Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1884-08-22
JAMES WHlTCOMB RILEY.
what London Journals Say-Som,c
Biographical Notes.
Naples Cor. American Registcr.l


| have been very much amused in seeing
an item floating about the American press.
which has also crept into some of the London
journals, concerning James Whitromb Riley,
the Indiana poet, "whosc humorous and son
timental verses have made him famous
This quotation is only just because thcre are
few poets in America, except james Russell
Lowell, who have taken up the dialect Of one
portion of the United States and made il SO
elastically subservient rs a popular vehicle
in II metrcal way, and who at the same tim"
have made their mark as true poets. Why |
am amused at the floating item is because it
pletends to give in all sincerity II brief hi
ugraphv of the poet, but nothing can be more
erroneous.
Just look at this pen picture, quoted from
the aforesaid brief biography: ale Riley was
originally hotel keeper. He was born i'll
New Bedford. Mass. and there lived for many
years. His father was the captain OF Il
whaler but the son never took to the s,a.
Capt. Riley gave the young man an ample
fortune when he attained his ma jOrity, ami
James invested the bulk of it in a hotel,
which he named the Ocean View house.
Riley sold his hotel in the winter of 1873,
invested his money in Pennsylvania oil, lost
everything and then moved to Indiana 10
try farming. Until within the last four
years he never wrote line of poetry
If | could laugh out loud ON paper | would
do so in this letter. In the first place James
Whitcomb Riley manned after the late gov
eruor and United States senator. James
Whitcomb, of lndiana) never saw New Bed
ford. Mass, but was born of Hoosier parents
at Greenfield, Ind, twenty miles east of In
dianapolis So far from his father being II
whaler and Riley being brought up within
sight of the briny, he never saw the sea at
all until he was "A quarter of century old.
He never had any money left him; he never
kept a hotel and though fellow of genius he
couldn't do it, even though h had Il hotel.
He never had any money to invest in oil, be-
cause he always struggled for living, and
did not have any money to invest i'll any
thing From his loyhood he wrote verses,
and good ones, too.
In 1877 IA year before our item biography
makes him a hotel keeper made his ac-
ouantance in indianapolis. do not think
he was more than %. His poetry had
already struck my attention. whether it
was in the grave or gay vell IN 1877 there
Travelled all over the United States, and also
in England, lines purporting to be from Poe
and from Ternyson. They Travelled for a
wear unchallengel until some litterateul
seriously undertook to show that while the
verses were like those of the two masters yet
they could no: be found in their works 1t
turned out by his own confession that Riley,
in banter, had written the lines without any
intention of palming them off ON the public,
and was heartily sorry that they ever got
into print But his original poems are full
of poetry. whether serious or funny, and he
is equally strong in prose In the dialectic
poems, where westernisms come in, he is as
happy as James Russell Lowell i'll the Yankee
dialect. He is as much to the point as Bret
Harte or John Hay without the proclivities
to profanity that mar some of their poems.
Few persons are his equal in the recitation of
funny poems.