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Stanford memorial resurfaces |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Thursday, 09 September 2004 |
By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News
"Is it not, is it not, haunted ground?''
So asks a poem that grieving Jane Stanford had etched on a memorial tablet to mark the site of her son's original grave.
The ground is now haunted by bulldozers, debris and construction workers, the site of the future Hyatt-managed Classic Residence luxury senior housing on Palo Alto's Sand Hill Road.
The monument itself, carved from Leland Jr.'s original marble crypt after his body was moved to a larger one, is boxed in protective plywood. The verse can be viewed by peering through a tiny plexiglass window.
So ends the mystery of the Leland Jr. Memorial Tablet, which four years ago disappeared from its historic site and was rumored to be gone forever.
Hyatt promises that the 12-foot-tall monument, cleaned up and preserved, will be on public display starting next summer at a new ``Stanford Heritage Park.'' Also at the site will be a 140-year-old carriage house, used as a storage shed by the Stanfords.
The tablet's whereabouts have been unknown to local history buffs, who complain that the founding family is too often forgotten at the modern world-class university.
``It was uprooted to make room for more housing -- unnecessary housing,'' said Norman Tutorow, local historian and author of the newly published book ``The Governor: The Life and Legacy of Leland Stanford.'' ``The memorial is another one of those things that reminds people of the family, and the family has fallen out of favor.''
``Hello? Is nothing sacred? For whom is the institution named?'' asked Stanford alumna Karen Bartholomew in a letter to Stanford magazine.
The death of Leland Stanford Jr. is a tale of Victorian tragedy. A boy of great promise and the sole heir of a vast fortune, Leland died of typhoid fever in Italy on March 13, 1884, two months short of his 16th birthday. Within a year, his parents created the university to honor their child by educating others.
Leland was laid to rest in a crypt of white Carrara marble within a brick mausoleum in a garden of the Palo Alto farmhouse where he had played as a child.
A flurry of condolences arrived to mourn the death of Leland, the only child of the former governor of California and one of the 50 richest men in America.
One of the letters contained a verse from a friend.
``Death breathing stillness and sadness around and is it not, is it not, haunted ground,'' she wrote, in a poem Jane believed to be the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
In 1898, she had four stanzas chiseled into her son's memorial tablet. The tablet was placed at his original grave site after he was moved to join his father in a larger marble mausoleum.
``The text is so sad, it gives me the goose bumps,'' said campus archaeologist Laura Jones. ``It is horrific. One can only imagine the loss of your only child, as a teenager. Young Leland's death is one of the great stories of American history -- that his parents managed to turn it around and build one of the world's great universities out of it.''
More than a century after its creation, the monument's message resonates because ``it calls on the universal human emotion of grief,'' Jones said. ``It also has, for some people, that element of the macabre. There is something kind of creepy about it.''
The verse held its own mystery. For years, scholars could never find the poem among Browning's work. Tutorow and his wife recently identified the true author as Felicia Dorothea Hemans, a 19th-century poet.
Curiously, when Tutorow finally read a proper edition of Hemans' work, he compared it to the words carved in the marble. They didn't quite match. Several words were different. Many commas were out of place.
``I don't know whether it was from memory or false transcription when Jane had it engraved,'' he said.
Construction of 388 new homes at the site meant that the monument had to move. In 2000, a large crane carefully lifted and carried the stone to its current spot.
It was boxed up for protection, so no graffiti or construction equipment could damage it, said Bob Hutchinson, vice president for development of Hyatt Classic Residences.
The tablet will soon get a sturdy new concrete base. Stains will be removed. And the marble will be chemically treated to reduce the effects of natural weathering and prevent biological growth.
Once unveiled, the restored Leland Jr. Memorial Tablet may finally receive long-overdue attention. As part of a new public park along a walking trail, a new generation of visitors will read its sad verse.
``It is a very powerful thing to see,'' said Jones. ``It has all the elements of a great story.''
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/9614628.htm |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.” Walt Whitman
Shirtless and Sculpted
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