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{ 179 } AFTERWORD At Whitman’s Grave GEORGE B. HUTCHINSON Eleanor Ray, the caretaker of Whitman’s home in Camden, showed me the piece of paper on which Whitman had contracted for the building of his tomb: New England granite from Quincy quarry, where, as a college student, I had learned rock-­ climbing some fifteen years before. The tomb caught Whitman’s disciples by surprise. Believing he was destitute, for years they had been holding subscription birthday dinners and organizing evenings for his lecture on the death of Abraham Lincoln, while he’d been quietly hoarding $1,500 for a mausoleum—which ultimately cost about $4,000, more than twice what his house on Mickle Street had cost. Dr. Bucke, who thought of Whitman as an improvement on Christ Jesus and the Buddha, was taken aback. But evidently the old man knew what he was about. He chose the spot with a view to posterity. He was one to whom generations mattered—­ generations and geography, our placement in this world. I was in Philadelphia in 1987, a week after the celebration of the poet’s 168th birthday, to coach a pair-­ oared crew I’d brought up from Tennessee for the Dad Vail championships on the Schuylkill. There Thomas Eakins, who did the death mask and a famous portrait of the poet, had painted the Biglin brothers racing back in Whitman’s day.While I was in the area I was determined to visit Whitman’s home and, if I could, his grave. One of my oarsmen, a white Philadelphian, sent me off with a warning about Camden: “It’s a rough place,” he said. He smiled wryly: “I wouldn’t stay past dark if I were you.” I picked my way through the torn-­ up streets of Philly trying to find the Walt Whitman Bridge over the Delaware River but finally settled for the Ben Franklin Bridge instead. It’s more direct for reaching Whitman’s house. Caught in the afternoon rush hour, I { 180 } George B. Hutchinson gazed on the river below, bearing who knows what to the polluted bay. Then the weird terrain of Camden suddenly engulfed me— all those row houses block on block, uniformly three stories, the mélange of faded colors, the curious flatness of the city, its repetitiveness , its poverty. Finding the right street was not so hard, but I missed Whitman ’s house the first time past. I’d expected to find it in the midst of a block of dilapidated row houses, but it sat quite primly amid a small group of them nicely kept up on Mickle Boulevard—not Mickle Street anymore, but a broad and empty thoroughfare divided by a median in a nearly deserted stretch of the city. Across the street some sort of large civic building in the middle stages of construction was rising. The boulevard itself dead-­ ended into a half-­ constructed bridge the city had begun and then, it seemed, changed its mind about. The whole block where Whitman had lived was a kind of twilight zone, strangely cut off from the rest of the city. It was so deserted that Saturday that I began to wonder if Mickle Street had been bodily moved, all in one piece, to another spot. How could it be so barren of people? And the few houses left looked too neat from the outside, like lawyers’ or architects’ offices on yuppiedom ’s urban frontier. I parked, walked up to 328 Mickle Boulevard, and knocked. No answer. Knocked again, harder. Still no answer, and no sign that this was Whitman’s home. But I was sure I had the address right. I looked in the windows. “Too modern inside,” I concluded. Then I went next door, 330 Mickle Boulevard, the one with the flag flying from the top story. At least I could ask someone here what had happened to Whitman’s house. Surely it would not have been torn down. Was there a Mickle Street somewhere? As I asked myself this, I saw a brass plaque designating the place as Whitman’s. The number had changed since Whitman’s day. There was no answer to my knock. This can’t be it, I thought. I looked at the sign again, the hours posted. It should be open, I thought. I knocked again. Nothing. I started to walk away, went back, knocked one more time, harder. Just as I was turning away again, the knob turned from the inside. The door...

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