James Whitcomb Riley's Letter  

(To Chesterville)

(Mrs. R. E. Jones)

July 29, 1890

Dear Friend:

I can't keep my impious pen out of your last peom. See where I have daggered it, and forgive me it you can. Mind, though, the wounds made are only meant to forcibly suggest the thousand other ways into which poetry may be made to walk on its long march toward perfection - which state you must attain for it now - so very near it is!

Nothing I mave marked without good reason, as you will note, I'm cetrain. The first word, "notion," it too trivial, in such dignity of theme: "Beneath" is better than "under," for candence - sake: 'Wizard - spell of necromancy" - (some meaning twice), may be bettered as suggeste: etc. &c. for all the rest - even up to the omission of entire last stanza - the one immediately preceeding it the sacred some of the song - God bless the singer! Send it in new form. - I'm rewriting mine in the meantime - to be printed with it. - A jovial, devil-may-care sort o' midsummer stave that suns: -

The blue above and the green below - would that the world were always so! - Always Summer, and wrmth and light And mirth and melody, day and night! Birds in the boughs of the orchard trees - Chirr of locusts and hun of bees - Lilies and roses that buud and blow - The blue above and the green below!

Haven't time to half thank you for all your good words and the cheer thereof.

Am packing for a few day up as Lake Maxinkuckee. Reimain there over Sunday, where, should should write meantime, your letter would find me. Care Booth Tarkington, Maxinkuckee, Ind

The green below and the blue above! Neigh young hearts and the hopes thereof! Season for dreams - whatte-er befall Here, heroine, hearts and all!

As ever, with all gratitude and regard for you and yours, - J. W. Riley

This stub-pen is abominabe - but haste compells.


Riley's first published poems were written for newspapers. Although Riley's pieces were picked up from one newspaper to the next they copied around the country, It is said that Riley felt his reputation as a poet had no chance because he came from the American "frontier" Midwest and not the East. Later in life Riley's poems were reproduced in beautifully illustrated books which attracted national and international readership.

By this letter James Whitcomb Riley was writing the come around 29 July 1890 and the title may have been "Life at the Lake"

James Whitcomb Riley (Greenfield, Indiana, October 7, 1849 - July 22, 1916) was an American writer and poet. Known as the "Hoosier Poet" and the "Children's Poet," he started his career in 1875 writing newspaper verse in Indiana dialect for the Indianapolis Journal


Riley himself befriended best selling Indiana authors such as Booth Tarkington, George Ade and Meredith Nicholson.

Sometime in his fifties Riley suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side (this would of been in the 1890's and about the time he was coming to the Lake) and he kept mostly near to his Indianapolis "Lockerbie Street" home during the last twenty-three years of his life. Which was near downtown Indianapolis, as a paying guest of his friends Major and Mrs. Charles Holstein; chosing to live there instead of in his childhood home at Greenfield; which he had became wealthy enough to buy back 1893, and never having a permanent residence there. Indiana honored Riley after his death in 1916 by burying him in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. The site of his grave is atop Strawberry Hill, the highest point in Indianapolis

By 1883, Riley had published his first book, The Old Swimmin’-Hole and ‘Leven More Poems and during the next twenty-five years, writing hundreds of verses in dialect, he did not completely abandoned “correct” English. During his life time Riley wrote more than 1,000 poems and had published more than 90 books. It is said that by 1894, the royalties from these books earned Riley more money than any other American poet except Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Riley’s successful appeal was the “Hoosier Character” that he brought to America. According to author Barbara Olenyik Morrow, “He was their spokesman, the poet who understood them and whom they could understand. He immortalized their simple virtues, celebrated their natural speech, and recorded their lives.” It is said that not one word of the original peoms of Riley's have been altered!