Walt Whitman’s Grave Concern
The tomb looked like blocks from Stonehenge had been unearthed and carved into the shape of a little house. It was crude and unadorned. Someone had placed a little flower and a pumpkin in front of the gate that sealed the tomb.
In this excerpt from the Philadelphia Press from May 16, 1890, one would never guess that the writer was describing Camden, NJ:
“It is a natural mound, beneath majestic oaks and chestnut trees, while about 200 feet below a stream of water flows over a precipice from an artificial lake. […] The boughs of the gnarled oaks are spread like arms over the hillock, and touch the greensward on the sides. Back of this piece of ground is the woods […].”
This is Camden, NJ. Yes Camden! Not just any neighborhood, but Harleigh Cemetery — more specifically, the twenty-by-thirty plot that would become the site of Walt Whitman’s tomb.
It is not just any Camden either, but the Camden of Walt Whitman.
I encounter a very different site on a recent visit to the cemetery.
Geese honk from the man-made pond. Police car sirens sound down the narrow roadway from Haddon Avenue. An ambulance wails into the receiving area of Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center. The electric hum and click of a Patco High Speedline train recedes into the west toward Philadelphia. Behind the…