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| Who can resist a poet so famous he could sell cigars? |
At least once during National Poetry Month I like to give
the poetry snobs the vapors. Those are the high minded, serious folk— the
worst high school English teachers, academics whose careers depend on culling
ever diminish heard of obscure poets for publish-or-perish theses the no one
reads, and critics convinced that only the obscure and arcane are worthy of
notice and that popularity is vulgar.
Together these folks have just about beat to death any chance that the
general public might consider reading and enjoying poetry.
Today we offer up a
poet sure to set fire to these folks hair.
The Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley may not have been the greatest American poet. But for a good many years he was the most
popular—and the most beloved. Many of
his verses were written for, and loved, by children and there was a time when
most could recite at least one of his poems by heart.
Riley was born on
October 7, 1849 in the extremely rustic village of Greenfield, Indiana.
Although his father was a lawyer with political ambitions—the boy was named
for a governor of the state—the family was still crowded into a two room log
cabin.
What passed for a super
highway, the planked National Road,
ran by the cabin’s dooryard. In those
days with inns and taverns scarce, travelers on the road often pulled up at the
cabin, the largest in the village, for supper or a place to sleep by the hearth
or in the soft hay of the barn. From the
time he was a small boy, James listened to and absorbed the accents and the
stories of the visitors and entertained his family and friends with imitations.
As the village and
fortunes of the family grew, they replaced the cabin with a handsome two story
white frame house.
James was an
indifferent, make that horrible, student in the local one room academy. His mind was always wandering to the meadows,
woods, and creeks and the play of his friends.
He learned well enough to read and write, but seemed totally indifferent
to anything else. One teacher told his exasperated father, “He doesn’t know
which is more—twice ten or twice eternity.”
He dropped out of school to work odd jobs in town and on nearby farms.
His father convinced
him to try reading law with him. But
that was a failure, too.
Despite his love of his
town and his friends among the lively local youths, Riley had itchy feet and a
hankering to see a bit more of the world.
He took up the tramp profession of traveling sign painter, roaming the Mid West.
Later, he became a barker
in a traveling medicine show where
he honed stage skills that would later help make him famous and where he
cultivated a lifelong taste for product, heavily laced with alcohol.
Riley didn’t write his
first known poem until the age of 21 in 1870.
He sent it to a newspaper, which published it. It became a habit. The poems, usually in dialect, reflected his
memories of the rural childhood. Newspapers
began, in the custom of the time, to reprint the poems “on exchange.” He even started to get paid a dollar or two
for a submission.
Despite this modest
success, Riley suspected that as a rural bumpkin he would never be taken
seriously as a poet by the Eastern literary establishment. To prove his point, he perpetuated a
hoax. He submitted Leonanie an “undiscovered
poem” by Edgar Allan Poe which was
universally proclaimed as a masterpiece.
The Eastern critics failed to note that Poe himself was a famous hoaxer,
having published at least six in his life, the most famous about a supposed
1844 crossing of the Atlantic by
balloon. When Riley revealed himself
there were a lot of embarrassed—and angry—critics. It is seems likely that tribe holds the
grudge to this day.
He established himself
enough as a writer to get a full time job on the Indianapolis Journal
where he did reporting and regularly contributed verse, still a popular part of
any American newspaper.
In 1883 he self
published an edition of 1000 copies of a collection, The Old Swimmin’ Hole and ‘Leven
More Poems under the pen name of Benjamin
F. Johnson, of Boone. Most poets
trying this gambit ended up with crates full of unsold books and ruinous debts
to the printer. Riley’s book sold out
its first printing in only a few months.
That got the attention
of local Indianapolis publisher Merrill,
Meigs and Company which published a beautifully bound second edition under
his real name. It sold like hot
cakes. Riley would be associated with
the company, which eventually became Bobbs-Merrill,
for the rest of his life. In fact that well known publishing house
was largely built on the success of its Riley books. The first of the original ones was The
Boss Girl.
Riley was able to give
up his day job, cater to his wanderlust, and promote his books when he took to the lecture
platform. With his charming wit, and
theatrical style of reading he became one of the most sought after public
speakers in the country, a genuine star of the Lyceum Circuit. And
everywhere he spoke, he sold even more books.
One of the few critics
who appreciated him, fellow Mid Westerner Hamlin
Garland, noted that of American writer only Mark Twain “who had the same
amazing flow of quaint conceits. He spoke ‘copy’ all the time.” In an interview in 1892 in Greenfield, Riley
told him, “My work did itself. I'm only the willer bark through which the
whistle comes.”
Twain, by the way, was
not fond of Riley. In their only appearance
together on the same program, he felt that he was upstaged by someone plowing
similar ground. There after he avoided
those literary dinners where Riley might make an appearance and occasionally derided
his adversary.
Riley’s lectures and
book sales made him the best paid writer America for a while, surely another
bitter pill for struggling “serious” scribes.
It was said copies of his books were found in homes that contained no
other save the Bible.
Riley never
married. He said a failed teenage
romance back in Greenfield had made him decide not to commit his heart. But serious alcoholism, that all too common
malady of writers, was more likely the cause.
At least one lecture tour was aborted do to drunkenness. Several attempts of stop drinking all
ultimately failed.
In 1893 Riley began boarding
at the home of his friends, Charles
and Magdalena Holstein in the
Indianapolis neighborhood of Lockerbie. It was his home for the rest of his life
and his friends took care of him through bouts of drinking and later severe
health problems.
By 1895 he had largely
stopped touring and his attempts to publish more “serious” poems were savaged
even by critics who had warmed to his rustic style. At home in Lockerbie he appointed himself an
uncle to neighborhood children who flocked to hear his stories and tales.
That inspired his last,
and ultimately most successful, original book, Rhymes of Childhood
with illustrations by Howard
Chandler Christy. It was so popular
through so many editions—it remains in print today—that Riley was proclaimed
the Children’s Poet, much as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had been
years before. Twain was so moved by this
collection—and probably the memory of his dead children—that he finally had
good things to say about Riley.
In 1902 Boobs-Merrill
began issuing elegantly appointed volumes of his complete works, an honor few
poets lived to see. Riley spent his last
years editing the texts. Eventually 16
volumes were issued.
Riley purchased the
family homestead in Greenfield and his brother John lived in the house.
Riley would make occasional visits.
Riley’s health had been
in steady decline since 1901. He
suffered a debilitating stroke in 1910 which confined him to a wheel
chair. The loss of the use of his
writing hand bothered him and he later relied on dictation to George Ade for his last poems and
biographical sketches. By 1912 he had
recovered enough to begin recording readings for Edison cylinders. The same
year the Governor of Indiana declared his birthday James Whitcomb Riley Day, a state
holiday observed until 1968.
He made his last visit
to Greenfield in 1916 for the funeral of a boyhood friend. A week later back in Lockerbie, he suffered a
second stroke and died on July 22nd.
Riley was widely
mourned. His books continued to be
popular through the next two decades, finally falling out of favor.
His boyhood home in
Greenfield is now a preserved historical site and his home in Lockerbie is the James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home and a
designated National Historic Site.
Our
Hired Girl
Our hired girl, she’s ‘Lizabuth Ann;
An’ she can cook best things to eat!
She ist puts dough in our pie-pan,
An’ pours in somepin’ ‘at's good an’ sweet;
An’ nen she salts it all on top
With cinnamon; an’ nen she’ll stop
An’ stoop an' slide it, ist as slow,
In th’ old cook-stove, so's 'twon't slop
An’ git all spilled; nen bakes it, so
It's custard-pie, first thing you know!
An’ nen she’ll say,
“Clear out o’ my way!
They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play!
Take yer dough, an’ run, child, run!
Er I cain’t git no cookin’ done!”
When our hired girl ‘tends like she’s mad,
An’ says folks got to walk the chalk
When she's around, er wisht they had!
I play out on our porch an' talk
To Th’ Raggedy Man ‘at mows our lawn;
An’ he says, “Whew!” an’ nen leans on
His old crook-scythe, and blinks his eyes,
An’ sniffs all ‘round an’ says, “I swawn!
Ef my old nose don’t tell me lies,
It ‘pears like I smell custard-pies!”
An’ nen he’ll say,
“Clear out o’ my way!
They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play!
Take yer dough, an’ run, child, run!
Er she cain’t git no cookin’ done!
Wunst our hired girl, when she
Got the supper, an we all et,
An’ it wuz night, an’ Ma an’ me
An’ Pa went wher’ the “Social’ met,--
An’ nen when we come
home, an’ see
A light in the kitchen door, an’ we
Heerd a maccordeun, Pa says, “Lan’--
O’-Gracious! who can her beau be?’
An’ I marched in, an’ ‘Lizabuth Ann
Wuz parchin’ corn fer The Raggedy Man!
Better say,
“Clear out o’ the way!
They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play!
Take the hint, an’ run, child, run!
Er we cain’t git no courtin’ done!”
—James Whitcomb Riley
