A Clue to Darger's Sexual Experiences

When Darger escaped from the Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children on July 29, 1909, he was seventeen and penniless and had no choice but to walk the nearly 200 miles that separated Lincoln, IL, where the asylum was located, and Chicago, his home. When he got to Chicago in early August, he went to his godmother’s home and stayed with her until she was able to get him hired as a janitor at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Beginning at that moment, he was employed steadily for fifty-four years at various hospitals, all on the Near North Side. Even during the Great Depression, when thousands of individuals across the U.S. were unemployed, Darger had a job.

Thirteen years later, tired of the way he was treated by the Daughters of Charity, the nuns who ran St. Joseph’s—and especially by the bully Sr. DePaul, who “had a bulldog like face,” Darger recalled, “and seemed to have the disposition of one”—he quit and immediately found a job as a dishwasher at Grant Hospital. He remained at Grant until 1928, when a shake-up in the staff made him believe that he was about to get fired, and he “left in a huff.”  

Now thirty-seven years old, he was worried about the future. For the first time since he was seventeen, he was jobless. His friend William Schloeder put in a good word for him at a local restaurant, hoping to pave the way for Darger to be hired on there, but nothing came of it.

In the meantime, Darger applied for jobs at various places near his home: at St. Joseph’s; at a place he never identifies “somewhere on Webster and Burling streets” where he “was insultingly told to go to the poor farm at oak forest” [sic]; and even at a café. A day or two after quitting Grant, he landed a job in the café, probably washing dishes but perhaps also cleaning up the place after it closed. A few days after that, he was re-hired at St. Joseph’s, not as a janitor this time, but as a dishwasher.

He worked at St. Joseph’s the second time for thirteen years, first under the supervision of a series of nuns but then under a layperson, Miss Casey, who gave Darger a supervisory role, overseeing a group of young women who worked in the kitchen. He even ended up firing one of them for misbehaving on the job. Although the other young women walked out in protest of his decision against their friend, Miss Casey supported him 100%.

In 1947, Darger went on the first real vacation of his life—the last two weeks of July through the first week of August. A few days before he left, a nun named Sr. Alberta had taken over as St. Joseph’s chief administrator. While he was gone, she discussed Darger with his supervisor, and together they decided to fire him. When he returned, Sr. Alberta gave him the bad news, but added that they weren’t letting him go because of “any wrong doing.” She told, Darger recalled, that it was because of his job: “the work was too much,” “the hours too long,” and it “could cause me to break down in my health.” She also told him he could “eat my meals there yet untill I got a new job” [sic] and suggested that, when he went looking for one, he try to get one that was “easier” with “much shorter hours.”

Within days, Darger applied at Alexian Brothers Hospital, and he was offered a job there a week after he was fired from his second stint at St. Joseph’s. He began as a dishwasher in mid-August 1947, although he ended up working in a variety of positions, including vegetable peeler and bandage roller. This was the first time he worked for men, a religious order called the Alexian Brothers, and eventually, he would again be put in a supervisory role, overseeing his helper, Jacob Feseri. He worked at Alexian Brothers until November 19, 1963 when he was forced to retire because of ill health. He was seventy-one.

Interestingly, a letter from 1928, that’s related to his employment, shines light on an important period of Darger’s life—not when he was a working adult, but when he was a child between six and eight years old. A recommendation, it was addressed “To Whom It May Concern” and signed by Schloeder. The brief letter and Schloeder’s signature are in Darger’s very distinct handwriting, and it’s obvious that Darger wrote and signed it when he resigned from Grant Hospital “in a huff.” Darger included Schloeder’s job—“Watchman at Phillip Rinn Company”—under Schloeder’s signature, and that phrase is a clue that solves a mystery about Darger’s sexual escapades during his childhood. What was that mystery?

For the answer to this and other questions surrounding the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, be on the lookout for Throw-Away Boy: A Life of Henry Darger….

Pages

Henry Darger wrote three, huge novels during his life—as well as kept a weather notebook every day for ten years, scribbled notes about his writings and his life in a journal, and compiled a number of scrapbooks of source materials that he then used for both his novels and his paintings.

His first novel, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, was his longest: over 15,000 pages. His second, called Further Adventures in Chicago: Crazy House by one of his first critics (because Darger had used both “Further Adventures in Chicago” and “Crazy House” as its title), logs in at well over 10,000 pages. His third, A History of My Life, is the shortest of his novels, a mere 5,000+ pages.

None have been correctly paged. Darger tended to paginate his novels after he wrote them, but in the process, he often got distracted and skipped ahead or fell behind in the numbering. For example, he might be paginating the manuscript 2,579, 2,580, 2,581… but, without realizing it, skip to 3,582 and continue the count from there: 3,583, 3,584, 3,585…. Or it could be the opposite. He could skip backwards, going from 459 to 259. The total number of the pages of his novels that are typically cited is only the number on the last page of the manuscript, the one that Darger gave it. None is correct.

And none of his novels have been published in their entirety, although brief excerpts from them appear in both John MacGregor’s Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal and Michael Bonesteel’s Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings. To read any of his novels, you have to read the original manuscripts.

Something mysterious happens on page 206 of A History of My Life. Between page 1 and halfway down page 206, Darger created a typical chronicle of his life. The book begins with an announcement of his birth, although he forgets to mention that it is his birth that he’s announcing—“In the month of April on the 12, in the year of 1892, of what week day I never knew, as I was never told, nor did I seek the information.”

Then on page 206, right after he discusses an accident that happened to a baker at Grant Hospital where he once worked, Darger makes a second peculiar announcement: “There is one really important thing I must write which I have forgotten.” With that, he launches into the story of a tornado that lays waste to a huge area of Illinois. There seems to be no reason for the shift from nonfiction to fiction. Darger doesn’t warn his reader before the change. He simply shifts gears and continues for another 4,000+ pages. Why? And why does he continue to write the phrase “The History of My Life” on the pages as a running head from beginning to end when the text is obviously made-up?

For the answers to these and other mysteries surrounding the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, be on the lookout for Throw-Away Boy: A Life of Henry Darger….

Darger’s WWII Draft Card

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese air force bombarded Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, then a U.S. territory, not a state, killing almost two and a half thousand civilians and military personnel. War had been raging in Europe for several years, and in response to the Japanese government’s attack, the U.S. threw its hat into the ring.

Knowing it would eventually join its European allies, but desperate for soldiers, the U.S. instituted a draft registration in 1940 that would be undertaken at four different times in 1942. Henry was required to register on April 27, on what has been called the “old man’s draft registration.” The last of four different periods during which men registered for the draft, it was established for men born between April 28, 1899 and February 16, 1897. That meant Darger had to register for military service a second time.

Darger’s draft card for World War II gives the picture of a forty-nine-year-old man in physical decline. He weighed only 125 pounds, a sign of undernourishment. His skin was “sallow,” another probable sign of his poor eating habits and of general debilitation. His eyes are described as “hazel,” although his draft card for the First World War indicates they were blue, and his dark brown hair has turned “gray.” The draft card also raises a number of questions about Darger.

One question we’re faced with is his height. When Henry registered for the First World War, he was twenty-five years old and stood, according to his registration card, five feet and one inch tall. However, twenty-four years later, instead of shrinking as men typically do as they age, Henry has sprouted an extra ten inches, growing to a remarkable five feet eight inches tall. How was this possible?

Another question revolves around the individual whom Henry listed as the “Person Who Will Always Know Your Address.” It wasn’t a family member who would always know where he was because none of his uncles and aunts were alive in 1942, and his cousins, all of whom were considerably older than he, had been strangers to him for years. Who in the world might Darger have listed as his contact person, the only human being who would always know his address—and why?

For the answer to these and other mysteries surrounding the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, be on the lookout for Throw-Away Boy: A Life of Henry Darger….

The Source of Darger’s Most Important Character

When Darger became friends with William Schloeder, whom Darger called “Whillie” throughout his autobiography, he met and began to interact with Whillie’s entire family, and he would eventually become an accepted part of the family, often visiting the Schloeder home. It was only a block and a half away from where Darger was then living—at the Workingmen’s House, a dormitory-like situation for employees of St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Whillie’s parents must have given Darger a good sense of what he had missed out on throughout his early life. Whillie had grown up in a two-parent home. Michael and Susanna Schloeder, Whillie’s parents, were married on August 12, 1872. Like Henry’s father, Michael was born in Germany (on February 24, 1837), the son of Mathiae and Catharina Schloeder. He had moved to Chicago almost directly from Germany in 1864, the year before the U.S. Civil War ended. Susanna, often called Susie, was born January 2, 1846 in Luxembourg, the daughter of Nicholas and Elizabeth Braun, and immigrated in 1871—the year of the Great Chicago Fire and close to the time that Henry’s father had arrived from Germany.

Darger met Whillie only a short time before Michael Schloeder, who had been ill for two and a half months, died of chronic bronchitis on December 14, 1911. The 1900 Federal Census reveals that he and Susanna had had seven children, but listed only six. And in 1911, only five were still living: Elizabeth, aged thirty-six; William (called “Bill” by the family, but “Whillie” by Darger), aged thirty; Henry, aged twenty-eight; Susan, aged twenty-three; and Katherine (or “Catherine”), the baby, aged twenty-one. Another daughter, Lucy, was born in 1875, but died between the 1900 and the 1910 censuses. The whereabouts of the seventh child was never disclosed.

As it turns out, Darger named one of his most important characters after Whillie’s older sister. She plays an important role in both his first novel (In the Realms of the Unreal….) and an even more important one in his second (Further Adventures in Chicago: Crazy House). In Crazy House, she is an obvious stand-in for Darger. Many of her experiences in the novel are actually what he experienced during his childhood on the streets of Chicago’s notorious vice district, West Madison Street, now the very gentrified Near West Side. But why would he incorporate Whillie’s sister, someone he’d never met, into his first two novels and give her such an important role in Crazy House?

For the answer to this and other mysteries surrounding the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, be on the lookout for Throw-Away Boy: A Life of Henry Darger…

A Classic of Gay Fiction Close to Darger's Heart

Henry Darger was a reader.

His father taught him how to read newspapers before he ever attended school. He loved books and read them voraciously, and in fact, he had a large library that ranged in subject from the popular (The Dion Quintuplets “Going on Three” and The Great Chicago Fire) to the esoteric (Sources of Volcanic Energy and Catechism of Christian Doctrine). He owned a nearly complete run of every Oz book that L. Frank Baum wrote, having thirteen of the fourteen.

But one of the most peculiar volumes in his library was a classic of gay literature, Condemned to Devil’s Island. Written by Blair Niles and published in 1928, it’s supposedly a fictionalized account of the life of a very handsome young Frenchman who’s imprisoned there because he was a thief. She claimed to have visited the island and interviewed him thoroughly, and the book’s subtitle, The Biography of an Unknown Convict, suggests just that. But it reads more like fiction than nonfiction.

Sent to the jungle penal colony at Devil’s Island, just off the shore of French Guiana, Niles’ “unknown convict,” Michel Oban, recalls early in the book that he had no family. His mother had disappeared when he was very young and he rarely saw his father—exactly what Darger could have said about his own parents. Darger’s mother died when he was four, and his father was rarely at home, leaving him to roam Chicago’s notorious West Madison Street vice district at will. Many pages later, Oban discovers, “There are only three sorts of men in prison … the men who keep brats, those who become brats, and those who learn how to relieve themselves.” (page 133) Brat was a term at the time for a young man who exchanged his sexual favors for money, protection, and/or affection.

This hardback was among the nine novels by Dickens and A Shirley Temple Story Book that Darger saved, but why did he save it? We save what is important to us, but why was this book important to him?

For the answer to this and other mysteries surrounding the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, be on the lookout for Throw-Away Boy: A Life of Henry Darger…

Henry Darger, Doughboy

On April 6, 1917, the U.S. decided to join with various European countries to fight German aggression in what is now called World War I. Although willing to fight, the U.S. wasn’t prepared to. It needed to bolster its number of troops, and so it instituted conscription, what we now often refer to as the “draft.” Like most American men of the time, Darger followed the law and registered for the draft on June 2, and three and a half months later, on September 20, he was drafted.

He was sent to Camp Grant in nearby Rockford, IL first and was later herded onto a train bound for Camp Logan (now Memorial Park) in Houston, TX. 

But Darger didn’t like being an infantryman. In his autobiography written over half a century later, he complained about how the many vaccinations he had to take as a new recruit left his arm sore. He implied that he didn’t like the food (although he loved the snacks he could buy at the canteen). Most important of all, he grumbled about how he hated leaving what he loved most behind in Chicago.

Always a creative problem solver, Darger figured out a way of getting out of the army. He began to carp about his eyesight when he arrived at Camp Logan. Doctors there put him though a very thorough eye examination that lasted for several days. As it turned out, Darger flunked the tests—on purpose. He claimed not to be able to see things when he could, or he exaggerated his genuinely weak eyesight, making it appear worse than it was.

Within a little over three months of his induction, Darger was honorably discharged from the army, put onto the Katy Flier, one of the fastest trains of its day, and sent home to Chicago. He returned to work at St. Joseph’s Hospital immediately.

But what was it that he loved and missed so much that he deceived the military—and risked imprisonment if his deception were discovered—to return to it?

For the answer to this and other mysteries surrounding the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, be on the lookout for Throw-Away Boy: A Life of Henry Darger…

The Mystery of Darger's Multiple Birth Certificates

Henry Darger’s birth date is a puzzle.

When Henry’s parents met, his mother’s name was Mrs. Rosa Ronalds. She’d been married before—twice. First to a man named Fullman, later to one called Ronalds. Henry’s father’s name was also Henry Darger, and like his wife, he too had been married before—to Elizabeth, an immigrant from England, who died on September 14, 1883. Henry was an immigrant from Germany, and Rosa was native born, from Wisconsin. Rosa and Henry were married on August 18, 1890, and according to their marriage license, he was forty-nine when he was joined in holy matrimony with twenty-nine-year-old Rosa. It was a no-frills affair. John Murphy, a Chicago justice of the peace, married them, and his clerk, Henry Wulff, served as their witness.

Several years later, their son was born, but when? The date that Henry believed to be his birth doesn’t jibe with either of the two birth certificates on file for him. And, complicating matters, the birth certificates contradict one another!

Henry opens his unpublished autobiography, The History of My Life, by writing, “In the month of April, on the 12 in the year of 1892, of what week day I never knew, as I was never told, nor did I seek the information.” Written when he was sixty-eight and in ill health, he forgot to mention what the date refers to: his birthday. It’s this date that is typically used as his birth date.

But his birth certificates offer alternatives.

In the earlier of the two, Henry is not “Henry” at all, but “Arthar.” He was born on May 23, 1893—a year and twelve days later than Henry reports in his autobiography. He was born at home, at 2707 Portland Avenue on Chicago’s Near South Side. His father, Henry Darger, was fifty-two years old, a tailor, and a German immigrant, and his mother, Rosa Darger (née Burkeman) was thirty-two. “Arthar” was his mother’s third child. The form is dated June 2, 1893.

In the other one, dated a year and eight days later, Henry is “Henry” again. He’s still his mother’s third child, and she is called Rosie—not Rosa, though close enough—but his place of birth has changed to the Cook County Infirmary, where the most destitute of Chicago’s poor sought medical help. His father’s name remains “Henry,” but he’s not a German immigrant anymore, having now been born in the “UStates.” His occupation is “unknown.” Henry’s birth date—his third—is listed as May 28, 1894.

Which should we believe? And why are there two birth certificates, which contradict one another?

For the answers to these and other mysteries surrounding the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, be on the lookout forThrow-Away Boy: A Life of Henry Darger…