Lilian Steichen on Poets, Princeton and the World — 1908

Editor's note: This is the final installment in a three-part series on Carl Sandburg and his wife, Lilian Steichen Sandburg.

That Lilian Steichen fell in love with Carl Sandburg while she was a teacher at Princeton High School is quite the romantic story, told through the many letters they exchanged during the first five months of 1908. Their “Princeton letters” make clear that Steichen quickly became his muse, convincing a discouraged Sandburg that he had great talent and should keep writing poetry.

America might never have known the poet of “Chicago,” and “Fog,” without Steichen’s influence. “Have you really turned from poetry for good?” she wrote from Princeton on Feb. 15, 1908. “Shaw is our dramatist – why shouldn’t you be our poet?” Since they were both committed Socialists at the time (and he a Socialist Party organizer in Wisconsin), she asked whether it might be possible for him to be both organizer and poet. A few years later, we know which won out.

Steichen was extremely intelligent, unconventional and – unlike Sandburg – very well educated. Though Steichen could clearly hold her own, she felt out of place in Princeton. Dinner table conversations at her boarding house (323 E. Peru) mostly bored her. But there was a saving grace for her here: The beauty of the landscape. A teacher of literature and expression, she wrote quite poetically about it in her letters to Sandburg.

A favorite jaunt of Steichen’s was walking west out of town. From the description in her March 7, 1908, letter to Sandburg, her route was likely down Park Avenue West:

“The other evening I came in to supper after a splendid walk – in an exuberance of joy! It had been raining hard all day till late in the afternoon ... The air was sweet and fresh after the rain. At sunset the sky had cleared in the west along the horizon – The rest of the sky was still overcast with great heavy clouds – slate blue. I was walking toward the sun-set. The street was bordered with elm trees. Thru this vista of arching elms, I saw the sky aglow! And the ruts in the road caught the glow – two ribbons of burning gold. And my heart caught the glow – burning intense. So there I stood and looked and looked. “Let it be said I have lived!”

Besides long walks, nothing seems to have made Steichen happier than escaping to Bryant’s Woods south of town.  She raved about it several times in her letters to Sandburg. Sometimes she took a “flock of children” for the day. They’d pick flowers (like hepaticas which she pressed and sent to Sandburg), play ball, run up and down the ravines and have a picnic (as Princeton children did for many years before the Bryant Woods subdivision was built).

The 25-year old Steichen felt constrained in the town of Princeton, for sure, and was ready to experience “the World” (as she called it) with her soon-to-be husband Carl Sandburg. But, while here, she clearly found a joy and beauty about which she wrote to Sandburg with great passion in 1908. Or maybe it’s simply that then, as now, spring feels especially wondrous when you’ve just fallen in love.

All quotes from "The Poet and the Dream Girl: The Love Letters of Lilian Steichen & Carl Sandburg," Margaret Sandburg, ed. (University of Illinois Press, 1987).

Lilian Streichen on Bryant's Woods

(From a letter to Carl Sandburg, April 11, 1908)

"Bryant’s Woods is a winding ravine – a stream meandering thru the bottom – with side ravines and tributary brooks branching off — the banks of the ravines very high and finely wooded with beautiful old trees and young ones scattered between and lots of underbrush — the banks sloping gradually sometimes, but mostly sheer and steep, or terraced. Imagine there winding ravines flooded with sunshine — swept by strong yet sun-warmed winds — fragrant with spring-odors of earth and flowers. Hear now the poignant call of a bird from the shadows of some side-ravine — or now the tinkle of the brook clear and sweet below.— Oh heart — heart — heart!"