Riley’s reading was marked by the casualness that was part of his
nature. He liked small books that fitted comfortably into the hand, and
he brought to the mere opening of a volume and the cutting of leaves
a deliberation eloquent of all respect for the contents. Always a man
of surprises, in nothing was he more surprising than in the wide range
of his reading. It was never safe to assume that he was unacquainted
with some book which might appear to be foreign to his tastes. His
literary judgments were sound, though his prejudices (always amusing
and frequently unaccountable) occasionally led him astray.
While his study of literature had followed the haphazard course
inevitable in one so uninfluenced by formal schooling, it may fairly
be said that he knew all that it was important for him to know of
books. He was of those for whom life and letters are of one piece and
inseparable. In a broad sense he was a humanist. What he missed in
literature he acquired from life. Shakespeare he had absorbed early;
Herrick, Keats, Tennyson, and Longfellow were deep-planted in his
memory. His excursions into history had been the slightest; biographies
and essays interested him much more, and he was constantly on the
lookout for new poets. No new volume of verse, no striking poem in a
periodical escaped his watchful eye.
He professed to believe that Mrs. Browning was a poet greatly superior
to her husband. Nevertheless he had read Robert Browning with some
attention, for on one or two occasions he burlesqued successfully that
poet’s mannerisms. For some reason he manifested a marked antipathy to
Poe. And in this connection it may be of interest to mention that he
was born (October 7, 1849) the day Poe died! But for Riley’s cordial
dislike of Poe I might be tempted to speculate upon this coincidence as
suggesting a relinquishment of the singing robes by one poet in favor
of another. Riley had, undoubtedly, at some time felt Poe’s spell, for
there are unmistakable traces of Poe’s influence in some of his earlier
work. Indeed, his first wide advertisement came through an imitation of
Poe--a poem called “Leonanie”--palmed off as having been found written
in an old schoolbook that had been Poe’s property. Riley long resented
any reference to this hoax, though it was a harmless enough prank--the
device of a newspaper friend to prove that public neglect of Riley
was not based upon any lack of merit in his writings. It was probably
Poe’s sombreness that Riley did not like, or possibly his personal
characteristics. Still, he would close any discussion of Poe’s merits
as a writer by declaring that “The Raven” was clearly inspired by Mrs.
Browning’s “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” This is hardly susceptible of
proof, and Elizabeth Barrett’s gracious acceptance of the compliment
of Poe’s dedication of his volume containing “The Raven” may or may not
be conclusive as to her own judgment in the matter.
Whitman had no attraction for Riley; he thought him something of
a charlatan. He greatly admired Stevenson and kept near at hand a
rare photograph of the Scot which Mrs. Stevenson had given him. He
had recognized Kipling’s genius early, and his meeting with that
writer in New York many years ago was one of the pleasantest and most
satisfactory of all his literary encounters.
The contentions between Realism and Romanticism that occasionally
enliven our periodical literature never roused his interest; his
sympathies were with the conservatives and he preferred gardens that
contained familiar and firmly planted literary landmarks. He knew his
Dickens thoroughly, and his lifelong attention to “character” was due
no doubt in some measure to his study of Dickens’s portraits of the
quaint and humorous. He always confessed gratefully his indebtedness
to Longfellow, and once, when we were speaking of the older poet, he
remarked that Mark Twain and Bret Harte were other writers to whom
he owed much. Harte’s obligations to both Dickens and Longfellow
are, of course, obvious and Harte’s use of dialect in verse probably
strengthened Riley’s confidence in the Hoosier speech as a medium when
he began to find himself.
His humor--both as expressed in his writings, and as we knew it who
lived neighbor to him--was of the same _genre_ as Mark Twain’s. And it
is not surprising that Mark Twain and Riley should have met on grounds
of common sympathy and understanding. What the Mississippi was to the
Missourian, the Old National Road that bisected Greenfield was to
Riley. The larger adventure of life that made Clemens a cosmopolitan
did not appeal to Riley, with his intense loyalty to the State of his
birth and the city that for thirty-eight years was his home.
It gave him the greatest pleasure to send his friends books that he
thought would interest them. Among those he sent me are Professor
Woodberry’s selections from Aubrey de Vere, whose “Bard Ethell” Riley
thought a fine performance; Bradford Torrey’s _Friends on the Shelf_
and, a few weeks before his death, a copy of G. K. Chesterton’s poems
in which he had written a substitute for one of the lines. If in these
gifts he chose some volume already known to the recipient, it was well
to conceal the fact, for it was essential to the perfect course of his
friendships that he be taken on his own terms, and no one would have
had the heart to spoil his pleasure in a “discovery.”
He was most generous toward all aspirants in his own field, though
for years these were prone to take advantage of his good nature
by inflicting books and manuscripts upon him. I once committed
the indiscretion of uttering a volume of verse, and observed with
trepidation a considerable number of copies on the counter of the
bookstore where we did much loafing together. A few days later I was
surprised and for a moment highly edified to find the stock greatly
depleted. On cautious inquiry I found that it was Riley alone who
had been the investor--to the extent of seventy-five copies, which
he distributed widely among literary acquaintances. In the case of
another friend who published a book without large expectations of
public favor, Riley secretly purchased a hundred and scattered them
broadcast. These instances are typical: he would do a kind thing
furtively and evince the deepest embarrassment when detected.
It is always a matter for speculation as to just what effect a
college training would have upon men of Riley’s type, who, missing
the inscribed portals, nevertheless find their way into the house of
literature. I give my opinion for what it may be worth, that he would
have been injured rather than benefited by an ampler education. He
was chiefly concerned with human nature, and it was his fortune to
know profoundly those definite phases and contrasts of life that were
susceptible of interpretation in the art of which he was sufficiently
the master. Of the general trend of society and social movements
he was as unconscious as though he lived on another planet. I am
disposed to think that he profited by his ignorance of such things,
which left him to the peaceful contemplation of the simple phenomena
of life that had early attracted him. Nothing seriously disturbed
his inveterate provincial habit of thought. He manifested Thoreau’s
indifference--without the Yankee’s scorn--for the world beyond his
dooryard. “I can see,” he once wrote me, “when you talk of your return
and the prospective housewarming of the new home, that your family’s
united heart is right here in old Indianapolis--high Heaven’s sole and
only understudy.” And this represented his very sincere feeling about
“our” town; no other was comparable to it!