On this day in 1854, socialite and philanthropist, wife of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, Elizabeth Hamilton died in Washington, D.C., at age 97. She was a defender of her husband’s works and co-founder and deputy director of Graham Windham, the first private orphanage in New York City. Hamilton is recognized as an early American philanthropist for her work with the Orphan Asylum Society.
The Final Footprint
Hamilton was buried near her husband in the graveyard of Trinity Church, a historic parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. I have visited her grave and my love and fabulous cemetery walkin’ companion, Anna took this photograph of her grave.
On this day in 1918, poet, playwright, short story writer, and novelist, Guillaume Apollinaire died in Paris during the Spanish flu pandemic at the age of 38. Born on 26 August 1880 in Rome.
In my opinion, Apollinaire is one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the most impassioned defenders of Cubism and a forefather of Surrealism. He is credited with coining the term “cubism” in 1911 to describe the emerging art movement and the term “surrealism” in 1917 to describe the works of Erik Satie. The term Orphism (1912) is also his. Apollinaire wrote one of the earliest Surrealist literary works, the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917), which became the basis for the 1947 opera Les mamelles de Tirésias.
Apollinaire was active as a journalist and art critic for Le Matin, L’Intransigeant, L’Esprit nouveau, Mercure de France, and Paris Journal. In 1912 Apollinaire co-founded Les Soirées de Paris, an artistic and literary magazine.
The Final Footprint
He was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Other notable Final Footprints at Père Lachaise include; Honoré de Balzac, Georges Bizet, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Maria Callas, Frédéric Chopin, Colette, Auguste Comte, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Max Ernst, Molière, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, Marcel Proust, Sully Prudhomme, Gioachino Rossini, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Simone Signoret, Gertrude Stein, Dorothea Tanning, Alice B. Toklas, Oscar Wilde, and Richard Wright.
Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens
Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu’un vivant peut connaître
Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l’amour
On this day in 1953, poet and writer, Dylan Thomas, died in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village from pneumonia at the age of 39. Born Dylan Marlais Thomas on 27 October 1914 in Swansea, South Wales. One of my favorite poets. I particularly like the villanelle for his dying father, “Do not go gentle into that good night” and the poem “And death shall have no dominion”. Thomas met the dancer Caitlin MacNamara in the Wheatsheaf pub in London’s West End. They were married on 11 July 1937 in Cornwall. Their marriage was a stormy affair, fuelled by alcohol and infidelity, though the couple remained together until Dylan’s death. I am certainly proud of my own Welsh heritage. Cymru am byth! Wales forever!
The Final Footprint – Following his death, Thomas’ body was brought back to Wales for burial. Thomas’ funeral took place at St Martin’s Church in Laugharne on 24 November. Thomas’ coffin was carried by six friends from the village. The procession to the church was filmed and the wake took place at Brown’s Hotel. Thomas is interred in Saint Martin’s Churchyard. His grave is marked by a white cross. There is a statue of Thomas in Swansea and a memorial. The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden in Cwmdonkin Park. The rock is inscribed with the closing lines from his poem Fern Hill;
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Thomas’s home in Laugharne, the Boat House, has been made a memorial. A plaque was placed in Westminster Abbey’s Poets Corner in honour of Thomas. His image appears on the pub sign of Brown’s Hotel in Laugharne. From “And death shall have no dominion”:
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” (1952)
#RIP #OTD in 2003 actor (The Honeymooners, Harry and Tonto, The Late Show, House Calls, Going in Style, Firestarter, Last Action Hero) Art Carney died at a care home in Chester, Connecticut, aged 85. Riverside Cemetery in Old Saybrook, Connecticut
On this day in 2004, journalist and writer Stieg Larsson died from a heart attack after climbing the stairs to work in Stockholm, at the age of 50. Born Karl Stig-Erland Larsson on 15 August 1954 in Skelleftehamn, Västerbottens län, Sweden. Perhaps best known for writing the Millennium trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2005, after his sudden death. The trilogy was adapted as three motion pictures in Sweden, and one in the U.S. (for the first book only). The publisher commissioned David Lagercrantz to expand the trilogy into a longer series. For much of his life, Larsson lived and worked in Stockholm. His journalistic work covered socialist politics and he acted as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.
He was the second-best-selling fiction author in the world for 2008, owing to the success of the English translation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The third and final novel in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, became the bestselling book in the United States in 2010, according to Publishers Weekly. By March 2015, his series had sold 80 million copies worldwide.
The Final Footprint
He is entombed at the Högalid Church cemetery in the district of Södermalm in Stockholm.
In May 2008, it was announced that a 1977 will, found soon after Larsson’s death, declared his wish to leave his assets to the Umeå branch of the Communist Workers League (now the Socialist Party). As the will was unwitnessed, it was not valid under Swedish law, with the result that all of Larsson’s estate, including future royalties from book sales, went to his father and brother, leaving nothing to his long-term partner Eva Gabrielsson.
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