II
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!