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#11-2 September 2024
Panting on the Beach (Harbert, Michigan) Sandburg Collection, Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, University of Illinois
Sandburg’s Canine Friends in Michigan
By John W. Quinley
Dear Readers,, Sandburg’s
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
brought financial reward enough for the family to move to the Michigan town of
Harbert, directly across Lake Michigan from Chicago. In their new home, Paula
Sandburg took steps to accommodate their canine family members by installing
linoleum on the floors so the dogs could run in and out freely. During a visit
by her brother Edward Steichen–world-famous photographer and owner of Irish
wolfhounds–Paula took
the photo above of Helga, Uncle Ed, Bosco the dog, Carl, and Janet (their second
daughter), “with tongues out panting and our paws…before us in the warm sand.” The Sandburg’s dog tribe in Michigan waxed and waned in
numbers. Helga recalls that two young red Irish Setters called Dan and Cullie,
“go up into his study on the third floor and lie about there. And when he comes
down in the evenings, singing on the stairs, he is preceded by their wild
delighted barking.” The dogs joined the family on their walks, and they quickly
learned to retrieve the sticks Sandburg threw. Helga loved to include the family dogs in her childhood
fantasies. She writes, She is Tarzan (not Jane) and
Dan, Cullie, and the rest of the dogs are lions pacing at her side. Trotting
through the woods again, she is Mowgli, and they are Akela’s clan of wolves
hunting Shere Khan. She will join a circus and all the dogs now shake hands,
roll over, jump through hoops, sit on pedestals, or stand on tree branches. In winter, Helga hitched the dogs in a tandem team to
haul a toboggan over the ice floes of Lake Michigan. For Helga, this is Jack
London’s frozen North and Jack is Buck. In a tribute to Jack London and the dogs London
immortalized, Sandburg wrote “Dogheads”:
In
1939, when Helga was a student at Michigan State College, Sandburg wrote to
Helga about Jon, her great Dane puppy. “All reports as to Jon are good. Jon is
coming strong, in color and grace and disposition.” Sandburg shares that he
walks Jon every day and notes that “when he comes down or goes up stairs his
legs and paws fumble and he waddles and waggles.” Sandburg thinks that “Jon is
going to rate as the best dog we have ever had.”
However, Helga shares that when she returned from college she found, “her Great
Dane pup, Jon, grown huge, and since he had no training while she had been away,
quite unpredictable.” One evening when the family was sitting at the dinner
table, some abrupt movement from Margaret (the eldest daughter) caused Jon to
snarl and leap at her, lacerating her arm. As Helga ran forward to punish the
dog, she could hear her sister’s cry, “Don’t hit Jon. He didn’t know what he was
doing. I shouldn’t have moved so suddenly.” Help others discover or rediscover this American icon.
Thanks for reading,
John Quinley is the author of
Discovering Carl
Sandburg: The Eclectic Life of an American Icon and is a former docent at
the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
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