JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.COM
"Where we celebrate the child in us all"
At one time, when America honored her writers far more than today, there was the Western Writer's Association. This group of writers shared moments together and joys and frustrations of being writers far from the Eastern cities.. James Whitcomb Riley was a committed member of this group. Mr. Riley called himself, "the first of fifteen or so Vice Presidents of the Association." During James Whitcomb Riley's time, the group held an annual meeting in June at Winona Lake, Indiana. Few writers were actually able to afford to attend the meetings but James Whitcomb Riley always did.
We do have a record of one of those meetings from the account of Clara E. Laughlin, who published a volume entitled, "James Whitcomb Riley - Reminiscences" in 1916, the year of Riley's death. Miss Laughlin was herself a writer with credits to include "The Work-a-Day Girl," ""Everybody's Birthright," "The Penny Philanthropist," "The Gleaner," "Everybody's Lonesome," "Divided," "The Lady in Gray," "When Joy Begins," and "The Evolution of a Girl's Ideal." Perhaps these books are not so well known but they do indicate by their titles the kinds of books which were read at the turn of the Twentieth Century in America.
Miss Laughlin was only eighteen when she made the acquaintance of James Whitcomb Riley. She was struggling to edit the literary department of a Chicago weekly on a tiny allowance for material. She wanted to feature James Whitcomb Riley so by dint of much scraping here and there, she amassed the enormous sum of twenty-five dollars. She then wrote to Mr. Riley whom she did not know requesting "Twenty five dollars worth of your best poetry."
Riley was at the height of his popularity but he replied promptly and in a friendly manner. He always insisted on proof-reading his material, so correspondence between the two grew from that December. Miss Laughlin praised the poet which pleased him so that he invited her in June to the annual sessions of the Western Writers Association at Winona Lake, Indiana.
The brash Miss Laughlin accepted the riley invitation and undertook the three and a half hour train ride from Chicago. When she arrived, Riley was at the train station apparently to meet someone, but Miss Laughlin did not dream she was the one, nor did Riley. She hurried to the Hotel where Mr. Frank Marshall had thoughtfully waited to be her supper companion. When Riley appeared, after scanning the register and finding that she had arrived, he demanded, "Where are your corkscrew curls?" He was completely dumbfounded by her youth. He was referring to the long curl's young girls wore at the time. He immediately assigned her as a chaperone an older lady named Mrs. Whipple.
To amuse themselves at the Western Writers Association, the participants would take trips to Warsaw, two miles away, and sit on the courthouse yard playing mumbledy-peg at which James Whitcomb Riley was very dexterous. This was a game played with a pocket knife, the blade of was aimed at a peg in the ground. The group was also fond of eating watermelon at the side of the road. Even James Whitcomb Riley could not look dignified doing this; and it seemed that someone usually appeared from nowhere and recognized the poet.
While playing this game, someone came up to Riley and insisted on telling a Riley story from back in the days when Riley did store sign painting. The man insisted he saw Riley was painting with kid gloves on. "He's a pearl-gray ass!" Riley fumed. "A man couldn't paint with kid gloves on!"
Usually in the evenings at Winona Lake, groups of six or so would gather in the hotel's "Ordinary," a small room off the dining room where they ate cheese and crackers, pickles, sweet chocolates and cold tea.
The time Miss Laughlin was there, James Whitcomb Riley led a discussion on the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Riley's mood was the dominating one. Riley mentioned his admiration for Elizabeth Barrett Browning and considered her mind the most exquisite of any writer since Shakespeare. He said that in going to the depths of one great emotion, one reaches a point of sympathetic understanding where all profound emotions become comprehensible. To illustrate this, he read, "Bianca Among the Nightingales." Riley commented, "Below a certain depth, all suffering is sympathetic"