The maturity of James Whitcomb Riley; fortune's way with the poet in the prime of life and after

Foreword

The author's first volume — The Youth of James Whitcomb Riley — according to friendly reviewers, has more than biographic value. 'It is almost the story of the youth of Indiana/' wrote a generous critic, "or the story of our great Middle West. Impelled by inherent individualism, the central figure rises from primitive beginnings, and, catching at apparently trivial, haphazard and often serio-comic opportunities, lifts itself in obedience to some secret spring of power within, and emerging at last into a gracious maturity, presents the spectacle of a strong, admirable personality, well worth the careful study and whole-hearted approval of a critical world."

This reviewer fittingly termed the story "Eiley the Boy." And so this story of the poet's maturity may be termed Riley the Man, and as such is offered to a friendly public with the enduring gratitude of

The Author.

Heart of the Highlands Nashville, Indiana, June, 1922.

Contents

Chapter Page

I Early Ventures on the Platform . 1

II Distinction on Weekly Papers . . 23

Chapter I Eauly Ventures On The Platform

AS shown in The Youth of James Whitcomb Riley the poet had a clear vision of his mission as a writer of verse. In connection with that mission, his early days revealed another phase of his future, foretold his genius as a public entertainer.

It was the third scene in the fourth act — a railroad station at Shrewsbury Bend. To the right is an unpainted shed with a broad platform around it, a door at the side, and a window in front. There is a clump of shrubs near a tree on the left. A railroad track crosses at the rear, and back of it in perspective is a view of Shrewsbury River in the moonlight. There is a switch with a red lantern and a coat hanging on it; a signal lamp and post beside it, and there are numerous packages on the platform when the scene opens. The Signal Man, whistling as he works, is v,^heeling a barrel toward the shed when a beautiful girl of nineteen steps into the moonlight and seats herself beside the tree. She has fled from her lover at Long Branch a few miles distant, and is intent on catching a train for New York, but there is no train till morning. Moved by her distress, the Signal Man decides to aid her, so, after storing the packages, conceals her in the station shed for the night. Locking the door safely, he goes to the switch, puts on his coat and looks at his watch. The ''Night Express" from New York is due in ten minutes. He walks around the shed with his lantern, goes to the track again, looks up and down the shining rails, lights his pipe, and then walks off to his shanty in the village.

Then things begin to happen: A friend of the young woman (a veteran of the late Civil War), puts in an appearance, is seized by a robber and bound with a rope to the railroad track — then the faint whistle of the locomotive and the rumble of the oncoming train — the frantic fright of the young woman, who batters down the shed door with an ax and rescues her friend in the glare of the headlight as the **Express'' roars by.

Such, inadequately outlined, is a scene from Augustin Daly's famous old play. Under the Gaslight, a picturesque drama of life and love ''in these times" — the times being the early 'seventies of the last century. The play had been booked for a one-night stand at White's Hall, Marion, Indiana. For a week it had been heralded as "the great New York sensation," with a railroad scene guaranteed to raise the audience "to the highest pitch of excitement."

Then a calamity befell : the Signal Man of the company was taken ill! What was to be done? Riley's friends, knowing his ability, suggested him to the manager, and he was asked to play the part. He consented with the understanding that he be allowed to portray character as he conceived it. Discovering that the "property" coat was not realistic, he borrowed one from a local "section man"; also a pair of wrinlded boots and a "run-down" hat. Riley was twenty-three at this time, but in the guise of the switchman he looked sixty. Since his dialogue was with the young woman only, he gave her the cue for reply by a simple and self-designed turn of the index finger, which she alone understood, thus affording him opportunity to introduce features not in the original text. His lines were brief, but as he went on improvising here and there, talking naturally as an old man would talk, the audience listened with rapt attention, and when at last, muttering and smiling deliciously to himself, he trudged off the stage, the hall grew stormy with applause.

Quite early in his young manhood Riley was aflame with the desire to be an actor, just as Louisa Alcott was "violently attacked" by the same mania. With slight change in his purpose, the desire led him on through struggles and failures to success as a public reader. When but six years old, his mimicry often shocked his parents, for he frequently displayed it at the wrong time. A year or so later his mother listened in amazement to his recital of the chatter of a strolling Bohemian, who was picking up a living on the street with a cage of trained canaries.

In April, 1870, Riley made quite a hit as Charles Fenton in T oodles, but when, two or three years later, his success as Grandfather Whitehead in The Chimney Comer, and Troubled Tom in A Child of Waterloo, became the talk of the town, he began to dream of a wider field. A friend virrote him from the West, "a tragi-comic friend," said Riley, "who wore a black

4 JAMES WHITCOMB KILEY

frock-coat to look like Hamlet. He had the stage fever as I had, but he also had what I lacked — ^the money to reconnoiter in new fields." According to the friend, there were two flattering prospects. In the first, Riley might star in Second Comedy on an Omaha circuit. The second was a probable engagement at the Olympic Theater, St. Louis, at fifteen dollars a week. "I really believe,'' said Riley, "that I could have made good in St. Louis, but it soon turned out that I had the wrong pig by the ear."

One Saturday evening the Harry Gilbert Company entertained a Greenfield audience, in "the very laughable farce, The Rough Diamond." The company was assisted by "well-known local talent," including Captain Lee Harris and J. W. Riley. Here was Riley's first experience with that autocrat, the stage manager. "I once thought I could be an actor," was his comment twenty years later, "but I found they would not let me. For instance, traditions of the stage would never permit me to stand with my hands in my pockets. I thought there were exceptions. Whenever I saw a chance to do some good acting, something that would be natural, the autocrat would scream out, 'Here! that's not the way to do that! You come in at this entrance; you stand there; you do this way, and that way.' Being always in hot water at rehearsals, I found it impossible to be natural at the performance. My heart was not in it. It was all on a false basis. Sometimes I would talk back. *Na man ever said that that way/ I would retort. *It is not truthful, and it will not go.' 'No matter,' returned the autocrat, 'you do it the way I tell you. I've got to look out for the proper effect.' I soon saw they would not let me be an actor. An actor, according to the old story of Peg Woffington, really personates, which your mere man of the stage never does. A grain less may be good speaking, fine preaching, high ranting, and eloquent reciting, but Fll he hanged if it's acting/'

One property man's advice, however, was not forgotten. "Say, Riley,'' he said at a rehearsal, "you have a trade, haven't you? You can make two or three dollars a day, I suppose." Riley told him that he could. "See here," said he, "why waste time in failure on the stage? Stick to your trade. You do not know it, but there are people in this company working for nothing. Half the time none of us get our pay. Take my advice and go back to your trade." Riley took the advice ; he quit the company ; for years he painted signs for a living. Nevertheless he loved the members of the dramatic profession. "They are big-hearted people, charitable and noble," said he.

The poet's debt to the stage was noteworthy, and it was always gratefully remembered, but the memories were of the days when he painted the scenery for the Greenfield Dramatic Club and acted after his own fashion. It was his interest in the stage that led him to think about the relation of a character to those who should hear that character speak. Thoughts should not be foreign to a character if they were to impress the audience. The scene and the words must harmonize. Soon he discovered that what an author writes must be in concord with the reader's knowledge of the facts. He gained a local reputation by reciting "The Vagabonds," "The Village Blacksmith," and other selections at "modest little gatherings" and home concerts, "but," to quote his own words, "very soon

I was up a stump." He found in reading a poem or reciting a story from some book, that he could not do it well because it was not naturally written. He tried to mend the faulty lines but soon found that would not work. The difficulty suggested two questions : First, How can you express a thought naturally unless it is phrased naturally? And second. Why not write something yourself and see whether it will take? Answering the second question he wrote several dialect poems, but for some time was careful not to claim them as his own, under the impression that there was a prejudice against home-grown poets. He avoided the singsong delivery and spoke his lines as if they were spontaneous statements of facts. "Here is a selection," he would say to the audience, when about to recite one of his own verses, "that I found in a wornout newspaper,'' and "Here is another from a magazine," and so on. Whenever a poem made a hit he saved it, improved it, and added it to his permanent list — and when there were no signs of approval he "buried the production." He was not then vnriting for publication. To quote him again, he "never expected to see in print one half of what he wrote." In due time he had the courage to acknowledge the authorship of his poems. It was the familiar experiment of Robert Burns — "trying a poem on the public to see if it would take."

"How did I become a poet?" Riley smiled at his interviewer. "I just drifted into it through the natural course of events. I wanted to be an actor — ^had a vdld craving for the stage — but that's a mighty rocky road to travel. The nearest thing in that line I could do was to give public readings. Now, there is plenty of good elocutionary talent, but the people soon tire of the regular selections. So I concluded it might be a taking thing to have an original program.

*Then I took part in the blue ribbon movement," Riley continued; "wrote temperance poems and gave temperance entertainments in company with other speakers. One of my best was the story of a reformed saloonkeeper, who was bothered by the women who prayed in front of his house. He shut himself in and drank to delirium, and was finally rescued by a veiled lady — ^his wife in disguise — who prayed before his door day after day. No, I never published the poems ; I was not publishing in those days."

In his *'Buzz Club Papers," 1878, Riley in the guise of "Mr. Bryce," set down his introductory remarks when reading an original poem in Greenfield — a memory it was of the charming effect produced on the members of a local lodge. " 1 lay no claim to that immortal gift of song,' " said Mr. Bryce, " 'yet I trust that what I shall offer you to-night may serve at least the purpose for which it is designed, namely, that of pleasing rather as a sketch of character than as a work of art. Although I feel that it falls short of the requirements of strict imitation, it was projected in that spirit, and weak as it is, I must present it, reserving hov/ever the right to claim it as my own in case the model remains undiscovered.*

"With this little whiff of pleasantry," runs the account in the "Club Papers," "Mr. Bryce bowed his smiling face an instant from sight. Then lifted it again, grown old and wrinkled as by enchantment, and in a voice gro\vn husky as with age, recited with lifelike simplicity the homely romance of Tarmer

Whipple — Bachelor/ " The poem was received with an outburst of genuine enthusiasm.

Riley's dream of being an actor faded, but there remained the hope of success on the platform. He was his own master in the interpretation of his poems — no autocrats in his path — just dark days — ^failures — ^then sunlight — and triumph.

"Dickens is giving a series of farewell readings in England, which attract attention beyond all precedent. People go from town to town in the vain hope of getting seats before they are sold." This news item Riley read in the Greenfield Commercial when he was twenty years old. It served to clinch some remarks by Tom Snow, the "Greenfield Socrates'' who had taught Riley to love Dickens. The old Shoemaker had dreams of a day when Riley would impersonate some of Dickens' characters. "You want to be an actor," he had said, looking up to Riley from his bench; "Dickens is an actor; he is as successful on the boards as he is between them. No greater actor in England ; I do not except Macready. Dickens reads from his own books, Macready from Shakespeare ; why not Riley from Dickens?" Dickens had gone to the theater nearly every night for three years to study acting. According to the Shoemaker, the novelist had been astoundingly successful in readings from the Carol, the Chimes and Pickwick — successful because he was a great actor.

Riley was deeply impressed and Dickens at once became his platform inspiration, just as Longfellow became his patron saint in poetry. He began to impersonate rustic characters; to assume the name of Jones or Smith and invent a family of relatives and attach to them various characteristics — ^virtues and vices.

The summer of 1874 marked Riley's first appearance as a sole performer. It was at Monrovia, Morgan County, Indiana, then a lively little place of four hundred inhabitants. '1 picked out a village far from home," he said, "so that if I failed nobody would hear of it. By the almanac I was twenty-five, but as a booster of entertainments, callow as celery in a tile. Still sticking to my trade, I was hanging round a paint shop in Mooresville. When business was dull I loafed at the photograph gallery and wrote articles for the Mooresville Herald, Sometimes the Herald was out of space; then I just loafed around the gallery. The elocution bee was buzzing in my bonnet, and having created a furor by reciting to a few friends in a parlor one night, I concluded to cut loose and try it alone. Nobody would know me over there in the cross-roads village, and I fancied that I might make quite a hit as The Greatest Imitator and Caricaturist of the Age. So I rolled up some paint brushes in long sheets of white paper from the Herald ofiice, borrowed a hat and a guitar, threw a light overcoat over my arm, and like Obidah, the son of Abensina, went forward to see the hills rising before me. I remember that my overcoat was rather shabby, but by turning it wrong-side out the lining gave it a tolerable appearance, as it hung on my arm. After walking a short distance, the hack came along, an old covered quailtrap that plied between the towns. I gave the driver forty cents and about noon he landed me safely at the little tavern in Monrovia."

It was Tuesday. After dinner Riley sought out the trustees who promptly promised him their "meetinghouse'' for an entertainment Wednesday evening. Returning to the tavern, he painted hand-bills and a few large posters with his name in big red letters at the top. One poster displayed the word Comedian, and was illustrated with a picture of a fat man holding his sides and laughing, presumably, at the comedian's witticisms. "Judging from the band of children that followed Riley as he tacked up his bills," said the Monrovian marshal many years after, "one would have thought he was the biggest man in town — and he was"

It was a windy afternoon and the bill-posting had been disagreeable business, but Riley was happy. In those days it did not take much to make him happy, or miserable either. "In the shank of the evening" he was sitting in front of the tavern, feeling that he had earned his night's rest, when a tall, lank man approached him.

''You're the fellow that's goin' to give the show?" he asked.

"A literary entertainment," replied Riley. He did not like to have it called a show.

"Your hand-bills stuck up round town?" asked the man.

"Yes, sir — ^my posters," returned Riley.

"Well, you can't have the church ; the trustees didn't know you wuz a comedian."

This made Riley feel, he said, as if he had been caught stealing. He tried to make the lanky gentleman understand that he wasn't going to cut "monkeyshines," and that he would not injure the people morally. In vain he pleaded; no show of that sort in "our church" — and that settled it.

Old Schoolhouse at Monrovia — now a Sawmill — Scene of the Poet' FiKST Public Reading

The Greenfield Adelphian Club and Band Wagon — 1874

The next place for the entertainment was the schoolhouse, and this was promised for Thursday evening. Wednesday morning Riley distributed revised hand-bills. This time there were not so many *'curly-cues" on them, nor did he whistle and sing as he had done the day before. He began to feel as if the whole venture would "fizzle." In the afternoon he was tuning his guitar and practising his songs, when a stranger knocked at his door.

"You are the showman, are you?'' he asked.

"Yes, sir," was the prompt answer. Riley was not so particular about it being called a literary entertainment as he had been the day before.

"Well," said the man, "you'll have to pay a license before you can sell tickets."

"How much is the license?"

"Two dollars."

Riley had but a dollar left. The admission was to be ten cents and feeling certain the receipts would not cover the expenses, Riley quickly decided to make it a free show. So he hurried a third time over town and painted on the posters — Admission Free.

When night came the little schoolhouse was full — full of noise and disappointment. "It was a crowd of thoughtless children," to quote again the town marshal, "the ragtag and bobtail of the neighborhood, and a gang of rough fellows from Adams Township, who happened to ride to town that night." The "little sprinkling" of men and women who frowned on the disorder did not count.

Interspersing his comic selections with such musical favorites as "Kathleen Mavourneen" and "Silver This* tie," Riley strove to gain a respectable hearing, to* make his audience respond, the while his own heart was breaking. The response to 'The Mocking Bird" with his own variations was a sickening jumble of hisses and cat-calls. The effect on him is indescribable. His own words give a glimpse of his agony: 'The groans of confusion," said he, "were blotched and patched with scraps of sound torn from tunes that demons dreamed. For the moment I thought I would break down, but keeping a stiff under-lip upside down, as a brother actor once admonished me, I stuck to it and finished my program with Tulling Hard against the Stream.' "

As Riley sat down, the village blacksmith rose: "You fellows," he said abruptly, "have had your fun with this young man and I think youVe hurt his feelings. He has done his best to please you, and he has given us a pretty good show. I move we pass the hat." Dropping two hits in for good luck, he passed his hat through the crowd himself. This little act of approval touched Riley tenderly; it was a kindhearted crowd after all, and he smiled — "as the sun smiles through the mists of morning."

The blacksmith had his own way of referring to the collection. "When I tell you what was in that hat," he once groaned, "it makes me want to roll my overalls up above my knees and kick that gang from Monrovia to Mud Creek. There was everything in it — beans and pebbles, nails and screws, tobacco quids, buttons, pieces of a door-knob and a wishbone^ — and money? — just forty-eight cents."

The blacksmith also spoke of the effect on Riley. "There are some feelings," he said, "that just have to be let alone; they have to describe themselves. It seemed to me that Riley went to his room as if begging his own pardon for having been born a man instead of a dog. The next morning he rolled up his paint brushes and his guitar and leaving his overcoat as security for his board bill plodded his weary way back to Mooresville/'

For Riley it was Black Friday. Four days before, the scenery had been beautiful — ^the growing corn, the orchards, the beech and walnut groves, and the old mill. Now things were dark and dreary. *1 remember," said he, *'that the moaning of a dove across a stubble field was ineffably sad. It was like the yearning cry of a long-lost love. Although the sun was shining, the weather seemed dispiriting. It was noon when I came in sight of Mooresville, yet the church spires seemed to peer through a coming darkness."

Monrovia saw Riley no more. "It would be fine," he said, when at the summit of his platform triumphs, "to spend a day at the little brown boarding-house under its duck-bill roof. I would like to see the old couple who kept it, fiying about to prepare the spare room for me and an extra place at the table. I would like to ask them where they hung my overcoat. But I can't go back to Monrovia, and besides I can't read Tarmer Whipple' and Tradin' Joe' any better now than I did then."

"When Fate desires a great success, she sends her chosen one failure," some one observes. "So she sent failure to Sol Smith Russell," said Riley, "and Joseph Jefferson, and Mary Anderson. Russell gave an entertainment over in Illinois, and the boys drove him to the river. Jefferson when a boy came with a poor, little itinerant troupe to an Indiana town. The players could not pay the license for the opera house. So they called their play a concert and gave it in an empty pork house, little Joe singing comic songs by the light of a tallow candle. Mary Anderson had always seen the stage across the footlights. It was the most glittering, romantic place in the world. But when she saw it from the alley entrance, with just one dingy gas-jet burning in the center, the romance turned to blank despair, and she trudged home through the rain to hide herself and find relief in tears. It is all very well,'* Riley concluded, "for the people to laugh at our expense, but there are not so many comic songs in a pork-house entertainment as they think. No more Monrovia in mine!''

Riley returned to Greenfield, knowing all sorts of secrets and never telling them. Although he avoided reference to Monrovia, he did not forego his ambition. Accordingly he hung out his sign in front of his shop : Fancy Painter, Delineator and Caricaturist.

In 1875, having recovered from the shock at Monrovia, the Delineator and Caricaturist was persuaded to tempt fortune again. This time he did not do his own boosting but had a manager beat the drum. Riley thought it should be a little tour through the "pennyroyal circuit" of Central Indiana. The manager had his eye on the big towns. So, for a beginning, they chose Anderson, Lebanon and Crawfordsville. Riley opposed the "big towns" because he had nothing to wear. To ease his mind on that score, the manager went his security for a fine black suit and a highcrov/ned black hat. The bills were printed in a neighboring tovni to keep the details of the tour a secret from the home-folks. One bill, a yard long, ran as follows :

RILEY

THE

AUTHOR,

HUMORIST

AND

REGIT ATIONIST!

Will give one of his

NEW AND

original

Entertainments !

at

Anderson, Saturday Evening, July 3 (1875)

The Programme will consist of Selections,

HUMOROUS AND PATHETIC,

From our best writers, together with

ORIGINAL RECITATIONS,

character sketches and

POPULAR BALLADS.

This Young and Talented Artist is particularly pleasing and happy in everything he attempts, having a keen appreciation of the Mirthful Side of LIFE, alloyed with a fine Poetic Sense. He is a True Student of

THE GREAT MASTER— NATURE.

His powers of Mimicry are free from all the strain of rant and the mock heroic. Easy, graceful, thoroughly at "home," he holds his throne, the rostrum and reigns

SOVEREIGN OF ALL PASSIONS.

Without the artifice of dress, or trickery of paint, he stands a child of five, or a tottering old man. His facial capabilities seem inexhaustible, enabling him to look the thought he speaks and mirror back to Life its

EVERY PHASE OF CHARACTER!

Cultured and refined, with a true conception of the MORAL and the GOOD, he suffers no low jest or vulgar thought to desecrate his worth.

HE HAS MET WITH THE MOST FLATTERING

SUCCESS WHEREVER HE HAS APPEARED, the

more especially in his ORIGINAL READINGS AND

HUMOROUS PERSONATIONS.

Don't Fail to See AND

HEAR HIM

Admission 25 Cts.

0. H. P. MOORE,

General MANAGER.

Jeffersonian Job Print, Franklin, Ind.

Borrowing an old rockaway for the trip, Riley and his manager drove across country to Anderson. The program for the evening was essentially the same as that given at Monrovia^ — recitations, and music by himself on the guitar. The door receipts were fifteen dollars, hall rent ten dollars, other expenses eight dollars — dead loss, three dollars.

On Sunday there was a lack of necessary funds. The rockaway had been sent home. "The next day," said Riley, "there being a hitch between me (party of the first part) and my manager and my thorn in the flesh (party of the second part), I boarded the Accommodation, and at night crept into Greenfield with a hangdog look that would have done credit to a man floundering in the swamps of Tipton County."

Riley attributed the failure to o^er-advertising and itTzcZer-proficiency. "Sovereign of all Passions!" he groaned — when rereading his bill twenty years after the failure — "and that monstrous line, The Mirthful Side of Life, alloyed with a fine Poetic Sense, alloyed (debased by mixing); great God! what stupidity! That damned the venture. I marvel that our old rockaway was not shattered by a thunderbolt.

"It is never safe," he went on, "to gloss the facts. You can no more deceive the people than live-stock boosters can trick the farmers. No, no, it will not work. To sail under false colors is to invite defeat. You can not deceive Mr. Truth. He will spot you as surely as Mark Twain spots a sham."

The Anderson Democrat thought Riley's entertainment was a credit to him. It showed unmistakable evidence of dramatic talent and literary taste of a high order, which only needed to be properly cultivated to place him in the front rank. The Herald said the audience was small. Several of the recitations were fairly creditable; but want of training was apparent in every effort. The Herald commended to Mr. Riley a liberal use of a life-size mirror, midnight oil and the instruction to be had from a competent drill-master. "There^s millions in it."

On recovering from his second failure, Riley took the Herald's admonition to heart. He remembered how Dickens walked about the fields, practising four and five hours a day, and he gave heed to his motto : "No Day Without a Line/'

For two years, beginning with 1876, he had his way about reciting in the churches and schoolhouses of small towns. So doing, the hall rent would be nominal and the audience usually sympathetic. Occasionally there would be some hitch in the advertising, then "the house would be dark'' and there would be left but one alternative — the return to Greenfield without funds. "More than once," was his word, "I dodged the tollgate and slipped into town by a circuitous route."

The humorous predominated in his readings. "My lecture on Funny Folks," he wrote his Schoolmaster in October, 1876, "is nearly complete." He got his cue from the annual forecast of talent for the lecture platform. The bureaus were calling for humorists. Petroleum V. Nasby was to tell about "Betsey Jane." Mark Twain was to describe "Buck Fanshaw's Funeral" and tell his whistling story. Eli Perkins was to lecture on the "Philosophy of Fun." The Danbury News Man was to read from his "Life in Danbury," and Josh Billings from his "Almanac." Last and not least, Riley's favorite, Bret Harte, was to be in the field with "Progress of American Humor."