New museum exhibit explores Sandburg’s life and times in Elmhurst
Any school student who has read Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” describing the city as “Hog Butcher for the World” and “City of the Big Shoulders” knows him to be a great American poet.
But not everyone knows that while Sandburg lived in Elmhurst for a decade, he was also a film critic, children’s writer, biographer of Lincoln and tireless collector of American folk songs.
“Carl Sandburg in Elmhurst,” a new exhibit up through April 20 at the Elmhurst Historical Museum, tells that story.
“We aren’t doing Carl Sandburg the man. This is Carl Sandburg in Elmhurst,” said Patrice Roche, the museum’s marketing and communications specialist. “Very few people know he lived in Elmhurst.”
Museum curator Lance Tawzer collaborated with Sandburg experts for the past year to bring together an exhibit of rare photos, first edition books, film clips, touch-screen interactives and loaned artifacts. The exhibit was written by Marten Stromberg, curator of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which loaned many of the materials.
“We are fortunate to have an exhibit partner like Marten Stromberg to tell Sandburg’s story,” Tawzer said in a news release. “He brings a deep knowledge of Sandburg’s life and work, and also has a strong passion for his poetry and folk songs.”
Sandburg, his wife and three daughters moved to Elmhurst about 1919 to get way from the din and grit of the city he characterized so well. By the time the family bought their home at 331 S. York St., Sandburg already was a published poet with his famed “Chicago” poem appearing in Poetry magazine in 1914.
While in Elmhurst, Sandburg continued to commute into the city, where he served as a film critic at the Chicago Daily News. Included in the exhibit are three theater-style seats where visitors can sit and watch some of the silent films Sandburg reviewed and hear his commentary about them. He knew some of the movie stars of the day.
“He actually was friends with Charlie Chaplin,” Roche said.
Workers’ advocate
Among the visitors to the Sandburgs’ Elmhurst home was Eugene Debs, who ran for president of the United States several times on the Socialist Party ticket. Debs visited Elmhurst for treatment at the Lindlahr Sanitarium.
“He and Sandburg became very fast friends. He was often a visitor at their home,” Roche said.
Although he eschewed labels, Sandburg himself had Socialist leanings. Born the son of an illiterate railroad laborer in Galesburg in 1878, he left school at eighth grade to help support the family. He held a variety of jobs, including bricklayer and farm laborer in the Kansas wheat fields. His experiences instilled in him a distrust of capitalism and a concern about the industrialization of the United States.
“He was very much an advocate of the working class,” Roche said.
Sandburg traveled as a hobo and served briefly in the Spanish-American War without seeing miliary action before attending what then was Lombard College in Galesburg. Sandburg left college without graduating, but his years there helped shape his literary talents.
He turned to a career in journalism after marrying Lilian Steichen, whom he called Paula, in 1908.
“He was very fond of nicknaming everybody,” Roche said.
The couple had three daughters, Margaret, Janet and Helga. Helga, the youngest and only surviving daughter, loaned one of Sandburg’s typewriters and a guitar for the exhibit. Sandburg’s “Rootabaga Stories” and “Rootabaga Pigeons,” written while he was in Elmhurst, began as stories he told his daughters. Sandburg avoided the common practice of the day of populating children’s stories with fairies, witches and princesses.
“He set his in America,” Roche said.
Family photos of Sandburg playing with his daughters at their Elmhurst home were taken by his brother-in-law Edward Steichen, a famous photographer. The Sandburgs’ moves to Elmhurst and later to Harbert, Mich., were based on what they thought was best for their daughters, Stromberg said.
Their letters reveal a close and caring family,” he said.
American voice
Sandburg frequently was away from home, traveling the lecture circuit and collecting folk songs from across America. He turned his collection into the “American Songbag” with the help of editor Alfred Frankenstein. “American Songbag” is still sold today.
“It’s considered the ultimate compilation,” Roche said. “He felt folk songs were very much a part of telling America’s history.”
While in Elmhurst, Sandburg also wrote the first volume of his presidential biography, “Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years.” Stromberg said Sandburg’s travels on the lecture circuit helped promote the sales of his books. His Lincoln biography was a financial success.
Reverent of Lincoln, Sandburg did not write his biography as a dry compilation of dates and facts, Roche said.
“He was very opinionated about his history of Lincoln,” she said. “He characterized him as a human being.”
Sandburg would continue his biography of Lincoln, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his “Abraham Lincoln: The War Years” in 1940. He also won two Pulitzers in poetry, for “Corn Huskers” in 1919 and “Complete Poems” in 1951.
By 1930, Sandburg was exhausted from his travels and Elmhurst had grown too much for his taste. The family moved to Harbert, where they had previously spent summer vacations, and later to North Carolina. Sandburg returned to Elmhurst in 1960 at the age of 82 when Carl Sandburg Junior High, now Carl Sandburg Middle School, was dedicated in his honor.
Refusing to allow a TV crew into the event, Sandburg said he wanted to be part of the dedication, not a spectacle. He ended his speech by saying simply, “I love you kids.”
Sandburg died in 1967 with his place in American literature secured.
“What differentiates Sandburg from his contemporaries is that he advocated a uniquely American style of writing, he intentionally avoided the popular trend of imitating earlier English writers and instead modeled his work after Walt Whitman, gradually crafting his own distinct voice,” Stromberg wrote in an email interview. “Sandburg’s writing reflects a wide breadth of the American experience, and I believe he brought more of the American people, especially the working class, into his work than the other literary figures of his time.”