The Association of Bill Nye and James Whitcomb Riley: Further Documents

The two authors, Bill Nye (1850-96), born Edgar Wilson Nye in Maine, and James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916), born in Indiana, achieved a considerable amount of fame independently. Nye, after a distinguished career as a journalist, became widely known as a humorist. He wrote over a dozen books including Bill Nye and Boomerang (1881), Forty Liars and Other Lies (1882), Baled Hay (1884), and Bill Nye's History of the United States (1894). Riley, also a journalist, became known as the author of sentimental poems in the Hoosier dialect. He published collections such as The Old Swimmin' Hole and 'Leven More Poems (1883), Afterwhiles (1887), and Rhymes of Childhood (1890). Some poems, such as "When the Frost Is on the Punkin'," "Little Orphant Annie," and "The Raggedy Man," became household favorites. Each man appeared on the lecture circuit, reading from his own works. ¹

And then the two men combined their talents. They wrote some works together, such as Nye and Riley's Railway Guide (1888) and Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor: Amusing Prose Sketches and Quaint Dialect Poems (1901). Yet it was when they toured together that they became best known: "Their combined presentations took the lecture circuit by storm" (Kesterson 24); "[t]here never was such a combination upon the platform" (Eitel 482). Actually, their time together was very brief: a few appearances in 1886 and 1887, followed by an extended lecture tour during the 1888-89 season and another in 1889-90. After a slow start, they "began attracting large crowds and drawing favorable reviews in the newspapers" (Kesterson 71). The combination became known as "Jamesie and Bill," "the Siamese Twins," and "the Twins of Genius." In a "professional relationship that rivaled Mark Twain and George W. Cable's platform duet" (Kesterson 74), they achieved a fame that Edmund H. Eitel termed, "a tradition of the early lecturing period" (473).

The two men complemented each other, forming "a perfect duo" (Kesterson 72). A typical audience "laughed itself weary over Nye's drollery" (Eitel 482), the tall man's anecdotes and witty observations" (Kesterson 73). Then, we are told, the short Riley stepped forward and led the audience "into a reminiscent or serious mood and stirred it to impressions and emotions never to be forgotten" when he read some of his Hoosier poems (Eitel 482).

Previously published letters suggest that the two men got along well together. ² Nye said that he welcomed Riley into his "home with ever-increasing joy" (Eitel 479). Nye's children called Riley "Uncle Sidney," and Nye recalled that after Riley's departure his house seemed "very still" because there was a "general demand" for Riley (Eitel 483). William Lyon Phelps comments, "Assuredly the best [of the Riley letters] . . . are those addressed to the friend he perhaps loved most of all, Bill Nye" (2-3). After Nye died, Riley wrote that every memory of his lecture partner was "most cheering and inspiring" (Eitel 484). In a memorial sonnet, Riley called his friend Nye, "O prince of halest humor, wit and cheer!" (Kesterson 26).

Yet in some of the thirty-nine Nye manuscript letters in the Library of Congress, now made available, there are indications that all was not as harmonious as might appear on the surface. ³ Eight letters among the thirty-nine refer to Riley in some way. Those written directly to Riley are very cordial. But in some of the letters to the agent Major J. B. Pond, Nye reveals an underlying stress generated not only by traveling on the lecture circuit but also by the difficulties of contract negotiation. These letters show that it was wise for the two to abandon any future joint lecturing plans because their association had become a "somewhat burdensome joint venture" (Kesterson 74). And Nye's letters to Pond back up the statement...