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Indiana Authors and their books, 1816-1980.
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page: 270[View Page: 270]

RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB: 1849-1916.

To some hundreds of thousands who still read and enjoy his verse, James Whitcomb Riley is Indiana . No American poet–those patriarchs of New England included–has thus far caught the popular fancy, has thus far enjoyed the voluntary following, that was and is his.

The beginnings of James Whitcomb Riley were auspicious enough, although he showed very little of what biographers of his day liked to call "early promise." He was born in Greenfield, Ind., on Oct. 7, 1849, (probably, although biographers differ as to the year), the son of Reubin A. and Elizabeth Riley. His father was a reasonably prosperous small town lawyer. He was named for an Indiana governor and he attended the local schools, where he fortunately had a teacher who was interested in both the reading and writing of poetry. The teacher was Lee O. Harris, who, although his own efforts at verse brought him no fame, was credited by Riley with having been a strong influence. Riley apparently had his first poem published in the GREENFIELD COMMERCIAL in the fall of 1870. Once out of the school, however, he began a rather aimless existence.

For a short time he read law in his father's office, without hope, interest or success–and his father, probably noting his very apparent incapacity, seems to have given at least tacit consent to his defection. Thereupon, James Whitcomb took up sign-painting, which ranked as a profession only slightly above that of minstrel man or medicine show spieler in that day. Perfecting himself in that trade he engaged as advance agent and display advertising specialist (in the barn-side and back fence media) for a wagon-show.

Shortly, however, he found an outlet for his talent for versifying, partially discovered in his school days. The wagon-show had a musical department, topical songs were in vogue, and Riley began to write their lyrics. In 1872 he sent several poems to the Indianapolis SATURDAY MIRROR, a literary weekly. These were published through March, April and May over the signature "Jay Whit." In 1873, only twenty-four years old but a widely traveled man of the world, he returned to Greenfield .

His literary experience and his travels gave him a good background for journalism, and he became an employee of one of the local papers.

He continued his contributions to Indianapolis papers and presently, beginning to make use of his experience in publicity, he wrote some advertising jingles for the GREENFIELD NEWS. He still accepted a sign-painting order occasionally, and one of the jingles advertised this service.

Next move was to the ANDERSON DEMOCRAT in April, 1877. While working on that paper he wrote a poem, "Leonainie," in the style of, and signed with the initials of, Edgar Allan Poe. He sent it to the KOKOMO DISPATCH with a note to the effect that it had been discovered on the flyleaf of an old dictionary. Many critics accepted it as an unknown Poe production, and quite a few of them maintained their pronouncements correct even after Riley had admitted his authorship. The ANDERSON DEMOCRAT, horrified (according to tradition) at its employee's lapse of literary integrity, cast him out; but the INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL, which knew a good newspaperman when it saw one, hired him, and there he stayed from 1877 to 1885.

There were routine assignments on the JOURNAL, but there was also a space to be filled with poetry and Riley soon began to take far more than his share of these columns. He had contributed rather widely during the preceding two or three years, but in 1878, encouraged by a welcome in Indianapolis , his greatest period of production began. His first appearance in a periodical of national circulation is thought to have been with the poem "A Destiny" in the April, 1875, issue of HEARTH AND HOME. Possibly because all of his energies were now devoted to filling the JOURNAL and other papers in Indianapolis and elsewhere with poems, letters and sketches over a variety of pseudonyms, there was little further contribution to periodicals until the middle Eighties.

His first book of collected poems, The Ole Swimmin' page: 271[View Page 271] Hole, and "Leven More Poems, by Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone [James Whitcomb Riley], did not inspire any publisher with enthusiasm, but George C. Hitt, business manager of the INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL and Riley together financed its publication. The book was an immediate success, and by his venturesome spirit Mr. Hitt earned the eternal gratitude of all Hoosiers and a good slice of other North Americans as well.

As a craftsman Riley was indefatigable, polishing and repolishing until his verse was near technical perfection. In his great talent for the accurate hearing and the true recording of dialect he was unsurpassed in his time. His Hoosier was perfection itself–most of us who were reared in Indiana , unless we are constantly alert, find ourselves lapsing into recognizable, if modified, Rileyesque–but much of his dialect is also recognizable as careless Americana of almost any state. Perhaps it was this infallible ear for everyday speech which is most accountable for Riley's enormous popularity: the Raggedy Man was obviously everyone's odd-job man; the little boy who reported upon the arrival of his grandmother lived down the street from almost any reader.

There were many sides to James Whitcomb Riley. To the children to whom he read he was a benevolent old gentleman (he was always old to them, even though he died at sixty-seven, because children naturally believed that anyone who spoke so nearly their own language must of necessity be very old or very young and no one very young could possibly support that vast expanse of white waistcoat, that magnificent watch chain). To those eiders who attended his evening programs he was Art, but an Art singularly understandable. To his contemporaries in letters he was a gay and wonderful companion. Many an Eastern audience, attending his recitals to see what sort of rustic character wrote that backwoods verse, was astonished to find that Riley was urbanity itself, with a polished good taste which met even the rigid standards of Boston. Riley was also given an honorary A.M. degree by Yale University.

James Whitcomb Riley progressed rapidly, and apparently easily, from an object of regard to an object of something very like worship. No Indiana school-child of 1900-1910 (the period in which he read his works most widely in Indiana schools) is likely ever to forget the hushed awe with which his teacher introduced Riley when he stopped in to deliver "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphant Annie" to the deeply impressed, if not always fully understanding, young audience.

Long before his sixtieth birthday Riley's Lockerbie Street residence in Indianapolis had become a mecca where small, starched Indianapolis boys and girls were taken to be photographed on the poet's knee as he recited to them. Before his birthdate was four score years past, both the Lockerbie Street house and his birthplace were memorials, visited by more admirers than are the shrines of most ex-presidents.

Riley never married. He enjoyed the company of women, but his verse, his correspondence, his reading and conversation with his friends filled his life completely. His (perhaps abstract) liking for children, rather than having been concentrated on a few of his own, was showered upon a nation of them.

Riley died, one of America's most widely known literary figures, on July 22, 1916, at the age of sixty-six.

Information from Burke and Howe–American Authors and Books, 1640-1940; Russo–A Bibliography of James Whitcomb Riley; and Dickey–Youth of James Whitcomb Riley.

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