Con­tributed by Chris­tian Leh­mann, Bard High School, Early Col­lege

On his 52 bi­rthday (7 Feb­rua­ry, 1864) Char­les Di­ckens re­ceived word that his son, Walt­er Lan­dor, had died in India on 31 De­cemb­er 1863. A few days later Di­ckens de­scribed the cir­cumstan­ces of Wal­ter’s death in a long lett­er to An­gela Bur­dett Co­utts (12 Feb­rua­ry 1864). “On the last day of the old year at a quart­er past 5 in the af­ternoon he [Walt­er] was talk­ing to the other patients about his ar­range­ments for com­ing home, when he be­came violent­ly ex­cited, co­ug­hed violent­ly, had a great gush of blood from the mouth, and fell dead;—all this, in a few seconds. It was then found that there was ex­ten­sive and per­fect­ly in­cur­able an­eur­ism of the Aorta, which had burst.” He con­tinues, “An­oth­er of his broth­ers, Frank, I sent out to Cal­cutta on the 20^th of De­cemb­er. He would hear of his brot­her’s death, on touch­ing the shore.” Di­ckens spends much of the re­maind­er of the lett­er dwell­ing on the co­in­cid­ence that he was play­ing charades at the time of his son’s death and had a funere­al pre­sen­ti­ment about the co­stume he had created. In a lett­er to Char­les Knight on the first of March 1864, Di­ckens seems to have settled upon the de­tails that he is will­ing to share, name­ly, the san­guina­ry and rapid de­m­ise of his son and Frank’s macab­re ar­riv­al. “He was talk­ing to some brother-officers…when he sud­den­ly be­came ex­cited, had a rush of blood from the mouth, and was dead. His broth­er Frank would ar­rive out at Cal­cutta, ex­pect­ing to see him after six years, and he would have been dead a month.” The nar­rative of Wal­ter’s af­terlife ends here, but a year ago, around Christmas of 2018, I would pick it up again.

On De­cemb­er 26^th, 2018, in a Twitt­er re­spon­se to @hemantsarin post­ing an ar­ticle from The Tri­bune India about Walt­er Lan­dor Di­ckens’s grave in Kol­kata (Cal­cutta), the pro­minent Vic­torian twitt­er han­dle and web­site, @VictorianWeb, wrote, “Hope some­one visits one day. Sad!”

At the time, @Southportgal (Roc­helle Al­meida) had been spend­ing a year in India and tweet­ing about her ex­peri­ence so I asked if she might see it. Un­for­tunate­ly, I had mis­sed the win­dow.

Well, this plan­ted the seed of an idea in my head, and when I was in­vited to a wedd­ing in Chen­nai (Mad­ras) over the second week of De­cemb­er 2019, I de­cided to let the idea flow­er. I would visit the grave and honor Walt­er near the time of his death day (31 De­cemb­er) and de­liv­er the flow­ers that The Tri­bune said no one had placed for “poor Walt­er Lan­dor Di­ckens, whose de­solate tombstone re­mains de­solate even on a Christmas day. No car­ing hand places flow­er on it” (Link).

Walt­er Lan­dor Di­ckens, cal­led Wally by some and “Young Skull” by his fath­er due to his high cheek­bones (Pilgrim Lett­ers 3:331) was born on 8 Feb­rua­ry 1841. Original­ly to be cal­led Edgar, his fath­er chan­ged his mind and named him after the poet Walt­er Savage Lan­dor, upon whom, in turn, Di­ckens claimed to have based the charact­er of Bleak House‘s Lawr­ence Boyt­horn: “Boyt­horn is (bet­ween our­selves) a most exact portrait of Walt­er Savage Lan­dor” (to Mrs. Ric­hard Wat­son, 6 May 1852; Pilgrim Lett­ers 6:666). He is the baby with the plumed hat in Daniel Mac­lise’s (1841) fam­ous paint­ing of the first four Di­ckens childr­en and the second Grip.

Walt­er pas­sed the next years of his life re­lative­ly with­out in­cident, other than winn­ing a variety of med­als in school and once, when he was twel­ve, spend­ing the day in the bathroom in sol­ita­ry (1857) con­fine­ment after hav­ing thrown a chair at a nurse. At the age of six­te­en and with the help of An­gela Bur­dett Co­utts, he ob­tained a Cadetship and was off to Cal­cutta with the East India Com­pany’s Pre­siden­cy arm­ies. There he pas­sed a re­lative­ly un­remark­able care­er that showed a pro­pens­ity for gett­ing into debt. In late 1863, he tur­ned most of his pos­sess­ions into cash with the aim of re­turn­ing home, but died be­fore he could. In­stead of his body, Di­ckens re­ceived his debt(for a full­er bi­og­ra­phy, see Vic­torian­Web Link, Lucin­da Hawksley Di­ckens’s Ar­tistic Daught­er, Katey, and Robert Gottleib, Great Ex­pec­ta­tions: The Sons and Daught­ers of Char­les Di­ckens).

As a few dif­ferent popular sour­ces have men­tioned (The Hindu, Cul­ture Tripand Get Be­ng­al), Char­les’ son was original­ly buried in a milita­ry cemete­ry in Bhowanipore, not far from where the tombstone now lies. In 1987, a group of students of Jadav­pur Uni­vers­ity raised funds to move the tombstone(­but not the body) to South Park Street Cemete­ry where other not­able European em­ig­rants are buried. This task is com­memorated by a small plaque be­neath the tombstone: “this tombstone from Bhowanipore Cemete­ry was placed here in April 1987 hel­ped by col­lec­tions made by the students of Jadav­pur Uni­vers­ity.” Furth­er up­keep from that point seems neg­ligib­le.

I ar­rived in Cal­cutta on the 22^nd of De­cemb­er on an all-night train from Puri to How­rah, the main train depot for Cal­cutta and home to some phenomen­al Vic­torian architec­ture. After tak­ing one of the ubiquit­ous yel­low Am­bassador Clas­sic taxis to my hotel, I set out to find the South Park Street Cemete­ry. This was the eas­iest part of the jour­ney, it would turn out, since it is re­lative­ly fam­ous and shows up pro­mpt­ly on Goog­leMaps.

When I got to the cemete­ry, I paid my 50 Rupee fee, sig­ned my name, and pro­ceeded to wand­er around in search of the grave. The first thing I noticed was the ab­rupt sil­ence as large walls cut the site off from the in­ces­sant honks, mur­murs, roars, and be­llows of the street. Second­ly, I rea­lized that this would be a fair­ly dif­ficult task as my eyes drank in the lofty mausoleums all around me.

Luc­ki­ly, The Hindu had prin­ted this image.

I therefore knew that I was not going to be look­ing for any of the em­pyre­al edifices, but would in­stead have to con­jure the spirit of Durdles to navigate this labyrinth of funera­ry mark­ers. I set off and searched among the centuries-old con­crete and marble monu­ments and crept by the young loc­als gat­hered for dates, con­ver­sa­tion, and photos­hoots.

After mak­ing a few rounds of the cemete­ry and watch­ing the sun’s shadows length­en ac­ross the text of the tombs, I began cutt­ing ac­ross and be­hind the de­sig­nated walk­ing paths, some of which were al­ready turn­ing eldritch.

It was only on my final, and some­what fran­tic, scramble mo­ments be­fore I needed to leave that I step­ped be­hind a cor­n­er mausoleum and caught sight of the chip­ped and frag­menta­ry tombstone of non­descript marble that I had seen on­line.

Here, nestled bet­ween two small shrubs and dominated by some­one else’s mas­sive mem­ori­al, lay the rea­son I had traveled from Cleveland, Ohio to Kol­kata, India: Walt­er Lan­dor Di­ckens’ tombstone. I did not have flow­ers, but I had brought my copy of David Co­pper­field along, and so I put fath­er and son togeth­er.

The text of the tombstone is dif­ficult to read, and a large piece of it has brok­en away, which is oddly fitt­ing given the frag­menta­ry know­ledge that we have about Cat­herine and Char­les’ fourth child.

A much ear­li­er ac­count, from 1914, of a similar pilgrimage (p.128 of this ar­ticle by Wil­mont Cor­field, al­though he nor­malizes the capitaliza­tion pdf), re­ve­als that it read in full:

My pur­suit of the grave was hard­ly the dramatic noc­turn­al event that Cor­field’s was. In de­spera­tion to find the grave he had heard about be­fore leav­ing Cal­cutta, he had put forth “ur­gent en­qui­ries.” In re­spon­se, he lear­ned that “an aged Be­ngali had re­mem­bered see­ing a numb­er of sahibs stand­ing round a grave in a cer­tain part of the cemete­ry in the sixt­ies. A close search by lan­tern light had fol­lowed and the stone lay re­vealed. Weeds and de­bris brus­hed aside, the havoc of earthquake, sun and rain had yiel­ded to the search­ers, and dis­closed the hidd­en sec­ret of the years” (ibid).

The next day I de­cided to re­turn and spend a more leisure­ly af­ternoon with the tombstone. I also wan­ted to make it eas­i­er for the next per­son who seeks it out. Upon pass­ing through the gate, pay­ing the fee, and writ­ing your name, take the first right.

Walk until you come to the large white marble struc­ture on your left.

Step be­hind it, and you will find Wal­ter’s tombstone.

I pul­led out my copy of David Co­pper­field and read Di­ckens’s most ex­ten­sive pas­sage on Cal­cutta in all of his writ­ings. (The only other men­tion of the city is a throw-away com­ment in chapt­er 31 of Mar­tin Chuzzlewit, “Many a man in Mr Pecksniff’s place, if he could have dived through the floor of the pew of state and come out at Cal­cutta or any in­habited re­g­ion on the other side of the earth, would have done it in­stant­ly. Mr Pecksniff sat down upon a has­sock, and li­sten­ing more at­tentive­ly than ever, smiled.) The pas­sage in Co­pper­field reads:

But Mr. Mills, who was al­ways doing some­th­ing or other to annoy me—or I felt as if he were, which was the same thing—had brought his con­duct to a climax, by tak­ing it into his head that he would go to India. Why should he go to India, ex­cept to harass me? To be sure he had noth­ing to do with any other part of the world, and had a good deal to do with that part; being en­tire­ly in the India trade, whatev­er that was (I had float­ing dreams myself con­cern­ing gold­en shawls and elep­hants’ teeth); hav­ing been at Cal­cutta in his youth; and de­sign­ing now to go out there again, in the capac­ity of re­sident partn­er. But this was noth­ing to me. Howev­er, it was so much to him that for India he was bound, and Julia with him; and Julia went into the co­unt­ry to take leave of her re­la­tions; and the house was put into a per­fect suit of bills, an­nounc­ing that it was to be let or sold, and that the fur­ni­ture (Man­gle and all) was to be taken at a valua­tion.

(DC, Ch. 41, p. 596-597 Penguin)

Clos­ing my book, I de­cided to ful­fill my last task and place flow­ers upon tombstone. I wal­ked the cemete­ry and selec­ted from the meag­er flor­al growth there. At last I placed my bouquet.

In search­ing for the flow­ers, howev­er, I had also come upon a plas­tic gar­land cast away in a re­fuse heap. So I de­cided to go all out and give Walt­er a gaudy pre­sen­ta­tion and to celeb­rate him in a way I im­agine he never was, even when he de­par­ted En­gland at six­te­en years old.