OCR Text |
Show j Afe? o knew James Whit- com ?7ey ani AIs worA n-timatety n-timatety tell something about , the great Hoosierlfoho played upon the heartstrings of a I nation Voith his songs of & I common folk and manners f w fC h jfe OWADAVS a poetic genius doesn't fx tvC it look like 0,le' 0,1 the st,'eet' you i L"'aVnI1 m'B'll; Elless lll,u t0 be a business j'v " mill or n lawyer or a preacher or 1 n photographer. Not since the KffX,.! time of Edgar Allan Ioe have real pools worn their hair long as in tS tlle comic pictures or affected J-' t &sG!gl!w the soulful expression. Nowadays fW y 'fVi when a man wears his hair like yt;gi.'$ '$$SfiK Spanish moss on a Florida oak he ft y j-M i s suspected of being hard up. And ' J I if he exhihits wliat is supposed to ' "r be his soul hy certain shifting and staring of his A, eyes he is pitied as one whose mental gearing h'fHpV has sand in It. j''fr Bliss Carman, former editor of the Independent I j and a poet of note, was one of James Whitcomb jjsJ $ t- Itiley's closest friends. After the Indiana V-sMatjt4 songster's death on July 23, Carman told much 'ifelE?!"" about Elley to Mr. Joyce Kilmer of the New York rrf-- Times JJagnJne pud Mr. Kilmer in tura told it "V r' 1 1116 PUL'IC- SL Some 30 years ago Carman was Introduced to -' 'jKx" tlie already famous Hoosier. Riley's keep bird- like eyes surveyed" the tall frame of the new and .young acquaintance: "Gosh, you're a stalwart, Ty-Tfi- ain't ye?" he remarked, grinning. "I guess your parenfs must have trained you on a trellis," - 5Z2J i Then, ns reported by Mr. Kilmer, CarmiVB went jon" t6 Bay f "The next time I saw Riley was in Philadelphia. I went to read before the Browning society, and I don't mind telling you that I was scared to death. When I got out all alone on the stage and saw a thousand people staring np at me I felt more like running away than doing anything else. But when I saw Riley down iu the audience, looking at me in his qunin', friendly way, then I felt all right I wasn't afraid to read my poetry to KUe.v. "After the ret liing was over Riley tucked me under his arm and said : 'Now, let's get around to the hotel and we'll take off our shoes and get a chow of tobacco and be comfortable.' "You know, such remarks as this were all the more piquant because Riley was so very punctilious punc-tilious and scrupulous in all his personal habits. He always was immaculately dressed. I never 'knew him even (o make so much of a concession conces-sion to comfort as to put on a smoking jacket or a lounge coat. But he liked to go to his room and stretch himself on his bed and talk. And he never talked about anything but literature, chiefly poetry. "Riley had a great fund of knowledge of poetry and knew lots of out-of-the-way homely verse. He delighted particularly in ridiculously bad newspaper verse. "Riley liked to read poetry aloud. When I went to his house of an evening, he generally was waiting wait-ing for me with some favorite book, ready to read aloud." "What sort of poetry did he prefer?" "His tastes covered a wide range. Two poets to whom he was especially devoted were Longfellow Long-fellow aud Swinburne. "Riley liked Longfellow's directness and simplicity. sim-plicity. The things that pleased him in Swinburne's Swin-burne's work were the music and the deft craftsmanship. crafts-manship. "After Riley had received his degrees from some of the colleges, he seemed to feel that he ought to be known as a poet, rather than as a humorist and writer of dialect verse. He tried hard to live up to the name of poet, and wanted his nonsense rhymes of his vagabondage forgotten. forgot-ten. Yet his vernacular verse, or, as he called it, his dialect verse, was his chief contribution to literature. "Riley was just a poet. That was all he ever cared to be. He was not Interested In anything but poetry. He knew nothing of politics lie had not voted for 30 years. And as for philosophy, he had nothing but contempt for the modern thinkers. "There was something very pathetic and charming charm-ing about Riley's tenacity In holding the serious poet pose. His nonsense was just one of his ways of writing which happened to prove popular; when he got a chance to write in another way how eagerly he seized it, and how persistently he clung to it ! "His last years were the happiest of his life. I think. He had his own car and rode around Indianapolis and Its suburbs every day, generally taking with him some friend. He was honored .and loved, and I think he felt that life had been good to him. "Riley's father was a lawyer, nis grandfather came to Indiana from Pennsylvania. His grandmother grand-mother on his mother's side was Pennsylvania Dutch. His father was Irish. "Riley had many prejudices. He disliked Poe very much. He disliked Poe's character so much that he could hardly read his poetry. Of course, lie must have liked Poe's music and splendid nn'triml effects. "Of course, you know the story of Riley's famous fa-mous Imitation of Poe? He h:ul taken a position on the staff of an Anderson. Ind.. paper, and the editor of a rival paper kept ridiculing him. Riley H. v. v if ": Yf'fi ywtr 4 : j?"V wunted to get even with him, so he wrote his Imitation of Poe, and had it published in a paper in another part of the state with an elaborate story about the discovery of the manuscript. "At once it made a great sensation all over the country. It made so great a sensation that Riley was terrified, and feared that he would be accused of literary forgery. Meanwhile the editor edi-tor of the rival paper wrote: 'N,p 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.' The sfeS ,ation grew to such proportions pro-portions that Riley hnd to confess that he had written the poem. And then the editor of the paper discharged Riley because he had not published pub-lished It in his paper. "Then the Indianapolis Journal gave him a job, which he held for years. He wrote reams of nonsense verse, and wrote up in verse the shops of the merchants who advertised In the Journal. "Riley's first book was called 'The Old Swim-min' Swim-min' Hole and 'Leven More Poems.' He published pub-lished it himself. It sold so well that it was soon taken over by a publisher, and passed through many editions. "Riley's exquisite penmanship showed the care with which he wrote. Originally he wrote a careless care-less and rather illegible script, but he had so much difficulty in getting the printers to read his writing, and printing his dialect verse correctly, that he took up the study of penmanship. He was 'careful always to gef the dialect of one part of Indiana as distinct from the dialect of any other part. " 'Any man's character,' he said, 'is best remembered, re-membered, I suppose, by some of his habitual gestures and expressions.' I remember Riley as very deliberate in his motions, especially In his last years. Smooth shaven, ruddy, well groomed, he looked like a benign old English bishop more than anything else." Mr. Don Marquis of the New York Sun aptly considers Riley and his poetry from an entirely different angle. "James Whitcomb Riley," says he, "was the companion of fairies in Arcady; for the Hoosier belongs to a race apart. And while some are captured and broken to trade, the gentle poef escaped and kept always the vision of hidden things." With these prefatory remarks the writer goes on with his essay: "There are two sorts of Indlanan the ordinary Indianan, who Is not so very different from the Ohloan or the Rlinnlsan, and the Hoosier. "The Hoosier belong not merely to a race apart, but to a separate species. He Is human, hut with a difference; he Is aware of the kinship between humanity and the so-called lower animals ani-mals (and even the plants and streams) on the one side, and on the other side of the kinship of humanity with the elves. "When the moon turns the mists to silver and the owls wnil and the frogs wake np along th creeks and lakes and the fairies saddle and brkfle the flrellles and mount them and go whirring and flashing off in search of ,alry adventures the Hoosiers steal out of the farmhouses and hamlets ham-lets and creep down to the bottom lands and dance and sing and cavort under the summer stars. They do so secretly, dodging the mere humans, hu-mans, for secrecy Is the essence of their midnight, whimsical revels. "In the daytime they pretend tfcey are just ordinary Indianans; their own brothers nnd mothers may not realize that they are Hoosiers. "But in Indiana, as elsewhere, there Is business and tin1 need to attend to It. There must have hern e"tt iu Arendy somebody owned the (locks and hiT'Is of Arr.-idy and ihi-immI rlnTn Into butcher's meat :ilcl I : i r 1 1 . r . ;ml ih shcphcrd-i only piped on tin siiff :-:ince of their coiir.ncrctiil- ' minded masters. These Hoosiers, these wild barda and prancing, long-legged lovers of the moon, ar often captured and broken and tamed to trade and industry by the more sordid citizenry. They are yoked to the handle end of the plow, chained to the desk; by the hundreds and thousands thou-sands they become clerks and salesmen and railroad rail-road presidents and novelists and business men of all sorts. "James Whitcomb Riley was a Hoosier who happily escaped ; he was never captured, never enslaved ; the things hidden from the rest of na, or revealed only In flashes, remembered but vaguely from the days of our own happy Hoosier-dom, Hoosier-dom, he continued to see steadily; he lived among them familiarly to the end, and until the end was their interpreter to us. " 'Bud come here to your uncle a spell," says Riley in effect, 'and I'll show you not only a fairy, but a fairy who has for the moment chosen to be just as much of a Hoosier as the Raggedy Man, or Orphant Annie, or Old Klngry, or the folks at Griggsby Station.' "The critics and the learned doctors of literature liter-ature are already debating as to whether Riley had imagination or only fancy. (It would be a terrible calamity to some of them if they said it was imagination and it was officially declared later to be merely fancy; that Is the sort ol mistake that damns a critic and makes the sons and grandsons of critics meek, hacked, apologetic apolo-getic young men.) And doubtless the point is exceedingly ex-ceedingly importnnt. For if a poet has imagination imagi-nation they say his work is significant. And b he has only fancy his work is not significant "The chief merit of Riley's dialect verse which is the most popular part of his production and the part with which the critics chiefly concern con-cern themselves is its effectiveness as a medium for character portrayal. Whimsical, lovable, homely, racy, quaint, salty, pathetic, humorous tender are his dialect poems; essentially, he has shown us life as a superior writer of prose sketches might do, adding the charm of his lyricism. lyri-cism. "But, personally, we never like him so well as when he is writing sheer moonlight and music Probably no poet who ever wrote English certainly cer-tainly no American poet got more luscious language lan-guage than Riley. A sweetness that is not sc sugary that it cloys, having always a winy tang For Instance, from 'The Flying Islands of th Night:' '. . .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 his most ultimate of stammering sobs And maudlin wanderings of blinded breath "There is no better evidence of the genuineness genuine-ness of Riley's sentiment, particularly In the dialect dia-lect poems, than the discretion with which h touches the pathetic chord when he touches Ii at all. One of the most popular poems he evei wrote was 'Old-Fashioned Roses,' and one wore too much, one pressure the least bit too insistent would have made the thing as offensive ns t vaudeville ballad. The taste which told him t( be simple and the sincerity which begat tht taste save the verses from the reproach. "His verses for children nnd about children could only have been written by a man whnst love nnd understanding of children was real, foi children are quick to detect and repudiate any tiling of the sort that Is 'pumped up' for effect nnd they contributed enormously to the genera feeling -of affection .for him. The regard of tht children was In a way a testimonial to his per sisting yonl hfulness of spirit; he was still theli playmate; perhaps It is an earnest of Immor tality. if Immortality can be. Certainly love en (lures longer than anything else, and this mar with the childlike sweetness In his soul p Ii'oiii us loved as few men have been." |