given by The

TRIBUNE  are corroborated by private information of the

JOURNAL from Anderson.

     That same day Riley wrote to Henderson, as follows:

 

               Greetings: It's a trifle warm!

                                 Greenfield, Aug. 27 - `77

Dear Henderson:

     Unfortunately your letter of Saturday did not reach me

till too late for me to strike to-day's mail - in consequence

this may not reach you till too late to be of any service.  I

will say briefly that I do not like the idea of being

compelled to confess the fraud before real critical tests

have been applied.

     It has not gone too far - The TRIBUNE'S expose can be

successfully refuted even tho' you have verbally acknowledged

its truth.  You can claim that their story was manufactured

for them by me, and for the  purpose of claiming a poem whose

excellence I envied - don't you see. Treat the matter with

the same complacency that has marked your past course, and

express regret that one so full of promise could stoop to

such a depth, and all that sorto'stuff.  Claim that my visit

to Kokomo was to hatch the scheme with the Philips, and that

you suspected some trickery of me and treachery from my first

appearance in your office.  Another thing you can

mystify the Philips with but it must be done indirectly.  let

someone, apparently his friend, tell him that Riley has put

up the job on him, for if the Anderson man was my friend why

did he give me away - say that it rather looks like he -

Philips - had bit at the very thing I wanted. O we can

mystify anything they can pit against us!  I have a friend

here who has written a letter to the SENTINEL, Indianapolis,

which will perhaps appear in tomorrow's issue - look for it,

and I think you'll find a cue for a better course than yet to

confess. When we get ready we'll confess, and I really think

we can select our own good time.  Yours in the bonds,

                           J.W. Riley

Write me in plain envelopes.  My course will perhaps be

silence dark and deep.

                        ---LATER ---

     I have just written to have a letter `cooked' at

Anderson, which if it reaches its proper destination will

bother the public wonderfully, and be particularly

unwholesome for Metcalf of the HERALD,  and the TRIBUNE.  It

will be claimed that Metcalf is my tool, and that the story

he gives The TRIBUNE is of my own manufacture - for I am

satisfied that Metcalf and not Kinnard gave them the story.

That I am right I think you will agree when I tell you I had

word direct from Anderson last week that Metcalf had

threatened to give full expose in HERALD - Well, he didn't -

why? - because Kinnard wouldn't have it, and so he sneakingly

sends it to The TRIBUNE, and posts them to tell you that they

got it of a young man, and my intimate friend in order to

make you acknowledge - see?

     Well, if this ruse works and I'm almost certain it will

- it will cripple them too badly to ever smile again.  Then

we can go on till our own good time.

                               Yours ever,

                                   J.W. Riley

     In the meantime to more confuse the listening public,

you hatch up a letter from Kokomo to The Indianapolis JOURNAL

in which you shall claim that the whole plot was concocted by

The DISPATCH and TRIBUNE jointly for the purpose of notoriety

to each, and that it was originally written by Judge Biddle,

and never published till several years and years ago in

Logansport PHAROS - and that the copy - doctored somewhat-is

now in your possession - you being a civilian, and sign bogus

name.  Do this and we have another barricade from danger.

 

     Here is Jucklet at work big time! Here is a mischievous

minstrel piping up great court intrigue. Here is a jester

who simply does not wish his jest to cease. There is also in

this a great push to drain every ounce of publicity out of

the great controversy that Riley can. He wants his

`Leonainie' to bring him "fame." He does not seem to care a

great deal about the consequences to any of the newspapers

with which he is dealing. His manipulations do not reveal a

great regard for reality to say the least and one senses

Crestillomeem is confusing his perceptions of what reality

is. To a half-drunken man, staggering can seem walking a

straight line.

     This  day, Riley also wrote a "pseudonymous" letter -

which he signed "W," his middle initial - to the Indianapolis

SENTINEL which in fact was published the next day:

To the Editor of The SENTINEL:

Sir - I notice in this morning's Indianapolis JOURNAL a

covert attempt to claim for their poet, J.W. Riley, of this

place, the authorship of the lately discovered poem of Edgar

A. Poe, the beautiful and mysterious `Leonainie' which has

for some weeks been bewildering the literary world.  The

article referred to apparently sides with an article taken

from The Kokomo TRIBUNE, savagely jealous of the good future

of the rival paper that discovered the poem. Whether it is

indeed Poe's I do not undertake to state, but this much I am

assured of, that the well laid plan of Riley, The Kokomo

TRIBUNE and The JOURNAL is altogether too thin a proposition

to go down in the community.  Riley may possess some genius

for verse making, but he can't mislead with equal grace, and

a recent visit of his to Kokomo points directly to his

complicity with The TRIBUNE'S story of the poem's paternity.

I have not seen the article as originally published, but that

it was written by his own hand I am confident, and guarantee

that an inspection of it will testify the fact.

Greenfield, Ind. Aug. 27.               W.

     Nor was Riley so incapacitated that he did not take

Henderson's suggestion that he write a poem parody poking fun

at "Leonainie." Riley did not however write only one parody.

Instead, he wrote two. Writing verse was absolutely no trick

at all to him.  He wrote doggerel verse all the time for

advertising as well as personal instance.  When, for example,

he would go to visit someone and the person wasn't there, he

would often leave a rhymed note to state his reason

for the visit or some other thought. Many evidences of this

survive.

     The first of the doggerel "parodies" he sent not to his

fellow conspirator Henderson, but rather to his friend

Charles Philips who had just participated in the "expose."

If Philips published it, the "spoof" would mean even more

publicity for Riley. Then he wrote another for The

Indianapolis Saturday HERALD. Riley had not told Henderson he

was sending the parody to his rival newspaper so Riley wrote

Henderson a second letter with this information.

     The parody he wrote for The Kokomo TRIBUNE was called

"Leoloony":

                          LEOLOONY

          Leoloony, angels called her,

             And they took the bloom

          Of the tickled stars and walled her

             In the nom de plume,

                And they made her hair of plaited

                Midnight, and her eyes of grated

                Moonshine, and with her inflated

             Me with solemn gloom.

 

          With a solemn gloom of frenzy

             For my heart of sin

          Blossomed up with influenza

             When they brought her in.

                Every phase of dissipation

                I indulged at this donation --

                (For I knew of no foundation

             For a joke so thin.)

 

          Only spake the small pretender,

             Angel-like and calm,

          Yet I, listening, heard her render

             "Mary's Little Lamb;"

                And she closed the lines by saying

                I'd no further need of praying,

                For she knew `twas useless playing

             Longer such a sham.

 

          Then I grinned, for I was grateful

             As a jolly Thug.

          And the loss of one so hateful

             Overflowed my mug --

                Every grain of pain I sifted

                From the dust of sin was lifted

                As my Leoloony drifted

             From me like a bug.

 

     The second parody Riley wrote that day he sent to The

Indianapolis Saturday HERALD which published it the following

Saturday, September lst:

                          LEONAINIE

          Leonainie - Riley named her,

             And he took the glow

          Of the `laughing stars,' and framed her

             In the style of Poe;

                And he chuckled with the notion

                Of her voyage of commotion

                O'er the literary ocean

             With his fame in tow.

 

          He was but a local poet

             Full of coy deceit,

          And, tho' many didn't know it,

             He was `out o' meat;'

                And this Leonainie fever

                Struck him as the magic lover

                To uptip the world and heave her

             Worship at his feet.

 

          Only spake the rhythmic lisper

             In a jingly strain,

          That to critics seemed to whisper -

             "All pretense is vain.

                I'm too thin for public diet

                And I long for calm and quiet

                Where unnoticed I may lie at

             Rest from every pain!"

 

          Then we smiled at this conclusion -

             Pocketed our grief -

          Thankful Riley's dread delusion

             Had a life so brief.

                Every heart but his seemed gifted

                With a joy the breezes lifted

                Where his Leonainie drifted

             Like a withered leaf.

 

     The events of Monday after the expose of the hoax were

not over. Up in Anderson, Metcalf ran into Riley's roommate,

Jim McClanahan on the street. In the course of the

conversation, the hoax was brought up and Metcalf suggested

to McClanahan that Kinnard had told The TRIBUNE.  McClanahan

immediately went to Riley's boss at the Anderson DEMOCRAT,

Croan. Croan then wrote Riley at Greenfield with the entire

conversation's contents.

     Meanwhile the evening Indianapolis newspaper carried the

following story:

     The Kokomo TRIBUNE publishes a long expose of the fraud

attempted to be played upon the public by The DISPATCH, in

publishing `Leonainie' as a new found poem of Edgar A. Poe.

It was very thin imitation by a local poet named Riley who

can do much better untrammeled by a model.  The joke was

harmless and foolish enough, but it was complicated by an

eastern publisher, who sent for the original.  The TRIBUNE

avows that Riley then got an old copy of Ainsworth's

dictionary and had the lines copies into it, and sent the

book east.  If he did it, it was an exceedingly foolish act,

if nothing worse.

 

     The next morning, Riley found Coran's note of the night

before at the Greenfield Post Office.  When he had returned

home he wrote his girlfriend in Anderson:

Dear Kit:                Greenfield, Ind., August 28, 1877

     I fear one thing has saddened you, and made you anxious

on my account.  I refer of course to the premature exposure

of my Poe imitation.  But there is not the slightest fear on

that account. I was, I admit, greatly worried when I first

heard of the treachery of some pretended friend, but now I am

so fortified that I can laugh at the poor weak dupes who

sought to injure me.  I have been assured that Mr. Kinnard

exposed the whole affair, but I do not believe it, and I want

you, my dear Kit, to go to him and tell him that I do not

doubt him in the least.  I like him and my faith in him is

perfect as the day I held his hand and said good-bye.

     I have not been well for many days or would have written

a letter for The DEMOCRAT. So you see I have not forgotten my

old love. Whew! but I have bitter enemies in Anderson! I once

suspected it, but now I know! and won't I make 'em scringe!

My ire is like the storm-scourged surf in that light-house

poem for I "hold it up and shake it like a fleece!"

     In my defense I've been forced to take the most peculiar

position imaginable, but I shall not fail! And if you should

read some very bitter `Leonainie' squibs, just fancy I'm the

author of them all, and know what I'm about.  I have written

a most atrocious parody or two in which I attack myself with

a savageness the world will wonder at; but remember, Kit,

                 Out of the darkest sorrow -

                 Out of the deepest night -

                  Into the peaceful morrow

                   Flows the purest light!

 

     All this you must keep strictly secret, and that all

will yet go well, rest assured.

     I will not write you more now, for I do not wish to

worry you with never ending "Leonainie" venture.  I have too

many irons in the fire to think of better things.  I shall

expect a letter from you tonight, but if disappointed will

hope at least that all is well with you. My regards to your

good folks; my love to Jess, Mr. Croan and to your brother

Will. Devotedly yours, J.W. Riley.

     That afternoon, Riley wrote his "Card" to the General

Public, confessing his part in the hoax and explaining his

reasons for concocting it.

To the Public:

 

     Having been publicly accused of the authorship of the

poem, "Leonainie," and again of the far more grievous error

of an attempt to falsely claim it, I deem it proper to

acknowledge the justice of the first accusation.  Yes, as

much as I regret to say it, I am the author,\; but, in

justice to the paper that originally produced it, and to

myself as well, I desire to say a few words more.

     The plan of the deception was originally suggested to me

by a controversy with friends, in which I was foolish enough

to assert that 'no matter the little worth of a poem, if a

great author's name was attached, it would be certain of

success and popularity,' and to  establish the truth of this

proposition, I was unfortunate enough to select a ruse, that,

although establishing my theory, has been the means of

placing me in a false light, as well as those of my friends

who were good enough to assist us in the scheme, for when we

found our literary bombshell bounding throughout the length

and breadth of the Union, we were so bewildered and involved

we knew not how to act.  Our only  intercourse had been by

poet, and we could not advise together fairly in that way; in

 consequence, a fibrous growth of circumstances had chained

us in a manner, and a fear of unjust censure combined to hold

us silent for so long.

     To  find, at last,  a jocular explosion of the fraud,

we thoughtlessly employed a means both ill-advised for

ourselves and others.  And now, trusting the public will only

condemn for the folly, and hold me blameless of all

dishonorable motives wherein I have feigned ignorance of

the real authorship of the poem, etc. etc., I am,

                            Yours Truly

Anderson, August 28             J.W. Riley

     This card was printed in The Indianapolis JOURNAL on

August 30th.

     On the same day the Kokomo DISPATCH published its own

reply to the expose.

                             ---

                          LEONAINIE

                             ---

              A CLEVER RUSE SUCCESSFULLY PLAYED

                             ---

              J.W. RILEY THE AUTHOR OF THE POEM

                             ---

             HOW THE KOKOMO TRIBUNE WAS USED AS

                    A TOOL TO FURNISH THE

                           EXPOSE

                             ---

                WHAT PART THE DISPATCH PLAYED

                             ---

    "On the 23rd of July, we received a letter from Mr. J.W.

Riley - then connected with the Anderson DEMOCRAT, but now

residing in Greenfield - in which a proposition was made to

furnish The DISPATCH with an original poem a parody on Poe,

subject to these conditions: We were to envelope the poem

with additional interest by clothing it with a fictitious

net-work of own fabrication, in which we should loosely and

in the most flimsy manner charge its paternity to Poe.  It

was also distinctly agreed that in the course of a few weeks,

after the poem had had audience with the ablest literary

critics in the land, that we would explain the ruse and

declare Mr. Riley the real author of the poem.  But this was

not to be done until some other journal, innocent of the

plot, should be duped into making a `thrilling expose' from

facts furnished indirectly by Mr. Riley's friends.  This, of

course, would attract greater attention to Mr. Riley than if

we should make the exposure ourselves.  Owing to its morbid

and inordinate jealously of The DISPATCH, The Kokomo TRIBUNE

was selected as the paper to be used as the tool to further

Mr. Riley's and our purpose.  A friend in Anderson was posted

and the job was handsomely set up.  The friend, a pretended

enemy of Mr. R., disclosed the `terrible secret' to The

TRIBUNE  under the strictest bond of secrecy.  That paper was

not to `give its informant away,' etc., d'ye see? But to

return to our part of the play: Everything was in readiness

and The DISPATCH of August 2nd, published the poem.  We then

lay quiet and laughed in our sleeves at the comments of the

press - and The TRIBUNE'S silence.  That paper was

thunderstruck, and for two weeks  never opened its mouth.  It

believed the story and was just dying with jealousy, envy and

pique.  In the meanwhile, the poem was traveling over the

country from the Pacific to the Atlantic.  Eminent critics

had written us concerning it.  Last week we published nearly

three columns of comments.  The opportune moment had arrived,

and the `Expose' trap was sprung.  The TRIBUNE  greedily

jumped at it like a bull-frog at a red flannel bait.  The

plot has worked admirably.  All The DISPATCH wished for has

been done.  We have only to say, that in behalf of Mr. R., we

heartily thank The TRIBUNE for its valuable, yet unwittingly

rendered aid in the ruse.  We have been on the inside all the

time while The TRIBUNE has been in the dark on the outside.

Its jealousy has for once served a useful purpose, and we can

readily forgive it for past displays of this hateful passion.

Really we feel like embracing  The TRIBUNE for its stupidity

in this  matter, for we were apprehensive that it would

certainly `tumble' to it, but it didn't.  Mr. Riley is so

grateful that he has written and forwarded to The TRIBUNE a

parody of `Leonainie,' which that paper will probably publish

this week - if it doesn't get too mad when it sees what a

booby it has been.  The TRIBUNE really deserves a sugar tit,

and we are glad Mr. Riley has been so grateful as to forward

one in the shape of a parody.  It has richly earned two

parodies for its assistance in this matter. The TRIBUNE will

never forget `Leonainie.'

     We are sure our readers will forgive us for the part we

played in this ruse.  Our object was two-fold, both of which

have been accomplished: First, to perpetrate a quiet,

pleasant joke - which we would afterward explain; secondly,

to give Mr. Riley's genius as a poet a fair, full and

impartial test before the ablest critics in the land,

uninfluenced by local prejudice or sectional bias. The only

fiction about the transaction  was the Poe story. The poem

possesses a vast deal of merit and would do no violence to

the reputation of our more pretentious bards of today.

Although it has been pretty roughly criticized in certain

quarters, it has been praised as a work of genius in others.

No poem ever passed through a more relentless gauntlet

of criticism than this.  No one has ever had a more general

reception by the press of the United States. Mr. Riley is a

young poet of great promise, and will, we predict, yet make

his mark as one of the sweetest singers of his age.

     Riley wrote back on August 31st to Henderson in part,

"I have just rec'd your letter of today, and am glad at

heart.'..."

    Kinnard of The Anderson HERALD wrote on August 31st:

     "Upon our first page we present The TRIBUNE'S exposure

of the poetical fraud `Leonainie.'  We are sorry that Mr.

Riley should have proven himself so mendacious, and sorrier

still that he is the author of the poem.  We might have

forgiven him his want of veracity, but it is hard to condone

`Leonainie.' The Kokomo DISPATCH, however, has sacrificed

every claim to truth, and hereafter every statement it may

make, no matter how trivial or commonplace, must be taken

with a wide margin left for falsehood.

      The Indianapolis Saturday HERALD'S loyal editor, Rev.

George Harding, reprinted Riley's card of confession of the

hoax in its September lst issue and added: "J.W. Riley, in a

note to the JOURNAL,  admits the authorship of the

`Leonainie' poem, but disclaims any dishonorable intention.

He only wanted to see if a poem of no merit could be floated

into popularity by attaching a distinguished name to it.  The

rage of the fools who swallowed the bait is comical."

     When Riley felt well enough, on September lst, to return

to Anderson, he was told by Todiman, the co-proprietor of The

Anderson DEMOCRAT  that "his services were no longer

required."  Riley later described this by saying "The paper

on which I gained my meagre living excused me."

     Two weeks later The Kokomo DISPATCH had the announcement

of a rosy little girl born weighing ten pounds who was named

Leonainie Titus.  She died about a year later, and Riley

memorialized her death with another "Leonainie" poem "To

Leonainie," which was published in The Kokomo TRIBUNE of

February 1, 1879.

                     TO LEONAINIE (1879)

In memory of Leonainie, infant daughter of W.B. and Lotta

Titus, these line are tenderly inscribed.

 

         "LEONAINIE!" angels missed her -

             Baby angels - they

          Who behind the stars had kissed her

             E'er she came away;

          And their little, wandering faces

          Drooped o'er Heaven's hiding-places

          Whiter than the lily-vases

             On the Sabbath day.

 

         "Leonainie!" crying, crying,

             Crying through the night,

          Till her lisping lips replying,

             Laughing with delight,

          Drew us nearer yet, and nearer

          That we might the better hear her

          Baby-words, and love her dearer

             Hearing not aright.

 

          Only spake the little lisper

             In the Angel-tongue,

          Fainter than a fairy-whisper

             Murmured in among

          Dewy blossoms covered over

          With the fragrant tufts of clover,

          Where the minstrel honey-rover

             Twanged his wings and sung.

 

         "Leonainie!" - And the glimmer

             Of her starry eyes

          Faded and the world grew dimmer

             E'en as Paradise

          Blossomed with a glory brighter

          Than the waning stars, and whiter

          Than the dying moon, and lighter

             Than the morning skies.

 

     After the "Leonainie" hoax received continuing great

comment throughout the United States, many other "Poe"

poems were found. One, allegedly found etched on a barn door,

read:

                          MARIENNEY

 

          Mary Ann her parents named her,

             But SHE wrote it Marienney;

          And though angels have not claimed her

             She's as fair as any.

                For her eyes are dark and gloomy,

                And her nose is sort o' bloomy,

                And her mouth is rather roomy, --

                And have angels whispered to me,

                   Marienney?

                   No, not any

           etc.                        E.A.P.

 

     The New York comic magazine "Puck" in its September 12,

1877 issue reported the arrest of "The young lady without an

abdomen" who was arrested on the Bowery under the poetic name

of "Melusine," for fraud carrying a Poe forgery of a poem of

her name signed E.A.P. The poem reads in part, "Melusine, so

they named her\ Stomachless, but beauteous bright!\ In a

looking-glass they framed her\ To deceive the people's

sight.\ But the angels wouldn't stand it,\ `Move on, Mellie!"

they commanded,\ Melusine's biz was stranded,\ And she

vanished ere the night. etc.

     "Leonainie" was set to music in March 14, 1879 by Will

H. Ponthius of Cincinnati.

     The Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary containing the Poe

forgery was sold for twenty-five dollars to a New York

book dealer, Charles B. Foote. Following Foote's death,

a Cleveland, Ohio collector of Riley, Paul Lemperly, bought

the forgery. Following his death in 1939, Scribner's Sons

purchased it.

     Riley eventually included "Leonainie" in his volume

of poems entitled "Armazindy," published October 7, 1894.

The Indianapolis SENTINEL in reviewing the book repeated the

details of the hoax, commenting that "It was extensively

copied, and so clever was the imitation that American and

English reviewers, and even an eminent authority like Edmund

Clarence Stedman pronounced it genuine; and when the name of

the real author was disclosed, Mr. Stedman still maintained

that the poem was unquestionably written by Poe."

     For many years, "Leonainie" reappeared in various places

in the world as a "previously unpublished" poem of Poe's such

as in the The New York CRITIC of April 8, 1886. On June 5,

1886, an article printed in the Paris, France newspaper THE

AMERICAN REGISTER recounted "Leonainie" was widely known in

Italy as a poem of Poe's. The London FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW of

February, 1904 brought it forth as a new poem of Poe's, etc.

etc.

     There is an element of the "Leonainie" hoax that might

easily be overlooked if we did not examine it here. Riley

was perpetrating the hoax within a tradition Riley enjoyed

immensely. Riley enjoyed the poetry of the "master hoaxer"

Thomas Chatterton. There was once this angry, suicidal young

man, fatherless early in life, originally thought an idiot

from birth, named Thomas Chatterton. Actually, Thomas

Chatterton was a creative and literary genius in Riley's

view. Born in Bristol on November 20, 1752, Chatterton's

father, a teacher, died shortly after his son's birth. The

mother took in sewing and ran a "home school" to support

herself and child. Chatterton refused to play with other

children nor communicate. His first school expelled him for

being a dullard. Chatterton then chose to lock himself often

in the attic of the family home where he found ancient paper

which his father had brought home as waste paper.  The paper

had been old music folios the father had come across while a

sub-chanter at the Church of St. Mary Redcliff in Bristol.

The father brought the old papers home with him for his wife

to use as sewing-patterns, or for himself as bookbindings.

Chatterton made use of these old papers in quite a different

way.

     Chatterton became a forger. With reading materials

limited to a huge family Bible, a bad printing of Chaucer,

and borrowed "faulty" dictionaries and glossaries, Chatterton

produced literary pieces he proposed as the works of a 15th

Century monk named Thomas Rowley (Rowleie). They were

Chatterton's own poems, of course, written on dad's purloined

sheets of music folios.

     We remember that Chatterton was only in his early

teenaged years and not considered very bright so when he

started selling these works of the Middle English monk,

Thomas Rowley, they were considered a great "find."

Chatterton was desperate for funds. He was unhappily

apprenticed to an attorney when all else failed him. This

position drove him even more suicidal and he began drawing

and writing poetry in the lawyer's office until the attorney

found a suicide note dated for the next day unless the

attorney released him from his apprenticeship. He did.

Chatterton left for London where he hoped to make his mark as

a poet. Hunger and poverty awaited him in London and he died

by poisoning himself with arsenic at the age of seventeen.

     Two of those most influenced by this strangely possessed

boy were William Wordsworth, an English poet who extolled him

in poetry as "The marvellous boy,\ The sleepless soul that

perished in his pride" and James Whitcomb Riley, the American

poet. Chatterton's poetry and particularly his faked "Rowley

poems" in fact had great literary merit as Riley recognized.

Even though the poems were certainly not medieval

manuscripts, they are very richly decorative pieces filled

with mystery and "gut" emotion. Modern critics call

Chatterton the first "Romantic" poet. Not just Riley and

Wordsworth, but also Keats and Byron acknowledged

indebtedness to his poetry.  Riley took from Chatterton's

works a love of their richness of imagery and great technical

dexterity.

     We must not forget Chatterton as an influence on Riley's

"The Flying Islands of the Night," written the year after

"Leonainie." Chatterton's "AElla" is similarly written in

play form. It concerns a pre-Norman conquest warrior named

AElla whose wooing of his beloved Birtha is interrupted by a

Danish invasion of England. Believing Birtha is taken into

the arms of another man, AElla commits suicide ("stabbeth hys

breste") with his sword. Just before his death, a noble

Danish warrior, Hurra, who respects AElla's honor brings

Birtha to him. She chooses to die with AElla saying, "Oh! ys

(is) mie (my) AElla dedde?\ O! I will make hys (his) grave

mie (my) vyrgyn (virgin) spousal bedde." Riley's subject

matter in "The Flying Islands of the Night" goes in quite

another direction. Both "plays" are impossible to produce and

set in the strange Chaucerian style.

     And so ends our journey through the "Leonainie" hoax

through correspondence, references, clippings and

recollections.

 

 

     We think of Riley as being a journalist, or perhaps a

newspaper poet, as well as lyceum circuit "lecturer" during

the 1880's.  Jucklet was with Riley in both his newspaper

office and on the platform tours.

     Riley loved to play practical jokes while working as a

"staffer" at the Indianapolis JOURNAL.  One of them he used

often he called the "lung tester" which he rigged up. There

was an electric call box in the newspaper's editorial

offices. To engage it, the message sender pushed over a

lever, released it and it returned with considerable clatter.

Riley rigged the call box so he could push the lever over and

release it at will.  Then he attached a tube to it and put

the nipple from a baby's bottle on the end of the tube.

When a friend came in, he would slap him on the back,

compliment him on his vigorous health, ask him how his lungs

were, and finally suggest that he try them out on the office

lung tester. The friend would put the baby nipple in his

mouth, blow lustily, Riley would release the lever and it

would clatter to the end of the slot. The friend would swell

up with pride until the device was loosed again without the

aid of any lung power and reveal that the clatter had nothing

to do with the man's lungs.

     Jucklet was in Riley's very soul throughout his life.

     That Riley was able to have his chance to excel on the

Lyceum Circuit was due to Jucklet. Jucklet was the minstrel

in Riley who loved to tell stories and entertain people with

witty anecdotes.

      One of Riley's favorites was "The Object Lesson."

This was a tale Riley repeated so often he fully mastered its

presentation.

      One of the tellings of this story occurred at the

Indianapolis JOURNAL office where Riley was employed at a

time when many people were present. One of those present was

a friend who Riley had recently met named Robert Burdette,

a man already on the Lyceum Circuit and billed as "Hawkeye

Man."

     Burdette was so impressed by the recitation that he

became convinced Riley could succeed on the platform.  In a

sense, then, this recitation would later become responsible

for Riley's getting his chance at a platform career. Marcus

Dickey, Riley's secretary and early biographer, relates the

incident.  "Burdette was one of a group in a back corner of

the Journal office, when Riley recited "The Object

Lesson.""That audience," said Burdette, "beat any public one

that ever drew a a watch on me or coaxed me into silence by

their slumbers.  There were brilliant men in it, among them a

future president of the United States (Benjamin Harrison)"

Burdette was so certain after hearing it that Riley could

magnetize a public audience that he went home and wrote the

following, which he sent abroad to lecture bureaus and

committees, and had printed in many newspapers:

                   Office of "The Hawkeye," Burlington, Iowa

 

     It has been my pleasure to listen to Mr. J.W. Riley and

I never heard him say a tiresome word or utter a stupid

sentence. I would walk through the mud or ride through the

rain to hear him again.  I would get out of bed to listen to

him.  If I have a friend on a lecture committee in the Untied

States, I want to whisper in his ear that one of the best

hits he can make will be to surprise his audience with J.W.

Riley and his "Object Lesson." Riley is good clean through.

His humor is gentle; it is not caustic.  It is pure and

manly, and the people that will once listen to him will want

him back again the same season.

                        /S/ Robert J. Burdette

 

     What follows is a written representation of one of

Riley's always varying recitations of his famous platform

piece.

 

                     THE OBJECT LESSON1

 

     Barely a year ago I attended the Friday afternoon

exercises of a country school.  My mission there, as I

remember, was to refresh my mind with such material as might

be gathered for a "valedictory," which, I regret to say, was

to be handed down to posterity under another signature than

my own.

     There was present, among a host of visitors, a pale

young man of perhaps thirty years, with a tall head and

bulging brow and a highly-intellectual pair of eyes and

spectacles.  He wore his hair without roach or "part" and the

smile he beamed about him was "a joy forever." He was an

educator - from the East, I think I heard it rumored - anyway

he was introduced to the school at last, and he bowed, and

smiled, and beamed upon us all, and entertained us after the

most delightfully edifying manner imaginable.  And although I

may fail to reproduce the exact substance of his remarks upon

that highly important occasion, I think I can at least

present his theme in all its coherency of detail.  Addressing

more particularly the primary department of the  school, he

said: -

    "As the little exercise I am about to introduce is of

recent origin, and the bright, intelligent faces of the

pupils before me seem rife with eager and expectant interest,

it will be well for me, perhaps, to offer by way of

preparatory preface, a few terse words of explanation.

     "The Object-Lesson is designed to fill a long-felt want,

and is destined, as I think, to revolutionize in a great

degree, the educational systems of our land. - In my belief,

the Object-Lesson will supply a want which I may safely say

has heretofore left the most egregious and palpable traces of

mental confusion and intellectual inadequacies stamped, as it

were, upon the gleaming reasons of the most learned - the

highest cultured, and the most eminently gifted and promising

of our professors and scientists both at home and abroad.

     "Now this deficiency - if it may be so termed - plainly

has a beginning: and probing deeply with the bright, clean

scalpel of experience we discover that - "As the twig is

bent, the tree's inclined."  To remedy, then, a deeply-seated

error which for so long has rankled at the very root of

educational progress throughout the land, many plausible, and

we must admit, many helpful theories have been introduced to

allay the painful errors resulting from the discrepancy of

which we speak: but until now, nothing that seemed wholly to

eradicate the defect has been discovered, and that, too,

strange as it may seem, is, at last, found emanating, like

the mighty river, from the simplest source, but broadening

and gathering in force and power as it flows along, until, at

last, its grand and mighty current sweeps on in majesty to

the vast illimitable ocean of-of-of- Success! Ahem!

     "And, now, little boys and girls, that we have had by

implication, a clear and comprehensive explanation of the

Object-Lesson and its mission, I trust you will give me your

undivided attention while I endeavor - in my humble way - to

direct your newly acquired knowledge through the proper

channel.  For instance: -

      "This little object I hold in my hand - who will

designate it by its proper name? Come, now, let us see who

will be the first to answer. `A peanut,' says the little boy

here at my right.  Very good - very good! I hold then, in my

hand, a peanut.  And now who will tell me, what is the

peanut? A very simply question - who will answer?  `Something

good to eat,' says the little girl.  Yes, `something good to

eat,' but would it not be better to say simply that the

peanut is an edible? I think so, yes.  The peanut, then, is -

an edible - now, all together, an edible!

     "To what kingdom does the peanut belong?  The animal,

vegetable or mineral kingdom?  A very easy question.  Come,

let us have prompt answers.  `The animal kingdom,' does the

little boy say?  Oh no! The peanut does not belong to the

animal kingdom! Surely the little boy must be thinking of a

larger object than the peanut - the elephant, perhaps.  To

what kingdom, then, does the peanut belong?  The v-v-veg-The

vegetable kingdom,' says the bright-faced little girl on the

back seat. Ah! that is better.  We find then that the peanut

belongs to the - what kingdom? The `vegetable kingdom.'  Very

good, very good!

     "And now who will tell us of what the peanut is

composed.  Let us have quick responses now.  Time is

fleeting! Of what is the peanut composed? `The hull and the

goody,' in vulgar parlance, but how much better it would be

to say simply, the shell and the kernel.  Would not that

sound better? Yes, I thought you would agree with me there!

     "And now who will tell me the color of the peanut! And

be careful now! for I shouldn't like to hear you make the

very stupid blunder I once heard a little boy make in reply

to the same question.  Would you like to hear what color the

stupid little boy said the peanut was?  You would, eh? Well,

now, how many of you would like to hear what color the stupid

little boy said the peanut was? Come now, let's have an

expression.  All who would like to hear what color the stupid

little boy said the peanut was, may hold up their right

hands.  Very good, very good - there, that will do.

     "Well, it was during a professional visit I was once

called upon to make to a neighboring city, where I was

invited to address the children of a free school - Hands

down, now, little boy, - founded for the exclusive benefit of

the little newsboys and bootblacks, who, it seems, had not

the means to defray the expenses of the commonest educational

accessories, and during an object lesson identical with the

one before us now - for it is a favorite one of mine - I

propounded the question, what is the color of the peanut?

Many answers were given in response, but none as sufficiently

succinct and apropos as I deemed the facts demanded; and so

at last I personally addressed a ragged, boy, as I then

thought, a bright-eyed little fellow, when judge of my

surprise, in reply to my question, what is the color of a

peanut, the little fellow, without the slightest gleam of

intelligence lighting up his face, answered, that `if not

scorched by roasting, the peanut was a blond.' Why, I was

almost tempted to join in the general merriment his

inapposite reply elicited. But I occupy your attention with

trivial things; and as I notice the time allotted me has

slipped away, we will drop the peanut for the present.

Trusting the few facts gleaned from a topic so homely and

unpromising will sink deep in your minds, in time to bloom

and blossom in the fields of future usefulness - I-I--I thank

you."

 

1. An Object Lesson from going to a county teacher's

institute in Anderson in late 1872.

 

     Riley and Bill Nye had a standard lark when they went on

lecture tours.  On entering a town, Riley or Nye would enter

the best bookstore in town, take the proprietor to one side

and in a whisper inquire as to whether he could sell them an

unexpunged edition of Felicia Hemans. Of course the bookstore

owner could not, and then the two would meet outside and have

a good laugh at the unsophisticated bookseller.  But one day,

Riley thought he would have a little fun at Nye's expense so

before they arrived at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Riley wrote

ahead to one of the prominent bookstores acquainting the

proprietor with all the facts and asking him to prepare a

special title page and insert it in a volume of Mrs.  Heman's

poems.  On arriving at Milwaukee, it was Nye's turn to try to

secure the unexpunged edition of Mrs. Hemans's poems.

     Riley remained outside while Nye went through the usual

program and offered the bookseller $5 if he could secure for

him such an edition.  In a whisper, much to Nye's surprise,

he told him he had such a book, produced it, and Nye was

forced to lose his $5 and when they met later at the hotel,

for Riley did not remain outside this time, Riley certainly

had a good laugh at Nye's discomfort.

     Jucklet was always a great entertainer even when

he reached fame. He was fun to be with socially. Stories

about him always portray him as warm and companionable.

     Riley liked to begin stories with friends and then

have them carry through with its story line. He would reach a

point in a story and then ask a friend to carry it on. The

only point at which Riley would object would be if someone

wanted to kill off one of the heroes of Riley's invention.

He called anyone wanting to do not only a person of no

imagination but also a blatant murderer. Such a person did

not understand that there could be no death to literary

characters so they must be allowed to live forever.

     Even so, around his friends, Riley was not always

humorous and generous to persons he did not like. Haute

Jameson recalled that Riley did not like some of the young

men who joined the social group with Riley who often gathered

at the Tarkington home.  He did not like a man's beard to be

parted and to one young man who called while there he said "a

beard like that may be becoming to his style of character,

but to me it places him in the garden, not as flowering

product, but as a nice pleasant, comforting woolly worm.

Maybe a caterpillar would be a better word, but woolly worm

is the way I think of him." Haute recalled Riley said he felt

"fuzzy" when in the man's presence. Another man Riley did not

like he called "aboriginal" and said the man's head was "meat

clear through."

     This Riley was the witty socialite who took Indianapolis

society by storm upon his move there. The Indianapolis scene

was a welter of busy, busy activity compared to the life he

knew in his hometown of Greenfield, Indiana.

     Riley was able to play the great "literatus" and find a

place in the most reputable and socially expanded circles.

     Jucklet continued to write amusing anecdotal stories

through this period.

 

                  THE FISHING PARTY (1890)

 

Wunst1 we went a-fishin' - Me

An' my Pa an' Ma, all three

When they wuz a picnic, 'way

Out to Hanch's Woods, one day.

 

An' they wuz a crick out there,

Where the fishes is, an' where

Little boys `taint big an' strong

Better have their folks along!

 

My Pa he ist fished an' fished!

An' my Ma she said she wished

Me an' her was home; an' Pa

Said he wished so worse'n Ma.

 

Pa said ef you talk, er say

Anything, er sneeze, er play

Hain't no fish, alive er dead,

Ever go' to bite! he said.

 

Purt'2 nigh dark in town when we

Got back home; an' Ma, says she,

Now she'll have a fish for shore!

An' she buyed one at the store.

 

Nen at supper Pa he won't

Eat no fish, an' says, he don't

Like 'em - An' he pounded me

When I choked!...Ma, didn't he?

-------------------------

1. Once.

2. Variant of "pretty," a Hoosier expression denoting

proximity.

 

     Was Jucklet's mischievous minstrelsy involved in

Riley's elderly years? Yes, Jucklet seems to have lived with

Riley as a favorite self until the end.

     In these last years, we recall the great honors bestowed

upon Riley.  These years were the years as in 1902 when Yale

College, New Haven, Connecticut conferred upon Riley at age

52 the honorary degree of Master of Arts. Or the next year,

1903 when Wabash College at Crawfordsville, Indiana presented

Riley at age 53 with another Honorary Master's Degree. Or

the next year, in 1904, when the University of Pennsylvania,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania honored Riley at age 54 with a

degree of Doctor of Letters, or in 1907, when Indiana

University, Bloomington, Indiana granted Riley at age 57 the

degree of Doctor of Laws.

     It was Jucklet that had earned these degrees more than

any of the other roles Riley played in his life. Riley had

survived to achieve great honor as a mischievous jongleur,

dialect singer, and story teller.

     Appropriately, it was a poem of Jucklet's that Riley

recited at Yale on the occasion of his receiving his honorary

degree from that institution.

 

                     NO BOY KNOWS (1902)

 

There are many things that boys may know -

Why this and that are thus and so, -

Who made the world in the dark and lit

The great sun up to lighten it:

Boys know new things every day -

When they study, or when they play, -

When they idle, or sow and reap -

But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.

 

Boys who listen - or should, at least, -

May know that the round old earth rolls East; -

And know that the ice and the snow and the rain -

Ever repeating their parts again -

Are all just water the sunbeams first

Sip from the earth in their endless thirst,

And pour again till the low streams leap. -

But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.

 

A boy may know what a long, glad while

It has been to him since the dawn's first smile,

When forth he fared in the realm divine

Of brook-laced woodland and spun-sunshine; -

He may know each call of his truant mates,

And the paths they went, - and the pasture-gates

Of the 'cross-lots home through the dusk so deep. -

But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.

 

O I have followed me, o'er and o'er,

From the flagrant drowse on the parlor-floor,

To the pleading voice of the mother when

I even doubted I heard it then -

To the sense of a kiss, and a moonlit room,

And dewy odors of locust-bloom -

A sweet white cot - and a cricket's cheep. -

But no boy knows when he goes to sleep.

 

     Toward the end of his life, and after suffering a

crippling stroke, Riley kept himself very busy with a huge

correspondence. Jucklet was at work in this voluminous daily

correspondence.

     One of his letter found after he died was to a child who

wrote him to say she enjoyed the poem "Orphant Annie" and

"The Runaway Boy."

 

Dear Little Friend.  - One time an old middle-aged man, a

very middle-aged man, who from his childhood had been playing

that he was a poet - got some sure-enough books of poetry-

pieces printed, at last, and sprinkled them over his friends

like salt on cantaloupes; and then leaned back and waited for

applause and laughed to himself so that he would not miss any

voice of praise out of the vast chorus of the world at large.

And - he is listening still - though, like the bass kings in

the O-r-tao-r-o,

          He thinks it not becoming

          To be found in idle funning

          So his laugh is ver-ee L O W -

          H A --------------------- H A!

And yet not quite in vain has he been listening all these

years, for now and then faint murmurous accents like yours

reach his almost starving senses; and as he hears them, the

old man's fancies find his Youth again and all the childish

joys that once were his.  So veritably young he is that he

goes dancing back to his old make-believes and plays that

he's a poet, just as then.

          Miss Medairy Dory Ann

          Cast her line and caught a man,

          But when he looked so pleased aback!

          She unhooked and plunked him back,

          "I never like to catch what I can,"

          Said Miss Medairy Dory Ann.

---(Biographer's Note: This letter was never completed.)

 

     At Christmas times, Riley's correspondence was said to

rival Santa Claus's. On his last birthday, October 7th 1915,

ten thousand cards came many of them containing greetings of

an entire class of school children. One child wrote, "I think

Indiana should be proud of such a child as you. Not only

Indiana, but the United States should be proud of you. I am

proud of you myself." Another wrote "I tell you what, Mr.

Riley, I was surprised to learn that you was living because I

thought all poets was dead." Another wrote, "I have read so

many of your poems that I have a strong taste of poetry

myself."

 

                    JUCKLET'S LAST TRICK

 

     Indiana's U.S. Senator Harry S. New told the ghost story

that follows about Riley at the time of the poet's death. The

Senator knew Riley intimately from being a young reporter of

the Indianapolis JOURNAL when Riley was on its staff and

later as the same newspaper's Managing Editor who valued

Riley's contributions exceedingly.

     "The Riley home was in East Lockerbie street in

Indianapolis, and it was there that the poet died.  His death

came in the afternoon and it was still early when the

undertaker, that individual most repellent to Riley in his

lifetime, arrived to perform the preliminary services of

those of his kind.  The room in which the dead man lay was on

the second floor and was a modest apartment with but a single

door and a window opposite, which looked out on a narrow side

yard.  In that room what was left of the sensitive poet was

alone with the creature he despised, and if the soul of the

dead lingers near the mortal clay, it may be conceived that

Riley's spirit had a bad half hour with the follower of the

grim reaper.  But that half hour passed and the servitor of

the departed soft-footedly went his way, silently closing the

door behind him.

     This was but part of the work of the undertaker. He was

to return some hours later to finish his task. He returned as

the day was drawing to its close, and mournfully climbed

the Riley stairs. He applied the cautious pressure of a

silent hand to the Riley door knob which he had deftly turned

but a few hours earlier. The knob refused to turn. The door

declined to open.

     Evidently, said the methodical worker, some member of

the family has locked the death chamber. He summoned those in

the house and asked for the key. He was told that the door

had not been locked. No one had been in the second floor room

since his former visit.

     Nevertheless, he assured them, the door was locked. So

the family bunches of keys were produced and the journey of

the undertaker, this time not alone, wound again to the

second floor. But there it halted at the poet's door.  One

after one the keys were tried in the lock.  None would enter

the keyhole. The door might not be unlocked.

     A delicacy was felt in doing violence to the door of the

dead.  As there was no other entrance to the room except the

window, the party went into the yard, procured a ladder and

the undertaker climbed it and entered the room of the

departed through the window.

     When he had gained an entrance he investigated carefully

and found that the door was locked from the inside, and that

the key had been left in the lock.

     Those who knew Riley best, his penchant for a practical

joke, his dislike for undertakers, his belief in the

ministration of the spirits of the departed, are willing to

admit that here was a prank quite characteristic and to be

expected - the sort of thing that might be done by the ghost

of him who was gone, if ghosts were a matter of fact."

     Although Jucklet was not Riley's most enduring role,

and certainly was not the character in Riley's life who

produced his finest poetry, nevertheless Jucklet must

receive credit for a job successfully done. Riley survived

on his inner laughter.

 

 

                           AMPHINE

 

   WHERE IS LOVE FOR RILEY? - AMPHINE'S WOMAN PROBLEMS AND

              CAPACITIES FOR GREAT FRIENDSHIPS

 

     There is at least one event in everyone's life which

"tears you up." In Riley's great poem of self-scrutiny "The

Flying Islands of the Night," Riley is "torn up" because

of love. He can know it only at the level of the soul with

an already married woman. How could a poetic genius have

been driven to such an impasse? What foul fate fickled him?

     Riley's self that bears this scar is Amphine, the

Riley who can love. Riley wants to know love very badly. He

needs his soulmate. Amphine is the lover who seeks reunion

with his recently deceased married friend, Nellie Millikan

Cooley who died in the days before he wrote "The Flying

Islands of the Night."

     No, Riley's relationship with Nellie Millikan Cooley

was no ordinary one. Would we expect the tapestry of Riley's

romance to be woven as traditional cloth?  Riley's affair

with Nellie was a combination silver, gold and diamond

friendship of souls.

     Riley is dealing with his emotional self in great

turmoil in the poem "The Flying Islands of the Night." Where

is love?  Where can he find love now that his beloved

soul-mate Nellie Millikan Cooley is dead?  Riley is dealing

with the essential sensibility of a poet, love, a "feel" of

warmth, of passion, of happiness, of fulfillment, occasions

of loving and being loved in the past and future as well as

the present.  There is no definition of love but it does have

a root meaning which can be expressed in descriptions of

qualities and expressions, never matters of intention or

demand, but always in happening and gift. It has to do with

affection but is not limited to spheres of affections but

rather finds its expression in relationships and the yearning

to be with another. Riley knew this great love for Nellie

Cooley, the source of his great inspiration. That is why it

had the worth of silver, gold and diamond.

     Riley as Amphine was also a play character of love who

expresses Riley's need for companionship with men as well as

women. This is love which the Greeks referred to as "philia"

rather than "eros." Riley was capable of assuming the role of

Amphine, the lover and man of affectionate relationships,

with ease. The company of others often saved him from his

deep depression which we will consider in a following section

on Crestillomeem, Riley's dejected and alcoholic self in the

poem and in his life.

     The company of Amphine probably leaves Riley at the end

of "The Flying Island of the Night." Riley sought relief

from his heavy depression in alcohol on many occasions.

Riley "drowned" his sorrow as some refer to it. We are

reminded of an effect of alcohol from Shakespeare's

"Macbeth," Act II, iii29-40, where Macbeth's porter made the

following remark to a houseguest:

    "Macduff: What three things does drink especially

provoke?

     Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.

Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the

desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much

drink can be said to be an equivocator with lechery. It makes

him and it mars him, it sets him on and it takes him off, it

persuades him and disheartens him, and makes him stand to and

not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and

giving him the lie, leaves him."

     Modern science supports Shakespeare's observation.

     Amphine did not depart Riley other than as impotence

might have resulted from too great a consumption of alcohol.

Possibly such problems marred every single one of Riley's

later attempts to find a marriage partner. Most of the women

Riley seems to have courted after his thirties cited Riley's

alcoholism as a reason why they did not wish to marry him.

We simply do not know what this meant.

     Riley retained the great capacity for affectionate

relationships. Anyway, Riley's "affair of the souls" with

Nellie Millikan Cooley was enough to remember. It was a

North Star to guide Riley's emotions even after her death.

     We have so very, very little to go on to recreate the

setting of the great "soul-level" love of James Whitcomb

Riley's for Nellie Millikan Cooley. Those in Greenfield who

gossiped after noticing Riley's horse tethered at Nellie's

house so often are long gone but their tales have lived on to

the present time in folklore. Riley retreated to Greenfield

from wherever he wandered when he "felt bad." The soul-mate

who shared this escape to find comfort in an unfriendly

world who helped him survive such bouts was Nellie Millikan

Cooley.

     We know that Nellie, married to another man, George

Cooley, was taken from Greenfield by her husband to a

far point in Illinois after many years of rambunctious youth

for Riley and his Nellie together. Prior to that must have

occurred the moments of sharing that brought Nellie and Riley

into such great union of souls. Nellie and her husband,

George Cooley, remained married for only a short time in

Illinois -about two years -before Nellie died there.  She was

brought back to Greenfield for burial and Riley wrote a great

emotionally draining obituary shortly before writing "The

Flying Islands of the Night." Were it not for this

autobiographical poem and "taking stock of himself after

Nellie's demise" we would probably have nothing at all from

Riley about this great soul-love of his life.  Riley would

never have brooked causing Nellie's reputation to suffer

because of their relationship.

     The poem "The Flying Islands of the Night" contains much

speculative material about this relationship which will be

considered further in this section on the life of Amphine,

Riley's romantic self, but for now we read a letter of

Nellie's sent to Riley from her exile with her husband in

Illinois.

 

                  LETTER FROM NELLIE COOLEY

January 13, 1877

 

Jim dear boy ---...We have been too true and loving friends

to say "Good Bye" and let that be all.  How many times I have

thoughts of you, how many good things I have read and wished

you could read it. Oh, how many times I have only asked for

one more evening like those happy ones spent in old G... when

you would come over and bring your violin and perhaps have

one of your charming poems in your pocket to read to us and

when it would rain and I would send the beggar maid to see

you home.

Jim, when your letter was brought to me yesterday, I was

sitting reading over some of your poems and some of our

correspondence, very strange "was noted." Sometimes you

appear to me in a dream and how we do talk and laugh, and

always we are the same warm friends that we have been for so

many years and every evening I play over the same waltzes and

sing the same songs but alas there is a missing link. I sound

A in vain, but I still play them all the same...

                             Your devoted friend til death

                             Nellie M. Cooley

Nellie's standard farewell was, "Your devoted friend,"

as in another letter extant of June 1, 1877.

     The distance of Riley from Nellie after George took her

to Illinois apparently did not cool their "soul

companionship." Forgive me for a little quote that comes to

mind from Shakespeare's 116th Sonnet:

    "Let me not to the marriage of true minds

     Admit impediments.  Love is not love

     Which alters when it alteration finds..."

This seems to describe how Riley felt about Nellie wherever

she might be. Riley's soul found a home in the encouragement

of Nellie. Even death did not sever Riley's cord of regard

for Nellie.

     We also have a poem from one letter from Riley to Nellie

preserved by her daughter, Emma Cooley Cox, which was brought

to light in 1878 about eight years after Nellie's death. It

attests to Nellie's encouragement to Riley.

 

          A LETTER TO A FRIEND (To: Nellie Cooley)

 

          The past is like a story

               I have listened to in dreams

          That vanished in the glory

               Of the Morning's early gleams;

          And - at my shadow glancing -

               I feel a loss of strength,

          As the Day of Life advancing

               leaves it shorn of half its length.

 

          But it's all in vain to worry

               At the rapid race of Time -

          And he flies in such a flurry

               When I trip him with a rhyme,

          I'll bother him no longer

               Than to thank you for the thought

          That "my fame is growing stronger

               As you really think it ought."

 

          And though I fall below it,

               I might know as much of mirth

          To live and die a poet

               Of unacknowledged worth;

          For Fame is but a vagrant -

               Though a loyal one and brave,

          And his laurels ne'er so fragrant

               As when scattered o'er the grave.

 

Nellie's daughter, Emma Cooley Cox, mentioned this poem to

the editor (Ochiltree) of the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD

who thereafter published it many years after Nellie's death.

Riley included the poem in a letter to Nellie in which Riley

responded to Nellie's saying she felt his fame was growing

stronger as she thought it ought.

     In the original poem, "The Flying Island of the Night"

as it appeared in the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD in 1878,

Amphine, Riley's romantic and affectionate self, loved only

the one woman, Dwainie, recently deceased as far as earthlife

was concerned. Nellie was only dead weeks at this time.

Dwainie is Nellie.

     Dwainie - Nellie Millikan Cooley - was a woman married

to another man whose life we shall connect with Riley's as

Amphine grew into adolescence and with Nellie into his mid-

twenties. Now, by the time Riley wrote his autobiographical

poem, Nellie had died.  Nellie was the great foe of

Crestillomeem of the poem.  While Crestillomeem plotted

Riley's downfall, Dwainie, steeped in love for Riley,

returned to Riley from the dead to save his great life-plan

to achieve fame.  Crestillomeem early in the poem recognizes

Dwainie:

 

          'Tis Dwainie of the Wunks who peeks and peers

          With those fine eyes of hers in our affairs

          And carries Krung, in some disguise, these hints

          Of our intent! See thou that silence falls

          Forever on her lips, and that the sight

          She wastes upon our secret action blurs

          With gray and grisly scum that shall for aye

          Conceal us from her gaze while she writhes blind

          And fangles as the fat worms of the grave!

 

    Nellie Millikan Cooley was not simply the woman who

Riley loved, she was his great booster and encourager. Her

death preceded the writing of the poem "The Flying Islands of

the Night" bears Riley's otherwise unexpressible grief at her

passing. Without Nellie, his love interest became alcohol,

the Crestillomeem of the poem. His soul had lost its mate

and needed another. Crestillomeem sought Riley's courtship.

     "The Flying Islands of the Night" tells us that Riley

loved Nellie Cooley. That is not to say that he did not have

affection for others or even encounters "on the run" in his

years of early manhood. These seem extremely probable.  But

with Nellie Cooley did Riley indulge in his great "soul" love

affair. "The Flying Islands of the Night" written during

Riley's great grief following Nellie's death, contains what

this biographer considers the finest love lyric in all of

literature. One recognizes echoes from Riley's obituary of

Nellie alive in "Warm depths of azure skies, where merry

birds, afloat on waves of sunshine, poured out their sweetest

songs, and so baptized the world with sweetest melody..."

 

                  AY,DWAINIE! - MY DWAINIE

 

                     Spraivoll (Singing)

 

          Ay, Dwainie! - My Dwainie!

          The lurloo ever sings,

          A tremor in his flossy crest

          And in his glossy wings.

          And Dwainie! - My Dwainie!

          The sinno-welvers call; -

          But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

          And answers not at all.

 

          The teeper twitters Dwainie! -

          The tcheucker on his spray

          Teeters up and down the wind

          And will not fly away:

          And Dwainie! - My Dwainie!

          The drowsy oovers drawl; -

          But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

          And answers not at all.

 

          O Dwainie! - My Dwainie!

          The breezes hold their breath -

          The stars are pale as blossoms,

          And the night as still as death:

          And Dwainie! - My Dwainie!

          The fainting echoes fall; -

          But Dwainie in Spirkland

          And answers not at all.

 

The death of a beloved can never make more sense than Riley

gives to this Dwainie poem of "The Flying Islands of the

Night." Love blurs reality and takes its imagery from

absurdity or from such alienation as delirium dreams.

     There is only scant evidence of the life of Nellie

Millikan Cooley. Although Riley's obituary of her shows her

burial in Greenfield's Park Cemetery, no stone remains to

mark the spot nor record of where she is buried. Nor does the

cemetery have record of it. The winter of the writing of this

biography, 1997, the biographer located the grave with

cemetery personnel from Greenfield's Riley Park Cemetery

using a probe into the soft early winter earth. Only the pea

gravel which covered the wooden coffin gave the tracings of

the spot of her burial. I placed a wreath of the usual

variety on the grave once located. It will probably never be

of interest hereafter. The thought of my causing a "probe" to

be sent into the ground to disturb her grave causes me

horrible regret. Nellie, "Dwainie," forgive my curiosity.

     Riley sent his soul down into that grave I found to

marry his Dwainie there. Marriage with any other was

impossible.

     In the 1870 United States census, Nellie is listed as

living in Greenfield, Indiana in the household of George B.

Cooley, age 30, as Nellie M. Cooley, age 25, "keeping house"

and born in Ohio.  Her children are listed as Emma, age 4,

and Susannah, age 1. Also listed in the household of George

B. Cooley is the mother, Rhoda Millikan, Riley's art and

"home school" tutor from Riley's youth. She is listed as

being age 50 and as an "artist."

     The Millikans are not recorded in the 1860 United States

census as being residents of Hancock County, Indiana.  They

arrived shortly after the American Civil War began and Nellie

Millikan's mother, Mrs. Rhoda Millikan, took up schooling in

Greenfield from the opportunity that the local school had

disbanded when its men teachers went off to war.

     Shortly after her arrival with her family in the year

1862, Nellie Millikan - as a girl - joined the Ladies Saxhorn

Band which apparently took the place of the men's group after

it enlisted en masse to become a regimental band for a

Hoosier Civil War Regiment.

     While still a young girl, Nellie married George Cooley

on February 22, 1865. George was in advertising and often

traveled.

     History tells us that Nellie, and sometimes her husband,

George, were members of many casts of the Adelphians, a

Greenfield dramatic club. The Adelphians put on plays at the

Greenfield Masonic Hall. James Whitcomb Riley was very active

in this group in the early 1870's and was said to have made

most of the stage scenery and backdrops while Nellie provided

piano accompaniments.  Other familiar faces mentioned in

Riley poetry or within his circle of friends who were in the

casts were Lee O. Harris, George A. Carr, War Barnett, E.P.

and Jesse Millikan.

     "Mother" Rhoda Millikan died October 2, 1903 after

returning to Greenfield Indiana. She had lived with her son

Jesse Millikan, born the same year as James Whitcomb Riley,

who died the month before on September 1st.

     While Jesse Millikan lay on his deathbed shortly before

his death, James Whitcomb Riley went to see him and tried to

cheer him up saying, "Jesse, I just met old Fate up on the

street and I knocked him the other way: he is going east

now." Jesse was not able to do much more than smile and died

shortly afterward.

     Riley loved the Millikans as his own family because they

were in his mind his own family through his soul-love for

Nellie. When Nellie died in Riley's late 20's his world was

shattered. Nellie's brothers, Ed Millikan, a Greenfield

painter, and Jess Millikan, a Greenfield shoemaker, remained

among Riley's closest friends throughout their long lives.

After Riley bought his boyhood home in Greenfield, he left a

standing order with Nellie's brother Ed to paint it once a

year - "twice a year if you have time." When Nellie's brother

Jess got sick, Riley cheered him by saying, "Hurry and get

well, Jess, and if you haven't any leather in your shop, I'll

see to getting some if I have to tan my own old hide," and to

Jess's doctor, he said, "You've got to cure this man - I

don't care what it costs." Riley paid for the care including

an extended hospital bill.

     Let us pose what Riley's life was like with Nellie.

Can we imagine Riley serenading her? Serenading was very

popular in the days of Riley's and Nellie's youth. Riley

played the violin, mandolin, guitar, banjo and anything

else he could lay his hands on. Did they make fudge, pull

taffy or pop pop-corn? Their moments together are shrouded

in oblivion.

     The finality of the death of Nellie Cooley in 1878 left

Riley with only the dreams of a life a woman with whom he

could share his life's goals and aspirations, love and

affection.  But let us return to the earlier days in Riley's

20's when he returned to Greenfield on so many occasions to

be with Nellie. Gone seemed all of the truanting days of his

young manhood.

     His life when Nellie was alive included croquet parties,

ice cream festivals on the courthouse lawn, dancing at the

Twilight Club. They acted together in Adelphian plays and

private entertainments. He played violin on moonlit nights

with Nellie at the stone culvert over the Bradywine where the

boys and girls of Greenfield went for privacy. Public

appearances included other women. Alice Thayer took Riley as

a date to a February party and he acted like a skittish girl.

Then after the fun and socializing, if he didn't feel the

urge to write and if he felt the need to bare his genius-

soul, he went to Nellie's. George, who travelled selling

advertisements, was perhaps not always around. Or perhaps he

was. George did not get in the way.

    The final stanza of "The Flying Islands" seems to

indicate Riley's determination to love only Nellie and be

content with these dreams of her even after her death.

         "Tho' I have found restored to me my life -

          Tho' I have found a daughter, I have lost

          A son - for Dwainie, with her sorcery,

          Will, on the morrow, carry him away."

     The dead Nellie took Riley's life of his soul-love as

one feels for a true mate to the grave with her. Riley

married Nellie in heaven.

     Riley once dismissed his failure to marry in another way

as, "Should he find the right woman she would fail to find

him the right man." But we suspect some altogether different

reason. Nellie was the only woman he fully loved.

     He seems to have enjoyed relationships with other women

but these were simply encounters. There were no more Nellies.

     Content with his dreams permitted great imaginative

contacts with her, one of which was Riley's poem, "An Old

Sweetheart of Mine," written in 1875 before Nellie left

Greenfield with her husband or Nellie was resettled by her

husband in Illinois.

     It is useless to speculate why Nellie left Greenfield

with her husband at about the time Riley also left

Greenfield. Did George become jealous about Riley and his

wife's relationship at a soul level which he could not share?

The relationship of Riley and the Cooleys in the lonesome

letters that Riley later wrote to Nellie do not indicate any

strain in Riley's friendship with George.

     Riley's sadness at Nellie's departure is reflected in

poetry of the Amphine of 1876 who wrote romantic and

narrative verse. His was a stifled inspiration most often

drawn from recollection and personal experience. On the other

hand some of Amphine's themes are borrowed from literary

sources.  Unlike Spraivoll's great kenotic poetry, inspired

by an indirect route from the great Lutheran German

theologians, Amphine's inspiration comes from Riley's heart.

Here is a poem written after Nellie's departure from

Greenfield when she was taken to Illinois by her husband.

 

                     ONLY A DREAM (1876)

 

Only a dream!

           Her head is bent

Over the keys of the instrument,1

While her trembling fingers go astray

In the foolish tune she tries to play.

He smiles in his heart, though his deep, sad eyes

Never change to a glad surprise

As he finds the answer he seeks confessed

In glowing features, and heaving breast.

 

Only a dream!

          Though the fete is grand,

And a hundred hearts at her command,

She takes no part, for her soul is sick

Of the Coquette's art and the Serpent's trick, -

She someway feels she would like to fling

Her sins away as a robe, and spring

Up like a lily pure and white,

And bloom alone for him to-night.

 

Only a dream

          That the fancy weaves.

The lids unfold like the rose's leaves,

And the upraised eyes are moist and mild

As the prayerful eyes of a drowsy child.

Does she remember the spell they once

Wrought in the past a few short months?

Haply not - yet her lover's eyes

Never change to the glad surprise.

 

Only a dream!

          He winds her form

Close in the coil of his curving arm,

And whirls her away in a gust of sound

As wild and sweet as the poets found

In the paradise where the silken tent

Of the Persian blooms in the Orient, -

While ever the chords of the music seem

Whispering sadly, - "Only a dream!"

 

1. Nellie often played the piano while Riley sang or played

his violin or guitar.

 

For two years the Cooleys lived in Belleville, Illinois where

Riley wrote them this letter in Oct. 28, 1877.

 

Dear Friends -

`Mother,' Nell, George:

     I have neglected writing to you for so long that I come

to you at last with my apologetic features elongated and

stretched to their utmost tension.  If you can forgive me

for my long silence do so in God's name, and if you can't w'y

take me your prisoner and `fasten me down forever in the

round tower of your heart' and I'll never murmur for release

till heaven dawns thro' the gates.

      I am so glad today - so `sure-enough' glad - that you

must join me in my joy, and become a portion of that fat and

rare old sentiment - `W'ats the hodds so long as you're

happ!" I've a a thousand things to tell you, and a thousand

things to ask: but first I would suggest - by way of casual

introductory - the propriety of your getting together the

accessories of instant response, for I shall expect a reply

by return mail.

     Everything has changed here - everything - except,

perhaps, old Johnny Rardin - who won't die, and don't care

a cuss who knows it.  Yes, Johnny is as "bright" as ever and

as thoroughly up with the styles.  I saw him blow past awhile

ago in a cloud of leaves, but as he had taken precaution

before, leaving home to have his straw hat firmly strapped on

his head, that - valuable adornment will doubtless plug up

some window of the future or furnish fodder of facts for some

historian yet unborn.  Speaking of old Johnny - you wouldn't

know the old street passing his palatial residence - the old

road home, you know.  W'y it's had all the twists taken out

of its vertebra, and dug down and filled up till it's as

level as a brickyard from A to Izzard; a lovely sidewalk on

either side, and a stone and iron fence occasionally - well,

in fact it's the `boss' thoroughfare in the city - no

mistaking.  But then, for all that, it can never be so good a

friend to me as when in the old days - it led me through its

ruts and puddies to the Cooley mansion.  And as I write the

words, a gust of memories blown from the Long Ago comes

like a fragrance  o'er my yearning heart and thrills me with

-

     "A feeling of sadness and longing

          That is not akin to pain

      And resembles sorrows only

          --- as the mist resembles the rain."

 

     You were better friends to me than I could know - or

appreciate then - but now - now when great blank miles and

miles of cruel separation intervene I can but reach with

empty hands and fancy they are pressed again with that old

warmth of hale regard that still burns in your bosoms I am

sure -but pardon! "My heart grows as weak as a woman's" and

it "behooves me to fend off such puerile tho'ts and turn to

manlier things - the girls for instance.  I was at "the Club"

last  night (Terpsichorean)...(I'd like to give in this

connection a genuine Hartpence local1, but - space forbids,

and thank God, that "Space" is still in our midst!"

     Well, I've rattled away here for an hour or more, and

have said nothing of importance or interest yet forgive me

for my intentions were the best. Before I close I want to ask

if you don't think it would do you all good to come home here

for awhile.  I want to see you - your friends want to see

you, and in fact Greenfield as an individual would greet you

with open arms.  I have been building castles of a visit to

you, but the Fates won't hear to it yet awhile.  I will come

tho' the very minute my incoming `ship' sticks her nose

against the shore...

     I have been quite busy with my literary studies, and am

progressing with every promise of success. I have in course

of construction now a work I'd like to read to mother and

Nell before the great eyes of the public  - get a peek.

Whatever you do write to me and write now and kiss the

children for your old friend.

                                     J. W. Riley

1. "Hartpence local" would be a local news account for

William Hartpence, the Editor of the Greenfield NEWS to which

Riley contributed (and later edited) until it folded.

     The very subtitle of "The Flying Islands of the Night"

reflects Nellie and Riley's love for her.  In the original

publication of "Flying Islands of the Night" in the Buzz Club

series, Number IV of August 24, 1878, the poem was subtitled

"A Twintorette."

     What is a "Twintorette?"

     As in many other instances, one can look to other

writing of Riley for assistance in interpretation. A poem

entitled "A Twintorette" was first published in 1881 but no

doubt was written much earlier.

 

                        A TWINTORETTE

 

Ho!  my little maiden

    With the glossy tresses,

  Come thou and dance with me

    A measure all divine;

Let my breast be laden

    With but thy caresses -

  Come thou and glancingly

    Mate thy face with mine.

 

Thou shalt trill a rondel,

    While my lips are purling

  Some dainty twitterings

    Sweeter than the birds';

And, with arms that fondle

    Each as we go, twirling,

  We will kiss, with twitterings,

    Lisps and loving words.

 

"Twinning," as this poem proposes, has to do with romantic

joinder.  It refers to intimate union of two things.  Torrid

is suggestive of the depth of the "twinning" and "ette"

simply means a short poem.  Flying Islands was originally of

course, published on a single page, Page 6 of the

Indianapolis Saturday Herald of August 24, 1874.

     A "twintorette" seems to be a poem in which a lover and

beloved are rejoined. The two who are the subjects of this

poem are Riley and his beloved Nellie Cooley, recently

deceased by a bare two months, at the time of the writing.

     Riley wrote to Mrs. Emma Cox, Nellie's daughter, on

April 10, 1885 in response to the publication of a poem

Riley had written to Nellie which Nellie's daughter had

published.

     Dear Friend: -

          It is Sunday, but to write you as I do is like a

     prayer, - Your beautiful tribute in the HERALD touched

     me deeply, recalling so tenderly your absent mother's

     kindliness when she was here; her brave, glad nature;

     the noble generous gentlewoman that she was; the truest

     friend on earth, or now in Heaven - God bless us always

     with the sweetness of her memory!

         I can say no more now - only, my dear friend, I am

     very proud of your friendship, and of your talents - in

     music - composition - every way, and God bless us every

     one!'

          Gratefully and always, as ever, your friend.

                                     J.W. Riley

 

     Literary friends of Mrs. Rhoda Millikan, Nellie Cooley's

mother, asked her, during the summer of 1902 (a year before

her death) to write her first impression of Mr. Riley. Though

83 years old she was still a constant reader, her mind was

clear and her handwriting easily legible. Her recollections

were reported in the Indianapolis STAR of October 4, 1931.

 

            AN IMPRESSION OF JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

     "I have been requested by some friends of Mr. James

Whitcomb Riley to write my first impressions of that much

admired poet, humorist and artist.  My first impression of

Mr. Riley was vague and uncertain.  When I first saw him I

was a middle-aged woman.  He was a small boy, quiet, shy and

modest.  When I came to Greenfield, I was a stranger. I took

charge of a school there. I had some of my own children with

me. They soon became quite well acquainted with `Jim' Riley.

It was a great treat to them to hear him talk and they were

constantly telling me something concerning what he had said

to them. I soon became interested and requested them to bring

their admired companion to my room.  I soon saw he was trying

to become a writer.  After a time he could be found willing

to read some of his poems and prose sketches to me.  I was

greatly surprised when I heard them though I had a hard time

to make him believe they were of any merit.

    After a while some of his poems were published in some of

the Greenfield papers. They were not copied in papers outside

of Greenfield.  This was discouraging to our very young

writer.  He came to talk to me about it and said he would

write no more. I told him that was what young writers might

look for. Greenfield was then quite a small place, and

editors of magazines were not looking for gems in small

country papers.  I talked a good deal to him at this time as

he was not much encouraged by his father, a lawyer of decided

ability, who was anxious to have James study law...

    Mr. Riley was in the way of coming in sometimes of an

evening.  He never was much inclined to talk very much, but

what he did say counted. He nearly always had a pencil in his

hand, and when he left the house we would find some of the

most comical drawings or the queerest little poems

imaginable.

     One night, I remember, a Japanese fan had been left on

the table.  The picture on the fan was quite as ridiculous as

are usually found on fans of that kind. It represented an

impossible bridge, with three Chinamen in undress costume

fishing on  from the bridge.  My daughter had just been

singing Kingsley's "Three  Fishers."  We saw Mr. Riley

writing something on the fan which proved to a parody on the

first verse of "The Fishers' -

     "Three fishers came walking out of the west.

      Out of the west when the sun went down: -

      And so they came almost undressed

      To be prepared if the bridge broke down"

     Well, time when on. I have lived eight-three years in

this world and have seen many people, but I have never met

any one that I felt was like James Whitcomb Riley.  He stands

quite alone.  His writings are a strange mixture of humor and

pathos blended with a strong element of unexpectedness which

is a fascination of itself. I have been made happy by his

success. I have able to exclaim with the famous old lady, "I

told you so." Rhoda H. Millikan

     While Nellie Millikan Cooley lived, it seems that Riley

was able to use the verse of Longfellow as inspirational

models to produce ballad like poetry of a similar ilk to

Longfellow's. After Nellie died the possibility of Longfellow

lyric also departed. Perhaps its lilt and feel were simply

no longer possible in Riley's life.

     Riley's earliest published poetry seems to have the ring

of Longfellow about it.  Much of his earliest poetry,

published in local Greenfield newspapers such as the

Greenfield COMMERCIAL, is lost but we do have the early

"Amphine" poem "Man's Devotion" of 1872 published in The

Indianapolis Saturday MIRROR to look at. Its theme is

romantic in that we find the departures or separations of

innocent first lovers is an inexplicable but necessary life

situation.

 

                    MAN'S DEVOTION (1872)

 

A lover said, "O Maiden, love me well

    For I must go away:

And should another ever come to tell

    Of love - What will you say?"

...

(The Maiden promises to remain faithful to him until he

returns, keeps his picture, but eventually after "years -dull

years -in dull monotony" she marries another who eventually

dies. The young wandering man\lover returns after much time,

but the "Maiden" must admit she has been married.)

 

And as she kneeled there, sobbing at his feet

    He calmly spoke - no sigh

Betrayed his inward agony - "I count you meet

    To be a wife of mine!"

 

And raised her up forgiven, though untrue;

    As fond he gazed on her,

She sighed, - "So happy!" And she never knew

    He was a widower.

 

     I suppose we recall that about this time, Riley was

leaving Nellie Cooley behind in Greenfield for jaunts out

into the countryside to paint barns or signs and also to

travel in the medicine shows. His theme explores how

attachments between lovers change and marital conditions

become inevitable drawbacks to the permanency of stolen

initial innocent love. Nevertheless personal ties, "vows,"

remain real and circumstances may later permit the first

lovers to resume a more permanent residence together. In the

poem the woman marries another but eventually the two again

find each other and resume life together again. It sounds

like a "pipe-dream" but Riley perhaps had the youthful

thought in his head, as evidenced by the poem, that he could

leave Greenfield and come back to find the woman he loved a

widow and then marry her.

    After Nellie's death, the lyric of Longfellow's romantic

ballad's was pretty much stilled.  While Nellie lived, and

was close, he could write "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," with

its sentimental strain of satisfaction in a loving home he

could conjure up with Nellie. Then Nellie left and we have

no more such "Longfellow" type ballads.

     Much has been made of the relationship of the early

James Whitcomb Riley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This

derives from Riley's recollections that Riley read Longfellow

poetry from an early age. Riley's early ballad narratives

do seem to bear this influence.  His "Longfellow" poetry also

seems to bear on his relationship with Nellie in the early

period of Riley's twenties. Perhaps the figure in this poem

was the Riley who never married because the woman he loved

was already married.  Perhaps one day they might marry.

Perhaps we can see a little of Nellie as "Mary" and Riley in

this one. In 1874, Riley wrote

 

              FARMER WHIPPLE - BACHELOR (1874)

 

It's a mystery to see me - a man o' fifty-four,

Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more -

A-lookin' glad and smilin'! And they's none o' you can say

That you can guess the reason why I feel so good to-day!

 

I must tell you all about it! But I'll have to deviate

A little in beginnin', so's to set the matter straight

As to how it comes to happen that I never took a wife -

Kindo' "crawfish" from the present to the Springtime of my

life!

 

I was brought up in the country: Of a family of five -

Three brothers and a sister - I'm the only one alive, -

Fer they all died little babies; and 'twas one o' Mother's

ways,

You know, to want a daughter; so she took a girl to raise.

 

The sweetest little thing she was, with rosy cheeks, and fat

-

We was little chunks o' shavers then about as high as that!

But someway we sort o' suited-like! and Mother she'd declare

She never laid her eyes on a more lovin' pair

 

Than we was! So we growed up side by side fer thirteen year',

And every hour of it she growed to me more dear! -

W'y, even Father's dyin', as he did, I do believe

Warn't more affectin' to me than it was to see her grieve!

 

I was then a lad o' twenty; and I felt a flash o' pride

In thinkin' all depended on me now to pervide

Fer mother and fer Mary; and I went about the place

With sleeves rolled up - and workin', with a mighty smilin'

face, -

 

Fer somepin' else was workin'! but not a word I said

Of a certain sort o' notion that was runnin' through my head,

-

"Some day I'd maybe marry, and brother's love was one

Thing - a lover's was another!" was the way the notion run!

 

I remember onc't in harvest, when the "cradle-in'" was done,

(When the harvest of my summers mounted up to twenty-one),

I was ridin' home with Mary at the closin' o' the day -

A-chawin' straws and thinkin', in a lover's lazy way!  And

Mary's cheeks was burnin' like the sunset down the lane:

I noticed she was thinkin', too,  and ast her to explain.

Well - when she turned and kissed me, with her arms around me

- law!

I'd a bigger load o' Heaven than I had a load o' straw!

 

I don't p'tend to larnin', but I'll tell you what's a fac',

They's a mighty truthful sayin' somers in a' almanac -

Er somers - 'bout "puore happiness"- perhaps  some  folks'll

laugh

At the idy - "only lastin' jest two seconds and half." -

 

But it's jest as true as preachin'! - fer that was a sister's

kiss,

And a sister's lovin' confidence a-tellin' to me this: -

"She was happy, bein' promised to the son o' Farmer Brown."

And my feelin's stuck a pardnership with sunset and went

down!

 

I don't know how I acted, and I don't  know what I said, -

Fer my heart seemed jest a-turnin' to an ice-cold lump o'

lead;

And the hosses kind o' glimmered before me in the road,

And the lines fell from my fingers - And that was all I

knowed -

 

Fer - well, I don't know how long - They's a dim rememberence

Of a sound o' snortin' horses, and a stake-and-ridered fence

A-whizzin' past, and wheat-sheaves a-dancin' in the air,

And Mary screamin' "Murder!"  and a-runnin' up to where

 

I was layin' by the roadside, and the wagon upside down

A-leanin' on the gate-post, with the wheels a-whirlin' roun'!

And I tried to raise and meet her, but I couldn't, with a

vague

Sort o' notion comin' to me that I had a broken leg.

 

Well, the women nussed me through it; but many a time I'd

sigh

As I'd keep a-gettin' better instid o' goin' to die,

And wonder what was left me worth livin' fer below,

When the girl I loved was married to another, don't you know!

 

And my thoughts was as rebellious as the folks was good and

kind

When Brown and Mary married - Railly must 'a' been my mind

Was kind o' out o' kilter! - fer I hated Brown, you see,

Worse's pizen - and the feller whittled crutches out fer me -

 

And done a thousand little ac's o' kindness and respec' -

And me a-wishin' all the time that I could break his neck!

My relief was like a mourner's when the funeral is done

When they moved to Illinois in the Fall o' Forty-one.

 

Then I went to work in airnest - I had nothin' much in view

But to drownd out rickollections - and it kep' me busy, too!

But I slowly thrived and prospered, tel Mother used to say

She expected yit to see me a wealthy man some day.

 

Then I'd think how little money was, compared to happiness -

And who'd be left to use it when I died I couldn't  guess!

But I've still kep' speculatin' and a-gainin' year by year,

Tel I'm payin' half the taxes in the county, might near!

 

Well! - A year ago er better, a letter comes to hand

Astin' how'd I'd like to dicker fer some Illinois land -

"The feller that had owned it," it went ahead to state,

"Had jest deceased, insolvent, leavin' chance to speculate,"

-

 

And then it closed by sayin' that I'd better come and see." -

I'd never been West, anyhow - a'most too wild fer me,

I'd allus had a notion; but a lawyer here in town

Said I'd find myself mistakend when I come to look around.

 

So I bids good-by to Mother, and I jumps aboard the train,

A-thinkin' what I'd bring her when I come back home again -

And ef she'd had an idy what the present was to be,

I think it's more'n likely she'd 'a'went along with me!

 

Cars is awful tejus ridin', fer all they go so fast!

But finally they called out my stoppin'-place at last:

And that night, at the tavern, I dreamp' I was a train

O' cars, and skeered at somepin', runnin' down a country

lane!

 

Well, in the morning airly - after huntin' up the man -

The lawyer who was wantin' to swap a piece o' land  -

We started fer the country; and I ast the history

Of the farm - its former owner - and so forth, etcetery!

 

And - well - it was interestin' - I su'prised him, I suppose,

By the loud and frequent manner in which I blowed my nose! -

But his su'prise was greater, and it made him wonder more,

When I kissed and hugged the widder when she met us at the

door! -

 

It was Mary:...They's a feelin' a-hidin' down in here -

Of course I can't explain it, ner ever make it clear. -

It was with us in that meetin', I don't want you to fergit!

And it makes me kind o' nervous when I think about it yit!

 

I bought that farm, and deeded it, afore I left the town,

With 'title clear to mansions in the skies," to Mary Brown!

And fu'thermore, I took her and the childern - fer you see,

They'd never seed their Grandma - and I fetched 'em home with

me.

 

So now you've got  an idy why a man o' fifty-four,

Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more

Is a-lookin' glad and smilin'! - And I've jest come into town

To git a pair o' license fer to marry Mary Brown."

 

     While Nellie was alive, Riley might imagine a hopeful

future. With Nellie in Greenfield, Riley could visualize his

arrangement with her almost as a married life. He included

the thought in poetry, thinking of her as the companion he

had grown up with and the wife she might have been or could

one day become after her more elderly husband's death, one of

which is the following:

 

              AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE1 (1875)

 

An old sweetheart of mine! - Is this her presence here with

me,

Or but a vain creation of a lover's memory?

A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air

Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?

 

Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true -

The semblance of the old love and the substance of the new, -

The then of changeless sunny days - the now of shower and

shine -

But Love forever smiling - as that old sweetheart of mine.

 

This ever-restful sense of home, though shouts ring in the

hall. -

The easy chair - the old book-shelves and prints along the

wall,

The rare Habanas in their box, or gaunt church-warden-stem

That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.

 

As one who cons at evening o'er an album, all alone,

And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,

So I turn the leaves of Fancy, til, in shadowy design,

I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.

 

The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,

As I turn it low - to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,

And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke

Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.

 

'Tis a fragrant retrospection, - for the loving thoughts that

start

Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart;

And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine -

When my truant fancies wander with that old sweetheart of

mine.

 

Though I hear beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,

The voices of my children and the mother as she sings -

I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any theme

When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream -

 

In fact, to speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm

To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm, -

For I find an extra flavor in Memory's mellow wine

That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of

mine.

 

O Childhood-days enchanted! O the magic of the Spring!  -

With all green boughs to blossom white, and all bluebirds to

sing!

When all the air, to toss and quaff, made life a jubilee

And changed the children's song and laugh to shrieks of

ecstasy.

 

With eyes half closed in clouds that ooze from lips that

taste, as well,

The peppermint and cinnamon, I hear the old School bell,

And from "Recess" romp in  again from "Blackman's" broken

line,

To smile, behind my "lesson," at that old sweetheart of mine.

 

A face of lily beauty, with a form of airy grace,

Floats out of my tobacco as the Genii from the vase;

And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes

As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies.

 

I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered dress

She wore when first I kissed her and she answered the caress

With the written declaration that, "as surely as the vine

Grew 'round the stump," she loved me - that old sweetheart of

mine.

 

Again I made her presents, in a really helpless way, -

The big "Rhode Island Greening2" - I was hungry, too, that

day! -

But I follow her from Spelling, with her hand behind her - so

-

And I slip the apple in it - and the Teacher doesn't know!

 

I give my treasures to her - all, - my pencil - blue-and-red;

-

And, if little girls played marbles, mine should all be hers,

instead!

But she gave me her photograph, and printed, "Ever thine"

Across the back - in blue-and-red - that old sweetheart of

mine!

 

And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand,

As we used to talk together of the future we had planned, -

When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do

But write the tender verses that she set the music to...

 

When we should live together in a cozy little cot

Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot,

Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine,

And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of

mine.

 

When I should be her lover forever and a day,

And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray;

And we should be so happy that when either's lips were dumb

They would not smile in Heaven till the other's kiss had

come.

 

But, ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair,

And the door is softly opened, and - my wife is standing

there:

Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I resign, -

To greet the living presence of that old sweetheart of mine."

1. This poem was one of Riley's most popular. It was said to

have earned him $500 a word - a princely sum in Riley's day.

A story set in New York City demonstrates its popularity,  A

vagabond named McGlaughlin was brought to Court on an October

day charged with loitering and vagrancy.  In defending

himself he said that he was an actor and simply out of work.

"To prove I'm an actor just give me a poem to recite. I'll

orate any piece you choose." The judge said if he could

recite "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" he would acknowledge that

he was no "bum." McGlaughlin did so and his reading was so

good that the judge not only dismissed the charges but also

had a collection taken up for the man in his courtroom.

2. Apples were the most commonly mentioned food in Riley's

poetry and the variety known as Rhode Island Greening is the

most obscure of Rileyana.

 

     Shortly after the writing of this poem, Nellie was taken

from Greenfield by her husband to exile in Illinois. Others

have vied ever since for the honor of being Riley's "Old

Sweetheart of Mine."

     One of the most unseemly debates in all of literature is

that over who was the woman pictured in the poem "An Old

Sweetheart of Mine."

     It seems that almost every otherwise "reputable"

Greenfield family of the last century tried to publicize

some one or other of its otherwise modest and chaste

daughters as having sultry, wildly adulterous or loose

affairs with Riley in order to have them pictured as the

"Sweetheart."  Some even published books to have a daughter

deemed the one, unconcerned that their daughter's reputation

might suffer a little in the process.  It seems hard to

imagine the mothers and fathers fighting so to have a

daughter deemed promiscuous with James Whitcomb Riley, but

they went at it with "unadulterated" frenzy.

     Of course the poem was the most widely known poem of the

last century and made Riley rich, but that hardly seems like

a good excuse to slander an otherwise nice young daughter.

     I think this genre of books, pushing a woman's claim to

having had an affair with Riley, is the strangest of any ever

published, but apparently the goal of having the woman

declared the "Sweetheart" offered the gift of fame beyond any

wish to keep the more private things of life about a family

member under wraps, assuming an encounter between Riley and

any of the girl candidates ever did occur with any of the

many proposed "Sweethearts."

     It seems to me we ought to leave all of these candidates

to their own little private reminiscences as to what did or

did not happen with James Whitcomb Riley. Although I do not

believe any one woman is the model for the "Sweetheart," I

agree with Minnie Belle Mitchell, one of the poet's great

biographers, that the most important female influences on his

life, and thus probably in his mind in picturing the

Sweetheart, would have been his own mother, Elizabeth Riley,

Nellie Millikan Cooley, and Adda Rowell Barber, both of the

latter being early Riley girlfriends who married other men.

     Having said that, let us remember the poem itself, not

because it made Riley the most wealthy poet who ever lived,

or because it has been the most widely published American

piece of poetry in history, or for any other reason than to

indulge in a picture of American homelife by Amphine's most

hopeful vision of love itself within the intimacy of lover's

fantasy sheltered from the world outside.

 

 

     While it seems that Nellie Cooley was Riley's only

fully beloved woman, Nellie's husband was also a friend of

Riley's and perhaps never aware how intimate Riley and Nellie

were. George Cooley wrote Riley letters of encouragement as

did Nellie.

 

         LETTER FROM NELLIE COOLEY'S HUSBAND, GEORGE

Bellesville, IL  Jan 1, 1877 (Holiday Eve)

My Dear James,

I have had my letters but seldom one as welcome as yours to

myself and Nellie. Those lines to Nellie were beautiful

indeed. You have a talent - that is bound to meet with its

first reward. Should you live a few years (Greenfield

notwithstanding). Go on my Boy. never look backward. It is in

you. I only wish it was in my power to point you to a shorter

and lazier road to fame than that you seem to have been

compelled to travel but as before said, pass on. Look

forward. Work - be determined and despite all back biting and

jealousy, such as has been displayed with Hancock. Take my

word for it. The time will come when it won't be Jim Riley,

but James W. Riley, Esq. one of America's Famous Poets.

 

     He goes on to encourage Riley to write both or either

himself or Nellie and states Nellie will be writing him the

next day.

     As the poem "The Flying Islands of the Night" comes

to an end, Riley comments how Dwainie takes Amphine with him

into the grave.

     Riley's memorial to Riley was not just his written

obituary to her or his poetry to her but also his play/

poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night." This poem, with

all of its many revisions and additions and editings,

retained the references to Nellie as its core.

 

Linger, my Dwainie! Dwainie! lily-fair,

Stay yet thy step upon the casement-stair1 -

Poised be thy slipper-tip as is the tine

Of some still star. - Ah, Dwainie - Dwainie mine,

     Yet linger - linger there!

 

1. A casement is a window-frame. For it to be a stair would

refer to it as an access down from heaven through it, or

possibly, the reference is to the stair leading to Riley's

place of writing at "The Seminary" where the Riley family

lived called the "Crow's Nest" where Riley wrote much of this

poetry.

Thy face, O Dwainie, lily-pure and fair,

Gleams i' the dusk, as in the dusky hair

The moony zhoomer1 glimmers, or the shine,

Of the swift smile - Ah, Dwainie -Dwainie mine,

     Yet linger - linger there!

 

1. Summer in intoxicatese.

 

With lifted wrist, where round the laughing air

Hath blown a mist of lawn and clasped it there,

Waft finger-thipt1 adieus that spray the wine

Of they waste kisses toward me, Dwainie mine -

     Yet linger -linger there!

 

1. (tipped) - language in simply intoxicated thickly

uttered speech.

 

What unloosed splendor is there may compare

With thy hand's unfurled glory, anywhere?

What giant of dazzling dew or jewel fine

May mate thine eyes? -Ah, Dwainie - Dwainie mine!

     Yet linger - linger there.

 

My soul confronts thee; On thy brow and hair

It lays its tenderness like palms of prayer -

It touches sacredly those lips of thine

And swoops across thy spirit, Dwainie mine,

     The while thou lingerest there.

 

     The recollection of Nellie did not dim over the years.

Riley added the following poem to the text of "The Flying

Islands of the Night" many years after her death during a

later revision:

 

     Ah, help me! but her face and brow

     Are lovelier than lilies are

     Beneath the light of moon and star

     That smile as they are smiling now -

     White lilies in a pallid swoon

     Of sweetest white beneath the moon -

     White lilies in a flood of bright

     Pure lucidness of liquid light

     Cascading down some plenilune1

     When all the azure overhead

     Blooms like a dazzling daisy-bed -

     So luminous her face and brow,

     The luster of their glory, shed

     In memory, even, blinds me now.

 

1. Something like plenteous lunar rays in intoxicatese.

 

Nellie remained Riley's salvation over the many years of his

life. Nellie, from her dead state, continually intervened to

encourage Riley over the years and fend off Crestillomeem.

     By the time "The Flying Islands of the Night" was

revised thirteen years later and placed into book form in

1891, Riley chose to add another beloved from his life to

join the cast with Dwainie, Nellie Millikan Cooley. This was

AEo, Riley's mother. The name derives from the centered

letter "E," the abbreviated first letter of his mother's name

surrounded by the Greek alpha and omega substitutes signaling

his mother meant to him the beginning and end of his love.

     The tombstone of James Whitcomb Riley's mother,

Elizabeth Riley, at Greenfield, Indiana's Park Cemetery

reflects that she lived from 1823 until 1870, "the year the

mother died." Her grave on a hill overlooks Brandywine Creek

meandering through the Hoosier landscape, the same "crick" on

which was James Whitcomb Riley's "Old Swimmin' Hole" was

located to the north near the old "National Road."

     Her name was Elizabeth Marine before she married Reuben

Riley and bore James Whitcomb Riley as her third child.

     We can elaborate more upon the life of Riley's beloved

mother. Elizabeth's family had come to America to avoid

persecution in Europe. This seems to be the case with most of

our ancestors which is why I find it so hard to understand

how any American can have prejudice toward any member of

another church, creed or race.  Elizabeth's Marine (or

Merine) grandparents were Welch Quakers who came to America

when Quakers were being persecuted in England. The Marine

grandmother's family had fled to England to avoid Protestant

persecution in France.  Their son, John, married Elizabeth's

mother, Fanny.  They were living on the border between North

Carolina and South Carolina, near Rockingham, when Elizabeth,

their tenth of eleven children, was born.

     When Elizabeth was only two, her parents left North

Carolina broke.  By the time the family fled over the Blue

Ridge Mountains and into Indiana, their total resources were

a wagon pulled by a single horse. Elizabeth's parents became

pioneer settlers of a Randolph County farm. At this place,

Elizabeth became acquainted with Johnny Appleseed personally

and had listened to the tales he told the pioneer children.

Most people know of Johnny Appleseed's quaint habit of

wearing a cooking pot for a hat and for planting apple trees

wherever he went, but not everybody remembers that Johnny was

also a gospel carrying preacher.  Elizabeth believed him when

he said you grow old on earth but you grow young again in

heaven. You can find traces of Johnny's preachings in the

poetry of James Whitcomb Riley, Elizabeth's son. As a child

Elizabeth went to school obediently to her parents' wishes,

but she enjoyed most wandering through the Hoosier woods.

     Her father tried to turn part of his farm into a town

called Rockingham after the town in North Carolina he had

fled. The project failed and the platted town remains

farmland to this day except for what was to be the town

cemetery without stones in one of whose graves rests

Elizabeth's mother, Fanny.

     After her mother died, the Marines moved to a settlement

on Cabin Creek near the Mississinewa River. At a Fourth of

July picnic in 1843, Elizabeth met Reuben Riley. There was an

Indian trail between the creek Elizabeth lived on and the one

where the family of Reuben Riley resided, Cabin Creek.  After

the two, Elizabeth and Reuben, met at the picnic, it is said

this trail got worn down by Reuben's use. In Feb. 1844,

Elizabeth married Reuben in a beautiful pioneer wedding

performed by the local Methodist preacher. Pioneer Indiana

was not so backwoodsy and crude as many think.  Elizabeth

wore a long white veil, white kid gloves and shoes, and a

pale pink silk dress. She was a truly beautiful woman.

     Elizabeth and her new husband left for Greenfield five

months after the wedding to settle in Greenfield.  In the

year 1844, Greenfield was a settlement of about 300 people.

The legislature had only "created" Hancock County 16 years

before. The town was mainly cabins and a few frame houses and

businesses around the "public square." The Riley Home, then a

cabin, was on the West edge of Greenfield and the Hoosier

woods was behind it.

     Elizabeth Riley was said to be gentle, kindly,

sympathetic, tolerant, and patient.  She and her son were on

the same wave length at all times. Both were poetic,

imaginative.  If one saw fairies in their walks through the

woods the other saw them too and each wove fanciful stories.

Both were dreamers to live above the sordid impoverishment of

their daily lives.  She was the only one who fully recognized

his talents  and visualized the heights he could attain. Some

have stated Elizabeth Riley was over-solicitous of James

Whitcomb Riley. They note that on September 4, 1851, when he

was two, his older sister, Martha Celeste died and that as

sometimes happens after a child's death, the mother becomes

extra extra careful about the next child.

      What is clear is that Riley leaned heavily upon his

mother's sympathetic encouragement and understanding and love

and clung to her as strongly as he clung to his goal of being

a writer. She was necessary to his very existence. He wished

his success for her.  Then one day she died.

     The death of his mother gave Riley a deep abiding

sympathy and pity for those who suffered bereavement and he

wrote

                 SINCE MY MOTHER DIED (1879)

 

          "Since my mother died, my face

           Knows not any resting-place,

           Save in visions, lightly pressed

           In its old accustomed rest

           On her shoulder. But I wake

           With a never-ending ache

           In my heart, and naught beside,

           Since my mother died.  ...

 

    What was her legacy to the boy?

    A psychologist of my century, Jerome Kagan, teaches that

an intelligent person is not necessarily creative but a

creative person is generally intelligent with creativity

based on three key characteristics: they have a mental set to

search for the unusual, they take delight in generating novel

ideas and they are not unduly apprehensive about making

mistakes.  A creative person is one whose life is not subject

to humiliation upon failure.  The caregiver has given such a

person great freedom to try, to succeed, and to fail. High-

risk solutions can be tried without fear of their potential.

This describes Elizabeth Riley's strategy for her son, James

Whitcomb Riley. She encouraged each of the three

characteristics. Elizabeth Riley was the source of the poet's

strength and courage as well.

     In Riley's "Poem of the Seven Faces" comes the

confession of a "face" of a character who is not one of the

"Flying Islands" of the cast. The faces of the poems are

those vivid recollections that confront Riley's life every

day and often drive him into the relief of intoxication. The

"Second Face" of the poems speaks of someone other than one

of Riley's play-characters representing a fragmentation of

himself. This "Second Face" says of Crestillomeem, Riley's

alcoholic self:

 

     I knew her - long and long before

     High AEo2 loosed her palm and thought:

     "What awful splendor have I wrought

     To dazzle earth and Heaven, too!"

 

     Elizabeth Riley, Riley's mother who died in the midst of

the poverty stricken years when Riley was 20, confesses from

her seat in heaven that her departure has precipitated

Riley's initial descent into alcoholism. From heaven, AEo

can only be horrified at Riley in the throes of

Crestillomeem.

     Riley's mother was with him as a living presence

throughout his life as the poem acknowledges.

 

                           Jucklet

 

In one strange phase he spake

As though some spirited lady (AEo1) talked with him. -

Full courteously he said: "In woman's guise

Thou comest, yet I think thou art, in sooth

But woman in thy form. - Thy words are strange

And leave me mystified. I feel the truth

Of all thou hast declared, and yet so vague

And shadow-like thy meaning is to me

I know not how to act to ward the blow

Thou sayest is hanging o'er me even now."

And then, with open hands held pleadingly,

He asked, "Who is my foe?" - And o'er his face

A sudden pallor flashed, like death itself,

As though, if answer had been given, it

Had fallen like a curse.

 

1. AEo, Riley's mother, now dead tries to caution him

against his drunken lifestyle.

 

     A letter is preserved which Riley wrote as an old man to

a child, James L. Murray, confirming his mother was still

very much in his thoughts.

     Dear Little Boy, -No-sir-ee! I couldn't write verse when

I was nine years old like you.  But, as you do, I could get

verses "by heart," for speeches at School - only I always got

pale and sick and faint when I tried to speak `em - and my

chin wobbled, and my throat hurt, and then I broke clean down

and cried. Oughtn't I been ashamed of myself? I bet you ain't

goin' to cry - in the Second Room of the A Grade!

    I was sorry to hear your mother died when you were only

one year old.  My mother is dead, too; and so I wouldn't be

surprised if your mother and my mother were together right

now, and know each other, and are the best friends in their

World, just as you and I are in  this.  My best respects to

your good father and teachers all.

                           Every your friend, James Whitcomb

                              Riley

      Riley's finest set of complete works was published 1915

with dedication to his mother as the Elizabeth Marine Riley

Edition. Original watercolors are inserted as illustrations

in many of the limited edition of 150. From George Richman, a

Hancock County historian we learn that Riley's mother was a

"woman of rare strength of character, combined with deep

sympathy and a clear understanding." Others recalled

her as being a gardener and a writer of verse.

     Speaking to his nephew and secretary, Edmund Eitel,

Riley commented on the death of his mother when asked about

it and after a long period of silence. "Sometimes I think

mentality is developed by such things.  Some terrible

experience comes and worries and worries you until your mind

seems stretched like the head of a drum.   Well, you bear up

bravely, and say to yourself, I can stand just this - but no

more.  Then some greater horror comes and turns the screws

and turns the screws until you feel that your mind is surely

strained to breaking...and so on, and so on, and if it

doesn't break, it becomes very strong. "

     The same Edmund Eitel added, "(Riley's mother,

Elizabeth) alone understood the boy, Riley, and sympathized

with him.  Riley said, "I was her child in color of hair and

eyes, in heart and soul. I worshiped her, and to see her in

poverty and suffering was agony for me -and a mother so

worthy of the best!"

     Riley's mother probably did not know of his great

love of Nellie Cooley in real life, but Riley imagined

she must know of it from her vantage in heaven. She would

also know of her son's great anguish at Nellie's departure

from Greenfield and then death. After the death of Nellie

Cooley, great sadness must have stroked Riley's life. Nellie

did not outlive her husband, George, so that Riley might rush

to Illinois, find her a widow with children, marry her and

bring her back to Indiana to find happiness in the way

envisioned in the 1974 poem, "Farmer Whipple-Bachelor."

     The only memory Riley had was of his stolen love with

Nellie as a married woman. This relationship might otherwise

have been a sordid affair except that Riley knew that the

"mother's heart" of Elizabeth understood his needs and

situation and approved it. He writes of this in his

autobiographical poem's Act II when speaking to the dead

spirit of Nellie, he says:

 

"Amphine

                     Then,

Thou lovest! - O my homing dove, veer down

And nestle in the warm home of my breast!

So empty are mine arms, so full my heart

The one must hold thee, or the other burst.

 

Dwainie (Throwing herself in his embrace)

 

AEo's own hand methinks hath flung me here;

O hold me that He may not pluck me back!"

 

     Riley felt his mother must have understood how much he

needed Nellie. Her "own hand" encourages the relationship.

     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."

 

 

     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.

 

 

     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.

 

 

                        CRESTILLOMEEM

 

  DRUNKENNESS AND DELIRIUM TREMENS AS A LADY TRYING TO RUIN

                        RILEY'S LIFE

 

     In the Preface we first met Crestillomeem.1 She is

the naggy depression and drunkenness that threatens Riley.

She is Riley's "Queen." She has taken charge of him in his

late 20's when "The Flying Islands Of the Night" was written.

Riley calls her his "Second Consort" in the later "book"

editions of the poem. His first and foremost "Consort" was

his beloved "soul-mate" Nellie who died shortly before the

poem was first composed.

 

1. We remember her name is an elision of "crestfallen"

(dejected), "ill" and "me" backwards and forwards.

 

     Crestillomeem is the Riley who goes crazy about life

sometimes and becomes a binge drinker before pulling himself

out. She is also the scary tremens and torporous deliriums of

alcoholism.  These are, of course, the vision of Riley's

great autobiographical poem "The Flying Islands of the

Night." Crestillomeem is the nasty Queen of Riley's life

trying to destroy its meaning and hope for success.

     Crestillomeem is one of Riley's "Flying islands." Flying

islands are Riley's lives in the poem. They are not a

singular island.  Riley, with great insight, knew himself as

an archipelago afloat in "red eye" whiskey at the time of the

writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night." All of the

islands make up Riley's conception of his own life as a man

in great alienation acting through life as a cast of players.

Riley was a great enough actor to get by with this.  He

simply was not a single "himself."

     Islands are lonely images. They are by themselves

and don't have "connections." Riley must have felt so

very, very lonely at times to take upon himself this

representation of himself in his imagination. I suspect this

loneliness was the cause for becoming Crestillomeem at

times.  Most often, Riley retreated to Greenfield when

he fell under Crestillomeem's spell and "waited her out"

among friends and family.

     We see Riley using this depressed and sometimes drunken

aspect of himself most often in his John C. Walker poems

which we will discuss later in this book. For now, we might

want to get a taste of how this persona wrote poetry:

 

            JOHN GOLLIHER'S THIRD WOMERN1 (1879)

     (From the Kokomo Saturday TRIBUNE of Dec. 27, 1879)

I'm a-talkin' - not adzac'ly in the old-maid kindo way

O' sayin' things onpleasant `cause there're plenty sich to

say: -

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

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

 

But I `low `at married people, as a rule, all has their sheer

O' troubles and vexations. - Yet theyr're one example here

`At some folks find confusin' - seein's how they used to say

John Golliher's third womern wouldn't be alive today!

 

You see, John's ben a drinker - jest a SOAKER thue and thue!-

As his daddy was afore him, and his old grandaddy, too! -

W'y, the Golliher's, I reckon, ef you'd stand `em in a row,

Would make a string o' drunkards clean from here to Jericho.

 

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

her brags

She'd have him, drunk or sober, ef she had to dress in rags,-

And thems the kind o' clothin' she dome to `fore she died,

And laid `em down forever, thanking God, and saisfied.

 

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

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

face;

And fer-well, a year and better, he kep' straight enough, I

guess

Til he met a widder womern `at upset him more or less.

 

He was warned agin the womern -she was warned agin the man,-

And ef that won't make a weddin', w'y there're nothin' else

`at can!

And when THAT couple married, they was some `at even bet

The widder would out-last him, but - John's a-livin yet!

 

Things was might bad, I tell you, at that funeral o'hern!-

No serous indications o' very deep concern-

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

Fer the crazy wretch with tremans howlin' there beside the

dead!

 

W'y the preachers worked their sermints out o' that!- and

women wrung

Their empty hands in meetin! and shouted, cried and sung:

And little sleepy childern was shuck awake to pray,

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

 

They was no one else to `tend him, so I staid there -more on

Account of Mary's feelin's than fur any keer o' John, -

Fer that fust thing, when he rallied so's he knowed me, I-

says- I-

"I'm mighty feered the chances is you aint a-goin' to die!"

 

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

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

frown,-

"Don't, then! I'll DIE - A DRUNKARD! and the womern who can

say

As mean a thing as that is, ortn't tetch him! GO AWAY!"

 

It was afterwards `at Mary told me she was peekin' thue

The kitchen-door, and saw me, knelln'- like I used to do

In public meetins' - on'y, the prayer, she said was more

Full o' lovin' stren'th `an any `at she'd ever heerd afore.-

 

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

About as nigh pefection as they git `em now - because,

Her father he forgive me- quit his drinkin'- and is- Well,

John Golliher's third womern ain't got nuthin' else to tell.

 

1. This poem parenthetically points out the difficult life of

women in Riley's day. Life was literally a woman-killer.

A man might marry the first time for love, resulting in

several children.  To bring up the children, he might marry

several more times "for convenience." Riley describes

housework of women in "My First Womern:"  "Fer I'm allus

thinkin' - thinkin' Of the first one's peaceful ways.  A

bilin' soap and singin' of the Lord's amazin' grace. -And I'm

thinkin' of her constant, Dyin' carpet-chain and stuff And a

makin' up rag carpets, When the floor was GOOD ENOUGH! And

I'm allus thinkin' of her reddin' up  around the house; Er

cookin fer the farm hands; er drivin' up the cows. - And

there she lays out yander By the lower medder fence. W'y they

ain't no sadder thing Than to think of my first womern, and

her funeral last spring."

 

     Crestillomeem's spell on Riley really wasn't so humerous

as John C. Walker portrayed. She brought about Riley's

depression or was at least a product of it. But she is also a

uniquely important person in the life of James Whitcomb Riley

because she impels him through dialogue to see her as a

consequence to him if he does not pursue the only other goal

for his life that James Whitcomb Riley could imagine more

powerful - the lust for fame (another figure in Riley's

imaginative self-life who Riley thinks of as an equally

clearly defined "flying island" named Krung. We shall meet

Krung later on in this book. The happy result of it all was,

however, to allow Spraivoll, yet another character, to sing

poetically. This conforms to the common description of

alcohol as "the great exciter of the Yes function in people."

     It was about himself as the sinful persona dominated by

his alcoholic Crestillomeem that Riley's 1878 poem, "The

Flying Islands of the Night," was written in the turmoil of

one of his greatest periods of intoxication and tremens and

possible concern over impotency.

     In the "Flying Islands of the Night," Riley knows

that Crestillomeem, his alcoholism, is constantly beckoning

him. She seeks to destroy him and even seek his death.

Crestillomeem demands Riley toe her line and meet her

demands.  She invites him to imprison himself in the tower

of servitude to alcoholism and its fantasies. We read:

                    "The Queen (Crestillomeem)

Impatiently awaits his Majesty

And craves his presence in the Tower of Stars,

That she may there express full tenderly

Her great solicitude."

     In alcoholics' confessional genre literature the curse

of alcohol manifest in a person, here Crestillomeem in James

Whitcomb Riley, always leads to self-destructive behavior.

As the great temperance mediator Luther Benson states in

Fifteen Years in Hell, "(to go out on an alcoholic spree) "is

to quench the light of ambition, to crush hope, entomb joy,

lay waste the powers of the mind, neglect duty, desert the

family and commit in the end suicide."

     In the poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," Riley is

able to cast her off. In reality Riley never was able to

fully subdue his alcoholism. Riley's capacity to physically

love was probably affected by Crestillomeem.  One suspects

that impotence was her legacy, possibly manifest about the

time he began writing "The Flying Islands of the Night" and

after the death of Nellie Cooley, the only woman Riley had

loved as a soul-mate.

     The Crestillomeem character of Riley's fragmented life

is "roughly" referenced in verse in James Whitcomb Riley's

poem "Luther Benson" contemporaneously written with "Flying

Islands" as the poem's subtitle says, "After reading his

autobiography." The poem describes alcoholism as the "vulture

curse, That hovers o'er the universe, With ready talons quick

to strike In every human heart alike." Benson's

autobiography, Fifteen Years in Hell, like Riley's play/poem,

marks how Benson was wasted in alcohol addiction, reformed,

and went on to "lecture" extensively throughout Indiana and

the nation as a temperance speaker.  The parallel to the

movement of the acts of "Flying Islands" is pronounced as is

the eventual progress of Riley's own life...although Riley's

"cause" was not temperance but the spread of humanistic

and "kenotic" themes. His dependency makes of his dissolute

and alcoholic nature the relationship of something wedded to

him as a queenly wife as well as curse.  Possibly "Flying

Islands" was originally intended as an extensive farcical

account of the life of Benson, based on Benson's

autobiography, in the nature of Riley's comical imitation of

Benson on the platform called "Benson Out-Bensoned" but if so

Riley's realization that the alcoholic addiction was similar

to his own probably changed the story line and the play\poem

into Riley's own autobiography.  Benson does not seem to be

remembered much these days, but his book Fifteen Years in

Hell describing his alcoholic years was a national best-

seller in the 1880's.

     A major event in Riley's life must have been his first

encounter with tremens from his alcoholism. This was the most

dispiriting aspect of play with himself as Crestillomeem. I

am informed that such tremens come only to one of lengthy and

alcoholic lifestyle.

     Riley admits his writing is "under the influence" in his

Sixth and Final episode of the Buzz Club Papers in which

series "The Flying Islands of the Night" appears.  When

writing "The Flying Islands" the author was stated to be

under the "baleful influence of intoxicants...driving reason

from her Throne." The work is the product of "old crime."

     Riley was, of course, notorious for using pseudonymous

names for his writings. The ostensible writer of the original

"The Flying Islands of the Night" is Mr. Clickwad, a member

of the "Buzz Club" whose poetry is deliberately questioned in

the very first of the "Respectfully Declined" Papers of the

Buzz Club. Another member asks: "The gentleman who has just

favored us," said Mr. Plempton, "is a weird cuss, but if

he'll pardon my curiosity I should like to inquire if he was

ever troubled with the tremens?" The answer is obvious.  "The

Flying Islands of the Night," appearing in the fourth

installment of the "Respectfully Declined" series, is

introduced as Mr. Clickwad's work.

     Riley knows of the tremens. He experienced them. He also

wrote of them in such prose accounts as "Jamesy" where he

refers to them as "jim jams." At one point in that short

narrative appears the following colloquy which might relate

to one of James Whitcomb Riley's own experiences:

     "Liable to what?" said I

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

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

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

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

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

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

whisky, now you bet!.."

     Riley must have felt enraged because intoxication was

not supposed to have such a down side! As Riley's teenaged

years dawned alcohol use was only beginning to questioned.

When Riley was 11, a newspaper article published in the

Hancock DEMOCRAT of July 3, 1861 stated, "It was at one time

generally believed that the use of alcoholic liquors was

positively necessary and beneficial to all men...Physicians

recommended such beverages and regular daily rations of rum

were provided in all armies and navies.  These notions are

still entertained by many persons, and very generally there

is a want of correct information on the subject. It is very

common for soldiers of all classes to indulge in the use of

alcoholic beverages...By close observation and many

experiments, it has been found that the tissues and the blood

of drunkards, as well as those who continually tipple in beer

and whisky, but do not get drunk, are generally in a state of

degeneration.  Alcohol passes into the blood and retards the

elimination of waste and injurious matter from the body and

thus tends to produce disease, especially fever..." The

effects of alcohol were obviously unclear in Riley's time.

     Eventually, Riley came to see his alcohol addiction to

personify the activity of a person he called Crestillomeem

and took her vision of himself as his own to see what it

meant. This was done in "The Flying Islands of the Night."

Crestillomeem never left Riley but came to become a pretty

much subdued lady except for many private but also a few

highly publicized incidents such as one recurrence in

Louisville, Kentucky in February 1890 which caused the

breakup of his stand-up comedy partnership with Edgar Nye.

     Crestillomeem did not produce poetry. Riley wrote no

poetry when he was in delirium. Crestillomeem did, however,

provide the delirious subject matter of a small body of very

important poetry to a biographer. She gave Riley "An

Adjustable Lunatic" with its vision of a lover in another

dimension whose ethereal connectedness is an otherwise mad

man's only touch with reality.

                       FANTASY (1878)

(FROM "AN ADJUSTABLE LUNATIC")

(a poem written by a fictional author in a Riley sketch, a

man who subsequently committed suicide within the story line

and who described himself as "an adjustable lunatic" by

profession.  The sketch from which this poem derives portrays

the writer of "Fantasy" as a penniless bachelor, the owner of

a painting of a mysteriously enchanting woman in his room.

The poem reveals an impossible romantic attachment so

real and yet so imaginary that it severs the man from his

senses. As a biographer, I find the story bears relation to

Riley's relationship with his married friend, Nellie

Cooley, so recently dead at the time of its writing.)

 

A Fantasy that came to me

     As wild and wantonly designed

As ever any dream might be

     Unraveled from a madman's mind, -

A tangle-work of tissue, wrought

     By cunning of the spider-brain,

     And woven, in an hour of pain,

To trap the giddy flies of thought -.

 

I stood beneath a summer moon

     All swollen to uncanny girth,

And hanging, like the sun at noon,

     Above the center of the earth;

     But with a sad and sallow light,

     As it had sickened of the night

And fallen in a pallid swoon.

Around me I could hear the rush

     Of sullen winds, and feel the whir

Of unseen wings apast me brush

     like phantoms round a sepulcher;

And, like a carpeting of plush,

     A lawn unrolled beneath my feet,

     Bespangled o'er with flowers as sweet

     To look upon as those that nod

     Within the garden-fields of God,

     But odorless as those that blow

     In ashes in the shades below.

 

And on my hearing fell a storm

     Of gusty music, sadder yet

     Than every whimper of regret

That sobbing utterance could form,

     And patched with scraps of sound that seemed

     Torn out of tunes that demons dreamed,

     And pitched to such a piercing key,

     It stabbed the ear with agony;

     And when at last it lulled and died,

     I stood aghast and terrified.

I shuddered and I shut my eyes

     And still could see, and feel aware

     Some mystic presence waited there;

And staring, with a dazed surprise,

     I saw a creature so divine

     That never subtle thought of mine

     May reproduce to inner sight

     So  fair a vision of delight.

 

A syllable of dew that drips

From out a lily's laughing lips

Could not be sweeter than the word

I listened to, yet never heard. -

For, oh, the woman hiding there

Within the shadows of her hair,

Spake to me in an undertone

So delicate, my soul alone

But understood it as a moan

Of some weak melody of wind

A heavenward breeze had left behind.

 

A tracery of trees, grotesque

     Against the sky, behind her seem

Like shapeless shapes of arabesque

     Wrought in an oriental screen;

And tall, austere and statuesque

     She loomed before it - e'en as though

     The spirit-hand of Angelo

     Had chiseled her to life complete,

     With chips of moonshine round her feet.

And I grew jealous of the dusk,

     To see it softly touch her face,

     As lover-like, with fond embrace

It folded round her like a husk:

But when the glitter of her hand

     Like wasted glory, beckoned me,

     My eyes grew blurred and dull and dim -

     My vision failed - I could not see -

I could not stir - I could but stand,

     Till, quivering in every limb,

     I flung me prone, as though to swim

     The tide of grass whose waves of green

     Went rolling ocean-wide between

     My helpless shipwrecked heart and her

     Who claimed me for a worshiper.

 

And writhing thus in my despair,

     I heard a weird, unearthly sound,

     That seemed to lift me from the ground

     And hold me floating in the air.

     I looked, and lo! I saw her bow

     Above a harp within her hands;

A crown of blossoms bound her brow,

     And on her harp were twisted strands

Of silken starlight, rippling o'er

With music never heard before

By mortal ears; and, at the strain,

I felt my Spirit snap its chain

And break away, - and I could see

It as it turned and fled from me

To greet its mistress, where she smiled

To see the phantom dancing wild

And wizard-like before the spell

Her mystic fingers knew so well.

 

What is it? Who will rightly guess

If it be aught but nothingness

That dribbles from a wayward pen

To spatter in the eyes of men?

What matter! I will call it mine,

     And I will take the changeling home

And bathe its face with morning-shine,

     And comb it with a golden comb

     Till every tangled tress of rhyme

     Will fairer be than summer-time;

And I will nurse it on my knee

     And dandle it beyond the clasp

     Of hands that grip and hands that grasp

Through life and all eternity!

 

     Something like this vision became Act II of Riley's

great delirious, autobiographical play\poem "The Flying

Islands of the Night." The other subject matter is in such

poetry as "Quitting California." The poem is not, of course,

about the State of California at all, but rather about a

brand name of whiskey.  While one is led by the poem to

believe that the poem's writer is becoming temperate and

giving up alcohol, the poem playfully concludes that the

writer is merely changing to another brand of cheap whiskey

and not giving up whiskey at all.

 

                ON QUITTING CALIFORNIA (1879)

 

O rare old drink, the oldest, strongest far

  Of which the house can boast,

Whose guardian, smiling, betteth at the bar

  On who can drink the most -

 

How art thou conquered - tamed in all the pride

  Of average beauty still!

How brought, O painter of the human hide,

  To know thy master's will!

 

No more the shallow goblet is baptized

  Until it overflows;

No more thy liquid blushes are capsized,

  And succored by the nose.

 

For now the wild oats thou hast helped to till

  In pain are harvested,

And, as the boss presents his little bill,

  The gleaner droops his head.

 

Yet at thy shrine shall thousands kneel again

  Beneath thy mystic spell;

O mother-in-law of great and mighty men,

  Thou do'st thy mission well!

 

Thy newer children shall restore the right

  I force you to resign

And future years yield up an appetite,

  Perchance as wild as mine.

 

Though order, justice, social law shall scowl

  On all the works reveal,

And art and science shake their heads and howl

  With unabated zeal,

 

The marble, shaken from its glassy sheath,

  Shall twirl and palpitate

For those of fiery eye and potent breath

  Who take their whisky straight.

 

The cornless cob shall drain its warmest blood -

  The still its blackest lees,

And all transfusive percolations flood

  Thy swollen arteries,

 

Till "Tremens," as he hides himself away

  Within thy depths, shall wink

As victims pour him down from day to day

  At fifteen cents a drink.

 

When Mr. Clickwad is finished his friends congratulate him at

least on agreeing to quit alcohol. Mr. Clickwad denies this

intent and admits that he is only quitting the one brand

indicated. He remains an unrepentant alcoholic which is his

nature.

     While the poetry of Crestillomeem is small in volume,

Riley considered it his personal record of the hell of his

life and treasured it inordinately. One finds his poem

"The Flying Islands of the Night" being published again and

again from 1878 to the end of his life.  None of the

printings was popular. Most contained changes as Riley

considered and reconsidered its autobiographical cryptic

subject matter. The poem came to have a strange life of its

own because of its beautiful lyrics and of course authorship

by the famous James Whitcomb Riley.

     Riley simply hid himself in this poem. No one except

possibly his alcoholic brother Hum (who died three years

after "The Flying Islands of the Night's" composition) and

friend, Dr. Frank Hays, knew the poem was a delirium.

     Why?

     Among the reasons why Crestillomeem was not a visible

presence was Riley's later popularity and commercial

posture. But another reason was that Crestillomeem lurked

within his soul.  Riley couldn't account for this himself.

His vision of life included a simple belief that ultimately

life was inexplicable. When his father died, Riley had

engraved on the Riley family marker in the little Greenfield

cemetery where he was buried, "God is his own interpreter and

will someday make things clear." Riley's alcoholism like his

father's death was a part of life that God alone understood.

Nevertheless there was an expectation that it fit in with

some greater plan.

     Crestillomeem was Riley in his uneasiness about his

alcoholism. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, declared

uneasiness was the central human motive. Riley was constantly

in a state of uncertainty about himself. His incentive to

survive despite his alcoholism required great mental work,

emotionality and activity.  After a person's biological needs

are satisfied, time and energy are next spent in a narrow

space of mind bounded on the right by boredom and ordinarily

on the left by terror of the bizarre.  Riley often lived in

this region of the bizarre and actually knew it as a comfort.

He often lived in the nurture of Crestillomeem. Others have

commented that Riley's "weakness" was even beneficial. Rev.

Finley Sapp, minister of a Greenfield Protestant Church from

1904-1906 and knew Riley, has written: "James Whitcomb

Riley touched the heart of humanity as only a few have.

"Jim" was really more "`ligious" when "lit up" a little,

than most of the saints at camp meeting." (From page 54, A

HISTORY OF THE GREENFIELD CHRISTIAN CHURCH, Dorothy June

Williams).

     So who is Crestillomeem? She is the one whose life

is explained in The Flying Islands as an entourage of

faces.  She is the soul breaking apart in Riley's "Poem of

Seven Faces." In tremens deliriums, Riley encounters faces

swarming around him telling him all about Crestillomeem.

 

     CRESTILLOMEEM'S STORY IN A CHORUS OF SWARMING FACES

 

                      First Face

 

And who hath known her - like as I

Have known her?  - since the envying sky

Filched from her cheeks its morning hue,

And from her eyes its glory, too,

Of dazzling shine and diamond-dew.

 

                         Second Face

 

I knew her - long and long before

High AEo1 loosed her palm and thought:

"What awful splendor have I wrought

To dazzle earth and Heaven, too!"

 

1. AEo is Elizabeth, Riley's mother, who died when he was

twenty. The E is her initial surrounded by the alpha and

omega representing the scope of Riley's affection for her

from beginning of life to end. Riley idolized his mother

causing deep agony upon her death and Riley's initial need

for consolation and escape in alcoholism.

 

                         Third Face

 

I knew her - long ere Night1 was o'er -

Ere, AEo yet conjectured what

To fashion Day of - ay, before

He sprinkled stars across the floor

Of dark, and swept that form of mine

E'en as a fleck of blinded shine,

Back to the black were light was not.

 

1. Night is related to the past in the alcoholics

confessional genre of literature such as "The Flying Islands

of the Night." SEE: Benson, Fifteen Years in Hell, (night as

a black, unlighted past).

 

                         Fourth face

 

Ere day was dreamt, I saw her face

Lift from some starry hiding-place

Where our old moon was kneeling while

She lit its features with her smile.

 

                         Fifth Face

 

I knew her while these islands3 yet,

Were nestlings - ere they feathered wing,

Or e'en could gape with them or get

Apoise the laziest-ambling breeze;

Or cheep, chirp our, or anything!

When time crooned rhymes of nurseries

Above them - nodded, dozed and slept,

And knew it not, till, wakening.

The morning stars agreed to sing

And Heaven's first tender dews were wept.

 

3. Riley's fractured lives are the "flying" islands,

disassociated "play/cast" entities, of the poem.

 

                         Sixth Face

 

I knew her when the jealous hands

Of Angels set her sculptured form

Upon a pedestal of storm

And let her to this land with strands

Of twisted lightnings.

 

                        Seventh Face

 

         And I heard

Her voice ere she could tone a word

Of any but the Seraph-tongue. -

And O sad-sweeter than all sung -

Or word-said things! - to hear her say,

Between the tears she dashed away: -

"Lo, launched from the offended sight

Of AEo! - anguish infinite

Is ours, O Sisterhood of Sin!

Yet is thy service mine by right,

And, sweet as I may rule it, thus

   Shall Sin's myrrh-savor taste to us -

   Sin's empress - let my reign begin!4"

 

4. After his mother's death and then Nellie's death, Riley

fell to pieces and launched a life of abandonment to

alcoholism supported by meager casual employments.

 

      RILEY'S FOUR GREAT ENCOUNTERS WITH CRESTILLOMEEM

 

    There were four great encounters Riley had with

Crestillomeem. Each led to a new era in Riley's life and the

crises were closer together in years in his 20's than later

on. Each proved devastating and led to great life changes for

the sensitive poet. The first occurred as Riley was faced

with the death of his mother on Aug. 9, 1870 when Elizabeth

Riley died of heart disease. Riley floundered after this and

eventually took to the road with a traveling miracle medicine

show of Doc McCrillus.

     After returning to his home to settle down, a second

event occurred when he was in  his 20's which thoroughly

unsettled him.  This was a "black lynching" by a band of

masked Hancock County men who broke into the Greenfield jail

to drag a presumably innocent black man out for his date with

a rope at the local fairgrounds. Riley again left his

hometown for a second trip with a traveling medicine show,

this time the one of Doc Townsend.

     Again returning to Greenfield after a time, he learned

of the death of his soul-mate he most loved, Nellie Cooley,

and after writing her obituary and burying her back in

Greenfield, he again entered into a period of great

despondency resulting in his eventual move to Indianapolis to

work for a newspaper there.

     It was after this third great "depressing" circumstance

that Riley wrote his autobiographical poem, "The Flying

Islands of the Night."

     By this time, Riley was brought in contact with kenotic

teachers and was taking to the platform. His great Benjamin

Johnson of Boone poems were written during a period of

recovery in this period.

     The fourth great onset of depression culminated in 1890

when Riley could not take the strain of constant platform

touring any longer and was found drunk and with the "shakes"

in public. This ended Riley's lyceum circuit days as they had

been. The event did however usher in a gentler time when

Riley wrote most of his annual books and became "The

Children's Poet." We will examine each of these periods of

Riley's great bouts with Crestillomeem in turn before getting

into his great poetry written as Spraivoll of the play/poem

"The Flying Islands of the Night."

 

 

                        CRESTILLOMEEM

 

  DRUNKENNESS AND DELIRIUM TREMENS AS A LADY TRYING TO RUIN

                        RILEY'S LIFE

 

     In the Preface we first met Crestillomeem.1 She is

the naggy depression and drunkenness that threatens Riley.

She is Riley's "Queen." She has taken charge of him in his

late 20's when "The Flying Islands Of the Night" was written.

Riley calls her his "Second Consort" in the later "book"

editions of the poem. His first and foremost "Consort" was

his beloved "soul-mate" Nellie who died shortly before the

poem was first composed.

 

1. We remember her name is an elision of "crestfallen"

(dejected), "ill" and "me" backwards and forwards.

 

     Crestillomeem is the Riley who goes crazy about life

sometimes and becomes a binge drinker before pulling himself

out. She is also the scary tremens and torporous deliriums of

alcoholism.  These are, of course, the vision of Riley's

great autobiographical poem "The Flying Islands of the

Night." Crestillomeem is the nasty Queen of Riley's life

trying to destroy its meaning and hope for success.

     Crestillomeem is one of Riley's "Flying islands." Flying

islands are Riley's lives in the poem. They are not a

singular island.  Riley, with great insight, knew himself as

an archipelago afloat in "red eye" whiskey at the time of the

writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night." All of the

islands make up Riley's conception of his own life as a man

in great alienation acting through life as a cast of players.

Riley was a great enough actor to get by with this.  He

simply was not a single "himself."

     Islands are lonely images. They are by themselves

and don't have "connections." Riley must have felt so

very, very lonely at times to take upon himself this

representation of himself in his imagination. I suspect this

loneliness was the cause for becoming Crestillomeem at

times.  Most often, Riley retreated to Greenfield when

he fell under Crestillomeem's spell and "waited her out"

among friends and family.

     We see Riley using this depressed and sometimes drunken

aspect of himself most often in his John C. Walker poems

which we will discuss later in this book. For now, we might

want to get a taste of how this persona wrote poetry:

 

            JOHN GOLLIHER'S THIRD WOMERN1 (1879)

     (From the Kokomo Saturday TRIBUNE of Dec. 27, 1879)

I'm a-talkin' - not adzac'ly in the old-maid kindo way

O' sayin' things onpleasant `cause there're plenty sich to

say: -

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

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

 

But I `low `at married people, as a rule, all has their sheer

O' troubles and vexations. - Yet theyr're one example here

`At some folks find confusin' - seein's how they used to say

John Golliher's third womern wouldn't be alive today!

 

You see, John's ben a drinker - jest a SOAKER thue and thue!-

As his daddy was afore him, and his old grandaddy, too! -

W'y, the Golliher's, I reckon, ef you'd stand `em in a row,

Would make a string o' drunkards clean from here to Jericho.

 

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

her brags

She'd have him, drunk or sober, ef she had to dress in rags,-

And thems the kind o' clothin' she dome to `fore she died,

And laid `em down forever, thanking God, and saisfied.

 

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

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

face;

And fer-well, a year and better, he kep' straight enough, I

guess

Til he met a widder womern `at upset him more or less.

 

He was warned agin the womern -she was warned agin the man,-

And ef that won't make a weddin', w'y there're nothin' else

`at can!

And when THAT couple married, they was some `at even bet

The widder would out-last him, but - John's a-livin yet!

 

Things was might bad, I tell you, at that funeral o'hern!-

No serous indications o' very deep concern-

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

Fer the crazy wretch with tremans howlin' there beside the

dead!

 

W'y the preachers worked their sermints out o' that!- and

women wrung

Their empty hands in meetin! and shouted, cried and sung:

And little sleepy childern was shuck awake to pray,

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

 

They was no one else to `tend him, so I staid there -more on

Account of Mary's feelin's than fur any keer o' John, -

Fer that fust thing, when he rallied so's he knowed me, I-

says- I-

"I'm mighty feered the chances is you aint a-goin' to die!"

 

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

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

frown,-

"Don't, then! I'll DIE - A DRUNKARD! and the womern who can

say

As mean a thing as that is, ortn't tetch him! GO AWAY!"

 

It was afterwards `at Mary told me she was peekin' thue

The kitchen-door, and saw me, knelln'- like I used to do

In public meetins' - on'y, the prayer, she said was more

Full o' lovin' stren'th `an any `at she'd ever heerd afore.-

 

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

About as nigh pefection as they git `em now - because,

Her father he forgive me- quit his drinkin'- and is- Well,

John Golliher's third womern ain't got nuthin' else to tell.

 

1. This poem parenthetically points out the difficult life of

women in Riley's day. Life was literally a woman-killer.

A man might marry the first time for love, resulting in

several children.  To bring up the children, he might marry

several more times "for convenience." Riley describes

housework of women in "My First Womern:"  "Fer I'm allus

thinkin' - thinkin' Of the first one's peaceful ways.  A

bilin' soap and singin' of the Lord's amazin' grace. -And I'm

thinkin' of her constant, Dyin' carpet-chain and stuff And a

makin' up rag carpets, When the floor was GOOD ENOUGH! And

I'm allus thinkin' of her reddin' up  around the house; Er

cookin fer the farm hands; er drivin' up the cows. - And

there she lays out yander By the lower medder fence. W'y they

ain't no sadder thing Than to think of my first womern, and

her funeral last spring."

 

     Crestillomeem's spell on Riley really wasn't so humerous

as John C. Walker portrayed. She brought about Riley's

depression or was at least a product of it. But she is also a

uniquely important person in the life of James Whitcomb Riley

because she impels him through dialogue to see her as a

consequence to him if he does not pursue the only other goal

for his life that James Whitcomb Riley could imagine more

powerful - the lust for fame (another figure in Riley's

imaginative self-life who Riley thinks of as an equally

clearly defined "flying island" named Krung. We shall meet

Krung later on in this book. The happy result of it all was,

however, to allow Spraivoll, yet another character, to sing

poetically. This conforms to the common description of

alcohol as "the great exciter of the Yes function in people."

     It was about himself as the sinful persona dominated by

his alcoholic Crestillomeem that Riley's 1878 poem, "The

Flying Islands of the Night," was written in the turmoil of

one of his greatest periods of intoxication and tremens and

possible concern over impotency.

     In the "Flying Islands of the Night," Riley knows

that Crestillomeem, his alcoholism, is constantly beckoning

him. She seeks to destroy him and even seek his death.

Crestillomeem demands Riley toe her line and meet her

demands.  She invites him to imprison himself in the tower

of servitude to alcoholism and its fantasies. We read:

                    "The Queen (Crestillomeem)

Impatiently awaits his Majesty

And craves his presence in the Tower of Stars,

That she may there express full tenderly

Her great solicitude."

     In alcoholics' confessional genre literature the curse

of alcohol manifest in a person, here Crestillomeem in James

Whitcomb Riley, always leads to self-destructive behavior.

As the great temperance mediator Luther Benson states in

Fifteen Years in Hell, "(to go out on an alcoholic spree) "is

to quench the light of ambition, to crush hope, entomb joy,

lay waste the powers of the mind, neglect duty, desert the

family and commit in the end suicide."

     In the poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," Riley is

able to cast her off. In reality Riley never was able to

fully subdue his alcoholism. Riley's capacity to physically

love was probably affected by Crestillomeem.  One suspects

that impotence was her legacy, possibly manifest about the

time he began writing "The Flying Islands of the Night" and

after the death of Nellie Cooley, the only woman Riley had

loved as a soul-mate.

     The Crestillomeem character of Riley's fragmented life

is "roughly" referenced in verse in James Whitcomb Riley's

poem "Luther Benson" contemporaneously written with "Flying

Islands" as the poem's subtitle says, "After reading his

autobiography." The poem describes alcoholism as the "vulture

curse, That hovers o'er the universe, With ready talons quick

to strike In every human heart alike." Benson's

autobiography, Fifteen Years in Hell, like Riley's play/poem,

marks how Benson was wasted in alcohol addiction, reformed,

and went on to "lecture" extensively throughout Indiana and

the nation as a temperance speaker.  The parallel to the

movement of the acts of "Flying Islands" is pronounced as is

the eventual progress of Riley's own life...although Riley's

"cause" was not temperance but the spread of humanistic

and "kenotic" themes. His dependency makes of his dissolute

and alcoholic nature the relationship of something wedded to

him as a queenly wife as well as curse.  Possibly "Flying

Islands" was originally intended as an extensive farcical

account of the life of Benson, based on Benson's

autobiography, in the nature of Riley's comical imitation of

Benson on the platform called "Benson Out-Bensoned" but if so

Riley's realization that the alcoholic addiction was similar

to his own probably changed the story line and the play\poem

into Riley's own autobiography.  Benson does not seem to be

remembered much these days, but his book Fifteen Years in

Hell describing his alcoholic years was a national best-

seller in the 1880's.

     A major event in Riley's life must have been his first

encounter with tremens from his alcoholism. This was the most

dispiriting aspect of play with himself as Crestillomeem. I

am informed that such tremens come only to one of lengthy and

alcoholic lifestyle.

     Riley admits his writing is "under the influence" in his

Sixth and Final episode of the Buzz Club Papers in which

series "The Flying Islands of the Night" appears.  When

writing "The Flying Islands" the author was stated to be

under the "baleful influence of intoxicants...driving reason

from her Throne." The work is the product of "old crime."

     Riley was, of course, notorious for using pseudonymous

names for his writings. The ostensible writer of the original

"The Flying Islands of the Night" is Mr. Clickwad, a member

of the "Buzz Club" whose poetry is deliberately questioned in

the very first of the "Respectfully Declined" Papers of the

Buzz Club. Another member asks: "The gentleman who has just

favored us," said Mr. Plempton, "is a weird cuss, but if

he'll pardon my curiosity I should like to inquire if he was

ever troubled with the tremens?" The answer is obvious.  "The

Flying Islands of the Night," appearing in the fourth

installment of the "Respectfully Declined" series, is

introduced as Mr. Clickwad's work.

     Riley knows of the tremens. He experienced them. He also

wrote of them in such prose accounts as "Jamesy" where he

refers to them as "jim jams." At one point in that short

narrative appears the following colloquy which might relate

to one of James Whitcomb Riley's own experiences:

     "Liable to what?" said I

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

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

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

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

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

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

whisky, now you bet!.."

     Riley must have felt enraged because intoxication was

not supposed to have such a down side! As Riley's teenaged

years dawned alcohol use was only beginning to questioned.

When Riley was 11, a newspaper article published in the

Hancock DEMOCRAT of July 3, 1861 stated, "It was at one time

generally believed that the use of alcoholic liquors was

positively necessary and beneficial to all men...Physicians

recommended such beverages and regular daily rations of rum

were provided in all armies and navies.  These notions are

still entertained by many persons, and very generally there

is a want of correct information on the subject. It is very

common for soldiers of all classes to indulge in the use of

alcoholic beverages...By close observation and many

experiments, it has been found that the tissues and the blood

of drunkards, as well as those who continually tipple in beer

and whisky, but do not get drunk, are generally in a state of

degeneration.  Alcohol passes into the blood and retards the

elimination of waste and injurious matter from the body and

thus tends to produce disease, especially fever..." The

effects of alcohol were obviously unclear in Riley's time.

     Eventually, Riley came to see his alcohol addiction to

personify the activity of a person he called Crestillomeem

and took her vision of himself as his own to see what it

meant. This was done in "The Flying Islands of the Night."

Crestillomeem never left Riley but came to become a pretty

much subdued lady except for many private but also a few

highly publicized incidents such as one recurrence in

Louisville, Kentucky in February 1890 which caused the

breakup of his stand-up comedy partnership with Edgar Nye.

     Crestillomeem did not produce poetry. Riley wrote no

poetry when he was in delirium. Crestillomeem did, however,

provide the delirious subject matter of a small body of very

important poetry to a biographer. She gave Riley "An

Adjustable Lunatic" with its vision of a lover in another

dimension whose ethereal connectedness is an otherwise mad

man's only touch with reality.

                       FANTASY (1878)

(FROM "AN ADJUSTABLE LUNATIC")

(a poem written by a fictional author in a Riley sketch, a

man who subsequently committed suicide within the story line

and who described himself as "an adjustable lunatic" by

profession.  The sketch from which this poem derives portrays

the writer of "Fantasy" as a penniless bachelor, the owner of

a painting of a mysteriously enchanting woman in his room.

The poem reveals an impossible romantic attachment so

real and yet so imaginary that it severs the man from his

senses. As a biographer, I find the story bears relation to

Riley's relationship with his married friend, Nellie

Cooley, so recently dead at the time of its writing.)

 

A Fantasy that came to me

     As wild and wantonly designed

As ever any dream might be

     Unraveled from a madman's mind, -

A tangle-work of tissue, wrought

     By cunning of the spider-brain,

     And woven, in an hour of pain,

To trap the giddy flies of thought -.

 

I stood beneath a summer moon

     All swollen to uncanny girth,

And hanging, like the sun at noon,

     Above the center of the earth;

     But with a sad and sallow light,

     As it had sickened of the night

And fallen in a pallid swoon.

Around me I could hear the rush

     Of sullen winds, and feel the whir

Of unseen wings apast me brush

     like phantoms round a sepulcher;

And, like a carpeting of plush,

     A lawn unrolled beneath my feet,

     Bespangled o'er with flowers as sweet

     To look upon as those that nod

     Within the garden-fields of God,

     But odorless as those that blow

     In ashes in the shades below.

 

And on my hearing fell a storm

     Of gusty music, sadder yet

     Than every whimper of regret

That sobbing utterance could form,

     And patched with scraps of sound that seemed

     Torn out of tunes that demons dreamed,

     And pitched to such a piercing key,

     It stabbed the ear with agony;

     And when at last it lulled and died,

     I stood aghast and terrified.

I shuddered and I shut my eyes

     And still could see, and feel aware

     Some mystic presence waited there;

And staring, with a dazed surprise,

     I saw a creature so divine

     That never subtle thought of mine

     May reproduce to inner sight

     So  fair a vision of delight.

 

A syllable of dew that drips

From out a lily's laughing lips

Could not be sweeter than the word

I listened to, yet never heard. -

For, oh, the woman hiding there

Within the shadows of her hair,

Spake to me in an undertone

So delicate, my soul alone

But understood it as a moan

Of some weak melody of wind

A heavenward breeze had left behind.

 

A tracery of trees, grotesque

     Against the sky, behind her seem

Like shapeless shapes of arabesque

     Wrought in an oriental screen;

And tall, austere and statuesque

     She loomed before it - e'en as though

     The spirit-hand of Angelo

     Had chiseled her to life complete,

     With chips of moonshine round her feet.

And I grew jealous of the dusk,

     To see it softly touch her face,

     As lover-like, with fond embrace

It folded round her like a husk:

But when the glitter of her hand

     Like wasted glory, beckoned me,

     My eyes grew blurred and dull and dim -

     My vision failed - I could not see -

I could not stir - I could but stand,

     Till, quivering in every limb,

     I flung me prone, as though to swim

     The tide of grass whose waves of green

     Went rolling ocean-wide between

     My helpless shipwrecked heart and her

     Who claimed me for a worshiper.

 

And writhing thus in my despair,

     I heard a weird, unearthly sound,

     That seemed to lift me from the ground

     And hold me floating in the air.

     I looked, and lo! I saw her bow

     Above a harp within her hands;

A crown of blossoms bound her brow,

     And on her harp were twisted strands

Of silken starlight, rippling o'er

With music never heard before

By mortal ears; and, at the strain,

I felt my Spirit snap its chain

And break away, - and I could see

It as it turned and fled from me

To greet its mistress, where she smiled

To see the phantom dancing wild

And wizard-like before the spell

Her mystic fingers knew so well.

 

What is it? Who will rightly guess

If it be aught but nothingness

That dribbles from a wayward pen

To spatter in the eyes of men?

What matter! I will call it mine,

     And I will take the changeling home

And bathe its face with morning-shine,

     And comb it with a golden comb

     Till every tangled tress of rhyme

     Will fairer be than summer-time;

And I will nurse it on my knee

     And dandle it beyond the clasp

     Of hands that grip and hands that grasp

Through life and all eternity!

 

     Something like this vision became Act II of Riley's

great delirious, autobiographical play\poem "The Flying

Islands of the Night." The other subject matter is in such

poetry as "Quitting California." The poem is not, of course,

about the State of California at all, but rather about a

brand name of whiskey.  While one is led by the poem to

believe that the poem's writer is becoming temperate and

giving up alcohol, the poem playfully concludes that the

writer is merely changing to another brand of cheap whiskey

and not giving up whiskey at all.

 

                ON QUITTING CALIFORNIA (1879)

 

O rare old drink, the oldest, strongest far

  Of which the house can boast,

Whose guardian, smiling, betteth at the bar

  On who can drink the most -

 

How art thou conquered - tamed in all the pride

  Of average beauty still!

How brought, O painter of the human hide,

  To know thy master's will!

 

No more the shallow goblet is baptized

  Until it overflows;

No more thy liquid blushes are capsized,

  And succored by the nose.

 

For now the wild oats thou hast helped to till

  In pain are harvested,

And, as the boss presents his little bill,

  The gleaner droops his head.

 

Yet at thy shrine shall thousands kneel again

  Beneath thy mystic spell;

O mother-in-law of great and mighty men,

  Thou do'st thy mission well!

 

Thy newer children shall restore the right

  I force you to resign

And future years yield up an appetite,

  Perchance as wild as mine.

 

Though order, justice, social law shall scowl

  On all the works reveal,

And art and science shake their heads and howl

  With unabated zeal,

 

The marble, shaken from its glassy sheath,

  Shall twirl and palpitate

For those of fiery eye and potent breath

  Who take their whisky straight.

 

The cornless cob shall drain its warmest blood -

  The still its blackest lees,

And all transfusive percolations flood

  Thy swollen arteries,

 

Till "Tremens," as he hides himself away

  Within thy depths, shall wink

As victims pour him down from day to day

  At fifteen cents a drink.

 

When Mr. Clickwad is finished his friends congratulate him at

least on agreeing to quit alcohol. Mr. Clickwad denies this

intent and admits that he is only quitting the one brand

indicated. He remains an unrepentant alcoholic which is his

nature.

     While the poetry of Crestillomeem is small in volume,

Riley considered it his personal record of the hell of his

life and treasured it inordinately. One finds his poem

"The Flying Islands of the Night" being published again and

again from 1878 to the end of his life.  None of the

printings was popular. Most contained changes as Riley

considered and reconsidered its autobiographical cryptic

subject matter. The poem came to have a strange life of its

own because of its beautiful lyrics and of course authorship

by the famous James Whitcomb Riley.

     Riley simply hid himself in this poem. No one except

possibly his alcoholic brother Hum (who died three years

after "The Flying Islands of the Night's" composition) and

friend, Dr. Frank Hays, knew the poem was a delirium.

     Why?

     Among the reasons why Crestillomeem was not a visible

presence was Riley's later popularity and commercial

posture. But another reason was that Crestillomeem lurked

within his soul.  Riley couldn't account for this himself.

His vision of life included a simple belief that ultimately

life was inexplicable. When his father died, Riley had

engraved on the Riley family marker in the little Greenfield

cemetery where he was buried, "God is his own interpreter and

will someday make things clear." Riley's alcoholism like his

father's death was a part of life that God alone understood.

Nevertheless there was an expectation that it fit in with

some greater plan.

     Crestillomeem was Riley in his uneasiness about his

alcoholism. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, declared

uneasiness was the central human motive. Riley was constantly

in a state of uncertainty about himself. His incentive to

survive despite his alcoholism required great mental work,

emotionality and activity.  After a person's biological needs

are satisfied, time and energy are next spent in a narrow

space of mind bounded on the right by boredom and ordinarily

on the left by terror of the bizarre.  Riley often lived in

this region of the bizarre and actually knew it as a comfort.

He often lived in the nurture of Crestillomeem. Others have

commented that Riley's "weakness" was even beneficial. Rev.

Finley Sapp, minister of a Greenfield Protestant Church from

1904-1906 and knew Riley, has written: "James Whitcomb

Riley touched the heart of humanity as only a few have.

"Jim" was really more "`ligious" when "lit up" a little,

than most of the saints at camp meeting." (From page 54, A

HISTORY OF THE GREENFIELD CHRISTIAN CHURCH, Dorothy June

Williams).

     So who is Crestillomeem? She is the one whose life

is explained in The Flying Islands as an entourage of

faces.  She is the soul breaking apart in Riley's "Poem of

Seven Faces." In tremens deliriums, Riley encounters faces

swarming around him telling him all about Crestillomeem.

 

     CRESTILLOMEEM'S STORY IN A CHORUS OF SWARMING FACES

 

                      First Face

 

And who hath known her - like as I

Have known her?  - since the envying sky

Filched from her cheeks its morning hue,

And from her eyes its glory, too,

Of dazzling shine and diamond-dew.

 

                         Second Face

 

I knew her - long and long before

High AEo1 loosed her palm and thought:

"What awful splendor have I wrought

To dazzle earth and Heaven, too!"

 

1. AEo is Elizabeth, Riley's mother, who died when he was

twenty. The E is her initial surrounded by the alpha and

omega representing the scope of Riley's affection for her

from beginning of life to end. Riley idolized his mother

causing deep agony upon her death and Riley's initial need

for consolation and escape in alcoholism.

 

                         Third Face

 

I knew her - long ere Night1 was o'er -

Ere, AEo yet conjectured what

To fashion Day of - ay, before

He sprinkled stars across the floor

Of dark, and swept that form of mine

E'en as a fleck of blinded shine,

Back to the black were light was not.

 

1. Night is related to the past in the alcoholics

confessional genre of literature such as "The Flying Islands

of the Night." SEE: Benson, Fifteen Years in Hell, (night as

a black, unlighted past).

 

                         Fourth face

 

Ere day was dreamt, I saw her face

Lift from some starry hiding-place

Where our old moon was kneeling while

She lit its features with her smile.

 

                         Fifth Face

 

I knew her while these islands3 yet,

Were nestlings - ere they feathered wing,

Or e'en could gape with them or get

Apoise the laziest-ambling breeze;

Or cheep, chirp our, or anything!

When time crooned rhymes of nurseries

Above them - nodded, dozed and slept,

And knew it not, till, wakening.

The morning stars agreed to sing

And Heaven's first tender dews were wept.

 

3. Riley's fractured lives are the "flying" islands,

disassociated "play/cast" entities, of the poem.

 

                         Sixth Face

 

I knew her when the jealous hands

Of Angels set her sculptured form

Upon a pedestal of storm

And let her to this land with strands

Of twisted lightnings.

 

                        Seventh Face

 

         And I heard

Her voice ere she could tone a word

Of any but the Seraph-tongue. -

And O sad-sweeter than all sung -

Or word-said things! - to hear her say,

Between the tears she dashed away: -

"Lo, launched from the offended sight

Of AEo! - anguish infinite

Is ours, O Sisterhood of Sin!

Yet is thy service mine by right,

And, sweet as I may rule it, thus

   Shall Sin's myrrh-savor taste to us -

   Sin's empress - let my reign begin!4"

 

4. After his mother's death and then Nellie's death, Riley

fell to pieces and launched a life of abandonment to

alcoholism supported by meager casual employments.

 

      RILEY'S FOUR GREAT ENCOUNTERS WITH CRESTILLOMEEM

 

    There were four great encounters Riley had with

Crestillomeem. Each led to a new era in Riley's life and the

crises were closer together in years in his 20's than later

on. Each proved devastating and led to great life changes for

the sensitive poet. The first occurred as Riley was faced

with the death of his mother on Aug. 9, 1870 when Elizabeth

Riley died of heart disease. Riley floundered after this and

eventually took to the road with a traveling miracle medicine

show of Doc McCrillus.

     After returning to his home to settle down, a second

event occurred when he was in  his 20's which thoroughly

unsettled him.  This was a "black lynching" by a band of

masked Hancock County men who broke into the Greenfield jail

to drag a presumably innocent black man out for his date with

a rope at the local fairgrounds. Riley again left his

hometown for a second trip with a traveling medicine show,

this time the one of Doc Townsend.

     Again returning to Greenfield after a time, he learned

of the death of his soul-mate he most loved, Nellie Cooley,

and after writing her obituary and burying her back in

Greenfield, he again entered into a period of great

despondency resulting in his eventual move to Indianapolis to

work for a newspaper there.

     It was after this third great "depressing" circumstance

that Riley wrote his autobiographical poem, "The Flying

Islands of the Night."

     By this time, Riley was brought in contact with kenotic

teachers and was taking to the platform. His great Benjamin

Johnson of Boone poems were written during a period of

recovery in this period.

     The fourth great onset of depression culminated in 1890

when Riley could not take the strain of constant platform

touring any longer and was found drunk and with the "shakes"

in public. This ended Riley's lyceum circuit days as they had

been. The event did however usher in a gentler time when

Riley wrote most of his annual books and became "The

Children's Poet." We will examine each of these periods of

Riley's great bouts with Crestillomeem in turn before getting

into his great poetry written as Spraivoll of the play/poem

"The Flying Islands of the Night."

 

 

      CRESTILLOMEEM'S FIRST GREAT ENCOUNTER WITH RILEY

                AFTER THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER

 

     At what point in Riley's life he became severely

depressed we do not know. His experience with alcohol tells

us nothing about this. We remember Riley was from a Hoosier

Deutsch family. The Hoosier Deutsch were very lenient in

regard to alcohol use.

     The Hoosier Deutsch were a very industrious farming

people in central Indiana. Their farms, distinguished because

their farm houses were often built in the middle of their

land rather than along the roads, were very prosperous.

Nothing was wasted. Whiskey was made from their excess corn

crops and all of their holidays and weddings involved great

drinking of whiskey.

     Deutsch-run taverns were in every locale where the

Deutsch settled in Indiana and were places of common social

and even family gathering.  Whiskey was kept in homes and

children were given it for medicinal reasons at the drop of a

hat. Riley no doubt had tasted corn whiskey or "red eye" on

many, many occasions as a child. In adolescence we hear of

Riley's drunken times with friends.

     Riley once admitted, "I've went more (miles) so's to

come back by old Guthrie's still-house where minors got

liquor providing we showed him that Old folks sent for it

from home."

     The occasions were social and the stories from these

times are humorous. One night when John E. Davis, met "Uncle"

Billy Davis (not related) and Riley, Davis got his nickname

"Durbin." The three were "whooping" it up on Greenfield

streets. They had just stopped in at a Deutsch tavern in

Greenfield, the "Last Chance," but found it closed for the

night. Riley led the three to another place to get a drink, a

water pump that Riley sighted.  According to Davis, "Riley

grabbed hold of the pump handle, clapped me on the back and

said, "I want you to meet Mr. Durbin. Now Mr. Durbin, I want

the boys to have all they want. It's on the house, boys.""

Davis continued, "We drank water and pumped and drank again.

And ever since, they've called me after a kind of pump

manufactured in those days known as the Durbin pump." Davis

also mentioned another story. As a boy, Durbin said, Riley

"always had a pocketful of poems even when we swam down on

the Brandywine. I've seen him turn somersaults, recite a

poem, and then jump clean over the muddy bank into the

swimmin' hole. He knowed all of Charles Dickens' works by

heart." As a boy, "Uncle" Davis said Riley wasn't much of a

swimmer but preferred to loiter in the shade while the others

swam. "We'd go in natural and many's the time we'd tie each

others clothes into knots and throw mud at each other.  He

used to make up poems down there and recite them to us while

we swam around. There were some dandies all right.  There's

one of them I'll never forget. I only wish it could be

printed."

     After Riley quit school at 16, he apparently fooled

around with alcohol.  The casual attitude toward drinking by

the young men of the time is revealed by a story contemporary

with this period in Hancock County in which a young man

riding home one night slightly "bour bonized" looked at the

moon with great contempt and said, "You needn't be so proud,

Madame Moon. You are full once a month and I every night."

     In any case, Riley was familiar with alcohol use even

before his first great encounter with Crestillomeem.

 

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

                        INTOXICATION

 

     The death of Riley's mother Elizabeth was publicly

announced in the Hancock DEMOCRAT of Thursday morning, August

11, 1870 as follows:

                        SUDDEN DEATH

               On Tuesday morning last our citizens were much

          astounded to hear that Mrs. Elizabeth Riley, wife

          of Capt. R.A. Riley, of this place, had died very

          suddenly and unexpectedly that morning, about half

          past seven o'clock, of heart disease.  Some time

          during the latter part of the night, she felt

          unwell and got up from her  bed without awaking any

          of the family.  In a short time Capt. Riley was

          aroused by someone falling on the floor.  He soon

          discovered that it was his wife who had fallen as

          if  in a swoon.  The alarm was given and the

          neighbors and physician sent for.  No serious

          danger was at the time apprehended, but toward

          daylight she begun to grow  worse and died as we

          have stated above.  She was buried in the new

          cemetery on yesterday morning.  A large number of

          our citizens were present at the funeral services,

          conducted by Rev. J.W. Lacy, and all sympathized

          deeply with the bereaved family.  We tender our

          condolence to our friend, Capt. Riley, and his

          bereaved and afflicted children.  In the death of

          the one they loved so well, we can truthfully say

          that she was a kind and good woman and that is the

          best epitaph that can be written upon the tomb of a

          departed wife and mother.

     Brother John wrote in his diary of that day, "What shall

we do with Jim now that mother is dead?"

     The answer was that nothing on this earth could console

Riley except alcohol.

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

     Here is a little poem Riley wrote that shows his depth

of affection for his mother remembered even in his older age.

 

                    A BOY'S MOTHER (1890)

 

          My mother she's so good to me,

            Ef I was good as I could be,

          I couldn't be as good - no, sir! -

            Can't any boy be good as her!

 

          She loves me when I'm glad er sad;

            She loves me when I'm good er bad;

          An', what's a funniest thing, she says

            She loves me when she punishes.

 

          I don't like her to punish me, -

            That don't hurt, - but it hurts to see

          Her cryin', - Nen I cry; an' nen

            We both cry an' be good again.

 

          She loves me when she cuts an' sews

            My little cloak an' Sund'y clothes;

          An' when my Pa comes home to tea,

            She loves him most as much as me.

 

          She laughs an' tells him all I said,

            An' grabs me up an' pats my head;

          An' I hug her, an' hug my Pa

            An' love him purt' nigh as much as Ma.

 

     Riley's secretary, Marcus Dickey, has recorded how

Riley recollected his reaction to his mother's death.

"The bereavement caused a complete change in his life.  It

sent him into the world to make his own living, and in

numerous ways it was a forlorn road he had to travel. A few

hours after her death he walked alone through a cornfield to

a favorite retreat south of the railroad to an old clearing.

"I was  alone," he said, "till as in a vision I saw my mother

smiling back upon me from the blue  fields of love - when lo!

she was young again.  Suddenly I had the assurance that I

would meet her somewhere in another world.  I was gathering

the fruit of what had been so happily impressed on  me in

childhood. I had seen that the world is a stage. Now I saw

that the universe is a stage. Another curtain had been

lifted.  My mother was enraptured at the sight of new

scenery. It was the dream of Heaven with which `Johnny

Appleseed' had impressed my mother in the Mississinewa

cabin."

     The first thing Riley did after his mother died was to

go to Rushville to sell Bibles with some man unknown in

history. Reuben Riley was very skeptical about this

enterprise and did not know the Bible salesman Riley had

taken off to Rushville with. On December 19, 1870 we find the

father writing to the son,

"I have been patiently waiting for a letter from you and have

received none.  Scarcely an hour passes without my thinking

of you and wondering how you are getting along? how you are

doing? how you are managing? I have had much more experience

in the world than you.  It is all important that you

associate with none but those of good character, that you be

self-reliant and aim high and suffer no stain to attach to

your conduct.  I would like to counsel and advise with you.

Please write me fully and confidently, and all reasonable

assistance in my power I will render..."

     "It turned out," said Riley, "that citizens of Rushville

had all the Bibles they needed; they had not time to read

those they had." Soon Riley was back in Greenfield

apprenticed to Almon Keefer's uncle, John Keefer, a painter

by trade. Reuben paid for the apprenticeship. Soon Riley was

armed with a Number 5 paint brush and a bucketful of paint

under the eaves painting houses in Greenfield.  Riley worked

at painting houses for two summers while he learned the more

delicate art of painting signs. Eventually Riley rented a

paint shop above a drugstore which he called the "Morgue" and

slept there much of the time because he did not want his

family to see how intoxicated he often became.

     The Editor of Century Magazine, Hewitt Hanson Howland,

claimed Riley's life was dominated by two fears, the fear of

life and the fear of death.  "From my earliest recollection

of him, he would, on the death of a friend, take on an added

air of confidence, almost of gaiety.  `You can't make me

believe he isn't around here somewhere,' he would say,

`probably listening to us now and chuckling over our

distress.'" I thought of him then as whistling in the dark;

today we'd call it defensive mechanism. But by whatever name,

Riley always gave the departed the best of the bargain." The

death of his mother left him outside her physical presence

but with the hope that she was still with him and had gone

right on living.

     When Riley wrote poetry he was in a way still

participating in an activity with his mother. Riley told

Hamlin Garland in an interview that he got his verse-writing

from his mother's family, the Marines. A characteristic of

the whole family was their ability to write rhymes, but all

unambitiously. "They wrote rhymed letters to each other, and

joked and jim-crowed with the Muses." This family love of

poetry was the legacy of the poverty stricken mother to her

son. She had nothing else to give him.

     After the mother's death, poverty in the Riley home

continued to render life there miserable. Riley's brother,

Hum, and sisters remained. The period was one of great

privation. Reuben Riley was not a good provider at any time

following his very brief Civil War service.  Riley's younger

brother gives evidence of this in a brief plaintive letter to

brother  John who left home to live and earn an income in

Indianapolis.  Riley's brother, Hum at 13, wrote his brother

John,

"Dear Brother,

I want you to send me a cap if you pleas (sic) by tomoro

(sic) evening. I have none but one old one and it is not fit

to wear to the festival a cheap one will do so it looks well.

Yours truly,

                                     /s/ Hum

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

     Another letter from Riley himself to his brother, John

explains Riley's poverty.

 

July 14, 1871

Dear Bro.:

    Yesterday morn I failed to write to you - I found "the

folks" all well - that is, "on their pins," but all pretty

blue and no wonder.  There is no one to help May, who still

continues to "gaze in vacancy" the  greater part of the time.

I "waked" her for a little time yesterday by reading a sketch

or two from Dickens.  Father is chief-cook-and bottle washer.

I was going to say but Hum washes the dishes. Father has to

go to the court house and be fined $10 for contempt of court.

John, I tell you, our noble House is on the wane - everything

is going - going - the same old carelessness marks our

"progress."

     ...I am going to work for Harris in a day or two.

Father, I guess don't want to get, or keep a girl to assist

May - economy, you know. I've been laughing forced laughs and

dancing forced jigs till I'm about gone up - they don't

appear to take - it will take a deeper trick - "simulating"

happiness, to be a success.

     Augustus and Marie were up last evening and Dora from

Pendleton - we had a pleasant time in our front parlors - the

kitchen door open and father with his sleeves rolled up to

his knees, getting supper for his clamor of offspring who ate

crackers and water for dinner - maybe I don't talk right- I

can't say other way -Your affectionate bro.  Jim.

     Elva May Riley, at fourteen, took the mother's place in

the family.  Harris was Riley's school master. In his

schoolhouse in Lewisville, Riley and Harris spent half the

night studying the poetry, especially Tennyson, and writing

verse.

     The first poems were printed in Greenfield in local

newspapers about this time.  Riley wrote them under the name

Edyrn, taken from Tennyson's IDYLLS OF THE KING.

     Although Elva May Riley assumed the role of the mother

of the bereaved family, the younger crippled child, Mary,

was left in great inconsolable sorrow by the death of her

mother.

     Following Elizabeth's death, Riley took to the habit of

coming to his sister Mary's side at night after she had been

put to bed to recite Tennyson and Longfellow.  Both came to

know some of these poems by heart and she remembered her

brother particularly tried to emulate the musical cadence of

the "The Lady of Shalott".  She recalled him as loving Keats

best of all, but "he did not repeat those poems to me as a

girl."

     Mary and Riley formed a special bond during this period.

Often Riley came home to the Riley homestead drunk and

the little girl came down to assist him get to his room.

     Throughout the remainder of his life Riley considered

his sister, Mary, as a special charge and supported her and

her daughter, Leslie, financially through many travails.

Born during the Civil War, Sister Mary suffered from spinal

meningitis and was 15 years younger than Riley. His financial

help kept her in a rather expensive standard of living. She

and her daughter, Lesley, lived in Paris, France, for many

years dependent upon the assistance of the poet who gladly

provided whatever resources were needed. Riley did this in

memory of his mother as well as out of love for his sister.

His sister's life was as shattered by Crestillomeem as was

his own.

     Eventually, still in grief at his mother's death, Riley

left Greenfield, his boyhood home, in May 1872, when he was

twenty-two by joining the traveling medicine show of Dr.

Samuel Brown McCrillus. As the Twentieth Century ends, we can

hardly imagine such a wild and strange event as the

appearance in town of a medicine show.  But to the folk of

Greenfield and the little towns of Indiana in the decade

following the Civil War, the coming of a patent medicine

wagon offered an occasion for fun and excitement.

     Dr. McCrillus was not just a "doctor" who made his own

prescription in Anderson - the one principal remedy for

almost every illness to hear him tell it - McCrillus'

European Balsam - he was also an entertainer back in the days

when folk with that duo proclivity would take to the roads

and sell medicine at medicine shows.

     Imagine yourself in the Greenfield of the decade after

the Civil War. Supper is over and the women are busy with a

sinkful of dishes and the children are finishing their chores

for the day. The men are out on the front porches having an

after-dinner chaw of tobacco.  Only the buzz of a persistent

fly breaks the lazy silence of the warm summer evening.

     Suddenly, this halcyon scene is broken by a near-

deafening blast of a trumpet. The Greenfield folk rush out of

their houses to see what is going on.

     Down State Street from the direction of Anderson come a

pair of matched, plumed horses pulling a gaily decorated

wagon.  It is painted in gaudy reds and blues and is

embellished with curlicues in gold.  Is it a circus wagon?

No. Even so all the kids of the town, cheering and pushing to

get close, rush toward it and circle it as it heads down to

the courthouse square.

     Dr. McCrillus has brought his medicine show to

Greenfield once again as he did every year during this era.

     We would all know him. Dr. Samuel Brown McCrillus is one

of the most notable men in this part of Indiana.  He has made

sure he is well known by hiring an "advance man" to paint his

advertisements for his patent medicines in Greenfield on

every available barnside, post and rock.

     Dr. McCrillus sits on the wagon seat, dignified and

smiling, and he waves his hat to the men and bows and lifts

his hat in a mannerly way to the ladies along the way.  He is

a great humanitarian who takes the tributes of the crowd in

stride.  After all not everyone has curing the sicknesses and

ailments of folk in their hearts like the good Quaker doctor.

    After encircling the town square, Dr. McCrillus stops his

bright wagon and climbs down.  Soon he is joined by the young

man with him, Jim McClanahan, who will present an evening

performance on the tailgate of the wagon in the flickering

late summer light along the Greenfield downtown Main Street.

     Frequent commercials were interjected into the

entertainments. Dr. McCrillus would signal for silence and a

hush would encompass the crowd. "Friends and neighbors, "

he would say, "let's get one thing clear at the beginning. I

don't want your money. I have come to Greenfield to help

you." He really meant it. Then he would give his 19th Century

hard sell, a pitch for "McCrillus European Balsam" and it

worked, probably unlike the medicine itself.

     One observer of this has recorded Dr. McCrillus's

standard introduction of himself, as follows: "I have been

engaged in the medicine business ever since I can recollect.

I made pills by the day when only a boy of ten years.  For

the past thirty-eight years, I have been engaged in putting

up what is known as Dr. McCrillus' popular standard remedies,

European Balsam, Tonic Block Purifier, Oriental Liniment, and

Hoarhound Expectorant. They are sold by druggists. I could

offer thousands of genuine certificates, but I am willing to

leave the great public to judge of their merits.  I have

adopted for my special use a trade mark, whereby the public

may be protected against fraud and imposition.  Relief has

been obtained by thousands of sufferers by the use of my

medicines and they in turn have recommended them to others.

In this way,  I am making living advertisements for myself

and medicines.  Be sure the name of Dr. S.B. McCrillus,

Anderson, Indiana, is on every bottle, otherwise it is a

fraud." (As found in the Madison County Historical GAZETTE of

October, 1979.)

     Dr. McCrillus worked all winter making pills and

preparing his tonic in his laboratory.  Then in the summer he

would pack them all up in a bright wagon driven by his two

sorral horses and travel all over Central Indiana putting on

these little shows to cause people to congregate.

     When Doc McCrillus left Greenfield on this occasion, he

took James Whitcomb Riley with him.

     When James Whitcomb Riley left Greenfield at the age of

twenty-two to join a traveling patent medicine show, he had

not just hooked up with a simple charlatan.  Doc McCrillus

was a patent medicine manufacturer who believed in his

products and traveled around Indiana in the summers peddling

his cures with vim and vigor. The Doc would give wondrous

programs from his wagon to extol the virtues of his many

cures.  Somehow he also kept open a little medicine shop on

the south side of Anderson's public square during this era

according to the EMERSON AND WILLIAMS ANDERSON CITY DIRECTORY

of 1876-77.

     In a way, Riley was lucky that Doc McCrillus took him

on. Jim Riley tried to talk his way into the good doctor's

traveling miracle medicine show on the basis that he could

do a good public relations job.  Riley had experience

painting signs - Riley's dad apprenticed him to a Greenfield

signmaker at an early age to keep the boy from being a

juvenile delinquent - and he told Doc McCrillus he would

advance to the next towns on the circuit and make signs for

his show.  The problem is that Doc McCrillus already had one

sign painter, a young man named James McClanahan also from

the doctor's hometown of Anderson.

     The more Riley talked though, the more the doctor felt

favorably inclined to include the young man in his travels.

Like many others, Doctor McCrillus knew Reuben Riley, Jim's

dad, and knew his father, a lawyer, was a good showman in his

own way. Then he asked Riley to see some of his signs. Riley

sighted him to a bridge where he had painted an eagle and a

flag. With the boy's father's permission, James Whitcomb

Riley was off on his first adventure away from Greenfield

and home.

     Doc McCrillus's visit to Greenfield was the first of the

patent medicine man's stops in the summer of 1872.  Actually,

the Doc took his two Jims back to Anderson and to his home at

3 East Lincoln Street there on its historic brick street that

still remains after the Greenfield trip to prepare for the

entertainments for the rest of the summer. Jim Riley and Jim

McClanahan learned to perform many acts together. Riley had

brought with him his guitar and banjo along with his natural

gift of wit and novelty. The program would provide a forum

for Doc McCrillus to spiel out his philosophic approach to

his patent medicines, then the three would sing a trio and

other entertainments would follow.  In this summer, Riley

became a comedian and give recitations and also sang, as well

as went on ahead of the medicine show to the oncoming towns

to paint signs advertising the show to come.

     It is a shame that Doctor McCrillus has faded into such

obscurity as a historical figure.  No obituary of him

survives. We only know that he was born in Dubois County on

June 27, 1830 and died at the age of 70 in Anderson on Feb.

12, 1901. His wife was from Southern Indiana. Her name was

Helen Coningore and the two married in 1861 in Paoli. The

doctor's parents were Aaron Bailey and Sarah (nee Brown)

McCrillus. We know from the standard Dubois County Histories

of the Nineteenth Century that Dr. Samuel McCrillus was

educated in a pioneer school - his only education that I

could uncover-in the front room of a "Professor Cheaver on

the southeast corner of the public square of Jasper, and was

elected as the first Auditor of Dubois County before he was

twenty-one under Indiana's Second Constitution, before

migrating to Anderson in 1861 for some unknown reason and

taking to patent medicine manufacture. Medical School

anywhere is not in his resume. I suppose he had learned as

Auditor of Dubois County that to be a medical doctor in this

period of history one only had to register as such with the

County Auditor where you wished to be an M.D. Among the

places his children settled was Wilkinson, in Hancock County.

     This was the man who would spirit James Whitcomb Riley

away from Greenfield and offer him the chance to become

an entertainer and meet many characters.

     None of this may particularly sound like a background

experience for a young man who would help define what an

American home and its life would involve. But James Whitcomb

Riley was a young man who "itched" to move right then.

     Whether he knew it or not, James Whitcomb Riley was on a

quest to understand the meaning of his life as well as to

understand his Greenfield home where he had lived in his

youth, a home whose coup he had now flown. His quest would

cause him to write extensively and famously and he would

explore every element of what others might think were

elements of his dream.  Strangely he would never have a home

such as he would formulate as an ideal for his readers and

listeners.

    In a newspaper interview about taking on James Whitcomb

Riley to join his patent medicine show, Doc McCrillus once

said, "This patent medicine business was not organized then

like it is today." (I suppose he meant after the passage of

laws like the Pure Food and Drug Act regulating what could be

sold as "drugs.") "I did as big a business as any one. All of

us then had great, fine wagons and would load up with our

medicines and drive from town to town. We would carry a sign

painter along and as we jogged from place to place would stop

and paint signs on fences or barns. I would take part of the

pay for the medicines in paint."

     "We got to Greenfield...(His "sign painter," James

McClanahan was present at this interview too)... "and when I

was over at the drug store, Jim McClanahan, who was my

painter, scraped up an acquaintance with this fellow Riley,

who was a red-head, sorry-looking young fellow."

     "Yes, (McClanahan said,) Doc had gone over to the drug

store and I had let down the back and was looking over the

supply of paint when this feller Riley came up and commenced

to talk to me. He told me he was a painter, too.  I sized him

up and shot back - 'Yes, I see as how you're a blin'

painter,' and I pointed out some green paint on his clothes -

the green that we used to daub the blinds with. That was the

worst thing you could say to a painter, and Riley blushed and

said that he could paint more than blinds and houses and he

pointed out a sign or two.  When Doc came back to the wagon I

told him the young fellow wanted to go with us, that he had

painted those signs; and that he said he could play the

guitar and the fiddle - Riley never liked the word fiddle.

Doc took him on to help me out and to help him in his

lectures.  Riley was a fast painter and his lettering was

good, and he helped McCrillus entertain the crowds in the

street." (From a newspaper interview found in loose papers at

the Indiana University library at Indianapolis.)

    It is easy to say that Riley's career began on Doc

McCrillus's gaudy "show wagon." The entertainments that Riley

performed to gather crowds for Doc McCrillus were the start

of his public career as a showman himself...and entertainer

from the stage.

     After his death, a contemporary American author of

Riley's, Hamlin Garland, would say of him, "...in truth his

success did not come so much in print as through his own

reading of his lines from the platform.  He had in him

something of the minstrel.  He possessed notable power to

charm and move an audience, and everywhere he spoke he left a

throng of friends.  To hear him read - or recite - "A Song of

the Airly Days" was to be moved in a new and unforgettable

way.  His vibrant individual voice, his flexile lips, his

droll glance, united to make him at once poet and comedian -

comedian in the sense which makes for tears as well as for

laughter." (From "Commemorative Tribute to James Whitcomb

Riley" by Hamlin Garland, read in the 1920 Lecture Series of

the American Academy of Arts and Letters.)

     Riley's "minstrelsy" or showmanship may have been an

offshoot of Doc McCrillus's, or at least substantially

influenced by him. People would come to listen and be

entertained by the patent medicine man and his young men

consorts. At most these audiences were a "testing ground" for

the young James Whitcomb Riley to learn his craft of

entertaining and amusing audiences.  There is a tendency to

think this shallow and not necessarily significant.  That

conclusion would be dead wrong.

     There is not just a "give" but rather a "give and take"

in the performing arts.  James Whitcomb Riley participated in

the life of these audiences around the brightly painted

patent medicine wagon.  The crowds became a part of the

entertainer who would write down his poetry from time to

time. What the crowds found "right" in Riley's poetry became

Riley's subject matter. Since establishing homes was the main

thrust of the small town populaces Riley entertained, ideas

of home abound in Riley's poetry.

      Riley's trip with Doc McCrillus was a start on a

journey which would take him through his life and even take

his life at the end. It was a tragic quest which was buried

in humor and hopeful sentiment. It was a journey to find love

and to try to be loved in the life of his Hoosier people. Its

meaning would boil down to a concept of home. Unfortunately,

the meaning was one which proved a truce by which American

homelife could become established and normalized and permit

the thriving of others, but not for himself. A lonely death

in a small upper apartment of an Indianapolis house would be

James Whitcomb Riley's lot.

     In the Biographical Edition of his poetry, Riley

described his employment with Doc McCrillus, the traveling

miracle medicine man with whom Riley escaped Greenfield:

     "My duty was the manipulation of two blackboards swung

at the sides of the wagon during our street lecture and

concert. These boards were alternately embellished with

colored drawings illustrative of the manifold virtues of the

nostrum vended.  Sometimes, I assisted the musical olio with

dialect recitations and character sketches from the back

steps of the wagon."

     In describing his getaway from the memories of this

death with a medicine man selling his cure-all, Riley said "I

rode out of town with that glittering cavalcade," the poet

said, "without saying good-bye to anyone, and though my

patron was not a diplomaed doctor, as I found out, he was a

man of excellent habits and the whole company was made up of

good, straight, jolly, chirping vagabonds like myself." Riley

fitted easily into this roving company as a black board and

colored chalk artist, illustrating the virtues of the

medicine vended, supplemented with a repertoire of songs,

jokes and original recitations.   After a wonderful tour, the

poet returned to Greenfield with pockets as empty as they

were when he left.

     In May 31, 1872 Riley wrote his brother,

"... I have been advertising for the Farmer's Grocery for

three or four days and am feeling pretty sore, physically -

but quite the contrary mentally for I have now removed a load

of about $6 from my mind and so -

     "Patience and shuffle the cards," - and I'll soon be out

of debt.

     John, I have an offer from a young advertiser, who was

attracted by my card in the post-office, to travel and do

Medicine advertising and such, and I believe I will go.  I

can be at home as often as you.  I guess: so we won't be

broken badly.  I think it will be the best thing I could do:

I'll be in the open air all the time, and I do like

advertising - especially where I have a chance of making $5

and $6 a day.  I send you a photograph of my card. - How do

you like? - I received a complimentary squib in both our

worthy papers.  The young man i am going with is a good

business agent and sharp as the proverbial tack.  He is not

much on the letter, but knows how to get work and handle

"expenses" and all that.  He is entirely stranger to me - but

he is from Anderson, and refers me to dozens of the best men

the town contains.  We will do general advertising: he has

had experience and knows all about it - I will go as partner

or not at all.  If we succeed it won't be a great while

before I show advertisers what advertising is like the card I

send you for instance - I can design them and we can have

them engraved and furnish cards novel, new and unique for so

much a thous - look out!

                             Yours &c Jim

Then on July 17th 1872, he wrote his brother that he was

about to start on a week's trip to neighboring towns.

     When Riley and McClanahan traveled by themselves to

paint, they entered a town to great theatrical display. Riley

said, "On entering a town, McClanahan went first to the

livery stable and with unfailing instinct picked out the best

horses. It was not long before we were in the good graces of

the livery-man and had as our reward the best team in the

barn free of charge for the afternoon. Then the two made a

dashing appearance into town to talk to the leading merchants

proposing to advertise them on every barn fence and boulder

on each of the roads leading into town.  Riley remembered

saying "these signs will stand as long as the fence or barn

or stone remains...Why, you spend that much each year on

newspaper advertising and, what is more, your newspaper

allows your competitor to advertise in the very next column

in a more conspicuous place.  He can't do that on the road,

because you'll have every fence and barn, and if you don't

take the contract he will, you bet."

     Their business card proposed "all styles of signs and

painted advertisements and original designs in fancy cards

and bulletins and banner signs of all kinds and ends is in

rhyme,

    "We strive in each particular to give our fellow man

     entire Satisfaction.

                        Riley and McClanahan

     Life on the road was not easy. Riley did not conserve

what money he did make. In the winter of 1872-3, Riley spent

the winter in Marion. He recalls, "I didn't have enough

covers on my bed, only a counterpane. (Biographer's note:

coverlet).  I laid newspapers in between that and the sheet

to keep out the cold.  Oh, I was living in an old rat-trap

and didn't see where the money for my Saturday's board was

coming from.  And I was homesick. One day a letter came from

my small brother `Hum,' a boy letter about "Nuisance," our

dog, who had died.  When I got that broken-hearted letter I

simply crawled away to my room, threw myself on the bed and

cried." This was the winter when "Dot Leedle Boy of Mine,"

was written.  Riley said, "Writing verse was the only fun I

had."

     We know that Riley left Greenfield to join Doc McCrillus

and therafter to travel with Jim McClanahan painting at just

about the time the temperance movement was strengthening and

young men Riley's age were being asked to sign Murphy pledges

not to drink alcoholic beverages. Near this time of Riley's

period of greatest inebriations after his mother's death, the

Indiana Women's Christian Temperance Union was just getting

organized.  When Mrs. Zerelda Wallace, its first President,

and stepmother of General Lew Wallace, author of BEN HUR,

took her first temperance petition before the Indiana

legislature, she was informed that, since her petition was

from women who couldn't vote, it "amounted to no more than

the tracks of so many mice." This aroused Mrs. Wallace to

become a public speaker throughout the state on temperance

and women's vote issues.  Other women joined in the  fight.

Soon women were lining up, two abreast, in great processions

after church services to enter the taverns of Hoosier towns

to ask saloon keepers to close down and seek the reformation

of the drinkers inside.  Tavern keepers could do little about

these invasions. They could not throw out the ladies who

would yell, "Unhand me, Sir!" or remind them that "No one but

a coward touches a woman save in kindness." No lady could be

removed from the bar door when they chose to sing temperance

songs outside.  It is said that huge and brutal looking

barkeeps quailed to the pure womanhood while their potential

patrons left or walked away without entering their usual

haunts.

    The resistance of the saloon keepers of the Hoosier

Deutsch - those of Riley's stock - was greater than the

others.  Sometimes a thick accented German wife of a barkeep

fetched her small children and fed them beer in full sight of

the temperance women. Many times those of Hoosier Deutsch

heritage were subject to derision for special sinfulness and

foreign barbarism. It was more common for the Deutsch

saloon owners to resist. They drove the women out of their

establishments by opening doors and windows in the winter,

throwing pepper on the stoves to cause them to sneeze and

cry, flooding the floor with filthy water, putting out the

fires in their stoves or just plain plugging the stovepipe to

smoke them out. Occasionally, drinkers would throw tobacco

juicy sawdust from the bar floors at the ladies. If fights

did break out, few ladies feared being convicted of

disorderly conduct or such charges.

     A poem by Elizabeth T. Wills of the Wabash, Indiana,

Women's Christian Temperance Union describes the temperance

activity of the time.  It should be remembered that Riley

and his friends were what these ladies would call "rummies."

The antagonistic but pious mood toward alcoholics in Indiana

is expressed in this poem.

 

                   THE TEMPERANCE CRUSADE

 

     Away back in the Seventies

     A long, long time ago,

     We women went out in the old crusade

     When the ground was covered with snow.

     Now what do you  mean by the old crusade?

     We would like to hear you explain

     Was the fight just for popularity

     Which we women were hoping to gain?

     No, we mothers had sat in rum ruined homes

     And mourned o'er the wreckage the rum fiend had made

     It was rum, rum with its withering curse,

     That's what started the Temperance Crusade.  Rum had

     robbed us of husband, had robbed us of sons

     And of all, which the heart holds most dear

     So we women went out, in this battle for home

     Without the least tremor of fear.

     In Hillsboro, Ohio, the Crusade first broke out

     And the first soon kindled to flame.

     it flew to the south, the north, east and west

     Just like a tornado it came.

     This fire had been smoldering  for years and for years

     Just waiting and ready to catch.

     It was fed by wrecked manhood and orphan's sad tears

     All it lacked was just touching the match.

     We met in the churches, met three times a day

     To form resolutions, to talk, sing and pray.

     Just women in daytime, men kept out of sight

     But they joined in our mass-meetings held every  night.

     Then while all the church bells were ringing at once

     and all the whistles were blowing,

     We started right out with our hymn books in hand

     To  visit saloons - we were going.

     We caused much excitement as we marched two abreast

     Through the crowded and awe-stricken street But with

     heads quite erect and courage unchecked

     Did we march with the snow on our feet.

     We marched right in to the open saloon

     And begged of the men to desist

     But some grew angry and cursed us

     And came at us  with shaking fist;

     And some of them told us we'd better go home

     And men our husband's sox; We appointed committees to

     sit out in front,

     To keep the men out of saloons.

     I imagine we felt a little like men

     When they finally tree their 'coons;

     And we couldn't help but sorter wear

     A half-way satisfied grin

     To see the men we were keeping out

     That wanted so much to go in.

     Then while at this stage in the conflict

     After first excitement was through,

     we organized the little band

     called the W.C.T.U,

     And the ball has kept rolling and rolling

     with its purity banner unfurled,

     Till now our white-ribbon army

     Is teaching and belting the world.

     So pin on the white ribbon, sisters,

     And we will keep plugging away,

     Till we win in the fight and put rummies to flight

     Some Glad Day.

 

I suppose to some extent the young Riley was "put to flight"

by the temperance ladies and their talk about such young men

as Riley who drank too much.

     Riley did not consider his alcoholism as some disease or

unconscious decision. Riley wanted to indulge in alcohol and

become intoxicated as a young man following the death of his

mother.  He did not want any temperance movement person

interfering for the escape he found in drinking alcoholic

beverages.

     This admission is made in his autobiographical poem,

"The Flying Islands of the Night" where Jucklet explains this

to Crestillomeem, Riley's alcoholism. The "wife" and "love"

is alcohol.

 

He thinks thee even true to him as thou

Art fickle, false and subtle!  O how blind

And lame, and deaf and dumb, and worn and weak,

And faint, and sick, and all-commodious

His dear love is! In sooth, O wifely one,

Thy malleable spouse doth mind me of

That pliant hero of the bald old catch

"Thy Lovely Husband." - Shall I wreak the thing?

 

(Sings1 - with much affected gravity and grimace)

 

O a lovely husband he was known,

He loved his wife and her a-lone;

She reaped the harvest he had sown;

She ate the meat, he picked the bone.

    With mixed admirers every size,

    She smiled on each without disguise;

    This lovely husband closed his eyes

    Lest he might take her by surprise,

 

                    (Aside, exclamatory)

 

                    Chorious uproarious!

 

(Then pantomime as though pulling at bell-rope - singing in

pent, explosive utterance)

 

Trot!

Run!  Wasn't he a handy hubby?

 

What

Fun

She could plot and plan!

 

Not One

Other such a dandy hubby

As this lovely man!

 

1. The 1898 edition of "The Flying Islands" contains a score

for this song. Riley set the song to music for this edition.

 

     This part of the poem borders on pathos rather than

humor.

     Nellie Cooley (Dwainie) tried on many occasions to set

Riley free from his alcoholism, none with any success during

her lifetime. Only after her death did she come to him in the

delirious account chronicled in "The Flying Islands of the

Night," and succeed in this effort.

     Riley not only began his life of alcoholism after his

mother's death, but he also most earnestly began his writing

of poetry to express his feelings. Riley began his nocturnal

life. Riley's poems were mostly written at night because he

once said, "Then angels listen to the whisper of his pencil

as I write." This habit came early and from the days he

painted signs.  Often too intoxicated to return home, he

slept many places. One of them was at the station of the

night watchman of the Greenfield Bank. The night watchman was

happy for the company because he could sleep at night knowing

Riley was awake by a dim lamp with a pencil and tablet in

hand.

     Most of his early life, he recalled hearing a clock

strike four.

     How did Riley consider his life?

     There can be no more discordant event than the death of

a caregiving mother. There is no place to go for reassurance

and to avoid anxiety more satisfying than to one's mother.

One does not feel unworthy when a mother gives acceptance.

Parental love is the great shield of apprehensiveness.

     The next year saw Riley traveling the State of

Indiana again with McClanahan.

     Riley's friends shared his general love of the

drunken life. Nov. 26, 1873, apparently written while Mack

(James McClanahan) was drunk.  The letter starts out, "Answer

soon for God's sake.  Don't make fun of me.  This is written

on the letterhead of Harvin and Booker, Frankfort. "O dam the

pin I can't write fast enough.  Damd if I ever felt good in

my life.  Good God I'm off my feet. Would to God that I could

see you NOW. You ask me why don't I write.  That's damn fine

talk ain't it...Oh, my God, but I do feel Hob. Hob hell. That

don't express it.  Can you read this?...." McClanahan is

writing Riley in desperation. The woman he is living with

is apparently giving him Hell. McClanahan says he has given

people the impression the woman he is living with and he are

married but they aren't.

     There are records from friends in newspaper

recollections that are revealing:

     From Riley's South Bend life comes the recollection

of Frank Murphy. Just across from Blowneys was a saloon and

Riley was said to dearly love to have a glass of beer there

with innumerable friends, Bill Allen, Al Stockford, Frank

Murphy.  On one occasion, when Riley and Bill Allen, a

drinking buddy of Riley's, were painting the outside of the

old St. Joseph hotel, the scaffolding they were standing on

fell and both of them were hurt, but not seriously. Later,

when Riley was famous and was lecturing in South Bend, Bill

Allen went to see Riley at his hotel and Riley refused to see

him.  In Riley's "Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury," Riley mentioned

many of his South Bend friends and in particular "the Wild

Irishman," Frank Murphy, a genial, jovial Irishman, loud of

speech, warm in friendship and who could improvise poetry and

enjoy a glass of whisky or any other concoction accompanied

with plenty of hilarity and good fellowship, which was

exactly to young Riley's temperamental liking and as a result

the two were good friends til death took them. Riley called

him Tommy in his sketch and says he sings at one of their

convivial gatherings in the Andrews saloon:

     "But R-R-Riley, he'll not go I guess

      Lest, he'd get losht in the wil-der-ness,

      And so in the city he will shtop

      For to curl his hair in the barbershop."

     Of the Andrews Saloon where Riley frequently quenched

his thirst and was always welcome, he sings,

     "Of the Andrews brothers they'll be there

      Wid good sy-gars and wine to spare,

      They'll treat us here on fine champagne

      And when we're there, they'll treat us again."

Whenever Murphy went to Indianapolis, he would look Riley up

and they would have a good time recalling the days when Riley

was a sign painter in South Bend. Maj. Blowney did not mind

Riley writing verses and gave him a blank book to write them

in.

     It is to this early period of Riley's wandering life

following the death of his mother, that Riley refers in his

autobiographical poem when he portrays Crestillomeem (his

alcoholism) and his minstrelsy play-self (Jucklet) in

happy companionship and shared delight.

 

                Semblance of Jucklet (Sings)

 

Crestillomeem!

               Crestillomeem!  Soul of my slumber! - Dream of

my dream!

Moonlight may fall not as goldenly fair

As falls the gold of thine opulent hair -

Nay, nor the starlight as dazzlingly gleam

As gleam thine eyes, 'Meema - Crestillomeem! -

        Star of the skies, 'Meema -

                                    Crestillomeem!

 

             Semblance of Crestillomeem (Sings)

 

O Prince divine!

                   O Prince divine!

Tempt thou me not with that sweet voice of thine!

Though my proud brow bear the blaze of a crown,

Lo, at thy feet must its glory bow down.

That from the dust thou mayest lift me to shine

Heaven'd in thy heart's rapture, O Prince divine! -

     Queen of thy love ever,

                              O Prince divine!

 

                Semblance of Jucklet (Sings)

 

Crestillomeem!  Crestillomeem!

Our life shall flow as a musical stream1 -

Windingly - placidly on it shall wend,

Marged with mazhorra-bloom banks without end -

Word-birds shall call thee and dreamily scream,

"Where dost thou cruise, 'Meema - Crestillomeem?

       Whither away, 'Meema? -Crestillomeem!

 

1. Jucklet, Riley's pranking and jocular self, can express

himself along quite well in intoxicated state.

 

                             Duo

 

(Vision and voices gradually failing away)

 

Crestillomeem!

               Crestillomeem!

Soul of my slumber! - Dream of my dream!

Star of Love's light, 'Meema - Crestillomeem!

     Crescent of Night, 'Meema! -

 

     Several incidents from Riley's travels are remembered.

     Once Riley suspended himself by a rope from a bridge and

painted a sign on the bottom of the bridge inverting the

letters so the approaching traffic would see the advertising

on the surface of the water.  He painted many barns on his

travels in the years of his early twenties.

     When he returned home to Greenfield occasionally he did

some odd jobs for Greenfield folk.  He did cards for War

Barnett and went to a Greeley meeting and "ogled some

terribly damp Goddesses of Liberty, etc."

     Riley saw Brett Harte read while in South Bend in the

fall 1873 but did not go speak to him although they stood

close to each other after the performance. "I wanted to speak

to him for he had been a great inspiration to me, but some

fear within restrained me."

     1874 was another year of restless wandering about

Indiana with Jim McClanahan and friends. Riley's family

were not supportive. They wished him settled down. They

did not like his wanderings around with his carefree

drinking friends. A letter Riley sent to his brother

John, dated Nov.  16, 1874, states:

"...In reply to a question of yours-McClanahan is not with me

now, nor hasn't been for months, and in lieu of myself -as

per lady-book-statement, -is traveling in the Vinegar Recipe

line and making big money.  He controls a party of 13 agents

who sell recipes while he is employed selling Territory.

    I have been working for McCrillus, principally, since my

return to Anderson, but have surprised the folks occasionally

with a sign: I am at work now on an advertising card that

will be superior! I won't enter in to a description of it -

wait till it's done and I'll show it to you - it will be my

masterpiece as I have "mixed my colors with brains." Oh, it's

artistic - not letters in gold alone, but the "female form

divine" graces the center of the design, while the letters

around her twine and glimmer and gleam and shine

 

     Like the limpid, laughing waters

     Of the Classic Brandywine."

 

     The picture from the poetry and the situation of the

departure with the good Doc's patent medicine show is of a

young man, Riley, simply on the run from the death of his

mother steadily seeking the companionship of Crestillomeem

but holding his own in the sign painting and medicine show

business.

     Perhaps his relationship with his married friend, Nellie

Cooley back in Greenfield further encouraged both his

departures and exacerbated alcohol use. Upon his returns to

Greenfield he inevitably sought Nellie's company and this was

not a situation Riley's family was very happy about either.

Nellie was, after all, a married woman. It was not a good

sign that she was the woman he was paying attention to. For

now we simply repeat the last stanza of this poem:

 

                   A POET'S WOOING (1872)

 

What can I do to make you glad -

  As glad as glad can be,

     Till your clear eyes seem

     Like the rays that gleam

  And glint through a dew-decked tree? -

     Will it please you, dear, that I now begin

     A grand old air on my violin?"

  And she spoke again in the following way, -

    "Yes, oh yes, it would please me, sir;

 I would be so glad you'd play

     Some grand old march - in character, -

  And then as you march away

I will no longer thus be sad,

But oh, so glad - so glad - so glad!"

 

Was Nellie discouraging Riley's attentions as well as

encouraging them driving Riley crazy?

     Life with Doc McCrillus was a pleasant and diverting

life. To gain the flavor of the Doc McCrillus patent medicine

enterprise, it may be helpful to consider the product Riley

was selling.  One of the testimonials to Doc McCrillus's

patent medicine has come down to us from two Anderson,

Indiana men who otherwise are unknown to history, E. Sipe and

Sam Pence, self-styled as "Horse Dealers." They witness as

follows:

"We speak whereof we have seen and know about Dr. S.B.

McCrillus' European Balsam.  We believe it to be a valuable

medicine in the cure of horse disease -epizootic -as a

disinfectant, and also a great relief to the horse when sick

by burning it on coals in the stable and letting the horses

inhale the Balsam." (Found in loose folders on Riley in the

Anderson City Library).

     This testimonial would be rather "backhand" since Doc

McCrillus's miracle cures were intended for humans.

     As you would look at the darkly ominous bottle of the

good doctor's chief product, you would immediately know it

was something very special.  A trumpeting baby elephant was

on the label on whose back was a huge leather satchel as big

as the elephant containing the word's "McCrillus' European

Balsam."

     The Balsam's label contained other information in

different sized print: "The Acknowledged Excelsior System

Renovator.  Cures WEAK BACK. It Cures Bronchitis, Palpitation

of the Heart, Laryngitis, Sore Throat, Phthisic(sic), Weak

Breast, Coughs and Colds, Female Complaints, Liver Complains,

Dyspepsia, Chronic Rheumatism, Etc." In much smaller print

along the sides of the label are the statements, "This

Balsam, composed exclusively of vegetable matter, has

attained for itself an almost cosmopolitan celebrity. In its

successful treatment of all diseases of a nervous and

inflammatory nature, and for a weak state of the system. It

heals the lungs, strengthens the stomach, rectifies its

disorders and regulates the bowels.  It allays inflammation

externally and internally.  Dissolves the secretions of the

urinary glands, and cures grave and WEAKNESS OF THE KIDNEYS."

     Just dreaming up such a mess of quasi-medical

gobbledegook such as this must have taken the good Doc much

time. Incidentally, the good Dr. McCrillus's death

certificate on file with the Madison Co. Health Department

shows his cause of death as "acute pneumonitis" which we tend

to call pneumonia. Did the doctor not take his own cure?

Lung ailments were supposed to be overcome by his European

Balsam.  Or could it have been that he wished his own remedy

worked a little better as he was slipping away?

     In any case, the summers in which James Whitcomb Riley

left home to join Doc McCrillus and paint and travel were

pleasant and fun-filled interludes and adventures  Riley and

McClanahan were said to have performed many acts together

from the show wagon.  Riley always took his guitar and banjo

with him, and much entertainment was verbalized with

recitation of entertaining stories.  When Riley was on the

road with Doc, he would interject his philosophy of medicine

and the virtues of his cures and then sometimes the three

would sing as a trio.  Eventually, James Whitcomb Riley is

said to have become very popular with demands for encores for

his recitations and even singing.

     After these surrealistic summer experiences, James

Whitcomb Riley returned with the Doc to Anderson to idle away

time. He lived either with Doc or in boarding houses in

Anderson or nearby towns where he went to paint signs or

houses or with mom McClanahan in Anderson.  Everywhere he

went, Riley spent time on street corners talking to the

people of Anderson or wherever he was and writing seriously,

filling the bureau drawers of his board rooms and trunks with

papers until they were stuffed.

     Only when Riley ran out of his "summer" or "sign" money

did he return to Greenfield, his boyhood home.

     1874 was the year McGeecy, editor of the Danbury,

Connecticut, NEWS, accepted Riley's poetry encouraging him

greatly. This was also the year Riley worked out the

elocution and performance points for "The Bear Story" and

"Tradin' Joe." Riley read these in occasional school houses

and churches.

     These early years of young manhood also saw Riley

produce much whimsical doggerel verse for advertising

including this "advertisement" for his friend the good

Doc McCrillus:

     "Wherever blooms of health are blown,

      McCrillus' Remedies are known;

      Wherever happy lives are found

      You'll find his medicines around,

      From coughs and colds and lung disease

      His patients find a sweet release

      In using his Expectorant

      That cures where even doctors can't.

      His Oriental Liniment

      Is known to fame to such extent

      That orders for it emanate

      From every portion of the State,

      His European Balsam, too,

      Send blessings down to me and you;

      And holds its throne from year to year

      In every household far and near,

      His purifier for the blood

      Has earned a name fair and good

      As ever glistened on the page

      Of any annals of the age.

      And he who pants for health ease

      Should try these Standard Remedies."

 

 

    There is both prose and poetry written reflecting Riley's

wandering life with Crestillomeem. It is mostly poetry of the

1870's, Riley's period of great production in which no topic

of his life was "off limits."

     We have the poet who would one day - after he comes

to kenoticism - be known as "The Children's Poet" taking the

classic "Little Red Riding Hood," and turning it into the

story as told by an alcoholic - maybe Riley's friend "Old

Sport."

 

                  "LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD"

 

     "Wonst they was a leetle-teeny dirl, an' she was named

Red Riding Hood, toz her ma maked her a leetle red cloak `at

torned up over her head - an' it was all thist one piece of

red cardnal like the dreat long stockin's `at the

storekeeper's dot.  O! it was the nicest cloak in this town!

An' - an' - an' so one day her ma she put it on her. It was

Sunday, coz the cloak was too nice to wear thist all the

time.  An' so her ma she put it on her, an' told her not to

dit no dirt on it; an' nen she dot out her little basket `at

ole K'is b'inged her, an' filled it full o' whole lots o'

good fings t'eat, an' told her to take `em to her dran'ma,

an' not spill `em, toz her dran'ma'd spank her ef she did,

maybe.

     An' so little Red Riding Hood she promised to be

tareful, an' tossed her heart she wouldn't spill`em

for six-five-ten-two hundred bushel dollars. An' nen she

kissed her ma dood bye, an' went a skippin off through the

dreat big woods to her dran'ma's - no she didn't do a

skippin' nedver coz that 'ud spill the dood fings. She thist

went a walkin'along like a little lady, she did  - as slow

an' purty- like she was a marchin' in the Sunday school

kassession.

     An' so she was a goin' along an' along through the dreat

big woods - toz her dran'ma lived a way fur off from her ma's

house, an' you had to do through the dreat big woods to dit

there.

     An' little Red Riding Hood had mostest fun when she'd do

there - a listenin' to the purty burds, an' pullin the purty

flowers at drowed around the stumps - an' catchin'

butterflies an' drasshoppers, an' stickin' pins through 'em-I

thist `said' that!  coz she was dood.  She'd this catch `em,

an' leave their wings on `em thist like they was, an' let 'em

do adin, toz she was a "boss girl" - my pa said she was!

     An' so she was a doin' along an' doin' along, an' purty

soon they was a old wicked wolf jumped out; an' he wanted to

eat her up, but there was a big man a choppin' wood wite

those there, an' you could hear him, an' so th' old wolf was

afeared to tackle her this then - feared the man ud kill him,

you know; an' so he `tended like he was a dood friends to

her, an' he says, "Dood morning, little Red Riding Hood!"

this like that.  An' nen little Red Riding Hood she says,

"dood morning," this as kind - like her ma learnt her - coz

she didn't know th' old wolf wanted t'eat her up.

     Nen th' old wolf says, "Where are you doin' to?"

     Nen little Red Riding Hood says, "I'm doin' to my

dran'ma's -coz my ma said I might." An' nen she told him that

th' old wolf skipped out an' dot to her dran'ma's first, an'

she didn't know he did.

     Nen when th' old wolf dot to her dran'ma's he knocked at

the door. An' nen th' old wolf he knocked adin, an' little

Red Riding Hood's dran'ma she says, "Who's there?"

     Nen th' old wolf 'tended like he was little Red Riding

Hood, you know, an' so he says, "W'y, it's me, dran'ma; I'm

little Red Riding Hood, an' I'm tome to see you!"

     Nen little Red Riding Hood's dran'ma she says, "Thist

walk in, nen, an' make yousef at home, toz I'm dot the

'raigy, an' tuvered up in bed, an' I tan't open the door fur

you!"

     An' so the old wolf thist walked in an' shut the door,

an' hopped up on th' bed an' et old Miss Ridinghood up 'fore

she could take her specs off, he did!  Nen th' old wolf put

on her nightcap an' tovered up in bed like she was, you know,

an' purty soon her tome little Red Riding Hood, an' she

knocked at the door. Nen th' old wolf says, "Who's there?"

thist like he was her dran'ma, you know, an' she thought he

was, an' so she says, "W'y its me, dran'ma; I'm little Red

Riding Hood, an' I'm tome to see you."

    Nen th' old wolf says "Thist walk in an' make yousef at

home, toz I dot the 'raigy an' tovered up in bed, an' I tan't

open the door for you."

     An' so little Red Riding Hood she opened the door an'

tomed in; an' the old wolf told her to set down her basket

an' take off her fings an' tome an' set on the bed wif her.

     An' little Red Riding Hood she didn't know it was th'

old wolf, an' so she set down her basket an' tooked off her

fings, an' dot a chair an' thumbed up on the bed wif her an'

she thought th' old wolf had more whiskers'n her dran'ma, an'

dreat bigger eyes too, an' she was skeered, an' so she says:

"Oh, dran'ma, what big eyes you dot!"

     Nen th' old wolf says: "They're thist big toz I'm so

dlad to see you."

     Nen little Red Riding Hood she says: "O! dran'ma, what a

big nose you dot."

     Nen th' old wolf says: "It's thist big thataway toz I

smell the dood fings you bringed in the basket."

     An' nen little Red Riding Hood she says: "O! dran'ma,

what long, sharp teeth you dot."

     Nen th' old wolf he says: "Yes, an' they're thist

thataway t'eat you up wif!" an' nen he made a jump at her,

an' she hollered an' the big man that was a choppin' wood he

tomed in there wif his axe, an' he split th' old wolf's

brains out from ear to ear, an' killed him so quick it made

his head swim, an' little Red Riding Hood wasn't hurt at all,

an' the big man tooked her home, an' her ma was so dlad she

div'd him all the dood fings in the basket an' told him to

call adin - an - an- that's all of it."

     Alcoholism rendered Riley like an "adjustable lunatic."

He must have feared the consequences of public intoxication

displays greatly after public intoxication arrest. The main

character in his story, "An Adjustable Lunatic," explains

why. He says, "I don't make a business of insanity, or I

wouldn't be running at large here on the streets of the

city." He continues at a later point, "...I'm glad to assure

you of the fact that I'm as harmless as a baby-butterfly.

Nobody knows I'm crazy, nobody ever dreams of such a thing -

and why? -Because the faculty is adjustable, don't you see,

and self-controlling. I never allow it to interfere with

business matters, and only  let it on at leisure intervals

for the amusement it affords me in the pleasurable break it

makes in the monotony of a matter-of-fact existence. I'm off

duty to-day - in fact, I've been off duty fir a week; or, to

be franker still, I lost my situation ten days ago, and I've

been humoring this propensity in the meanwhile..."

     A poem of the period reads:

 

                    BELLS JANGLED  (1879)

 

     I lie low-ceiled in a nest of dreams;

          The lamp gleams dim i' the odorous gloom,

     And the stars at the casement leak long gleams

          Of misty light through the haunted room

     Where I lie low-coiled in dreams.

 

     The night-winds ooze o'er my dusk-drowned face

          In a dewy flood that ebbs and flows,

     Washing a surf of dim white lace

          Under my throat and the dark red rose

     In the shade of my dusk-drowned face.

 

     There's a silken strand of some strange sound

          Slipping out of skein of song:

     Eerily as a call unwound

          From a fairy-bugle, it slides along

     In a silken strand of sound.

 

     There's a tinkling drip of faint guitar;

          There's a gurgling flute, and a blaring horn

     Billowing bubbles of tune afar

          O'er the misty heights of the hills of morn,

     To the drip of a faint guitar.

 

     And I dream that I neither sleep nor wake -

          Careless am I if I wake or sleep,

     For my soul floats on the waves that break

          In crests of song on the shoreless deep

     Where I neither sleep nor wake.

 

     That there are pieces describing Riley's intoxicated

situation is not to say they were not transforming pieces.

Such poetry challenge thought patterns. But deep down they

touch on Riley's greatest fear. This was the fear that he was

the psychotically wounded Edgar Allan Poe in reincarnation.

This fear was grounded in the birth of James Whitcomb Riley

at precisely the morning in October, 1849, when the tormented

Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore in delirium tremens. It was

as if Riley took up the air of life that Poe expired. Did

he also inherit his alcoholism?

     At some point it seems, Riley, similarly demonically

possessed in alcoholism as Poe took his former incarnation's

"Scenes from `Politian" and was in the process of completing

them when a strange thing happened-the recollection of the

recently deceased Nellie Cooley entered the strange world of

Riley's demonic delirium while Riley was writing "The Flying

Islands of the Night." Nellie Cooley, we remember, was the

young married woman and friend whose encouragement had kept

Riley from total breakdown after his mother's death until her

husband moved her away to Illinois and away from Riley in

1875 when both left Greenfield after a black lynching there.

     Edgar Allan Poe's melancholy or joyless themes were

combined with mastery of verse.  Riley devoted many hours to

studying Poe's verse and read "The Rationale of Verse," Poe's

essay on the subject, thoroughly.  The memory of Nellie kept

him from Poe's thematics.

     Riley did not just study Poe's manner, he also wrote

Poe-like poems. His "A Dream of Long Ago," was given the

metre and cadence of Poe's "The Raven," with a slightly

different verse structure.  The sounds of Poe were easily

mirrored with the liquid and musical sounds of the alphabet.

     Crestillomeem was a great admirer of Poe. In a letter of

March 4, 1883 written to Dr. James Newton Matthews, Riley

said:

     "...In the Poe sonnets, the work is splendid - masterly

in parts - only the theme is joyless - and that hurt the

success of such an effort,  however deserving in all other

qualities. It is what hurt Poe, and will always drape his

memory with gloomy speculations and unsatisfying

contemplations.  He was a marvelous intellect perhaps as much

estranged from himself as from all of his kind.  Anyway, he

seems, always, to me, unhappy, and his influence always

cheerless. If I ever get to Heaven, I will  doubtless love

him better there where all `will be unriddled.' All

melancholy themes are pets of mine - positively; but I am

growing to avoid them as much as possible for I am more and

more satisfied of their hurtfulness every new one I indulge."

     "Poe was hoodooed all his life. I took up the hoodoo

where he left off," Riley once said. We know Riley studied

Poe because of the famous "Leonainie" incident in Riley's

life.  Riley wrote the poem in the style of Poe and

perpetrated the hoax in concert with a friend who was the

editor of the Kokomo Dispatch upon the representation that it

was a newly discovered manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe

published in the Kokomo DISPATCH on August 12, 1877.

     How Riley described writing "Leonainie": "I studied

Poe's method.  He seemed to have a theory, rather misty to be

sure, about the use of m's and n's and mellifluous vowels and

sonorous words.  I remember that I was a long time in

evolving the name of `Leonainie,' but at length the verses

were finished and ready for trial.  A friend, the editor of

the Kokomo Dispatch, undertook the launching of the hoax in

his paper; he did this with great editorial gusto, while, at

the same time, I attacked the authenticity of the poem in the

Democrat.  That diverted all possible suspicion from me.  the

hoax succeeded far too well, for what had started as a boyish

prank, became a literary discussion nation-wide, and the

necessary expose had to be made.  I was appalled by the

result.  The press assailed me furiously, and even my own

paper dismissed me because I had given the `discovery' to a

rival."

     How much Riley knew about the orphaned, tragic Edgar

Allan Poe is not known. Poe's death in delirium tremens was

widely reported. Discovered by a printer named Walker in a

Baltimore tavern called Gunner's Hall on an Election Day for

members of Congress, Poe was in great distress. Taken to

Baltimore's Washington Medical College in stupor, he was

admitted at five in the afternoon. He remained in stupor

until three o'clock the next morning when he entered a stage

of busy delirium, talking constantly and deliriously

addressing spectral and imaginary objects on the walls. The

next day Poe revived somewhat but was basically incoherent

before lapsing into violent delirium resisting the efforts of

nurses to keep him in bed. His doctor, a man named Dr. John

J. Moran, mentions him raving for nearly a day and calling

out an unrecognizable name until three o'clock the next

morning when Doctor Moran noted: "quietly moving his head he

said `Lord help my poor soul' and expired." Poe died a drunk.

Dr. Moran attributed his death to delirium tremens on the

basis of Poe's profuse perspiration, trembling and

hallucinations. Others have since sought to find less

disgraceful causes of death such as "exposure." Poe's great

admirer, the French poet Charles Baudelaire, called the death

"suicide" which is probably much closer to the truth.

      Riley studied Poe extensively. He thought of himself as

Poe at times. His forgery of Poe's name to the poem,

"Leonainie," may not have even seemed like forgery. Riley's

"Tale of a Spider" in which a spider takes on the life of a

doomed communicant and "An Adjustable Lunatic" of a maniacal

disappearing and suicidal stranger seem clearly composed

under Poe's gothic influence. It is not clear if Riley wrote

poetry while intoxicated as Poe did. One remembers that "The

Bells" was written by an Edgar Allan Poe who did not even

remember he wrote it the next morning. Riley's "The Flying

Islands of the Night" was, we know, written by an alcoholic

seeking to understand himself. Some of it bears the same

throbbings and excesses of "intoxicatese" writing that Poe's

does. One thing seems clear. If Riley had not written his

"The Flying Islands of the Night" and gained through it a

self-understanding and feeling of great encouragement to

himself from the beyond from his dead mother and dead Nellie

Cooley one could speculate he might have died as Poe did. The

strange death-birth connection between Poe and Riley

contributed to Riley's unease about the fate for which he was

destined.  The poetry and alcoholic life-style of Edgar Allan

Poe were definite dynamics in Riley's self-perception.

One does not fear being a reincarnation of someone without

great tremor. Probably for this reason, Riley avoided

admitting he was born when he was. The comparisons of

alcoholism by two kindred poets was already too vivid in

Riley's mind.

     There was in fact great talk of Riley being Poe's

reincarnation as in an article in the Chicago TRIBUNE of

December 16, 1894 under the title: "Plagiarism or

Reincarnation?" The many points of similarity of the writing

of Riley and Poe brought forth the author of this article,

George Harper, to find evidence for the Hindoo theory of

transmigration of souls, or reincarnation. When Riley as

Crestillomeem wrote, Poe was affixed in his mind.

     In the meantime, Riley slipped further and further into

alcoholism. Riley, the alcoholic, was considered a no-good in

Greenfield during much of his early life, but he was not

reviled.

     To understand this requires a brief review of the

temperance movement in Indiana of the time.

     Whiskey was easily availability in the corn growing

regions of Indiana where Riley grew up. Whiskey was a corn

product after all. Liquor traffic was always a source of

revenue to Hancock County from the founding of the county.

The first meeting of the county's government, through its

board of commissioners, was held April 7, 1828 and the first

license to sell liquor was granted by them less than a month

later. As the years went along, whisky was sold not just at

saloons but also in grocery stores. Every home had supplies.

Children drank whisky and it was a popular medicine used for

colds or pain reduction.

     In the 1860's movements to control alcoholism, then an

epidemic, began.  Citizens began to remonstrate against the

granting of licenses to sell whiskey. Reuben Riley and

Joseph B. Atkison were usually the two Greenfield lawyers

who represented the remonstrators.

     As Riley entered manhood, the temperance battle against

alcohol use reached the level of a crusade, just as James

Whitcomb Riley, was firmly established as an alcoholic.

    A Ladies' Temperance Alliance was organized at

Greenfield's Methodist Episcopal church in 1874. The goal

was to obtain pledges of Hancock County men not to drink

intoxicating liquors. Other meetings were held in area

churches and soon the ladies began visiting liquor

establishments causing many of them to close or else begin

serving sodas. Lists were made of signatories of the Murphy

pledge and circulated. Applicants for liquor licenses

were hounded into withdrawing them. Prosecutions were

sought of intoxicated persons or any proprietor who served

liquor to an intoxicated person. As stated elsewhere, Riley

himself was prosecuted for intoxication. Candidates for

office were screened to ensure they were not subject to

intoxication. The local bar was invited to a meeting and the

demand was made that none represent alcoholic interests or

the intoxicated. Lawyers were urged to sign a pledge not

to but the majority of the members refused.  Mass meetings

were organized and among the local speakers against

intoxicants was Reuben Riley, the poet's father. Richman

described one of March 7, 1874 at the Greenfield Christian

Church. Later in the 1870's Red Ribbon Societies were

organized in which persons who had signed the "pledge" wore

red ribbons. Another temperance group wore "blue ribbons." A

county convention was organized of the Christian Temperance

Union in 1879.  Temperance picnics and the like were

sponsored. A "secret" organization also spread devoted to

terrorist tactics for the cause bragging of "cells'in every

township. The only saloon in New Palestine was burned to the

ground during this period by such a secret "cell."

     It was in the mood of a county with such temperance

activity that James Whitcomb Riley was often found drunk in

different places around the city.

     Reuben Riley, the poet's father, and remonstration

attorney, refused to assist his son under any such

circumstances.  Nor would the "Captain" pay fines or bonds

when the poet was arrested and charged with public

intoxications during his youth.  The Riley family was greatly

ashamed of the poet.  Stories are told of Riley sneaking into

the home, led by the hand up to his bedroom to sleep off a

drunk, by his little sister, Mary, fifteen years his junior.

The two, Mary, who also suffered from alcoholism later in

life, as well as the brother between them, Hum, often relied

upon each other in a world hostile to them because of their

propensity to liquor overuse.

     As the early 70's proceeded, the temperance movement

gained more and more force. Riley's father, Reuben Riley,

became a leader of it further distancing himself from Riley

because Riley was, after all, "wedded to Crestillomeem."

Greenfield saw a great temperance movement arise in 1874.  As

a part of this movement, mass meetings of citizens were

called.  One such meeting was sponsored by the Temperance

Alliance, a ladies' organization, held in the Methodist

Episcopal Church on Sunday evening, March 8, 1874.  The

church was filled to overflowing with hundreds of people and

many of the lawyers of the town were present. At one point in

the meeting, the ladies distributed the usual temperance

pledges for the attendees to sign. In addition, the ladies

had a special pledge they wished the attorneys to sign.  This

pledge contained an agreement not to defend any person

charged with a violation of the liquor laws.  When the

majority of the lawyers refused to sign the pledge, the

ladies called for them to explain themselves. The first to

speak was the lawyer, Ephraim Marsh who stated "All criminals

were entitled to a fair and impartial trial, and to be heard

in person or by counsel, This being the case, I as a lawyer

cannot consent to place myself in a position not to accept

employment in any case at bar if I desire to do so." Another

lawyer, Charles G. Offutt, responded to the call to sign the

pledge saying, "I declined to sign it and  I still decline.

So far as I know but two members of the bar have signed it.

I hold that an attorney has the right to engage in the

defense of any man, woman, or child charged with a crime

without being liable to just censure from any quarter.  The

fundamental law of the land declares that in all criminal

prosecutions the accused shall have the right to be heard by

himself and counsel, and that the presumption of innocence is

in his favor.  Sir, because a man is charged with a violation

of law, be it the "Baxter bill" or any other, it doesn't

necessarily follow that he is guilty, not by any means."

     As Offutt continued his reasons for not signing the

pledge, his words reveal the mild attitude against alcoholics

such as Riley which then prevailed in Greenfield.

     "As far as the temperance question question is

concerned, I think it is admitted by all candid men that

temperance is right and intemperance wrong. It is not

necessary that I should stand here and declaim against the

evils of intemperance.  All men everywhere admit it to be the

great foe of mankind.  The veriest wretch that ever drank

destruction to his own soul will tell you that his course is

not to be approved or followed.  No man can engage in the use

of intoxicating liquor to an excess, and not finally destroy

his constitution.  It shatters the physical man and lays the

mind in ruins, and whatever others may say, I know that no

man in this audience would more heartily rejoice over the

success of any plan that would stay the fearful tide of

intemperance sweeping over the land, than I. And, sir, I

think this is the most favorable time for the ladies to

accomplish great good. No political party, as my friend,

Captain Ogg, has said, is opposing their movements.  Good

people everywhere are wishing them success, and if they go

about their work in the spirit of Christianity, love and

kindness their efforts may be crowned with success. It won't

do to proscribe men or treat them harshly for their views,

but reason with them, treat them kindly, convince them that

it is to their interests to be sober and upright, that the

good of society demands that they should give up a business

which yields only poverty, disgrace and crime, and, my word

for it, your success will be great."

     It is said that this lawyer's speech was roundly

applauded at the ladies temperance meeting in this year

before the community consented to other mob action, the

breaking in of the Hancock County Jail and the lynching of

the black taken out from there at the county fairgrounds so

soon to occur. Despite the castigation and shame cast on

alcoholics such as Riley, they were not to be the subject of

violent personal attacks.  The bars they frequented were. The

sellers of alcoholic products were. The talk was much against

them. None were, however, lynched.  One wonders where Messers

Marsh and Offutt were when the black man, William Kemmer, was

lynched the next year with their lofty beliefs in rights to

trial, an attorney, a presumption of innocence and a

semblance of a right to defense.

 

 

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à

à     In the preface we first met Crestillomeem. This is

?the drunkenness that threatens Riley. It is the Riley under

?the influence of alcohol. It is the scary tremens and

?torporous deliriums of alcoholism. These are, of course, the

?vision of Riley's great autobiographical poem "The Flying

àIslands of the Night."  Crestillomeem is the bitchy Queen of

àRiley's life trying to take it over and more.

?    Crestillomeem is one of Riley's "Flying islands." Flying

?islands are Riley's lives in the poem. They are not a

?singular island.  Riley, with great insight, knew himself as

?an archipelago afloat in "red eye" whiskey at the time of

?the writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night."  All of the

?islands make up Riley's conception of his own life as a man

?in great alienation acting through life as a cast of players.

àRiley was a great enough actor to get by with this.  He

àsimply was not himself. Possibly out of very low esteem from

àadolescence, Riley took other identities in his imagination.

àRiley took onto himself projections of whole islands.

?     Crestillomeem is the product of Riley's alcoholism and

?depression but she is also a uniquely important person in the

?life of James Whitcomb Riley because she impels him through

?dialogue to see her as a consequence to him if he does not

?pursue the only other goal for his life that James Whitcomb

?Riley could imagine more powerful - the lust for fame

?(another figure in Riley's imaginative self-life who Riley

?thinks of as an equally clearly defined "flying island" named

?Krung. We shall meet Krung later on in this book. The happy

?result of it all was, however, to allow Spraivoll, yet

àanother character, to sing poetically.

à     It was about himself as the sinful persona dominated by

?his alcoholic Crestillomeem that his 1878 poem, "The Flying

?Islands of the Night," was written in the turmoil of one of

àhis greatest periods of intoxication and tremens.

à     In the "Flying Islands of the Night," Riley knows

?that Crestillomeem, his alcoholism, is constantly beckoning

àhim. She seeks to destroy him and even seek his death.

àCrestillomeem demands Riley toe her line and meet her

àdemands.  She invites him to imprison himself in the tower

àof servitude to alcoholism and its fantasies. We read:

à                    "The Queen (Crestillomeem)

àImpatiently awaits his Majesty

àAnd craves his presence in the Tower of Stars,

àThat she may there express full tenderly

àHer great solicitude."

?     In alcoholics' confessional genre literature the curse

?of alcohol manifest in a person, here Crestillomeem in James

?Whitcomb Riley, always leads to self-destructive behavior.

?As the great temperance mediator Luther Benson states in

?Æéæôååî Ùåạ́ó éî Èǻ́, page 58, to go out on an alcoholic

?spree "is to quench the light of ambition, to crush hope,

?entomb joy, lay waste the powers of the mind, neglect duty,

àdesert the family and commit in the end suicide."

?     In the poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," Riley is

?able to cast her off.  In reality Riley never was able to

àfully subdue his alcoholism.

?     The Crestillomeem character of Riley's fragmented life

?is "roughly" referenced in verse in James Whitcomb Riley's

?poem "Luther Benson" contemporaneously written with "Flying

?Islands" as the poem's subtitle says, "After reading his

?autobiography." The poem describes alcoholism as the "vulture

?curse, That hovers o'er the universe, With ready talons quick

?to strike In every human heart alike." Benson's

?autobiography, Æéæôååî Ùåạ́ó éî Èǻ́, like Riley's play/poem,

?marks how Benson was wasted in alcohol addiction, reformed,

?and went on to "lecture" extensively throughout Indiana and

?the nation as a temperance speaker.  The parallel to the

?movement of the acts of "Flying Islands" is pronounced as is

?the eventual progress of Riley's own life...although Riley's

?"cause" was not temperance but the spread of Midwestern

àAmerican Protestant Nineteenth Century "kenotic" themes.

?His dependency makes of his dissolute and alcoholic nature

?the relationship of something wedded to him as a queenly wife

?as well as curse.  Possibly "Flying Islands" was originally

?intended as an extensive farcical account of the life of

?Benson, based on Benson's autobiography, in the nature of

?Riley's comical imitation of Benson on the platform, but if

?so Riley's realization that the alcoholic addiction was

?similar to his own probably changed the storyline and the

?play\poem into Riley's own autobiography.  Benson does not

?seem to be remembered much these days, but his book Æ‚é‚æ‚ô‚å‚å‚î‚ ‚

?Ù‚å‚á‚̣‚ó‚ ‚é‚î‚ ‚È‚å‚́‚́‚ ‚describing his alcoholic years was a national

?best-seller in the 1880's.  Riley's poem, "Luther Benson"

?could almost be an outline of "The Flying Islands" in its

àmovement from addiction to salvation from an angelic agent to

àthe resolution against alcoholism.

à

àƒ                 ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚Ăł̀‚É‚̉‚ɂςƠ‚Ó‚ ‚Ô‚̉‚ł͂ł΂ӂ

à

à     A major event in Riley's life must have been his first

àencounter with tremens from his alcoholism. This was the

?most disspiriting aspect of play with himself as

àCrestillomeem.

à     He must have felt enraged because intoxication was not

àsupposed to have such a down side! As Riley's teenaged years

?dawned alcohol use was only beginning to questioned.  When

?Riley was 11, a newspaper article published in the Hancock

?DEMOCRAT of July 3, 1861 stated, "it was at one time

?generally believed that the use of alcoholic liquors was

?positively necessary and beneficial to all men...Physicians

?recommended such beverages and regular daily rations of rum

?were provided in all armies and navies.  These notions are

?still entertained by many persons, and very generally there

?is a want of correct information on the subject. It is very

?common for soldiers of all classes to indulge in the use of

?alcoholic beverages...By close observation and many

?experiments, it has been found that the tissues and the blood

?of drunkards, as well as those who continually tipple in beer

?and whisky, but do not get drunk, are generally in a state of

?degeneration.  Alcohol passes into the blood and retards the

?elimiantion of waste and injurious matter from the body and

àthus tends to produce disease, especially fever..."

?     Eventually, Riley came to see his alcohol addiction to

?personify the activity of a person he called Crestillomeem

?and took her vision of himself as his own to see what it

?meant. This was done in "The Flying Islands of the Night."

?Crestillomeem never left Riley but came to become a pretty

?much subdued lady except for many private but also a few

?highly publicized incidents such as one recurrence in

?Louisville, Kentucky in February 1890 which caused the

àbreakup of his stand-up comedy partnership with Edgar Nye.

à     Crestillomeem did not produce poetry. Riley wrote no

?poetry when he was in delirium. Crestillomeem did, however,

?provide the delirious subject matter of a small body of very

?important poetry to a biographer. She gave Riley "An

?Adjustable Lunatic" with its vision of a lover in another

?dimension whose etherial connectedness is an otherwise mad

àman's only touch with reality.

à          FANTASY (1878)

à(FROM "AN ADJUSTABLE LUNATIC")

?(a poem written by a fictional author in a Riley sketch, a

?man who subsequently committed suicide within the story line

?and who described himself as "an adjustable lunatic" by

?profession.  The sketch from which this poem derives portrays

?the writer of "Fantasy" as a penniless bachelor, the owner of

àa painting of a mysteriously enchanting woman in his room.

àThe poem reveals an impossible romantic attachment so

?real and yet so imaginary that it severs the man from his

?senses. As a biographer, I find the story bears relation to

àRiley's relationship with his married friend, Nellie Cooley.)

à

àA Fantasy that came to me

à     As wild and wantonly designed

àAs ever any dream might be

à     Unraveled from a madman's mind, -

àA tangle-work of tissue, wrought

à     By cunning of the spider-brain,

à     And woven, in an hour of pain,

àTo trap the giddy flies of thought -.

à

àI stood beneath a summer moon

à     All swollen to uncanny girth,

àAnd hanging, like the sun at noon,

à     Above the center of the earth;

à     But with a sad and sallow light,

à     As it had sickened of the night

àAnd fallen in a pallid swoon.

àAround me I could hear the rush

à     Of sullen winds, and feel the whir

àOf unseen wings apast me brush

à     like phantoms round a sepulcher;

àAnd, like a carpeting of plush,

à     A lawn unrolled beneath my feet,

à     Bespangled o'er with flowers as sweet

à     To look upon as those that nod

à     Within the garden-fields of God,

à     But odorless as those that blow

à     In ashes in the shades below.

à

àAnd on my hearing fell a storm

à     Of gusty music, sadder yet

à     Than every whimper of regret

àThat sobbing utterance could form,

à     And patched with scraps of sound that seemed

à     Torn out of tunes that demons dreamed,

à     And pitched to such a piercing key,

à     It stabbed the ear with agony;

à     And when at last it lulled and died,

à     I stood aghast and terrified.

àI shuddered and I shut my eyes

à     And still could see, and feel aware

à     Some mystic presence waited there;

àAnd staring, with a dazed surprise,

à     I saw a creature so divine

à     That never subtle thought of mine

à     May reproduce to inner sight

à     So  fair a vision of delight.

à

àA syllable of dew that drips

àFrom out a lily's laughing lips

àCould not be sweeter than the word

àI listened to, yet never heard. -

àFor, oh, the woman hiding there

àWithin the shadows of her hair,

àSpake to me in an undertone

àSo delicate, my soul alone

àBut understood it as a moan

àOf some weak melody of wind

àA heavenward breeze had left behind.

à

àA tracery of trees, grotesque

à     Against the sky, behind her seem

àLike shapeless shapes of arabesque

à     Wrought in an oriental screen;

àAnd tall, austere and statuesque

à     She loomed before it - e'en as though

à     The spirit-hand of Angelo

à     Had chiseled her to life complete,

à     With chips of moonshine round her feet.

àAnd I grew jealous of the dusk,

à     To see it softly touch her face,

à     As lover-like, with fond embrace

àIt folded round her like a husk:

àBut when the glitter of her hand

à     Like wasted glory, beckoned me,

à     My eyes grew blurred and dull and dim -

à     My vision failed - I could not see -

àI could not stir - I could but stand,

à     Till, quivering in every limb,

à     I flung me prone, as though to swim

à     The tide of grass whose waves of green

à     Went rolling ocean-wide between

à     My helpless shipwrecked heart and her

à     Who claimed me for a worshiper.

à

àAnd writhing thus in my despair,

à     I heard a weird, unearthly sound,

à     That seemed to lift me from the ground

à     And hold me floating in the air.

à     I looked, and lo! I saw her bow

à     Above a harp within her hands;

àA crown of blossoms bound her brow,

à     And on her harp were twisted strands

àOf silken starlight, rippling o'er

àWith music never heard before

àBy mortal ears; and, at the strain,

àI felt my Spirit snap its chain

àAnd break away, - and I could see

àIt as it turned and fled from me

àTo greet its mistress, where she smiled

àTo see the phantom dancing wild

àAnd wizard-like before the spell

àHer mystic fingers knew so well.

à

àWhat is it? Who will rightly guess

àIf it be aught but nothingness

àThat dribbles from a wayward pen

àTo spatter in the eyes of men?

àWhat matter! I will call it mine,

à     And I will take the changeling home

àAnd bathe its face with morning-shine,

à     And comb it with a golden comb

à     Till every tangled tress of rhyme

à     Will fairer be than summer-time;

àAnd I will nurse it on my knee

à     And dandle it beyond the clasp

à     Of hands that grip and hands that grasp

àThrough life and all eternity!

à

à

?     Something like this vision became Act II of Riley's

?great delirious, autobiographical play\poem "The Flying

?Islands of the Night." The other subject matter is in such

?poetry as "Quitting California." The poem is not, of course,

?about the State of California at all, but rather about a

?brand name of whiskey.  While one is led by the poem to

?believe that the poem's writer is becoming temperate and

?giving up alcohol, the poem playfully concludes that the

?writer is merely changing to another brand of cheap whiskey

àand not giving up whiskey at all.

à

à‚                   ς‚Ñ‚ơ‚é‚ô‚ô‚é‚î‚ç‚ ‚Ă‚á‚́‚邿‚ï‚̣‚î‚é‚á‚

à

àO rare old drink, the oldest, strongest far

à  Of which the house can boast,

àWhose guardian, smiling, betteth at the bar

à  On who can drink the most -

à

àHow art thou conquered - tamed in all the pride

à  Of average beauty still!

àHow brought, O painter of the human hide,

à  To know thy master's will!

à

àNo more the shallow goblet is baptized

à  Until it overflows;

àNo more thy liquid blushes are capsized,

?  And succored by the nose.  For now the wild oats thou hast

àhelped to till

à  In pain are harvested,

àAnd, as the boss presents his little bill,

à  The gleaner droops his head.

à

àYet at thy shrine shall thousands kneel again

à  Beneath thy mystic spell;

àO mother-in-law of great and mighty men,

à  Thou do'st thy mission well!

à

àThy newer children shall restore the right

à  I force you to resign

àAnd future years yield up an appetite,

à  Perchance as wild as mine.

à

àThough order, justice, social law shall scowl

à  On all the works reveal,

àAnd art and science shake their heads and howl

à  With unabated zeal,

à

àThe marble, shaken from its glassy sheath,

à  Shall twirl and palpitate

àFor those of fiery eye and potent breath

à  Who take their whisky straight.

à

àThe cornless cob shall drain its warmest blood -

à  The still its blackest lees,

àAnd all transfusive percolations flood

à  Thy swollen arteries,

à

àTill "Tremens," as he hides himself away

à  Within thy depths, shall wink

àAs victims pour him down from day to day

à  At fifteen cents a drink.

à

?When Mr. Clickwad is finished his friends congratulate him at

?least on agreeing to quit alcohol. Mr. Clickwad denies this

?intent and admits that he is only quitting the one brand

?indicated. He remains an unrepentent alcoholic which is his

ànature.

à

àƒ           ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Đ‚Ï‚Å‚Ô‚̉‚Ù‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Ăł̀‚É‚̉‚ɂςƠ‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚̀‚ɂł΂Á‚Ԃɂς΂

à

à     While the poetry of Crestillomeem is small in volume,

àRiley considered it his personal record of the hell of his

àlife and treasured it inordinately. One finds his poem

?Flying Islands being published again and again from 1878 to

àthe end of his life.  None of the printings was popular.

àMost contained changes as Riley considered and reconsidered

?its autobiographical cryptic subject matter. The poem came to

?have a strange life of its own because of its beautiful

?lyrics and of course authorship by the famous James Whitcomb

àRiley.

à     Riley simply hid himself in this poem. No one except

?possibly his alcoholic brother, (who died three years after

?"The Flying Islands of the Night's" composition) and friend,

àDr. Hays, knew the poem was a delirium.

à     Why?

à     Among the reasons why Crestillomeem was not a visible

àpresence was Riley's later popularity and commercial

?posture. But another reason was that Crestillomeem lurked

àwithin his soul.  Riley couldn't account for this himself.

?His vision of life included a simple belief that ultimately

?life was inexplicable. When his father died, Riley had

?engraved on the Riley family marker in the little Greenfield

?cemetery where he was buried, "God is his own interpreter and

?will someday make things clear." Riley's alcoholism like his

?father's death was a part of life that God alone understood.

?Nevertheless there was an expectation that it fit in with

àsome greater plan.

?     Crestillomeem was Riley in his uneasiness about his

?alcoholism.  Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography,

?declared uneasiness was the central human motive. Riley was

?constantly in a state of uncertainty about himself. His

?incentive to survive despite his alcoholism required great

?mental work, emotionality and activity.  After a person's

?biological needs are satisfied, time and energy are next

?spent in a narrow space of mind bounded on the right by

?boredom and ordinarily on the left by terror of the bizarre.

?Riley often lived in this region of the bizarre and actually

?knew it as a comfort. He often lived in the nurture of

àCrestillomeem.

à     So who is Crestillomeem? She is the one whose life

àis explained in The Flying Islands as an entourage of

?faces.  She is the soul breaking apart in Riley's "Poem of

àSeven Faces." In tremens deliriums, Riley encounters her

àswarming around him.

à

?     Ă‚̉‚łӂԂɂ̀‚̀‚ς͂łł͂§‚Ó‚ ‚Ó‚Ô‚Ï‚̉‚Ù‚ ɂ΂ ‚Á‚ ‚Ă‚È‚Ï‚̉‚Ơ‚Ó‚ ‚ςƂ ‚ӂׂÁ‚̉‚͂ɂ΂ǂ ‚Æ‚Á‚Ă‚Å‚Ó‚

à

à                      First Face

à

àAnd who hath known her - like as I

àHave known her?  - since the envying sky

àFilched from her cheeks its morning hue,

àAnd from her eyes its glory, too,

àOf dazzling shine and diamond-dew.

à

àƒ                         Second Face

à

àI knew her - long and long before

àHigh AEo±À‚ loosed her palm and thought:

à"What awful splendor have I wrought

àTo dazzle earth and Heaven, too!"

à

?1. AEo is Elizabeth, Riley's mother, who died when he was

?twenty. The E is her initial surrounded by the alpha and

?omega representing the scope of his affection from beginning

?of life to end for her.  Riley idolized his mother causing

?deep agony upon her death and Riley's initial need for

àconsolation and escape in alcoholism.

à

à‚                         Third Face

à

àI knew her - long ere Night±À‚ was o'er -

àEre, AEo yet conjectured what

àTo fashion Day of - ay, before

àHe sprinkled stars across the floor

àOf dark, and swept that form of mine

àE'en as a fleck of blinded shine,

àBack to the black were light was not.

à

?1. Night is related in the alcoholics confessional genre of

?literature such as "The Flying Islands of the Night" to the

?past.  SEE: Benson, Æéæôååî Ùåạ́ó éî Èǻ́, (night as a black,

àunlighted past).

à

àƒ                         Fourth face

à

àEre day was dreamt, I saw her face

àLift from some starry hiding-place

àWhere our old moon was kneeling while

àShe lit its features with her smile.

à

àƒ                         Fifth Face

à

àI knew her while these islands³À‚ yet,

àWere nestlings - ere they feathered wing,

àOr e'en could gape with them or get

àApoise the laziest-ambling breeze;

àOr cheep, chirp our, or anything!

àWhen time crooned rhymes of nurseries

àAbove them - nodded, dozed and slept,

àAnd knew it not, till, wakening.

àThe morning stars agreed to sing

àAnd Heaven's first tender dews were wept.

à

à3. Riley's fractured lives are the "flying" islands,

àdisassociated "play" entities, of the poem.

à

àƒ                         Sixth Face

à

àI knew her when the jealous hands

àOf Angels set her sculptured form

àUpon a pedestal of storm

àAnd let her to this land with strands

àOf twisted lightnings.

à

àƒ                        Seventh Face

à

à         And I heard

àHer voice ere she could tone a word

àOf any but the Seraph-tongue. -

àAnd O sad-sweeter than all sung -

àOr word-said things! - to hear her say,

àBetween the tears she dashed away: -

à"Lo, launched from the offended sight

àOf AEo! - anguish infinite

àIs ours, O Sisterhood of Sin!

àYet is thy service mine by right,

àAnd, sweet as I may rule it, thus

à   Shall Sin's myrrh-savor taste to us -

à   Sin's empress - let my reign begin!´À‚"

à

?4. After his mother's death, Riley acknowledges he fell to

?pieces and launched a life of abandonment to alcoholism

àsupported by meager casual employments.

à

à     Ă‚È‚Ï‚̉‚Ơ‚Ó‚ ‚ςƂ ‚ӂׂÁ‚̉‚͂ɂ΂ǂ ‚Æ‚Á‚Ă‚Å‚Ó‚ ‚

à

àWe follow you forever on!

àThrough darkest night, and dimmest dawn;

àThrough storm and calm - through shower and shine.

àHear thou our voices answering thine;

à     We follow - craving but to be

à     Thy followers, - We follow thee

à     We follow, follow, follow thee.

à

àWe follow ever on and on -

àO'er hill and hollow, brake and lawn;

àThrough gruesome vale and dread ravine

àWhere light of day is never seen. -

à     We waver not in loyalty, -

à     Unfaltering we follow thee -

à     We follow, follow, follow thee!

à

àWe follow ever on and on!

àThe shroud of night around us drawn,

àThough wet with mists, is wild-ashine

àWith stars to light that path of thine; -

à     The glowworms, too, befriend us - we

à     Shall fail not as we follow thee.

à     We follow, follow, follow thee!

à

àWe follow ever on and on. -

àThe notched reeds we pipe upon

àAre pithed with music, keener blown

àAnd blither where thou leadest lone -

à     Glad pangs of its ecstatic glee

à     Shall reach thee as we follow thee,

à     We follow, follow, follow thee!

à

àWe follow ever on and on. -

àWe know the ways thy feet have gone, -

àThe grass is greener, and the bloom

àOf roses richer in perfume -

à     And the birds of every blooming tree

à     Sing sweeter as we follow thee,

à     We follow, follow, follow thee!

à

àWe follow ever on and on;

àFor wheresoever thou hast gone

àWe hasten joyous, knowing there

àIs sweeter sin than otherwhere -

à     Leave still its latest cup, that we

à     May drain it as we follow thee,

à     We follow, follow, follow thee!

à

àƒ      ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚ƂςƠ‚̉‚ ‚Ç‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚Å‚Î‚Ă‚Ï‚Ơ‚΂Ԃł̉‚Ó‚ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚Ă‚̉‚łӂԂɂ̀‚̀‚ς͂łł͂

à

?    There were four great encounters Riley had with

?Crestillomeem. Each led to a new era in Riley's life and they

?were closer togtether in years in his early manhood than

?later on. Each proved devestating and led to great life

?changes for the sensitive poet. The first occurred as Riley

?was faced with the death of his mother in 1869 and eventually

?led to his taking to the road with a traveling miracle

?medicine show of Doc McCrillus. After returning to his home

àto settle down, a second event occurred which

àthoroughly unsettled him. This was a "black lynching" by

?a band of masked Hancock County men who broke into the

?Greenfield jail to drag the presumably innocent man out for

àhis date with a rope at the local fairgrounds. Riley again

àleft his hometown for a second trip with a traveling medicine

?show, this time the one of Doc Townsend. Again returning to

?Greenfield after a time, he learned of the death of the one

?woman he most loved, Nellie Cooley, and after writing her

àobituary and burying her back in Greenfield, he again entered

?into a period of great intoxication and despondency resulting

?in his eventual move to Indianapolis to work for a newspaper

?there. By this time, Riley was brought in contact with

àkenotic teachers and was taking to the platform. His great

àBenjamin Johnson of Boone poems were written during a period

?of recovery in this period. The fourth great period of his

?intoxication and despondence was when Riley could not take

?the strain of the platform tour and was found drunk in public

?and close to death in Louisville after an engagement.  This

?ended Riley's career as it had been. The event did however

?usher in a gentler time when Riley wrote most of his annual

?books and became "The Children"s Poet." We will examine each

?of these periods of Riley's great bouts with Crestillomeem in

?turn before getting into his great poetry written as

àSpraivoll of the play/poem "The Flying Islands of the Night."


 

 

the Night."

?

 queen of a

?fantasy horror show who slurs words and lurks behind him

?ready to

FJéd



GERBILDOC3  ưCCNN?[1] ?[1]


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@DNNNPRINTERàƒ      Ă‚̉‚łӂԂɂ̀‚̀‚ς͂łł͂§‚Ó‚ ‚Ƃɂ̉‚Ó‚Ô‚ ‚Ç‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚Å‚Î‚Ă‚Ï‚Ơ‚΂Ԃł̉‚ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق

 

à‚                Á‚ƂԂł̉‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚͂ςԂȂł̉‚

?

?     At what point in Riley's life he became an alcoholic we

?do not know. We remember Riley was from a Hoosier Deutsch

?family. The Hoosier Deutsch people were a very lenient people

?in regard to alcohol use. Deutsch-run taverns were in every

?locale where the Deutsch settled and were places of common

àsocialand even family gathering. Whiskey was kept in the

?Hoosier Deutsch homes and children were given it for

àmedicinal reasons. Riley no doubt had tasted corn whiskey

?or "red eye" on many, many occasions. In adolescence we hear

?of Riley's use with friends. The occasions brought on

?humorous times with friends and were not seriously

?debilitating. One night when John E. Davis, met "Uncle" Billy

?Davis, (not relatted) and Riley, Davis got his nickname

?"Durbin." The three were "whooping" it up on Greenfield

?streets. They had just stopped in at a Deutsch tavern in

?Greenfield, the "Last Chance," but found it closed for the

?night. Riley led the three to another place to get a drink, a

?water pump that Riley sighted. According to Davis, Riley

?grabbed hold of the pump handled, clapped me on the abck and

?said, "I want you to meet Mr. Durbin.  Now Mr.  Durbin, I

?want the boys to have all they want. It's on the house,

?boys."  We drank water and pumped and drank again.  And ever

?since, they've called me after a kind of pump manufactured in

?those days known as the Durbin pump." Davis also mentioned

?another circumstance that seems related. As a boy, Durbin

?said, Riley "always had a pocketful of poems even when we

?swam down on the Brandywine.  I've seen him turn

?sommersaults, recite a poem, and then jump clean over the

àmuddy bank into the swimmin' hole.  He knowed all of

?Charles Dickens' works by heart." As a boy, "Uncle" Davis

?said Riley wasn't much of a swimmer but preferred to loiter

?in the shade while the others swam.  "We'd go in natural and

?many's the time we'd tie each others clothes into knots and

?throw mud at each other.  He used to make up poems down there

?and recite them to us while we swam around. There were some

?dandies all right. There's one of them I'll never forget.  I

àonly wish it could be printed." Perhaps this suggests that

?Riley took to alcohol with his friends and even took to

?writing poetry - to participate with others when he really

?wasn't competitive or capable of being companionable.

?     After Riley quit school at 16, Riley apparently drank

?more often. One folktale still repeated in Greenfield recalls

àhim being brought home drunk from the Indiana State Fair in

?Indianapolis after being found passed out there. Apparently

?the experience was not reforming since Riley went to the

?state fair every year to get what he called "cider" on the

?Midway there. As his medical doctor, Dr. Carleton B.

?M'Culloch, remembered it, Riley said he liked to go to the

?state fair to see two brothers who made their cider on a

?press with a secret formula as had their father before them.

?Riley claimed it was so good because it had a secret

àproportion of "wormy apples."

à     The casual attitude toward drinking by the young men of

àthe time is revealed by a story contemporary with this period

àin Hancock County in which a young man riding home one night

?slightly "bour bonized" looked at the moon with great

?contempt and said, "You needn't be so proud, Madame Moon.

àYou are full once a month and I every night."

?     In any case, Riley was not unfamiliar with alcohol use

àeven before his first great encounter with Crestillomeem.

à

à‚ԂȂł ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚͂ςԂȂł̉‚ ‚Ă‚Á‚Ơ‚ӂłĂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Ƃɂ̉‚Ó‚Ô‚ ‚Ç‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚Đ‚Å‚̉‚ɂςĂ ‚ςƂ ‚

à‚                        É‚Î‚Ô‚Ï‚Ø‚É‚Ă‚Á‚Ԃɂς΂

?

?     The death of Riley's mother Elizabeth was publicly

?announced in the Hancock DEMOCRAT of Thursday morning, August

à11, 1870 as follows:

à‚                        Ó‚Ơ‚ĂĂł΂ ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚

̀ÀÀ?0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ>ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

?               On Tuesday morning last our citizens were much

?          astounded to hear that Mrs. Elizabeth Riley, wife

?          of Capt. R.A. Riley, of this place, had died very

?          suddenly and unexpectedly that morning, about half

?          past seven o'clock, of heart disease.  Some time

?          during the latter part of the night, she felt

?          unwell and got up from her  bed without awaking any

?          of the family.  In a short time Capt. Riley was

?          aroused by someone falling on the floor.  He soon

?          discovered that it was his wife who had fallen as

?          if  in a swoon.  The alarm was given and the

?          neighbors and physician sent for.  No serious

?          danger was at the time apprehended, but toward

?          daylight she begun to grow  worse and died as we

?          have stated above.  She was buried in the new

?          cemetery on yesterday morning.  A large number of

?          our citizens were present at the funeral services,

?          conducted by Rev. J.W. Lacy, and all sympathized

?          deeply with the bereaved family.  We tender our

?          condolence to our friend, Capt. Riley, and his

?          bereaved and afflicted children.  In the death of

?          the one they loved so well, we can truthfully say

?          that she was a kind and good woman and that is the

?          best epitaph that can be written upon the tomb of a

à          departed wife and mother.

̀÷ÿ?0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ2ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

?     Brother John wrote in his diary of that day, "What shall

àwe do with Jim now that mother is dead?"

à     Riley's secretary, Marcus Dickey, has recorded Riley's

?own recollections of the event.  "The bereavement caused a

?complete change in his life.  It sent him into the world to

?make his own living, and in numerous ways it was a forlorn

àroad he had to travel.

?     A few hoursafter her deaht he walked alone through a

?cornfield to a favorite retreat south of the railroad to an

?old clearing.  "I was  alone," he said, "till as in a vision

?I saw my mother  smiling back upon me from the blue  fields

?of love - when lo! she was young again. Suddenly I had the

?assurance that I would meet her somewhere in another world.

?I was gathering the fruit of what had been so happily

?impressed on  me in childhood.  I had seen that the world is

?a stage. Now I saw that the universe is  a stage.  Antoher

?curtain had been lifted.  My mother was enraptured at the

?sight of new scenery. It was the dream of Heaven with which

?`Johnny Appleseed'  had impressed my mother in the

àMississinewa cabin."

?     The first thing Riley did after his mother died was to

?go to Rushville to sell Bibles with some man unknown in

?history. Reuben Riley was very skeptical about this

?enterprise and did not know the Bible salesman Riley had

?taken off to Rushville with. On December 19, 1870 we find the

?father writing to the son, "I have been patiently waiting for

?a letter from you and have received none.  Scarcely an hour

?passes without my thinking of you and wondering how you are

?getting along? how you are doing? how you are managing? I

?have had  much more experience in the world than you.  It is

?all important that you associate with none but those of good

?character, that you be self-reliant and aim high and suffer

?no stain to attach to your conduct.  I would like to counsel

?and advise with you.  Please write me fully and confidently,

?and all reasonable assistance in my power I will render..."

?     "It turned out," said Riley, "that citizens of Rushville

?had all the Bibles they needed; they had not time to read

?those they had." Soon Riley was back in Greenfield

?apprenticed to Almon Keefer's uncle, John Keefer, a painter

?by trade.  Reuben paid for the apprenticeship. Soon Riley was

?armed with a Number 5 paint brush and a busketful of paint

?under the eaves painting houses in Greenfield.  Riley worked

?at painting houses for two summers while he learned the more

àdelicate art of painting signs. Eventually

?Riley rented a paint shop above a drugstore which he called

àthe "Morgue" and slept there much of the time because he did

ànot want his family to see how intoxicated he often became.

à

àƒ  Á‚ƂԂł̉‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚͂ςԂȂł̉‚¬‚ ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ‚Â‚Å‚Ă‚Á‚͂ł ‚Á‚ ‚Æ‚Á‚ӂÂɂ΂Á‚Ԃɂς΂

àƒ           ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Æ‚Á‚Ă‚Å‚Ó‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚Ă‚Á‚̉‚łǂɂւł̉‚

à

?     The Editor of Century Magazine, Hewitt Hanson Howland,

?claimed Riley's life was dominated by two fears, the fear of

?life and the fear of death.  "From my earliest recollection

?of him, he would, on the death of a friend, take on an added

?air of confidence, almost of gaiety.  `You can't make me

?believe he isn't around here somewhere,' he would say,

?`probably listening to us now and chuckling over our

?distress.'" I thought of him then as whistling in the dark;

?today we'd call it defensive mechanism. But by whatever name,

àRiley always gave the departed the best of the bargain."

à     Death of his mother turned the boy to denial.

à

àƒ     ׂ̉‚ɂԂɂ΂ǂ ‚Đ‚Ï‚Å‚Ô‚̉‚Ù‚ ‚ׂÁ‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚ ‚ׂÁ‚Ù‚ ‚ςƂ ‚̉‚ł͂ł͂‚ł̉‚ɂ΂ǂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚͂ςԂȂł̉‚

à

?     When Riley wrote poetry he was in a way still

?participating in an activity with his mother. Riley told

?Hamlin Garland in an interview that he got his verse-writing

?from his mother's family, the Marines. A characteristic of

?the whole family was their ability to write rhymes, but all

?unambitiously. "They write rhymed letters to each other, and

?joke and jim-crow with the Muses." This family love of poetry

?was the legacy of the poverty stricken mother to her son. She

?had nothing else to give him.

à

à̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚̀‚ɂƂł ‚Á‚ƂԂł̉‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚͂ςԂȂł̉‚ ‚ׂÁ‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚ ‚Ä‚̉‚Ơ‚΂˂ł΂

àƒ                   ɂԂɂ΂ł̉‚ł΂Ԃ ‚ӂɂǂ΂ ‚Đ‚Á‚ɂ΂Ԃł̉‚

àƒ

à     Poverty in the Riley home as well as Riley's increasing

?alcoholism combined to drive Riley from his home with his

àfather following his mother's death.  Riley's brother, Hum,

àand sisters remained. The period was one of great privation.

?Reuben Riley was not a good provider at any time following

?his very brief Civil War service.  Riley's younger brother

àgives evidence of this in a brief plaintive letter to brother

?John who left home to live and earn an income in

?Indianapolis.  Riley's brother, Hum at 13, wrote his brother

àJohn, "Dear Brother,

?I want you to send me a cap if you pleas (sic) by tomoro

?(sic) evening. I have none but one old one and it is not fit

àto wear to the fetival a cheap one will do so it looks well.

àYours truly,

à                                     /s/ Hum

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

à

à‚   ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Å‚Ø‚Đ‚̀‚Á‚ɂ΂ӂ ‚Ô‚Ï‚ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚‚̉‚ςԂȂł̉‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚Æ‚Á‚͂ɂ̀‚Ù‚ ‚̀‚ɂƂł ‚Á‚ƂԂł̉‚ ‚ԂȂł

àƒ                       ͂ςԂȂł̉‚§‚Ó‚ ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚

à

?     Another letter from Riley himself to his brother

àexplains Riley's poverty.

à

àJuly 14, 1871 letter to his brother John:

àDear Bro.:

?    Yesterday morn I failed to write to you - I found "the

?folks" all well - that is, "on their pins," but all pretty

?blue and no wonder.  There is no one to help May, who still

?continues to "gaze in vacancy" the  greater part of the time.

?I "waked" her for a little time yesterday by reading a sketch

?or two from Dickens.  Father is chief-cook-and bottle washer.

?I was going to say but Hum washes the dishes. Father has to

?go to the court house and be fined $10 for contempt of court.

?John, I tell you, our noble House is on the wane - everything

?is going - going - the same old carelessness marks our

à"progress."

?     ...I am going to work for Harris in a day or two.

?Father, I guess don't want to get, or keep a girl to assist

?May - economy, you know. I've been laughing forced laughs and

?dancing forced jigs till I'm about gone up - they don't

?appear to take - it will take a deeper trick - "simulating"

àhappiness, to be a success.

?     Augustus and Marie were up last evening and Dora from

?Pendleton - we had a pleasant time in our front parlors - the

?kitchen door open and father with his sleeves rolled up to

?his knees, getting supper for his clamor of offspring who ate

?crackers and water for dinner - maybe I don't talk right- I

àcan't say other way -Your affectionate bro.  Jim.

à

?Elva May Riley, at fourteen, took the mother's place in the

?family.  Harris was Riley's school master. In his schoolhouse

?in Lewisville, Riley and Harris spent half the night studying

àthe poetry, especially Tennyson, and writing verse.

?     The first poems were printed in Greenfield in local

?newspapers about this time.  Riley wrote them under the name

àEdyrn, taken from Tennyson's Éäù́́ó ïæ ôèå Ëéîç.

à

àƒ  ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚‚łǂɂ΂ӂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚̀‚ɂƂł­‚̀‚ς΂ǂ ‚Ó‚Ï‚̀‚ɂÂɂԂƠ‚Ăł ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚ӂɂӂԂł̉‚ ‚Í‚Á‚̉‚Ù‚

àƒ

?     Although Elva May Riley assumed the role of the mother

àof the bereaved family, the younger crippled child, Mary,

àwas left in great inconsolable sorrow by the death of her

àmother.

?     Following Elizabeth's death, Riley took to the habit of

?coming to his sister Mary's side at night after she had been

?put to bed, to recite Tennyson and Longfellow.  Both came to

?know some of these poems by heart and she remembered her

?brother particularly tried to emulate the musical cadence of

?the "The Lady of Shalott".  She recalled him as loving Keats

?best of all, but "he did not repeat those poems to me as a

àgirl."

à     Mary and Riley formed a special bond during this period.

àOften Riley would come home to the Riley homestead drunk and

àthe litte girl would come down to assist him get to his room.

?     Throughout the remainder of his life Riley considered

?his sister, Mary, as a special charge and supported her

?financially through many treveails. Born during the Civil

?War, Sister Mary suffered from spinal meningitis and was 15

àyears younger than Riley. His financial help kept her in

àa rather expensive standard of living. She and her daughter,

àLesley, lived in Paris, France, for many years dependent upon

?the assistance of the poet who gladly provided whatever

?resources were needed. Riley did this in memory of his mother

àas well as out of love for his sister. His sister's

àlife was as shattered by Crestillomeem as was his own.

à̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Ƃɂ̉‚Ó‚Ô‚ ‚Đ‚Ơ‚‚̀‚ɂӂȂłĂ ‚Đ‚Ï‚Å‚Ô‚̉‚Ù‚ ‚ɂ΂ ‚ɂ΂ĂɂÁ‚΂Á‚Đ‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ ‚Î‚Å‚×‚Ó‚Đ‚Á‚Đ‚Å‚̉‚Ó‚

à

?    A year and half after his mother's death, Riley sent

?poetry over to his brother John, then living in Indianapolis,

?to see if his brother could get them published in

?Indianapolis. John was able to do so at the Saturday MIRROR

?but only after recopying them because Riley's penmanship was

àvery bad. Riley sent this poetry to his brother on Feb 9th

àand awaited expectantly until the first, "Man's Devotion,"

?was published on March 30th.  Riley used the pen name Jay

àWhit but the newspaper mistakenly printed it as "Jay White."

?    Again Riley sent poetry in. Riley drove himself crazy

?after sending "A Ballad" to the Mirror. He wrote his brother

?"This suspense is terrible!  - daily I may be seen with

?solemn expression following the mail-bag from the depot, as

?tho' it were some dear-little-fat-corps of a relative who had

àperhaps remember me in his will- but alas!... "

?      When the poem "A Ballad" was finally published, it was

?edited and Riley was heartsick. Prepositions and articles

?were changed. Riley saw these as insults to the "ballad

?style." "It hurts me more that the poem was my favorite, and

àI had built an airy castle for it!" It was in this Spring

àthat Riley rented a room at an Inn in Greenfield, the Dunbar

àHouse, to practice his violin.

àƒ

àƒ            ̀‚Å‚Á‚ւɂ΂ǂ ‚Ȃς͂ł ‚Á‚ƂԂł̉‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚͂ςԂȂł̉‚§‚Ó‚ ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚

àƒ×‚ɂԂȂ ‚Ä‚Ï‚Ă‚ ‚Í‚ă‚Ă‚̉‚É‚̀‚̀‚Ơ‚Ó‚

à

?     Eventually, still in grief at his mother's death, Riley

?left Greenfield, his boyhood home, in May 1872, when he was

àtwenty-two by joining the traveling medicine show of Dr.

?Samuel Brown McCrillus. As the Twentieth Century ends, we can

?hardly imagine such a wild and strange event as the

?appearance in town of a medicine show.  But to the folk of

?Greenfield and the little towns of Indiana in the decade

àfollowing the Civil War, the coming of a patent

àmedicine wagon offered an occasion for fun and excitement.

?     Dr. McCrillus was not just a "doctor" who made his own

?prescription in Anderson - the one principal remedy for

?almost every illness to hear him tell it - McCrillus'

?European Balsam - he was also an entertainer back in the days

?when folk with that duo proclivity would take to the roads

àand sell medicine at medicine shows.

?     Imagine yourself in the Greenfield of the decade after

?the Civil War. Supper is over and the women are busy with a

?sinkful of dishes and the children are finishing their chores

?for the day. The men are out on the front porches having an

?after-dinner chaw of tobacco.  Only the buzz of a persistent

àfly breaks the lazy silence of the warm summer evening.

?     Suddenly, this halcyon scene is broken by a near-

?deafening blast of a trumpet. The Greenfield folk rush out of

àtheir houses to see what is going on.

?     Down State Street from the direction of Anderson come a

?pair of matched, plumed horses pulling a gaily decorated

?wagon.  It is painted in gaudy reds and blues and is

àembellished with curlicues in gold.  Is it a circus wagon?

?No. Even so all the kids of the town, cheering and pushing to

?get close, rush toward it and circle it as it heads down to

àthe courthouse square.

?     Dr. McCrillus has brought his medicine show to

àGreenfield once again as he did every year during this era.

?     We would all know him. Dr. Samuel Brown McCrillus is one

?of the most notable men in this part of Indiana.  He has made

?sure he is well known by hiring an "advance man" to paint his

?advertisements for his patent medicines in Greenfield on

àevery available barnside, post and rock.

?     Dr. McCrillus sits on the wagon seat, dignified and

?smiling, and he waves his hat to the men and bows and lifts

?his hat in a mannerly way to the ladies along the way.  He is

?a great humanitarian who takes the tributes of the crowd in

?stride.  After all not everyone has the sicknesses and

àailments of folk in their hearts like the good Quaker doctor.

?    After encircling the town square, Dr. McCrillus stops his

?bright wagon and climbs down.  Soon he is joined by the young

?man with him, Jim McClanahan, who will present an evening

?performance on the tailgate of the wagon in the flickering

àlate summer light along the Greenfield downtown Main Street.

?     Frequest commercials were interjected into the

?entertainments. Dr. McCrillus would signal for silence and a

àhush would encompass the crowd. "Friends and neighbors, "

?he would say, "let's get one thing clear at the beginning. I

?don't want your money.  I have come to Greenfield to help

?you." He really meant it. Then he would give his 19th Century

?hard sell, a pitch for "McCrillus European Balsam" and it

àworked, probably unlike the medicine itself.

?     One observer of this has recorded Dr. McCrillus's

?standard introduction of himself, as follows: "I have been

?engaged in the medicine business ever since I can recollect.

?I made pills by the day when only a boy of ten years.  For

?the past thirty-eight years, I have been engaged in putting

?up what is known as Dr. McCrillus' popular standard remedies,

?European Balsam, Tonic Blook Purifier, Oriental Liniment, and

?hoarhoud Expectorant.  Sold by druggists.  I could offer

?thousands of genuine certificates, but I am willing to leave

?the great public to judge of their merits.  I have adopted

?for my special use a trade mark, whereby the public may be

?protected against fraud and imposition.  Relief has been

?obtained by thousands of suferors by the use of my meedcines

?and they in turn have recommended them to others.  In this

?way,  I am making living advertisements for myself and

?medicines.  Be sure the name of Dr. S.B. McCrillus, Anderson,

àIndiana, is on every bottle, otherwise it is a fraud." (As

?found in the Madison County Historical Gazette of October,

à1979.)

?     Dr. McCrillus worked all winter making pills and

?preparing his tonic in his laboratory.  Then in the summer he

?would pack them all up in a bright wagon driven by his two

?sorral horses and travel all over Central Indiana putting on

àthese little shows to cause people to congregate.

?     When James Whitcomb Riley left Greenfield at the age of

?twenty-two to join a traveling patent medicine show, he had

?not just hooked up with a simple charlaton.  Doc McCrillus

?was a patent medicine manufacturer who believed in his

?products and traveled around Indiana in the summers peddling

?his cures with vim and vigor. The Doc would give wondrous

?programs from his wagon to extol the virtues of his many

?cures.  Somehow he also kept open a little medicine shop on

?the south side of Anderson's public square during this era

?according to the Emerson and Williams Anderson City Directory

àof 1876-77.

?     In a way, Riley was lucky that Doc McCrillus took him

àon. Jim Riley tried to talk his way into the good doctor's

àtraveling miracle medicine show on the basis that he could

àdo a good public relations job.  Riley had long painted

?signs - Riley's dad had had him apprenticed to a Greenfield

?signmaker at an early age to keep the boy from being a

?juvenile delinquent - and he told Doc McCrillus he would

?advance to the next towns on the circuit and make signs for

?his show.  The problem is that Doc McCrillus already had one

?sign painter, a young man named James McClanahan also from

àthe doctor's hometown of Anderson.

à     The more Riley talked though, the more the doctor felt

àfavorably inclined to include the young man in his travels.

àLike many others, Doctor McCrillus knew Reuben Riley, Jim's

àdad, and knew his father, a lawyer, was a good showman in his

àown way. Then he asked Riley to see some of his signs. Riley

?sited him to a bridge where he had painted an eagle and a

?flag.  With the boy's father's permission, James Whitcomb

àRiley was off on his first adventure away from Greenfield

àand home.

?     Doc McCrillus's visit to Greenfield was the first of the

?patent medicine man's stops in the summer of 1872.  Actually,

?the Doc took his two Jims back to Anderson and to his home at

?3 East Lincoln Street there on its historic brick street that

?still remains after the Greenfield trip to prepare for the

?entertainments for the rest of the summer.  Jim Riley and Jim

?McClanahan learned to perform many acts together.  Riley had

?brought with him his guitar and banjo along with his natural

?gift of wit and novelty.  The program would provide a forum

?for Doc McCrillus to spiel out his philosophic approach to

?his patent medicines, then the three would sing a trio and

?other entertainments would follow.  In this summer, Riley

?would become a comedian and give recitations and also sing,

?as well as go on ahead of the medicine show to the oncoming

àtowns to paint signs advertising the show to come.

à     It is a shame that Doctor McCrillus has faded into such

?obscurity as a historical figure.  No obituary of him

?survives.  We only know that he was born in Dubois County on

?June 27, 1830 and died at the age of 70 in Anderson on Feb.

?12, 1901.  His wife was from Southern Indiana too.  Her name

?was Helen Coningore and the two married in 1861 in Paoli. The

?doctor's parents were Aaron Bailey and Sarah (nee Brown)

?McCrillus. We know from the standard Dubois County Histories

?of the Nineteenth Century that Dr. Samuel McCrillus was

?educated in a pioneer school - his only education that I

?could uncover-in the front room of a "Professor Cheaver on

?the southeast corner of the public square of Jasper, and was

?elected as the first Auditor of Dubois County before he was

?twenty-one under Indiana's Second Constitution, before

?migrating to Anderson in 1861 for some unknown reason and

?taking to patent medicine manufacture. Medical School

?anywhere is not in his resume. I suppose he had learned as

?Auditor of Dubois County that to be a medical doctor in this

?period of history one only had to register as such with the

?County Auditor where you wished to be an M.D.  Among the

àplaces his children settled was Wilkinson, in Hancock County.

à     This was the man who would spirit James Whitcomb Riley

àaway from Greenfield and offer him the chance to become

àan entertainer and meet many characters.

?     None of this may particularly sound like a background

?experience for a young man who would help define what an

àAmerican home and its life would involve. But James Whitcomb

àRiley was a young man who "itched" to move right then.

?     Whether he knew it or not, James Whitcomb Riley was on a

?quest to understand the meaning of homelife as well as to

?understand his Greenfield home where he had lived in his

?youth, a home he had now flown.  His quest would cause him to

?write extensively and famously and he would explore every

?element of what others might think were elements of his

àdream.  Strangely he would never have a home such as he would

àformulate as an ideal for his readers and listeners.

?    In a newspaper interview about taking on James Whitcomb

?Riley to join his patent medicine show, Doc McCrillus once

?said, "This patent medicine business was not organized then

?like it is today." (I suppose he meant after the passage of

?laws like the Pure Food and Drug Act regulating what could be

?sold as "drugs.") "I did as big a business as any one.  All

?of us then had great, fine wagons and would load up with our

?medicines and drive from town to town.  We would carry a sign

?painter along and as we jogged from place to place would stop

?and paint signs on fences or barns.  I would take part of the

àpay for the medicines in paint."

?     "We got to Greenfield...(His "sign painter," James

àMcClanahan was present at this interview too)... "and when I

?was over at the drug store, Jim McClanahan, who was my

?painter, scraped up an acquaintance with this fellow Riley,

àwho was a red-head, sorry-looking young fellow."

à     "Yes, (McClanahan said,) Doc had gone over to the drug

?store and I had let down the back and was looking over the

àsupply of paint when this feller Riley came up and commenced

?to talk to me. He told me he was a painter, too.  I sized him

?*up and shot back - 'Yes, I see as how you're a blin'

àpainter,' and I pointed out some green paint on his clothes -

?the green that we used to daub the blinds with.  That was the

?worst thing you could say to a painter, and Riley blushed and

?said that he could paint more than blinds and houses and he

?pointed out a sign or two.  When Doc came back to the wagon I

?told him the young fellow wanted to go with us, that he had

?painted those signs; and that he said he could play the

?guitar and the fiddle - Riley never liked the word fiddle.

?Doc took him on to help me out and to help him in his

?lectures.  Riley was a fast painter and his lettering was

?good, and he helped McCrillus entertain the crowds in the

àstreet." (From a newspaper interview found in loose papers at

àthe Indiana University library at Indianapolis.)

à    It is easy to say that Riley's career began on Doc

?McCrillus's gaudy "show wagon." The entertainments that Riley

?performed to gather crowds for Doc McCrillus were the start

?of his public career as a showman himself...and entertainer

àfrom the stage.

?     After his death, a contemporary American author of

?Riley's, Hamlin Garland, would say of him, "...in truth his

?success did not come so much in print as through his own

?reading of his lines from the platform.  He had in him

?something of the minstrel.  He possessed notable power to

?charm and move an audience, and everywhere he spoke he left a

?throng of friends.  To hear him read - or recite - "A Song of

?the Airly Days" was to be moved in a new and unforgettable

?way.  His vibrant individual voice, his flexile lips, his

?droll glance, united to make him at once poet and comedian -

?comedian in the sense which makes for tears as well as for

?laughter." (From "Commemorative Tribute to James Whitcomb

?Riley" by Hamlin Garland, read in the 1920 Lecture Series of

àthe American Academy of Arts and Letters.)

?     Riley's "minstrelcy" or showmanship may have been an

?offshoot of Doc McCrillus's, or at least substantially

?influenced by him. People would come to listen and be

?entertained by the patent medicine man and his young men

?consorts. At most these audiences were a "testing ground" for

?the young James Whitcomb Riley to learn his craft of

?entertaining and amusing audiences.  There is a tendency to

?think this shallow and not necessarily significant.  That

àconclusion would be dead wrong.

à     There is not just a "give" but rather a "give and take"

àin the performing arts.  James Whitcomb Riley participated in

?the life of these audiences around the brightly painted

?patent medicine wagon.  The crowds became a part of the

?entertainer who would write down his poetry from time to

àtime. What the crowds found "right" in Riley's poetry became

àRiley's subject matter. Since establishing homes was the main

?thrust of the small town populaces Riley entertained, ideas

àof home abound in Riley's poetry.

à     This book proposes that there was also a Riley component

àto the formulation of an American homelife conceptually which

àdeserves this book's exploration.

?     In any case, Riley's trip with Doc McCrillus was a start

?on a journey which would take him through his life and even

?take his life at the end. It was a tragic quest which was

?buried in humor and hopeful sentiment. It was a journey to

?find love and to try to be loved. Its meaning would boil down

?to a concept of home. Unfortunately, the meaning was one

?which proved a truce by which American homelife could become

?established and normalized and permit the thriving of others,

?but not for himself. A lonely death in a small upper

?apartment of an Indianapolis house would be James Whitcomb

àRiley's lot.

à     James Whitcomb Riley's first journey away from

àGreenfield was begun when he joined the patent medicine

àshow of Doctor Samuel McCrillus in 1872.

?     In the autobiographical edition of his poetry, Riley

?described his employment with Doc McCrillus, the traveling

àmiracle medicine man with whom Riley escaped Greenfield:

?     "My duty was the manipulation of two blackboards swung

?at the sides of the wagon during our street lecture and

?concert. These boards were alternately embellished with

àcolored drawings illustrative of the manifold virtues of the

ànostrum vended.  Sometimes, I assisted the musical olio with

?dialect recitations and character sketches from the back

àsteps of the wagon."

?     In describing his getaway from the memories of this

?death with a medicine man selling his cure-all, Riley said "I

?rode out of town with that glittering cavalcade," the poet

?said, "without saying good-bye to anyone, and though my

?patron was not a diplomaed doctor, as I found out, he was a

?man of excellent habits and the whole company was made up of

?good, straight, jolly, chirping vagabonds like myself." Riley

?fitted easily into this roving company as a black board and

?colored chalk artist, illustrating the virtues of the

?medicine vended, supplemented with a repertoire of songs,

?jokes and original recitations.   After a wonderful tour, the

?poet returned to Greenfield with pockets as empty as they

àwere when he left.

?     In May 31, 1872 Riley wrote his brother, "...  I have

?been advertising for the Farmer's Grocery for three or four

?days and am feeling pretty sore, physically - but quite the

?contrary mentally for I have now removed a load of about 6$

àfrom my mind and so -

?     "Patience and shuffle the cards," - and I'll soon be out

àof debt.

?     John, I have an offer from a young advertiser, who was

?attracted by my card in the post-office, to travel and do

?Medicine advertising and such, and I believe I will go.  I

?can be at home as often as you.  I guess: so we won't be

?broken badly.  I think it will be the best thing I could do:

?I'll be in the open air all the time, and I do like

?advertising - especially where I have a chance of making 5$

?and 6$ a day.  I send you a photograph of my card. - How do

?you like? - I received a complimentary squib in both our

?worthy papers.  The young man i am going with is a good

?business agent and sharp as the proverbial tack.  He is not

?much on the letter, but knows how to get work and handle

?"expenses" and all that.  He is entirely stranger to me - but

?he is from Anderson, and refers me to dozens of the best men

?the town contains.  We will do general advertising: he has

?had experience and knows all about it - I will go as partner

?or not at all.  If we succeed it won't be a great while

?before I show advertisers what advertising is like the card I

?send you for instance - I can design them and we can have

?them engraved and furnish cards novel, new and unique for so

àmuch a thous - look out!

à                             Yours &c Jim

à

?Then on July 17th 1872, he wrote his brother that he was

àabout to start on a week's trip to neighboring towns.

?     When Riley and McClanahan traveled they entered a town

?to great theatrical display.  Riley said, "on entering a

?town, McClanahan went first to the livery stable and with

?unfailing instinct  picked out the best horses.  It was not

?long before we were in the good graces of the livery-man and

?had as our reward the best team in the barn free of charge

?for the afternoon. Then the two made a dashing appearance

?into town to talk to the leading merchants proposing to

?advertise them on every barn fence and boulder on each of the

?roads leading into town.  Riley remembered saying "these

?signs will stand as long as the fence or barn or stone

?remains...Why, you spend that much each year on newspaper

?advertising and, what is more, your newspaper allows your

?competitor to advertise in the very next column in a more

?conspicuous place.  He  can't do that on the road, because

?you'll have every fence and barn, and if you don't take the

àcontract he will, you bet."

?     Their business card proposed "all styles of signs and

?painted advertisements and original designs in fancy cards

?and bulletins and banner signs of all kinds and ends is in

àrhyme,

?    "We strive in each particular to give our fellow man

à     entire Satisfaction.

à                        Riley and McClanahan

à

à     In the winter of 72-3, Riley spent the winter in Marion.

?"I didn't have enough covers on my bed, only a

?counterpane.(Biographer's note: coverlet). I laid newspapers

?in between that and the sheet to keep out the cold.  Oh, I

?was living in an old rat-trap and didn't see where the money

?for my Saturday's board was coming from.  And I was homesick.

?One day a letter came from my small brother `Hum,' a boy

?letter about Nuisance," our dog, who had died.  When I got

?that broken-hearted letter I simply crawled away to my room,

?threw myself on the bed and cried." This was the winter when

?"Dot Leedle Boy of Mine," was written.  Riley said, "Writing

àverse was the only fun I had."

à

à‚   ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Ä‚Å‚Đ‚Á‚̉‚Ô‚Ơ‚̉‚Å‚ ‚̉‚Å‚̀‚Á‚ԂłĂ ‚Ô‚Ï‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚̉‚ɂӂł ‚ςƂ ‚ԂȂł ‚Ô‚Å‚Í‚Đ‚Å‚̉‚Á‚Î‚Ă‚Å‚

àƒ                          ͂ςւł͂ł΂Ԃ¿‚

àƒ  We know that Riley left Greenfield to join Doc McCrillus

?and therafter to travel with Jim McClanahan painting at just

?about the time the temperance movement was strenghthening and

?young men Riley's age were being asked to sign Murphy pledges

?not to drink alcoholic beverages. Near this time of Riley's

?period of greatest inebriations after his mother's death, the

?Indiana Women's Christian Temperance Union was just getting

?organized.  When Mrs.  Zerelda Wallace, its first President,

?and stepmother of General Lew Wallace, author of "Ben Hur,"

?took her first temperance petition before the Indiana

?legislature, she was informed that, since her petition was

?from women who couldn't vote, it "amounted to no more than

?the tracks of so many mice." This aroused Mrs. Wallace to

?become a public speaker throughout the state on temperance

?and women's vote issues.  Other women joined in the  fight.

?Soon women were lining up, two abreast, in great processions

?after church services to enter the taverns of Hoosier towns

?to ask saloon keepers to close down and seek the reformation

?of the drinkers inside.  Tavern keepers could do little about

?these invasions. They could not throw out the ladies who

?would yell, "Unhand me, Sir!" or remind them that "No one but

?a coward touches a woman save in kindness." No lady could be

?removed from the bar door when they chose to sing temperance

?songs outside.  It is said that huge and brutal looking

?barkeeps quailed  to the pure womanhood while their potential

?patrons left or walked away without entering their usual

àhaunts.

?    The resistance of the saloon keepers of the Hoosier

?Deutsch - those of Riley's stock - was greater than the

àothers.  Sometimes a thick accented German wife of a barkeep

?fetched her small children and fed them beer in full sight of

àthe temperance women. Many times those of Hoosier Deutsch

?heritage were subject to derision for special sinfulness and

àforeign barbarism. It was more common for the Deutsch

àsaloon owners to resist. They drove the women out of their

?establishments by opening doors and windows in the winter,

?throwing pepper on the stoves to cause them to sneeze and

?cry, flooding the floor with filthy water, putting out the

?fires in their stoves or just plain plugging the stovepipe to

àsmoke them out. Occasionally, drinkers would throw tobacco

?juicy sawdust from the bar floors at the ladies. If fights

?did break out, few ladies feared being convicted of

àdisorderly conduct or such charges.

?     A poem by Elizabeth T. Wills of the Wabash, Indiana,

?Women's Christian Temperance Union describes the temperance

àactivity of the time.  It should be remembered that Riley

àand his friends were what these ladies would call "rummies."

?The antagonistic but pious mood toward alcoholics in Indiana

àis expressed in this poem.

à‚                   ԂȂł ‚Ô‚Å‚Í‚Đ‚Å‚̉‚Á‚Î‚Ă‚Å‚ ‚Ă‚̉‚Ơ‚Ó‚Á‚Ăł

̀ÅÙ0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆ>ˆˆˆˆ2ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

à     Away back in the Seventies

à     A long, long time ago,

à     We women went out in the old crusade

à     When the ground was covered with snow.

à     Now what do you  mean by the old crusade?

à     We would like to hear you explain

à     Was the fight just for popularity

à     Which we women were hoping to gain?

à     No, we mothers had sat in rum ruined homes

à     And mourned o'er the wreckage the rum fiend had made

à     It was rum, rum with its withering curse,

?     That's what started the Temperance Crusade.  Rum had

à     robbed us of husband, had robbed us of sons

à     And of all, which the heart holds most dear

à     So we women went out, in this battle for home

à     Without the least tremor of fear.

à     In Hillsboro, Ohio, the Crusade first broke out

à     And the first soon kindled to flame.

à     it flew to the south, the north, east and west

à     Just like a tornado it came.

à     This fire had been smoldering  for years and for years

à     Just waiting and ready to catch.

à     It was fed by wrecked manhood and orphan's sad tears

à     All it lacked was just touching the match.

à     We met in the churches, met three times a day

à     To form resolutions, to talk, sing and pray.

à     Just women in daytime, men kept out of sight

à     But they joined in our mass-meetings held every  night.

à     Then while all the church bells were ringing at once

à     and all the whistles were blowing,

à     We started right out with our hymn books in hand

à     To  visit saloons - we were going.

à     We caused much excitement as we marched two abreast

?     Through the crowded and awe-stricken street But with

à     heads quite erect and courage unchecked

à     Did we march with the snow on our feet.

à     We marched right in to the open saloon

à     And begged of the men to desist

à     But some grew angry and cursed us

à     And came at us  with shaking fist;

à     And some of them told us we'd better go home

?     And men our husband's sox; We appointed committees to

à     sit out in front,

à     To keep the men out of saloons.

à     I imagine we felt a little like men

à     When they finally tree their 'coons;

à     And we couldn't help but sorter wear

à     A half-way satisfied grin

à     To see the men we were keeping out

à     That wanted so much to go in.

à     Then while at this stage in the conflict

à     After first excitement was through,

à     we organized the little band

à     called the W.C.T.U,

à     And the ball has kept rolling and rolling

à     with its purity banner unfurled,

à     Till now our white-ribbon army

à     Is teaching and belting the world.

à     So pin on the white ribbon, sisters,

à     And we will keep plugging away,

à     Till we win in the fight and put rummies to flight

à     Some Glad Day.

à

àI suppose to some extent the young Riley was "put to flight"

àby the temperance ladies and their talk about such young men

àas Riley who drank too much.

à

̀ëá‰0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ2ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

?̀‚ɂƂł ‚ɂ΂ ‚É‚Î‚Ô‚Ï‚Ø‚É‚Ă‚Á‚Ԃɂς΂ ‚Á‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚ ‚Ă‚Ï‚Î‚Ó‚Ă‚É‚Ï‚Ơ‚Ó‚ ‚Ă‚È‚Ï‚É‚Ă‚Å‚ ‚ςƂ ‚ԂȂł ‚Ù‚Ï‚Ơ‚΂ǂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق

à

à     Riley did not consider his alcoholism as some disease or

àunconscious decision. Riley wanted to indulge in alcohol and

?become intoxicated as a young man following the death of his

àmother.  He did not want any temperance movement person

àinterfering for the escape he found in drinking alcoholic

àbeverages.

?     This admission is made in his autobiographical poem,

à"The Flying Islands of the Night" where Jucklet explains this

àto Crestillomeem, Riley's alcoholism.

à

àHe thinks thee even true to him as thou

àArt fickle, false and subtle!  O how blind

àAnd lame, and deaf and dumb, and worn and weak,

àAnd faint, and sick, and all-commodious

àHis dear love is! In sooth, O wifely one,

àThy malleable spouse doth mind me of

àThat pliant hero of the bald old catch

à"Thy Lovely Husband." - Shall I wreach the thing?

à

à(Sings±À‚ - with much affected gravity and grimace)

à

àO a lovely husband he was known,

àHe loved his wife and her a-lone;

àShe reaped the harvest he had sown;

àShe ate the meat, he picked the bone.

à    With mixed admirers every size,

à    She smiled on each without disguise;

à    This lovely husband closed his eyes

à    Lest he might take her by surprise,

à

àƒ                    (Aside, exclamatory)

à

àƒ                    Chorious uproarious!

à

?(Then pantomime as though pulling at bell-rope - singing in

àpent, explosive utterance)

à

àTrot!

àRun!  Wasn't he a handy hubby?

à

àWhat

àFun

àShe could plot and plan!

à

àNot One

àOther such a dandy hubby

àAs this lovely man!

à

à1. The 1898 edition of "The Flying Islands" contains a score

àfor this song. Riley set the song to music for this edition.

?The hubby's (Riley's) hope for public success is dwindled

?into the alcoholic debauchery preferred by Riley in

àsubjection to the personality of the Queen.

à

?     This part of the poem borders on pathos rather than

àhumor. Riley was wedded to alcoholism when he might have been

?"more conscious and alive" when Riley's married lover, Nellie

àCooley, was alive.

?     Nellie Cooley (Dwainie) tried on many occasions to set

?Riley free from his alcoholism, none with any success during

?her lifetime. Only after her death did she come to him in the

?delirious account chronicled in "The Flying Islands of the

àNight," and succeed in this effort.

à

àƒ                   Đ‚Ï‚Å‚Ô‚̉‚Ù‚ ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚͂ς̉‚Å‚ ‚Ô‚̉‚Á‚Ö‚Å‚̀‚

à

à     Riley not only began his life of alcoholism after his

àmother's death, but he also most earnestly began his writing

?of poetry to express his feelings. After his mother's death

?he began his nocturnal life. Riley's poems were mostly

?written at night because he once said, "Then angels listen to

?the whisper of his pencil as I write." This habit came early

?and from the days he painted signs.  Often too intoxicated to

?return home, he slept many places. One of them was at the

?station of the night watchman of the Greenfield Bank. The

?night watchman was happy for the company because he could

?sleep at night knowing Riley was awake by a dim lamp with a

àpencil and tablet in hand.

?     Most of his early life, he recalled hearing a clock

àstrike four.

à     How did Riley consider his life?

?     There can be no more discordant event than the death of

?a caregiving mother. There is no place to go for reassurance

àand to avoid anxiety more satisfying than to one's mother.

?One does not feel unworthy when a mother gives acceptance.

àParental love is the great shield of apprehensiveness.

à     The next year saw Riley traveling the State of

àIndiana again with McClanahan.

à     Riley's friends shared his general love of the

?drunken life. Nov. 26, 1873, apparently written while Mack

?(James McClanahan) was drunk.  The letter starts out, "Answer

?soon for God's sake.  Don't make fun of me.  This is written

?on the letterhead of Harvin and Booker, Frankfort. "O dam the

?pin I can't write fast enough.  Damd if I ever felt good in

?my life.  Good God I'm off my feet. Would to God that I could

?see you NOW. You ask me why don't I write.  That's damn fine

?talk ain't it...Oh, my God, but I do feel Hob. Hob hell. That

?don't express it.  Can you read this?...." McClanahan is

àwriting Riley in desperation. The woman he is living with

?is apparently giving him Hell. McClanahan says he has given

?people the impression the woman he is living with and he are

àmarried but they aren't.

?     There are records from friends in newspaper

àrecollections that are revealing:

à     From Riley's South Bend life comes the recollection

?of Frank Murphy. Just across from Blowneys was a saloon and

?Riley was said to dearly love to have a glass of beer there

?with innumerable friends, Bill Allen, Al Stockford, Frank

?Murphy.  On one occasion, when Riley and Bill Allen, a

?drinking buddy of Riley's, were painting the outside of the

?old St. Joseph hotel, the scaffolding they were standing on

?fell and both of them were hurt, but not seriously. Later,

?when Riley was famous and was lecturing in South Bend, Bill

?Allen went to see Riley at his hotel and Riley refused to see

?him.  In Riley's "Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury," Riley mentioned

àmany of his South Bend friends and in particular "the Wild

?Irishman," Frank Murphy, a genial, jovial Irishman, loud of

?speech, warm in friendship and who could improvise poetry and

?enjoy a glass of whisky or any other concoction accompanied

?with plenty of hilarity and good fellowship, which was

?exactly to young Riley's temperamental liking and as a result

?the two were good friends til death took them. Riley called

?him Tommy in his sketch and says he sings at one of their

àconvivial gatherings in the Andrews saloon:

à     "But R-R-Riley, he'll not go I guess

à      Lest, he'd get losht in the wil-der-ness,

à      And so in the city he will shtop

à      For to curl his hair in the barbershop."

?     Of the Andrews Saloon where Riley frequently quenched

àhis thirst and was always welcome, he sings,

à     "Of the Andrews brothers they'll be there

à      Wid good sy-gars and wine to spare,

à      They'll treat us here on fine champagne

à      And when we're there, they'll treat us again."

?Whenever Murphy went to Indianapolis, he would look Riley up

?and they would have a good time recalling the days when Riley

?was a sign painter in South Bend. Maj. Blowney did not mind

?Riley writing verses and gave him a blank book to write them

àin.

à

?̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚ׂȂɂ̀‚Å‚ ‚͂ɂ΂ӂԂ̉‚Å‚̀‚ɂڂɂ΂ǂ ‚Á‚Ó‚ ‚Ê‚Ơ‚Â˂̀‚łԂ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚Ă‚̉‚łӂԂɂ̀‚̀‚ς͂łł͂

à

à     It is to this early period of Riley's wandering life

?following the death of his mother, that Riley refers in his

àautobiographical poem when he portrays Crestilommen (his

àalcoholism) and his minstrelcy play self (Jucklet) in

àhappy companionship and shared delight.

à

àƒ                Semblance of Jucklet (Sings)

à

àCrestillomeem!

?               Crestillomeem!  Soul of my slumber! - Dream of

àmy dream!

àMoonlight may fall not as goldenly fair

àAs falls the gold of thine opulent hair -

àNay, nor the starlight as dazzlingly gleam

àAs gleam thine eyes, 'Meema - Crestillomeem! -

à        Star of the skies, 'Meema -

?                                    Crestillomeem!

à

àƒ             Semblance of Crestillomeem (Sings)

à

àO Prince divine!

à                   O Prince divine!

àTempt thou me not with that sweet voice of thine!

àThough my proud brow bear the blaze of a crown,

àLo, at thy feet must its glory bow down.

àThat from the dust thou mayest lift me to shine

àHeaven'd in thy heart's rapture, O Prince divine! -

à     Queen of thy love ever,

à                              O Prince divine!

à

àƒ                Semblance of Jucklet (Sings)

à

àCrestillomeem!  Crestillomeem!

àOur life shall flow as a musical stream±À‚ -

àWindingly - placidly on it shall wend,

àMarged with mazhorra-bloom banks without end -

àWord-birds shall call thee and dreamily scream,

à"Where dost thou cruise, 'Meema - Crestillomeem?

à       Whither away, 'Meema? -Crestillomeem!

à

à1. Jucklet, Riley's pranking and jocular self,

àcan get along quite well in intoxicated state.

à

àƒ                             Duo

à

à(Vision and voices gradually failing away)

à

àCrestillomeem!

à               Crestillomeem!

àSoul of my slumber! - Dream of my dream!

àStar of Love's light, 'Meema±À‚ - Crestillomeem!

à     Crescent of Night, 'Meema! -

à

à1. "me" backwards and forwards.

à

àƒ             É‚Î‚Ă‚É‚Ä‚Å‚Î‚Ô‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚ƂԂł̉‚ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚͂ςԂȂł̉‚§‚Ó‚ ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚

àƒ

?     Once Riley suspended himself by a rope from a bridge and

?painted a sign on the bottom of the bridge inverting the

?letters so the approaching traffic would see the advertising

?on the surface of the water.  He painted many barns on his

àtravels in the years of his early twenties.

?     When he returned home to Greenfield occasionally he did

?some odd jobs for Greenfield folk.  He did cards for War

?Barnett and went to a Greeley meeting and "ogled some

àterribly damp Goddesses of Liberty, etc."

?     Riley saw Brett Harte read while in South Bend in the

?fall 1873 but did not go speak to him although they stood

?close to each other after the performance. "I wanted to speak

?to him for he had been a great inspiration to me, but some

àfear within restrained me.

?     1874 was another year of restless wandering about

àIndiana with Jim McClanahan and friends. Riley's family

?were not supportive. They wished him settled down. They

àdid not like his wanderings around with his carefree

?drinking friends. A letter Riley sent to his brother

?John, dated Nov.  16, 1874, states: "...In reply to a

?question of yours-McClanahan is not with me now, nor hasn't

?been for months, and in lieu of myself -as per lady-book-

?statement, -is traveling in the Vinegar Recipe line and

?making big money.  He controls a party of 13 agents who sell

àrecipes while he is employed selling Territory.

?    I have been working for McCrillus, principally, since my

?return to Anderson, but have surprised the folks occasionally

?with a sign: I am at work now on an advertising card that

?will be superior! I won't enter in to a description of it -

?wait till it's done and I'll show it to you - it will be my

?masterpiece as I have "mixed my colors with brains." Oh, it's

?artistic - not letters in gold alone, but the "female form

?divine" graces the center of the design, while the letters

àaround her twine and glimmer and gleam and shine

à

à     Like the limpid, laughing waters

à     Of the Classic Brandywine."

à

?     The picture from the poetry and the situation of the

?departure with the good Doc's patent medicine show is of a

?young man, Riley, simply on the run from the death of his

àmother steadily seeking the companionship of Crestillomeem.

à     Perhaps his relationship with his married friend, Nellie

?Cooley back in Greenfield further encouraged both his

?departures and exacerbated alcohol use. Upon his returns to

?Greenfield he inevitably sought Nellie's company and this was

?not a situation Riley's family was very happy about either.

?Nellie was, after all, a married woman. It was not a good

?sign that she was the woman he was paying attention to. For

?now we simply repeat the last stanza of a poem called "A

àPoet's Wooing," (1872)

à"What can I do to make you glad -

à  As glad as glad can be,

à     Till your clear eyes seem

à     Like the rays that gleam

à  And glint through a dew-decked tree? -

à     Will it please you, dear, that I now begin

à     A grand old air on my violin?"

à  And she spoke again in the following way, -

à    "Yes, oh yes, it would please me, sir;

à I would be so glad you'd play

à     Some grand old march - in character, -

à  And then as you march away

àI will no longer thus be sad,

àBut oh, so glad - so glad - so glad!"

à

?Was Nellie discouraging Riley's attentions as well as

àencouraging them - driving Riley crazy?

à     Life with Doc McCrillus was a pleasant and diverting

?life. To gain the flavor of the Doc McCrillus patent medicine

?enterprise, it may be helpful to consider the product Riley

?was selling.  One of the testimonials to Doc McCrillus's

?patent medicine has come down to us from two men who

?otherwise are unknown to history, E. Sipe and Sam Pence,

?self-styled as "Horse Dealers." They witness as follows:  "We

?speak whereof we have seen and know about Dr. S.B. McCrillus'

?European Balsam.  We believe it to be a valuable medicine in

?the cure of horse disease -epizootic -as a disinfectant, and

?also a great relief to the horse when sick by burning it on

?coals in the stable and letting the horses inhale the

?Balsam." (Found in loose folders on Riley in the Anderson

àCity Library).

à     This testimonial would be rather "backhand" since Doc

àMcCrillus's miracle cures were intended for humans.

?     As you would look at the darkly ominous bottle of the

?good doctor's chief product, you would immediately know it

?was something very special.  A trumpeting baby elephant was

?on the label on whose back was a huge leather satchel as big

?as the elephant comtaining the word's "McCrillus' European

àBalsam."

à     The Balsam's label contained other information in

?different sized print: "The Acknowledged Excelsior System

?Renovator.  Cures WEAK BACK. It Cures Bronchitis, Palpitation

?of the Heart, Laryngitis, Sore Throat, Phthisic(sic), Weak

?Breast, Coughs and Colds, Female Complaints, Liver Complains,

?Dyspepsia, Chronic Rheumatism, Etc." In much smaller print

?along the sides of the label are the statements, "This

?Balsam, composed exclusively of vegetable matter, has

àattained for itself an almost cosmopolitan celebrity. In its

?successful treatment of all diseases of a nervous and

àinflammatory nature, and for a weak state of the system.  It

?heals the lungs, strengthens the stomach, rectifies its

?disorders and regualtes the bowels.  It allays inflammation

àexternally and internally.  Dissolves the secretions of the

àurinary glands, and cures grave and WEAKNESS OF THE KIDNEYS."

?     Just dreaming up such a mess of quasi-medical

?gobbledegook such as this must have taken the good Doc much

?time.  Incidently, the good Dr. McCrillus's death certificate

àon file with the Madison Co. Health Department shows

?his cause of death as "acute pneumonitis" which we tend to

?call pneumonia.  Did the doctor not take his own cure?  Lung

?ailments were supposed to be overcome by his European Balsam.

?Or could it have been that he wished his own remedy worked a

àlittle better as he was slipping away?

?     In any case, the summers in which James Whitcomb Riley

àleft home to join Doc McCrillus and paint and travel were

?pleasant and fun-filled interludes and adventures  Riley and

?McClanahan were said to have performed many acts together

?from the show wagon.  Riley always took his guitar and banjo

?with him, and much entertainment was verbalized with

?recitation of entertaining stories.  When Riley was on the

?road with Doc, he would interject his philsophy of medicine

?and the virtures of his cures and then sometimes the three

?would sing as a trio.  Eventually, James Whitcomb Riley is

?said to have become very popular with demands for encores for

àhis recitations and even singing.

?     After these surrealistic summer experiences, James

àWhitcomb Riley returned with the Doc to Anderson to idle away

?time.  He lived either with Doc or in apartment houses in

?Anderson or nearby towns where he went to paint signs or

?houses or with mom McClanahan in Anderson.  Everywhere he

?went, Riley spent time on street corners talking to the

?people of Anderson or wherever he was and writing seriously,

?filling the bureau drawers of his board rooms and trunks with

àpapers until they were stuffed.

?     Only when Riley ran out of his "summer" or "sign" money

àdid he return to Greenfield, his boyhood home.

?     1874 was the year McGeecy, editor of the Danbury,

?Connecticut, NEWS, accepted Riley's poetry encouraging him

?greatly. This was also the year Riley worked out the

?elocution and performance points for "The Bear Story" and

?"Tradin' Joe." Riley read these in occasional school houses

àand churches.

?     These early years of young manhood also saw Riley

?produce much whimsical doggerel verse for advertising

àincluding this "advertisement" for his friend the good

àDoc McCrillus:

à     "Whereever blooms of health are blown,

à      McCrillus' Remedies are known;

à      Wherever happy lives are found

à      You'll find his medicines around,

à      From coughs and colds and lung disease

à      His patients find a sweet release

à      In using his Expectorant

à      That cures where even doctors can't.

à      His Oriental Liniment

à      Is known to fame to such extent

à      That orders for it emanate

à      From every portion of the State,

à      His European Balsam, too,

à      Send blessings down to me and you;

à      And holds its throne from year to year

à      In every household far and near,

à      His purifier for the blood

à      Has earned a name fair and good

à      As ever glistened on the page

à      Of any annals of the age.

à      And he who pants for health ease

à      Should try these Standard Remedies."


 

 

cure of horse disease -epizootic -as a disinfectant, and

?also a great relief to the horse when sick by burning it on

?coals in the stable and letting the horses inhale the

?Balsam

FÄb̃
GERBILDOC3  ưCCNN?[1] ?[1]


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à

?    There is both prose and poetry written reflecting Riley's

?life in intoxication.  It is mostly poetry of the 1870's,

?Riley's period of great production in which no topic of his

àlife was "off limits."

à     We have the poet who would one day - after he comes

àto kenoticism - be known as "The Children's Poet" taking the

?classic "Little Red Riding Hood," and turning it into the

àstory as told by an alcoholic.

à

à     ¢‚̀‚ɂԂԂ̀‚Å‚ ‚̉‚łĂ ‚̉‚ɂĂɂ΂ǂ ‚ȂςςĂ¢‚ ‚é‚î‚ ‚é‚î‚ô‚ï‚ø‚é‚ă‚á‚ô‚å‚ó‚傺‚

à

?     "Wonst they was a leetle-teeny dirl, an' she was named

?Red Riding Hood, toz her ma maked her a leetle red cloak `at

?torned up over her head - an' it was all thist one piece of

?red cardnal like the dreat long stockin's `at the

?storekeeper's dot.  O! it was the nicest cloak in this town!

?An' - an' - an' so one day her ma she put it on her. It was

?Sunday, coz the cloak was too nice to wear thist all the

?time.  An' so her ma she put it on her, an' told her not to

?dit no dirt on it; an' nen she dot out her little basket `at

?ole K'is b'inged her, an' filled it full o' whole lots o'

?good fings t'eat, an' told her to take `em to her dran'ma,

?an' not spill `em, toz her dran'ma'd spank her ef she did,

àmaybe.

?     An' so little Red Riding Hood she promised to be

àtareful, an' tossed her heart she wouldn't spill`em

?for six-five-ten-two hundred bushel dollars. An' nen she

?kissed her ma dood bye, an' went a skippin off through the

?dreat big woods to her dran'ma's - no she didn't do a

?skippin' nedver coz that 'ud spill the dood fings. She thist

àwent a walkin'along like a little lady, she did  - as slow

?an' purty- like she was a marchin' in the Sunday school

àkassession.

?     An' so she was a goin' along an' along through the dreat

?big woods - toz her dran'ma lived a way fur off from her ma's

?house, an' you had to do through the dreat big woods to dit

àthere.

?     An' little Red Riding Hood had mostest fun when she'd do

?there - a listenin' to the purty burds, an' pullin the purty

?flowers at drowed around the stumps - an' catchin'

?butterflies an' drasshoppers, an' stickin' pins through 'em-I

?thist `said' that!  coz she was dood.  She'd this catch `em,

?an' leave their wings on `em thist like they was, an' let 'em

àdo adin, toz she was a "boss girl" - my pa said she was!

?     An' so she was a doin' along an' doin' along, an' purty

?soon they was a old wicked wolf jumped out; an' he wanted to

?eat her up, but there was a big man a choppin' wood wite

?those there, an' you could hear him, an' so th' old wolf was

?afeared to tackle her this then - feared the man ud kill him,

?you know; an' so he `tended like he was a dood friends to

?her, an' he says, "Dood morning, little Red Riding Hood!"

?this like that.  An' nen little Red Riding Hood she says,

?"dood morning," this as kind - like her ma learnt her - coz

àshe didn't know th' old wolf wanted t'eat her up.

à     Nen th' old wolf says, "Where are you doin' to?"

?     Nen little Red Riding Hood says, "I'm doin' to my

?dran'ma's -coz my ma said I might." An' nen she told him that

?th' old wolf skipped out an' dot to her dran'ma's first, an'

àshe didn't know he did.

?     Nen when th' old wolf dot to her dran'ma's he knocked at

?the door. An' nen th' old wolf he knocked adin, an' little

àRed Riding Hood's dran'ma she says, "Who's there?"

?     Nen th' old wolf 'tended like he was little Red Riding

?Hood, you know, an' so he says, "W'y, it's me, dran'ma; I'm

àlittle Red Riding Hood, an' I'm tome to see you!"

?     Nen little Red Riding Hood's dran'ma she says, "Thist

?walk in, nen, an' make yousef at home, toz I'm dot the

?'raigy, an' tuvered up in bed, an' I tan't open the door fur

àyou!"

?     An' so the old wolf thist walked in an' shut the door,

?an' hopped up on th' bed an' et old Miss Ridinghood up 'fore

?she could take her specs off, he did!  Nen th' old wolf put

?on her nightcap an' tovered up in bed like she was, you know,

?an' purty soon her tome little Red Riding Hood, an' she

?knocked at the door. Nen th' old wolf says, "Who's there?"

?thist like he was her dran'ma, you know, an' she thought he

?was, an' so she says, "W'y its me, dran'ma; I'm little Red

àRiding Hood, an' I'm tome to see you."

?    Nen th' old wolf says "Thist walk in an' make yousef at

?home, toz I dot the 'raigy an' tovered up in bed, an' I tan't

àopen the door for you."

?     An' so little Red Riding Hood she opened the door an'

àtomed in; an' the old wolf told her to set down her basket

àan' take off her fings an' tome an' set on the bed wif her.

?     An' little Red Riding Hood she didn't know it was th'

?old wolf, an' so she set down her basket an' tooked off her

?fings, an' dot a chair an' thumbed up on the bed wif her an'

?she thought th' old wolf had more whiskers'n her dran'ma, an'

?dreat bigger eyes too, an' she was skeered, an' so she says:

à"Oh, dran'ma, what big eyes you dot!"

?     Nen th' old wolf says: "They're thist big toz I'm so

àdlad to see you."

?     Nen little Red Riding Hood she says: "O! dran'ma, what a

àbig nose you dot."

?     Nen th' old wolf says: "It's thist big thataway toz I

àsmell the dood fings you bringed in the basket."

?     An' nen little Red Riding Hood she says: "O! dran'ma,

àwhat long, sharp teeth you dot."

?     Nen th' old wolf he says: "Yes, an' they're thist

?thataway t'eat you up wif!" an' nen he made a jump at her,

?an' she hollered an' the big man that was a choppin' wood he

?tomed in there wif his axe, an' he split th' old wolf's

?brains out from ear to ear, an' killed him so quick it made

?his head swim, an' little Red Riding Hood wasn't hurt at all,

?an' the big man tooked her home, an' her ma was so dlad she

?div'd him all the dood fings in the basket an' told him to

àcall adin - an - an- that's all of it."

à     Alcoholism rendered Riley (in his own description)

àan "adjustable lunatic." Sometimes he was subject to

?such intoxication that he qualified for admission to a

àmadhouse of the time of the 1870's. He grew very clever

?apparently at hiding it. He must have feared the consequences

?of public intoxication displays greatly after his many public

?intoxication arrests. The main character in his story, "An

?Adjustable Lunatic," explains why. He says, "I don't make a

?business of insanity, or I wouldn't be running at large here

?on the streets of the city." He continues at a later point,

?"...I'm glad to assure you of the fact that I'm as harmless

?as a baby-butterfly.  Nobody knows I'm crazy, nobody ever

?dreams of such a thing - and why? -Because the faculty is

?adjustable, don't you see, and self-controlling.  I never

?allow it to  interfere with business matters, and only  let

?it on at leisure intervals for the amusement it affords me in

?the pleasurable break it makes in the monotony of a

?matter-of-fact existence. I'm off duty to-day - in fact, I've

?been off duty fir a week; or, to be franker still, I lost my

?situation ten days ago, and I've been humoring this

àpropensity in the meanwhile..."

à

àƒ                    ‚ł̀‚̀‚Ó‚ ‚Ê‚Á‚΂ǂ̀‚łĂ  (1879)

̀ÀÀ?0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆ>ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

à     I lie low-ceiled in a nest of dreams;

à          The lamp gleams dim i' the odorous gloom,

à     And the stars at the casement leak long gleams

à          Of misty light through the haunted room

à     Where I lie low-coiled in dreams.

à

à     The night-winds ooze o'er my dusk-drowned face

à          In a dewy flood that ebbs and flows,

à     Washing a surf of dim white lace

à          Under my throat and the dark red rose

à     In the shade of my dusk-drowned face.

à

à     There's a silken strand of some strange sound

à          Slipping out of skein of song:

à     Eerily as a call unwound

à          From a fairy-bugle, it slides along

à     In a silken strand of sound.

à

à     There's a tinkling drip of faint guitar;

à          There's a gurgling flute, and a blaring horn

à     Billowing bubbles of tune afar

à          O'er the misty heights of the hills of morn,

à     To the drip of a faint guitar.

à

à     And I dream that I neither sleep nor wake -

à          Careless am I if I wake or sleep,

à     For my soul floats on the waves that break

à          In crests of song on the shoreless deep

à     Where I neither sleep nor wake.

à

à‚  Á‚ ‚Đ‚Ï‚Å‚Ô‚̉‚Ù‚ ‚΂ςԂ ‚ςƂ ‚É‚Î‚Ô‚Ï‚Ø‚É‚Ă‚Á‚Ԃɂς΂ ‚‚Ơ‚Ô‚ ‚Á‚̀‚ɂł΂Á‚Ԃɂς΂¬‚ ‚È‚Ơ‚͂ɂ̀‚ɂԂق ‚Á‚΂Ă

àƒ               Đ‚Ï‚Ö‚Å‚̉‚Ô‚Ù‚ ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚Ă‚Ơ‚̀‚Ô‚Ơ‚̉‚Á‚̀‚ ‚Ô‚̉‚Á‚΂ӂɂԂɂς΂

àƒ

?     That there are pieces describing Riley's intoxicated

àsituation is not to say they were not transforming pieces.

?Such poetry challenge thought patterns and are as koams of

àShinto.  They are intended to break open closed thought

àfunctions.  The intoxicatese is one way in which Riley

àfelt he was "hoodooed" by Edgar Allan Poe.

à

à‚                  ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚łĂǂÁ‚̉‚ ‚Á‚̀‚̀‚ł΂ ‚Đ‚Ï‚Å‚

à

?     James Whitcomb Riley considered Edgar Allan Poe one of

àhis favortie poets, not because of Poe's meancholy or joyless

?themes, but because of Poe's mastery of verse.  Riley devoted

?many hours to studying Poe's verse and read "The Rationale of

àVerse," Poe's essay on the subject, thoroughly.

?     Riley did not just study Poe's manner, he also wrote

?Poe-like poems. His "A Dream of Long Ago," was given the

?metre and cadence of Poe's "The Raven," with a slightly

?different verse structure.  The sounds of Poe were easily

àmirrored with the liquid and musical sounds of the alphabet.

à     Crestillomeem was a great admirer of Poe. In a letter of

?March 4, 1883 written to Dr. James Newton Matthews, Riley

àsaid:

à     "...In the Poe sonnets, the work is splendid - masterly

?in parts - only the threme is joyless - and that hurt the

?success of such an effot,  however deservign in all other

?qualiti4es. It is what hurt Poe, and will always drape his

?memory with gloomy speculations and unsatisfying

àcontemplations.  He was a marvelous intellect perhpas as much

àestranged from himself  as from all of his kind.  Anyway, he

?seems, always, to me, unhappy, and his influence always

?cheerless. If I ever get to Heaven, I will  doubtless love

?him better there where all `will be unriddled.' All

?melancholy themes are pets of mine - positively; but I am

?growing to avoid them as much as possible for I am more and

àmore satisfied of their hurtfulness every new one I indulge."

?     "Poe was hoodooed all his life. I took up the hoodoo

?where he left off," Riley once said. We know Riley studied

?Poe because of the famous Leonainie incident in Riley's life.

?Riley wrote the poem in the style of Poe and perpetrated the

?hoax in concert with a friend who was the editor of the

?Kokomo Dispatch upon the representation that it was a newly

?discovered manuscript of Edgar Allen Poe. It was published in

àthe Kokomo DISPATCH on August 12, 1877.

à

à̀‚łς΂Á‚ɂ΂ɂł

à

àLeonainie - Angels named her;

à  And they took the light

àOf the laughing stars and framed her

à  In a smile of white;

à    And they made her hair of gloomy

à    Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy

à    Moonshine, and they brought her to me

à  In the solemn night. -

à

àIn a solemn night of summer,

à  When my heart of gloom

àBlossomed up to greet the comer

à  Like a rose in bloom;

à    All forebodings that distressed me

à    I forgot as Joy caressed me -

à    (Lying Joy! that caught and pressed me

à  In the arms of doom!)

à

àOnly spake the little lisper

à  In the Angel-tongue;

àYet I, listening, heard her whisper, -

à  "Songs are only sung

à    Here below that they may grieve you -

à    Tales but told you to deceive you, -

à    So must Leonainie leave you

à  While her love is young."

à

àThen God smiled and it was morning.

à  Matchless and supreme

àHeaven's glory seemed adorning

à  Earth with its esteem;

à    Every heart but mine seemed gifted

à    With the voice of prayer, and lifted

à    Where my Leonainie drifted

à  From me like a dream.

à

?     How Riley described writing Leonaine: "I studied Poe's

àmethod.  He seemed to have a theory, rather misty to be sure,

?about the use of m's and n's and mellifluous vowels and

?sonorous words.  I remember that I was a long time in

?evolving the name of `Leonaine,' but at length the verses

?were finished and ready for trial.  A friend, the editor of

?the Kokomo Dispatch, undertook the lauching of the hoax in

?his paper; he did this with great editorial gusto, while, at

?the same time, I attacked the authenticity of the poem in the

?Democrat.  That diverted all possible suspicion from me.  the

?hoax succeeded far too well, for what had started as a boyish

?prank, became a literary discussion nation-wide, and the

?necessary expose had to be made.  I was appalled by the

?result.  The press assailed me furiously, and even my own

?paper dismissed me because I had given the 'discovery' to a

àrival."

?     How much Riley knew about the orphaned, tragic Edgar

?Allen Poe is not known. Poe's death in delirium tremens was

?widely reported. Discovered by a printer named Walker in a

?Baltimore tavern called Gunner's Hall on an Election Day for

?members of Congress, Poe was in great distress. Taken to

?Baltimore's Washington Medical College in stupor, he was

?admitted at five in the afternoon. He remained in stupor

?until three o'clock the next morning when he entered a stage

?of busy delirium, talking constantly and deliriously

?addressing spectral and imaginary objects on the walls. The

?next day Poe revived somewhat but was basically incoherent

?before lapsing into violent delirium resisting the efforts of

?nurses to keep him in bed. His doctor, a man named Dr. John

?J. Moran, mentions him raving for nearly a day and calling

?out an unrecognizable name until three o'clock the next

?morning when Doctor Moran noted: "quietly moving his head he

?said `Lord help my poor soul' and expired." Poe died a drunk.

?Dr. Moran attributed his death to delirium tremens on the

?basis of Poe's profuse perspiration, trembling and

?hallucinations. Others have since sought to find less

?disgraceful causes of death such as "exposure." Poe's great

?admirer, the poet Charles Baudelaire, called the death

à"suicide" which is probably much closer to the truth.

?      Riley studied Poe extensively. He thought of himself as

?Poe at times. His forgery of Poe's name to the poem,

?Leonainie, may not have even seemed like forgery. Riley's

?"Tale of a Spider" in which a spider takes on the life of a

?doomed communicant and "An Adjustable Lunatic" of a maniacal

?disappearing and suicidal stranger seem clearly composed

?under Poe's gothic influence. It is not clear if Riley wrote

?poetry while intoxicated as Poe did. One remembers that "The

?Bells" was written by an Edgar Allen Poe who did not even

?remember he wrote it the next morning. Riley's "The Flying

?Islands of the Night" was, we know, written by an alcoholic

àseeking to understand himself. Some of it bears the same

?throbbings and excesses of "intoxicated" writing that Poe's

?does. One thing seems clear. If Riley had not written his

?"The Flying Islands of the Night" and gained through it a

?self-understanding and feeling of great encouragement to

?himself from the beyond from his dead mother and dead Nellie

?Cooley one could speculate he might have died as Poe did. The

?strange death-birth connection between Poe and Riley

?contributed to Riley's unease about the fate for which he was

?destined.  The poetry and alcoholic life-style of Edgar Allen

àPoe were definite dynamics in Riley's self-perception.

?One does not fear being a reincarnation of someone without

?great tremor. Probably for this reason, Riley avoided

?admitting he was born when he was. The comparisons of

?alcoholism by two kindred poets was already too vivid in

àRiley's mind.

?     There was in fact great talk of Riley being Poe's

àreincarnation as in an article in the Chicago TRIBUNE of

?December 16, 1894 under the title: "Plagiarism or

?Reincanation?" The many points of similarity of the writing

àof Riley and Poe brought forth the author of this article,

?George Harper, to find evidence for the Hindoo theory of

àtransmigration of souls, or reincarnation. When Riley as

àCretillomeem wrote, Poe was affixed in his mind.

à

à

à

à

à

à

àƒ   ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚ɂ΂ ‚ԂȂł ‚ӂɂǂȂԂ ‚ςƂ ‚ԂȂł ‚Ç‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚Ô‚Å‚Í‚Đ‚Å‚̉‚Á‚Í‚Ă‚Å‚ ‚͂ς̉‚Á‚̀‚ɂڂł̉‚Ó‚º‚

àƒ       ԂȂł ‚ӂԂɂǂ͂Á‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Á‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂ ‚ɂ΂ ‚Ç‚̉‚łł΂Ƃɂł̀‚Ä‚¬‚ ‚ɂ΂ĂɂÁ‚΂Á‚

à

?     In the meantime, Riley slipped further and further into

?alcoholism. Riley, the alcoholic, was considered a no-good in

?Greenfield during much of his early life, but he was not

àreviled.

à     To understand this requires a brief review of the

àtemperance movement in Indiana of the time.

?     Whiskey was easily availability in the corn growing

?regions of Indiana where Riley grew up. Whiskey was a corn

?product after all. Liquor traffic was alwasy a source of

?revenue to Hancock County from the founding of the county.

?The first meeting of the county's government, through its

?board of commissioners, was held April 7, 1828 and the first

?license to sell liquor was granted by them less than a month

?later. As the years went along, whisky was sold not just at

?saloons but also in grocery stores. Every home had supplies.

?Children drank whisky and it was a popular medicine used for

àcolds or pain reduction.

à     In the 1860's movements to control alcoholism, then an

?epidemic, began.  Citizens began to remonstrate against the

?granting of licenses to sell whiskey. Reuben Riley and

?Josaeph B. Atkison were usually the two Greenfield lawsyers

àwho represented the remonstrators.

à     As Riley entered manhood, the temperance battle against

?alcohol use reached the level of a crusdae, just as James

àWhitcomb Riley, was firmly establsihed as an alcoholic.

?    A Ladies' Temperance Alliance was organized at

?Greenfield's Methodist Episcopal churcch in 1874. The goal

àwas to obtain pledges of Hancock County men not to drink

?intoxicating liquors. Other meetings were held in area

?churches and soon the ladies began visiting liqour

?establsihments causing many of them to close or else begin

àserving sodas. Lists were made of persons who had signed the

àpledge and circulated. Persons applying for liquor licenses

àwere hounded into withdrawing them. Prosecutions were

?sought of intoxicated persons or any proprietor who served

àliquor to an intoxicated person.  As stated elsewhere, Riley

àhimself was prosecuted for intoxication. PErsons running for

?office were screened to ensure they were not subject to

?intoxication. The local bar was invited to a meeting and the

?demand was made that none represent alcoholic interests or

?the intoxicated and sign a pledge to that effect but the

?majority of the members refused.  Mass meetings were held in

?the movement and among the local speakers against intoxicants

?was Reuben Riley, the poet's father.  Richman described ones

?one March 7, 1874 at the Greenfield Christian Church.  Later

?in the 1870's Red Ribbon Societies were organized in which

?persons who had signed the "pledge" wore red ribbons.

?Another temperance group wore "blue ribbons." A county

?convention was organized of the Christian Temperance Union in

?1879.  Temperance picnics and the like were sponsored. A

?"secret" organization also spread devoted to terrorist

àtactics for the cause bragging of "cells'in every township.

àThe only saloon in New Palestine was burned to the ground

àduring this period by such a secret "cell."

à     It was in the mood of a county with such temperance

àactivity that James Whitcomb Riley was often found drunk in

àdifferent places around the city.

?     Reuben Riley, the poet's father, and remonstration

?attorney, refused to assist his son under any such

?circumstances.  Nor would the "Captain" pay fines or bonds

?when the poet was arrested and charged with public

?intoxications during his youth.  The Riley family was greatly

?ashamed of the poet.  Stories are told of Riley sneaking into

?the home, led by the hand up to his bedroom to sleep off a

?drunk, by his little sister, Mary, fifteen years his junior.

?The two, Mary, who also suffered from alcoholism later in

?life, as well as the brother between them, Hum, often relied

?upon each other in a world hostile to them because of their

àpropensity to liquor overuse.

?     As the early 70's proceeded, the temperance movement

?gained more and more force. Riley's father, Reuben Riley,

?became a leader of it further distancing himself from Riley

?because Riley was, after all, "wedded to Crestillomeem."

?Greenfield saw a great temperance movement arise in 1874.  As

?a part of this movement, mass meetings of citizens were

?called.  One such meeting was sponsored by the Temperance

?Alliance, a ladies' organization, held in the Methodist

?Episcopal Church on Sunday evening, March 8, 1874.  The

?church was filled to overflowing with hundreds of people and

?many of the lawyers of the town were present. At one point in

?the meeting, the laides distributed the usual temperance

?pledges for the attendees to sign. In addition, the ladies

?had a special pledge they wished the attorneys to sign.  This

?pledge contained an agreement not to defend any person

?charged with a violation of the liquor laws.  When the

?majority of the lawyers refused to sign the pledge, the

?ladies called for them to explain themselves. The first to

?speak was the lawyer, Ephraim Marsh who stated "All criminals

?were entittled to a fair and impartial trial, and to be heard

?in person or by counsel, This being the case, I as a lawyer

?cannot conset to place myself in a position not to accept

àemployment in any case at bar if I desire to do so." Another

?lawyer, Charles G. Offutt, responded to the call to sign the

?pledge saying, "I declined to sign it and  I still decline.

?So far as I know but two memebrs of the bar have sign4ed it.

?I hold that an attorney has the right to engage in the

?defense of any man, woman, or child charged with a crime

?without being liable to just censure from any quarter.  The

?fundamental law of the land declares that in all criminal

?prosecutions the accused shall have the right to be heard by

?himself and counsel, and that the presumption of innocense is

?in his favor.  Sir, because a man is charged with a violation

?of law, be it the "Baxster bill" or any other, it doesn't

ànecessarily follow that he is guilty, not by any means."

?     As Offutt continued his reasons for not signing the

?pledge, his words reveal the attitude against alcoholics such

àas Riley which then prevailed in Greenfield.

?     "As far as the temperance question question is

?concerned, I think it is admitted by all candid men that

?temperance is right and intemperance wrong.  It is not

?necessary that I should stand here and declaim against the

?evils of intemperance.  All men everywhere admit it to be the

?great foe of mankind.  The veriest wretch that ever drank

?destruction to his own soul will tell you that his course is

?not to be approved or followed.  No man can engage int he use

?of intoxicating liquor to an excess, and not finally destroy

?his constitution.  It shatters the physical man and lays the

?mind in ruins, and whatever others may say, I know that no

?man in this audience would more heartily rejoice over the

?success of any plan that would stay the fearful tide of

?intemperance sweeping over the land, than I. And, sir, I

?think this is themost favorable time for the ladies to

?accomplish great good. No political party, as my friend,

?Captin Ogg, has said, is opposing their movements.  Good

?people everywhere are wishing them success, and if they go

?about their work in the spirit of Christianity, love and

?kindness their efforts may be crowned with success. It won't

?do to proscribe men or treat them harshly for their views,

?but reason with them, treat them kindly, convince them that

?it is to their interests to be sober and upright, that the

?good of society demands that they should give up a business

?which yields only pverty, disgrace and crime, and, my word

àfor it, your success will be great."

?     It is said that this lawyer's speech was roundly

?applauded at the ladies temperance meeting in this year

àbefore the community consented to other mob action, the

àbreaking in of the Hancock County Jail, and the lynching of

àthe black taken out from there at the county fairgrounds.

?Despite the castigation and shame cast on alcoholics such as

?Riley, they were not to be the subject of violent personal

àattacks.  The bars they frequented were. The sellers of

àalcoholic products were. The talk was much against them.

àNone were, however, lynched.  One wonders where Messers Marsh

?and Offutt were when the black man, William Kemmer, was

?lynched the next year with their lofty beliefs in rights to

?trial, an attorney, a presumption of innocence and a

?semblance of a right to defense.


 

 

itcomb

àRiley was a young man who "itched" to move right then.

?     Whether he knew it or not, James Whitcomb Riley was on a

?quest to understand the meaning of homelife as well as to

?understand his Greenfield home where he had lived in his

?youth, a home he had now flown.  His quest would cause him to

?write

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à

à     One does not imagine Riley's first great encounter with

?Crestillomeem in his wanderings about Indiana after his

?mother's death as being more than social drinking with

àoccasional more severe lapses.  Crestillomeem was simply

?trying to take over his life.  She had not succeeded in

àkeeping him from marginal employments, pleasant associations

àwith friends and moments with women on the run. Riley was

àsurviving and maturing as a man. This perhaps did not exclude

?the thought that he might someday return to his hometown of

?Greenfield and live there. Perhaps he might conform to his

àfather's wishes and even become a lawyer?

à     These thoughts were no doubt in his mind as the year

à1875 dawned. Riley had returned to his hometown again by this

àtime and seemed much more settled and likely to remain when

?another event happened which drove him away from his home

àagain.

àƒ

àƒ         Á‚ ‚È‚Á‚΂ǂɂ΂ǂ ‚×‚È‚É‚Ă‚È‚ ‚Ă‚È‚Á‚΂ǂłĂ ‚Á‚ ‚Ù‚Ï‚Ơ‚΂ǂ ‚Í‚Á‚΂§‚Ó‚ ‚̀‚ɂƂł

à

?    The second was the death of Kemmer which caused an

àawareness that social institutions matter hugely. This

àrevolution in the thouht of James Whitcomb Riley caused him

?to devote his life to the stage and missionarying for kenotic

?ideas.  Racism, in particular, was a hated thing to him as

?was intolerance in any form for the humble people he had

?come to know in his travels with Crestillomeem. Riley wrote

àin the poem "To Uncle Remus,"

à    "The Lord who made the day and night,

à     He made the Black man and the White;

à        So, in like view,

à        We hold it true

à     That He hain't got no favorite."

à

à     Although the life of James Whticmob Riley was tumultuous

?in many respects, the one great event of his life which

?fueled his flight into kenotic poetry was an event never

?mentioned in all of his poetry except his cryptic

àautobiographical poem, Flying Islands. Riley simply stayed

?away from controversy in order to secure for himself a

àstanding on which to make kenotic points for a public needing

?encouragement to live peacefully and "neighborly" with each

àother.

à

à     Jucklet (Aside)

àTwigg-brebblets! but her Majesty hath speech

àThat doth bejuice all metaphor to drip

àAnd spray and mist of sweetness!

à

àCrestillomeem (Confusedly)

à                                  Where was I?

àO ay! ...

à... - That airy penalty

àThe jocund Fates provide our love-lorn wights

àIn this glad island: So for thrice three nights

àThey spun th4e prince his lien and marked him pay

àIt out (despite all warnings of his doom)

àIn fast and sleepless search for her - and then

àThey tripped his fumbling feet and he fell - UP! -

àUp! - as 'tis writ - sheer past Heaven's flinching walls

àAnd toppost cornices. - Up - up and on! -

àAnd, it is grimly guessed of those who thus

àFor such a term bemoan an absent love,

àAnd so fall uipwise, they must needs fall on -

àAnd on and on - and on - and on - and on!

àHa! ha!

à

àJucklet

à          Quahh! but the prince's holden breath

?Must ache his throat by this!

à

?     Jucklet, or James Whitcomb Riley who survives to tell

?his story in minstrelcy, tells us of the metaphoric happening

àof a hanging which could not have been otherwise described.

?     The "princess" who "strangely went" as the result of

?this hanging was none other than himself, James Whitcomb

?Riley. He left Greenfield, Indiana, his hometown under the

?circumstance of a hanging which symptomized a horror in

àAmerican life at the time which James Whictomb Riley took on

àwith all of the energy of his fragile life thereafter through

àhis writing of kenotic poetry.

à     The hanging to which we refer was one almost forgotten

?as a matter of history but of the ilk indelibly written in

?the annals of the American people during the Reconstruction

?period following the American Civil War. It was a typical

?example of not just racism but also the impulses of life

?which the poet felt deeply - the potential of persons acting

àagainst the more natural tendency of love of others.

à

à‚        ˂ł͂͂ł̉‚ ‚È‚Á‚΂ǂɂ΂ǂ ‚ɂ΂ ‚Ç‚̉‚łł΂Ƃɂł̀‚Ä‚ ‚̉‚Å‚Đ‚Ï‚̉‚ԂłĂ ‚ɂ΂ ‚ԂȂł

àƒ                     ɂ΂ĂÁ‚΂Á‚Đ‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ ‚ʂςƠ‚̉‚΂Á‚̀‚

à

?     The Kemmer hanging was on the front page of the

?Indianapolis JOURNAL of Monday morning, June 28, 1875 under

?the huge headline, "Judge Lynch," A first sub-headline read,

?"Hanging of a Negro Ravisher by an Armed Mob.", with a second

?reading "Swift Punishment Meted Out to an Inhuman Fiend -

?Greenfield in  a State of Wild Excitement." The article was

?attributed to information from an unnamed "Special

?Correspondent." Was it Riley?  Later, the Journal was pressed

?for who this "correspondent" was but the newspaper never

?revealed the informer's name. The account differs from that

àof the Hancock DEMOCRAT and so is quoted.

?    This account reads in part, "...While Mr. Vaughn, a

àfarmer, was at work in the fields, about a half a mile away,

?a Negro entered the house and deliberately outraged the

?person of the wife, who was at that time lying sick and

?defenseless on her bed, with no companion but her two-year

?old son.  The burly brute entering the house, proceeded

?without a moment's hesitation to the commission of the awful

?crime, and escaped from the house just in time to avoid the

?husband, who had been summoned by his little son, who had ran

?toward him and attracted his attention....(Kemmer) was

àovertaken in Rush County, and for the time being confined in

?the Rushville jail, but threats of lynching having been

?freely indulged in, he was removed to the a jail in

?Greenfield, the crime having been perpetrated within the

?confines of Hancock County.  The people were in a state of

?wild excitement and demanded that an indictment be returned

?against the brute at once, that his trial and punishment

?might not be delayed an instant.  But the authorities in

?their wisdom decided to wait till the indignation had

?subsided somewhat and as a consequence measures were taken

?with the utmost secrecy and dispatch to execute summary

?vengeance upon the prisoner.  The quiet community was

?thoroughly aroused and a look of deep determination was on

?every face.  Everybody knew something was on foot, but none

?could say who were engaged in  it.  The husband of the

?outraged woman was in a perfect frenzy that nothing could

?appease and every where he met with the spontaneous sympathy

?of good and true citizens who could only be worked up the

?commission of an unlawful act by some such an emergency as

?this, Mrs. Vaughn was lying at the very point of death from

?the effects of her injuries, and it was determined to rid the

?world of a monster ere his victim passed to the other shore.

?Accordingly on Friday night, a band of one hundred and sixty

?disguised men met at an appointed rendezvous between

?Rushville and Greenfield and without a sound marched toward

?the latter place, passing on their way long enough to take a

?vote as to whether  their intended victim should be hung,

?burned or cut to pieces. With grim ferocity, forty men

?balloted for the cutting process and thirty-two for the

?burning, but eight-eight votes were cast for the less brutal

?yet equally  certain means of transit out of the world.  A

?squad of seventy remained on the outskirts to act as a

?reserve in case their services were needed while the

?remainder of the battalion moved silently in the direction of

àjail wherein Kemmer was confined.

?     A detail of twenty of the vigilants noiselessly effected

?entrance by means of an aperture in one of the windows and

?made their way to the sheriff's quarters, where a demand was

?made upon him for the keys to Kemmer's cell. The plucky

?office refused to deliver them but he was quickly overpowered

?and the keys were taken from him but as the invaders were to

?them they were of little value, and crowbar agency was

?resorted to with eminent success. Kemmer remained in his bed

?quietly until his door was opened when he sprang to his feet

?and with a heavy club, commend a furious battle for his life,

?striking right and left with destruction.  The leader, a

?large and powerfully built man, received a terrific blow on

?the head but in a trice his assailant was disarmed, bloodily

?beaten into submission, bound and taken to a wagon and

?hastily carted to the fair-ground, the place designed for his

?execution.  In "Floral Hall" a rude gallows was improvised by

?means of a rafter and noose, a very simple yet effective

?contrivance.  The wagon containing Kemmer was then backed up

?under the rafter, the noose adjusted about his neck, and the

àother end securely fastened to an immovable object.

?     The wretch was then given a chance to say something for

?himself, but his sole response to an inquiry from the chief

àwas "Men, you are doing wrong."

?    "If that's all you have to say," was the angry reply,

?"the quicker you die the better," and at the word the wagon

?was drawn from under the ravisher's feet and he was left to

?die of strangulation, the shock not having been sufficient to

?break his neck.  The rope was a new one and, with the heavy

?weight attached, stretched until Kemmer's great feet touched

?the earth but the ground was scooped out by a dozen willing

àhands in less time than it takes to tell it.

?     In twenty minutes the man was pronounced dead, and

?shortly thereafter the vigilants under orders from the chief,

?took the back  track, but not until the score or so of

?citizens standing about had been ordered to go home and make

?no attempt to follow or ascertain their identity.  The body

?was allowed to hang till morning, and when it was cut down

?the following verdict written on an envelope was found pinned

àto his back:

?     "It is the verdict of 160 men from Hancock, Shelby and

?Rush, that his life is inadequate to meet the demands of

àjustice.

?     The Coroner empanneled a jury Saturday and after hearing

?the evidence of all persons who claimed to have knowledge of

?the affair, returned a verdict in  accordance with the facts

àas above narrated.

?     Kemmer is well known in Indianapolis where he has lived

?for several months and gained an unenviable reputation.

?together with a woman whom he claimed was his sister, he

?occupied a tenement owned by John E. Foundray in the

?northwestern part of the city.  On the night previous to the

?day he committed the crime for hwhich he was hung, he stole a

?horse from Mr. Springer, an employee of Daggett & Co.,

àconfectioners, and left the city.

à

à‚    ԂȂł ‚È‚Á‚Î‚Ă‚Ï‚Ă‚Ë‚ ‚Ä‚Å‚Í‚Ï‚Ă‚̉‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚Ö‚Å‚̉‚ӂɂς΂ ςƂ ‚ԂȂł ‚‚̀‚Á‚Â˂ ‚̀‚Ù‚Î‚Ă‚È‚É‚Î‚Ç‚ ‚ɂ΂

àƒ                         Ç‚̉‚łł΂Ƃɂł̀‚Ä‚

à

?     The Hancock Democrat.  William Mitchell, Editor,

àGreenfield, Ind. July 1, 1875.

?"The Forcible Hanging of the Negro Man, Kemmer for the Rape

àof Mrs. Vaughn,"

?     "In the Democrat of last week, we published an account

?of the ravishing of Mrs. Vaughn, wife of Wm. N. Vaughn, of

?Blue River township, by a negro man named William Kemmer, and

?his subsequent arrest in Rush county, and legal transfer to

?this county. It is now our duty to record the summary death

?at the hands of a large number of outraged but unknown

?citizens of Rush, Shelby and Hancock on Saturday morning

?last, and we will endeavor to discharge that duty without

?unnecessary varnish or sensational literature, keeping as

?near the facts of the summary proceeding as possible,

àconsidering the secrecy of the transaction.

?     At about 12:30 A.M. on Saturday morning, June 26, 1875,

?a party of armed and masked men, numbering about 125, quietly

?and orderly entered our town from the East and without

?unnecessary preliminaries surrounded the new jail building.

?An entrance from the front and south doors was soon and

?easily effected by probably twenty-five of the party.  Once

?in the building, the next step was to get the keys of the

?jail house.  Search was made for the room in which Mr.

?Thomas, the Sheriff and jailor, was sleeping.  This was soon

?found by the answer of Mr. Thomas to the demand for

?admission, as his voice was probably well known.  To this

?demand Mr. Thomas positively and persistently refused.

?Seeing that he could not be roused to depart from a sworn

?duty, the necessary means were soon brought to bear to open

?the door by force.  This was easily done, as it was a pine

?door, and the splinters flew in every direction in the room.

?Mr. Thomas was soon face to face with an armed, masked, and

?of course, unknown lot of men, who resolutely and

?determinedly demanded the keys of the jail and to whose

?demand Thomas as resolutely refused to surrender the keys.

?He was informed that they did not desire to injure him or the

?building, and that they did not want to be injured

?themselves; but that they would have the keys or they would

?go through the walls of the jail  They wanted the

?incarcerated negro, had come for him and would have him at

?all hazards.  Thomas still refused and stood in silence

?before his armed and powerful opponents. Seeing that he would

?not surrender, he was caught and forced back against the wall

?where he was soon relieved of the coveted keys. Once in their

?possession, the object of the mission seemed half

?accomplished; but they did not know they had the right keys,

?and if so, they were uncertain how to use them.  Thomas was

?then asked if they were the right keys, but he said not a

?word, but stood silent and mute as a marble statue.  The next

?move was to get him to go down and open the doors leading to

?the object of their midnight mission; but this was stoutly

?refused.  Then he was taken up by four of the most stalwart

?men in the room and carried head first down the front stairs.

?Thomas now began to feel his oats, and said it was useless to

?try to force him to do that which a plain violation of his

?official duty, and he emphasized it by saying that he would

?be d-d if he would.  Satisfied that they were losing time on

?Thomas, they sent him back to his room, saying that they

?would endeavor to open the fail themselves.  There are two

?separate locks to the doors one of which opens out and other

?in. A little practice soon resulted in the opening of these

?doors. They were now in the main part of the jail, but there

?was another bolt to throw before the prisoner could be

?reached, and this they did not at first understand, for they

?forced by main strength and crowbars the upper fastening of

?the cell door. When this bolt was broken off, the lower bolt

?not being damaged, it looks as if some one had pulled the

?lever below that operates the bolt above.  While the men were

?working at the door, our information is, but we have no idea

?that it is mere guess work, that the negro lay still on his

?bed on the lower bunk.  When the cell door was thrown back,

?the same authority says, and equally creditable, that the

?negro sprang forward and leveled two of his assailants.  It

?is probably that by this time he was in the hall aiming for

?the door on the west of the cells, which leads to the lower

?floor of the jail.  At this point it is very probable the

?negro was knocked senseless by some of the men in which

?condition he was securely bound, taken below and placed in a

?spring wagon standing at the south door of the jail. It is

?not true that the negro had a bar of iron in his cell.  The

?bar of iron alluded to and found in the negro's cell the next

?morning, was evidently taken there by one of the masked me,

?as, after the negro was locked up for the night, it was

?standing outside the jail part of the building.  The negro

?was a very powerful and physically courageous man, and with

?such an implement for defense, he would have bloody work for

?at least some of the men.  The statement of its presence in

?the cell is merely sensation and coined in the brain of some

?reporter to lengthen out his piece to regular city limits.

àBut we must return to our narrative.

?    In possession of the subject of their search, and seeing

?him securely tied and lying in the bottom of the wagon and

?surrounded by a few of their trusty friends, the masked men

?gave vent to their feelings by repeated shouts of apparent

?joy.  The leader of their party then gave the word to move on

?as they had entered the town in regular order and in true

?military style.  The order was speedily and quietly executed

?and the march of death was commenced for this victim of a

?hellish and unbridled lust.  Around the jail building the

?solemn procession moved toward Main street and approaching

?which street the negro began to mourn and make piteous

?appeals to his Master above whose laws he had so cruelly and

?wantonly violated.  Turning into Main street, the procession

?moved silently toward the east, followed by a rear guard to

?keep off all intruders.  Reaching the toll-house, the

?procession turned to the south when the Fair Grounds was soon

?reached, into which the procession moved with unerring

àprecision toward the south end of the old Floral Hall, as if

?it had been previously selected for the expiation of the

?criminal's evil and outrageous deed of crime.  The

?preparation for the last act of the tragedy was soon

?completed, by the fastening of a rope to the joists of the

àhall.  A neat and judicious hangman's knot was soon place at

àthe other end, and the wagon in which the doomed man lay was

àbacked under.  Standing between the certainties of earth and

?the uncertainties of the future, with the dark waters of

?death in full view to the eyes of him who was soon to pass

?over, the guilty culprit was asked if he had anything to say,

?and his reply was..." Men, you are doing a great wrong!"

?which he repeated several times.  He was asked if he had

?nothing more to say: if not the end was near.  Saying nothing

?more, the wagon was driven from under, and William Kemmer,

?the negro ravisher, danced an air jig suspended between

?heaven and earth.  Thus ended the career of an evil and

?corrupt scoundrel, whose vicious tastes and unbridled lust

?brought him a just and ignominious death.  After hanging

?until he was dead and beyond the reach of the pains and pangs

?of this world, a placard, written upon the glued side of an

?envelope was pinned upon his breast by some one who fully

?understood the use and force of his mother tongue, from which

àwe made the following copy:

?"- It is the verdict of one hundred and sixty men from

?Hancock, Shelby and Rush that his life is inadequate to the

àdemands of justice."

?     Though we are not apologists for mob law,; yet, from our

?knowledge of the terrible crime committed by this demon in

?human form upon the person of a good but weak and frail

?woman, the wife a most excellent citizen, well and favorably

?known in this community, we say amen to the above verdict.

?Though the taking of the life of the miserable miscreant is a

?violation of our written law, we feel, and so ought every

?citizen who puts a correct estimate upon the sacredness and

?inviolability of our household idols, that his death, under

?all the surrounding circumstances, was but a poor return for

?the great wrong he had done, and that the motive that

?prompted the men, who did the work was the legitimate out-

?cropping of the highest promptings of the human heart.  No

?crime is so great and harrowing o the mind of man as the

?raping of the innocent, the pure and the weak, and no

?punishment known to our laws, is commensurate with the

?demands of the justice that invariably wells up  in the

?breasts of all right thinking people.  The protection of the

?weak from the encroachments of the strong, and the virtuous

?and pure from the lecherous hand of the depraved of our human

?race, is the mission of all good citizens, whether by the

àmodern jurisprudence or that practiced in Mosaic times,

?when "an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth" was the rule

?of action.  The delays and uncertainties of our laws, coupled

?with numerous technicalities of construction and decision

?through which the guilty so often escape just and condign

?(sic) punishment for crimes against society, must stand

àresponsible for that great leveler of all our laws -

àthe tornado of public indignation, commonly called Mob Law.

?It is to be hoped that never again in the history of our

?county will there be even a seeming necessity for the

àexercise of this dangerous practice.

à     When life was pronounced extinct, some one in the masked

?crowd rose and announced in slow and measured tones, in

àsubstance as follows:

à     "The act just committed was done in no spirit of bravado

?or malice, but to vindicate, in a small degree, an outrage

?upon an innocent and unprotected woman, and to give

?protection in the future to your wives, as well as mine; that

?if any one, be he officer or citizen, divulge the secrets of

?this night he shall suffer (pointing to the suspended negro)

àin the same way."

à     With this benediction, the crowd was dispersed from the

àFair Ground and the inanimate form of William Kemmer was left

àsuspended in mid air, in the darkness and gloom of the night,

?to be gazed at in the morrow's sun by an indiscriminate

?multitude, young and old, in not one of whom could be

?discovered a single sign of pity or remorse.  So perished

?William Kemmer for a crime that ought to be unknown in our

àland of liberty, law and intelligence.

?     In conclusion, we desire to say to our friends in the

àcountry, that the crowd of masked me who hung Kemmer was, so

àfar as we are enabled to judge by conversation with those who

?saw them, sober and orderly in their action, and that they

?were certain, beyond any doubt, that the negro man was the

àidentical person who committed the outrage upon Mrs. Vaughn.

à     Coroner's Inquest over the Dead Body of William Kemmer.

?On Saturday morning, January 26, 1875, Harrison I.  Cooper,

àCoroner of Hancock County, hearing that the dead

àbody of a negro man was suspended in the old Floral Hall

àon the Fair Ground, east of Greenfield, repaired to the

?scene with a dray to remove the body to town.  He found the

àbody  suspended by the neck with a small cotton cord doubled

?and looking quite natural.  The mouth and eyes were closed,

?and, beyond a slight hemorrhage at the nose, the man looked

àas if nothing unusual had happened.  The cord around the neck

?was sunk beneath the skin, but so far as could be seen the

?skin was not broken.  Two small holes in the scalp on the

àback of the head were visible, but they evidently did not do

?much  harm, beyond a stun at the time of being made, as the

?skull was not broken.  The Coroner cut him down, placed him

?on the dray and moved him to town, leaving the noose still

àaround his neck, and with which he was buried.  He was placed

?in a coffin at the undertaking establishment of Wills and

?Pratt, where he remained during the day, being visited by

?thousands of citizens and strangers.  Some difficulty was

?experienced in getting a place to deposit his remains, his

?father, at Carthage, having refused to a special messenger

àfrom the Coroner to have anything to do with them.  Not being

?a citizen of Greefield, he could not be interred in the New

?Cemetery without the payment of the required fee, two

?dollars.  There was no one to advance the money, and Mr.

àCooper had to look elsewhere for a place to deposit the body

?of Kemmer. About dark the box was placed in a wagon, and the

?Coroner, and the grave-digger, Buffalo Bill, it was driven to

?the county poor farm, where the remains of William Kemmer,

?the negro ravisher, were deposited about 11 p.m. in their

àlast resting place, "unwept, unhonored, and unsung."

à

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à

à     The brief events prior to this hanging permit us to

àsee how crucial the event was in the life of the poet.

?In early 75, we find James Whitcomb Riley, at 25, finally

?settling down to become the small-town Hoosier lawyer that

?his father wished him to be. In the year 1875, Riley's father

?insisted that he undertake legal studies. Riley said, "My

?father wanted me to study law and I honestly tried, but I

?forgot it faster than I read it." While his father was away

?in Court, Riley wrote poetry such as "If I Knew What Poet's

?Know" "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" and "Squire Hawkins'

àStory."

à     January of this year finds him writing casually for

àa local Greenfield newspaper, the Greenfield NEWS, and

àpainting signs for local commercial businesses. The next

àmonth this newspaper was sold to a buyer who changed its

àname to the Republican. March found James Whitcomb Riley

?consenting to join his father in law practice. The ostensible

?reason was that the renamed newspaper, The REPUBLICAN, folded

?due to mismanagement. Riley was out even this scant local

àpress to write for.

?     As the opportunity of writing ended, Riley succombed to

?his father's pleas to join him in his law practice. In the

?evenings he undertook trips to "lecture" in nearby towns, but

?not so much. This was commonly done in those days by

?"reading" the law.  Now, as he entered the first days of

?maturity, James Whitcomb Riley, finally took the steps to

?enter a professinal life as a lawyer. Not only this, but he

?also began to conform his life to small town norms in other

?ways. In March, he became temporary secy of Methodist church

?sunday school and did chalk illustrations while reading law

?in his father's law office. He was seeing a young teacher,

?Clara Bottsford, at the time. One might have expected each

?step thereafter to head directly into the life of a lawyer

àwith family and eventual community standing.

à     The "jester" in in James Whitcomb Riley was not

àsubdued entirely. James Whitcomb Riley was blessed with

?a social capactity to make friends.  He thoroughly enjoyed

?and pursued companionships with others of his age. During

?this Spring, Riley, with one of his friends, Oliver Moore,

àput on small entertainments with Riley billing himself

?as a "Delineator and Caricaturist" with Oliver Moore at towns

àincluding Anderson.

?     Nor did Riley confine himself entirely to the law during

?the days of this momentous Spring of his 25th year. We are

?aware that he painted a sign for the A.J. Banks Building in

?downtown Greenfield in this April and also one of his poems,

?"A Destiny" was published in Hearth and Home, a Connecticut

?newspaper which took the work of new and promising authors.

àNevertheless, a life of conformity loomed.

?Reuben had been able to ensconce his "jester" son to a desk

àin his law office.

à     One can now see James Whitcomb Riley on his way into

àhis father's legal profession. Reuben was the trainer of many

?young lawyers. The list of those entered on the roll of the

àHancock County Bar Association on the Motion of Reuben Riley

?is very extensive. Reuben taught young men the law. Law

?schools were not established in Indiana at this time.

àBarristers became lawyers by "reading" with older lawyers

?such as Reuben Riley. Now James Whitcomb Riley had finally

àbegun the process.

à     It is said that James Whticomb Riley was not given in to

?his father's apprenticeship into the law without a great

?struggle. Ofyten, when James Whitcomb Riely was expected to

àbe reading Blackstone, his book was laid down while his pen

àwas busy at poetry. One of the poems written in his father's

?law office during this period of apprenticeship was the

àfamous "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" which would one day

àbecome the most commonly known poem in America.

à     The days of apprenticeship continued on through late

àwinter, Spring, and on into the summer until one of the

?most telling details of the history of the poet's hometown

àoccurred, the hanging of James Kemmer.

à      After the hanging of James Kemmer, James Whitcomb

àRiley "strangely went" from town.

à     Only his autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands

àof the Night" explains why.

à     This hanging required him to leave.

à     So began another period of wandering which continued

àfor the next two years.

à     In late 1877, Riley, fired from his job on the Anderson

?DEMOCRAT for perpetrating a hoax poem claimed to be written

?by Edgar Allan Poe called `Leonainie,' took up travel with a

?temperance lecturer who was coincidentally also a committed

àalcoholic with numerous public intoxication arrests named

àLuther Benson. Benson lectured on the evils of alcohol to

?great temperance audiences.  Riley went with Benson on tour

àof Northern Indiana after Riley's `Leolainie' hoax was

?exposed. On their way home from the tour, Benson and Riley

?stopped at Kokomo where the Editor fo the Kokomo DISPATCH,

?Oscar Henderson noted, "Luther Benson and J.W. Riley -

?`Leolainie' - honored The DISPATCH  with a pleasant call

?yesterday.  They were jsut returning from a lecturing tour in

?Northern Indiana. Riley promises a poem for these columns at

àno distant day."

?     The trip with Benson inspired Riley: Why not lecture as

?Benson did? Soon Riley arranged a platoform "reading" with

?the friendly assistance of B.N. Parker, editor of the New

àCastle MERCURY, who had known Riley for some time.

?    About the time that "Luther Benson" was reported to have

?fallen again in the press, Riley performed successfully at

?New Castle.  Riley thought to "read" at Kokomo too. His

?career as a reader was begun.  In Riley's biographical

?     edition of his poems, he tells of his boyhood "in a

?dreamy way" where he "did a little of a number of things

?fairly well - sung, played the guitar and violin, acted,

?painted signs and wrote poetry,"all of which was "too

?visionary" for his father who settled him down to reading the

?law.  Then comes the confession, "But finding that political

?economy and Blackstone did not rhyme and the study of law was

?unbearable, I slipped out of the office one summer afternoon

?when all outdoors called imperiously, shook the last dusty

àpremise from my head and was away."


 

 

y."

?

d was away."

?

bullets struck into the Negro man's

?flesh and he made his escape into Rush County. Adam White was

?unable to get assistance there from the Carthage town

?authorities until he could get to Greenfield to have a

?warrant sworn out since the alleged crime had been committed

àin Hancock County.

à     But what was the likelihood of a conviction for rape?

?The news account o

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à

?     In mid-June, 1874, Riley decided to try a program of

?readings and instrumental music outside Greenfield with his

?friend, John Moore. They chose Kokomo as a location. John

?borrowed the Prince Albert coat needed for wardrobe from the

?store of his father. The first night's show was totally

?disastrous and such a crushing failure financially that the

?two were unable to pay for their overnight lodging. The bill

?was paid for by painting the next day.  This truncated tour

?is mentioned in the Hancock DEMOCRAT. Riley was friendly with

àits editor who reported in its June 24th issue, "Every place

àthey have visited they met with great success."

?     Upon returning home, Riley found Greenfield in a great

àstate of excitement. It was the time when Kemmer was hung

àand the man's body, with noose around the neck, was displayed

àfor viewing before all the county.

?     There is an angst about living in what one considers an

àunjust society. One loses the feeling of security that life

?is properly regarded. One challenges all standards. There is

?no place for encouragement when there is suspicion about the

?social ideals which motivate one's friends and acquaintances.

?One wants to "run" from such a society to avoid the distress

?of life under hostile social norms. To stay means social

?rejection, loss of status, and counterattack for having

àcountervailing views about the justice of the place.

?     Riley - as a sensitive person with humanistic ideas -

?sought escape after hanging of Kemmer.  Distress comes when

?standards are not just too difficult to attain, but also when

?they seem wrong.  Vulnerbility to distress comes about due to

?shame about a feeling impotence to cope with a problem and

?inability to share the approval of an actionof others.  One

?does not "run" to become righteous.  One runs to avoid a life

?of shame. Shame comes about when one violates the standards

?of the family and society. It was shameful for Riley to see

?wrong when Kemmer was lynched.  The citizens of the town

àthought the action rightful. One escapes to avoid shame.

à

à      ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚ׂ̉‚ɂԂɂ΂ǂ ‚‚łƂς̉‚Å‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚È‚Á‚΂ǂɂ΂ǂ ‚

à

?     1875 was the year of "A Dreamer" which appeared in

?Hearth and Home Magazine. Ik Marvel, its Editor, not only

?accepted it but sent Riley a check of the first money he

?received for a poem.  Riley did not remember with it was six

?or eight dollars. In a letter dated April foolest, 1875,

àRiley wrote:

à

?Dear Bro.  ...I have had and still have plenty to do in

?     signwork -I've got old Greenfield spangled off like a

àcircus clown...

?     I am improved to some extent in a moral particular.  I

?am a confirmed Sunday-school goer - Yes! did Secretary

?business for two Sundays, and blackboard lesson - You just

?ought to see me clothe a blackboard in artistic raiment and

?yaller chalk - Last Sunday's was as good as a magic-lantern

àshow to the children.  The trustees talk of an admission fee.

?      Well, here's the "best of the wine"! I yesterday

?received a letter, with check enclosed, paying for poem

àpublished in Hearth & Home of April 10.

?     I want you to secure for me a few extras as they cannot

àbe had here.  Write to me and "told me all about it." Jim

?     After this fact, he says, "I thought my fortune made.

?Almost immediately I sent off another contribution, whereupon

?to my dismay, came this reply `The management has decided to

?discontinue the publication and hopes that you will find a

?market for your worthy work elsewhere." Many months without

àmagazine publication followed.

à

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à

?     During the "dark half" of 1875 after his reporting of

àthe Kemmer black lynching and his separation from

àhis married lover, Riley wrote relatively little poetry.

àNellie's departure from Greenfield as well as his own

àwere horribly wreching events. Crestillomeem became his

?comforter.  He escaped with Crestillomeem and Doc Townsned, a

?"patent medicine vendor," who came to Greenfield with his

?"Wizard Oil Co.  wagon," and Riley  left.

àƒ

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à

à     One of the strangest absences in the cast of characters

àin Riley's autobiographical poem, "The Flying Islands of the

àNight," is his father. AEo, Riley's mother, occupies a great

?role in the poem.  She is the sainted force of great

àinspiration to Riley in the poem. The father, Reuben Riley,

àis "zero."

à     Riley's father is, as always, a great enigma not just to

àRiley but to the world at large. Riley knows him as taking a

àswig of whiskey before he heads to court to try a case as a

?lawyer and yet he is the great orator of the town who

?addresses temperance audiences with calls for bans of

?whiskey. In George Richman's Èéóôị̈ù ïæ Èáîăïăë Ăïơîôù¬ 

?Éîäéáîá we learn Reuben Riley spoke at the Greenfield

?Christian Church on March 7, 1874 at a mass meeting on

?temperance urging the town's ladies to visit the town's many

?saloons to try to convince their patrons to go back home to

àtheir families.

à     Reuben Riley was the lawyer for the temperance movement

?in Greenfield, Indiana. He was a great booster of the Songs

?of Temperance. In temperance fights of the 1859 and following

?David VanLaningham, another member of the Hancock County Bar,

?represented the the liquor interests, and Reuben A.  Riley is

?almost always appearing as the attorney for the

?remonstrators.  How strange it is that the majority of Reuben

àRiley's children were alcoholics.

à     Liquor was always a sore point between father and son.

?The father took great part in public airing of the issue

àwhile the son merely drank.

à     Then again we know that Reuben Riley was a strong Mason.

àHe went through the chairs of the Greenfield lodge early in

?his career. Some have suggested that the group of masked men

?who stormed the county jail and drug out the black man Kemmer

?accused of raping the white woman as coming from that order

?in some capacity.  If Reuben Riley participated in this

?event, or even simply stood by, what could his son have

?thought of the man who taught him as a child and above all to

?honor Abraham Lincoln's legacy. Reuben Riley, the great

?idealist, the orator who roamed the State of Indiana in 1860

?speaking for Lincoln's election, who went to Chicago to the

?Republican convention of 1860 that nominated Lincoln, serving

?as Indiana's Lincoln Elector in the Electoral College in

àDecember, 1860...could this figure have turned into some

?kind of hypocritical or irrelevant person to Riley?

àApparently so.

?     Whatever...however...hypocricy or not...Riley did not

?include him as a cast figure - or an influence on his life -

àin his great autobiographical poem.

à

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à

?     Even when Riley later became famous, Krung eschewed

?politics. Was this too a rejection of what his father had

àbecome at this point in his life? His father had been the

?great Lincolnesque lawyer of the town. Now, however, we find

?in the Hancock County History of George Richman that Reuben

?Riley is present at a meeting on Dec. 23, 1876 called to

?express feelings that Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A.

?Hendricks should be declared elected President and Vice

?President of the United States instead of Rutherford Hayes

?and William A. Wheeler, the "Lincoln" ticket attempting to

?continue the resettlement of the South into Lincoln's view

?of toleration with all races and religions.  A resolution of

?the meeting calling the election fruaduent and tainted by

?violence and manipulation was even noted as being drafted by

àReuben Riley.

?     Thomas Hendricks, the Vice Presidential candidate who

?Reuben Riley now was aiding, was perhaps the greatest

?opponent of the policies of Abraham Lincoln in the nation.

?His invective in speeches was often decidedly racist against

?blacks. Now  we find Reuben Riley declaring he should be Vice

?President.  Reuben Riley was a confusing person to figure at

àthis point in his life.

?     Throughout his life, Riley had great suspicion about the

?political process. Remembering the lynching incident from his

?young manhood, Riley was suspicious of aroused people.

?Settled conditions did less to threaten the vulnerable of his

?Hoosier people.  Also he stayed away from politics because it

?was a realm which had captured his father's love and taken

àthe attention of his father away from him and perhaps had

àled his own father into great confusion.

?     Racism in Indiana was not an isolated incident

?especially during times of political contest.  Greenfield's

?black community were Republican and at the time the county

?voted basically Democrat. It was a rare election in which

?Greenfield's blacks were not harassed in some way.  In the

?1872 camppaign, a political speaker of the Democrat parties,

?Thomas A. Hendricks, came to Greenfield to speak for Greeley

?and evoked racism according to George Knox, Greenfield's

?black barber as stated in his memoirs, saying "he could stand

?everything but one thing and that was the "nigger." Shortly

?after the black lynching in Greenfield in 1875, in the 1876

?presidential campaign, clubs were organized, Grant and

?Lincoln clubs by the Republicans and Tilden and Hendricks

?clubs by the Democrats. On the Monday before the election in

?November, the Democrat Club held a county rally numbering by

?George Knox's estimate about 25,000 and the club members

?gathered in Greenfield shouting things like "Hurrah for

?Tilden and Hendricks!" and occasionally "God damn the

?Republicans and nigger lovers." Wagons were decorated with

?slogans like, "Clean the Radicals out," "Clean the black

?Republicans out," "White husbands or none." George Knox

?remembered a group coming into his barbershop and one jumping

?up on his stove and Knox asked him to get off and was told,

?"Don't give me any of your black sass." Some took razors and

?cut Knox's leather straps and another kicked his dye stand

?over. Knox stated, "I had gone through the army, passed

?through exciting times, had experienced the quick terror of

?the midnight whisper, "the enemy is upon us" (during the

?Civil War in Northern service), but even on the battle field

?of Mission Ridge, that bloody spot, where men were being

?killed in platoons all around me, heads and legs torn off,

?cannon and minnie balls flying as thick as hail, at no time

?did I suffer in feelings, as on that awful day." (Slave and

àFreedman, page 105)

à     George Knox was James Whitcomb Riley's great friend and

?employer of his youth. To have his father side with the

?Thomas Hendricks in this election must have been devestating

àfor the young poet.

?     The exodus of the blacks from the broken South continued

?on. On one occasion in January 1880, a carload of blacks

?stopped in Greenfield. Knox remembered a colored man coming

àto him at his barbership with an envelope in his hand

?saying he had "twenty-seven head." When Knox asked of what,

?he explained there were twenty-seven of his people at the

?depot. The letter was an invoice for railroad passage

àaddressed to a "John Jones." By the time Knox got there

?a crowd of spectators, some of them armed farmers, had

?gathered threatening the group of homeless blacks of every

?age wearing scraps of clothing. The townsmen were worked up

?that blacks were going to take over the county.  Knox kept

?them at the depot that night and a young white store-keeper

?of Greenfield, Oliver Moore, donated food to feed them. His

àstore was burned down. Quarters were later fround for them in

àan empty building until they could be settled.

à    Riley wrote his "Plantation Hymn" to celebrate the faith

?of the black community of Greenfield in the welter of racism

?against them. "Hear dat rum'lin in de sky!; Hol' fas',

?brudders, till you git dah!, O, dat's de good Lord walkin'

?by, Hol' fas, brudders, till you git dah!" Riley's sympathies

?were with his friend, George Knox, and the home-seeking

àblacks of his era.

?     Knox recalled a local newspaper editorializing against

?him for helping these folk accusing him of bringing into the

?county the poor lazy "niggers" for the purpose of taxing the

?white people to take care of them and that they (the whites)

àshould withdraw their patronage from his barbershop.

à

à     PLANTATION HYMN

à

àHear dat rum'lin in de sky!

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

àO, dat's de good Lord walkin' by,

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

à

àƒ                           Chorus

à     Mahster! Jesus!

à     You done come down to please us,

à     And dahs de good Lord sees us,

à          As he goes walkin' by!

à

àSee dat lightnin' lick his tongue?

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

à`Spec he taste de song 'ut de angels sung -

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

à

àDe big black clouds is bust in two,

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

àAnd dahs de'postles peekin' frue,

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

à

àKnow dem angels ev'ry one,

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

àKase dey's got wings and we'se got none,

à     Hol' fas', brudders, till you git dah!

à

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à

àTo: John Skinner from Lima, Ohio October 7, 1875.

?Dear John: After my long waiting your letter came at

?last....."I tho't this place without an equal in regard to

?its "increase in crime", but I must knock under for the

?present to old Greenfield.  A saloon keeper was shot here

?last week and no particular stir made about it, nor the man

?missed...Day before yesterday we were furnished an entire

?`change of program' by our funny man - the one you know.

?They had a warrant for him and he run (sic) like a little man

?-the whole town ran after him. They wore him out at last and

?bro't him up a-standin'".  He had seduced a girl here - a

?Miss Vananda - and not having compromise money enough, or a

?hankering after prison wall - he did what he ought to have

?been man enough to do without compulsion - married her.  She

àis fifteen and he eighteen and both in the family way.

?    By the way there is a slashin' lot of girls here, and

?they do hold a man off too "purty".  I have only made the

?acquaintance of two or three, and they're the very ones I

?didn't care to know, but I will make it Hot for 'em shortly:

?I'm handling "wires" now that'll fetch 'em. "Confound my

?time" "I stand in" with the best men of the town, and am

?rapidly growing in public favor - I'll be out in book form

?yet.  I wish you were here to room with me at the bobbiest

?little boarding house in the world - everything is perfect

?even to the old girl, "the hostess." She wears a crutch, but

?I don't know how many of her legs are off.  She capers under

?the jocund patronymic of "Aunt Jane" - everybody calls her

àthat, so if she Aunt Jane who is she?  Speaking of Boarding

?Houses - how's the Test House? I would like to strike old 13

?to-night with its exchanged bed - I need something of that

?kind now, but I shall not excite your sensitive nature with

?visions of "sweet faces, rounded arms and bosoms prest to

?little harps of gold" not waken in the drowsy channels of

?your inmost soul, the fire of "Kisses sweet as those by

àhopeless fancy feigned

à                   On lips that are for others".

?To Mrs. Test give my especial regards, and thank her for

?remembering me so kindly. Tell Minnie I could be happy once

?again could I hear her one plaintive melody. I think of you

?often, and of the rare old times we had, and I still nurse a

?hope that we may have a grand Rehearsal of them again.  Say

?to Angie that she haunts me (a casual romantic interest)..."

àYours truly, Jim

?Give my love to George and Nell - not forgetting Jesse and

àNett.

à     Apparently Riley left Greenfield under "sudden need"

àabout a month after the Kemmer hanging. Riley was never

àfar from newspaper reporting. Earlier in the year that Kemmer

àwas hung Riley had edited and contributed to the Greenfield

àCommercial and News. After those newspapers folded, Riley

?did occasional assignments for what had been the rival

ànewspaper, the "Hancock Democrat." Minnie Belle Mitchell,

?wife of its later editor, recalled, Riley spending hours in

?the office of the "Hancock Democrat" where William Mitchell,

?the kindly old editor, sensing Riley's genius, would share

?with him a corner to write.  The editor gave him assignments

?such as reporting current events or social events or writing

?advertisements for the local columns. Sometimes these would

àend up rhymed.

?     One can imagine that Riley may have contributed or

àwritten the "Hancock Democrat" article detailing the events

àof the lynching of Kemmer.  If he witnessed the events, he

?might have lived precariously. The perpetrators would have

àknown his name. When other detailed versions of the incident

àbegan being leaked to other newspapers, Riley might well have

àfelt the heat of suspicion directed at him.

à

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à

?     Another letter to John Skinner - from Union City, Sept

à14, 1876.

?    At first he admits "dying of loneliness" striking

?Fortville after he joined the group at Greenfield. He must

àhave had to leave very quickly and desperately.  Then things

àchanged for the better.

à     "I am having first rate times considering the boys I

?am with - they, you know, are hardly my kind, but they are

?pleasant and agreeable...We sing along the road when we tire

?of talking, and when we tire of that and the scenery, we lay

?ourselves along the seats and "dream the happy hours away",

?as blissfully as the time-honored "baby in the sugar trough."

?"I made myself thoroughly solid with "Doxy" (a playful

?patronymic I have given the proprietor) by introducing a

?blackboard system of advertising, which promises to be the

?best card out.  I have two boards about 3 ft. by four, which

?- during the street concert - I fasten on the sides of the

?wagon and letter and illustrate during the performance and

?throughout the lecture.  There are dozens in the crowd that

?stay to watch the work going on that otherwise would drift

?from the fold during the dryer portion of the Doctor's

?harangue.  Last night at Winchester I made a decided

?sensation by making a rebus of the well-known lines from

àShakespeare: -

à             "Why let pain your pleasure spoil,

à              For want of Townsend's Magic Oil?"

?with a life sized bust of the author, and at another time, a

?bottle of Townsend's Cholera Balm on legs, and a very bland

?smile in its cork, making the "Can't come it" gesture at the

?skeleton, Death, who drops his scythe and hour-glass and

?turns to flee. Oh: I'm stared at like the fat woman on the

àside-show banner..."

?     Riley talks about his departure from Greenfield being

à"serious enough."

à

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à

à     After the lynching incident, the poet's small hometown

?went into a period of great anguish and self-scrutiny. Should

?the law condone the lynching? Obviously it had to since all

?of the county had either participated in it or done nothing

?about it. The attention of the State was focused on what the

?lynch mob had done. Self-righteously believing it had done

?the "right thing, the town drew its collective energy into

?internally defending its action. Any criticism within the

?town was dealt with.  Anyone who claimed the town should not

?have lynched an "untried" man was suspicious.  The town

?closed ranks against all dissenters.  No one from the town

?was supposed to even talk to outsiders. We find an Editorial

?in the Hancock Democrat on July 15th condemning the fact that

àsomeone has "broken" the code of silence about the conspiracy

?to hang Kemmer and talked to the Indianapolis newspapers.

?This Editorial demands the "Indianapolis Journal" to

?"surrender" the name of the Greenfied "traitor" who provided

?their information. The goal is to ensure that "all

?respectable people might not be contaminated by the presence

àand society of this moral leper."

?     Shortly after this Editorial we find Riley making a

?desparate departure from Greenfield on a medicine wagon

àsimilar to his departure escapade with Doc McCrillus after

àhis mother's death.

à

à

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àƒ                           È‚Á‚΂ǂɂ΂ǂ

à   Not only did Riley leave after the lynching of Kemmer,

àbut also Riley's married friend, Nellie Cooley, soon left

àGreenfield.

?     Riley's poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night," went

?through many editions and changes over Riley's life but in

àthe 1892 book of it appear Riley's addition:

à

à(Initial lines by Crestillomeem, Riley's alcoholic self:)

àƒ                 "Crestillomeem (Confusedly)

à

à                                  Where was I?

àO ay! - The princess went - she strangely went! -

àE'en as I deemed her lover-princeling would

àAs strangely go, were she not soon restored. -

àAs so he did: - That airy penalty±À‚

àThe jocund Fates provide our love-lorn wights

àIn this glad island: So for thrice three nights

àThey spun the prince his lien and marked him pay

àit out (despite all warnings of his doom)

àIn fast and sleepless search for her - and then

àThey tripped his fumbling feet²À‚ and he fell - UP!³À‚ -

àUp! - as 'tis writ - sheer past Heaven's flincing walls

àAnd topmost cornices. - Up - up and on! -

àAnd, it is grimly guessed of those who thus

àFor such a term bemoan an absent love,

àAnd so fall upwise, they must needs fall on -

àAnd on and on - and on - and on - and on!

àHa! ha!

àƒ                           Jucklet

à

à          Quahh! but the prince's holden breath

àMust ache his throat by this!..."

à

à      1. We do not know why Nellie Cooley left Greenfield.

?Was it because her husband and she decided to leave

?Greenfield as did Riley over the hanging of William Kemmer,

?or because her husband wished to remove her from

?Riley? A combination of many things? Life simply gives

àus few easy answers to why people do what they do.

?2. Hanging by the neck. In this instance the mob that hung

?Kemmer after pulling him out of the Hancock County jail,

àdrove the wagon out from under the black man. He fell "up"

àto heaven.

à3. Riley viewed death as "dropping upward." SEE: "Death,"

àcomposed contemporaneoulsy with "Flying Islands": "My breath

àbursts into dust - I can not cry - I whirl - I reel and veer

àup overhead, And drop flat-faced against - against - the sky

à- Soh, bless me! I am dead!"

à

à‚               È‚Á‚Î‚Ă‚Ï‚Ă‚Ë‚ ‚Ă‚Ï‚Ơ‚΂Ԃق§‚Ó‚ ‚ς΂̀‚Ù‚ ‚̀‚Ù‚Î‚Ă‚È‚É‚Î‚Ç‚

à

à     As I drove by the site of the county fairgrounds of the

?1870's in this year as the 29th century closes, I could

?hardly imagine that I was looking at the place where masked

?men had lynched a black man for allegedly raping a white

?woman.  But it was true.  What is now a cornfield on

?Morristown Pike just south of the lane leading back to the

?Greenfield Country Club was once the Hancock County

?Fairgrounds, a scene of proud livestock shows and country

?entertainment.  The deed from Samuel Milroy to the "Hancock

?Agricultural Society" was given March 9, 1863 and is recorded

?in Deed Record V, page 165 in the Office of the Recorder of

?Hancock County, IN.  The eight acre tract served as the

àcounty fairgrounds during the 1860's and 1870's.

?     On this site a "Floral Pavilion" had been built by the

àsociety for the ladies to display their floral bouquets,

?gardening produce and canning at the fair.  Unfortunately

àthis pavilion had burned in 1871 and was a ruins - but still

àstanding - shortly after midnight June 26, 1875. On that date

?and at that time, the "old" Floral Pavilion achieved its most

?notorious use.  It was around a joist of this building in

?ruins that the mob of masked men threw a cotton rope to hang

?the Negro man named William Kemmer.  The rope was fashioned

àinto a noose at its end tightly coiled around the black man's

àthroat.

?     The scene must have been eerie indeed as the men

?approached the fairgrounds that night. The hanging party came

?to the place surrounding a spring wagon drawn by a gray horse

?in which the Negro man who had been plucked out of the

?Hancock County Jail lay.  According to observers the only

?light came from torches and oil street lamps "confiscated" by

?the mob as it rode through town in disciplined order. The

ànight was pitch black.

?     It seems impossible that the scene with bound man being

?fitted for hanging and piteously begging for his life in the

?midst of close to two hundred masked men is now merely a

?field filled with corn stubble since the crops have been

?harvested. The young Negro man of 23 was said to have been

?very muscular and powerful and when the mob broke into the

?Hancock County Jail to pull him out of his cell, it is said

?he first cringed in a lower bunk and then he put up quite a

?fight injuring several of the masked men until he had been

?struck in the head with an iron bar, knocking him cold.  It

?was in this condition -except that he was bound hand and foot

?- that he had been carried out of the jail to the waiting

?spring wagon.  Only when the wagon, surrounded by the masked

?horsemen, reached Main Street and headed east, had he come

?back to his senses and pleaded in a loud voice for mercy. The

?cornfield seems so peaceful now compared to the illegal

àactivity that went on after midnight that night.

à     The riders did not turn south until they reached the

?toll house at what is now the corner of Apple and Main

àStreets. We remember that Main Street, or the National

?Road, or U.S. 40, was a toll road during this era and the

àtolls were paid at this toll house. Down the Morristown

?Pike went the deadly parade of night horsemen. A rear guard

àof horsemen kept the watch out for any who might try to stop

àthem coming from Greenfield.

?     At the Floral Pavilion, the masked men set to their

?task. A rope was placed around the young black man's neck and

?he was stood up in the wagon under the joist over which the

?rope had been hoist. He was asked what he had to say.  His

?words before being strung up were, "Men, you are doing a

?great wrong," which he repeated as the wagon was driven out

?from under him. A newspaper account from Greenfield's È‚á‚î‚ă‚ï‚ă‚ë‚ ‚

?Ä‚å‚í‚ï‚ă‚̣‚á‚ô‚ newspaper reports that the man did an "air jig." A

àmedical doctor in the crowd pronoucned William Kemmer

?dead and someone pinned a note to his chest reading, "It is

?the verdict of 160 men from Hancock, Shelby and Rush that his

?life is inadequate to the demands of justice."  One of the

?leaders of the mob announced to all those present, "Comrades

?and spectators: The scene just enacted was done in no spirit

?of bravado or revenge, but to vindicate in some degree an

?outrage upon an innocent, unprotected woman, and to give

?protection and security in the future to your wives, as well

?as mine.  Now, if any one, be he officer or citizen, divulge

?the secrets of this night, he shall surely suffer (pointing

?to the hanging man) in the same way." The crowd is said to

àhave then dispersed into the black night.

?     What were the circumstances that caused the county to

àbecome the locale of a mob lynching?  Did the Sheriff of the

?County merely permit his prisoner to be hauled from the

?Hancock County Jail to be lynched?  Was there really much

?proof that William Kemmer had even raped the alleged victim,

?the invalid Mrs. Vaughn?  Why was this lynching, rarely

?remembered in these days of the late 20th century, such a key

àpoint in the history of Hancock County?

?     June was scorching in the year 1875. It was so hot the

?city was berated for not sending the sprinkler wagon around

?to keep the dust down on Greenfield's unpaved streets.  Not

?much was happening and Judge Mellett of the Hancock Circuit

?Court was away at Madison County holding court. The greatest

?treat for the men of the time was to have a five cent cigar

?at Greenfield's best barber shop, an establishment of the

?famous black barber, George Knox, who rented space in

?Gooding's Tavern across the street from the courthouse of the

àtime, not the current one.

?     Then came the news of the alleged rape of the white

?woman. Soon all of Hancock County and the communities near

?Morristown knew about the incident on the victim's farm in

?Blue River Township.  This led to the midnight lynching of

?the twenty-three year old Negro man, William Kemmer, at the

?Old Hancock County Fairgrounds on Morristown Pike after a

?band of one hundred fifty or so masked horsemen surrounded

?the Hancock County Jail, overpowered the Hancock County

?Sheriff and plucked the incarcerated Negro man out of his

?cell knocking him temporarily unconscious with an iron bar

àripped out of the cell's structure in the process.

?     The original report of the event appears in the È‚á‚î‚ă‚ï‚ă‚ë‚

?Ä‚å‚í‚ï‚ă‚̣‚á‚ô‚ newspaper of June 24, 1875.  Under the heading

?"Horrible Crime," the account reads, "On Tuesday last, Blue-

?river township in this county was the scene of a terrible

?outrage on a lady, the wife who is in very feeble health.  On

?the day mentioned, between 9 and 10 am, William Kemmer, a

?mulatto man, resident of Carthage, entered the victim's

?house and finding no one present, except his wife, who was

?lying on her bed and (sic) attempted to ravish her.  The

?screams of the wife soon brought her husband to her rescue.

?The negro mounted his horse and started off at a rapid rate."

?The account continues with the husband and two farm hands

?mounting their horses to chase the young man with the

?husband shooting wildly in the fugitive's direction with his

?revolver. None of the bullets struck into the Negro man's

?flesh and he made his escape into Rush County. The husband

?was unable to get assistance there from the Carthage town

?authorities until he could get to Greenfield to have a

?warrant sworn out since the alleged crime had been committed

àin Hancock County.

à     But what was the likelihood of a conviction for rape?

?The news account only suggests an attempt and further

?indicated that the wife was "in a very frail condition and

?she may not be able to appear against 'the demon'."

?Apparently there might not be any testimony that a rape had

?occurred if the man were to be given a trial. The news

?account continues with the journalist's regrets that the

?shots of the husband had not struck and killed William Kemmer

?during the chase to capture him. By the time the warrant was

?sworn out the rape apparently was deemed a completed act. The

?affidavit for the warrant (by the husband) says that the

?young Negro, William Kemmer, "forcibly and against her will,

?feloniously, did ravish and carnally know her (the wife)..."

?(The affidavit was made an exhibit in the official County

?Inquest of the lynching which essentially "whitewashed" the

àwhole affair.)

?    Exactly what happened perhaps died with the deaths of

?the witnesses buried at Park Cemetery in Greenfield.  The

?husband died Feb. 1908 and the wife, Dec. 26th, the day after

?Christmas, 1923 at the age of 80. She had been born in 1844.

?When the alleged rape or attempted rape had been committed,

àthe wife would have been thirty-one.

à     Against this scanty evidence of guilt, there is the

àtestimony of William Kemmer who was asked what he had to say

?while a noose was around his throat and before the wagon on

?which he had been stood was pulled out, saying, ""Men, you

?are doing a great wrong," which he repeated as the spring

?wagon on which he was standing was pulled away and he was

?left to hang, his feet dangling just inches from the solid

àground on Morristown Pike below.

à     What had happened? Had the young Negro man raped the

àwhite woman, attempted to, or merely appeared at the home

?for some innocent reason which the wife had misinterpreted?

?No one will ever know since no trial was held in which the

?facts could come out. Would law and order mean nothing in

?this county as far as race would be a factor ever after? What

?is clear is that Hancock County was deeply affected by the

?young man's lynching in many ways some of which whisper to us

àthrough the years.

?     On U.S. 40 outside of Greenfield to the East on the

?north side, in a field across the road from what was the old

?County Home, or "Infirmary" between 400 and 500 East, there

?appears a strangely inappropriate stand of tall trees in the

?middle of a field. These trees represent a graveyard without

àmarkers of any kind. It was once the place where the county

?poor were taken to be buried into anonymity.  William Kemmer,

?the lynched Negro, is buried here at some unknown place in

?this solitary and isolated site.  He was buried with the

ànoose with which he had been lynched still around his neck.

?     Whatever anonymity the young twenty-three year old Negro

?man, William Kemmer, may have had as a living person was not

?his to have following his lynching on Morristown Pike at the

àOld County Fairgrounds.

à     We have recounted how the young black man was pulled out

?of his jail cell in the Hancock County Jail on a Friday night

?in 1875 after midnight by a mob of at least one hundred fifty

?masked horsemen who overpowered the Hancock County Sheriff

?and took from him the keys to the Negro man's cell and

àlynched him before trial for the alleged rape of the wife.

à     Events did not end here.

?     A newspaper account says that the lynched Negro's dead

?body was left dangling in the air from a noose suspended from

?a joist on the Floral Hall at the Greenfield fairgrounds "to

?be gazed at in the morrow's sun by an indiscriminate

?multitude in not one of whom could be discovered a single

àsign of pity or remorse."

à     Events did not end here either.

?     The Coroner of Hancock County of the time, Harrison

?Cooper, eventually drove a dray out to the Fairgrounds and

àcut the body down later that Saturday.  His report indicates

àhe found the young man's eyes and mouth closed and aside from

?hemorrhaging around the neck where the noose was tight, he

?looked like nothing had happened at all. Leaving the noose

?where it was, Cooper took him to Greenfield undertakers of

àthe time, Wills and Pratt, where the dead man was placed in a

?coffin. The news account says the body was displayed there

àduring the remainder of the day, "being visited by thousands

?of citizens and strangers." This strange "viewing" or wake

?may have been the largest gathering of county residents of

àthe Nineteenth Century in Hancock County.

?     The young man's family in Carthage's black community of

?the time were apparently unwilling to come and claim the body

?and about 11 P.M. the coffin containing the remains of the

?lynched man were driven out to the pauper cemetery under

?escort by the Coroner and the grave digger known to history

àonly as "Buffalo Bill" (probably one of Greenfield's blacks)

?where he was buried.  His interment was without benefit of

?clergy.  No Greenfield Protestant minister or Catholic priest

?dared accompany the body.  Nor did the preacher of

?Greenfield's own flegling African Methodist Church appear to

àgive benediction at the gravesite.

?     The newspaper account of the incident concludes,"The

?protection of the weak from the encroachments of the strong,

?and the virtuous and pure from the lecherous hands of the

?depraved of our human race, is the mission of all good

àcitizens."

?     History indicates an inquest was conducted about the

àevent. This simply was an investigation into the cause of the

?Negro man's death.  It was not a grand jury proceeding to

?determine if any crimes had been committed by the "masked

?horsemen" who broke into the Hancock County Jail and did

?their own form of justice.  The reason was apparently that no

?one would stand up to identify a single one of the "masked

?horsemen." (We shall explore who these "masked horsemen"

àmight have been later in this series.)

?     The Sheriff of the time, who I shall not name, until the

?year before a farmer from Brandywine Township, testified that

?he had tried to stop them from taking Kemmer from the jail.

?After their arrival, he said at the inquest, "they came to

?the door and asked admittance, that if I did not let them,

?they would break the door down. I told them I would not let

?them in under any circumstances. I then heard a voice from

?outside saying, "Boys, get down and fetch up our tools." The

?group got in and eventually allegedly took the keys

?physically from the Sheriff, but without his assistance

?according to his statement. No shots were fired.  No injury

?occurred to the Sheriff. The term of Sheriff was a two year

?one and history records the Sheriff was re-elected as a

?Democrat the next year.  History further records that the

?alleged rape victim's husband, himself ran for Sheriff after

?the Sheriff's two terms in the election following but was

àdefeated in the Democrat primary.

?     One hot autumn afternoon, as he was poring over a

?lawbook there swung into town to the jubilee of bugles a

?covered wagon painted in gay colors.  Across the body of the

?wagon was an ultramarine blue sign in golden letters, "Dr.

?Townsend's Magic Oil Company. Dr. Townsend was at the town

?square bowing and introducing  himself on a little back

?platform, stetson hat lifted, frock coat flapping and hair

àand beard trimmed to make him appear like a double to General

àU.S. Grant.  Behind him were three young men wearing linen

?dusters each playing two musical instruments playing martial

àmusic interspersed with loud organ recitals of hymns from an

?organ within the wagon. That night a "free concert" was

?promised "at early-candlelite." Riley talked his way into

àthis crew and left Greenfield with "the glittering cavalcade"

àwithout saying goodbye to anybody.

à

à                   Riley wrote in doggerel,

à     "Why let pain your pleasure spoil

à      For want of Townsend's Magic Oil?"

à

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à

?     The Wizard Oil Co. left Greenfield for Fortville and

?places beyond with Riley on board and several young men. The

?boys laughed at his stores and enjoyed his drawing, calling

?him "Little Man." He taught them new songs and did blackboard

àillustrations for Doc Townsend who he called "Doxy."

?The Wizard Oil co. boys arrived in town about noon announcing

?their presence with great showers of music.  Then the boys

?would distribute handbills and Doc Townsend would lecture on

?his medicines afternoon and evening. In the evenings, by

?torchlights, Riley would entertain too.  He did original

?recitations, impersonations, and readings of poetry.  When

?there was a weeklong county fair, the Wizard boys would stay

?in town the whole week and participate in the parades and

?fair entertainments. The boys being exciting and mysterious

?vagabonds had many girls chasing them.  Riley was often

?intoxicated. The times were never dull. By October the group

?reached Lima, Ohio, where Townsend resided and kept his

?laboratory.  The group made Lima the center for the last

?flings around Ohio before winter set in. Riley made many

?friendships and was invited often to read his poems.  While

?Townsend spent the days making his medicines, Riley was

àliving in the Townsend home and preparing new advertising.

?Riley kept no regular schedule. He is remembered by the child

?of Doc Townsend as studyiny Buckles' Èéóôị̈ù ïæ Ăéöé́éúáôéïî

?and deToqueville's Äåíïặáăù éî Áíạ̊éăá during this period.

?A few weeks before Christmas, Riley decided to return back

àhome to Greenfield.

?     Because he was addicted to alcohol he could not live in

?his father's home.  Instead Riley took a room in the Dunbar

àHouse.

à

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?Eventually, Riley's alcoholism grew so bad he was arrested

?for public intoxication shortly after returning from a trip

?with a temperance lecturer in which Riley was said to have

àspoken against liquor as a reformed alcoholic.

?     There is a very large leather covered volume which is

?labeled Mayor's Docket, City of Greenfield which is

?instructive for our purposes. The particular docket to which

?I refer carries cases filed within the City of Greenfield

?between June 1878 to May 1881.  In those days, the mayors of

?the towns acted as judges for many minor offenses committed

àwithin the borders of the towns.

?     On its page 165 appears the caption, "Mayor's Court.

àDec. 27th, 1877. City of Greenfield vs. James W. Riley.

àAffidavit for Intoxication."

?     This is one occasion, and probably only one of many, in

?which James Whitcomb Riley was arrested for public

?drunkenness.  Most such dusty record books have long been

?destroyed as city and town mayor's court or justice of the

?peace court administrations have changed hands, records have

àlost, etc.

?     This particular record reads, "Comes now Isaac Davis and

?files before me the following affidavit in the above entitled

?cause in these words, towit: (Here insert afft.) Wherefore a

?warrant was issued by me for the arrest of Said Defendant in

?these words, towit: (Here insert Warrant) - Which was

?delivered to Thos. J. Orr, City Marshall to be Executed.  And

?now comes said City Marshall and returns said Warrant.

?Endorsed as follows, towit: Come to hand Dec. 27th, 1877 at

?10 o'clock A.M.  I have this day arrested the within named

?defendant as commanded and have him now before the Court.

à/s/

àT.J. Orr, City Marshall.

?     Wherefore comes said Defendant and waives an arraignment

?on said affidavit and Enters a plea of Guilty as charged.

?Herein.  And the Court being fully advised in the premises

àassesses his fine at the Sum of Two Dollars.

?     It is Wherefore Considered and adjudged by the Court

?that The City of Greenfield recover of and from the Said

?defendant the fine of Two Dollars assessed as aforesaid, and

?that said defendant pay the costs of the proceedings taxed at

?___dollars and ____ cents and stand committed until said fine

?and costs are paid or replevied. /s/ Thos. H.  Branham,

àMayor."

?     Interestingly the fine has never yet to this day been

?paid.  Bail for the payment of the fine was signed by Israel

?P. Poulson so James Whitcomb Riley was released from the City

?Marshall's confinement after his guilty plea.  But where

?other records and receipts attached to such docket entries

?which reflect payment, none appears for Riley.  Evidently he

?was broke, never could pay the $2 and simply was never re-

?arrested.  There is a note where the Mayor himself ended up

?paying the City Marshall his portion of the fine of 70 cents

?for arresting Riley on the public intoxication charge.  That

àis all the entries reflect.

à     It seems to have profoundly influenced in Riley a great

àemotion which he did not try to treat poetically before. This

àgreat emotion was a sense of "death." Later this became

àevidenced in personal suicide plans as revealed only in his

àgreat autobiographical poem, "Flying Islands of the Night."

à     Shortly after the Kemmer incident, Riley composed his

àlittle remembered poem, "Death."

à

à    "Lo, I am dying! And to feel the King

à     Of Terrors fasten on me, steeps all sense

à     Of life, and love, and loss, and everything.

à     In such deep calms of restful indolence,

à     His keenest fangs of pain are sweeet to me

à     As fused kisses of mad lovers' lips

à     When, flung shut-eyed in spasmed ecstasy,

à     They feel the world spin past them in eclipse,

à     And so thank God with ever-tightening lids!

à     But what I see, the soul of me forbids

à     All utterance of; and what I hear and feel

à     The rattle in my throat could ill reveal

à     Though it were musci to your ears as to

à     Mine own. - Press closer - closer - I have grown

à     So great, your puny arms about me thrown

à     Seem powerless to hold me here with you; -

à     I slip away - I waver - and - I fall -

à     Christ! What a plunge! Where am I dropping? All

à     My breath bursts into dust - I can not cry -

à     I whirl - I reel and veer up overhead,

à     And drop flat-faced against - the sky -

à     Soh, bless me! I am dead!"

à     This seems to be a projection of how William Kemmer

àmust have felt.

àƒ                      ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Ä‚Á‚̉‚Ë‚ ‚ӂɂĂł

à

à     Crestillomeem helped Riley deal with not only his own

?"dark side" of depression but also with his realization of

?America's "dark side." To say Riley was alienated personally

?is simply not enough of an explanation to assess the life of

?James Whitcomb Riley. Riley was a reflection of his time.

?America was as shattered as Riley's self was.  Emerging from

?a horrible Civil War where men were killed, the country

?attempted to justify the conflict on the basis of noble

?ideals, specifically those pronounced by Abraham Lincoln. The

?only problem was that these principles were given little

àweight in the daily lives in small town or

à"majority" America. In fact, the opposite side seemed to

àhave the upper hand. In Riley's hometown, when a black man

àwas accused of rape on the barest suspicion, the inhabitants

?broke into the county jail, took the keys from the Sheriff

?and beat him until hanging him at the county fairgrounds

àwithout trial. This is not equal justice under law.

?     Crestillomeem was Riley's irrational alcoholic sometime

àself. She permitted him to escape such realizations but not

àforever. The life Riley encountered was enough to drive

?Riley to Crestillomeem's arms. She is Mr. Clickwad, the

?strangest of the members of the Buzz Club in Riley's famous

?series of that name published in the Indianapolis Saturday

?HERALD. It is he (Mr. Clickwad) who delivers "The Flying

?Islands of the Night" as a discourse while intoxicated. As

?related in the Buzz Club, Number IV, Mr. Clickwad arrives to

?deliver it thirty minutes late. He has not been cognizant of

?the members as he careened around ignoring greetings. The

?other members of the club hold him at arms length, and Mr.

?Hunchley comments, "I'd almost reached the conclusion you

?were sick or something-and, by Jove, you are pale, and your

?hand's as cold as a frog's -why my dear sir, you are sick -

?your eyes ain't right- and your -your." He is merely dead

?drunk, Mr. Hunchley. He is Riley pre-kenotic and at the

àgreatest depth of Riley's frustration and despair.

?     Crestillomeem is not merely Riley in as grotesque a

?state as one might depict drunk but also the Riley with "an

?attitude." She shares it in not only "The Flying Islands of

àthe Night," but also in other poetry such as "The Frog."

à

à     Who am I but the Frog - the Frog!

à          My realm is the dark bayou,

à     And my throne is the muddy and moss-grown log

à          That the poison-vine clings to -

à     And the blacknakes slide in the slimy tide

à          Where the ghost of the moon looks blue.

à     What am I but a King - a King! -

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à          For the royal robes I wear -

à     A scepter, too, and signet-ring,

à          As vassals and serfs declare:

à     And a voice, god wot±À‚, that is equaled not

à          In the wide world anywhere!

à

à     I can talk to the Night - the Night! -

à          Under her big black wing.

à     She tells me the tale of the world outright,

à          And the secret of everything;

à     For she knows you all, from the time you crawl

à          To the doom that death will bring.

à

à     Then Storm swoops down, and he blows - and blows, -

à          While I drum on his swollen cheek,

à     And croak in his angered eye that glows

à          With the lurid lightning's streak;

à     While the rushes drown in the watery frown

à          That his bursting passions leak.

à

à     And I can see through the sky - the sky -

à          As clear as piece of glass;

à     And I can tell you the how and why

à          Of the things that come to pass -

à     And whether the dead are there instead,

à          Or under the graveyard grass.

à

à     To your Sovereign lord all hail - all hail! -

à          To your Prince on his throne so grim!

à     Let the moon swing low, and the high stars trail

à          Their heads in the dust to him;

à     And the wide world sing: Long live the King,

à          And grace to his royal whim!

à1. "god wot" is a Middle English archaic expression meaning

à"some god only knows."

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?     Was Crestillomeem a positve or negative influence in

?Riley's life. In the overall scheme of things, Crestillomeem

àfragmented Riley's life into at least salvageable chunks.

?He required her place of escape. Amphine loved too strongly,

?men, women, and children, to be an exposed personality for

?long. The Hoosier Deutsch idealism of Krung was not allowed

àto exist by the society of the time. Crestillomeem was an

àisland where Riley could flee from refuge from the black

àlynching undertaken by his friens.

à

à‚      ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Ä‚Á‚̉‚Ë‚ ‚ӂɂĂł ‚ׂÁ‚Ó‚ ‚̉‚Å‚Á‚̀‚̀‚Ù‚ ‚Á‚͂ł̉‚ɂÂÁ‚§‚Ó‚ ‚Ä‚Á‚̉‚Ë‚ ‚ӂɂĂł

à

?     Lincoln saw the end of slavery but he did not live to

?participate in its repercussions.  He did not live to see the

?black lynching which Riley saw after the Civil War.  He did

?not see the carload of invoiced blacks sent north "by the

?head" to see the cruel reactions of allegedly Christian

?communities. A government does not solve the problem of

?insensitivity.  Justice is after all blind not just to avoid

?prejudice but often to prejudice and hatreds. It came to be

?Riley's mission, as a completion of that of his heroic ideal,

?Lincoln, to deal with such things on the basis of daily

àsensitizing poetry.

à

àƒ           Ăł̀‚É‚̉‚É‚Ơ‚Í‚ Æ‚̉‚ς͂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Å‚Á‚̉‚̀‚Ù‚ ‚Á‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂

àƒ

à     Delirium is an essential feature of alcohol withdrawal.

à"The Flying Islands of the Night" seems a delirium account.

àWhen did Riley sink into such a state after his long bouts of

?alcoholism after the death of his mother and now to escape

?Greenfield again after the Kemmer lynching with another

àmedicine man, this time Doc Townsend?  Probably not.

?The accounts seem to indicate he continued his life with

?Crestillomeem even more intimately. Delirium comes about when

?alcohol consumption is reduced. Riley did not reduce his

?drinking after the lynching incident. He raised it to a more

àserious level.

à

à

àƒ                ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚˂ł͂͂ł̉‚ ‚È‚Á‚΂ǂɂ΂ǂ¿‚

à

à     As the former Editor of the Greenfield News, only

àrecently defunct, Riley most likely followed the progress

àof the community exictement about Kemmer.  Additionally,

?Riley gravitated to the Hancock Democrat, the rival newspaper

?as a writer and eventually was a bylined contributor.  While

?it cannot be known except through initimations in his

?autobiographical poem, "Flying Islands" chances are Riley was

?a witness to much of the illegal doings of the lynch mob.

àThere is even some likelihood that Riley

?wrote the account of the incident not only for the Hancock

?Democrat in an edited version but also the more truthful

àversion of the bungling mobsters for the Indianapolis Journal

àwhere he later gained such prominence as a named poet.

?     Whether Riley was at the Kemmer hanging or not he most

àcertainly was subject to its spectacle afterwards.

àPeople were in long lines to see the black man with the noose

?still around his neck put up for display both at the

àFairgrounds and at the mortuary the next day.

?     At one time I wondered whether Riley wrote or

?participated in the writing up of the accounts of the

?incident. I now think probably not despite his long

?connection with the Hancock Democrat newspaper from

àadolescence as a "porinter's devil" there. I do not

?find Riley as writing for the Hancock Democrat at least

?formally until September 7th, 1876.  Of course he wrote for

àmany newspapers anonymously and I do not think we should

àtotally dismiss the idea that Riley even possibly

?was the author of the unacknowledged article detailing the

àevents of the hanging in the Hancock Democrat.

à     The pendency of his own death looms. Possibly he was

?afraid he would be found out or suspected as the source of

àthe Kemmer information to the Journal.  Riley felt he had to

àleave Greenfield for his own safety shortly after the Kemmer

àincident.

?     Riley told his secretary, Marcus Dickey, about his

?flight from Greenfield after the time when Kemmer was hung

?and he felt great depression. The conversation is repeated in

?Riley's comments in his Youth of James Whitcomb Riley as

àfollows:

à     "It is my opinion," said Riley, referring to those days,

?"that the ways for our feet are found - not made.  We strut

àabout like peacocks and boast of our achievements and fame;

à      Is it by man's wisdom that the hawk soareth,

à      And stretcheth her wings toward the south?

?There I was in Greenfield, blue as the zenith over my head,

àno money, no way to leave town except walk, and right out on

?the National road the dust was flying and the fates

àfashioning my way of escape.  Down that road came the Wizard

àOil Company, a band of musicians and comedians in a graveling

?chariot, drawn by horses that cantered and ran as if they

àwere ballasted with quicksilver.  The manager of the company

?had discharged a man at Knightstown.  I took the vacant

?place, mounted to a seat beside the manager and bowled away

àto Fortville."

?    Dickey explains that the company of the Wizard Oil Co.

?hailed from Lima Ohio and had visited Greenfield annually

àsince 1870. Apparently, they were competitors to the other

?medicine show of Dr. McCrillus of Anderson whose show Riley

?joined previously.  The Townsend "Medicine Show" was popular

?enough that the Greenfield Adelphian band had written an

?original band piece entitled "The Wizard Oil Man," in honor

?of his custom of holding seranades, playing at socials and at

?church entertainments as well as selling "cures" at his

?"lectures." Riley recalled that the Townsend group usually

àappeared the week of the Fair but without any assurance they

?would do so. With pun intended, Riley remarked to his

àsecretary, "All was hanging on what the wind said."

à     Riley said when he left he was sick in body and sick at

?heart. Before leaving he said a farewell to John Skinner,

àsaying, "Quit the town. Stay here and they'll swing you to a

àtree in the Fair Ground."

à     Riley did not feel safe until he was out of town. With

àrelief turning itself into euphoria, Riley described himself

àas joining "the jolly party of chirping vagabonds." The

?party of traveling minstrels welcomed Riley as one whose

?heart was as free as their own.Friendships were made

àimmediately.  One of the travelers recalls, "(Riley) waded

?boot-top deep into our affections.  We laughed at his

àstories; everybody humored him, everybody bet on him."

?     Riley was back into the escapism he knew after his

àmother died when he joined the Doc McCrillus medicine show

àtraveling from town to town selling "The Standard Remedy."

àHe imagained himself thousands of miles away from the Hancock

?County Fairgrounds where he had witnessed friends and

?neighbors lynch a black man out of racist hatred. At this

àpoint in his life, Riley must have felt like the last child

àof Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.

à

àƒ                            ̀‚ɂ΂łӂ

à‚  ς΂ ‚ȂłÁ‚̉‚ɂ΂ǂ ‚Á‚ ‚Ă‚Ï‚×‚ ‚‚Á‚ׂ̀‚ ‚ɂ΂ ‚Á‚ ‚Ä‚Å‚Å‚Đ‚ ‚ƂɂԂ ‚ςƂ ‚Ä‚Å‚Ê‚Å‚Ă‚Ô‚É‚Ï‚Î‚¬‚ ‚ς΂ ‚ԂȂł

àƒ                łւł΂ɂ΂ǂ ‚ςƂ ‚Ê‚Ơ‚̀‚Ù‚ ‚³‚¬‚ ‚Á‚®‚Ä‚®‚ ‚±‚¸‚·‚¹‚

àƒ

àƒ             Portentous sound! mysteriously vast

à           And awful in the grandeur of refrain

à        That lifts the listener's hair as it swells past,

à           And pour in turbid currents down the lane.

à

à        The small boy at the woodpile, in a dream,

à           Slow trails the meat-rind±À‚ o'er the listless saw;

à        The chickens roosting o'er him on the beam

à           Uplift their drowsy heads with cootered²À‚ awe.

à

à        The "gung-oigh!" of the pump is strangely stilled;

à           The smoke-house door bangs once emphatic'ly

à        Then bangs no more, but leaves the silence filled

à           With one lorn plaint's despotic minstrelsy.

à

à        Yet I would join thy sorrowing madrigal,

à           Most melancholy cow, and sing of thee

à        Full-hearted through my tears, for, after all,

à           'Tis very kine³À‚ in you to sing for me.

à

?1. meat-rind, a humorous description of the appearance of a

àbeef cow.  Rind is skin in reference to an animal.

?2. The image is of chickens swaying their heads into an arch

?as do the coots, birds which stiffly arch their necks prior

àto a dive into waters to fish.

?3. "Kine" is an old plural form of the "cow," a substitute

?for the word "cattle." Riley employs paronomasia. His play on

?the word for "kine" is humorously intended to suggest "kind"

?as in the expression "How kind (thoughtful, pleasant) of

àyou."

à     Who is the boy?

à     No flight of fancy is needed to recognize the boy at the

?woodpile as Abraham Lincoln. The poem simply describes how

?Abraham Lincoln might have felt in contemplation of the 4th

àof July in the year 1879.

?     Riley clearly indicates the place where his poem is

àcomposed.  It is the "morgue," the name he gave to his

àsecond floor paintshop in downtown Greenfield, Indiana.

àThe place of the poem is thus Greenfield in racial turmoil.

?Greenfield was not a happy place for Riley during the years

?immediately following the hanging of the black man Kemmer at

?the County Fairgrounds. The Sheriff who had offered so little

?resistance to the break-in of his jail for the forcible

?removal of Kemmer for the lynching was different in 1879. The

?Sheriff at the time of the lynching, William Thomas, a

?prosperous Democrat farmer of Brandywine Township born in

?1840, was elected just the year prior to the lynching, and

?was re-elected the year later. He did not seek re-election in

?1878, but supported his deputy, William H. Thompson, a

?Democrat who was elected that year.  Greenfield's mood was

àentirely prejudicial to the emancipation hopes of those who

àkept faith with Lincoln's vision of a free American nation.

?     Blacks were treated in Greenfield, as elsewhere,

?literally as "cattle." We read from an account by George

àKnox, Greenfield's famous black barber of Riley's epoch

?of an incident of the kind to which Riley may refer in 1879

?while the country was still reeling under the impact of the

?American Civil War.  Reconstruction of the South was a

?primary need in those days since the economy there had been

?based upon the intolerable system of slavery. But what of the

àblacks from the South?  Many migrated north. In this year

?the four o'clock train arrived in Greenfield with a car load

?of blacks. Knox said, "I shall not forget as long as I live,

?the sensation the news made in the city (Greenfield) and the

?querulous and anxious and frequently condemnatory looks that

?were leveled at me from all sides." Knox was approached by a

?"colored man" (Knox's words) coming with an envelope to the

?barbershop having been directed there somehow. He handed Knox

?the envelope and said he had "twenty seven head." The letter

?was addressed to someone named Jones that Knox did not know.

?When Knox asked him what he meant by "twenty seven head," the

?man indicated he meant a wide assortment of ages of black

àfolk.

?     Knox recalled that when he got to the depot a large and

?angry crowd were gathering. "The excitement was reaching

àfever heat." The black folk were in desperate circumstances.

àSome were barely clothed. All were homeless and hungry.

?     Knox took charge of them and kept them in the depot the

?first night. He also talked to a white Christian storekeeper

?of the town who provided food for the destitute homeseekers.

?None of this went over very well with Greenfield and this

?store keeper's store was burned shortly afterwards.

?Eventually a big empty building was found in Greenfield for

?the immigrants to stay until they could find homes. Knox

?recalled a local newspaper editorializing against him for

?helping these folk accusing him of bringing into the county

?the poor lazy "niggers" for the purpose of taxing the white

?people to take care of them and that they (the whites) should

àwithdraw their patronage from his barbershop.

?     What can be done about the dejected singing of the

àcattle, as the blacks were treated in Riley's hometown?

?Who would listen to the bawl of one of the kine?  Who could

?speak up for the lynched Kemmer? Lincoln could not. He was

?dead and "in a dream." Those of tender and disposing

?sensibilities realized the bawl was a song of the nation.

?The shame of it comes from the juxtaposition of the

?"portentious sound"..."awful" on the day before Fourth of

àJuly holiday, the day when America celebrated its national

àindependence, values and worth.

à     Crestillomeem for all of her hellishness cried for

àKemmer and these "kine."


 

 

?

?

?

 Greenfield with a car load

?of blacks. Knox said, "I shall not forget as long as I live,

?the sensation the news made in the city (Greenfield) and the

?querulous and anxious and frequently condemnato

F"ºĐ



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6[1]


DNNNPRINTERàƒ      Ă‚̉‚łӂԂɂ̀‚̀‚ς͂łł͂§‚Ó‚ ‚ԂȂɂ̉‚Ä‚ ‚Ç‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚Å‚Î‚Ă‚Ï‚Ơ‚΂Ԃł̉‚ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق

 

à‚              Á‚ƂԂł̉‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ‚ςƂ ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł ‚Ă‚Ï‚Ï‚̀‚łق

à

à     Riley's third great encounter with Crestillomeem was

àhis most serious and resulted in delirious experiences.

àThe great expression of the encounter was the writing of

?Riley's autobiographical piece, "The Flying Islands of the

?Night." The immediate event causing this flight into tremens

?and its effects was the death of Nellie Cooley, the only

?woman who Riley fully loved. Whereas earlier encounters had

àbeen episodic and at generally increasing levels, Riley's

?alcoholism following Nellie's death was so pronounced that

àRiley was physically unable to work and deemed himself

?"ill" which generally meant suffering such serious depression

?and alcoholism that he could not leave his bed. Doctors

?became his friends after the death of Nellie. Such companions

?included Dr. Hayes, Dr. Smith, Dr. M'Cullough.  Riley's fears

?about his health and drinking were so substantial that he

?sought out the companions of those who could treat him in his

àillness and "failing" as it was generously called.

à

àƒ         Á‚ ‚ԂȂɂ̉‚Ä‚ ‚Ç‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚Å‚Đ‚É‚Ó‚Ï‚Ä‚Å‚ ‚ςƂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂

à

à     When Nellie Cooley died, Riley truly lost his only

?hope for a life lived in a marital relationship with a woman

?he loved in innocence and truth. Only to Riley and her family

?was Nellie's death so devestating when she died at the young

?age of 32.  So strange it is that there is no record of her

?death in Belleville, Illinois, the county seat where she

?died. Nor is there any record of her burial in Greenfield

àwhere her body was brought for final rest on July

à29, 1878.

à     The young poet's reaction to this bereavement, his grief

?and sense of loss, is expressed in her obituary which Riley

àwrote and had published in the Hancock DEMOCRAT.

à

àƒ                 ͂ł͂ς̉‚É‚Á‚̀‚ ‚­‚ ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł ‚Í‚®‚ ‚Ă‚Ï‚Ï‚̀‚łق

à

?Died, at Belleville, Illinois, July 27, 1878, Nellie M.

?Cooley, wife of George B. Cooley. Interred at Greenfield, her

?old home, July 29, 1878.  Her life was like a dreamy summer

?day, made up of bright things only.  Warm depths of azure

?skies, where merry birds, afloat on waves of sunshine, poured

?out their sweetest songs, and so baptized the world with

?sweetest melody: where morning walked the dewy paths that led

?through Nature's fairest haunts, and laid her shining hand on

?all things loveable; where meadowlands lay basking in the sun

?and clover-blossoms shook their fragrance out on every

?passing breeze and flavored all the air with sweetness and

?delight; where the laughing brook leaped from its shady

?hiding-place, low-nestled in among the cool grasses growing

?in the dusky woods, and, while the lilies leaned their

?wondering face o'er the brink, and the weeping willows

?trained their slender hands within the wave, went loitering

àalong its winding way, and babbling limpid music as it went.

à     Her life was like a dreamy sunny day; and, as always was

?her wish, on such a day she laid aside the weary task of

?life, and out across "the all-golden afternoon" she walked on

?and on into her Father's open arms, and where fell upon her

àbrow the sister kiss of Heaven's happiest angel.

?     The fairest gifts of womanhood were hers - a child's

?pure faith, a maiden's hope, a woman's charity.  Her heart

?was soundless in its depths of love; her soul was boundless

?in its breadth of nobleness; she wore the bond of Friendship

?loyally, and ever held a gracious hand of welcome to

?distress.  Her home was Joy's abiding place, and Patience,

?Peace and Love walked ever at her side, as now they walk,

?appareled in the raiment of the Lord's approving smile, and

àwaiting with her loved ones lingering here.

à

à     Riley also appended a poem to his Hancock DEMOCRAT

àobituary for Nellie.

à

àƒ                     Á‚ ‚Ä‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Í‚ ‚Ơ‚΂Ƃɂ΂ɂӂȂłĂ

à

àOnly a dream unfinished; only a form at rest

àWith weary hands clasped lightly over a peaceful breast.

à

?And the lonesome light of summer through the open door-way

àfalls,

?But it makes no laugh in the parlor - no voice in the vacant

àhalls.

à

àIt throws no spell of  music over the slumbrous air;

àIt meets no step on the carpet - no form in the easy chair.

à

àIt finds no queenly presence blessing the solitude

àWith the gracious benediction of royal womanhood.

à

àIt finds no willowy figure tilting the cage that swings

àWith the little pale canary that forgets the song he sings.

à

àNo face at the open window to welcome the fragrant breeze;

àNo touch at the old piano to waken the sleeping keys.

à

àThe idle book lies open, and the folded leaf is pressed

àOver the half-told story while death relates the rest.

à

àOnly a dream unfinished; only a form at rest,

àWith weary hands clasped tightly over a peaceful breast.

à

?The light steals into the corner where the darkest shadows

àare,

?And sweeps with its golden fingers the strings of the mute

àguitar.

à

àAnd over the drooping mosses it clambers the rustic stand,

àAnd over the ivy's tresses it trails a trembling hand.

à

?But it brings no smile from the darkness - it  calls no face

àfrom the gloom -

?No song flows out of the silence that aches in the empty

àroom.

à

?And we look in vain for the dawning in the depths of our

àdespair,

?Where the weary voice goes wailing through the empty aisles

àof prayer.

à

?And the  hands reach out through the darkness for the touches

àwe have known

?When the icy palms lay warmly in the pressure of our own.

à

àWhen the folded eyes were gleaming with a glory God designed

àTo light a way to Heaven by the smiles they left behind.

à

àOnly a dream unfinished; only a form at rest

àWith weary hands clasped lightly over a peaceful breast."

à

àƒ              Ȃς΂ς̉‚ ‚È‚Á‚Ä‚ ‚Ë‚Å‚Đ‚Ô‚ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Æ‚̉‚ς͂ ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł

à

à      Why did Riley allow Nellie go with her husband to

àIllinois if he truly loved her?

à      Honor.

à      To a Nineteenth Century Protestant American, honor

àrequired giving respect to a married person as such. Honor

àrequired one to regard married people as inviably matched.

àIn private Riley might love Nellie dearly, but his sense

àof honor did not permit him to break up their marriage.

?In addition, Riley seems to have loved Nellie's husband

àalmost as much as Nellie but in a fraternal way.

à     After Nellie's death, honor seemed to Riley much less

?of an excuse for not having Nellie in his life. His

?dedication quotation to a later edition of "The Flying

?Islands of the Night" berates honor as "A thynege of

?wychencref, an idle dreme..." This comes from Thomas

?Chatterton's "AElla," lines 536-7.  In that poem, a

?frustrated "other man" utters these lines while

?contemplationg taking the betrothed woman of a friend. Riley

?was equally frustrated by honor which kept Nellie from his

àarms.

?     This death of his beloved shortly before the writing of

?"The Flying Islands of the Night" is represented in "Wraith±À‚-

?Song of Spraivoll" at the commencement of Act III of "The

?Flying Islands of the Night." A "wraith" has a 1500's sense

?of an immaterial spectral appearance of a living being,

?portending the person's death.  Here, Riley the poet, is

?close to death from alcoholism depressed over the death of

?his beloved Nellie Cooley.  Spraivoll, the poet's poetic

?self, bemoans his despair at the situation of Riley having

àlost Nellie to the hand of death.

à

à     I will not hear the dying word

à          Of any friend, nor stroke the wing

à     Of any little wounded bird.

à          ...Love is the deadest thing!

à

à     I wist not if I see the smile

à          Of prince or wight, in court or lane. -

à     I only know that afterwhile

à          He will not smile again.

à

à     The summer blossom, at my feet,

à          Swims backward, drowning in the grass. -

à     I will not stay to name it sweet -

à          Sink out! and let me pass!

à

à     I have no mind to feel the touch

à          Of gentle hands on brow and hair. -

à     The lack of this once pained me much,

à          And so I have a care.

à

à     Dead weeds, and husky-rustling leaves

à          That beat the dead boughs where ye cling,

à     And old dead nests beneath the eaves -

à          Love is the deadest thing!

à

à     Ah! once I fared not all alone;

à          And once - no matter, rain or snow! -

à     The stars of summer ever shone -

à          Because I loved him so!

à

à     With always tremblings in his hands,

à          And always blushes unaware,

à     And always ripples down the strands

à          Of his long yellow hair.

à

à     I needs must weep a little space,

à          Remembering his laughing eyes

à     And curving lip, and lifted face

à          Of rapture and surprise.

à

à     O joy is dead in every part,

à          And life and hope; and so I sing:

à     In all the graveyard of my heart

à          Love is the deadest thing!

à

àƒ   ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł ‚Á‚Ó‚ ‚͂ɂ΂΂ɂł ‚‚ł̀‚̀‚Å‚ ‚Í‚É‚Ô‚Ă‚È‚Å‚̀‚̀‚ ‚̉‚ł͂ł͂‚ł̉‚łĂ ‚ɂԂ

à

?     James W. Riley was in his early teens when the Millikan

?family came from the east and settled in Greenfield.  Mrs.

?Millikan, a widow with three sons and two daughters, brought

?with her Greenfield's first piano.  Because young Riley

?possessed another gift, a talent for music, he was at once

?attracted to  the family, especially to the younger daughter,

?Nellie, who not only played the piano, but also that

àsentimental instrument, the guitar.

?     Bud was intrenched into the Millikan family.   He and

? the youngest son, Jesse, established an intimate friendship

à which grew with each year until the latter's death.

à     But the lad's friendship for Nellie was different.  She

?was a gay, vivacious, fun-loving girl and young woman. Her

?music delighted him. She shared in the boys' games, helped

?young Riley with his studies and laughed sympathetically at

àhis wild antics and mimicry.  She was the personification of

?a satisfying friend and enough older than him to exercise a

àsister's prerogative of advising,  criticizing and rebuking

àhim when the need arose.

?     The intimacy and freedom of the Millikan home

?established in those early days remained unchanged on through

?Nellie's courtship and marriage to George Cooley, who shared

?in the family's affectionate regard for the sixteen year-old

àlad.

?     All through the years of the young poet's  diligent

?writing and struggle for recognition, Nellie remained his

?staunch friend and critic. Her standards were high.  She not

?only encouraged and praised his poetic efforts but she chided

?him at times when a passing weakness turned his faltering

?steps away from his coveted goal. She, with a mother's

?intuition, sustained him with her impelling faith in his

àultimate success and started him again upon the upward grade.

?     The happy times with the Millikans did not end, however,

àwith Nellie's marriage.  She and her husband with young Bud

?and Jesse attended the dancing club which was an integral

àpart of all social gatherings and they were always the life

?of the crowd. Bud and Nellie also led in charade parties

?which finally developed into parlor dramatics. Later young

?Riley, with a group of friends, organized a dramatic club

àknown as "The Adelphians." It was in this organization

?that he found his greatest pleasure - he was a born actor.

?The years he had spent in character study and mimicry stood

?him well in hand and the Cooleys and other intimates formed

àan enviable cast.

à     In 1875, Mrs. Millikan's family and the Cooleys moved to

àIllinois.  There were later two small children in the Cooley

àfamily.  The frequent letters that were exchanged, especially

àNellie's bright, encouraging ones, cheered the young poet in

?a way, yet his loneliness was great. An intimacy extending

?over many years could not be broken without a pull at heart

?strings.  Finally after three years absence, the faithful

?friend whose love and interest was much like that of a

?mother, passed away at Belleville, Illinois, on July 27,

à1876.  She was brought back to Greenfield for burial.

à

à̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚̀‚Á‚Đ‚Ó‚Å‚Ó‚ ‚Ä‚Å‚Å‚Đ‚Å‚̉‚ ‚ɂ΂Ԃς ‚Á‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂ ‚Ƃς̀‚̀‚ςׂɂ΂ǂ ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł§‚Ó‚ ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚

à

?      Riley's response to Nellie's death was to confirm

?himself as an alcoholic and lapse into even more continuous

àintoxications with attnedant occasional deliriums.

?      Riley's call for Crestillomeem (his alcoholism) to take

?over his life is found in his autobiographical poem, "The

àFlying Islands of the Night," where Riley admits:

à

à             He said: "Crestillomeem -

àO that she knew this thick distress of mine! -

àHer counsel would anoint me and her voice

àWould flow in limpid wisdom o'er my woes

àAnd, like a love-balm, lave my secret grief

àAnd lull my sleepless heart! " (Aside) And so went on,

àStruggling all maudlin in the wrangled web

àThat well-nigh hath cocooned him!

à

à     When Riley received word of the death of Nellie Cooley,

àhe reacted with great distress. That they were parted he had

?come to accept. That he was consigned never to live with

àNellie was never accepted. Her death sealed that fact.

?It literally "cocooned" him. He took to the night only as a

àplace where he might function away from people.

à     In another part of the poem, Crestillomeem, Riley's

àalcoholism acknowledges that only for his poetry can

àRiley choose to live and avoid suicide.

à

à...the Queen, doth rule the King in all

àSave this affectionate perversity

àOf favor for the son whom he would raise

àTo his own place. - And but for this the King

àLong since had tasted death and kissed his fate

àAs one might kiss a bride!

à

àIf his debauched nature can put an end to the

àpoetic self, then the triumph of debauchery will be complete

àand Riley must succomb to utter despair and suicide.

à

àƒ             ̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Æ‚Á‚Ă‚Å‚Ó‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚̀‚ςӂӂ ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚ĂׂÁ‚ɂ΂ɂł

à

?     With the death of Nellie Cooley, Riley faced a bleak

?future. There would never be the affection or essential signs

?of love, the expectatition of sexual embraces and kisses or

?physical affections. This lack generated great anxiety.  The

?goal of happiness becomes unattainable.  If one is of a great

àloving nature, the expression of it becomes frustrated.

?The anger must be released.  When the death is of one's great

?soul-partner there is no one with whom to express the depth

àof the separation. Nellie was this soul-partner of Riley.

à

à‚  ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚̀‚ς΂ł̀‚Ù‚ ‚Ä‚Å‚Ó‚Đ‚Ï‚Î‚Ä‚Å‚Î‚Ô‚ ‚̀‚ɂƂł ‚Ƃς̀‚̀‚ςׂɂ΂ǂ ‚ԂȂł ‚Ä‚Å‚Đ‚Á‚̉‚Ô‚Ơ‚̉‚Å‚ ‚ςƂ

àƒ                     ΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł ‚Ƃς̉‚ ‚É‚̀‚̀‚ɂ΂ςɂӂ

à

?     The testimony of Cornelia Loder (later Wood) describes

?the home of Reuben Riley. She lodged at the home of the

?Rileys when she was hired to teach in the Greenfield grade

?schools under Superintendent John Binford in the summer of

?1876. She recalled the Greenfield Academy building which

?Reuben turned into a residence as a tall, old, dignified,

?block-shaped, frame structure with a flat roof and a cupola

?belfrey. The home stood in a grove of trees. It was very

?imposing with pillar ornaments on the front giving it the

?impression of height and great dignity. The family called it

?the "Old Castle," or the "Castle in the Grove."  James

?Whitcomb Riley went to school there to Lee O. Harris in

àearlier years.

à     Riley was already recognized as a literary entertainer.

?Miss Loder recalled "making my home with them one week before

?school began in order to attend the teacher's institute.  The

?teachers had requested James Whitcomb to give his Bear story

?at the institute, and Elva (the sister) said to me `I wish

?Jim wouldn't do that. It sound so silly." I had never heard

?it before and could see why everybody wanted to hear him tell

?it." She also commented hearing that Riley never told the

àstory twice the same way.

?     Riley recited some other poems which were not original

?during this period in his platform career. One was "The Lily

?Bud" by Anna Poe. Riley touched simple Christian emotions in

?his platform work from the earliest stage of his career and

àconcentrated all of his creative effort on such evocations.

?The story line of "The Lily Bud" has two brothers who live on

?adjoining farms not speaking to each other for a long time.

?A little baby came into one of the homes. The other brother

?happens to be working near that home one day and cannot

?resist the desire to see the baby and steps through the back

?door up to the cradle. The brother/father sees him and steps

?to his side and peace is made between them. The story is a

àsimple referrant to the Matthean recollection whereby

àJesus teaches it is not just murder but also anger toward

?a brother that must be resolved if one is to fulfill a life

?consonent with the law of Christian love.  Mary Riley, the

?     poet's sister, once recollected the hours of labor that

àRiley devoted to getting his performance

?of poetry right while residing with the family at the

àGreenfield Academy residence.

?     She recalled, "It was his custom to shut himself up in

?his room at night, and work till 3 or 4 o'clock in the

?morning, reading aloud to himself, over and over, the

?recalcitrant lines of whatever poem he was at the time

àengaged in writing.

?     Even then, his voice had that strange arresting quality

?that so greatly moved audiences in his later years, when he

?read his poems from the lecture platform.  However, if his

?voice occasionally woke me from sleep, it was to me merely

?the comforting tones of the voice I loved - the voice of a

?brother whose tender care of me had replaced the loss of our

?sweet mother.  I immediately went back to sleep undistrubed

àby its sound.

?     The rest of the family was less enraptured, though, and

?I can remember my other brothers rising in righteous wrath,

?and tiptoeing to his door to protest in angry whispers.  Jim

?would apologize, and, for awhile his voice would remain as

?low and droning as a bumble bee. But he'd forget again

?shortly and resum,e his absorbed and dramatic intonations in

?a normal voice, and then I'd hear our father (Reuben Riley)

?go  to his door and remonstrate.  The strongest expletive

?father ever used was `By Goerge," but the mildness of the

?expression was contradicted by the stern tone, and I quaked

?for Jim as I heard father say: `By George, I want an end to

àthis!'"

à     As a consequence of his "night activities," Riley often

?slept over at other places or at his paint shop, when he had

àthat facility which he called "the morgue."

?     Riley was obviously despondent, missed having the

àcompanionship of Nellie Cooley, and returned to his alternate

àcompanion, Crestillomeem.

à

àƒ           Đ‚Ơ‚‚̀‚ɂ ‚Ó‚È‚Á‚͂ł ‚ςƂ ‚É‚Î‚Ô‚Ï‚Ø‚É‚Ă‚Á‚Ԃɂς΂ ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚Á‚̉‚̉‚łӂԂ

àƒ ¢‚̉‚Ơ‚͂ς̉‚§‚Ó‚ ‚Æ‚̀‚Ơ‚Ô‚Ô‚Å‚̉‚¢‚ ‚¨‚æ‚̣‚ï‚í‚ ‚¢‚Ô‚è‚å‚ ‚Æ‚́‚ù‚é‚î‚ç‚ ‚É‚ó‚́‚á‚î‚ä‚ó‚ ‚ï‚æ‚ ‚ô‚è‚å‚ ‚΂é‚ç‚è‚ô‚¢‚©‚

à

àBut dost thou know that rumors flutter now

àAmong the subjects of thy sorceries? -

àThe art being banned±À‚, thou knowest; or, unhoused

àIs unleashed pitilessly by the grim,

àFacetious body of the dridular²À‚

àUpon the one who fain had loosed the curse

àOn others. - An my counsel be worth aught,

àThen have a care thy spells do not revert

àUpon thyself, nor yet mine own poor hulk

àO' fearsomeness!

à

?1. Intoxication is a crime in Indiana as James Whitcomb Riley

àcame to know from being convicted of it in Hoosier

?town courts many times as a youth, usually released on bonds

?posted by friends.  A record of his conviction in the Mayor's

àCourt of Greenfield in late 1877 survives.

?2. Dridular is a prohibitionist agitator. Probably this

àreference is to Luther Benson, a temperance lecturer, and

?friend who took Riley's confessions about his alcoholism for

àmany years. Riley traveled with him briefly in late 1877

?into Northern Indiana. Benson loaned money to Riley as he

?often did to alcoholics such as Riley to aid them and their

?families in trouble cause by alcoholic use. Such a "dridular"

?promotes "dry" (prohibitionist) as opposed to wet (legal

?alcohol sales). The word is suggestive of a "dry dealer" in

?intoxicatese or one opposed to alcohol dealing.  Riley would

?know about such prohibition agitation.  He spoke about the

?evils  of intoxication as a "reformed drunk" in his own life

?on the Benson tour of 1877 shortly before returning to

àGreenfield.  A Benson testimonial was often used to promote

?Riley on his earlier lecture tours reading: "I want to say to

àyou tonight that his humor gnaws at the very vitals of your

?being and his pathos is like grinding sausage with bones in

àit." Benson had recurring falls into alcoholism and suffered

?one in the poet's hometown of Greenfield, Indiana with a

?subsequent arrest for public intoxication on January 18,

à1879.

à

?Ԃׂς ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚Đ‚Ï‚Å‚Í‚Ó‚ ‚Ƃς̀‚̀‚ςׂɂ΂ǂ ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł ‚Ă‚Ï‚Ï‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚ĂłÁ‚Ô‚È‚ ɂ΂ ‚

àĂ‚Ï‚Î‚Ô‚Å‚Í‚Đ‚̀‚Á‚Ԃɂς΂ ‚ςƂ ‚Ó‚Ơ‚É‚Ă‚É‚Ä‚Å‚ Á‚΂Ă ‚Ä‚̉‚Ơ‚΂˂ł΂΂łӂӂ ‚Ô‚Ï‚ ‚Ƃς̉‚ǂłԂ

à

à

̀ÀÀ?0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ>ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

àƒ           ̀‚ɂ΂łӂ ‚Ô‚Ï‚ ‚Á‚΂ ‚ς΂ӂłԂԂ̀‚łĂ ‚Ù‚Ï‚Ơ‚΂ǂ ‚Í‚Á‚΂ ‚¨‚±‚¸‚·‚¹‚©‚

à

à         "O what is Life at last," says you,

à          `ASt woman-floks and man-folks too,

à          Cain't oncomplainin', worry through?

à

à         "An' waht is Love, `at no one yit

à          `At's monkeyed with it kin forgit,

à          Er gits fat on remembern hit?

à

à         "An' what is Death?" - W'y, looky hyur -

à          Ef Life an' Love don't suit you, sir,

à          Hit's jes' the thing yer lookin' fer!

à

à--------------------------------

àIn 1879. Riley, considering himself as Jucklet of his play,

?composed "A Toast of Jucklet's," in similar Chattertonian

?bawd to his writing in "The Flying Islands," "To the Wine-God

àMerlus"

à

àHo! ho! thou jolly god, with kinded lips

àAnd laughter-streaming eytes, thou liftest up

àThe hgeart of me like any wassail-cup,

àAnd from its teeming brim, in foaming drips,

àThou blowest all my cares.  I cry to thee

àBetween the sips: - Drink long and lustily;

àDrink thou m ripest joys, my richest mirth,

àMy maddest staves of wanton minstrelsy;

àDrink every song I've tinkered here on earth

àWith any patch of music; drink! and be

àThou drainier of my soul, and to the lees

àDrink all myu lover-thrills and ecsatasies;

àAnd with a final gulp - ho! ho! - drink me,

àAnd roll me o'er thy tongue eternally.

à

?     Actually, in the poem itself, Crestillomeem is the Riley

?"self" who enchants Riley into alcoholism and delirium

àtremens. ("At present doth the King (Riley) lie in a sleep

?Drug-wrought and deep as death  - the after-phase of an

?unconscious state...") The poem is in the ostensible form of

?a "play," because this most fanciful of Riley's poems is a

?"play" on his life. It is written as a takeoff of a 15th

?century play such as Thomas Chatterton, the fantastic forger-

?boy would have written and passed off as play of the non-

?existent monk Rowley. It probably owes its form more to the

?gloom Poe fitted into his "Secenes from Politian." But

?Riley's "play" is not dreamish humorous or despairing however

?clever and entertaining or dishonest as a forgery on life it

?might be or as it may appear or be. "The Flying Islands of

?the Night" is boldly delirious-appropriate to Riley's hellish

àperception of his existence without ordinary love.

?     Riley intimately knows this cast member, Crestillomeem,

?a pushy, slutty lady-this mannish cross-dressing queen of a

?fantasy horror show who slurs words and lurks behind him

?ready to take over his life at every juncture. She is the

?foil of a W.C.T.U. crusader of Riley's late Nineteenth

?Century era, a type of personality who has haunted Riley and

?hunted him out for persecution as a youth to ridicule him and

?call him a "no-good" in his adolescence, to drive him under

?and sign a pledge not to drink. The fact is Riley's

?"Crestillomeem" is on the other side of the issue of

?alcoholism but just as determined a lady as any temperance

?"bitch."  "Crestillomeem" wants Riley drunk and delirious.

?She doesn't want him writing poetry.  She likes him suicidal.

?She is the reincarnation of the poison that Thomas Chatterton

?took when his forgeries became known.  Cretillomeem wants

?Riley dead if not drunk and insists he sign a "pledge" to

?stay drunk just as her "purer" W.C.T.U.  counterparts want

àRiley to sign a pledge to abstain from alcohol! Will Riley

àsign on to alcoholism's "Murphy" pledge? His autobiographical

àpoem, "The Flying Islands of the Night" tells us.

à     She wants him to die as did Tommy Chatterton, the poet

?whose life was such a fascination to Riley - the boy who

?ditched an apprenticeship in the law, wrote forgeries, but

àthen committed suicide horribly through taking arsenic rather

?than face life after exposure of his forgered poems.

àFollowing the condemnations of Riley for forging "Leonainie,"

?Riley must have considered the same course of suicidal

àaction.

à

?Riley was afflicted with terrible suicidal depression as well

?as alcoholism.  This is not beyond expectation. Creative

?writers are much more often afflicted by disabling

?personality traits as well as alcoholism, and writers are

?more than twice as likely to have affective disorders as

?other high achievers according to recent psychiatric study.

?SEE: "Verbal Creativty, Depression and Alcoholism," Brit.J.of

àPsych.(1966),168.

à

à‚ Riley and his brother Hum shared the life of great anguish

àover the loss of the mother, Elizabeth, who died too

àearly and under such compelling poverty. Both sank into

àalcoholism. Both tried to help the other out of its morass.

?Brother Hum did not live long enough after this letter was

àwritten, a matter of months, to do well for his brother. Nor

?did Riley succeed in healing his brother of his great

àsorrows.

à

àƒÁ‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂ ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚Ä‚Å‚Ó‚Đ‚Á‚É‚̉‚ ‚Á‚‚ςƠ‚Ô‚ ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł ‚Ă‚Á‚Ơ‚Ó‚Å‚ ‚‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ë‚ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚Ö‚Å‚̉‚Ó‚Å‚ ‚ςƂ

àƒ           ̀‚ς΂ǂƂł̀‚̀‚ςׂ ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚Đ‚̉‚ɂς̉‚ ‚Đ‚Ï‚Å‚Ô‚É‚Ă‚ ‚ɂ΂Ƃ̀‚Ơ‚Å‚Î‚Ă‚Å‚Ó‚

à

à      Riley's Declaration of Independence from prior American

àpoetry, particularly that of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was

?announced in a drunken letter to the editor carried in the

?Kokomo TRIBUNE of April 5, 1979.. The letter was signed by

àRiley's nom de plume John Walker, like the booze brand.

à

?The letter to the newspaper was entitled, "USE AND ABUSE OF

àTHE POETIC THEME" and reads:

?    "Poetry," said Johnson, "is the next best thing to

?prose." And in my belief had Johnson lived on until the

?present day and age, that utterance would now read, "Poetry

àis the next best thing to nothing."

?     The poetry of to-day is altogether too lush - too

?"sobby," I may say; too much sap, and not enough timber, you

?understand.  It's just as refreshing, perhaps, to those who

?never use it as it ever was; but to those who liked myself

?have the smouldering embers of poetic fire forever gasping

?the fuel treue genius alone can supply, the poetry of to-day

?only servbes to smother and depress the flickering flames

?that otherwise would leap up roaringly, and illuminate the

àwhole heartlike a torch-light procession.

?    Poets who will persist in writing the poetry of to-day

?ought to be bucked and gagged, and rolled up like a ball of

?stale pop-corn and thrown out o fthe car-window of modern

?advancem,ent.  And yuet how many unfettered hands do we daily

àsee lifted in this most unhaly practice.

?     Nor is the Press of our land wholly guiltless of lending

?furtherance to this most crying wrong; for it not only

?passively submits to these constantly recurring atrocities of

?rhyme, but - indirectly it may be - it aids and abets the

?evil by publishing and reproducing the very "poems" which

?otherwise would drop at once into the famishing oblivion

?which pants for them in vain.  Where is the boasted justice

?of our broad Republic?  Where is the Red-eyed Law we boast

àof? And "where, may I ask, is the Grand Jury of our land?"

?     This train of thought has been most painfully inflicted

?on my mind by a recent "poem," still going the rounds of the

?press, entitled "The Chamber Over the Gate," and openly

àclaimed by its author, Henry W. Longfellow.

?      Now, personally, I have nothing but the kindliest

?feeling toward Mr. Longfellow, but, in justice to the demands

?of the strictly literary element of Howard county, and Kokomo

?in particular, I must affirm that the really "suggestive and

?inviting theme he has selected, has not only met with neglect

?at his hands, but ;positive abuse.  Yet like the thousands

?like it that are daily flaunted in our faces by the public

?press, it is copied, reproduced, and duplicated till the path

?of progress is lieterally strewn and choked with the rank

àdead leaves of poetical ruin and literary woe.

?     I cannot comment at length upon a subject so glutted

?with disasster and so bleared and bloated with the highwires

?of distress, but I will add, byd way of admonition to Mr. L.

?that an author, and poet in particualr, cannot be too

?caustious in his encroachments on the public weal.  There

?are, I am frank to admit, certain points in "The Chamber over

?the Gate" that would warrant me in advising Mr. L. to

?continue, for a time at least, in the exercise of his

?poetical inclinations, but even this advice I must withold,

?unless, indeed, the audacious asp[9irant will curb his

?admbition, and adopt in future for each succeeding effort of

?his pen, a fresh nom de plume.  This, in a measure, would

?advance anythign of worth he mgiht chance to produce, while

?it would shield him as well from the pain and humiliation he

?must necessarily feel in reading such critizes as the one my

àduty now cllas on me to lay before the world.

?     And now that I have gone so far in pointing out this

?glaring discrepancy, and directing at least one wandering

?upon his pilgrimmage to the Great Perhaps, it becomes my

?further duty to illustrate, both to the unfortunate poet, and

?to my many admirers, the real principle involved in the

?poetical management of the theme he has so ruthlessly

àdistorted and abused.

?     I subjoin a hastily arranged though mainly perfect copy

àof the poem as it shoul.d be treated by a master hand.

à

àƒ                  THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE

̀ÔÎ…0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ>ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

àƒ                -----Is it too fine for thee

à          To drop onto, and see,

à          In the chamber over the gate

à          That old man hesitate -

à          Watching and waiting there

à          To swoop down unaware?

à               O Absalom, my son!  Is it so long ago

à          That in the street below

à          Thou hunst there on the gate

à          While the clock banged on from eight

à          Till thy footseeps died away

à          Into the dawning of the day?

à               O Absolam, my son!

à

à          There is no near or far.

à          There is neither here nor thar.

à          There is neither soon nor late

à          In that chamber over the gate

à          Nor any long ago

à          To that wail of human woe,

à               O Absalom, my son!

à

à          In dreams of the van shed past

à          The voice comes like a blast

à          Over the window-sill

à          Thou hears it howling still.

à          And in nightmares yet to be

à          Will its echoes tackle thee

à               O Absolam, my son!

à

à          He goes forth from the door

à          Who shall return no more:

à          With him the flower- pot goes

à          And the boot a spector throws

à          From the chamber over the gate

à          Where the old man lies in wait

à               O Absalom, my son!

à

à          That tis a common grief

à          Bringeth but slight relief;

à          Her's is the bitterest loss-

à          For the old man is the boss -

à          And forever the cry must be:

à          Would I had fled with thee

̀Äâ‡0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ2ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

à               O Absalom, my son!

à

à      Here is something very new in the life of James

?Whitcomb Riley. Yes, he wanted to be a poet. He had always

àwanted to be a poet. Yet his life had driven him into

àdespair, confused depression and alcoholism.

à     To find his voice it was necessary for him to transform

àpoetry itself. This meant first and foremost to break away

?from the mainstream "Longfellow-type romantic" poetry which

àhe had previously most admired.

?     Riley needed to write alcoholic poetry before he could

àwrite kenotic poetry.

?     He wrote poetry as "Old Sport" wrote doggerel for

àawhile. This was Riley's John Walker poetry. "Who is Old

àSport?" "Old Sport" was where Riley was coming from.

à     We look briefly at where Riley was coming from.

?     Let us first consider the "elevated" poetry of America's

?poet laureate prior to Riley's advent. "The Chamber Over the

?Gate" was a poem of the elderly Longfellow written October

?30, 1878. Longfellow wrote it to accompany a letter of

?condolence written to a Protestant "Bishop" of Mississippi,

?Rev. Duncan C. Green, whose son had died in Greenville,

àMississippi serving victims of an outbreak of yellow fever.

?     We compare Longfellows and Riley's "John Walker" re-

àarrangement:

à

à

àƒ                  THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE

̀Ơư‡0ˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆ1ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ2ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ7ˆˆˆˆ]

àLONGFELLOW'S                            RILEY'S

à

àIs it too fine for thee            Is it too fine for thee

àTo drop onto, and see              To drop onto, and see

àIn the chamber over the gate       In the chamber over the gate

àThat old man hesitate -            That old man hesitate -

àWatching and waiting there         Watching and waiting there

àTo swoop down unaware?             To swoop down unaware

à     O Absalom, my son!                 O Absalom, my son!

à

àIs it so long ago                  Is it so long ago

àThat cry of humn woe               That in the street below

àFrom the walled city came,         Thou hungst there on the gate

àCalling on his dear name           While the clock banged on from eight

àThat it has died away              Till thy footseeps died away

àIn the distance of to-day?         Into the dawning of the day?

à     O Absalom, my son!                 O Absolam, my son!

à

àThere is no far or near,           There is no near or far.

àThere is netiehr there nor here,   There is neither here nor thar.

àThere is neither soon nor late,    There is neither soon nor late

àIn that Chamber over the Gate,     In that chamber over the gate

àNor any long ago                   Nor any long ago

àTo that cry of human woe,          To that wail of human woe,

à     O Absalom, my son!                 O Absalom, my son!

à

àFrom the ages that are past        In dreams of the van shed past

àThe voice sounds like a blast      The voice comes like a blast

àOver seas that wreck and drown,    Over the window-sill

àOver tumult of traffic and town;   Thou hears it howling still.

àAnd from ages yet to be            And in nightmares yet to be

àCome the echoes back to me,        Will its echoes tackle thee

à   O Absalom, my son!                   O Absolam, my son!

à

àSomewhere at every hour            He goes forth from the door

àThe watchman on the tower          Who shall return no more:

àLooks forth, and sees the fleet    With him the flower-pot goes

àApproach of the hurrying feet      And the boot a spector throws

àOf messengers, that  bear          From the chamber over the gate

àThe tidings of despair,            Where the old man lies in wait

à     O Absalom, my son!                 O Absalom, my son!

à

àHe goes froth from the door,       That tis a common grief

àWho shall return no more.          Bringeth but slight relief;

àWith him our joy departs;          Her's is the bitterest loss-

àThe light goes out in our hearts;  For the old man is the boss -

àIn the Chamber over the Gate       And forever the cry must be:

àWe sit disconsolate.               Would I had fled with thee

à     O Absalom, my son!                 O Absalom, my son!

à

àThat 't is a common grief

àBringeth but slight relief;

àOurs is the bitterest loss,

àOurs is the heaviest cross;

àAnbd forever the cry will be

à"Would God I had died for thee,

à     O Absalom, my son!

à

à     Riley turns the situational subject matter over to a humble

?life situation. John Walker deos not know a noble father who grieves

?for a deserving son. John Walker knows a boy who is thrown out of his

?home by an uncaring father. He knwos this boy to be thrown out of his

?house with a flower pot and boot thrown out after him to make sure he

?goes on his way and knows he can't come home. This, according to Riley,

?would be a much more likely scenario for the writing of a poem about a

à"chamber over the gate."

à     In his late twenties, Riley is abandoning Longfellow as a trusted

?guide to American life and throwing his support to the weltershung of

àhis fellow alcoholic "Old Sport."

à     John C. Walker, the pseudonymn which Riley used here, was

?"Old Sport" according to his friend and biographer, Minnie Belle

àMitchell. The John Walker poems were done in imitation of an

?alcoholic "corduroy" poet whose real name was William Stafford.   She

?says of him, "The boys about town called Bill Stafford "Old Sport."

?When sober he sold a patent sieve from door to door, but when he was

?dringking, Old Sport made verses which were the merest doggerel.  He

?would sing thme to the tune of a weird old Irish song.  While thus

?engaged he would sit bent over on a box outside a store with arms

?crossed tight, legs dangling and head down, making these rhymes and

?singing them dolefully.  Sometimes his rhymes were of a local nature,

?again they would soar into the realm of imagination and become weird

àand mournful. Olf Sprot was, indeed, a favortie character for Mr. Riley

?to imitate when in a jolly crowd.  The poet would make up his own

?doggerel and sing it to the same Irish tune and every little while

?would say under his breath in Old Sport's same cracked voice, "God -

àwhat a doleful tune!" The following is an example of Old Sport's artful

àrhyming -

à           "I will not be a farmer

à                Nor longer till the sod,

à            I will not hitch another team

à                Nor hop another clod."

?Mitchell believes this very doggerel inspired Riley's first John C.

àWalker poem as published in the Kokomo TRIBUNE called "Tom

àJohnson's Quit."

àƒ                      ׂȂق ‚ʂςȂ΂§‚Ó‚ ‚ӂς΂¬‚ ‚Á‚ ‚Đ‚̉‚Ï‚Đ‚Ï‚Ó‚Á‚̀‚

à

à     Riley's Bible reading was well known. I find the references

àto John, the apostle of humility, and Riley's assumption of the name

àJohnson so often more than coincidence.

?     We do not find this character in Riley's poetry to even have a

?first name in Riley's use of the appelation in "Use and Abuse of the

àPoetic Theme."

à     In Riley's contemporaneous "Buzz Club," we find another use of the

àname Johnson. It is a boy who everyone seems to condemn, but who finds

àpeace in being John's son despite the humility the condition has had on

àhis life.

à     Here is Mr. Plempton's poem, "Johnson's Boy:"

à

à     The world is turned agin me,

à       And people says they guess

à     That nothin' else is in me

à       But pure maliciousness.

à     I git the blame for doin'

à       What other chaps destroy;

à     And I' jist agoin' to ruin

à       Because I'm "Johnson's Boy"

à

à     That ain't my name - I'd ruther

à       They'd call me Pete or Pat. -

à     But they've forgot the other -

à       And so have I, for that!

à     I reckon it's as handy,

à       When "nibsy" breaks his toy,

à     Or some one steals his candy.

à       To say 'twas Johnson's Boy."

à

à     You can't gif any worter

à       At a pump, and find the spout

à     So durn chuck full o' morter

à       That you have to bore it out;

à     You tackle any scholar

à       In wisdom's wise emply,

à     And I'll bet you half a dollar

à       He'll say its "Johnson's Boy."

à

à     Folks don't know how I suffer

à       In my uncomplainin' way!

à     They say I'm gittin' "tougher"

à       And "tougher" every day.

à     Last Sunday night, when Flinder

à       Was shoutin' out for joy

à     And some one shook the winder

à       He prayed for "Johnson's Boy."

à

à     I'm tired o' bein' follered

à       By farmers every day

à     And then o' bein' "collared"

à       For coaxin' hounds away.

à     Hounds allers "plays me double" -

à       Its a trick they all enjoy

à     To git me into trouble

à       Because I'm "Johnson's Boy."

à

à     I'm tired o' havin' fellers

à       Tie strings across the floor,

à     And havin' bloody "smellers"

à       A layin' at my door;

à     And people intimatin'

à       It's a life that I destroy

à     If a feller drownds a skatin'

à       When he's out with "Johnson's Boy."

à

à     But if I git to heaven,

à       I hope the Lord'll see

à     Some feller has been perfect,

à       And lay it on to me;

à     I'll swell the song sonorous

à       As I clap my wings for joy,

à     And sail off on the chorus -

à       "Hurray for Johnson's Boy."

à

?    How strange it is that the self-professed victim here, the boy, is

?always associated with dire events? Can we believe him when he says he

?is always the victim of circumstances? How strangely necessary it is

?that he continue to profess his innocence. Is it credible that he is

?charged with causing tragic happenings on so many occasions just

?because he is Johnson's boy? Did he kill the boy he was skating with?

?We certainly do wonder.  Riley employs antistrophe in repeating

?Johnson's Boy at the end of each stanza so that the whole weight of the

àhorribles seems to rest upon the boy's shoulders in reality.

à     The point seems to be the redemption that nevertheless comes later

àbecause the boy has hope for redemption as John's son.

à     Life is not, even for the Riley of Crestillomeem, without the hope

?of redemption to a son of John.  Riley uses this name Johnson so

?frequently it must have had special significance to him. We remember

àthat eventually it will be his poems under this name that betoken

àhis finest kenotic poetry, these being the poems of Benjamin Johnson of

?Boone.  Then again when his life is depicted on the Broadway stage in

àNew York, Riley suggests his character be called "Jim Johnson."

?"Ways is devius.." to the creative Riley as he says in his poem to

àWilliam Leachman.

à     Then we find the groping with alcoholism a major subject in

?James Whitcomb Riley's poetry. Can we see here a step into redemption

àthrough kenoticism?

à

à‚                       Ԃς͂ ‚ʂςȂ΂ӂς΂§‚Ó‚ ‚Ñ‚Ơ‚ɂԂ ‚¨‚±‚¸‚·‚¹‚©‚

à

àA passel o' the boys last night -

à     An' me amongst 'em - kind o' got

àTo talkin' Temper'nce left an' right,

à     An' workin' up "blue-ribbon, " hot;

àAn' while we was a-countin' jes'

à     How many hed gone into hit

àAn' signed the pledge, some feller says, -

à          "Tom Johnson's quit!"

àWe laughed, of course - 'cause Tom, you know,

à     Has spiled more whisky, boy an' man,

àAnd seed more trouble, high an' low,

à     Than any chap but Tom could stand:

àAnd so, says I, "He's too nigh dead

à     Fer Temper'nce to benefit!"

àThe feller sighed ag'in, and said -

à          "Tom Johnson's quit!"

à

àWe all liked Tom, an' that was why

à    We sort o' simmered down ag'in,

àAnd ast the feller ser'ously

à     Ef he wa'n't tryin' to draw us in:

àHe shuck his head - tuck off his hat -

à     Helt up his hand an' opened hit,

àAn' says, says he, "I'll swear to that -

à          Tom Johnson's quit!"

à

àWell, we was stumpt, an' tickled, too, -

à     Because we knowed ef Tom hed signed

àThere wa'n't no man 'at wore the "blue"

à     'At was more honester inclined:

àAn' then and there we kind o' riz -

à     The hull dern gang of us 'at bit -

àAn' thr'owed our hats and let 'er whiz, -

à          "Tom Johnson's quit!"

à

àI've heerd 'em holler when the balls

à     Was buzzin' 'round us wus'n bees,

àAn' when the old flag on the walls

à     Was flappin' o'er the enemy's,

àI've heerd a-many a wild "hooray"

à     'At made my heart git up an' git -

àBut Lord! - to hear 'em shout that way! -

à          "Tom Johnson's quit!"

à

àBut when we saw the chap 'at fetched

à     The news wa'n't jinin' in the cheer,

àBut stood there solemn-like, an' reched

à    An' kind o' wiped away a tear,

àWe someway sort o' stilled ag'in,

à     And listened - I kin hear him yit,

àHis voice a-wobblin' with his chin, -

à          "Tom Johnson's quit!"

à

à"I hain't a-givin' you no game -

à     I wisht I was!...An hour ago,

àThis operator - what's his name -

à     The one 'at works at night, you know? -

àWent out to flag that Ten Express,

à     And sees a man in front of hit

àTh'ow up his hands an' stagger - yes, -

à          "Tom Johnson's quit!"

à

à     Riley places the character of Old Sport through the mental

?gymnastics of abstinence of alcohol. In the same Mayor's Court docket

?book where one finds Along with James Whitcomb Riley's arrest for

?Public Intoxication in Dec. 1878, one finds many, many arrests of

?William Stafford for the same thing. Those dates of arrest are followed

?up by incarcerations for public intoxication because "Old Sport" had to

?"lay out his fines." (One got credit for fines on a per diem basis of

?incarceration if one didn't have the money to pay the fine.) It seems

?clear that Riley from the late 1870's and at least until his turn into

?kenoticism delves into the life of shamed alcoholics like himself to

?not only explore what intoxication and the life causing it but also how

?a poetry of such a man might be written.  Riley's poetry changes

?subject matter and also technique with flights into ellipse,

?intoxicatese orthography and diction, and imaginative dissembling such

àas one finds in "The Flying Islands of the Night."

?     I do find that Riley always seemed to come to identify with those

àwho, like himself, suffered public shame by public intoxication arrests

?to include friends like Clint Hamilton, Luther Benson, Almon Kiefer and

?even Riley's friend John Mitchell, whose wife was Minnie Belle

?Mitchell, the author and biographer of Riley whose intimacy with the

?facts of his life are so very helpful. In fact it almost seems to be a

?necessity that one be an alcoholic for Riley to dedicate a book of his

àpoetry to the person. It is a very rare volume of Riley's poetry that

àis not dedicated to an alcoholic.

à     Riley realized there is nothing about God's love which bars any

?alcoholic or anyone else from being a child of the gentle and beloved

àJohn.


 

 

er hand.

à

àƒ                  THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE

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àƒ                -----Is it too fine for thee

à          To drop onto, and see,

à          In the chamber over the gate

à          That old man hesitate -

à          Watching and waiting there

à          To swoop down unaware?

à               O Absalom, my son!  Is it so long a

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àƒ                      ‚Ơ‚Ú‚Ú‚ ‚Ă‚̀‚Ơ‚‚ ‚Ó‚Å‚̉‚ɂłӂ

à

à     The finest of the "alcoholic" Riley's works were his

?Buzz Club papers. They were a taunt at the temperance

?majority from the start. The meetings always conclude with

?resort to alcohol somewhere as if the members were not under

?the influence during the meetings themselves. The Buzz Club

?consisted of something like an alcoholic's support group in

?which each of the three members would try to better himself

?by producing something of literary merit. The results were

?semi-comical but oddly beautiful pieces of writing and poetry

?and stand-up comedy or drama in varying degrees of

?intoxicatese, of which "The Flying Islands of the Night," has

àproven to be the most durable.

?     The pieces were published in the Indianapolis Saturday

?Herald as follows: Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz

?Club No. I, May 11, 1878; Respectfully Declined Papers of the

?Buzz Club No. II, June 15, 1878; Respectfully Declined Papers

?of the Buzz Club No. III, July 6, 1878; Respectfully Declined

?Papers of the Buzz Club No. IV, August 24, 1878; Respectfully

àDeclined Papers of the Buzz Club No. V, September 28, 1878;

?and Respectfully Declined Papers of the Buzz Club No. VI,

àNovember 16, 1878.

?     The first of the series opens with an explanation that

?the club, originally of twenty five members, is now down to

?three and one of the members, Mr. Clickwad, moves that the

?club be disbanded and "I shall insist upon either a second or

?a duel...As Sancho Panza says...in God's name let us abandon

?the enterprise while we have enough members left to vote. If

?it runs this way there'll be no one but the janitor here next

?meeting..." Such anacoluthon gives us to know the members of

?this club are simple drunks. We are not given to expect much

?but grammaticial inconsequence and intoxicated inconsistency

?in expression by the group.  Occasionally, we are not

àentirely disappointed.

?     Crestillomeem is at work. She is the poet who writes in

?the sing-song intoxicatese of dissyllabic iambs. The

?gentlemen of the Buzz Club are at an unrepentent antithetical

àAlcoholics Anonymous meeting drunk.

?     Mr. Clickwad delivers the first poem we encounter in the

àseries:

àƒ                           Á‚ ‚Ä‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Í‚

à     I dreamed I was a spider

à     A big, fat, hungry spider;

à     A lusty, rusty spider

à          With a dozen paisied limbs

à     With a dozen limbs that dangled

à     Where three wretched flies were tangled

à     And their buzzing wings were strangled

à          In the middle of their hymns.

à

à     And I mocked them like a demon;

à     A demoniacal demon

à     Who delights to be a demon

à          For the sake of sin alone.

à     And with fondly false embraces

à     Did I weave my mystic laces

à     Round their horror stricken faces

à          Till I muffled every groan.

à

à     And I smiled to see them weeping,

à     For to see an insect weeping,

à     Sadly, sorrowfully weeping,

à          Fattens every spider's mirth;

à     And to note a fly's heart quaking,

à     And with anguish ever aching

à     Till you see it slowly breaking

à          Is the sweetest thing on earth.

à

à     I experienced a pleasure,

à     Such a highly flavored pleasure,

à     Such intoxicating pleasure,

à          That I drank of it like wine

à     And my mortal soul engages

à     That no spider on the pages

à     Of the history of ages

à          Felt a rapture more divine.

à

à     I careened around and capered -

à     Madly, mystically capered -

à     For three days and nights I capered

à          Round my web in wild delight;

à     Till with fierce ambition burning,

à     And an inward thirst and yearning

à     I hastened my returning

à          With a fiendish appetite.

à

à     And I found my victims dying,

à     "Ha," they whispered, "we are dying!"

à     Faintly whispered, "we are dying!

à          And our earthly course is run."

à     And the scene was so impressing

à     That I breathed a special blessing,

à     As I killed them with caressing

à          And devoured them one by one."

à

?     Riley continues, "There was a wild, unearthly light in

?Mr. Clickwad's eyes as he closed the poem and glared

àdefiantly upon his hearers."

?     We have heard a mock delirium tremens vision in lyric

?trimeter. The next member, Mr. Plempton, continues with his

?own as a stand-up narrative.  He "dreams" he is in a deserted

?banquet hall all alone. A feast was on the table and he was

?very hungry. There were chickens roasted, fried and broiled,

?dumplings and peach cobblers, pies etc. Whenever he tried to

?eat anything it became alive. He harpooned a fat apple

?dumpling and it squealed like a pig when he stuck it. He then

?took a chicken leg and all the chickens on the feast table

?got up and fluttered away. Even the chicken from whom he had

?wrenched the leg got up and hopped away on its remaining leg

?while the other chickens screamed at him, "He's got the

?chicken leg." He defiantly tried to eat it, but it was as

?steel and the fowl laughed at him, "He can't eat it. He can't

?eat it." Mr. Plempton says he then swallowed it metallic

?though it was after which the chicken on one leg hopped over

?to him and told him he had "swallowed a navy revolver, loaded

?with mugs to the sluzzle." Any movement and it would go off.

?The jelly then asked him if he had "any little earthly

?matters to clear up." Trembling, all Mr. Plempton could do

?was pray, "Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me;\Bless thy little

?lamb tonight" - to which the Jelly replied, "Oh, what a

?little lamb!" and later while Mr. Plempton was praying Jesus

?to keep him safe, the jely shrieks, "Time's up, Make ready!

?Take aim!  Fire!" The shot that got Mr. Plempton also wounded

?the jelly, who murmured, "A random shot, but we can at least

àdie together."

?     The final member delivers a more metered piece, again in

?fantasy, ".../Dreamer, say, will you dream of love\That lives

?in a land of sweet perfume,\ Where stars drip down from the

àskies above\In molten spatters of bud and bloom..."  To cries

?of "Splendid," the meeting adjourns with them all going out

àfor a bottle of burgundy at Mr. Hunchley's. So ends our first

àacquaintanceship with the antithetical Buzz Club.

à    In the second Buzz Club meeting, we learn what degenerate

?reprobates the members are. The subject upon which each is to

?produce a literary piece is childhood. The example of Mr.

?Clickwad will suffice.  He leads off with an incident in

?which he was tricked by a child who he is trying to entice to

?sit on his lap.  While visiting in Terre Haute Clickwad is

?taken into a drawing room to await the coming of a friend he

?wishes to meet when a sweet-faced little girl peeps in.

?Clickwad asks her name and she says, "I'm mama's yitty

?angel.""Ah!" I exclaimed rapturously, "and you are a little

?angel, to be sure!" And then telling her of my passionate

?love for little angels, "I patted my knee with a most

?seductive air." The little girl takes a nickel to come closer

?but won't sit on his lap for that because another gentleman

?"divs me one-five-two mucher'n that." Eventually she will sit

?on his lap for all of his money and plays with his

?possessions, sticking her doll down his vest. Eventually

?while trying to open his watch, she strikes herself on the

?head and rushes off to return with mother yelling this man

?tried to kill her. When he got up to defend his honor, the

àlegs of the doll protruded from his vest.

?     There is only "The Flying Islands of the Night," offered

àby Mr. Clickwad, in the fourth episode.

?     In the fifth episode, where imitations were to be

?undertaken, two lengthy pieces are presented: "An Idyl of the

?King" is told by Mr. Plempton on the order of Tennyson. (The

?title is Old Hec's Idolatry as found in Riley's Complete

àWorks, Biographical Edition.) Then Mr.  Hunchley reads his

?offering in prose, "Twiggs and Tudens" in imitation of

àDickens.

à     The sixth episode contains Mr. Bryce's imitation of

àan old man reciting "Farmer Whipple  - Bachelor" followed by

?Mr. Clickwad's offering. Clickwad tells the group at this

?last meeting, that he intends to quit drinking after the

àevening and its drunken party afterward.

à     Riley's intoxication becomes childlike and fantastic

ànot just in "The Flying Islands of the Night" from the

àBuzz Club series but also in such poems as the following:

à

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à

à     Dexery-Tethery! down in the dike,

à          Under the ooze and the slime,

à     Nestles the wraith of a reticent Gryke,

à          Blubbering bubbles of rhyme;

à     Though the reeds touch him and tickle his teeth -

à          Though the the Graigroll and the Cheest

à     Pluck at the leaves of his laureate-wreath,

à          Nothing affects him the least.

à

à     He sinks to the dregs in the dead o' the night,

à          And he shuffles the shadows about

à     As he gathers the stars in a nest of delight

à          And sets there and hatches them out:

à     The Zhederrill peers from his wtery mine

à          In scorn with the Will-o'-the-wisp,

à     As he twinkles his eyes in  a whisper of shine

à          That ends in a lumnionous lisp.

à

à     The Morning is born like a baby of gold,

à          And it lies in a spasm of pink,

à     And rallies the Cheest for the horrible cold

à          He has dragged to the willowy brink,

à     The Gryke blots his tears with a scrap of his grief,

à          And growls at the wary Graigroll

à     As he twunkers a tune on a Tiljicum leaf

à          And hums like a telegraph pole.

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à

?     The poet of wanderings in the American life of Indiana

?and Ohio over the last seven years since his mother's death,

?with the experiences of its ways, began recording his

?personal views driving him into alcoholism into a figurative

?speech appropriate to his condition.  And yet the world- for

?a time- did not care to see what he was doing to be able to

?drive him into conformity and banality.  While the influence

?of Charles Dickens was very pronounced not just in Riley's

?point of view but also in his life plan, the English poet,

?William Blake, and of course Riley's preinacarnation self,

?"Edgar Allen Poe," seem to me to be the most important

àwriters to Riley's career as Crestillomeem.

?     I am not taking Riley's writing career step-by-step.

?Nevertheless, chronologically, Riley was aware of "inspired

?spiritualism" in poeltry from an early age. I attribute

?Riley's study of William Blake for encouragement as the great

?freeing verse. Blake's poetry best adapted to a poetry of

?tremens-inspired visions such as "The Flying Islands of the

?Night," to spiritually inspired poetry such as Riley's

?greatest poetry, his kenotic poetry, and finally to his

?imaginative poetry of the variety commonly called Riley's

àchildren's poetry.

à

àƒ         Ăł̀‚É‚̉‚É‚Ơ‚Í‚ Æ‚̉‚ς͂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚̀‚Á‚Ô‚Å‚ ‚²‚°‚§‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂

àƒ

?     As we have noted, delirium is an essential feature of

?alcohol withdrawal. "The Flying Islands of the Night" seems a

àdelirium account. While Riley sank into great alcoholism

?after the death of his mother and to escape Greenfield again

?after the Kemmer lynching with another medicine man, this

àtime Doc Townsend, he does not appear to have grown delirious

àfrom these experiences. We find evidence of delirium tremens

?only after the death of Nellie. Delirium tremens often comes

àvery quickly as within a week after withdrawals.

?It consists of marked autonomic hyperactivity, with

?tachycardia and sweating. This is "delirium tremens," or

?"tremens," as referred to in the Buzz Club papers.  The

?associated feature of tremens are vivid hallucinations.

àDelusions and agitated behavior accompany these deliriums.

?A more modern diagnostic description is organic alcohol

?hallucinosis which is described in the American Psychiatry

?Associations "DSM III-R" as "The essential feature of this

?disorder" in which vivid and persistent hallucinations

?develop shortly (usually within 48 hours) after cessation of

?or reduction in alcohol ingestion by a person who apparently

?has Alcohol Dependence.  The hallucinations may be auditory

?or visual. The auditory hallucinations are usually voices

?and, less commonly, unformed sounds such as hissing or

?buzzing. In the majority of cases, the content of the

?hallucinations is unpleasant and disturbing...The voices may

?address the person directly, but more often they discuss him

?or her in the third person." In discussing delirium, the note

?is made that "The duration of an episode of Delirium is

?usually brief, about one week; it is rare for Delirium to

?persist for more than a month." Recovery is usually complete

?although a more stable organic mental disorder may result.

?Diagnostic Criterion are reduced ability to maintain

?attention to external stimuli, disorganized thinking,

?rambling, irrelevant, or incoherent speech, and the

?occasional perceptual disturbance, illusion,

?misinterpretation, hallucination, disorientation to time,

àplace, or person, and episodic memory impairment.

?     Crestillomeem is the Riley suffering from alcoholism,

?its delusions, and tremens upon withdrawal.  She is the

?ranting bitch that schemes at his success or composure as a

?poet.  She also is a person with remarkable powers of

?assessment who seems to see Riley the most clearly of all of

àhis fragmented selves.  She is not the "essential Riley."

àShe is however his nightmare of himself.

à

àƒ Â‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ë‚Ơ‚Ђӂ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚Á‚΂ق ‚΂ł̀‚̀‚ɂł ‚̉‚Å‚Đ‚̀‚Á‚Ă‚Å‚Í‚Å‚Î‚Ô‚ ‚Ä‚Ơ‚Å‚ ‚Ô‚Ï‚ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚Á‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂

à

?     On August 14, 1879, Riley wrote his friend, Elizabeth

?Kahle, "I am now furnishing four papers with contirbutions,

?besides writing a parntership book, and perfecting an

?original programme for readings the coming season. So you

?will see I am indeed overwhelmed, and I must throw in, too,

?by way of good measure, the fact that I'm in rather ill

àhealth."  He meant he was mostly drunk these days.

?     Riley admitted this poem ("I loved her, why I never

?knew-\Perhaps, because her face was fair;\Perhaps, because

?her eyes were blue,\ And wore a weary air.") was about his

?vision of his own love of "dissipation" in a letter he wrote

?to Elizabeth Kahle of July 6, 1880. She knows it as "Delilah"

?because Riley had not yet fitted it into "The Flying Islands

?of the Night," his autobiographical poem.  About it he says,

?"I must not let you think that I ever have loved seriously

?visions only; one part of my life has been seriously scarred

?with dissipation -as I think I have often intimated to you,

?because I would never willfully attempt the denial of any

?fact, however unpleasant the acknowledgement of it would be."

?     Riley's last letter from Elizabeth Kahle of June 26,

?1884, sent to Riley just before she married and became Mrs.

?Brunn, was a nasty one in which Elizabeth, Riley's

?correspondent and lover by mail only, "volunteered some

?advice as to his one failing." Thereafter, Riley tried to

?keep up a correspondence but was not given her address.

?     Meredith Nicholson recalled that Riley took pains to

?escape from any company where he found himself the centre of

?attraction.  He resented being "shown off" (to use his

àphrase) like "a white mouse with pink eyes." How could such a

àbashful person hope to live a life of great public fame?

àHe required the company of Crestillomeem.

àRiley never knew what to do with himself when alone

?or unoccupied on the road during his lyceum years. He often

àdrank out of loneliness.

à

àƒ          Á‚΂ςԂȂł̉‚ ‚Đ‚Á‚Ô‚È‚ ‚Ƃς̉‚ ‚ς΂ł ‚ɂ΂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Ă‚Ï‚Î‚Ä‚É‚Ô‚É‚Ï‚Î‚

à

à     There is a small stone to mark a grave at Park Cemetery,

?Greenfield, Indiana, Riley's hometown, only large enough for

?four letters, A-N-N-A.  It is near a much larger family

àstone, Chittenden.  The A-N-N-A lies not so far from the

àRiley family memorials at the same cemetery.

?    Here lie the remains of a woman known to generations of

?kids who have borrowed children's books from the Greenfield

?Public Library in Riley's hometown. My recollection is that

?the children's corner of the former "Carnegie" Greenfield

?library in use in Greenfield during the majority of the

?Twentieth Century bore a plaque which dedicated the area to

?her.  Some of its children's books were purchased out of a

?fund bequeathed by her. In December, 1996, the Greenfield

?Library Board voted to terminate this fund established in

?1926 and use the remaining principal to purchase shelving. No

?longer will Anna be the benefactress of children's books but

àit was a seventy year ride of benefiting the children of Anna

àChittenden's hometown.

à     Anna and James Whitcomb Riley knew each other well.

?Both were in the Greenfield Literary Club founded in

?Greenfield in 1879. They were the only two unmarried members

?of one of the divisions of the club. They must have spent

?pleasant afternoons together discussing literature with the

?other few intimate members of that division. There is another

àconnection however. Both sufferred horribly from alcoholism.

?     Anna Chittenden was a school teacher for some time but

?the sad fact is that Anna Chittenden lived a life of torment

?beyond description which causes me to consider hers to be one

àof the saddest stories I have ever heard. Her life history

àrepresents what might have become of James Whitcomb Riley.

?Eventually neither Riley nor Anna Chittenden could handle

àtheir own property or make decisions for themselves.

?     A little woman of 5'2" and frail appearing at just over

?100 pounds, with hazel eyes, light brown hair, and a light

?complexion, Anna began life in 1856, before the Civil War, on

?the sour note of having no father to raise her.  Her father,

?Giles, died in 1855 of a stroke before she was born.  Her

?mother, Margaret Chittenden, survived until 1895 and lived

?out her life on the corner of North and School Streets in

?Greenfield. Anna's mother died of an "abscess of the brain."

?Anna had no brothers or sisters either.  One died of

?paralysis and three others died within a couple of years of

?birth. Anna was the last child born and lived a long life.

?Eventually she would die at 70 of tuberculosis with her body

?described as "emaciated" at the inquest.  She had suffered

?from pulmonary tuberculosis for the last fourteen years of

àher life.

à     During her youth, Anna Chittenden appeared to have every

?chance for success.  Aside from having "scrofula" as a child,

?she did fine in school and graduated from the Greenfield

?schools at the age of eighteen.  She decided on entering the

?teaching profession and got a little more education to

àqualify her for that.

?     Soon she was teaching in various parts of the state and

?did so for the next ten years.  The only school in Hancock

?County where she taught that I could find was Fortville where

àshe taught school in 1882 under M. Caraway, Principal

àalong with two other teachers, A.E. Cummins and Alice Cory.

?Nevertheless, by all accounts, Anna Chittenden was a fine

?teacher and considered one of the best teachers in every

?community where she taught. It is said she was frequently

?able to discipline pupils "when other teachers failed

àentirely".

?     Then came 1890 and her school board of that year did not

?renew her contract. At 34 and unmarried, she apparently flew

?off the deep end and attempted suicide. Alcohoolism lurked

?into her life. She couldn't get it out of her mind that she

?was fired because the other teachers conspired against her.

?For the next five years, her family boarded her in a private

?sanitarium in Oxford, Ohio.  Upon her return home to

?Greenfield in 1895, she was more than her sick mother could

?handle. According to Commitment Proceedings begun in the

?Hancock Circuit Court, her uncle, a Greenfield, Indiana,

?medical doctor by the name of Warren R. King described her as

?"filthy, violent, abusive, thinks her best friends are her

?enemies, writing letters that have no intelegent(sic)

?construction, while she is well educated and when in good

?health refinement about her person and clothing." Thus began

?her first commitment to Central State Hospital for the

?Insane.  She was released after ten months in Dec. 1895 and

?termed "much improved."  Her mother had died in the interim

?and she was the recipient of her mother's estate of about

à$5,000.

?     For ten years, Anna Chittenden survived outside the

?state's mental hospital mainly by her wits. However,

?according to John P. Black, M.D. who signed a Proceeding to

?Re-Commit her, "she wanders about the streets and exposes

?herself." Apparently her alcohol problem intensified although

?was called only a borderline alcoholic. Anna, at 49, had

?reduced her standard of living to the point that she was

?found living in a hut without heat in winter according to

?Central State records, paying someone $2.00 a week for rent.

?Her uncle, Dr. King, by this time her legal guardian, again

?headed for Hancock Circuit Court to have her committed to

?Central State.  This second admission would be from Jan. 27,

?1905 until June 30, 1908.  It got her out of the hut and into

?a warm place for the next three years.  The Court papers call

?her "violent and abusive at times. Unable to adopt herself to

àenvironment." Once again she was released.

?     A little over a year later would spell the end of Anna

?Chittenden's life outside of the institution for the insane.

?On Nov. 25, 1910, the Judge of the Circuit Court again

?committed her - this one the third such commitment- and

?Anna's life would never again see freedom. It was said Anna

?Chittenden had again been found "restlessly wandering" around

?Greenfield and this time she was committed to Central State

àHospital where she remained until she died.

?     Usually, I find her described in hospital records as

?having chronic melancholia which to us means depression. But

?sometimes there is a statement such as "well systematized

?delusions of persecution.  She believed that parties were

?plotting against her to deprive her of property...Has had

?numerous hallucinations.  Has heard people plotting against

àher..."

?     There is much more, but the fact is that a will of hers

?was found at the Fortville Bank executed just before her

?first commitment leaving her property to her mother then

?aunts and if none of them were around to the public library

?in Greenfield.  With all dead, the library got her estate

?after a will contest was lost by Anna's more distant

?relatives.  And that is why for all the years since 1926,

?terminating only in 1996, that the kids of Greenfield have

?benefited with children's books from the life of a woman who

?suffered such agony that few could bear.  And the lesson is

?further that something like this might very well have

àhappened to James Whitcomb Riley due to his alcoholism.


 

 

?

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àhappened to James Whitcomb Riley.

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 to the "Hancock

?Agricultural Society" was given March 9, 1863 and is recorded

?in Deed Record V, page 165 in the Office of the Recorder of

?Hancock County, IN.  The eight acre tract served as the

àcounty fairgrounds during the 1860's and 1870's.

?     On this site a "Floral Pavilion" had been built by the

àsociety for the l

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à‚                  Ơ‚Đ‚Ï‚Î‚ ‚ԂȂł ‚‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ë‚Ơ‚Đ‚ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚΂قł

?

à     The writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night"

àresulted in a truce in the life of James Whitcomb Riley.

?Perhaps he no longer had Nellie as a font of encouragement

àand strength, but he did feel her presence with him.

?     Riley wrote to Mrs. Emma Cox, Nellie's daughter, on

àApril 10, 1885:

̀ÀÀ?0ˆˆˆˆňˆˆˆˆ[ˆˆˆˆ>ˆˆˆˆ2ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ3ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ4ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ5ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ6ˆˆˆˆTˆˆˆˆ]

à     Dear Friend: -

?          It is Sunday, but to write you as I do is like a

?     prayer, - Your beautiful tribute in the HERALD touched

?     me deeply, recalling so tenderly your absent mother's

?     kindliness when she was here; her brave, glad nature;

?     the noble generous gentlewoman that she was; the truest

?     friend on earth, or now in Heaven - God bless us always

à     with the sweetness of her memory!

?         I can say no more now - only, my dear friend, I am

?     very proud of your friendship, and of your talents - in

?     music - composition - every way, and God bless us every

à     one!'

à          Gratefully and always, as ever, your friend.

à                                     J.W. Riley

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à     One generally thinks of Riley as being in control of

?his alcoholism from the time of the writing of "The Flying

?Islands of the Night." There were many instances of illness

ànoted about Riley. One suspects these incidents reflect

àdepressions and intoxications. The overall picture does

ànot reflect the disabling situation of severe alcoholism.

àThere is one time of great public occurrence however when

àCrestillomeem clearly got the upper hand.

?     This was the very public incident when Riley's

?alcoholism caused the breakup of his Lyceum Circuit

àpartnership with his friend, Bill Nye.

à

àƒ                    ԂȂł ‚‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ë‚Ơ‚Đ‚ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚΂قł

à

?The Louisville Courier Journal published the following

àarticle after the Louisville incident of Feb., 1890.

à

àƒ                   THE POET'S  SIDE OF IT

à‚Mr. James Whitcomb Riley's Brother-in-Law Talks of the Split

àƒ                          with Nye.

à‚  The Hooiser Bard Had Been in Bad Health for Months and a

àƒ                 Little Liquor Was Too Much

à

?     Mr. James Whitcomb Riley still keeps his room at the

?Galt House, but sees no one save his brother-in-law, Mr.

?Henry Eitel, of Indianapolis, who come(sic) down yesterday

?for the purpose of taking the poet home as soon as he is able

?to travel.  Mr. Riley is much prostrated, and is in a bad

?state of mind over the recent unfortunate breaking up of his

?joint tour, in which matter he considers that he has to some

?extent been badly treated, being saddled with the entire

àresponsibility of the affair.

à     Mr. Either, in the course of a conversation with a

?Courier Journal reported last night, said that Mr. Riley's

?condition was not so much the result of his drinking as of

?mental worry over it.  "Mr. Riley," said Mr. Eitel, "is a man

?of  nervous temperament and very high-strung or he couldn't

?be a poet if he wasn't and has been in rather bad health for

?some time.  His throat has troubled him a good deal, and,

?being a careless eater, his stomach is frequently out of

?order.  As a consequesce, (sic) he has been much worn out

?with constant travel and has at times felt the necessity of

?taking something to brace him up.  His condition has been

àsuch that it took but little to affect him. He couldn't

?stand much liqor.  The main trouble seems to be that he did

?not like to be watched, and was much exasperated at Mr.

?Walker's way of handling him, giving out orders at hotels

?that he was to have no whisky, following him around and all

?that, and finally kicked over the traces.  He and Mr. Walker

?had some pretty hot words about it, and no doubt both of them

?said things they were sorry for.  He had several

àdisagreements before reaching here."

à     "Mr. Walker was very strict, was he?"

?     "Yes, very - inclined to be arbitrary, in fact.  Of

?course, he was looking after his own interests, but I can't

?blame him for that.  I think he handled Riley too severely.

?He had a contract with him for five years, and was

?continually shaking it over Riley's head. That exasperated

?him also, and so things went on until the breach here. Mr.

?Riley had been out four months and had missed but one

?engagement, at Madison, Wis. I think both Nye and Riley

?needed rest. It was intended that they should have a day off

?every week, but Major Pond either booked the time full or

àkept them on long trips, so that they got no rest at all.

?     "They should have taken Riley to his room when they saw

?his condition, instead of leaving him to sleep in a public

?place, but I suppose they were in a heat and did not think.

?Mr. Riley doesn't like to have the idea go out that all the

àtrouble was because of his fondness for drink."

à     "Mr. Nye has gone, has he not?"

?     "Yes, he left for New York to-night.  He went up and

?told Riley good-bye, and they parted good friends. Both

?regret the affair very much. I will take Riley home to-morrow

?afternoon, if he is able to travel, as I suppose he will be.

?His nerves are all unstrung, and he needs rest.  No, he has

?formed no new plans as yet.  He has several books to revise,

?and there are several publishers who want him to write, so

?that he will probably rest and resume his literary work,

?which has been much interrupted. He now feels much hurt at

?the false position in which he has been placed, as if he were

?to blame for the whole affair, especially because he had

?missed but one date up the time he reached here - a period of

?four months.  I will take him home at 2 o'clock to-morrow

àafternoon, if possible."

à     Delirium tremens can be a nightmarish thing.

à

àƒ              ‚ɂ̀‚̀‚ ‚΂قł§‚Ó‚ ‚Ö‚Å‚̉‚ӂɂς΂ ‚ςƂ ‚ԂȂł ‚‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ë‚Ơ‚Đ‚

à

?      Bill Nye, a Lyceum Circuit stage partner, told how

?Riley's habit of drinking too much was handled while they

?were on tour.  At their hotel, the manager was warned that

?nothing "but clean shirts and farinaceous food" was to be

?sent up to "No. 182." This was Riley's room.  The poet,

?however, found that his room communicated with the next one,

?No. 180.  Also he discovered the man in that room had left

?for the evening.  Nye comments, Riley stepped in and "at odd

?times used the bell of No. 180 with great skill, thereby

?irritating his manager so much that he returned to New York

?on the following day." Crestillomeem was a very dangerous

?"play-partner" to Riley but he often simply couldn't avoid

àthe temptation to join her games.

à

àƒ         Æ‚̉‚ɂł΂Ăӂ ‚˂΂ςׂ ‚ςƂ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚̉‚Å‚̀‚Á‚Ђӂɂ΂ǂ ‚Ă‚Ï‚Î‚Ä‚É‚Ô‚É‚Ï‚Î‚

à

à    The report of Riley's Louisville public episode with

àCrestillomeem was spread throughout the nation because by

à1890 Riley was a very famous American.

à    Among those friends of Riley's who shared concern for

?his health was Henry Woodfin Grady, Henry Woodfin Grady,

?1850-1889, a sometime lecturer as was Riley and writer for

?the Atlanta Constitution newspaper.  Grady who was only a

?year younger than Riley wrote him in the very year of Grady's

?death requesting Riley to visit. "I see from the papers that

àyou have been sick from overwork and prostration," he says

àin his invitation.

?    Many people encourage Riley in his battle with

àCrestillomeem.

à

à‚                 Á‚ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق ‚ЂɂÂԂƠ‚̉‚Å‚ ‚ςƂ ‚Á‚ ‚Ä‚̉‚Ơ‚΂˂

àƒ

à     There was always this feeling of ambiguity within Riley.

?He knew he was an alcoholic but he also knew he was fighting

?it mightily and accomplishing much good.  Riley feared his

àalcoholism.

à     In one of his prose pieces, "Jamesy," Riley describes

àwhat an old drunk of the Nineteenth Century would have lived

?like.  Keep in the back of your mind that Riley might have

àbeen thinking of himself if he didn't control his alcoholism.

?In "Jamesy," Riley confronts a bootblack, a boy who shines

àshoes, and asks him about his father.

?     "Won't work," said the boy, bitterly, "He won't work -he

?won't do nothin' - on'y `budge!' And I have to steer him in

?every night, cos the cops won't pull him any more - they

?won't let him in the station-house mor'n they'd let him in a

?parlor, cos he's a plum goner, and liable to `croak' any

àminute."

à     "Liable to what?" said I

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

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

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

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

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

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

?whisky, now you bet! Sis can handle him better'n me, but

?she's been a losin' her grip on him lately - you see Sis

?ain't stout any moren, and been kindo sicklike so long she

?humors him, you know, mor'n she ort.  And he couldn't git on

?his pins at all yesterday mornin', and Sis sent for me, and I

?took him a pint, and that set him a runnin' so that when I

?left he made Sis give up a quarter he saw me slip her, and it

?jist happened I run into him that evening and got him in, or

?he'd a froze to death.  I guess he must a kindo had 'em last

?night, cos he was the wildest man you ever see - saw

?grasshoppers with paper collars on, an' old sows with

?feather-duster tails, the durndest programme you ever heard

?of! And he got so bad onct he was a goin' to belt Sis, and

?did try it, and - and I had to chug him one or he'd a done

?it. And then he cried, and Sis cried, and I cri..., I ...

àDern him! You can bet your life I didn't cry."

à     You simply can't say that Riley was unaware of what

àalcoholism could lead to. He knew this and feared its

àgreat excesses.

à     The reason may well have been Riley's great desire to

?accomplish something with his life. He was very ambitious and

?desired fame. What is even more interesting is that he took a

?route to fame that derived from his alcoholism. Knowing his

àvulnerability, he wrote about a life in which sensitivities,

?feelings for others, friendships, homelife, and a love

àderived from a living God were redeeming.

à      While Riley suffered from alcoholism, his poetry saved

àhim from becoming the bum in "Jamesy."

à

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à‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ë‚Ơ‚Đ‚ ‚ׂɂԂȂ ‚΂قł ‚ĂɂĂ ‚΂ςԂ ‚Á‚Æ‚Æ‚Å‚Ă‚Ô‚ ‚̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Đ‚Ơ‚‚̀‚ɂ ‚ɂ͂Á‚ǂł

à

à     The amazing thing is that Riley's breakup with Nye

àdid not, apparently, affect Riley's great popularity among

àhis fellow Hoosiers.

?     Later this same year, when Georgia's Richard Malcolm

?Johnston appeared in Indianapolis on Nov. 6, 1890 to lecture

?on his "Tales of the South," Riley was asked to introduce

?him, after which the Georgian stated, "I really feel grateful

?at being introduced by Mr. Riley, said the author of the

?"Dukesborough Tales"...  There has long been a common tie

?between us, each having the same affection for the people of

?his early childhood, and each having endeavored in his way to

?save from oblivion their peculiarities - one through prose

?and the other through the more exalted medium of poetry.

?There are three poets who have sung of those in humble life.

?Two of them we know though they have passed away and were of

?foreign lands.  One of a foreign language.  Beranger sung as

?sweetly as any linnet of the people of his native France, and

?the other is Robert Burns.  The third is a neighbor to you,

?and you are familiar not only with his work but with his

?presence.  I can say of him, as was said of the great

?Beranger, not a speck will ever be put upon the heart or

?honor or good sense or genius of James Whitcomb Riley."

à{applause.}

à

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à

à     Who was this Riley as Crestillomeem struck again?

àWhat did he look like?  What was his reputation?

à     We have the record of Hamlin Garland, a writer and

?some say the literary arbiter of the 1890's who published an

?interview he had with Riley from a visit recorded in a

àMcClure's Magazine.

?     Riley is described at age 40 as "a short man, with

?square shoulders and a large head.  He has a very dignified

?manner -- at times.  His face is smoothly shaven, and though

?he is not bald, the light color of his hair makes him seem

?so.  His eyes are gray and round, and generally solemn, and

?sometimes stern.  His face is the face of a great actor -- in

?rest, grim and inscrutable; in action, full of the most

?elusive expressions, capable of humor and pathos.  Like most

?humorists, he is sad in repose.  His language, when he

?chooses to have it so, is wonderfully concise and penetrating

?and beautiful.  He drops often into dialect, but always with

?a look on his face which shows he is aware of what he is

?doing. In other words, he is master of both forms of speech.

?His mouth is his wonderful feature: wide, flexible, clean-

?cut.  His lips are capable of the grimmest and the merriest

?lines.  When he reads they pout like a child's, or draw down

?into a straight, grim line like a New England deacon's, or

?close at one side, and uncover his white and even teeth at

?the other, in the sly smile of "Benjamin F.  Johnson," the

?humble humorist and philosopher.  In his own proper person he

?is full of quaint and beautiful philosophy.  He is wise

?rather than learned -- wise with the quality that is in

?proverbs, almost always touched with humor.  His eyes are

?near-sighted and his nose prominent.  His head is of the

?"tack hammer" variety, as he calls it.  The public insists

?that there is an element of resemblance between Mr. Riley,

àEugene Field and Bill Nye.

à

àƒ                 Ă‚̉‚łӂԂɂ̀‚̀‚ς͂łł͂§‚Ó‚ ‚Ç‚̉‚Å‚Á‚Ô‚ ‚ł΂ł͂ق

à

?    Strangely to Riley's great autobiographical poem, "The

àFlying Islands," one does not find his mother to be listed

?in the cast of characters. The original poem proposes that it

?is enough for Riley to have the spirit of Nellie in the

àbeyond to sustain him.

à    However, as the breakup with Nye occurred and Riley found

àhis capacity to endure long periods of platform engagements

?more difficult, Riley evoked his mother's memory more and

àmore for strength.

à     Finally we find that Riley's mother, Elizabeth, is added

?to the 1891 book version of "The Flying Islands of the

àNight," as a source of sustaining resolve against alcoholism.

àElizabeth becomes AEo of the revised and expanded poem which

àcomes to reflect new cryptic information about Riley's life

?as his autobiography needs revision due to new developments

àin his life.

?     AEo seems to be an archtypical figure for Riley. We find

àthe type in a short story by Riley, ÅÚ, (standing for Ezra).

?Here the mother, a Methodist as Elizabeth was, looks after

?her child who has received a knot the size of an Easter egg

?administered by an alcoholic father in his intoxication and

?despite the mother's frailty by taking a ballbat to the bar

?in Greenfield where he has been imbibing the "budge," the

?common name for corn whiskey.  Finding her son who has gone

?to the bar to try to bring his father home knocked out, she

?acts.  The boy notes, "When I come to, things was lively, I

?tell you.  My mother is a little woman - don't weigh over

?ninety pounds -but if you'd a seen her yesterdayt, you'd 'a'

?thought she weighed a ton.  Ever been into Dutchy's? Know

?what a nice spread of glassware he has behind his bar? Know

?that mirror that he smears with soap pictures, birds an'

?things? All gone. They tried to hold mother, half a dozen of

?'em did, but they couldn't do it.  The old man had sneaked

?off somewhere-first time she'd ever folloered him - an' he

?felt ornery.  She told Dutchy that she'd begged him time 'n

?again not to sell liquor to father, an' then she went for the

àglassware.  .."  AEo overcomes liquor all right.  She takes

àon Crestillomeem for the life of her son.

à

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à

àAEo! AEo! AEo!±À‚

àThou dost all things know -

àWaving all claims of mine to dare to pray

àSave that I needs must: - Lo

àWhat may I pray for? Yea,

àI have not any way,

àAn Thou gainsayest me a tolerance so. -

àI dare not pray

àForgiveness - too great

àMy vast o'ertoppling weight

àOf sinning; nor can I

àPray my

àPooer soul unscouraged to go. -

àFrame Thou my prayer, AEo!

à

à1. Riley had a strong belief that his mother, Elizabeth,

àwas not dead but still with him. The death of Riley's mother

?brought on terrific loneliness and sorrow. He surrounds the

?initial of her name with the Greek letters alpha and omega to

?stand for her timeless presence with him. He once had a

?vision which he recounted to his secretary, Marcus Dickey, as

?found in Youth of James Whitcomb Riley, saying: "I was

àalone," said he, "till as in a vision I saw my mother

?smiling back upon me fromt he blue fields of love - when lo!

àshe was young again. Suddenly I had the assurance that

?I would meet her somewhere in another world." After the

?breakup with Nye and Riley's advancing age, he needs his

àmother as well as Nellie (Dwainie) for weapons against

àCrestillomeem.

à

àWhat may I pray for?  Dare

àI shape a prayer,

àIn sooth,

àFor any canceled joy

àOf my mad youth,

àor any bliss my sin's stress di destroy?

àWhat may I pray for - Wht? -

àThat the wild clusters of forget-me-not

àAnd mignonette

àAnd violet

àBe out of childhood brought,

àAnd in mine hard heart set

àA-blooming now as then? -

àWith all their petals yet

àBediamonded with dews -

àTheir sweet, sweet scent let loose

àFull sumptuously again!

à

àWhat mya I prya AEo!

àFor the poor hutched cot

àWhere death sate squat

àMidst my first memories? - Lo!

àMy mother's face - (they, whispering, told me so) -

àThat face! so picnedly

àIt blanched up, as they lifted me -

àIts frozen eyelids would

àNot part, nor could

àBe ever wetted open with warm tears.

à...Who hears

àThe prayers for all dead-mother-sakes, AEo!

à

àLeastwise one mercy: - May

àI not have leave to pray

àAll self to pass away -

àforgetful of all needs mine own -

àNeglectful of all creeds; - alone,

àStand fronting Thy high throne and say:

àTo Thee

àO Infinite, I pray

àShield Thou mine enemy!

à

à     Riley's enemy throughout his life was Crestillomeem.

à

àƒ         ̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚É‚Î‚Ô‚Ï‚Ø‚É‚Ă‚Á‚Ԃɂς΂ ‚łւł΂ ‚ɂ΂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚̀‚Á‚Ó‚Ô‚ ‚Ù‚Å‚Á‚̉‚Ó‚

à

?     Three anecdotes will close this section on Crestillomeem

?in the life of Riley. The first two were written in the

?memoirs of Walter Dennis Myers, James Whitcomb Riley's

àattorney in his later years.

à

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à

?     "The poet came to visit his friends, Major and Mrs.

?Holstein, for a week end on Lockerbie Street and stayed for

?the rest of his life.  After Major Holstein died, his widow

?took care of Mr. Riley like a child.  She understood him  and

àknew how to manage him without irritation as no one else did.

?     Their house was "L"-shaped. "Uncle Jim's" room in the

?"L" had a portch overlooking an old-fashioned sloping cellar

?door which opened upward and, when not closed, was held open

àby a chain fitted into a hook in a rainspout extending

?from the roof and anchored by a tile connection into the

àsewer.

?     "Uncle Jim" loved an occasional nip of bourbon, which

?Maggie Hostein well knew.  This, he obtained in a tavern a

?few blocks awy, run by a good Irish friend.  One day he came

?home on unsteady feet.  Maggie deduced that he had had too

àmany nips.  she took him to his room and locked him in.

?     He craved just another nip or two.  The only way to get

?out was by way of the porch above the cellar door and its

?sturdy rainspout.  Down the rainspout he slid without trouble

?until the hook for the door cahin entrapped him by piercing

?the seat of his trousers.  This development had not entered

?his calculations.  He wriggled, scooted, twisted and squirmed

?until the seat was torn out of his pants.   A freed man at

?last, he limped around to the front door and rang the

?doorbell.  When Maggie appeared, he bowed as low as his

?crippled chivalry would allow and breathed softely, "I thank

àyou, Mrs. Holstein, for the use of your rear exist."

?     At the first glance, Maggie exploded, "Rear exit,

?indeed! Look at your rear...rags and tatters.  You come in

àhere and put on another pair of pants."

?     "That's kind and thoughtful of you, my dear Maggie, but

àI'm on my way to an old sweetheart of mine.  You see..."

?    "I don't see," interrupted Maggie, "and you're on your

?way back to your room and a change of pants; and the room is

?going to be locked, good and tight, inside and porch side.

?As for that old sweetheart of yours, she's in her bottle down

?at Paddy O'Neil's and she's going to stay there.  Why haven't

?you as much sense as Paddy?  He dishes it out over the bar

àall day, yet never touches a drop."

?     "He's shy, Maggie.  He's shy. That's why. And he's like

?you ... no romance in his soul.  I caught him reading that

?Straus store ad: `Today is the day they give babies away with

?a half a pound of tea." He thinks that's poetry.  It's enough

?to make Shakespeare break down and write another romantic

àtragedy and entitle it `The Wiles of Women." What's

àthe world coming to?"

?     "Come on," commanded Maggie.  "March! You're on the way

àback to your room."

?     "Uncle Jim" bowed low, nearly toppled over and mumbled,

?"As you wish.  Thanks for the use of your front entrance. You

?are right, as always ... a torn seat in your pants is not the

àway to a woman's heart."

?      He tried what he thought was song, "Flow Gently, Sweet

àAfton."

?      "Oh, Jim, shut up! That's not romance.  Too much like

àthe baa of an old bachelor billie goat," said Maggie.

?     "Right you are again," agreed Uncle Jim.  Let's go and

?get a bachelor baby with a half pound of tea.  Babies don't

àbaa like billie goats.  Only kids do that."

?     The poet stagered upstairs and into his room. Thereupon,

àMaggie locked the doors.

à

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àƒ

?     "How I hate the god-dam, red-eyed law!" snorted James

?Whitcomb Riley as he plopped down into a big chair in the

?Columbia Club upon his return from the courtroom. He had been

?joined as a co-defendant on a promissory note filed as a

?claim against the estate of an old-time friend by one who

?also pretended to be the friend of both the deceased and Mr.

?Riley.  "And my father was a lawyer," he continued, "who

?called it the god-dam, red-eyed law, too, a good many times.

?Maybe that was why he took a nip or so of red-eye whenever he

àwent to try a case."

à     Mr. Riley was addressing me. I was his lawyer.

?     "Do you think the Judge'll get mad and send me to jail

?for contempt for cussing on the witness stand?  You see, he

?pulled his hand down over his walrus mustache and I couldn't

?make out whether he was laughing at me or taking a cud of

?tobacco out of his mouth.  This much I'm sure of, that

?roomful of ginks was laughing at me and the Judge never

àpounded his gavel.

?     "You see, I was mad. Sometimes I get mad pretty easy,

?and when I do, I fly off the handle and let loose and cuss.

?I always aim to be gentle and respectful of the dignity of

?the law.  But when I fly off the handle and let loose and

?cuss.  I always aim to be gentle and respectful of the

?dignity of the law.  But when I fly off the handle, hell! I

?can't help but cuss, dignity or no dignity.  Yet, I'd hate to

?be sent to jail and blowed up in the newspapers after I quit

?white-washing chicken coops and pale fences and

?kind...a...well, made a pretty good go of it.  Not many

?people get their stuff put out in books that people seem to

àlike to read.

?     But dammit to hell! Being sorry won't cure the chicken

?pox or the measles or a fellow with a stomach for Sunday

àSchool.

?     "The Judge never seemed like a Sunday School stomacher

àat the Club.  I've heard him cuss, too."

à     He paused reflectively.

?     "The trouble is, I cussed in what Pappy used to call

à     open court."

?    Mr. Riley's cussing in open court stemmed from a

?happening of many years before.  It was then the next to the

?last day before hanging for murder was abolished and

àelectrocution was substituted.

?     It had been the custom for Mr. Riley to meet with three

?friends at the Columbia Club weekly.  One of the friends was

?a society doctor who turned into a promoter.  After saving

?the lives of many socialites, he founded the Columbia Club

?and the city's two best hotels.  He became a millionaire.

?Another was a ne'er-do-well whose sole claim to fame was that

?he married the only daughter of the richest man in town.

?Then, she died young.  Her father went broke and he became a

?scheming hanger-on who lived by his wits. The last of the

?four was the Sheriff, a born politician, one of whose legal

àduties it was to execute criminals adjudged to be hanged.

?     The Sheriff pulled out his watch and jumped to his feet.

?"Sorry, boys.  Gotta go.  Must hand a murderer this afternoon

?after he's monkeyed around in the courts six years.  This'll

?be the last hangin' in the state.  Hereafter, it'll be

àelectrocution in the Pen at Michigan City," he explained.

?     "You mean to say you're going to hang somebody and take

?his life," queried Mr. Riley, adding, "I thought you were a

àfriend of mine."

?     "I'm the Sheriff. It's my job, ain't it?" replied the

àSheriff.

?     "Joe, I don't want anybody as my friend who has the

àblood of another man on his hands," shouted Mr. Riley.

?     "Listen, Jim.  You don't understand," replied the

?Sheriff.  "I don't do the hanging, personally that is.  There

?are three ropes on the gallows.  Only one drops the trap.

?There are three deputy sheriffs.  They draw lots for seats.

?Each picks up a sharp knife beside him.  when I say, `Cut,"

?they cut.  Nobody ever knows which rope dropped the trap.

àSee?  I couldn't possibly do it."

?     Mr. Riley argued that giving the order was the same

?thing as cutting the rope.  Verbal controversy was

àendangering the fate of an old friendship.

?     The Doctor broke in after gulping the last of several

ànips of what Mr. Riley called red-eye.

à     "Jim, you're drunk," he drawled.

?     "Shut up! You're the only one polluted here," snapped

àMr. Riley.

à     "Nuts," negated the Doctor.

?     "Let's prove who's polluted," challenged Mr. Riley.

?"Next door is the Marion Trust Company.  We'll get a blank

àpromissory note with two straight lines. We'll sign.  He who

àsigns the straightest is the least drunk."

?     The doctor agreed.  Notes were obtained and signed.  Mr.

?Riley's inimitable signature was neat, clear and on the line.

?The Doctor's name was scrawled all over the bottom of the

?note. Beyond doubt, according to the terms of the test, Mr.

àRiley was the least intoxicated.

?     After one glance, the Doctor crumpled up the note, stuck

àit in his coat pocket and without another word left the room.

à     The Sheriff went to the hanging.

?     The years sped by. The Doctor died.  Liquor had taken

?toll of his brilliant mind. In his will, the ne'er-do-well

àwas named as executor of his estate.

?     But there was no estate. The Doctor died insolvent,

?leaving a widow and two little sons, penniless.  I was

?attorney for the estate, partly because the old lawyer

?(Editor's note, John W. Kern, lawyer and one-time Mayor of

?Indianapolis) with whom I started practice could not afford

?to waste time on matters bringing in no fees, partly because

?Mr. Riley's brother-in-law was a client of the office, and

àMr. Riley's nephew was my college friend.

à    Diligent search disclosed no property until the executor

?reported that he had found a paid-up life insurance policy

?for twenty-five thousand dollars, payable to the estate, in

?the inside pocket of one of the Doctor's coats in an old

?suitcase.  He reported nothing more and resigned as executor.

?At the same time, the executor must have found the note

?signed by Mr. Riley and the unfortunate Doctor.  For, two

?months later this executor, who had resigned, filed the note

?with his name as payee and five thousand dollars payable,

?inserted by typewriter, as a claim.  Mr. Riley was joined as

àa defendant.

?     The executor said that he had hesitated to file the

?claim against the estate of an old friend, but that the money

?was justly due and he was in dire need and the surviving

?family would have twenty thousand dollars less established

àclaims anyhow.

?     At once, I interview Mr. Riley and his brother-in-law,

?Mr. Eitel, and was given the story of the execution of the

ànote.

?     The claim was set down for trial.  The attorney for the

?executor who had resigned, able but extremely gruff and

?unpleasant, put the note in evidence, attempted to prove the

?signatures by Mr. Riley and rested.  On cross-examination, I

?used Mr. Riley to establish the circumstances surrounding

?execution. The former executor's attorney re-examined, and

àthis is a part of the record:

?          Q. "Mr. Riley, I hand you claimant's Exhibit 1, the

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à     instrument in suit, and ask you ..."

à          A. "Wait a minute.  You hand me what?"

à          Claimant's attorney: "The instrument in suit."

?          Witness Riley. "I always thought an instrument was

?     a monkey wrench, a screw driver, a butcher knife, or

?     something like that and not an old, crumpled-up piece of

à     paper."

?          Q. "A fellow who makes his living out of writing

?     ought to know what a paper instrument is. Now I hand you

?     this instrument, claimant's Exhibit 1, ask you to

?     examine it and state whether or not at the time you

?     signed it you did not know that it had something to do

à     with a business transaction."

?          A  (In a gentle tone of voice) "Sure it's my

?     signature, put there as I swore to just a little while

à     ago. I signed no note to pay money."

?          Q. "When you signed, you knew it had something to

?     do with a business transaction, didn't you? Now, don't

à     fiddle-faddle about it."

?          A. "Mr. Lawyer, I don't know anything about

?     business. My brother-in-law, Henry Eitel, sitting right

?     there behind you, he's a banker and he tends to all my

?     business. And I never would have signed this thing you

?     call an instrument if we hadn't been hoisting a few."

à     Mr. Riley's voice was low and gentle."

?          Q. "I move to strike out the answer as not

?     responsive to the question. I asked the witness nothing

à     about hoisting a few."

à          The Court: "Motion sustained. It may be stricken."

?          Q. "Very well.  Reporter, read  the question to the

?     witness.  Now, Mr. Witness, answer that properly.  You

?     should understand English.  You make your living writing

à     it."

?     (Mr. Riley's face flushed.  He was getting angry.

à     Imitating the lawyer, he answered:)

?          A. "Read the answer to the previous question, but

?     add I never would have signed the thing you call an

à     instrument if we hadn't been drinking red-eye."

à          Q. "Red eye? What do you mean, red-eye?"

à          A. "Whisky to you.  Maybe bootleg."

?          The reporter read the previous question and Mr.

à     Riley's answer.

à          The attorney: "I move to strike out the answer."

à          The Court: "Sustained."

à          The attorney: "You're just trying to be perverse."

?          The witness, interrupting: "Perverse! That's the

à     kind of verse I never write."

?          Q. "Your Honor, direct the witness to answer my

?     questions and quit elaborating.  Now...now, reporter,

?     read the question again, and you...you poet-taster, you,

à     answer it properly."

?          A. "Reporter, read my answer again and add that I

?     never would have signed this thing he handed me if Doc

à     and I hadn't been drinking red-eye."

?         The answer was stricken out once more.  The Judge

?     explained that the law sometimes requires what seems

?     trivial to the laity.  Clearly, Mr. Riley was boiling

à     with restrained rage.

à          Q. "Riley, for the last time, now I ask, when you

?     signed Exhibit 1, the instrument in suit: you knew it

?     had something to do with a business transaction, now

?     didn't you? Answer that yes or no. Don't try to be a

à     stubborn jackass."

?          A. "No. Now you listen to me: For the last time,

?     I'm telling you I don't know a god-dam thing about

?     business, and I'm god-dam proud of it.  My brother-in-

?     law, Henry Eitel, there behind you, he's a banker and a

?     god-dam good one.  He tends to all the god-dam business

?     I have.  Besides, I never would have signed this god-dam

?     thing you keep on calling an instrument if Doc and I

à     hadn't been drinking red-eye to beat hell."

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?     The attorney spread his drooping hands side-wise and

àgroaned in despair, "What's the use?"

?     The Judge said, "That means no more questions, I

?presume.  I'll take the matter under advisement and

àultimately decide against the claimant."

à     "Court's adjourned."

?     The Judge strode to hischambers, breathing a sigh of

?relief.  Mr. Riley took me with him back to the Club,

?     worrying lest the Judge send him to jail for "cussing in

àopen court."

?     The Judge didn't send Mr. Riley to jail.  Neither did he

àdecide in favor of the claimant.

?     When advised about the decision, Mr. Riley soliloquized,

?"There's sense in the go-dam red-eyed law after all, like my

àPappy so often used to say."

à

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àƒ                     ͂ς΂ԂȂӂ ‚ςƂ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚̀‚ɂƂł

à

?     Crestillomeem was with Riley from adolescence to his

?grave. The final anecdote I will close with is from Dr.

?Carleton B. McCulloch, who was Riley's physician for the last

àyears of his life.

?     About a year before Riley died, Dr.  McCulloch took

?Riley to Miami, Florida. Riley was partially paralyzed by

?this time, and awas accompanied by a nburse, a housekeeper, a

?sister and two nieces, all women of prudish virtue. Carl G.

?Fisher, an Indianapolis promoter who built Miami Beach, and

?James Allison met Riley and asked him to come to their hotel

?for a party they were giving. The five women all were

?standing around saying "No." "You know Mr. Riley's failing,"

?they suggested. But eventually, the men promised they would

àkeep Riley absolutely abstemious.

à     However, when they got Riley to their rooms, they handed

àhim about six cocktails in quick succession, and by the time

?of the fish course, he was disgracefully stiff.  He was in

?even worse condition by the time they got him back to his

?hotel room, dumped him in bed, and rapped odn the nurse's

àdoor and fled.

?    The next afternoon they went over to see how Jim was

?doing.  He was sitting at one end of the hotel's veranda

?staring out to sea. The five female companions, with about

?fifteen other women in a crowd, started buzzing at each other

?when the two approach.  Allison and Fisher asked Riley how he

?was feeling but all Riley could do was grunt and look dead

?ahead. The conversation didn't go well. After fifteen

?minutes, Allison and Fisher ran out of small talk, and in a

?moment of silence, Riley said, "You see all those women over

?there?" he asked. Allison and Fisher allowed they did. "They

àthink I'm sorry," the old man said.

à

à̉‚É‚̀‚łق§‚Ó‚ ‚Ä‚Å‚Đ‚̉‚łӂӂɂς΂ ‚Á‚΂Ă ‚Á‚̀‚Ă‚Ï‚È‚Ï‚̀‚ɂӂ͂ ‚Á‚Ó‚ ‚Á‚Æ‚Æ‚Å‚Ă‚Ô‚É‚Î‚Ç‚ ‚Ȃɂӂ ‚Ă‚̉‚Å‚Á‚ԂɂւɂԂق

à

?     There is a great body of psychiatric information which

àhas begun to appear on subject of the creativity of writers.

àThe general conclusion is that creative writers as well as

?visual artists have a much higher prevalence of pathological

?personality traits and alcoholism.  In particular, depressive

?disorders, but no other psychiatric condition, affect writers

?almost twice as often as men with other high creative

?achievements. (The British psychiatric study upon which I

?base this considered only male writers.) 48% of such writers

àhad passed through major depressive episodes.

?     That Riley was among those creative people suffering

?horrible depression and alcoholism is not novel. What is

?novel is that Riley's strategy for dealing with these

?behavioral influences, as revealed in his autobiographical

?poem, worked in such a salutary manner. One gets the feeling

?that Riley's life was an approved one.


 

 

?

?

ed, "I really

 

     Something like these thoughts must have been in the

discussions of Myron Reed and Riley about the time he sat

down to pen his Benjamin Johnson of Boone poems, wherein

Riley emptied himself of himself, and lived the thought of

the humble farmer whose spiritual capacity was that of priest

and in his own deep yearnings, understandings and gropings

for the infinite, the conclusion that in the lowly origin of

man, here is what humanity is, spirit, intelligence, reason,

good will, affection, morally in correspondence with the same

faculties of his God without capacity to injure his soul, do

violence to the souls of others, just as God was in the

flesh.

     While Darwinism became misconstrued as the seed of

racism, industrialism's disregard for employees' welfare,

laissez fairism, greed justification, bullyism and

imperialism, the doctrine was, after all an intellectually

complete theory. The actual working out of such Nineteenth

Century ideas was the product of a faddish social philosopher

and British founder of modern sociology, Herbert Spencer.

His SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY, essays and his popular writings,

such as THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY, published in 1872-73 in

serial form in the POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY and distributed

throughout the United States provided great support for

social Darwinist ideas. Spencer's ideas were taught in the

great universities such as at Yale by Spencer's greatest

American protege, William Graham Sumner. His ideas were great

points of reference regarding "the normal course of social

evolution." Humanity was absolutely incapable of controlling

its own destiny. Evolution was deemed universal and a process

whereby homogeneity was reduced to heterogeneity just as the

earth was formed in its diversity of material and energy from

a nebular mass.

     Spencer's ideas formed the basic matrix of ideas of the

period in which Riley wrote. His ideas challenged and

replaced the idea that the earth was only a few thousand

years old created by a God during a single week in which the

entire universe was formed and human beings were its

culminating success. In Spencer's view, as society moved

toward heterogeneity, progress was achieved by the method of

survival of the fitest. Injustices were not avoidable whereby

resources were gobbled up by the wealthy, profits of

enterprises were amassed by the wealthy industrialists, and

women and children were denied rights.  Spencer opposed any

social aid such as poor laws, state-supported education,

regulation of housing or the professions, sanitary or health

laws, or governmental involvement in the economic life of the

nation.  These were some of the Spencerian tenants popular in

the nation as Riley began to contemplate the aims of his own

writing career in the 1870's and, with the weapons of

temperance Christianity, his alcoholism. In the interest of

social survival, Spencer contended classes of superior

citizens should be encouraged in favor of the inferior and no

laws should intervene.  Spencer's ideas gained great

currency especially with the rich and powerful in the United

States. Until Riley's popularization of kenoticism, there was

no opposite force.

     Spencer's ideas found God favoring the rich and the

efforts of those trying to get rich.  Western culture had

never before found any basis for such ideas and the cultural

life of the United States was shaken to its core. We read of

the assertion of the railroad magnate Chauncey Depew

commenting that the guests at the most exclusive social

engagements in New York represent the survival of the fitest

of the thousands who came to America in search of fame,

fortune and power and that it was their "superior ability,

foresight, and adaptability" that caused them to rise to the

top in the competitive arena of New York business. American

society was considered a stage of heterogeneity in which

natural order principles had selected a wealthy class for

survival. Absolute freedom for individual enterprise was the

framework whereby society must progress.  Economic and social

brutality was acceptable because it was grounded in the self-

adjusting doctrine of biological selection. Reform at a

governmental level was wrong because nature selected the

proper social environment for evolutionary progress.  Herbert

Spencer's ideas were the most prominent in sociological

circles during the years of Riley's work and carried the

weight of authority.  Riley's poetry and lectures can be seen

in fundamental opposition to the idea of America based on

"tooth and claw" society.  The Hoosier Deutsch child who

never grew up spoke a poetic voice softly and innocently

stating otherwise.

     Here was all the answer to Darwinism that was necessary.

The Pauline insistence that God became Incarnated in the man,

Jesus of Nazareth, did not subject God to the forces of

Darwinism, but rather were the product of a mind which valued

humility and service to others. McLeod Campbell, a theologian

who was deposed from a Presbyterian ministry in Scotland in

the 1830's for a kenotic Christology, published a mature

statement of his thought, THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT (1856)

which became a standard text in American Protestant

Seminaries. Beautifully written, it is still reckoned to be a

kenotic theological classic and a harbinger of modern

thinking on the subject. Although kenotic theology was

generally condemned by the established church, which

continued to hold out that Jesus of Nazareth was a figure in

glory and Godlike stature, kenotic thought grew.  Its

advocates included many of the newly German trained

theologians in the Union Theological Seminary in New York

City where young ministry candidates learned from their

German professors of kenotic theologies in the 1870's and

1880's.

     There is a long list of ministering friends and

counselors who constitute a very special group of people who

seem to be Spraivoll's support group.

    Perhaps they started out with Riley own grandmother,

Margaret Riley. During the adolescent years and later until

his alcoholism became so rampant, they seem to be few in

number. Possibly the most important step into Spraivoll's

kenotic poetry came from fellow alcoholic, Luther Benson.

Then they seem to descend upon Riley with great kenotic

influence.  Among the first was Reverend George C. Harding,

owner and editor of the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD, one of

Indiana's most distinguished editors. He published many of

Riley's poems and "The Flying Islands of the Night" and took

a great interest in Riley's literary bent. Myron Reed was

perhaps the most important.  Riley met him when delivering a

Decoration Day poem at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis

and Reed became an important friend to Spraivoll until his

death.

     It was men of God who took over Riley's life and cast it

within the anchoring song of the Philippian's "Christ Hymn."

     Friends felt Myron Reed was one of the most unusual of

Riley's friends. Although two very different types of men,

they united into a friendship  very close. They were often

seen together. They went abroad together into the Burns

county in Scotland. Riley wrote "Our Kind of a Man" upon

Reed's departure from Indianapolis for a pulpit in Denver,

Colorado as a tribute.

 

                   OUR KIND OF MAN (1884)

 

The kind of man for you and me!

He faces the world unflinchingly,

And smites, as long as the wrong resists,

With a knuckled faith and force like fists;

He lives the life he is preaching of,

And loves where most is the need of love;

His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears,

And his face sublime through the blind man's tears;

The light shines out where the clouds were dim,

And the widow's prayer goes up for him;

The latch is clicked at the hovel door

And the sick man sees the sun once more,

And out o'er the barren fields he sees

Springing blossoms and waving trees,

Feeling as only the dying may,

That God's own servant has come that way,

Smoothing the path as it still winds on

Through the golden gate where his love have gone.

 

II

 

The kind of a man for me and you!

However little of worth we do

He credits full, and abides in trust

That time will teach us how more is just.

He walks abroad, and he meets all kinds

Of querulous and uneasy minds,

And, sympathizing, he shares the pain

Of the doubts that rack us, heart and brain;

And, knowing this, as we grasp his hand,

We are surely coming to understand!

He looks on sin with pitying eyes -

E'en as the Lord, since Paradise, -

Else, should we read, Though our sins should glow

As scarlet, they shall be white as snow? -

And, feeling still, with a grief half glad,

That the bad are as good as the good are bad,

He strikes straight out for the Right - and he

Is the kind of a man for you and me!

 

     Riley once said, "He was eternally seeing and reading

the book of life as it was opened before him.  He had a rare

gift of discernment." Myron Reed was described by Meredith

Nicholson in OLD FAMILIAR FACES as "a tall, dark Indian-like

man quietly holding his horse in Circle Park." Reed had been

a Captain in the Cavalry in the Civil War.

     An acquaintance of both Riley and Reed recounts an

evening of the two on January 25th in the early 1880's. Both

were on a program of the Indianapolis Caledonian Society

designed to commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns. An

address by Myron Reed and a poem by Riley were the main

entertainment while songs, instrumental music, recitations,

dances in Scottish costume were additions.  During one point

in the program, young ladies came forward to sing "Bonny

Doon."

    After the program, Reed, Riley and the acquaintance

(whose memoir is signed only as Senex Contrib.), left, with

Riley steering the way. The talk was of Burns, his sympathy

with all suffering, his hatred of oppression, the events of

his life, etc. The account continues,: "At the corner of

Washington and Pennsylvania streets there was in those days a

popular cafe where, among other things, they served oysters

in all styles.  Riley proposed that we go  down - it was in a

basement - and continue the talk over a hot oyster stew; the

snow, the cold and the wind seconded the motion, so we went

down.  The writer had met Reed in company on several

occasions; he now saw and heard him at close range in a time

of relaxation and found the high opinion he had formed of his

qualities of mind were quite equaled by those of his heart.

     He says, "The oppressed and downtrodden could always

find an advocate in him; distress and suffering challenged a

sympathetic hearing and help from him, nor was he straitened

in his exhibition of these, for, like Goldsmith's village

preacher who -

     Please with his guests the good man learned to glow

     And quite forget their vices in their woe.

his broad charity took in humanity in all its aspects and

suffering and distress in all living things... when Riley

told some droll stories, accentuated and set off by his

impersonations and Reed had laughed heartily at them, one of

them reminded him of a comrade in the civil war, whose

freakish behavior was an unfailing source of amusement to

him, although it did not affect all his comrades thus.  Reed

stated, "On the march, he pushed his cap up on the back of

his head, stretched his long neck, lengthened his step, and

did everything he could to evince an eagerness to get

forward; at night when we went into camp, he would call out,

`Captain, how many miles did we march today?' Then in a gruff

tone he would answer himself, `Fifteen.' `Fifteen?' `Why

that's no march: we must do better than that!  The big show

can't start til I get there, and we'll never get there at

this rate!'  He assumed the part of a veteran of all the wars

his country had waged, and some foreign ones; and that his

campaigns had converted his body into steel and leather,

punctured by many scars received in battle.  In that

character, he would pull himself rigidly erect, his blouse

tightly about him and cap down, till the bill touched his

nose, nearly  obscuring his rolling eyes, and speak gruff

tones.

     Once, overhearing a comrade complaining of the long

toilsome march they had had that day and how his feet were

almost blistered, he turned upon him, saying, `Son, did you

think that this was a school picnic with fans? Why this is

just the a.b.c. You would have had reason to cuss had you

been with us on our march through the wilderness to Quebec,

or when we marched with Doniphon from St. Jo across the Santa

Fe after cleaning up the Mexicans and adding two more

territories to the Union; cut loose and marched 600 miles

into old Mexico joining old `Rough and Ready' at Buena Vista.

Talk about the march of the Ten Thousand, it was just a walk

before breakfast compared with ours.'...

     Another time, when one found fault with the rations,

`Vet,' as we called him, looked at the complainer in

indignant astonishment. `Say, son, when you drew your

rations? Sowbelly and hard-tack are the grub for soldiers.'

After a year or two of this diet you can eat whetstones with

relish. When your teeth wear out you can smash your hard-tack

with a rock before eating it.' Here he gave a demonstration,

smashing his hard-tack and devouring it with the meat, with

assumed gusto..."

     Eventually, Reed stopped and looking thoughtful for a

moment, said, "God alone knows. `Vet' may have been a

reincarnation of some old warrior who was wandering about

seeking visibility and companionship."

     "Riley and I saw Reed home at about 11."

     As Reed was dying and just before his death on January

30, 1899, he repeated the word, "Riley," over and over.

 

 

 

A POETRY OF FRONTIER SONG AND DOGGEREL WOVEN AND WARPED IN

CADENCED MYSTERY.

 

     Let us now turn to the subject of where Spraivoll's

poetry came from.

     Riley's poetry was founded on frontier song and doggerel

cadenced in the scoring and intervals of music. Like music,

Riley's poetry carried affective energy. This was

intentional. Music empowered Riley's poetry. Since this is

so, we need to enquire - what is the root of music?

     Since the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, music has

been considered a primary actor of human behavior. A listener

becomes involved with music involuntarily. Plato's theory of

"ethos" proposed that music was behavioral expression. It

evoked response toward the good or the bad.  Music and poetry

of its genesis pass judgment. Frontiersmen may not have known

of a theoretical basis for their "likes," but they did

strongly seek after the thematics of musical expression.  The

affective agent of music has never been fully identified.

Plotinus, a Neo-Platonist, argued that music influenced the

soul. Music bears spirituality and touches such values, a

concept which was adopted into church music theory. During

one "dark" period in a time of ignorance, the church examined

music to probe whether its enchantment might be a matter of

sorcery.  Riley was dealing with a very powerful medium. He

used it forcefully. Thousands of Americans in his time could

recite his poetry. Front pages of every American newspaper

carried it. The Nineteenth Century in America heard much

singing and the songs taught much. Riley sang his share.

     In the Hoosier lyric tradition, poems were similar to

songs and not necessarily written with musical annotation.

An example is a Baptist hymnal published in Riley's hometown

of Greenfield, Indiana in 1887 by D.H. Goble. It is a hymnal

without music. The little book contains 321 poems for use as

hymns. Many Middle West Christians of the Nineteenth Century

objected to musical scoring since the Bible contained none

even in its Psalms. Other frontier Protestant church

congregations banned choirs or refused to hire paid ministers

or those with seminary training. Song on the frontiers of

Nineteenth Century America might invoke strict biblical and

religious discipline as a way of life and Godly emotion.

Much poetry in Hoosier newspapers was basically "hymn without

music." Protestant frontiersmen believed in carrying Godly

music in their hearts, and poetic expression of it on their

lips.  Meter, as Riley used in his poetry, was learned in the

churches by all congregants. Unscored hymns carried notations

such as sm (short meter) etc. behind the name of the poem to

be sung.  Another example of meter is found in numerical

metrical designation. For example, "Guide Me O Thou Great

Jehovah" was listed in the Goble hymn book as being for

"8's", "7's", and "4's." This meant that the poem could be

sung to three different tunes depending upon the one begun by

the initiator. Poetry, hymns and song were composed in a very

strong oral tradition at the time of the writing of James

Whitcomb Riley's poetry.  The medium of song was poetry.

     Music carried Riley's spirit. He once told fellow author

Meredith Nicholson, "To throw your legs over the tail of a

band wagon and thump away - there's nothing like it!" He

played a bass drum in a band. Music carried him through the

sadness of his adolescence. Riley was noted for playing the

violin and guitar in particular. Music was the rhythm of

Riley's expression just as surely as music was the wellspring

he tapped to speak a common language in the same way the

hymns of all peoples do.

     At 18 James Whitcomb Riley started taking up fiddling

and banjo. He sang tenor. One day Riley bought an old violin,

on the bottom saying Paolo Albani, Botzen, 1650.  Working on

farm in late teenage years. Riley loved to play it while his

father demanded he help with hoeing instead of going with

friends. When given the choice, Riley chopped a few weeds,

then flung his hoe into the next lot, jumped over a fence and

took off to town with curses.  He came back an hour later to

apologize. He simply was not going to give up music.

     Music was how Riley expressed himself and told his love

to his married friend, Nellie Cooley. Jim and Nellie were

always together. They were a team.  When a local merchant,

John Ward Walker, bought a piano for his new imposing home

built in 1871 near a huge wooded hill known as "Walker's

Hill" on State Street in Greenfield, Jim and Nellie came to

entertain with it according to a newspaper account of the

event. Jim Riley played his violin and Nellie played the new

piano at the first social event of many which were held at

the Walker home. This residence became an entertainment

location for many groups particularly for local Greenfield

Methodist Episcopal Church functions.  When Nellie came to

play the piano, Jim Riley accompanied her with his violin

with the secret of their attachment heavy in their hearts.

Their love grew on the wings of music.

     Riley turned the musical rhythms of his life with Nellie

into his writings.

     What is frontier song and doggerel? Examples may

help. Doggerel is "occasional" poetry.  It is poetry that

makes no pretence of dignity and strikes for common emotion.

Some call it "burlesque" or "bastard" verse.  Its poetic feet

are irregular and the unlearned often compose it. An example

from an epitaph for a deceased horse follows:

 

                       JOHNNY KONGAPOD

 

             Here lies Johnny Kongapod

                  Have mercy on him Gracious God

             As he would on you if he were God

                  And you were Johnny Kongapod.

 

     While there is much subtlety in the writing of James

Whitcomb Riley, it should not be supposed that his verse

derived from anything other than frontier American song

and doggerel. In this, his poetry was not so different than

other poetry of the time. Poetry was a much different medium

in Riley's day on the American frontier than in modern times.

A vestige of the type poetry Riley wrote survives as lyric of

popular music. This is not to say that Riley did not study

the poetry of others within English and American traditions

and use his wits to craft poetry of great complexity of

thought. Nevertheless, to the end of his life, Riley wrote as

he had learned from frontier song and doggerel and simply

could not imagine poetry outside the context of this

framework.

      His poetry was set to music with ease. Among Riley's

poetry set to music or recorded are approximately one hundred

fifty titles. Some of the poems have attracted multiple

composers as did "A Life Lesson," "The Prayer Perfect" and

"Little Orphant Annie" which appear to be the most often

reduced to musical scores.

     Riley's poems set to music include "America" (also known

as "The Messiah of Nations" with music by John Phillip Sousa

-other composers will not hereafter be listed), Baby Bye,

Babyhood, The Bee-Bag, Billy and His Drum, Billy Goodin, The

Boy Patriot, The Brook song, Childhood, A Christmas Glee,

Christine's Song, Coffee Like His Mother Used to Make, Cradle

Song, The Daring Prince, The Days Gone By, The Dead Lover,

The Dead Wife, Dearth, the Diners in the Kitchen, Don't Cry,

A Dream of Autumn, Dwainie- A Sprite Song, Ever a Song

Somewhere, Extremes, The First Bluebird, Fool Younguns, The

Funny Little Fellow, The Gobble-Uns'll Git You Ef You Don't

Watch Out!, Good-By Er Howdy-Do, Granny's Come to Our House,

Griggsby's Station, Heigh-Ho!  Babyhood, Her Beautiful Eyes,

Her Beautiful Hands, A Humble Singer, I Want to Be a Soldier,

I Will Walk With You, My Lad, If I Knew What Poet's Know, An

Impetuous Resolve, In the Orchard Where the Children Used to

Play, It, The Jolly Miller, The Kingdom of a Child, Last

Night and This, A Leave-Taking, Leonainie, A Life-Lesson,

Light of Love,  Little Girly-Girl, Little Orphant Annie, The

Little Red Apple Tree, The Little Red Ribbon, The Little Tiny

Kickshaw, Lockerbie Street, The Lost Lover, Lullaby, Make Me

a Song, The Man in the Moon, Max and Jim,  Maymie's Story of

Red-Riding-Hood, Ms. Hammond's Parable, A Mother Song, My

Fiddle, My Mary, O Heart of Mine, O, I Will Walk with You, My

Lad, An Old Sweetheart of Mine, The Old Trundle Bed, Our Own

- A Chant, Out to Old Aunt Mary's, Pansies, Parental

Christmas Presents, A Pet of Uncle Sidney's. The Pixy People,

The Prayer Perfect,  A Primrose, The Raggedy Man, The Ribbon,

The Ring and the Rose, A Riley-Album, Say Farewell and Let Me

Go, A Scrawl, A Sea Song from the Shore, She "Displains" It,

The Silver Lining,  Some Scattering Remarks of Bub's,  A

Song, A Song and a Smile, A Song of the Road, There Is Ever A

Song Somewhere, There, Little Girl, Don't Cry, The Tree Toad,

Uncle Sidney, Uncle Sidney Says, Uncle Sidney's Logic, A Very

Youthful Affair, The Weather, When Evening shadows Fall, When

Our Baby Died, When She Comes How Again, when the Frost Is On

the Punkin, Where Shall We Land, Wind of the Sea, and the

Winky-Tooden Song.  This listing of titles was made in the

early 1940's.  No listing of more current titles is available

that I am aware of.  The listings do not include Riley in

collections of music. Nor does it include the Riley

phonograph albums made toward the end of Riley's life when

such items became technologically possible.

      Since Riley believe poetry to be connected to music he

hated the free verse of Walt Whitman, a contemporary poet for

whom Riley had nothing but contempt. When asked, Riley

condemned him saying he walked around with his shirt

unbuttoned. Riley's frontier American mentality could not

recognize Whitman's poetry as having musical genesis.

Whitman's poetry simply could not be sung within the metered

stanzas of pioneer Hoosier song and Riley did not conceive

Whitman's work to be poetry.

     The American poetry of Riley exists within a tradition

that goes back to the time of Homer whose Iliad and Oddysey

were sung by traveling folk artists. Song, in folk

traditions, seems to often be the basis of poetic expression

over the history of humanity.

     It is not without meaning that Riley chose to call the

poetic Riley in "The Flying Islands of the Night," the "tune-

fool." Frontier songs were the basis of Riley's meter. Riley

understood the thirst-quenching water of poetry to come from

this well.

     Riley recognized his musical and poetic nature to be

combined as his self who wrote poetry in his autobiographical

poem, "The Flying Islands of the Night." We find the

following dialogue therein:

 

          WHO IS SPRAIVOLL UNLESS CADENCED MYSTERY?

 

                           Jucklet

The voice of Spraivoll, an mine ears be whet

And honed o' late honeyed memories

Behaunting the deserted purlieus1 of

The court.

1. A purlieu refers to land on the border of a forest where a

serf in medieval times had the right to hunt without

permission of a sovereign's forest laws or their punishment

for unauthorized hunting.  Figuratively, it is a place where

one can range or a safe place to haunt or wander.

Crestillomeem

 

And who is Spraivoll, and what song

Is that besung so blinding exquisite

Of cadenced mystery?

 

    What did writing within such a definition of poetry mean?

    Riley's was a poetry he described as "cadenced mystery."

    The form caused Riley's poems to immediately prove

pleasurable to hear and familiar to grasp. They also thus

had a form which could bear Godly encouragement in a

desperate time-the kenotic themes which I feel gave Riley's

works particular value. Frontier songs did this as one finds

in doggerels.

     It should not be supposed there is no discipline in

doggerel poetry. Doggerel can be honed as any other more

formal form of poetry. Although Riley achieved great national

fame as a poet and his poetry was known, in part, by

thousands of people, his public poetry never strove to escape

the doggerel metrical theories of frontier song. I have to

qualify this by saying that the "personal Riley" was quite

capable of using other verse as when Riley chose the

Chatterton pentameter for his autobiographical poem, "Flying

Islands of the Night." Riley not only composed his poetry

from song rhythms but he also disciplined himself through

doggerel poetry, One finds this particularly in his

advertising poetry. Here are examples from his Anderson

"Democrat" days:

 

                    ADVERTISING DOGGEREL

     The farmer sat in his easy chair

     Smoking his pipe of clay,

     While his hale old wife with a sprightly air

     Was clearing her throat to say,

     "Read aloud," to the child that sat

     On his grandfather's knee with the Democrat.

 

                     Or:

 

                    The Anderson Democrat

                            is a

                      Good Little Paper

                           and you

                   Ought To Be Kind To It

           It Ain't the Best Paper In The "State."

                           No, it

                          Is Simply

                            Good.

 

     Frontier Hoosier songs of the first half of the

Nineteenth Century were not so different from others sung on

the American frontier north and south or anywhere West of the

Appalachians. Among the favorites were "Skip to My Lou," "Old

Sister Phoebe," and this one entitled "Thus the Farmer Sows

His Seed:"

                THUS THE FARMER SOWS HIS SEED

 

          Come, my love, and go with me,

          And I will take good care of thee.

          I am too young, I am not fit,

          I cannot leave my mamma yit.

 

          You're old enough, you are just right

          I asked your mamma last Saturday night.

 

     Frontier songs often were accompanied by dances.  This

one could be sung while dancing a Virginia reel:

 

                        WEEVILY WHEAT

 

          O Charley, he's a fine young man,

          O Charley, he's a dandy,

          He loves to hug and kiss the girls

          And feed 'em on good candy.

 

          The higher up the cherry tree,

          The riper grow the cherries,

          The more you hug and kiss the girls,

          The sooner they will marry.

 

          My pretty little pink, I suppose you think

          I care but little about you.

          But I'll let you know before you go,

          I cannot do without you.

 

          It's left hand round your weevily wheat.

          It's both hands round your weevily wheat.

          Come down this way with your weevily wheat

          It's swing, oh, swing, your weevily wheat.

 

     A patriotic song sung at nearly every Fourth of July

celebration in the frontier places was as follows:

 

                        HAIL COLUMBIA

 

          Hail! Columbia, happy land!

          Hail! ye heroes, heav'n born band,

          Who fought and bled in freedom's cause,

          Who fought, and bled in freedom's cause.

 

          And when the storm of war is gone,

          Enjoy the peace your valor won;

          Let independence be your boast,

          Ever mindful what it cost,

          Ever grateful for the prize,

          May its altar reach the skies.

 

     In the decade in which Riley was born, poetry provided

a form of common expression and was certainly not solely the

province of poets. As an example, there is the poetry of the

martyred President, Abraham Lincoln, written on the American

frontier prior to the American Civil War.

                        THE BEAR HUNT

 

           A wild bear chase didst never see?

               Then hast thou lived in vain -

          Thy richest bump of glorious glee

               Lies desert in thy brain.

 

          When first my father settled here,

               'Twas then the frontier line;

          The panther's scream filled night with fear

               And bears preyed on the swine.

 

          But woe for bruin's short-lived fun

               When rose the squealing cry;

          Now man and horse, with dog and gun

               For vengeance at him fly.

 

          A sound of danger strikes his ear;

               He gives the breeze a snuff;

          Away he bounds, with little fear,

               And seeks the tangled rough.

 

          Or press his foes, and reach the ground

               Where's left his half-munched meal;

          the dogs, in circles, scent around

               And find his fresh made trail

 

          With instant cry, away they dash,

               And men as fast pursue;

          O'er logs, they leap, through water splash

               And shout the brisk halloo.

 

          Now to elude the eager pack

               Bear shuns the open ground,

          Through matted vines he shapes his track,

               And runs it, round and round.

 

          The tall, fleet cur, with deep-mouthed voice

               Now speeds him, as the wind;

          While half-grown pup, and short-legged fice

               Are yelping far behind.

 

          And fresh recruits are dropping in

               To join the merry corps;

          With yelp and yell, a mingled din -

               The woods are in a roar -

 

          And round, and round the chase now goes,

               The world's alive with fun;

          Nick Carter's horse his rider throws,

               And Mose Hills drops his gun.

 

          Now, sorely pressed, bear glances back,

               And lolls his tired tongue,

          When as, to force him from his track

               An ambush on him sprung.

 

          Across the glade he sweeps for flight,

               And fully is in view -

          The dogs, new fired by the sight

               Their cry and speed renew.

 

          The foremost ones now reach his rear;

               He turns, they dash away,

          And circling now the wrathful bear

               They have him full at bay.

 

          At top of speed the horsemen come,

               All screaming in a row -

          `Whoop!' `Take him, Tiger!' `Seize him, Drum!'

               Bang - bang! the rifles go!

 

          And furious now, the dogs he tears

               And crushes in his ire -

          Wheels right and left, and upward rears,

               With eyes of burning fire.

 

          But laden death is at his heart -

               Vain all the strength he plies,

          And, spouting blood from every part,

               He reels, and sinks, and dies!

 

          And now a dinsome clamor rose, -

               `But who should have his skin?'

          Who first draws blood, each hunter knows

               This prize must always win.

 

          But, who did this, and how to trace

               What's true from what's a lie, -

          Like lawyers in a murder case

               They stoutly argufy.

 

          Aforesaid fire, of blustering mood,

               Behind, and quite forgot,

          Just now emerging from the wood

               Arrives upon the spot,

 

          With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair

               Brim full of spunk and wrath,

          He growls, and seized on dead bear

               And shakes for life and death -

 

          And swells, as if his skin would tear,

               And growls, and shakes again,

          And swears. as plain as dog can swear

               That he has won the skin!

 

          Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee,

               No mind that not a few

          Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be

               Conceited quite as you.

     The earliest poetry of Riley is close to being as

doggerel as Abraham Lincoln's "The Bear Hunt" and has the

same phrasings and metric cadences as frontier songs

generally.

 

         RILEY'S "THE SAME OLD STORY" (1870, age 20)

 

The same old story told again -

  The maiden droops her head,

The ripening glow of her crimson cheek

  Is answering in her stead.

The pleading tone of a trembling voice

  Is telling her the way

He loved her when his heart was young

  In Youth's sunshiny day;

The trembling tongue, the longing tone,

  Imploringly ask why

They cannot be as happy now

  As in the days gone by.

And two more hearts, tumultuous

  With overflowing joy,

Are dancing to the music

  Which the dear, provoking boy

Is twanging on his bowstring,

  As, fluttering his wings,

He send his love-charged arrows

  While merrily, he sings:

"Ho! ho!, you dainty maiden,

  It surely can not be

You are thinking you are master

  Of your heart, when it is me."

And another gleaming arrows

  Does the little god's behest,

And the dainty little maiden

  Falls upon her lover's breast.

"The same old story told again,"

  And listened o'er and o'er,

Will still be new, and pleasing, too

  Till "Time shall be no more."

 

     Poetics had an important role to play in the Hoosier

frontier with its rhymes and songs.

     Song was a feature of every aspect of frontier life.

Nothing was beyond its scope. The Hoosier regiments to the

Mexican War in the mid-1840's sang as they went into battle.

This was in the decade of the 1840's in which Riley was born.

A refrain to one of the Hoosier regimental battle songs with

many verses was:

 

       A MEXICAN WAR "HOOSIER" REGIMENTAL BATTLE SONG

 

                 Fire! Fire! how they tumble-

                 Shout, shout for the State,

                 Whose young bosom sent thee

                   To war with the great!

 

     To understand the subject matter of frontier poetry of

song and doggerel, it is necessary to look at the ground

where such poetry grew.

     Hamlin Garland, a fellow writer and admirer of Riley,

came to Greenfield to visit him in 1892.  Here is his account

of the Hoosier Poet's birth town as he saw it then.

 

             A VISIT TO RILEY IN HIS NATIVE TOWN

 

     "In 1892 I visited Riley at his native town of

Greenfield, Indiana, and the town and country gave moving

evidence of the wonder-working power of the poet.  To my eyes

it was the most unpromising field for art, especially for the

art of verse. The landscape had no hills, no lakes, no

streams of any movement or beauty.  Ragged fence-rows, flat

and dusty roads, fields of wheat alternating with clumps of

trees - these were the features of a country which to me was

utterly commonplace..." (As found in a 1920 lecture read at

the American Academy of Arts and Letters, entitled

"Commemorative Tribute to James Whitcomb Riley.")

     It seems curious that Hamlin Garland, whose formative

years were spent on a family farm in Iowa, and whose best

writings are about the economic troubles of Midwestern

farmers, the drudgery of their existence, and the

depredations practiced against them by moneylenders, would

find Riley's Midwestern hometown of Greenfield such a drag.

     Garland's point was that the genius of a person creates

poetry and literature from out of the stuff of life no matter

how backwoods or ordinary it may seem to others.  Again

speaking of Riley, Garland continued, "...from this dusty,

drab, unpromising environment Riley had been able to draw the

honey of woodland poesy, a sweet in which a native fragrance

as of basswood and buckwheat bloom mingled with hints of an

English meadow and the tang of a Canada thistle."

     What Hamlin Garland saw echoed in the works of James

Whitcomb Riley was what Riley conveyed as one of the themes

of what a home is. It is something plainly and unabashedly

common. Since it is common, it bears with it characteristic

proportionality and democratic distribution to all classes,

races and peoples. Every American is thought to deserve a

home. It is something the most common of attributes to which

each person has entitlement. In every ethical community, the

most common family should be conceived as having a home

according to James Whitcomb Riley. There is no social

division which precludes this. Riley's poetry was of this

teaching. It did not need to more specifically say so.

     As Garland said, "He taught us once again the

fundamental truth which we were long in learning here in

America, that there is a poetry of common things, as well as

of epic deeds.  His immense success with the common, no-

literary public is to be counted for him and not  against

him.  either consciously or unconsciously his verses were

wrought for the family.  He never forced the erotic note.

surrounded by Americans, he wrote for Americans. To me his

restraint is a fine and true distinction.

     His verse sprang from a certain era of western

development. It is a humble crop gathered from the corners of

rail fences, from the vines which clamber upon the porches of

small villages, and from the weedy side-walks of quiet towns

far away from the great markets of the world..."

     Riley's poetry is a poetry of home and the home of even

the most common family.

     On a more personal note, what impression did Riley give

to Hamlin Garland in 1892?  "In person Riley was as markedly

individual as his verse.  He was short, square-shouldered,

and very blond, with a head which he was accustomed to speak

of as "of the tack-hammer variety." His smoothly shaven face

was large and extremely expressive, the face of a great

actor.  Though grim in repose it lighted up with the merriest

smiles as he read or as he uttered some quaint jest.  His

diction when he wished it to be so was admirably clear and

precise, but he loved to drop into the speech and  drawl of

his Hoosier characters, and to me this was a never-failing

delight.  I have never met a man save Mark Twain who had the

same amazing flow of quaint conceits.  He spoke "copy" all

the time." Such was the way Riley struck a man who was not

just a fellow writer but one of the foremost "realists" along

with Stephen Crane in American fiction.

     It would also be good to describe the Hoosier character

out of which Riley's poetry flowered. The unfortunate side of

Riley's poetry is brought out by this kind of analysis.

Riley's characterizations are so good, his capacity to

personify and breath life into an archetypical persona, that

the characterizations really overshadow everything else.  The

benefit to Riley was that he could write over and over again

and create a massive volume of poetry easily because he

understood character types so very well. The problem is

reaching the "meat" or substance.  What is the theme of all

this voluminous spewing out of character interaction?

     The big picture reveals it as the individual poems do

not. Riley is the poet who has given us to know about

American life, what to expect of it, how to be fulfilled in

it, and disappointed, but how to make it through life in it.

This is particularly pronounced where Riley speaks with his

kenotic poetic voice. Riley's prayer was to master a kenotic

poetic style.

     In my day in this, the late Twentieth Century, I recall

Riley dismissed occasionally by literary friends and fellow

authors as a "sentimentalist" because Riley wrote of humble

characters, their lives and their settings in rural America

where I live. Riley's poetry entered into the "heart" of such

characters. He had them fighting for life and survival-

feeling life's disappointments, having a pioneer wife die,

being crippled or maimed or dead - in their humble non-

notable non-adaptive existences but being transformed into

heroic proportion by the fact of their very humility and

vulnerability of their lives. This expresses the "splagxnon"

of Riley, his inmost guts and feeling, a matter of hugely

different aspect than sentimentalism.

     The critics who see only "sentimentalism" in Riley's

poetry miss the stem upholding the leaves.  They simply do

not take into account, nor understand, the late Nineteenth

Century in America. Many of the very characters I have

mentioned-before Riley wrote of them-were the type of

American most would have dismissed as persons to be selected

out or disregarded in their miserable lives because they were

simply on the downside of evolutionary trends. Charles

Darwin's speciation theory is the dominant scientific idea of

Riley's era. Its proposals moulded thought after the American

Civil War.  Together with the impact of industrial

development and laissez faire government, the framework of

Post Civil War American culture lacked even the slightest

aspect of humanism when James Whitcomb Riley's poetry began

appearing on the front pages of American newspapers and his

stories began to make their rounds in lyceum circuits. The

poetry of James Whitcomb Riley and he, himself, became his

epoch's great radical phenomena.

     The poem, "To My Friend, William Leachman," and the

other poems in Riley's first volume, THE OLD SWIMMIN' HOLE"

AND `LEVEN MORE POEMS, hit America like a bombshell.  All of

America began to look at their neighbors differently. Maybe

people shouldn't simply be seen as ape-descendants. The

advent of Incarnation Theology, though not popularly named as

such, was at hand.  Folk drew the line at the Philippian's

Christ Hymn against the Robert Ingersoll's who attacked the

Bible.

    If there is vulnerability in life, as Riley's own

alcoholism rendered him vulnerable, nevertheless the

situation was within the encounter of God with humanity.

No special claim to wealth or wisdom or status gave access to

this God. Prayer was enough. God's standard of caring for

humanity derived from an ethic confirmed on a cross of

persecution where God too became weakened, fearful, filled

with anxiety, and died.

 

 

                  RILEY'S PRIMARY AUDIENCE

 

Q: WHO ARE THE HOOSIER PEOPLE?  A: A FRONTIER HOME-SEEKING

GOD-FEARING TRIBE OF HUMBLE WANDERERS.

 

     Then we need to address the poetic audience of Riley.

What is a Hoosier?

     The term "Hoosier" descriptive of Riley's people of

the frontier and his poetry came from a poem of great

currency in the first half of the Nineteenth Century which

described the people of Indiana.  Poetry was very much a part

of the daily lives on the American frontier. James Whitcomb

Riley had his own theory where the word "Hoosier" came from.

He stated, "The stories commonly told about the origin of the

word Hoosier are all nonsense. The real origin is found in

the pugnacious habits of the early settlers. They were very

vicious fighters and not only gouged and scratched, but

frequently bit off noses and ears.  This was so ordinary an

affair that a settler coming in to a bar on a morning after a

fight, and seeing an ear on the floor, would merely push it

aside with his foot and carelessly ask, "Who's ear?"

     Hoosiers were the earliest frontiersmen who settled in

the Ohio Valley north of the Ohio River in the early

Nineteenth Century. They are the people of a poem by John

Finley of Richmond, Indiana. In one of its first recorded

usages in the 1833 Indianapolis JOURNAL, John Finley

described folk living in backwoods Indiana cabins in a poem.

 

                      THE HOOSIER NEST

 

                Blest Indiana! In whose soil

             Men seek the sure rewards of toil,

                And honest poverty and worth

            Find here the best retreat on earth,

         While hosts of Preachers, Doctors, Lawyers,

              All independent as wood-sawyers,

             With men of every hue and fashion,

             Flock to the rising Hoosier nation.

               Men who can legislate or plow,

                Wage politics or milk a cow -

             So plastic are their various parts,

              Within the circle of their arts,

             With equal tack the Hoosier loons,

               Hunt offices or hunt raccoons.

                             ...

              Suppose in riding somewhere West

              A stranger found a Hoosier's nest

               In other words, a buckeye cabin

            Just big enough to hold Queen Mab in,

                 Its situation low but airy

              Was on the borders of a prairie,

              And fearing he might be benighted

           He hailed the house and then alighted.

               The Hoosier met him at the door

              Their salutations soon were o'er;

             He took the stranger's horse aside

                And to a sturdy sapling tied.

            Then, having stripped the saddle off,

                He fed him in a sugar trough.

              The stranger stooped to enter in,

              The entrance closing with a pin,

                And manifested strong desire

              To seat him by the log heap fire,

               Where half a dozen Hoosieroons

            With mush and mil, tincups and spoons

           White heads, bare feet and dirty faces

         Seemed much inclined to keep their places,

                But Madam, anxious to display

               Her rough and undisputed sway,

               Her offspring to the ladder led

             And cuffed the youngsters up to bed

                 Invited shortly to partake

              Of venison, milk and Johnny-cake

               The stranger made a hearty meal

           And glances round the room would steal

          One side was lined with skins of varmints

           The other spread with divers garments,

             Dried pumpkins overhead were strung

              Where venison hams in plenty hung

              Two rifles placed above the door,

          Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor,

               In short the domicile was rife

 

     Then we should examine an example of the poet considered

the first great master of Hoosier poetry, Sarah Boulton.

Riley himself acknowledged her reputation in a poem "Song of

a Life-Time" and knew her well. In the poem he speaks of her

quality of "melodiousness" and "mien" by which he meant

Hoosier expression of character and manner.  One of her well

known poems follows:

                    PADDLE YOUR OWN CANOE

 

Voyager upon life's sea, to yourself be true,

     And where'er your lot may be, paddle your own canoe!

Never, though the winds may rave, falter, nor look back;

     But upon the darkest wave leave a shining track.

 

Nobly dare the wildest storm, stem the rudest gale,

     Brave of heart and strong of arm, you will never fail.

When the world is cold and dark, keep an aim in view;

     And toward the beacon mark paddle your own canoe.

 

Every wave that bears you on to the silent shore,

     From its sunny source has gone to return no more,

Then let  not an hour's delay cheat you of your due;

     But, while it is called to-day, paddle your own canoe.

 

Would you wrest the wreath of fame from the hand of fate;

     Would you write a deathless name with the good and

          great;

Would you bless your fellow-men, heart and soul imbue

     With the holy task, and then paddle your own canoe.

 

Would you crush the tyrant wrong, in the world's fee fight,

     With spirit brave and strong, battle for the right;

And to break the chains that bind many to the  few -

     To enfranchise mind enslaved - paddle your own canoe.

 

Nothing great is light won, nothing won is lost;

     Every good deed, nobly done, will repay the cost.

Leave to heaven, in humble trust, all you will to do;

     But, if you'd succeed, you must paddle your own canoe.

     Riley's heritage was tied up part and parcel in frontier

songs and poems.  His later writing can be seen as deriving

from this wellspring.

     As did almost everyone else in Indiana, Riley's mother

and father both wrote poetry of the frontier song variety.

In a short article entitled a "Retrospective View of the

Hancock County Bar," George Richman, a Hancock County

historian writing in 1916, recalls Reuben A. Riley, as a

"(legal) practitioner for almost a century...Mr. Riley was

not only an able, conscientious lawyer, but he took a general

interest in public affairs.  Some of his poems and speeches

that still remain in print show him to have been gifted along

several lines." A poem of Reuben's survives:

 

                   THE CRUCIFICTION (Sic)

    `Tis evening, at the supper now,

          The Savior breaks the scared bread,

     And pours the wine; with solemn vow

          Proclaims Himself the Church's Head.

 

    `Tis night, on Olive's somber brow

          The stars are hid that twinkled there;

     Alone the suffering Savior bows,

          With none His agony to share.

 

     `Tis midnight, and the trial past,

          The Savior to the Jews betrayed,

     A pris'ner in their hands at last

          To smite, imprison, and degrade.

 

     `Tis morning, and among the great,

          Their spite, and jealous anger burns:

     They mock Him with a robe of state,

          And crown Him with a crown of thorns.

 

     `Tis noonday, and the Christ condemned

          To bleed and perish on the tree;

     Yet angels do their Lord attend -

          Sinner, He died for you and me!

 

     While on the cross the Savior hung,

          The pall of night at noonday spread,

     The quaking earth with anguish wrung,

          The bursting tombs gave up their dead.

 

     The veil was rent, the lightnings fell.

          From out the darkness hear the cry

     Of Him who conquered Death and Hell.

          "Eloi Lama Sabachthani."

 

     The tomb receives His mangled corpse -

          They set the seals, and Roman guard;

     With taunting jeer, and muttered curse,

          The tomb is sealed, and watched, and barred.

 

     Yet at the promised morning's dawn

          The seals were loosed, the guardsmen fell:

     He `rose, triumphant marching on,

          In chains led captive Death and Hell.

 

     The trembling earth, the bursting tomb,

          And songs of saints and seraphim

     Proclaim the risen Lord has come;

          The world shall bow and worship Him.

 

     As He ascends from earth above

          To Heaven, our promised home,

     In trusting faith we live, and love,

          Our risen Lord again will come.

 

     The poem is an artful account of the crucifixion united

initially by anaphora, the droning and heavy repetition of

the "`Tis" constructs. The poem bears a familiar meter to

much of the son's poetry and is thematically consistent.  It

also sounds close to the hymn, "`Tis Midnight and On Olive's

Brow." Frontier poetry never got far away from the thoughts

of hymns. Reuben's poetry was of the newspaper variety as was

the early poetry of James Whitcomb Riley.  We do not know

much of it because the early newspapers the father wrote for

were not so well preserved as those bearing the son's poetry.

     We can trace the appearance of James Whitcomb Riley's

writings back through time to the first newspaper pieces

Riley published.

    Riley was first a newspaper poet as was his father.

    The custom of printing poetry on the front pages of

newspapers ended probably in the 1880's in Indiana but not

before Riley had mastered the form and found great success in

it. The "Jay Whit" poetry - an early pseudonymn of Riley's-

in the Indianapolis Saturday MIRROR is the first. There were

four poems in this group. The first of them was mistakenly

published as a poem of "Jay White" instead of "Jay Whit" as

Riley intended.  The others were correctly attributed

to "Jay Whit." They included "Man's Devotion," March 30,

1872, "A Mockery," April 13, 1872; "Flames and Ashes," April

20th, 1872; and "Johnny" May 25th, 1872.  Riley also sent the

MIRROR "A Ballad/With a Serious Conclusion" which was

published anonymously on May 11th, 1872.

     His greatest pre-kenotic poetry and prose was published

in the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD as early as June 1875.

His first contribution was under the old pen name, "Jay

Whit," and was entitled "Red Riding-Hood." Occasional poems

were sent to the Saturday HERALD in late 1877 and then began

Riley's major work, the Respectfully Declined Papers of the

Buzz Club (Numbers 1 through 6). No. 1 was published, May 11,

1878; No. 2 was published June 15, 1878; No. 3 was published

July 6, 1878; No. 4 was published August 24, 1878; No. 5 was

published September 28, 1878; and the final installment, No.

6, was published November 16th, 1878. Riley wrote about the

"Flying Islands," which was his long autobiographical and

narrative "astronomical play/poem" in the September 14th

Issue.  Riley then contributed occasional poetry to the

Herald during 1879 and one poem in 1880. A series of "Robert

Burns" inspired poetry appeared in this paper from Riley in

1885.

    The No. 4 of the Respectfully Declined Papers has proven

to be the most important of Riley's submissions to the

HERALD. In this issue was Riley's original composition of

"Flying Islands of the Night."

    The poetry submitted to the HERALD is Riley at his most

rebelliousness. Where did this come from? In my epoch,

psychologist's play with such questions as the relationship

of age within a child's birth order to receptivity to

original ideas. They conclude those born later than other

siblings tend to be ideologically rebellious rather than

accept dominant theoretical positions. Since I have often

posed social Darwinism as Riley's foil, it is interesting to

enquire where both Riley and Darwin were in birth order.

Riley and Darwin were later-borns.  Darwin's evolutionary

theory required opposition to the strong and pervading

nineteenth-century belief in the biblical story of creation.

Riley's kenotic poetry required opposition to the scientific

biological truth that evolutionary theory rendered impossible

or unlikely a human God.

                     RILEY FAMILY POETRY

     Long before Riley became famous, his family wrote

poetry which confirms that poetry was a common form of

expression within Riley's family.

     Cornelia Loder who lived with the Riley's while teaching

in the Greenfield schools in 1877 kept an autograph album.

She sought entries from the Rileys and their guests.

Here are little poems written by the Riley family from

that album. Reuben Riley wrote,

           If, through life's eventful race,

             Our duties be well done,

           He'll still vouchsafe His grace,

             And Angels guard us home.

                          June 11th, 1877

     Ms. Loder recalls "Cap" Riley, as he was sometimes

called, was a lawyer with considerable oratorical skills from

a platform but not much of a money-maker. Her opinion was

that he was too upright a man to engage in more lucrative

activities of legal practitioners. She says that the home was

not at all poverty ridden.  The Rileys had not only a

respectable home but all of the common advantages available

to a respectable small-town family. In appearance, Reuben

Riley bore a remarkable likeness to John Wilkes Booth. He

told Ms. Loder that after the assassination of President

Lincoln he once had barely escaped arrest because of this

resemblance.  Ms. Loder also remembered the stepmother as

being patient and kind.  Her role of foster mother was

difficult but she filled it "efficiently and the children

usually were respectful of her." Her Quaker "thee" and "thou"

and various other old fashioned ways of speech and manner

contrasted strangely with the joyous humanity of the first

Mrs. Riley.  When she lived at the home, the children still

grieved keenly for Elizabeth Riley.  As her entry in the

autograph album, the stepmother, Martha Lukens Riley wrote:

  To Cornelia

  This little emblem of respect

  I gave my valued friend to thee

  Treat not its motto with neglect

  it is dear girl remember me.

  But say if Heaven should early doom

  For all is just by His decree,

  My bosom to the silent tomb,

  Wilt thou drop one tear for me

  June 7th, 1877   Thy True friend, Mattie C. Riley.

Cornelia Loder depicts the Riley children in the household as

an active, happy group, mingling freely in the normal social

life of the town. The youngest Riley son, wrote his name "Hum

Riley" in the album with many decorative elaborations. Riley

had begun teaching his younger brother such flourishes as he

was passing on his sign painting art to him.

     Elva's entry in the 1877 album read,

In the dimly outlined vista of the future when alone

In a mood of retrospection, you let your memory road,

You must not forget Old Greenfield, and the Castle in the

grove.

You Will not forget the "romance," you must not forget the

love (Editor's note, the reference here is to a boyfriend of

Cornelia's)

Of the many friends you left there, but keep in memories

store

One bud of recollection if you can keep  no more.

The Will in the fourth line was a play on a young man's name.

Elva signed herself as "La fille du chateau."

     Mary, at twelve, wrote:

  I'm small I know, but then I may

  Make some noise in this world of ours.

  My compliments to you I give

  As plentifully as this day's showers

  Come down from out the weeping skies.

     Mary was the last survivor of the Riley family and lived

until 1936.

    From this album one definitely concludes the entire Riley

family was used to rhyme and each could express himself or

herself in it. Riley made no contribution in this album

because it was circulated in the Spring of 1877 when Riley

had gone to Anderson to work for the newspaper, the Anderson

Democrat.

     LONGFELLOW AND OTHER POETS WHO INFLUENCED RILEY

     We have often commented on Riley's early love of

Longfellow to whom Riley composed several poems. In one of

his letters, Riley says of Longfellow, "The poetry of

Longfellow is artless and subdued and very tender, yet deep

as the love, the hope of any human heart, is deep." Only

after his thirties, does Riley find his own confident vision

of the spirit of his age. Longfellow then seems less relevant

to American poetry to Riley.

     Riley looked to Longfellow in his twenties for

encouragement. The incident is one recorded in every

biography of Riley and is substantially as follows:

     In the fall of 1876, Riley sent a small sheaf of his

poems to Longfellow asking for criticism and suggestions. The

were "Destiny," "If I Knew What Poets Know" and "The Iron

Horse." Longfellow's  reply, dated at Cambridge on November

30, arrived in Greenfield on December 5. Riley was delighted,

we know, from a firsthand report by the boarder Cornelia

Loder: "He came into the hall waving a letter to Elva, his

sister, and saying, `Some day you will be proud to be called

the sister of the Hoosier Poet.'" Longfellow had taken the

pains to criticize one of the poems, "Destiny", pointing out

Riley's inexact use of the word, "prone."  The word means

"face downward", Longfellow explained, and Riley should have

used "supine." But more important still, Longfellow had

written that Riley's work showed "true poetic faculty and

insight."

     From this contact by letter in 1876, many have come to

call Riley the student of Longfellow and his early years

"Riley's Longfellow Period." This biographer believes Riley's

poetry grows out of frontier song and doggerel and takes its

schema and inspiration more directly from the influence of

Dickens. Great study of many poets, Longfellow among them, no

doubt influenced Riley.

     Nevertheless we must examine Riley's relationship with

Longfellow carefully because Riley's love of Longfellow was

very intensive from Riley's earliest days. We have further

information from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, the

grandson who has written about his grandfather and Riley:

              RILEY AND LONGFELLOW CONNECTIONS

    "When Longfellow went abroad in 1868-1869, Riley, as a

19-year-old youth, followed the poet's travelings in the

Greenfield COMMERCIAL. When the Norwegian violinist, Ole

Bull, came to America, Longfellow described how "erect the

rapt musician stood." And when Ole Bull played at the Academy

of Music in Indianapolis on April 16, 1872, Riley in turn

cried: "Why, it was music the way he stood!"

     When an editor paid Longfellow $3,000 in 1874 for "The

Hanging of the Crane," some jealous would-be writer said the

poem was "flapdoodle." But Riley defended Longfellow, quoting

the lines in which he had described the azure eyes of

children:

         "Limpid as planets that emerge

          Above the ocean's rounded verge,

          Soft shining through the summer night!"

     From Longfellow's "Morituri Salutamus" of the next year,

1875, Riley is said to have gleaned the key for his own life:

         "Study yourself; and most of all note well

          Wherein kind nature meant you to excel."

     In his popular lectures, Riley gladly paid a fine

tribute to Longfellow:

     "The happiest forms of poetic expression are cast in

simplest phraseology and seeming artlessness...Longfellow has

furnished many notable examples, first among which I would

class the poem, "The Day is Done." It is like resting to read

it. It is like bending with uncovered head beneath the silent

benediction of the stars."

     In much the mood of Longfellow's "The Day is Done,"

Riley wrote his own poem, "In the Dark," especially when we

include the three final stanzas of the original version.

     It was this poem, the original manuscript version of "In

the Dark," together with "A Destiny" (later called "The

Dreamer") which he had published in HEARTH AND HOME for April

10, 1875, and one or two other manuscript and printed poems

that Riley decided to send to Longfellow in order to get his

opinion of them. This was a crisis in his life and he turned

to Longfellow as the one person whose help he most needed.

If only Longfellow would give a word of approval he would

decided to devote the rest of his life to literature.

     Accordingly with some trepidation, on Nov. 27, 1876,

James Whitcomb Riley, then 27 years old, sent to Longfellow,

then nearly 70, a letter in which he said:

    "I find the courage to address you as I would a friend

since by your works you have proven yourself a friend to the

world: I would not, however, intrude upon you now, did I not

feel that you alone could assist me."

     Almost immediately upon receiving the letter "there was

really no (10 days suspense") Longfellow wrote to Riley on

Nov. 30, 1876, saying of the poems which he had sent him:

     "I have read them with great pleasure, and think they

show the true poetic faculty and insight."

     As soon as this letter reached the post office at

Greenfield and Riley found it there and opened it, he was, as

he said "in a perfect hurricane of delight." He walked not

through the streets of Greenfield but through some enchanted

city, where the pavements were of air; where all the rough

sounds of a stirring town were softened into gentle music;

where everything was happy; where there was no distance and

no time."

     Two years later, on Sept. 2, 1878, Riley wrote to

Longfellow expressing to him "my warmest thanks"  for the

great good your influence and kindness have done me."

     This time he enclosed a long poetical drama, "The Flying

Islands of the Night," and a number of other poems.

     Again, Longfellow replied promptly, on Sept. 5, 1878:

     "I have received the poems you were kind enough to send

me, and have read the lyric pieces with much pleasure...Among

these poems the one that pleased me as much as any, if not

more than any, was "The Iron Horse!"

     It was interesting that the poem Longfellow selected for

particular praise is one in which the poet of the Middle West

exalted above any "Arab steed" the locomotives and their

trains which were making Indianapolis one of the great

railroad centers of the country.

     Once more Longfellow's encouragement helped Riley, and

who may deny that the faith the younger poet had in him,

unlike the earlier harsh criticisms of Poe, gave Longfellow

in turn a new lease on life so that much of his best and

apparently effortless verse was written during the few

remaining years.

     A few years afterwards, on Dec. 31, 1881, less than

three months before Longfellow's death, the Indiana poet came

to make a personal visit on the New England poet at the

Craigie House in Cambridge.  That evening, New Year's Eve,

Riley wrote:

     "Just think o' me a-shakin' hands with Longfellow -which

I did this very afternoon.  I was advised not to go -that he

was ill, and was not permitted by his physicians to see

anyone, but I went, in the old spirit of desperation that is

a good thing to have sometimes.  I shan't try to tell you

anything of his home - the house he lives in - but I knew it

when in sight, and hurried on and up to it and rang the bell.

(There's an old-fashioned brass knocker, highly polished,

still set in the middle of the door.) The bell is at the

side, and hard to find.  The plain-looking woman that

answered it said that Mr. Longfellow was not permitted to see

anyone. And I asked her at least to present my card, on which

I had written that Jas. W. Riley, of Indiana, wanted to offer

his respects, if entirely agreeable, &c.  There was some

little delay- but, in the language of the tree toad, "I

fetched him! O, I fetch him!" - And he seemed actually

delighted, and pranced around and showed off his study and

the famous Washington Room &  all. Lord! What a lovable old

man he is! He very highly commended some views I expressed

regarding the higher worth of dialect, and clapped his hands

over the "Old-fashioned Roses" which I repeated in

illustration of the real purity and sweetness which might be

found in the Hoosier idiom. I can't begin to tell you the

great interest he expressed - and encouraging me again and

again. I told him he was the first real poet who offered me

encouragement of any kind - and in reply he said he was glad

he did, and now could most heartily offer the same again, and

more of it."

     The Next Day, New Year's Day, 1882, in writing to his

first publisher about his visit on the previous afternoon to

Longfellow, he added:

     "He was very, very gracious, and complimented me beyond

all hope of expression.  Can't tell you anything now, wait

till I return, with the laurel on me brow."

     Five days later he wrote to another friend:

    "Have grappled hands with Longfellow, and he admitted me

despite physician's orders, and likes me and says it."

     Eleven weeks later came Longfellow's death.  This was a

great blow to Riley.  The next month he wrote for the

Indianapolis JOURNAL of April 29, 1882, an article called

"An Hour With Longfellow," in which he gave a further account

of his conversation with him:

    "His talk, although varied, was mainly of our native

poets and their work.  He knew them all - even the humblest.

And it was a surprise to us to find him well acquainted with

even the local characteristics and dialects of the West.  His

theme gradually deepened into graver and more serious

channels and he spoke of the higher mission of poetry - its

kinship with all the purer emotions and aspirations of the

human heart - and I remember as, with growing fervor, his

fascinating topic swept him on he broke abruptly, saying:

"But the idea grows too fragile for the touch of analysis -

the thought loses all palpable embodiment and is veiled and

almost lost in the midst of its own spiritual loveliness."

     In January, 1883, some nine months after Longfellow's

death, Riley was able to come again to Cambridge and visited

the grave of Longfellow on top of Indian Ridge in Mount

Auburn Cemetery.  Like the author of "The Children's Hour,"

Riley himself was to enter into the "Child World" and it was

appropriate that on this occasion he brought with him a group

of children bearing roses to lay on Longfellow's tomb.  Of

this event he wrote a poem, which has heretofore only been

published in part, but which is here printed apparently for

the first time in its entirety:

 

    THE POET AND THE CHILDREN AT THE GRAVE OF LONGFELLOW

     Because that he loved the children,

          If for nothing else, we would say

     This is a grand old poet

          Who is sleeping here today.

 

     Awake, he loved their voices,

          And wove them into his rhyme;

     And the music of their laughter

          Was with him all the time.

 

     Kindly, and warm and tender,

          He nestled each childish palm

     So close in his own that his touch was a prayer,

          And his speech a blessed psalm.

 

     Though he knew the tongues of nations

          And their meanings all were dear,

     The prattle and lisp of a little child

          Was the sweetest for him to hear.

 

     He has turned from the marvelous pages,

          Of many an alien tone -

     Haply come down from Olivet,

          Or out through the gates of Rome, -

 

     Set sail o'er the seas between him

          And each little beckoning hand

     That fluttered about the meadows

          And groves  of his native land -

 

     Fluttered and flashed on his vision,

          As, in the glimmering light

     Of the orchard lands of his childhood, The blossoms of

          pink and white

 

     And there have been smiles of rapture

          Lighting his face as he came,

     Hailing the children hailing him,

          And calling each by name.

 

     And there have been sobs in his bosom,

          As out of the shores he stepped,

     And many a little welcomer

          Has wondered why he wept.

 

     "That was because, O Children" -

          In fancy his voice comes slow

     And solemn and sweet through the roses

          You have heaped o'er the below, -

 

     "That was because, O Children,

          Ye might not always be

     The same that the Saviour's arms were wound

          About in Galilee."

 

     So because that he loved the children,

          If for nothing else, we would say

     This is a grand old poet

          Who is sleeping here today.

...

     At the time of Riley's visit, Longfellow had said to

him, "We are all of one common family." Both poets were

strong believers in democracy.  For both there was no rich

nor poor, nor high nor low, in poetry.  In a sonnet called

"Possibilities," Longfellow had raised the question: "Where

are the poets?" and had said:

    "Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught,

     In schools, some graduate of the field or street,

     Who shall become a master of the art."

 

     Such lines appealed to the young poet, who had not had

the advantage - or was it a disadvantage? - of university

training, and to none more than James Whitcomb Riley.  He, in

turn, loved to point to Longfellow as an example of "the art

to conceal art." To a friend who was struggling to compose

poetry, Riley wrote:

     "One of the finest attributes of poetry-making is to

conceal all effort. It can be done. Read any master to find

that out.  Longfellow above them all. He writes with the most

painstaking care and slowness, and yet his verse all seems as

though it made itself.  There's the art of it."

     Again he wrote:

     "Study Longfellow, and be artless and subdued and very

tender - yet deep as the  love - the hope of any human heart

is deep."

     Ten years after Longfellow's death, Riley published in

1892 his sonnet called "Longfellow," beginning:

    "The winds have talked with him confidingly;

     The trees have whispered to him; and the night

     Hath held him gently as a mother might,

     And taught him all sad tones of melody."

     In 1907, the centennial of Longfellow's birth was

celebrated...At that time Riley wrote a sonnet called,

"Longfellow; 1807 - February 27 - 1907." This began:

    "O gentlest kinsman of humanity!

     Thy love hath touched all hearts, even as thy song

     Hath touched all chords of music that belong

     To the quavering heaven-strung harp of harmony."

 

     From this time onward until his death in the house on

Lockerbie Street in Indianapolis on July 22, 1916, James

Whitcomb Riley himself had come to hold as a poet something

of the position in the hearts of the common people of America

that Longfellow held before him."

     One of Riley's legacies from Longfellow is his range of

stanza patterns including couplets, triplets, simple

quatrains and ballad meters, the varied patterns of the ode

and the elegy, sonnets, and blank verse. Longfellow was a

marvellous poetic craftsman. However, Longfellow's poetry

echoes artistic sensibility rather than Riley's musical

ethos. We find this difference stated in Longfellow's own

writings. In "The Singers," Longfellow gave poetry a

threefold purpose: to charm, to strengthen and to teach. He

wrote in "Michael Angelo: "Art is the gift of God, and must

be used \Unto His glory. That in art is highest\ Which aims

at this." Longfellow and Riley shared a fast brotherhood of

moral concern. Like Longfellow, Riley was beholden to the

past; but while the past inspired Longfellow to piety and a

desire to preserve out of it what was lovely and good, Riley

used the past as a field where innocence exists and hope in a

redeeming God of humility survives. By way of national

reputation, I would say that Riley and Longfellow each become

identified with the Nineteenth Century as no other poets did,

first Longfellow, then Riley.

     Riley apprenticed to Lee O. Harris in poetics. One

finds Harris as a primary influence. Riley wrote a poem to

him entitled, "Master and First Song-Friend - Lee O. Harris."

     Before we dismiss Lee O. Harris as merely Riley's

teacher, we should be made aware that Harris made himself

into a great disseminator of knowledge generally throughout

the country. In the 1880's and until his death, he was the

editor of "Home and School Visitor." Greenfield was its place

of publication. The magazine was begun in Jan. 1881 and

published for many years by D.H. Goble or by the later D.H.

Goble Publishing Co.  for distribution to township schools -

mostly "one room" -dotting the countryside neighborhoods of

Indiana and many other Western states. The growth of the

"Visitor" under Harris's editorial supervision was

phenomenal. By May, 1886, its edition states, "We cannot give

a better idea of (the "Visitor's") growth than by stating

that for the three years past the number used in schools was

5,000, 10,500 and 18,000 respectively." Greenfield's little

publication came to be used by schools all over the

Midwestern United States.  One of its editions claims its use

"in every state and territory and in many foreign countries."

That same edition claimed a publication of 22,000 per month

so it must have become very widely dispersed. "Home and

School Visitor" was originally published by a Hancock County

School Superintendent whose name was Aaron Pope and Captain

Lee O.  Harris, Riley's teacher who was by now the Greenfield

Principal of Schools.  Aaron Pope was a tragic but brilliant

man who died at the age of thirty-seven. Professor Pope (as

he was called) had been a teacher in several township schools

and also at the McCordsville graded school before becoming

Hancock County School Superintendent. He died of a heart

attack in June, 1882 shortly after the publication started

and the enterprise was sold to D.H. Goble, then a Greenfield

implement dealer who undertook its publication using the good

offices of Lee O. Harris as Editor. The first format of "Home

and School Visitor" was like a newspaper with advertising.

It then took the form of a magazine. The first issue contains

the news that electric lights had been introduced on Wall

Street in New York. There are many poems, some for

memorizing, many stories, with those for the lower one room

school grades in larger print, "natural history" or what we

would call science, stories about historic figures, "how to"

articles explaining how common products were produced,

current events, and other subject matter.

     Will H. Glasscock, an early historian of Greenfield,

wrote a book called YOUNG FOLK OF INDIANA in which he

included Lee O. Harris under the caption "History, Story and

Song." In describing Harris's youth, Glasscock wrote: "His

ear was ever close to Nature's heart and he heard and felt

its beatings in harmony with the promptings of his own life

and soul."  Among Harris's writings is a novel about a hobo

called, THE MAN WHO TRAMPS, and a volume of poetry entitled

INTERLUDES. Few remember that Riley himself did the artwork

for Harris's novel. A letter from Riley to Harris at the

James Whitcomb Riley Museum in Greenfield, Indiana confirms

this revelation.

     It might be well to examine one of Harris's own

compositions to note Harris's poetic style. His poem, "Song

of the Rain," was on the front page of the Indianapolis

Saturday HERALD of January 26, 1878.

 

                      SONG OF THE RAIN

 

Where folded about by the shadows,

My spirit is nursing its pain,

I sit all alone in the darkness,

And list to the song of the rain.

 

And often I  hear in its music

The patter of feet that are still;

And then I forget for a moment,

The mound on yon desolate hill.

 

And, thrilled with the bliss of her presence,

My heart leaps to welcome its guest;

I open my arms to receive her,

And clasp only grief to my breast.

 

I wrap myself up in the shadows

That woe o'er my spirit has spread,

And moan all alone in the darkness

And weep with the rain for my dead.

 

But now, as I hear at my window

The touch of those fingers so light,

That weave in the warp of the silence

The woof of their music to-night,

 

So sweet is the sound and so restful

The charm which its melody brings,

That sorrow has folded her pinions

To listen while memory sings.

 

And all that my heart has been dreaming

The rain in its music repeats,

While thoughts that like bees have been roaming

Come bearing their burden of sweets.

 

New hope, like a carrier pigeon,

Though weary and torn by the blast,

Escaping the snare of the fowler,

Flies home with her message at last.

 

Now faith paints the bow of her promise

On tear-drops that sorrow has shed,

And love is beguiled from her mourning,

And turns from the grave of her dead.

 

And thus, as I list to the fingers

That harp on my window to-night,

I look through the gloom and the darkness

With faith in the dawning of light.

 

     In point of comparison of teacher (Harris) to student

(Riley), I juxtapose Riley's "The Rain," published in the

same newspaper, the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD in the next

year on July 12, 1879:

                          THE RAIN

 

       The rain sounds like a laugh to me -

         A low laugh poured out Rapidly.

       My very soul smiles as I listen to

         The low, mysterious laughter of the rain,

       Poured musically over heart and brain

         Till weary care, soaked with it through and through,

       Sinks; and, with wings wet with it as with dew,

         My spirit flutters up, with every stain

       Washed from its plumage, and as white again

         As when the old laugh of the rain was new.

       Then laugh on, happy rain; laugh louder yet;

         Laugh out in torrent-bursts of watery mirth;

       Unlock thy lips of purple cloud and let

         Thy liquid merriment baptize the earth,

       And wash the sad face of the world, and set

         The universe to music dripping-wet.

 

     Just as the Harris poem was really not about the rain,

but about the death of a young woman, so is the Riley poem

really not about rain either. Riley does not however take an

unrelated tack about the fact of rain. He looks to its own

essence. Rain falls to permit growth and creation to be

sustained. This seems to Riley a thing like laughter: a

spontaneous and life-affirming activity, favorable to life

itself. The rain is, in this sense, "happy rain." Since

rain has this role of revival, let it also be thought of as

"baptizer," Riley suggests. The drift of Riley's mind is

toward the essential and ultimate. A world of

meaninglessness, anxiety, depression, fate, and death

finds simple rain as challenger. The humble rain changes

the drift of life to the direction of survival and comfort.

While the thought is really rather humorous in any kind of

overall scheme of things, nevertheless, how about a universe

set to music "dripping wet?" Riley suggests. This

catachresis takes the function of rain far beyond any simple

possibility one might imagine and so serves to take the poem

into the realm of its true subject: the rejuvenation of the

world through simple acceptance of humble life situation, a

kenotic idea. We have here not just an echo of literary

figure of speech as in such usages as "to take arms against a

sea of troubles." Instead we have a poem of a simple subject,

rendered essential, thematic and finally, and this is most

important, a point of salvation. The difference between the

poetry of the teacher (Harris) and student (Riley) is

dramatic.

     Many other early poets influenced Riley. Riley wrote

poems of acknowledgment to Robert Herrick, John Greenleaf

Whittier and also Alfred Lord Tennyson. Riley's first poem,

"A Backward Look," that we still have was published in 1870

under the nom de plume "Edyrn," the name of a very minor

knight in "Geriant and Enid" in Tennyson's IDYLS OF THE

KING.  This first poem was published in the newspaper, the

Greenfield COMMERCIAL, at an unknown date and one of its

original stanzas read:

 

     They got me to climb for the bluebird's nest

        By telling me they'd give me half the eggs,

     And I got to the limb by tuggin' my best

        And fell to the ground and broke one of my legs.

 

As most of Riley's poems, great revisions occurred as the

poems were printed, republished and reprinted.

     Dickens is noticeable although not as a poet. In fact,

Riley doesn't try to hide this influence at all.  One of his

great poems of the "Poetical Gymnastics" series is simply

titled, "God Bless Us Every One" in the Indianapolis Saturday

HERALD published July 26, 1879. We know its origin as a

saying of the crippled child, "Tiny Tim" in Charles Dickens'

A CHRISTMAS CAROL,

 

                GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE (1879)

 

God bless us every one!!! prayed Tiny Tim -

     Crippled and dwarfed of body, yet so tall

Of soul we tiptoe earth to look on him

     High towering over all.

 

He loved the loveless world, nor dreamed, indeed,

     That it, at best, could give to him the while

But pitying glances, when his only need

     Was but a cheery smile.

 

And thus he prayed, "God bless us every one," -

     Condensing all the creeds within the span

Of his child-heart; and so, despising none,

     Was nearer saint than man.

 

I like to fancy God in Paradise,

     Lifting a finger o'er the rhythmic swing

Of chiming harp and song, with eager eyes

     Turned earthward, listening. -

 

The anthem stilled -the angels leaning there

     Above the golden walls - the morning sun

Of Christmas bursting flower-like with the prayer, -

    "God bless us every one."

 

     Riley chose to open his 1895 volume of SKETCHES IN PROSE

AND OCCASIONAL VERSES with "God Bless Us Every One." He

really saw himself in "Tiny Tim." His alcoholism was as

disabling as Tiny Tim's. To Riley, God listens when one says

in a seemingly loveless world, "God Bless us Every One!" I

note that Riley often closed his dedicatory addresses and

public functionary appearances with this benediction.

     Riley acknowledged his appreciation of many poets

by poetry. For John Keats, Riley wrote "A Ditty of No Tone."

calling Keats' poetry "sun-washed" (natural, evocative of

nature) and "luxurious in rhyme." Something which captures

fragrance of wild flowers, drone bee "flight", shower and

sunshine. In one of his letters Riley states "Keats knew of

the nectar of his language."

     Riley's love of Robert Burns is referenced elsewhere.

A poem to Burns is "As We Read." Riley says Burns was a poet

who "outheld his hands lovingly to his people in dreams of

sweet pathos and "sweet" themes."

     Riley eulogized Ralph Waldo Emerson as one who "drew"

to the principles he acclaimed and held a "simple faith" in

the direction of the voyage of life.

     Riley was born on Edgar Allan Poe's date of death and he

always felt a special presence of Poe. In fact, Poe,

indirectly brought him initial fame. William Lyon Phelps,

Yale's English Professor who knew Riley intimately commented,

"His immense admiration for Poe's genius was tempered by his

regret over Poe's pessimism."

      William Cullen Bryant inspired a Riley poem. Riley said

his poetry was like music in "clearest utterings," a poetry

of "pride, purity and strength."

     Other poets who were Riley's friends and to whom he

wrote poetry include Carmen: "To Bliss;" Madison Cawein: "A

Southern Singer;" Rudyard Kipling; Joel Chandler Harris;

Benjamin Parker; Robert Lewis Stevenson and Lew Wallace.

     Clara Louise Bottsford, Riley's one-time fiance, wrote

in the romantic mode.  Her poem "Lancelot" for example

appeared in the Indianapolis Saturday Herald of December 11,

1880 on the front page, as had Riley's "Poetical Gymnastics"

column in the prior year. The lengthy poem describes

Lancelot's feelings on his way into Guinevere's presence for

a tryst. Lancelot feels "gloom" as he enters his "Queen of

Passion's" room to do her bidding and "meet my doom!" He asks

himself

                            Am I

The mighty Lancelot - to die

The meanest of the table round? -

I, Knight of Arthur's, fettered, bound,

The willing slave of even his queen -

Not his....nor any one's I ween,

But mine!...God's pity I am tired.

 

     In an August 1880 - to an aspiring writer - Riley

explained how he wrote to market his writing. He urged

writing for "today" and a general readership who are neither

profound nor classical scholars. "...and not only avoid

phrases, words or reference "of the old time order of

literature," but "avoid, too, the very acquaintance of it -

because we are apt to absorb more or less of the peculiar

ideas, methods, etc.  of those authors we read..." Then,

also, "when I am forced to say a commonplace thing it is my

effort, at least, to say it as it never has been said before

- if such a thing can be done without an apparent strain."

Writing it he tries to imagine himself competent to do so and

then lays it aside for a day or so to resurrect it in another

mood and to tear it shreds if needs be.

    In reviewing another poet's work he could be

devestatingly blunt. As to the following poetry stanza, he

offered comment.

             "Fair home, where needs no solar ray

                  To smile away the night;

              Where shines an everlasting day, -

                  The risen Lamb the light."

"The first line with "solar ray" in it! My God! what has

"solar ray" to do with poetry! The second line pure poetry in

idea, phrasing, everything; and the next two commonplace -the

last one absolutely awful!  Kill Mr. Buck for me, please.

Gather the revered gentleman to his fathers. - Crucify him! -

for it's an absolute shame that a man who could write poetry,

only carpenters at it, and builds a poem, as he would a pig-

pen out of unwieldy planks and clap-boards. Kill the

gentleman I tell you! tramp on him as you would a bald

"woolly worm!"

     Riley was a poet among many, many such artisans in

Post Civil War Indiana. A very partial list of published

Hoosier poets of the Nineteenth Century is compiled here to

prove the point that many, many persons wrote poetry in

Indiana during the Nineteenth Century: Albert Carlton

Andrews, Marie L. Andrews, Albion Fellows Bacon, Mrs. Albion

Fellows Bacon, R.G. Ball, Granville M.  Ballard, M.E. Banta,

Margaret Holmes Bates, Bessie Johnson Bellman, Horace P.

Biddle, G. Henry Bogart, Sarah T. Bolton, Allan Simpson

Bottsford, Ethel Bowman, Minnie T. Boyce, Louisa Vickroy

Boyd, Robert H. Brewington, Albert Fletcher Bridges, Mattie

Dyer Britts, M. Sears Brooks, Alice Williams Brotherton,

Jerome C. Burnett, Clarence A. Buskirk, Kate M.  Caplinger,

Emma N. Carleton, Mary Howard Catherwood, Emily Thornton

Cahrles, M. Louisa Chitwood, Noah J. Clodfelter, Jethro C.

Culmer, Will Cumback, George W. Cutter, Hannah E. Davis, Ida

May Davis, Richard Lew Dawson, Charles Dennis, William T.

Dennis, John B. Dillin, May W. Donnan, Amanda L.R. Dufour,

Julia L. Dumont, John Gibson Dunn, Sidney Dyer, Elijah Evan

Edwards, Alfred Ellison, Henry W. Ellsworth, Orpheus Everts,

John Finley, Mary Hockett Flanner, Elizabeth E. Foulke,

William W. Foulke, Willis Wilfred Fowler, Strickland W.

Gillilan, Jerome Bonaparte Girard, Samuel B.  Gookins,

Jonathan W. Gordon, Frank W. Harned, Lee O. Harris, William

Wallace Harney, Irene Boynton Hawley, John Hay, Enos B.

Heiney, Charles L.Holstein, Edwin S. Hopkins, Benjamin

Davenport House, Horace F.  Hubbard, Ben R. Hyman, Narcissa

Lewis Jenkinson, Robert Underwood Johnson, Annie Fellows

Johnston, Dulcina M. Jordan, David Starr Jordan, Isaac H.

Julian, Esther Nelson Karn, Isaac Kinley, Jesse G.  Kinley,

Josie V.H. Koons, Mary-Hannah Krout, Harvey Porter Layton,

Francis Locke, Richard K. Lyon, Zella McCoy, William W.H.

McCurdy, Silas B. McManus, Arthur W. Macy, James B.

Martindale, James Newton Matthews, Josephine W. Mellette,

Freeman E. Miller, Joaquin Miller, Hattie Athon Morrison,

Mary E. Nealy, William P. Needham, Rebecca S. Nichols,

Meredith Nicholson, John C. Ochiltree, Richard Owen, Daniel

L. Paine, Benjamin S. Parker, Edwin E.  Parker, Oran K.

Parker, Gavin Payne, William W. Pfrimmer, John James Piatt,

Robert E. Pretlow, Herman Rave, Maude M.  Redman, Joseph S.

Reed, Peter Fishe Reed, Alonzo Rice, Renos H. Richards, John

Clark Ridpath, Cornelia Laws St.John, Olive Sanxay, Henry J.

Shellman, John W. Shockley, A.E. Sinks, Hubbard M. Smith,

Evaleen Stein, Solomon P. Stoddard, George Stout, Juliet V.

Strauss, Martina Swafford, Henry W. Taylor, Howard S. Taylor,

John N. Taylor, Minetta T. Taylor, Tucker Woodson Taylor,

E.S.L. Thompson, Maurice Thompson, Laura M.  Thurston, Oliah

P. Toph, Newton A. Trueblood, William B.  Vickers, Lew

Wallace, Susan E. Wallace, W. DeWitt Wallace, Luther Dana

Watterman, L. May Wheeler, Louisa Wickersham, Elizabeth

Conwell Wilson, Forsythe Wilson, and Bruce H.  Woolford.

     Riley liked to call his poetry "poem-songs." Once Riley

was asked for a contribution for a school newspaper in his

hometown. Riley responded with a letter:

Miss Helen Downing:

    Dear Friend and Fellow Citizen, - It is just impossible

for me to  write a suitable article for "The High School

BUDGET," in the time you give me, being now a child no more.

...  As to the old song-rhymes of mine you desire to print -

Yes, put `em in "The BUDGET" if they're worthy...

     That is how Riley described his poems...as song-rhymes.

     By far, the great majority of Riley's works, even

his poems, are not preserved. That so many are seems close

to a miracle and is a mark of Riley's poetic draw as well

as the closeness of poetry at that time to the life of the

American people.

     Almost from the first of his newspaper career, Riley

wrote many newspaper articles and editorials which did not

carry his name. One of the particular fields to which his

writing was entrusted was editorials. A letter to Lee O.

Harris of December 25, 1895 mentions that an editorial he

wrote appeared in that day's Journal which made his soul

"blush to the roots of its hair."

     Here is a poem clearly written with music in mind.

Minnie Belle Mitchell recalls that Riley's poem "The Old

Times Were the Best," was actually written in his early youth

when Riley was in the company of young people, include

herself, practicing for one of the many entertainments Riley

did. Angie Williams, later Angie Downing, was playing the

piano when Riley left for a time and when he returned he

had with him the poem "The Old Times Were the Best."  Later

he gave a copy to Angie to put to music.

         A POETRY ECHOING NATURE WITH HER OWN VOICE

     I close with a dissenting opinion from the poet Donald

Culross Peattie who felt Riley's poetry was not so much

musical and doggerel as "natural." He finds that Riley's

better poetry "tries to echo Nature with her own voice."

Riley is a poet who speaks for American Nature. "His fame as

a versifier has helped to rob him of the title he ought to

have, "the poet of wisest Nature."

     "Poets themselves may resent the suggestion that Riley

is more than a versifier. Yet what is poetry if it is not the

essence of things, the thought-distilled, mood-condensed

sweet sap of the tree of life?  When a scientist has boiled

down Nature to a quintessential, he hands you what he quite

inaccurately calls a law.  But when a poet does that, he

stocks your memory with an unforgettable line that gets more

about the subject into less space than prove can ever do.

The man who said he was "knee-deep in June" is a Nature poet

of the first rank."

     Peattie continues, "Poems like "There little  girl,

don't cry", however sincere and popular, have down the

reputation of Riley no lasting good.  The truth is that like

Burns he wrote in two different languages, and was two

different men in them.  The dialect poems are, on the whole,

the good poems as Burns' were.  Humor keep them off the rocks

of sentimentality.  And why should humor, which has long been

accepted in the drama as a sparkling vessel for truth and

art, reduce a poet to the rank of a minor? For no reason

except that about poetry we are in a state of deadly

earnestness, or in the doldrums of a decaying gentility...

     In the matter of dialect, it is immaterial whether Riley

employed the speech that all Hoosiers used, or the colloquial

language of Indiana today.  There are few Scotchmen who speak

the idiom of Burns.  It is only essential that the dialect

should be the best medium for the subject that could have

been chosen. And to my ear, at least, not only does Riley

write the way the western child and farmer still often speak,

but in setting style to subject his sense of pitch is nearly

absolute. He vies with the grand masters of regional American

literature, the Mark Twain of HUCKLEBERRY FINN, the Lowell of

the BIGELOW PAPERS, and the Harris of UNCLE REMUS.

     To one who was born in the Middle West, and has tried to

write about its Nature, ...Riley's descriptions of birds on a

hot summer day is still unsurpassed for that distillation of

essence in the local speech which is poetry "come native with

the warmth."

    "Pee-wees' singin', to express

     My opinion, 's second class,

     Yit you'll hear 'em, more or less;

     Sapsucks, gittin' down to biz,

     Weedin' out the lonesomeness;

     Mr. Bluejay, full o' sass,

     In them baseball clothes o' his,

     Sportin' round the orchard jes'

     Like he owned the premises!"

     That expresses my opinion of pee-wees, too.  Sapsuck is

precisely what my Illinois neighbors call the bird I have to

set down in my naturalist's records as Sphyrapicus varius.

And if any poet can do a better delineation of that cheap

dandy of a bird, the bluejay, by all means let him seize his

pen."

     (Mr. Peattie's references are primarily to Riley's "Deer

Creek" poetry. I must add that the place where such imagery

arose, the Deer Creek of Indiana's White County lends itself

to poetry as do few places of the country. To get the sense

of it, your biographer walked this area in great

satisfaction. Taking the "boardwalk" in Delphi's "Riley Park"

along Deer Creek will raise the most depressed spirit into a

sense of timeless peace.)

 

 

                    SPECIAL KENOTIC POEMS

 

     James Whitcomb Riley's reputation as a poet rests most

securely upon his early Benjamin Johnson of Boone poetry.

They are his best and represent a high point of American

poetry. They are written after his "Declaration of

Independence" from his earlier mentor Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow as contained in Riley's "USE AND ABUSE OF THE

POETIC THEME" published in the Kokomo TRIBUNE of April 5,

1879. The are uniquely American in subject matter and

heartland spirit and meter arising as they do from frontier

song and doggerel. They are also deeply representative of the

American experience of Civil War, Reconstruction and cultural

dialogue between the Darwinism of Riley's age, to include its

social Darwinism "offshoot," and the kenotic theological tide

striking into America from Germany in the Nineteenth Century.

We simply cannot fail to include in a biography of James

Whitcomb Riley the poetry which contains his finest work and

point out its kenotic content.

     As an example, Riley, wrote of the farmer who had

experienced so much rain he couldn't plant his corn in the

year 1882. This was "Thoughts fer the Discuraged Farmer."

It was Riley in his kenotic years.  James Whitcomb Riley took

upon himself such subjects literally close to home to the

Hoosier people. Yes, the world does have a source of

encouragement when a farmer couldn't get his corn in. Poems

began appearing from the hand of a "Benj. F. Johnson of

Boone" growing out of Riley's understanding of life following

his worse bouts with Crestillomeem.

     Who was the poet Benjamin F. Johnson of Boone?

     It was James Whitcomb Riley, we remember, in his most

thoughtful 30's and still at an early stage of his career. He

used the name for a series of poems in 1882 which ran in the

Indianapolis JOURNAL. Although the poems were written early

in Riley's published career, they contain ones now famous.

The first one of them was "The Old Swimmmin'-Hole." Another

later one was "When the Frost Is on the Punkin." There were

twelve in all.

     The Benj. F. Johnson series of poems permitted Riley to

portray the thoughts and philosophy of a plain old dust-

bitten and clod-hopping Hoosier farmer who wrote with

inspiration as flush as bitters with tanzy in it1.

 

1. Bitters gave Western heartland pioneers a "bite" to the

taste of their food and tanzy was a plant with a very strong

aroma used as a garnish like parsley.

 

          THOUGHTS FER THE DISCURAGED FARMER (1882)

 

The summer winds is sniffin' round the bloomin' locus' trees;

And the clover in the pastur is a big day fer the bees,

And they been a-swiggin' honey, above board and on the sly,

Tel they stutter in theyr buzzin' and stagger as the fly.

 

The flicker on the fence-rail 'pears to jest spit on his

wings

And roll up his feathers, by the sassy way he sings;

And the hoss-fly is a-whettin-up his forelegs fer biz,

And the off-mare is a-switchin' all of her tale they is.

 

You can hear the blackbirds jawin' as they foller up the plow

-

Oh, theyr bound to git theyr brekfast, and theyr not a-carin'

how;

So they quarrel in the furries, and they quarrel on the wing

-

But theyr peaceabler in pot-pies than any other thing:

And it's when I git my shotgun drawed up in stiddy rest,

She's as full of tribbelation as a yeller-jacket's nest;

And a few shots before dinner, when the sun's a-shinin'

right,

Seems to kindo-sorto' sharpen up a feller's appetite!

 

They's been a heap o' rain, but the sun's out to-day,

And the clouds of the wet spell is all cleared away,

And the woods is all the greener, and the grass is greener

still;

It may rain again to-morry, but I don't think it will.

Some says the crops is ruined, and the corn's drownded out,

And propha-sy the wheat will be a failure, without doubt;

But the kind Providence that has never failed us yet,

Will be on hands onc't more at the 'leventh hour, I bet!

 

Does the medder-lark complane, as he swims high and dry

Through the waves of the wind and the blue of the sky?

Does the quail set up and whissel in a disappinted way,

Er hang his head in silunce, and sorrow all the day?

Is the chipmuck's health a-failin? - does he walk, er does he

run?

Don't the buzzards ooze around up thare jest like they've

allus done?

Is they anything the matter with the rooster's1 lungs er

voice?

Ort a mortul be complanin' when dumb animals rejoice?

 

Then let us, one and all, be contentud with our lot;

The June is here this morning, and the sun is shining hot.

Oh! let us fill our harts up with the glory of the day,

And banish ev'ry doubt and care and sorrow fur away!

Whatever be our station, with Providence fer guide,

Sich fine circumstances ort to make us satisfied;

Fer the world is full of roses, and the roses full of dew,

And the dew is full of heavenly love that drips fer me and

you.

 

1. Nothing was so sure to a Hoosier, as the rooster's cry as

the sun arose in the morning. Brahma chickens were the

popular breed of the Nineteenth Century because they were

meaty and survived long Hoosier winters with minimal

attention.

 

     This poem centers on a special mind which acknowledges

God's descent from ultimate being into flesh. This mind bears

the peace of God and withstands discouragement and

depression. Riley cultivated this mind not only to overcome

his own discouragement and depression but also to write a

poetry of that "mind." It is a state of content at being in

the form of humanity subject to degradation. Crestillomeem

had drug him down into this degradation and the mind of

Christ set him free. To the kenotic, Christ halted the influx

of His own life with God, not to dissolve the mutual

indwelling of God with God's child, but rather to participate

in life as a human. The state of mind further acknowledges

that Christ changed equality with God into a state of

dependence and need. God would know that this farmer of

Riley's poem needed his crops so everything would turn out

just fine. "With Providence fer guide, Sich fine

circumstances ort to make us satisfied," the farmer thinks.

The Incarnation was God becoming flesh to know what was

necessary.

     "Thoughts for a Discouraged Farmer," was a favorite poem

of James Whitcomb Riley through the coming years. In 1909,

the same year Riley suffered a stroke that left his right

hand "cold," he was asked to  be the guest of honor at a

reunion group's meeting in Indianapolis.  It was the first

meeting of the "Hancock County Society" and Riley was asked

to recite one of his poems. The one he chose to recite was

"Thoughts for a Discouraged Farmer." Audiences had loved this

poem for over a quarter of a century.

     Considered one of Riley's best poetics was:

 

                    THE BROOK-SONG (1882)

 

    Little Brook! Little brook!

    You have such a happy look -

Such a very merry manner, as you

        swerve and curve and crook-

      And your ripples, one and one,

      Reach each other's hands and run

Like laughing little children in the sun!

 

      Little brook, sing to me:

      Sing about a bumblebee

That tumbled from a lily-bell and grumbled mumblingly,

      Because he wet the film

      Of his wings, and had to swim,

While the water-bugs raced round and laughed at him!

 

      Little brook - sing a song

      Of a leaf that sailed along

Down the golden-braided center of your current swift and

        strong,

      And a dragon-fly that lit

      On the tilting rim of it,

And rode away and wasn't scared a bit.

 

      And sing - how oft in glee

      Came a truant boy like me,

Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody,

      Till the gurgle and refrain

      Of your music in his brain

Wrought a happiness as keen to him as pain.

 

      Little brook -laugh and leap!

      Do not let the dreamer weep;

Sing him all the songs of summer till

        He sink in softest sleep;

      And then sing soft and low

      Through his dreams of long ago -

Sing back to him the rest he used to know!

 

   The poet Riley proposed a kenotic view of nature which

differed markedly from the "tooth and claw" picture of it

posed by the social Darwinists of his time. Nature was not

an environmental selector of those who might survive to

reproduce and increase a species differentiating genetic

pool. Nature was simply the situation as was humanity itself-

situs of humanity's habitation. From the beginning of

history, humanity has long to understand the dim cave in

which the human shadow is cast and have searched for signs of

it in nature. The kenotics proposed that nature was a place,

however temporary, for rest rather than struggle for

survival. Natural setting, the environment, was intended to

nurture, feed and house a humanity in the quest of a life of

service. It is intentional human nature, as happened with

Christ, that one hunger, thirst, sleep, and feel weariness,

and the function of nature out of the bounty of God's love to

provide relief. Just as heaven is a place of rest, so is the

earth. As the kenotic Lutheran theologian Chemnitz proposed,

the natural situation of humanity in nature is merely a mix

of "visibility, tangibility, and existence in loco" and in a

natural setting with the same essential chemistry which

through accidence became the body of Christ. The substance of

nature was the same matter which became the natural humanity

which Christ received from the Virgin Mary, having hands,

feet, sides, flesh, bones in which body Christ chose to

ascend into heaven and will return in jugment as he was seen

to ascend in the kenotic view.

     Another poem, almost as illustrative of Riley's

kenoticism of this period, is Riley's "A Hymn of Faith."

 

                   A HYMB OF FAITH (1882)

 

O, THOU that doth all things devise

     And fashon fer the best,

He'p us who sees with mortul eyes

     To overlook the rest.

 

They's times, of course, we grope in doubt,

     And in afflictions sore;

So knock the louder, Lord, without,

     And we'll unlock the door.

 

Make us to feel, when times looks bad

     And tears in pitty melts,

Thou wast the only he'p we had

     When they was nothin' else.

 

Death comes alike to ev'ry man

     That ever was borned on earth;

Then let us do the best we can

     To live fer all life's wurth.

 

Ef storms and tempusts dred to see

     Makes black the heavens ore,

They done the same in Galilee

     Two thousand years before.

 

But after all, the golden sun

     Poured out its floods on them

That watched and waited fer the One

     Then borned in Bethlyham.

 

Also, the star of holy writ

     Made noonday of the night,

Whilse other stars that looked at it

     Was envious with delight.

 

The sages then in wurship bowed,

     From ev'ry clime so fare;

O, sinner, think of that glad crowd

     That congergated thare!

 

They was content to fall in ranks

     With One that knowed the way

From good old Jurden's stormy banks

     Clean up to Jedgmunt Day.

 

No matter, then, how all is mixed

     In our near-sighted eyes,

All things is fer the best, and fixed

     Out straight in Paradise.

 

Then take things as God sends 'em here,

     And, ef we live er die,

Be more and more contenteder,

     Without a'astin' why,

 

O, Thou that doth all things devise

     And fashon fer the best,

He'p us who sees with mortul eyes

     To overlook the  rest.

 

     Nineteenth Century kenotic ideas saw the possibility of

personal participation in Godly life no matter what he or she

faced. The example was the life image of Christ, a genuinely

human personality. This Christ was Jesus, the man, born in

"Bethlyham." Nevertheless though Jesus was a human being, God

was also in Him so there was relief for the kenotic "Ef

storms and tempusts dred to see\Makes black the heavens ore."

Conditions faced by humanity were within a scheme of

salvation of a Christ in a peculiar loving relation to God.

There was no need to fear a life for love was the motive of

the Incarnation and love was the sole measure of its depth.

Riley's point in "A HYMB OF FAITH" is to adopt God's free

relation to the world and accept the world's situation

because God did and yet see through the world to adopt its

essential attributes centering on a love perspective.  The

vulnerable human relates to the human incarnate God

spiritually but confidently through instinctive faith. Belief

comes because it is impelled by the human condition to seek

clear fulfillment withheld from mortal life. We have no

confident assurance through ourselves but we have it through

the relationship of God when on earth to God. We have no

authority by ourselves to evaluate as among ourselves, except

as we have the capacity from God, who qualifies us in a new

agreement, not written down, but instinctively. From Riley's

"We Must Believe,"

    "We must believe: For still all unappeased our hunger

         goes,

     From life's first waking, to its last repose"

    It was the "foolishness" done of God in becoming

Incarnate that gives the ultimate knowing about God from

a Nineteenth Century kenotic point of view.  This

"foolishness" avoided a robbery by Christ of God's love

but made it available to a degraded humanity.

 

                    MY PHILOSOFY  (1882)

 

I ain't, ner don't p'tend to be,

Much posted on philosofy;

But thare is times, when all alone,

I work out idees of my own.

And of these same there is a few

I'd like to jest refer to you -

Pervidin' that you don't object

To listen clos't and rickollect.

 

I allus argy that a man

Who does about the best he can

Is plenty good enugh to suit

This lower mundane institute -

No matter ef his daily walk

Is subject fer his neghbor's talk,

And critic-minds of ev'ry whim

Jest all git up and go fer him!

 

I knowed a feller onc't that had

The yeller-janders mighty bad, -

And each and ev'ry friend he'd meet

Would stop and give him some receet

Fer cuorin' of 'em.  But he'd say

He kindo' thought they'd go away

Without no medicin', and boast

That he'd git well without one doste.

 

He kep' a-yellerin' on - and they

Perdictin' that he'd die some day

Before he knowed it! Tuck his bed

The feller did, and lost his head,

and wundered in his mind a spell -

Then rallied, and, at last, got well,

But ev'ry friend that said he'd die

Went back on him eternally!

 

It's natchurl enugh, I guess,

When some gits more and some gits less,

Fer them-uns on the slimmest side

To claim it ain't fare divide;

And I've knowed some to lay and wait,

And git up soon, and set up late,

To ketch some feller they could hate

Fer goin' at a faster gait.

 

The signs is bad when folks commence

A-findin' fault with Providence,

And balkin' 'cause the earth don't shake

At ev'ry prancin' step they take.

No man is grate tel he can see

How less than little he would be

Ef stripped to self, and stark and bare

He hung his sign out anywhare.

 

My doctern is to lay aside

Contensions, and be satisfied:

Jest do your best, and praise er blame

That follers that, counts jest the same.

I've allus noticed grate success

Is mixed with troubles, more er less,

And it's the man who does the best

That gits more kicks than all the rest.

 

     Doing "one's best" as Riley terms is taking of the

infinite into the finite realm as the Incarnate Christ did

and a person can. A kenotic view upon how humanity can

manifest as God in the flesh uttered from the mouth of a

humble farmer. The kenotic assumed that human nature could

spiritually correspond to the human nature of the Incarnate

Son of God. As the kenotic late Nineteenth Century Methodist

theologian R.J. Cooke stated, There could be "essential

likeness and kinship between God and man.  Whatever physical

science may have to say as to the lowly origin of man, here

is what he is.  God does not have to force himself into human

nature, and when in it find himself unable to manifest

himself in it through lack of revealing capacity in the

human, nor is the human unable to bear the weight, the

presence, of deity.  But because man is spirit, because he

has intelligence, and reason, and will, and affection,

because he is a moral being, Infinite spirit, Infinite Wisdom

and Infinite Love can adjust himself to the spirit of man -

laying every power and quality of God alongside of every

corresponding faculty in the human soul without violence to

the soul - and thus manifest himself as God in the flesh.

The astounding revelation dawns on us for the first time that

the human may embody the eternal." (From THE INCARNATION

AND RECENT CRITICISM. Peripherally it should be noted how

reactive to Darwinism kenotic thought and movement really

was, that is the idea that even a lowly and humble person was

exalted because God chose humble humanity form.  Riley's

poetry was, of course, its chief literary expression and his

Benjamin Johnson poetry, the best of his kenotic poetry.)

     As a further idea, kenotics hoped for Christian unity.

The Nineteenth Century kenotic movement was intended as a

union movement between Lutheran and Reformed elements in

Germany. It eschewed contention. The idea swept into America

and found fertile ground for Protestant churches of every

denomination combating the pessimism, scepticism, and doubt

about a united Christianity and its benefit as characterized

by the immensely popular oratory of such as Robert Ingersoll,

a popular orator.

 

                      MY FIDDLE (1882)

 

My fiddle? - Well, I kindo' keep her handy, don't you know!

Though I ain't so much inclined to tromp the strings and

switch the bow

As I was before the timber of my elbows got so dry,

And my fingers was more limber-like and caperish and spry;

     Yit I can plonk and plunk and plink,

          And tune her up and play, And jest lean back and

     laugh and wink At ev'ry rainy day!

 

My playin' 's only middlin' - tunes I picked up when a boy -

The kindo'-sorto fiddlin' that the folks call "cordaroy"1;

"The Old Fat Gal," and "Rye-straw," and "My Sailyor's on the

Sea,"

Is the old cowtillions I "saw" when the ch'ice is left to me;

     And so I plunk and plonk and plink,

          And rosum-up my bow And play the tunes that makes

     you think The devil's in your toe!  I was allus a-

romancin', do-less boy, to tell the truth,

A-fiddlin' and a-dancin', and a-wastin' of my youth,

And a-actin' and a-cuttin'-up all sorts o' silly pranks

That wasn't worth a button of anybody's thanks!

     But they tell me, when I used to plink And plonk and

          plunk and play, My music seemed to have the kink O'

          drivin' cares away!

 

That's how this here old fiddle's won my hart's indurin'

love!

From the strings acrost her middle, to the schreechin' keys

above -

From her "apern," over "bridge," and to the ribbon round her

throat,

She's a wooin', cooin' pigeon, singin' "Love me" ev'ry note!

     And so I pat her neck, and plink

          Her strings with lovin' hands, -

     And, lis'nin' clos't, I sometimes think

          She kindo' understands!

 

1. "Cordaroy" means "makeshift" or "stopgap" in Hoosier

idiom. As best I can trace it, the term visualizes Hoosier

country roads which in summer were covered with dust so thick

that James Whitcomb Riley once described them "as thick as

butter on country bread" and passable, but which in the Fall

and Winter time might be half way up to the horse-drawn wagon

axles in mud. A Hoosier pioneer-style improvement was to

"firm up" these roads at their worst spots with "corduroy"

logs.

 

     A kenotic poem of satisfaction in dependence upon the

assumption of the servile state of humanity. Hey, you can

even enjoy fiddling because you can accept the human state

because Christ did.  Christ took on the form of a human and

accepted its life in humiliation. His end in becoming a

person was so that He might wear that form of existence which

is at the greatest possible distance from and the greatest

contrast to the life of God. There is the possibility of joy

in this fact coming from its participation with the life of

the earthly God. The theme is particularly and generally

a Nineteenth century one as well. We note that James Russell

Lowell asserts that reverence for life is the very primal

essence and life of poetry. "From reverence the spirit climbs

on to love, and thence beholds all things." Nevertheless the

source of the satisfaction is that it is sanctified because

it is human to enjoy pickin' and grinnin' which is otherwise

an irrelevant activity than as a human being does it.

 

                      THE CLOVER (1882)

 

Some sings of the lilly, and daisy, and rose,

And the pansies and pinks that the Summer-time throws

In the green grassy lap of the medder that lays

Blinkin' up at the skyes through the sunshiny days;

But what is the lilly and all of the rest

Of the flowers, to a man with a hart in his brest

That was dipped brimmin' full of the honey and dew

Of the sweet clover-blossoms his babyhood knew?

 

I never set eyes on a clover-field now,

Er fool round a stable, er climb in the mow,

But my childhood comes back jest as clear and as plane

As the smell of the clover I'm sniffin' again;

And I wunder away in a barefooted dream,

Whare I tangle my toes in the blossoms that gleam

With the dew of the dawn of the morning of love

Ere it wept ore the graves that I'm weepin' above.

 

And so I love clover - it seems like a part

Of the sacerdest sorrows and joys of my hart;

And wharever it blossoms, oh, thare let me bow

And thank the good God as I'm thankin' Him now;

And I pray to Him still fer the stren'th when I die,

To go out in the clover and tell it good-by,

And lovin'ly nestle my face in its bloom

While my soul slips away on a breth of purfume.

 

     Another poem extolling something common and humble.

In a kenotic frame of reference, the clover symbolizes

humble life such as Jesus gave up His nature as God to

manifest. Freedom is a sub-theme of the poem. Being humble

and thus acceptable to Godly reckoning brings freedom to

enjoy life. Benjamin Johnson, an old Hoosier farmer, tends to

deal with this world as a place of blessing. He is finding

his life laden with the happiness from simple things. He can

accept poverty because he can smell his clover. To a social

Darwinist of Riley's epoch Benjamin Johnson is thus

inexplicable.  That he is in poverty is understandable

because his values are not oriented within the struggle for

existence.  Poverty would cease if persons acted prudently,

industriously and wisely and brought their children up to

exercise those same virtues. Morals and social values are the

result of historical and institutional foundations rather

than either intuitive or Christian in character. Much of

morality is simply restatement of property rights. The

social Darwinist, Yale's William Graham Sumner in his

FOLKWAYS espouses these views.  Riley is not picturing a

person who seems to be struggling with existence very much as

long as he can smell the clover and he finds life virtuous

and redeeming among the clover blossoms which are a gift from

a God who sets the bounds of Benjamin Johnson's morality on

the basis of service to others.

 

                    NOTHIN' TO SAY (1883)

 

Nothin' to say, my daughter!

Nothin' at all to say!

Gyrls that's in love, I've noticed, giner'ly has their way!

Yer mother did, afore you, when her folks objected to me -

Yit here I am and here you air! and yer mother - where is

she?

 

You look lots like yer mother: purty much same in size;

And about the same complected; and favor about the eyes:

Like her, too, about livin' here, because she couldn't stay;

It'll 'most seem like you was dead like her! - but I haint'

got nothin' to say!

 

She left you her little Bible - writ yer name acrost the page

-

And left her ear-bobs fer you, ef ever you come of age;

I've alluz kep' 'em and gyuarded 'em, but ef yer goin' away -

Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say!

 

You don't rickollect her, I reckon?

No: you wasn't a year old then!

And now yer - how old air you? W'y, child, not "twenty"!

When?

And yer nex' birthday's in Aprile? and you want to git

married that day?

I wisht yer mother was livin'! - but I haint't got nothin' to

say!

 

Twenty year! and as good a gyrl as parent ever found!

There's a straw ketched on to yer dress

There - I'll bresh it off - turn around.

(Her mother was jes' twenty when us two run away.)

Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say!

 

     This is not a theological exposition of the Incarnation

but rather a poem of affirmation of life itself. The ongoing

evolutionary drift of the generations is not something to be

regreted. It is acceptable without objection and there is

"nothin'" more to say about it. The drama of life is lived

within the context of the total world submissiveness to God

in which God's own child is the absolute agent for total

submission.  God's life with people continues on through

time.

    This poem was the most prominent American poem of the

year 1887. It was first published in the Indianapolis JOURNAL

on July 31, 1887 and then printed to a more national audience

in the CENTURY MAGAZINE issue of August, 1887. Riley recited

it at a Chickering Hall poetry reading in New York City on

November 29, 1887 before other poets and a great audience

when his fellow poet James Russell Lowell called upon Riley

to give further readings of his poetry. It introduced dialect

as an appropriate speech to express the humble kenotic

message. This poem and many others were published in Riley's

book AFTERWHILES, one of his most enduring volumes of poetry

with great holiday sales at Christmas time throughout the

country.

 

                  THE BEAUTIFUL CITY (1883)

 

The Beautiful City! Forever

     Its rapturous praises resound;

We fain would behold it- but never

     A glimpse of its glory is found:

We slacken our lips at the tender

     White breasts of our mothers to hear

Of its marvelous beauty and splendor; -

     We see - but the gleam of a tear!

 

Yet never the story may tire us -

     First graven in symbols of stone -

Rewritten on scrolls of papyrus

     And parchment, and scattered and blown

By the winds of the tongues of all nations,

     Like a litter of leaves wildly whirled

Down the rack of a hundred translations,

     From the earliest lisp of the world.

 

We compass the earth and the ocean,

     From the Orient's uttermost light,

To where the last ripple in motion

     Lips hem of the skirt of the night, -

But the Beautiful City evades us -

     No spire of it glints in the sun -

No glad-bannered battlement shades us

     When all our long journey is done.

 

Where lies it? We question and listen;

     We lean from the mountain, or mast,

And see but dull earth, or the glisten

     Of seas inconceivably vast:

The dust of the one blurs our vision,

     The glare of the other our brain,

Nor city nor island Elysian

     In all of the land or the main!

 

We kneel in dim fanes where the thunders

     Of organs tumultuous roll,

And the longing heart listens and wonders,

     And the eyes look aloft from the soul:

But the chanson grows fainter and fainter,

     Swoons wholly away and is dead;

And our eyes only reach where the painter

     Has dabbled a saint overhead.

 

The Beautiful City! O mortal,

     Fare hopefully on in thy quest,

Pass down through the green grassy portal

     That leads to the Valley of Rest;

There first passed the One who, in pity

     Of all the great yearning, awaits

To point out the Beautiful City,

     And loosen the trump at the gates.

 

    A poem of Nineteenth Century kenotic hope. The Beautiful

City is the dialoguing Neo-Platonic Jerusalem to "come down"

referenced in the book of Revelation.  Regarding this along

with other poems, Riley once told a reporter that he "did not

make them. God made them," adding, "all that I do is to fit

the words to them. I am a sort of a mental camera, that

catches the stories. I develop the plate - and there you are.

And just here I must protest against the opinion of our dear

Longfellow who claims that it is sheer laziness in a poet to

refrain from writing because he is not in the mood. As I see

it, he who attempts to write when not in the mood prostitutes

his powers."

    The kenotic content of the poem is its reminder of the

promise of a second coming in a world ruling time

by the incarnate Christ. The event will render all the

world's ruling principles and authority and power null and

void.  The poem prescribes a regimen of hope, never to give

up that the world will continue until contrariness to God is

eventually and inevitably stepped underfoot by the appearance

of the incarnate Christ who will "loosen the trump (proclaim

entry with trumpets) at the gates."

     The poem became one of the most popular of Riley's

epoch. I think it must be seen in relationship to the

dominant vision of the age.

 

                         AWAY (1884)

 

I can not say, and I will not say

That he is dead. - He is just away!

 

With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,

He has wandered into an unknown land,

 

And left us dreaming how very fair

It needs must be, since he lingers there.

 

And you - O you, who the wildest yearn

For the old-time step and the glad return, -

 

Think of him faring on, as dear

In the love of There as the love of Here;

 

And loyal still, as he gave the blows

Of his warrior-strength to his country's foes. -

 

Mild and gentle, as he was brave, -

When the sweetest love of his life he gave

 

To simple things: - Where the violets grew

Blue as the eyes they were likened to,

 

The touches of his hands have strayed

As reverently as his lips have prayed:

 

When the little brown thrush that harshly chirred

Was dear to him as the mocking-bird;

 

And he pitied as much as a man in pain

A writhing honey-bee wet with rain. -

 

Think of him still as the same, I say:

He is not dead - he is just away!

 

    The kenotic content of this poem is very similar to the

thought of "On the Death of Little Mahala Ashcraft." I

cannot help but include it in this series however since it

was so important from a popular standpoint in the Nineteenth

Century. Probably every Protestant minister in America

used it at one point or another in counseling, sermon or

burial service. Abut the writing of this poem, Riley said, "I

was confined to my bed. I was ill and weak and all alone.  My

eyes were inflamed, and so I just rolled over and wept with

the weather." The occasion of the poem was the death of

General Wm. H. H. Terrell, who was an aide to Indiana's

embattled Civil War Governor Oliver Morton.  Riley remembered

the General gave "the sweetest love of his life to simple

things." While walking in a garden after a shower, Riley once

saw the General stoop to pity "a honey-bee wet with rain."

The kenotic content of the poem is its center in the promise

of life after death from the incarnate Christ. The poem

recalls the teaching of Paul who argued, "If God when on

earth preached that there was a rebirth after death, how can

any among you be saying that the dead aren't reborn into new

life after death?  If there's no life after death, then God

when on earth could not now exist as he once did as an earth

dweller, arose and arisen."

 

                       BEREAVED (1890)

 

Let me come in where you sit weeping, - ay,

Let me, who have not any child to die,

Weep with you for the little one whose love

     I have known nothing of.

 

The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed

Their pressure round your neck. the hands you used

To kiss, - Such arms - such hands I never knew.

     May I not weep with you?

 

Fain would I be of service - say some thing,

Between the tears, that would be comforting, -

But ah! so sadder than yourselves am I,

     Who have no child to die.

 

     The writing of "Bereaved" began with a strange

premonition which so vividly impressed Riley one night that

he was unable to sleep. He arose and wrote the poem rapidly

in about twenty minutes.  Usually, Riley's compositions were

labored, taking days or even months to rewrite and polish.

On this occasion, he stated his heart was heavy with a

sadness he could not relate to any known cause as he

addressed his lines to the unknown parents in the poem. Later

he received word of the death of the child of his lecturing

partner, Bill Nye and Riley at once dedicated this poem to

Mr. and Mrs. Nye. Had they been the subject of his strange

foreboding?

     The poem is kenotic in its presentation of the mind of

the Incarnate Christ in grief over the human condition.  This

poem is demonstrative of such grief as is found in

childlessness.  The poet had no children.  About the genesis

of this poem, Riley wrote, "I was awakened far in the night

as by a summons, and in seeming answer I arose and the poem

came trickling through my tears.  What was it that woke me I

can not tell.  Was it the pitying gaze of fathers and mothers

keeping their lonely vigil through the night? Was it the cry

of empty arms for the touch of vanished fingers?  Was it an

angel ray of light, a celestial petition from the land of

dreams and sleep? I do not know."

 

        POETRY OF THE "DEER CRICK" OR "DELPHI" EPOCH

 

     A famous body of Riley poetry was written in an epoch in

which Riley escaped from not just the lyceum circuit, but

also Indianapolis and Greenfield by frequent visits to

Delphi, Indiana, where his friend, Dr. Wycliffe Smith lived.

This was in the mid-1880's. The "Deer Creek" poems reflect

Riley's opportunity to wander "Deer Crick" country of Carroll

County which bordered orchards, clover fields and forested

areas.

     The poem "On the Banks of Deer Crick" was written for

the Delphi TIMES at a time when Riley was not feeling well.

Riley went to the banks of Deer Crick (Creek in Hoosier

dialect) across from Jackson's hole or Wilson's cave where he

could rest before reading poems at the old Delphi Opera House

that evening.  While taking in the scenic wonder of the

place, he scribbled the poem "On the banks o' Deer Crick..."

 

             ON THE BANKS O' DEER CRICK  (1885)

 

On the banks o' Deer Crick!  There's the place fer me! -

Worter slidin' past ye jes' as clair as it kin be: -

See yer shadder in it, and the shadder o' the sky,

And the shadder o' the buzzard as he goes a-lazin' by;

Shadder o' the pizen-vines, and shadder o' the trees -

And I purt' nigh said the shadder o' the sunshine and the

breeze!

Well! - I never seen the ocean ner I never seen the sea. -

On the banks o' Deer Crick's grand enough fer me!

 

On the banks o' Deer Crick - mil' er two from town -

'Long up where the mill-race comes a-loafin down, -

Like to git up in there - 'mongst the sycamores -

And watch the worter at the dam, a-frothin' as she pours:

Crawl out on some old log, with my hook and line,

Where the fish is jes' so thick you kin see 'em shine

As they flicker round her bait, coaxin' you to jerk,

Tel yer tired ketchin' of 'em, might nigh, as work!

 

On the banks o' Deer Crick! - Allus my delight

Jes' to be around there - take it day  er night! -

Watch the snipes and killdees foolin' half the day -

Er these-'ere little worter-bugs shootin' ever' way! -

Snake-feeders glancin' round, er dartin' out o' sight;

And dewfall, bullfrogs, and lightnin-bugs at night -

Stars up through the tree-tops - er in the crick below, -

And smell o' mussrat through the dark clean from the old by-

o!

 

Er take a tromp, some Sund'y, say, 'way up to "Johnson's

Hole,"

And find where he's had a fire, and hide his fishin'-pole:

Have yer "dog-leg" with ye, and yer pipe and "cut-and-dry" -

Pocketful' o' corn-bread, and slug er two o' rye...

Soak yer hide in sunshine and waller in the shade -

Like the Good Book tells us - "where there're none to make

afraid!"

Well! - I never seen the ocean ner I never seen the sea. -

On the banks o' Deer Crick's grand enough fer me!

 

     The "Deer Creek" poetry was the hallmark of one of

Riley's favorite platform lectures entitled, "Characteristics

of the Hoosier Dialect," and it was fantastically popular all

around the country beginning in 1884.

     One of the poems he wrote for this "lecture" as it was

billed was "Knee Deep in June." Although the poem was

tailored for his platform entertainment, he later had it

first published in the Indianapolis JOURNAL of June 14, 1885

under the title "Long About Knee Deep in June." Then, it was

included in the immensely popular book AFTERWHILES in 1887.

It was made available for sale at the Indianapolis NEWS

office in Indianapolis in that year and the first edition of

1,000 did not last a month.  It sold for $1.25. "Knee Deep in

June" probably received more critical acclaim than most of

Riley's poems. Among those who have commented on "Knee Deep

in June" was James Russell Lowell, one of the Cambridge group

of poets, who remarked that, "Nothing that the poets have

written in this country for years has touched me so deeply as

'Knee Deep in June.'"

 

                  KNEE-DEEP IN JUNE (1885)

 

                              I

Tell you what I like the best -

      'Long about knee-deep in June,

    'Bout the time strawberries melts

  On the vine, - some afternoon

Like to jes' git out and rest,

    And not work at nothin' else!

 

                             II

Orchard's where I'd ruther be -

Needn't fence it in fer me! -

  Jes' the whole sky overhead,

And the whole airth underneath -

Sort o' so's a man kin breathe

  Like he ort, and kind o' has

Elbow-room to keerlessly

  Sprawl out len'thways on the grass

    Where the shadders thick and soft

  As the kivvers on the bed

    Mother fixes in the loft

Allus, when they's company!

 

                             III

Jes' a-sort of lazin' there -

  S'lazy, 'at you peek and peer

    Through the wavin' leaves above,

    Like a feller 'ats in love

  And don't know it, ner don't keer!

  Ever'thing you hear and see

    Got some sort o' interest -

    Maybe find a bluebird's nest

  Tucked up there conveenently

  Fer the boy 'at's ap' to be

  Up some other apple tree!

Watch the swallers skootin' past

Bout as peert as you could ast;

  Er the Bob-white raise and whiz

  Where some other's whistle is.

 

                             IV

 

Ketch a shadder down below,

And look up to find the crow -

Er a hawk, - away up there,

'Pearantly froze in the air! -

  Hear the old hen squawk, and squat

  Over ever' chick she's got,

Sudden-like! - and she knows where

  That-air hawk is, well as you! -

  You jes' bet yer life she do! -

    Eyes a-glitterin' like glass,

    Waitin' till he makes a pass!

 

                              V

 

Pee-wees' singin', to express

  My opinion, 's second-class,

Yit you'll hear 'em more er less;

    Sapsucks gittin' down to biz,

Weedin' out the lonesomeness;

  Mr. Bluejay, full o' sass,

    In them baseball clothes o' his,

Sportin' round the orchard jes'

Like he owned the premises!

    Sun out in the fields kin sizz,

But flat on yer back, I guess,

    In the shade's where glory is!

That's jes' what I'd like to do

Stiddy fer a year er two!

 

                             VI

 

Plague! ef they ain't somepin' in

Work 'at kind o' goes ag'in'

  My convictions! - 'long about

    Here in June especially! -

    Under some old apple tree,

      Jes' a-restin' through and through,

  I could git along without

      Nothin' else at all to do

      Only jes' a-wishin' you

Wuz a-gittin' there like me,

And June wuz eternity!

 

                             VII

 

Lay out there and try to see

Jes' how lazy you kin be! -

    Tumble round and souse yer head

In the clover-bloom, er pull

      Yer straw hat acrost yer eyes

      And peek through it at the skies,

    Thinkin' of old chums 'at's dead,

      Maybe, smilin' back at you

In betwixt the beautiful

      Clouds o' gold and white and blue! -

Month a man kin railly love -

June, you know, I'm talkin' of!

 

                            VIII

 

March ain't never nothin' new! -

Aprile's altogether too

  Brash fer me! and May - I jes'

  'Bominate its promises, -

Little hints o' sunshine and

Green around the timber-land -

  A few blossoms, and a few

  Chip-birds, and a sprout er two, -

  Drap asleep, and it turns in

  'Fore daylight and snows ag'in! -

But when June comes - Clear my th'oat

  With wild honey! - Reach my hair

In the dew! and hold my coat!

    Whoop out loud! and th'ow my hat! -

  June wants me, and I'm to spare!

  Spread them shadders anywhere,

  I'll get down and waller there,

    And obleeged to you at that!

 

After accompanying Dr. Wycliffe Smith on a horseback ride,

Riley penned:

 

                FROM DELPHI TO CAMDEN (1884)

 

                              I

 

From Delphi to Camden - little Hoosier towns, -

But here were classic meadows, blooming dales and downs;

And here were grassy pastures, dewy as the leas

Trampled over by the trains of royal pageantries!

 

And here the winding highway loitered through the shade

Of the hazel covert, where, in ambuscade,

Loomed the larch and linden, and the greenwood-tree

Under which bold Robin Hood loud hallooed to me!

 

Here the stir and riot of the busy day

Dwindled to the quiet of the breath of May;

Gurgling brooks, and ridges lily-marged and spanned

By the rustic bridges found in Wonderland!

 

II

From Delphi to Camden, - from Camden back again! -

And now the night was on us, and the lightning and the rain;

And still the way was wondrous with the flash of hill and

plain, -

The stars like printed asterisks - the moon a murky strain!

 

And I thought of tragic idyll, and of flight and hot pursuit,

And the jingle of the bridle and the cuirass and spur on

boot,

As our horses' hooves struck showers from the flinty boulders

set

In freshet-ways of  writhing reed and drowning violet.

 

And we passed beleaguered castles, with their battlements a-

frown;

Where a tree fell in the forest was a turret toppled down;

While my master and commander - the brave knight I galloped

with

On this reckless road to ruin or to fame was - Dr. Smith!

 

 

              THE MEDIA FOR SPRAIVOLL'S WRITING

 

     Any artist lies imprisoned within his media of

expression. These bounds are as iron bars to genius. The best

an artist accomplishes is to ecstatically raise the language

of his or her media to its highest pitch and intensity.

     James Whitcomb Riley's media was the Nineteenth Century

"local sheet" the predecessor to today's newspaper. We have

seen the mundane operation of these organs as we traced how

the hoax poem "Leonainie" came to be published. Through most

of his life, Riley was a "newspaper poet." The one newspaper

he came to be most associated with was the Indianapolis

JOURNAL, now the Indianapolis STAR.  Riley wrote, however,

for many newspapers in many capacities.  He wrote advertising

and editorial copy as well as his more famous poetry. He also

covered news events and was assigned to special projects such

as his five-part serial on "What Our Bright College Boys Are

Doing" published during the last 1891 to January 1892.  There

is not a major Riley poem which was not first published in a

newspaper before printing in a book.

     There simply is no current reference to the poetry

published in the newspapers of the American Nineteenth

Century. The practice of placing poetry on the newspaper

front pages - of anywhere - in newspapers has long ago

vanished. Riley's media has, in short, passed into history.

Without experience with the media, it is hard to understand

its message. Nevertheless we must try if we are to have any

chance at all of understanding the Post Civil War American

scene and particularly its mood and dynamic.

     Riley was apprenticed into newspaper journalism at a

time when country journalism was intensely personal in cast

and flavor. Editors of local newspapers were vehement in

their beliefs, many of them of a political nature. Politics

caused great candid and savage debate - a product of the

great divisions in the country caused by the American Civil

War just a decade earlier in history. Elections were

especially bitter in the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876.  Many

Hoosiers refused to accept that Hayes won and called him a

"de jure" President.  No doubt some of Riley's journalistic

work was of a political nature. The newspapers of his day

were highly partisan and Riley wrote for many of them to

include their editorials.

     Riley had trouble with this. Throughout his life, Riley

had great suspicion about the political process. Remembering

the lynching incident from his young manhood, Riley was

suspicious of aroused people. Politics was also tied to

racism in Indiana in Riley's memory especially during

election times.  Greenfield's black community were Republican

and at the time the county voted basically Democrat. It was a

rare election in which Greenfield's blacks were not harassed

in some way.  In the 1872 campaign, a political speaker of

the Democrat parties, Thomas A. Hendricks, came to Greenfield

to speak for Greeley and evoked racism according to George

Knox, Greenfield's black barber as stated in his memoirs,

saying "he could stand everything but one thing and that was

the "nigger." Shortly after the black lynching in Greenfield

in 1875, in the 1876 presidential campaign, clubs were

organized, Grant and Lincoln clubs by the Republicans and

Tilden and Hendricks clubs by the Democrats. On the Monday

before the election in November, the Democrat Club held a

county rally numbering by George Knox's estimate about 25,000

and the club members gathered in Greenfield shouting things

like "Hurrah for Tilden and Hendricks!" and occasionally "God

damn the Republicans and nigger lovers." Wagons were

decorated with slogans like, "Clean the Radicals out," "Clean

the black Republicans out," "White husbands or none." George

Knox remembered a group coming into his barbershop and one

jumping up on his stove and Knox asked him to get off and was

told, "Don't give me any of your black sass." Some took

razors and cut Knox's leather straps and another kicked his

dye stand over. Knox stated, "I had gone through the army,

passed through exciting times, had experienced the quick

terror of the midnight whisper, "the enemy is upon us"

(during the Civil War in Northern service), but even on the

battle field of Mission Ridge, that bloody spot, where men

were being killed in platoons all around me, heads and legs

torn off, cannon and minie balls flying as thick as hail, at

no time did I suffer in feelings, as on that awful day."

George Knox was James Whitcomb Riley's great friend and first

employer. Riley was on his side politically.

     Riley was able to avoid the most heated of these

political conflicts by seeking to live at the soul level

where his play characters could breathe. Not until the

Benjamin Harrison campaign for the Presidency do we find

Riley personally speaking out for a candidate. Benjamin

Harrison was his man in that election largely because he was

a good personal friend.

     If pressed, Riley would not say he was either a Democrat

or Republican. To probe more deeply, Riley was asked about

his father's politics since political affiliation was often a

family matter. Reuben Riley of course had been both a

Democrat and Republican and other "splinter" parties. Once

when asked whther his father was a Democrat or Republican,

Riley replied: "I don't know, I haven't seen him since

breakfast."

     Riley hated such politicizing. Riley mentioned that he

was forced to do editorial work of this nature in a letter to

Elizabeth Kahle of August 9, 1881.

     Riley actually felt politicians were a rather comical

lot.

 

          A LOCAL POLITICIAN FROM AWAY BACK (1887)

 

Jedge is good at argyin' -

No mistake in that!

Most folks 'at takles him

He'll skin 'em like a cat!

You see, the Jedge is read up,

And b'en in politics,

Hand-in-glove, you might say,

Sence back in '56.

 

Elected to the Shurrif, first,

Then elected Clerk;

And buckled down to work;

Practised three or four terms,

Then he run for jedge -

Speechified a little 'round

And went in like a wedge!

 

     The first newspaper Riley contributed to was The

REPUBLICAN. This was a newspaper begun by T. B. Deems about

1870 in Greenfield, Indiana, and survived for approximately

three months. No copy of this newspaper survives.

     For a far longer period Riley wrote for The Greenfield

COMMERCIAL. The COMMERCIAL was begun by Amos C. Beeson in

1867. In 1870, Beeson sold this Pro-Republican newspaper to

Lionel E. Rumrill who terminated it in December, 1872. Riley

published most poetry in the Greenfield COMMERCIAL

anonymously.  One poem was a spoof of a Bret Harte style

and revolved around a girlfriend of Riley's, Lucy Atkinson.

Riley called on her as did a young jewelry salesman of

Greenfield.  Riley and the jewelry salesman did not consider

themselves rivals for the attention of Lucy because neither

saw each other at Lucy's home.  One day, Lucy sent Riley a

note to come to her home at six o'clock p.m. that evening.

Riley did so but somewhat later than six.  When Riley

arrived, he saw Lucy in a bridal dress with happy friends

around in an obvious marriage party.  A two-horse carriage

was tied at the gate ready to take the married couple off.

The woman was Lucy. Riley had been invited to a surprise

wedding of his girlfriend to another man.

     To commemorate this occasion, Riley wrote a poem in the

style of Bret Harte's "Truthful James." It was published in

The Greenfield COMMERCIAL on January 14, 1871 in "The Poet's

Corner" section of that newspaper. The name of the poet was

listed as Brat Heart.

 

                    AN UNEXPECTED RESULT

 

          Of late I'm becoming persuaded to smile

          At some things turning out, once-in-awhile;

          In the way that they do! I'll aim to explain,

          In order to make my meaning more plain,

          In the following crude vernacular strain:

 

          "Never go back on a woman, John!

          Unless you think she's a drawin' you on."

 

          "Drawing me on! Now look here, Dick

          Show me the girl that can do that trick

          Before you venture on calling me `sick."!

          It's all set up - she wants to tell

          Me "something" to-night - now look here - well -

          I'm going to cut her - I want you to see

          How much more she thinks of me

          Than of that damned jeweler - how'll that be?"

          "Be? - mighty bad, for a woman to fix

          And dress and get ready by half-past six,

          Don't play off on her, John! If you can,

          Get ready and go! act like a man -

          Some other time you can work this plan!

          And besides that you want to know

          What she wants by begging you so

          To come there early.  If I were you

          I'd marry that woman, that's what I'd do,

          As certain as one and one make two!

          Or ain't you much on the marry now?

          Well, she's a mighty fat take anyhow!"

 

          "Well now, you can bet she ain't so slow,

          Hang it! I won't play off on her so!

          Where's my overcoat? I'm going to go!

          And you needn't sit up till I come in,

          For I am right on the `woo' and the `win!'"

 

          "All right, John, my bully old brick!

          Play it right fine, and talk mighty slick,

          Good night, success to you!"

 

                                       "Good night, Dick!"

 

          "Not back a'ready! Why, what's up now?

          Going to go back on it? What's the row?

          Are you going crazy - Ouch! look here, say,

          Don't step on my corns in that lubberly way!

          You're the cussedest fool 'at I've seen today!"

 

          "Well, I reckon I am! Say, Dick, look here -

          Come here to the window and it will appear

          To you in a stronger light - I'm a fool,

          And a damned one too! Oh, I'm perfectly cool!

          I mostly resemble what's most like a mule.

          Don' you see 'em turning the corner there?

          See those carriages? That with the pair

          Of grays hitched to it? The happy twain

          Who sit  inside, it is very plain,

          Are married and going off on the next train!"

 

          "Well, what of that?"

 

                                "Why, that's the girl I

          kindly consented not `whirl

          For your sweet sake - and I'll defer

          Stating particulars - but for her,

          She may go to hell with her jew - el - er!"

 

          Of late I'm growing persuaded to smile

          At some things turning out once-in-awhile,

          In the way that they do.  I've tried to explain,

          In order to make my meaning more plain,

          In what some may term a "sarcastic vein."

 

     Toward its last days Riley was the COMMERCIAL's local

editor, solicitor and writer of advertisements. He filled the

literary department with poetry and astonished the editor and

public as well with advertisements like the following:

 

      Write me a rhyme of the present time;

      And the poet thus begun:

      A cheap bazaar for a good cigar

      Is the store of Carr and Son."

 

    The wares of the Mr. George Dove's shoe shop were

presented this way:

 

      "It's my opinion," said Farmer Gray,

       As he drove in town one Christmas day,

       `Of all the gifts there's none that suits

       A boy as well as a pair of boots.'

       So he drove to Dove's and made the purchase."

 

       "O where - tell me where

        Shall I buy my winter ware?

        And a voice answered, There!

        At the store of Hart and Thayer,

        Where

        They deal so fair

        And square

        You'll be tickled, I'll declare."

 

    A year and half after his mother's death, Riley sent a

poem to his brother John, then living in Indianapolis, to see

if his brother could get it published. John was able to do so

at the Indianapolis Saturday MIRROR but only after recopying

because Riley's penmanship was very bad. Riley sent this poem

to his brother on February 9th and awaited expectantly until

the first, "Man's Devotion," was published on March 30th.

Riley used the pen name Jay Whit but the newspaper mistakenly

printed it as "Jay White."

    Again Riley sent poetry in. Riley drove himself crazy

after sending "A Ballad" to the Mirror. He wrote his brother

"This suspense is terrible!  - daily I may be seen with

solemn expression following the mail-bag from the depot, as

though' it were some dear-little-fat-corps of a relative who

had perhaps remember me in his will- but alas!... "

      When the poem "A Ballad" was finally published, it was

edited and Riley was heartsick. Prepositions and articles

were changed. Riley saw these as insults to the "ballad

style." "It hurts me more that the poem was my favorite, and

I had built an airy castle for it!" he said.

      Riley's early contributions to this newspaper were

thus: 1872: March 30, "Man's Devotion" by Jay White (sic);

April 13, "A Mockery" by Jay Whit; "Flames and Ashes" by Jay

Whit; May 11, "A Ballad" anonymous; May 25, "Johnny" by Jay

Whit.

     After the Greenfield COMMERCIAL ceased operation, many

of Riley's writings then appeared in the older Greenfield

newspaper, The Hancock DEMOCRAT. The reason was one of his

best loafing buddies was Almon Keefer, several years his

elder, but a compositor at that newspaper.  Keefer had been

in Riley's father's Civil War unit and was a bachelor

himself. The Hancock DEMOCRAT is a great source of

information about the writings and career of James Whitcomb

Riley. This is the newspaper, for example, which published

Riley's obituary of Nellie Millikan Cooley and his poetry to

her. An Editor of the DEMOCRAT, John Mitchell, was also a

close Riley friend and companionable social alcoholic with an

arrest for public intoxication in Greenfield close to

the time of Riley's own in his younger years.

     Another of the first newspapers publishing Riley poetry

was the Greenfield NEWS. Riley once said when he covered an

event for the NEWS, it became a "Hartpence local." This

referred to William Hartpence, a Civil War veteran who

returned to Greenfield in December, 1874, purchased the plant

of the Greenfield NEWS, and published it as a Republican

weekly newspaper to which Riley contributed.  The Greenfield

NEWS began in 1874 under the ownership of Will T. Walker and

Lionel E. Rumrill. A year later Walter Hartpence purchased

the newspaper and continued it until the NEWS ceased

publication in the Spring, 1875. Riley felt responsible since

he was one of the few who contributed to the doomed

newspaper.

     Riley's efforts at the Greenfield NEWS were recounted by

William Hartpence as follows: "When I took possession of the

NEWS, Riley was contributing a serial bit of fiction,

entitled "Babie McDowell." This I continued for some weeks,

when needing space for increased advertising, by my

direction, Riley dexterously "killed" his principal

characters and ended the story. I preserved the file of the

NEWS very carefully and they are neatly bound in first-calls

style in marbled board full size of page. They show Riley's

name at the head of the local department of the paper.  This

volume is now more carefully than ever preserved by my son.

Bert E. Hartpence, Harrison, Ohio.

    My knowledge of James Whitcomb Riley began in 1861 when

I was a printer in the Hancock DEMOCRAT office, that was at

that time housed in a little brick annex on the west side of

the old courthouse in Greenfield.  "Jim" as everybody called

him until he  came into fame, was then a yellow-haired,

freckled faced boy of the normal type, with a predilection

for chewing tobacco, which, I think, he inherited from his

father, Reuben A. Riley."

     The NEWS he was writing for part time and without pay

folded in the Spring 1875. Riley celebrated the event by

joining company with a friend, Oliver Moore, to make a

circuit as "Delineator and Caricaturist" shortly afterward.

This attempt to start an entertainment career, bombed as

otherwise related.

     As an older man, Riley recalled his first serious

journalistic writing as occurring after his return from the

"medicine show" escape from his hometown. The account appears

in the Biographical Edition of his poetry and was ostensibly

edited by his nephew, Edmund Eitel:

     "...he became the local editor of his home paper (The

Greenfield NEWS) and in a few months "strangled the little

thing into a change of ownership." The new proprietor

transferred him to the literary department and the latter,

not knowing what else to put in the space allotted him,

filled it with verse. But there was not room in his

department for all he produced, so he began, timidly, to

offer his poetic wares in foreign markets. The editor of The

Indianapolis MIRROR accepted two or three shorter verses but

in doing so suggested that in the future he try prose.  Being

but a humble beginner, Riley harkened to the advice,

whereupon the editor made a further suggestion; this time

that he try poetry again. The "Danbury (Connecticut) NEWS,"

then at the height of its humorous reputation, accepted a

contribution shortly after  "The MIRROR" episode and Mr.

McGeechy, its managing editor, wrote the young poet a

graceful note of congratulation. Commenting on these perilous

times, Mr. Riley once wrote, "It is strange how little a

thing sometimes makes or unmakes a fellow.  In these dark

days I should have been content with the twinkle of the

tiniest star, but even this light was withheld from me.  Just

then came the letter from McGeechy; and about the same time,

arrived my first check, a payment from "Hearth and Home" for

a contribution called "A Destiny" (now "A Dreamer in A Child

World"). The letter was signed, `Editor' and unless sent by

an assistant it must have come from Ik Marvel himself, God

bless him! I thought my fortune made. Almost immediately I

sent off another contribution, whereupon to my dismay came

this reply: `The management has decided to discontinue the

publication and hopes that you will find a market for your

worthy work elsewhere.' Then followed dark days indeed, until

finally, inspired by my old teacher and comrade, Captain Lee

O. Harris, I sent some of my poems to Longfellow, who replied

in his kind and gentle manner with the substantial

encouragement for which I had long thirsted."

     Riley's first full-time employment came at Anderson,

Indiana when Riley was hired by the Anderson DEMOCRAT. This

tour ended Riley's wandering days about Indiana as a painter

and member of the Graphics or with its members. In the

Anderson DEMOCRAT of April, 1877, a box in the newspaper

stated the following:

                            WORD

"It is our endeavor to serve the best interest of our

patrons, and with this in view, we have

secured the services of Mr. J. W. Riley, who has attained

quite a reputation as a poet and writer.  His productions

have already attracted the attention of such men as

Longfellow, Whittier, Trowbridge and many other notables; and

being convinced of the high order of his talent in that

direction, we believe we not only benefit ourselves and

patrons by the acquisition of his services, but that he is

also supplied with a congenial position, and one in which he

will develop the highest attributes of his nature. Feeling

that we have already the hearty endorsement of a kindly

public, we leave Mr. Riley to close the homily.

                        Todisman and Groan (Proprietors)

     In making my salam to the Anderson public, I desire

first to extend my warmest thanks to those who have

interested themselves in my behalf, and whose kindly

influence has assisted me to an office I will ever feel

pleasure in occupying.  And in the fulfillment of the duties

that devolve upon me, it shall be my warmest endeavor to

merit the trust and confidence that has been so generously

relegated. That the position is one that is fraught with a

thousand trials and vexations, shall not deter me from the

steadfast purpose of right and justice; and while I shall at

all times exercise the lighter attributes which go to make up

the interest of a weekly, it shall be my care, as well, to

wend away all petty slurs that shake the growth of dignity,

and in fact, to nurture jealously the character of the paper,

and assist in my humble way in giving to its individuality

the stamp which "bears without abuse the grand old name of

gentleman." Treating the kindly indulgence of the public for

any discrepancy of inexperience, I am, Very truly,

                            J.W. Riley."

At the Anderson DEMOCRAT, Riley took charge of the

advertising end of the paper: soliciting, make-up,

proofreading, reporting of locals, starting at eight dollars

a week.  Soon he began inserting his own poetry such as his

parody of the Whittier poem that Riley called "The Other Maud

Muller," "A Man of Many Parts," "The Frog" and a parody of

the Coleridge poem, "The Ancient Mariner" that Riley called

"The Ancient Printerman," "Craqueodoom" in the style of

Joseph Drake's "The Culprit Fay," and a parody of Lewis

Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" poem of the same name called

"Father William." I suppose "Leonainie" is in this same

line of imitation pieces for apprenticeship into a greater

poetry.

     Newspapers did not pay for poetry when Riley first began

to hope for monetary rewards from his writing. The newspapers

did pay for prose pieces. To accommodate both his need for

money and his interest in poetry, Riley wrote prose pieces

but included poetry within them so that he did in fact get

paid.

     From the start through advertising rhymes, doggerels and

occasional more serious poetry, James Whitcomb Riley came to

sharpen his poetic skills as a newspaper contributor and

poet.  Although there are original poems published in many,

many newspapers throughout the country, three are newspapers

of particular significance. Each was a major publisher of

original Riley poetry. Riley's longstanding career was

however with only one of these newspapers, the Indianapolis

JOURNAL.

     How did Riley become a newspaper poet and not simply

a journalist?  From the start he was hired on because of his

poetic bent.

     Of all the people who gave James Whitcomb Riley a start

in his writing career none was more helpful than Judge Elijah

B. Martindale. He should be credited with initially giving

Riley the chance to write poetry regularly for newspapers.

The Judge gave Riley employment at The Indianapolis JOURNAL,

which would be about the only truly steady job Riley ever

had.  The offer of this job literally snatched Riley out of a

period of great despair and drunkenness. Riley actually

started at the JOURNAL in November, 1879 after returning from

a stint accompanying the temperance lecturer, Luther Benson,

through a circuit in Northern Indiana. Riley started out at

the JOURNAL at a regular weekly salary of twenty-five

dollars.  Riley contributed to the JOURNAL earlier but only

sporadically.  The editor said Riley "would stamp up and down

our reportorial rooms moaning for the sight of sunflowers."

Riley would get homesick and leave a note on the editor's

desk, "Going down home for a day or two to smoke my segyar."

Then he was simply gone.

     The only picture I have seen of Judge Martindale has him

posed as Napoleon with his right hand thrust inside his coat.

He was a heavy man with receding hairline and a huge

brushlike mustache with its ends curled as if by wax below

the line of his mouth. His appearance is very self-assured

and his eyes look like those of a man who can see through

steel. I have not seen a picture of him after he filed

personal bankruptcy in the later 1870's, having previously

transferred the JOURNAL and other major assets to this

children. Here was a man who almost literally took

Indianapolis as a pup and tamed it during the post-Civil War

period, giving it the habits that continue now in its

maturity.

     Judge Martindale grew up near Shirley, Indiana, although

he was born in the country in Wayne County August 22, 1828.

His father was a pioneer preacher of the Christian Church and

moved to a country farm near Shirley when the Judge was

four. Like so many persons who amounted to something that I

have found in Hoosier history, he learned industry by living

and working on a family farm. He was the tenth of fifteen

children. His education was the scanty one of the period with

only brief seminary attendances in the dead of winter. At

sixteen, in 1844, he decided to become a saddler and was

apprenticed to learn to make horse saddles which took him to

age twenty or so.

     While he had been a saddler apprentice, he had also

become a great reader and particularly found himself most

interested in the law. In his early twenties he decided to

become a lawyer, moved to New Castle, and hung out a shingle.

He also married there and would eventually be the father of

ten children. For twelve years he practiced law in our

neighbor county seat. For one term he was a Prosecuting

Attorney but he became of interest to us, as a James Whitcomb

Riley influence, in 1861 when he was appointed the Judge for

Hancock County. Here he came to know of the Riley family of

Greenfield. Reuben Riley, the poet's father, had been a very

active member of the Greenfield bar. The Judge's position was

more technically Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for

Hancock, Henry, Randolph, Delaware, and Wayne Counties which

was all one big venue in those days.  This brief stint - he

was judge only a year - earned him the title Judge ever

after.  He moved to Indianapolis in 1862 and began a legal

practice there.

     From the start, the Judge took Indianapolis on as a

development project. Cattycornered from the City-County Bldg

is the Martindale "Block" or building, the northeast corner

of Market and Pennsylvania Streets, which he had built and he

also was a prime mover of the platting of most of

Indianapolis of that period so that lots could be sold on

easy terms for new settlers to move there. He represented

many commercial and manufacturing interests and always

encouraged them to expand and grow to build up our Hoosier

capital. He was a visionary who saw the prime city of Indiana

as needing not just employment opportunities and homes of

brick and wood but also a poet of the love of the home. This

seems why he brought James Whitcomb Riley to Indianapolis -to

nourish the heart and soul of his adopted city.

     In 1876, the Judge bought the Indianapolis JOURNAL, then

the leading Republican newspaper in the state. He managed

this newspaper for only a four year period and sold it on the

eve of the political campaign of 1880 after a personal

bankruptcy had caused him great distress. His period of

ownership and that of his children into whose name the

JOURNAL was placed for "safekeeping," was, however, critical

in the life of James Whitcomb Riley.

     During the Judge's first year as owner of the JOURNAL he

happened to come to Greenfield, a town he knew well, for the

funeral of a young lawyer, Hamilton Dunbar, who had been a

"star comer" of his court when he had been judge. It was

September, and the meeting would prove to be one of the most

important dates in Riley history.

     The tragically dead young lawyer, Hamilton Dunbar, had

been a schoolmate and good friend to James Whitcomb Riley and

Riley had written a poem, "Dead in the Sight of Fame" which

Riley read at a meeting of the Greenfield bar honoring the

memory of Hamilton Dunbar. Judge Martindale was very

impressed by Riley's poem. A week later, the Judge wrote to

ask Riley to come to Indianapolis to talk to him. Riley did

not do so, but he did send the Judge some poems that Riley

offered the Judge's newspaper to publish.

     The next February, the Judge sent Riley $10 for the

poems and repeated his invitation for Riley to come see him,

writing a letter as follows:

                                   The JOURNAL

                                   Indianapolis, Feb. 27,

                                   1877.

Jas. W. Riley

Greenfield, Ind.

My dear Sir:

     I want to thank you for the article and poem sent The

JOURNAL. I am sure you have a future and will help with The

JOURNAL to make it whatever your application and industry

deserves. I hope you will call on me when you are in the

city. I may be able to make some suggestions and afford you

encouragement.  I like to help young men who help themselves.

                                    Truly yours.

                                      E.B. Martindale

 

     The Judge and his newspaper, the JOURNAL, were to remove

Riley from his home in Greenfield to Indianapolis at the most

bitter time in Riley's life when the only other course which

was probably open to Riley was that of becoming an unemployed

Greenfield town drunk.

     Of the Judge's later life, little is important to us in

following the life of James Whitcomb Riley. The Judge went on

to establish and become the owner of a major Indianapolis

industry, the Atlas Works, a foundry and machine factory, and

was active in many social and public causes until his death.

     The first time Riley used his full name for a poem was

for a poem published in the Indianapolis JOURNAL of April 17,

1881 entitled "The Ripest Peach." When asked why he had used

his full name then, he said there were many James Rileys in

Indianapolis and he was tired of getting letters from their

girls.

     Although Riley was employed by the JOURNAL until 1888,

he contributed poems long after that. The JOURNAL used Riley

for humorous items and poems. Riley told how he produced

them. "I had a peculiar position...My editor-in-chief was one

of the most indulgent men in the world and let me do pretty

much as I pleased.  I wrote when I felt like it, and when I

did not, nothing was said.  At first when called on for a

certain thing by a certain time I grew apprehensive and

nervous, but I soon solved the problem.  I learned to keep a

stack of poems and prose on hand, and when there was a big

hold in the paper and the called for `copy' I gave them all

they wanted.

     Riley was closely connected to the Indianapolis JOURNAL.

The newspaper employed Riley and regularly published Riley

poetry for many years from January 10, 1877 with "Song of the

New Year," to December 29, 1901 with "To the Mother."

     There is an example of the enthusiasm with which The

JOURNAL published Riley poetry after he reached fame.

The newspaper was literally willing to stop its presses to

put in a Riley poem toward the end of his long period of

contribution to that newspaper. James Whitcomb Riley had very

deep feelings that caused him to write poetry under great

inspiration and excitement.

     One night during 1890, Riley wrote a poem to describe

his feelings about war.

     Riley wrote the poem "Song of the Bullet" from his

Lockerbie Street home when most Hoosiers, not so poetic or

maybe inspired, were in bed.  He liked to write in the middle

of the night.

      The managing editor of The Indianapolis JOURNAL, then

Indiana's most prominent newspaper, Harry New, related that

Riley brought the poem in at 1 in the morning in great

disarray and very excited. Riley said he had just written it

and if The JOURNAL wanted to run it they could.  The managing

editor told the famous Hoosier Poet that the next day's

newspaper had already been made up and he would give the poem

very prominent treatment in the next issue.  Riley replied

that he would let The JOURNAL have the poem if they would

publish it the next morning or not at all.

     So great was the occasion of publishing anything from

"The Hoosier Poet" that you can imagine what Indiana's most

important newspaper did. It stopped the presses to print the

poem as James Whitcomb Riley had asked.  Since Riley has been

dead for so many years it might be well to give his words as

remembered by that editor as best he could recall, when Riley

had brought in that poem. "I have done something good," he

said. "I had gone to bed and to sleep.  It came to me and

woke me up.  I got up and put it down.  It is good.  There it

is.  You may have it." When the Editor had said he couldn't

possibly publish it in the next morning's newspaper since

Riley had brought the poem in to him at 1 am, that's when

Riley said publish it for the morning paper or not at all.

     Thinking about it, the poem gives a view of war that

the struggling country was trying to deal with.

     The imagery and message of the poem combine to produce

its powerful impact on the reader.  The poem became very well

known and was printed in many newspapers around the country.

     It is simply not possible to say that Riley wrote for

only the The Indianapolis JOURNAL.  Riley was a journalistic

"gadfly." He apparently was willing to write news, edit such

material, garner advertising, and/or do any and everything

else for a newspaper which published his poetry.

     One finds him editing the Kokomo TRIBUNE "Home

Department" in 1879 in order to secure for himself an

organ to originally publish his seventeen "John C. Walker"

poems of this era and other poetry. Following the "fame" from

Leonainie, the John C. Walker poems were the next stepping

stone to Riley's rise in prominence as a poet. These poems,

all of which were first published in the Kokomo TRIBUNE, were

copied far and wide in the United States.

    Great speculation arose. Who was this John C. Walker?

In July, 1879, the Mishawaka ENTERPRISE published the

following article directed to the Kokomo TRIBUNE: "Will wage

a year's subscription to the ENTERPRISE that your "John C.

Walker" whose charming little poems have been such a

brilliant feature of your paper, is none other than J.W.

Riley, Indiana's rising young poet, in disguise."

    For the most part they were as entertaining as any poetry

ever written. John C. Walker wrote verse that was "The

Ginoine Ar-Tickle" which was the title of his poem in the

"Home Department" of the Kokomo Saturday TRIBUNE of November

8, 1879.

                THE GINOINE AR-TICKLE (1979)

 

          Talkin' o' poetry, - there're few men yit

          `Ats got the stuff biled down so's it'll pour

          Out sorgum-like, and keep a year and more

          -Jes' sweeter ever' time you tackle it!

          W'y all the jinglin' truck `at has ben writ

          For twenty year and better is so pore

          You caint find no sap in it any more

          `N you'd find juice in puff-balls! - AND I'D QUIT!

          What people wants is facts, I apperhend;

          And naked Natur is the thing to give

          Your writin' bottom, eh? And I contend

          `At honest work is allus bound to live.

          Now thems my views; cause you kind reecommend

          Sich poetry as that from end to end.

 

     Charles H. Philips, placed him in charge of his Kokomo

TRIBUNE column, "Home Department."

     James Whitcomb Riley knew Charles Philips, the eldest

son of Theophilus C. Philips, owner and publisher of the

Kokomo TRIBUNE from Riley's Graphics days of wandering about

Indiana. Philips's father  had been appointed postmaster of

Kokomo by President Lincoln and was a staunch Republican

as well as Editor and Owner of the Kokomo TRIBUNE. The famous

John Walker Poems eventually were all published first in The

Kokomo TRIBUNE. After the Leonainie incident, the next step

in general public awareness of Riley came through the

publication of his poetry and prose in the Kokomo TRIBUNE

where Riley took employment as Editor of the TRIBUNE's Home

Department in March 1879.

     The Kokomo TRIBUNE, at this point in its history,

was among the finest publications in the west and strived

to duplicate the quality of "magazine" journalism. Many of

the finest Hoosier writers contributed to it and it prided

itself on having "sixty" literary contributors who were the

finest writers in Indiana. "John C. Walker" soon took top

honors as the finest of them all.

   The first of Riley's poetry to the Kokomo TRIBUNE was

after Riley's contribution of the "Edgar Allan Poe" hoax

poem, "Leonainie," to the rival Kokomo DISPATCH. About a

month after this publication, Riley sent to the Kokomo

TRIBUNE his hoax of the hoax, called "Leoloony" contributed

anonymously but published by the Kokomo TRIBUNE September 1,

1877. He also wrote an anonymous parody of "Leonainie" for

the Indianapolis Saturday HERALD which was published

September 1, 1877.

     Not until January, did Riley begin his vast output of

significant poetry sent to the Kokomo TRIBUNE. It began with

Riley's tribute to Luther Benson, the temperance lecturer who

had "pulled him out of his alcoholic bout" after the

condemnation of Riley for pulling the Edgar Allan Poe hoax.

Benson had literally rescued Riley from oblivion and the

obscurity of being a public drunk. Within this time period

had come Riley's firing from his job at the Anderson DEMOCRAT

and his arrest for public intoxication in his hometown of

Greenfield.

     The beautiful kenotic poem "T.C. Philips" followed in

July, and a tribute to a child of Kokomo named after the ill-

fated poem, Leonainie, before the John C. Walker series of

poems began. Occasional anonymous poems from the pen of James

Whitcomb Riley were also published within the period 1879 and

March 19th, 1881 when the last was printed. The most

significant was a poem, "The Beetle," which was as widely

reprinted in the national press as the John C. Walker poems.

The poem suffered a title change as it began a long career of

re-publication and re-issuance and became known as the "Dusk

Song." Its refrain is:

    "O'er garden blooms

        On tides of musk,

     The beetle booms adown the glooms

        And bumps along the dusk."

     James Whitcomb Riley's friend, Dan Paine, a critic for

the Indianapolis News in August, 1879, wrote Riley, "That

infernal Beetle has been booming and bumping about my ears

all day.  The poem is just crammed with subtle beauties.  Do

you know there is as much imagery and poetry in the work you

have turned out this week as would suffice many a man, who

breaks into the magazines at a round price, for half a year.

And you are doing it for nothing." From 1877: September 1,

"Leoloony." to March 19, 1880, "Kate Kennedy Philips."

     Some were telling Riley his poetry was too good to

contribute to weekly papers, but the counsel of Myron Reed,

Riley's spiritual mentor in matters of his alcoholism and

life in general, was different. Reed encouraged Riley to

"keep" as close as possible to the people of his age and

time. They were to be the "balance" of his poetry. Reed

insisted Riley stay attuned to the country people of the

Hoosier state. Only by knowing his own people could Riley

become acquainted with himself and the well-springs of his

own poetics. Reed insisted Riley weigh his own life first and

inform it with the life of those with whom he lived.  Avoid

at all costs gratifying your desire to live in the vanity of

city literary life, Reed warned.  In the meantime, the poems

contributed to the Kokomo TRIBUNE were picked up on the

newspaper exchanges and widely reprinted.

     Riley occasionally used his own name in the "Home

Department" columns as with his poem "Tired.

 

                        TIRED (1879)

 

          "Oh I am tired!" she sighed as her billowy

            Hair she unloosed in a torrent of gold

          That rippled and fell o'er a figure as willowy,

            Graceful and fair as a goddess of old:

          Over her jewels she flung herself drearily,

            Crumpled the laces that snowed on her breast,

          Crushed with her fingers the lily that wearily

            Clung in her hair like a dove in its nest.

              -And naught but a shadowy form in the mirror

               To kneel in dumb agony down and weep near her!

          "Tired?" - of what? Could we fathom the mystery? -

            Lift up the lashes weighed down by her tears,

          And wash, with their dews one white face from her

               history,

            Set like a gem in the red rust of years?

          Nothing will rest her - unless he who died of her

            Strayed from his grave, and in place of the

               groom,

          Tipping her face, kneeling there by the side of

               her,

          Drained the old kiss to the dregs of his doom.

               -And naught but that shadowy form in the

                   mirror

                To kneel in dumb agony down and weep near

                   her!

 

     Another newspaper publishing Riley poetry was The

Indianapolis Saturday HERALD.  This was the weekly newspaper

which published "The Flying Islands of the Night" in the

"Buzz Club" series, and Riley's "Poetic Gymnastics" series.

The newspaper accepted Riley poetry from an earlier period of

time than The Indianapolis JOURNAL.  Poetry in the HERALD

began with a Jay Whit poem on June 26, 1875, "Red

Riding-Hood" and ended on December 19, 1885 with "At Last

Meeting."

     James Whitcomb Riley was a writer in prose as well as

a poet. Riley wrote news articles and editorials by the

hundreds.  Riley took newspaper assignments to report events

like other staffers. There is a record of Riley's assignment

to report on what he called a "wind fight" one time. This was

an oratorical contest. Routine assignments continued during

the days he was at the JOURNAL. Few of them are identified as

Riley's work. Many of his editorials were written for the

Indianapolis JOURNAL, which we remember was the chief

newspaper in Indiana.  If such things mould public opinion or

express it tangentially if in no other way, Riley's writing

had to be influential.  Although we cannot identify this sort

of work, we can pose that it was of the same gentle,

humanitarian and generous point of view as his other writing.

     Some mention should also be made about Riley's interest

in another media. Sound recordings were just being invented

and becoming popular in Riley's era.  Riley had planned on

releasing nine records in his own voice to the public, but

only four were issued: 1) "Out to Old Aunt Mary's," 2)

"Little Orphant Annie," 3) "The Happy Little Cripple" and 4)

"The Raggedy Man." Five other recordings were made but not

marketed: 1) "Goodbye, Jim," 2) "When the Frost is on the

Punkin," 3) "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," 4) "On the Banks of

Deer Crick" and 5) "The Rain" (it is not known which rain

poem this was to be, perhaps "Wet Weather Talk" or "A Sudden

Show." These unreleased recordings have been lost to the

history of literature.  The records appeared in 1914 and 1915

on rolls in the thick Edison style but also on the regular

Victrola variety.

 

 

              THE MEDIA FOR SPRAIVOLL'S WRITING

 

     Any artist lies imprisoned within his media of

expression. These bounds are as iron bars to genius. The best

an artist accomplishes is to ecstatically raise the language

of his or her media to its highest pitch and intensity.

     James Whitcomb Riley's media was the Nineteenth Century

"local sheet" the predecessor to today's newspaper. We have

seen the mundane operation of these organs as we traced how

the hoax poem "Leonainie" came to be published. Through most

of his life, Riley was a "newspaper poet." The one newspaper

he came to be most associated with was the Indianapolis

JOURNAL, now the Indianapolis STAR.  Riley wrote, however,

for many newspapers in many capacities.  He wrote advertising

and editorial copy as well as his more famous poetry. He also

covered news events and was assigned to special projects such

as his five-part serial on "What Our Bright College Boys Are

Doing" published during the last 1891 to January 1892.  There

is not a major Riley poem which was not first published in a

newspaper before printing in a book.

     There simply is no current reference to the poetry

published in the newspapers of the American Nineteenth

Century. The practice of placing poetry on the newspaper

front pages - of anywhere - in newspapers has long ago

vanished. Riley's media has, in short, passed into history.

Without experience with the media, it is hard to understand

its message. Nevertheless we must try if we are to have any

chance at all of understanding the Post Civil War American

scene and particularly its mood and dynamic.

     Riley was apprenticed into newspaper journalism at a

time when country journalism was intensely personal in cast

and flavor. Editors of local newspapers were vehement in

their beliefs, many of them of a political nature. Politics

caused great candid and savage debate - a product of the

great divisions in the country caused by the American Civil

War just a decade earlier in history. Elections were

especially bitter in the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876.  Many

Hoosiers refused to accept that Hayes won and called him a

"de jure" President.  No doubt some of Riley's journalistic

work was of a political nature. The newspapers of his day

were highly partisan and Riley wrote for many of them to

include their editorials.

     Riley had trouble with this. Throughout his life, Riley

had great suspicion about the political process. Remembering

the lynching incident from his young manhood, Riley was

suspicious of aroused people. Politics was also tied to

racism in Indiana in Riley's memory especially during

election times.  Greenfield's black community were Republican

and at the time the county voted basically Democrat. It was a

rare election in which Greenfield's blacks were not harassed

in some way.  In the 1872 campaign, a political speaker of

the Democrat parties, Thomas A. Hendricks, came to Greenfield

to speak for Greeley and evoked racism according to George

Knox, Greenfield's black barber as stated in his memoirs,

saying "he could stand everything but one thing and that was

the "nigger." Shortly after the black lynching in Greenfield

in 1875, in the 1876 presidential campaign, clubs were

organized, Grant and Lincoln clubs by the Republicans and

Tilden and Hendricks clubs by the Democrats. On the Monday

before the election in November, the Democrat Club held a

county rally numbering by George Knox's estimate about 25,000

and the club members gathered in Greenfield shouting things

like "Hurrah for Tilden and Hendricks!" and occasionally "God

damn the Republicans and nigger lovers." Wagons were

decorated with slogans like, "Clean the Radicals out," "Clean

the black Republicans out," "White husbands or none." George

Knox remembered a group coming into his barbershop and one

jumping up on his stove and Knox asked him to get off and was

told, "Don't give me any of your black sass." Some took

razors and cut Knox's leather straps and another kicked his

dye stand over. Knox stated, "I had gone through the army,

passed through exciting times, had experienced the quick

terror of the midnight whisper, "the enemy is upon us"

(during the Civil War in Northern service), but even on the

battle field of Mission Ridge, that bloody spot, where men

were being killed in platoons all around me, heads and legs

torn off, cannon and minie balls flying as thick as hail, at

no time did I suffer in feelings, as on that awful day."

George Knox was James Whitcomb Riley's great friend and first

employer. Riley was on his side politically.

     Riley was able to avoid the most heated of these

political conflicts by seeking to live at the soul level

where his play characters could breathe. Not until the

Benjamin Harrison campaign for the Presidency do we find

Riley personally speaking out for a candidate. Benjamin

Harrison was his man in that election largely because he was

a good personal friend.

     If pressed, Riley would not say he was either a Democrat

or Republican. To probe more deeply, Riley was asked about

his father's politics since political affiliation was often a

family matter. Reuben Riley of course had been both a

Democrat and Republican and other "splinter" parties. Once

when asked whther his father was a Democrat or Republican,

Riley replied: "I don't know, I haven't seen him since

breakfast."

     Riley hated such politicizing. Riley mentioned that he

was forced to do editorial work of this nature in a letter to

Elizabeth Kahle of August 9, 1881.

     Riley actually felt politicians were a rather comical

lot.

 

          A LOCAL POLITICIAN FROM AWAY BACK (1887)

 

Jedge is good at argyin' -

No mistake in that!

Most folks 'at takles him

He'll skin 'em like a cat!

You see, the Jedge is read up,

And b'en in politics,

Hand-in-glove, you might say,

Sence back in '56.

 

Elected to the Shurrif, first,

Then elected Clerk;

And buckled down to work;

Practised three or four terms,

Then he run for jedge -

Speechified a little 'round

And went in like a wedge!

 

     The first newspaper Riley contributed to was The

REPUBLICAN. This was a newspaper begun by T. B. Deems about

1870 in Greenfield, Indiana, and survived for approximately

three months. No copy of this newspaper survives.

     For a far longer period Riley wrote for The Greenfield

COMMERCIAL. The COMMERCIAL was begun by Amos C. Beeson in

1867. In 1870, Beeson sold this Pro-Republican newspaper to

Lionel E. Rumrill who terminated it in December, 1872. Riley

published most poetry in the Greenfield COMMERCIAL

anonymously.  One poem was a spoof of a Bret Harte style

and revolved around a girlfriend of Riley's, Lucy Atkinson.

Riley called on her as did a young jewelry salesman of

Greenfield.  Riley and the jewelry salesman did not consider

themselves rivals for the attention of Lucy because neither

saw each other at Lucy's home.  One day, Lucy sent Riley a

note to come to her home at six o'clock p.m. that evening.

Riley did so but somewhat later than six.  When Riley

arrived, he saw Lucy in a bridal dress with happy friends

around in an obvious marriage party.  A two-horse carriage

was tied at the gate ready to take the married couple off.

The woman was Lucy. Riley had been invited to a surprise

wedding of his girlfriend to another man.

     To commemorate this occasion, Riley wrote a poem in the

style of Bret Harte's "Truthful James." It was published in

The Greenfield COMMERCIAL on January 14, 1871 in "The Poet's

Corner" section of that newspaper. The name of the poet was

listed as Brat Heart.

 

                    AN UNEXPECTED RESULT

 

          Of late I'm becoming persuaded to smile

          At some things turning out, once-in-awhile;

          In the way that they do! I'll aim to explain,

          In order to make my meaning more plain,

          In the following crude vernacular strain:

 

          "Never go back on a woman, John!

          Unless you think she's a drawin' you on."

 

          "Drawing me on! Now look here, Dick

          Show me the girl that can do that trick

          Before you venture on calling me `sick."!

          It's all set up - she wants to tell

          Me "something" to-night - now look here - well -

          I'm going to cut her - I want you to see

          How much more she thinks of me

          Than of that damned jeweler - how'll that be?"

          "Be? - mighty bad, for a woman to fix

          And dress and get ready by half-past six,

          Don't play off on her, John! If you can,

          Get ready and go! act like a man -

          Some other time you can work this plan!

          And besides that you want to know

          What she wants by begging you so

          To come there early.  If I were you

          I'd marry that woman, that's what I'd do,

          As certain as one and one make two!

          Or ain't you much on the marry now?

          Well, she's a mighty fat take anyhow!"

 

          "Well now, you can bet she ain't so slow,

          Hang it! I won't play off on her so!

          Where's my overcoat? I'm going to go!

          And you needn't sit up till I come in,

          For I am right on the `woo' and the `win!'"

 

          "All right, John, my bully old brick!

          Play it right fine, and talk mighty slick,

          Good night, success to you!"

 

                                       "Good night, Dick!"

 

          "Not back a'ready! Why, what's up now?

          Going to go back on it? What's the row?

          Are you going crazy - Ouch! look here, say,

          Don't step on my corns in that lubberly way!

          You're the cussedest fool 'at I've seen today!"

 

          "Well, I reckon I am! Say, Dick, look here -

          Come here to the window and it will appear

          To you in a stronger light - I'm a fool,

          And a damned one too! Oh, I'm perfectly cool!

          I mostly resemble what's most like a mule.

          Don' you see 'em turning the corner there?

          See those carriages? That with the pair

          Of grays hitched to it? The happy twain

          Who sit  inside, it is very plain,

          Are married and going off on the next train!"

 

          "Well, what of that?"

 

                                "Why, that's the girl I

          kindly consented not `whirl

          For your sweet sake - and I'll defer

          Stating particulars - but for her,

          She may go to hell with her jew - el - er!"

 

          Of late I'm growing persuaded to smile

          At some things turning out once-in-awhile,

          In the way that they do.  I've tried to explain,

          In order to make my meaning more plain,

          In what some may term a "sarcastic vein."

 

     Toward its last days Riley was the COMMERCIAL's local

editor, solicitor and writer of advertisements. He filled the

literary department with poetry and astonished the editor and

public as well with advertisements like the following:

 

      Write me a rhyme of the present time;

      And the poet thus begun:

      A cheap bazaar for a good cigar

      Is the store of Carr and Son."

 

    The wares of the Mr. George Dove's shoe shop were

presented this way:

 

      "It's my opinion," said Farmer Gray,

       As he drove in town one Christmas day,

       `Of all the gifts there's none that suits

       A boy as well as a pair of boots.'

       So he drove to Dove's and made the purchase."

 

       "O where - tell me where

        Shall I buy my winter ware?

        And a voice answered, There!

        At the store of Hart and Thayer,

        Where

        They deal so fair

        And square

        You'll be tickled, I'll declare."

 

    A year and half after his mother's death, Riley sent a

poem to his brother John, then living in Indianapolis, to see

if his brother could get it published. John was able to do so

at the Indianapolis Saturday MIRROR but only after recopying

because Riley's penmanship was very bad. Riley sent this poem

to his brother on February 9th and awaited expectantly until

the first, "Man's Devotion," was published on March 30th.

Riley used the pen name Jay Whit but the newspaper mistakenly

printed it as "Jay White."

    Again Riley sent poetry in. Riley drove himself crazy

after sending "A Ballad" to the Mirror. He wrote his brother

"This suspense is terrible!  - daily I may be seen with

solemn expression following the mail-bag from the depot, as

though' it were some dear-little-fat-corps of a relative who

had perhaps remember me in his will- but alas!... "

      When the poem "A Ballad" was finally published, it was

edited and Riley was heartsick. Prepositions and articles

were changed. Riley saw these as insults to the "ballad

style." "It hurts me more that the poem was my favorite, and

I had built an airy castle for it!" he said.

      Riley's early contributions to this newspaper were

thus: 1872: March 30, "Man's Devotion" by Jay White (sic);

April 13, "A Mockery" by Jay Whit; "Flames and Ashes" by Jay

Whit; May 11, "A Ballad" anonymous; May 25, "Johnny" by Jay

Whit.

     After the Greenfield COMMERCIAL ceased operation, many

of Riley's writings then appeared in the older Greenfield

newspaper, The Hancock DEMOCRAT. The reason was one of his

best loafing buddies was Almon Keefer, several years his

elder, but a compositor at that newspaper.  Keefer had been

in Riley's father's Civil War unit and was a bachelor

himself. The Hancock DEMOCRAT is a great source of

information about the writings and career of James Whitcomb

Riley. This is the newspaper, for example, which published

Riley's obituary of Nellie Millikan Cooley and his poetry to

her. An Editor of the DEMOCRAT, John Mitchell, was also a

close Riley friend and companionable social alcoholic with an

arrest for public intoxication in Greenfield close to

the time of Riley's own in his younger years.

     Another of the first newspapers publishing Riley poetry

was the Greenfield NEWS. Riley once said when he covered an

event for the NEWS, it became a "Hartpence local." This

referred to William Hartpence, a Civil War veteran who

returned to Greenfield in December, 1874, purchased the plant

of the Greenfield NEWS, and published it as a Republican

weekly newspaper to which Riley contributed.  The Greenfield

NEWS began in 1874 under the ownership of Will T. Walker and

Lionel E. Rumrill. A year later Walter Hartpence purchased

the newspaper and continued it until the NEWS ceased

publication in the Spring, 1875. Riley felt responsible since

he was one of the few who contributed to the doomed

newspaper.

     Riley's efforts at the Greenfield NEWS were recounted by

William Hartpence as follows: "When I took possession of the

NEWS, Riley was contributing a serial bit of fiction,

entitled "Babie McDowell." This I continued for some weeks,

when needing space for increased advertising, by my

direction, Riley dexterously "killed" his principal

characters and ended the story. I preserved the file of the

NEWS very carefully and they are neatly bound in first-calls

style in marbled board full size of page. They show Riley's

name at the head of the local department of the paper.  This

volume is now more carefully than ever preserved by my son.

Bert E. Hartpence, Harrison, Ohio.

    My knowledge of James Whitcomb Riley began in 1861 when

I was a printer in the Hancock DEMOCRAT office, that was at

that time housed in a little brick annex on the west side of

the old courthouse in Greenfield.  "Jim" as everybody called

him until he  came into fame, was then a yellow-haired,

freckled faced boy of the normal type, with a predilection

for chewing tobacco, which, I think, he inherited from his

father, Reuben A. Riley."

     The NEWS he was writing for part time and without pay

folded in the Spring 1875. Riley celebrated the event by

joining company with a friend, Oliver Moore, to make a

circuit as "Delineator and Caricaturist" shortly afterward.

This attempt to start an entertainment career, bombed as

otherwise related.

     As an older man, Riley recalled his first serious

journalistic writing as occurring after his return from the

"medicine show" escape from his hometown. The account appears

in the Biographical Edition of his poetry and was ostensibly

edited by his nephew, Edmund Eitel:

     "...he became the local editor of his home paper (The

Greenfield NEWS) and in a few months "strangled the little

thing into a change of ownership." The new proprietor

transferred him to the literary department and the latter,

not knowing what else to put in the space allotted him,

filled it with verse. But there was not room in his

department for all he produced, so he began, timidly, to

offer his poetic wares in foreign markets. The editor of The

Indianapolis MIRROR accepted two or three shorter verses but

in doing so suggested that in the future he try prose.  Being

but a humble beginner, Riley harkened to the advice,

whereupon the editor made a further suggestion; this time