Where Dead Writers Reside, Part Five: Rudyard Kipling, Gertrude Stein, Ayn Rand, T.S. Eliot

It's October, and that requires obligatory Halloween-inspired posts. And nothing is more obligatorily macabre than looking at the tombstones of those who have died.

Now through Halloween we'll occasionally post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.


Today:  Rudyard Kipling, Gertrude Stein, Ayn Rand, T.S.Eliot


Rudyard Kipling

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, Kipling would spend the next two decades still writing with some regularity. By the 1930s and in his mid-60s, Kipling's output slowed. You know how they say "60 is the new 40!"? Yeah, not in Kipling's case. 60 was still 60 then.

On January 12, 1936, Kipling suffered a hemorrhage in his small intestine. He underwent surgery, but died six days later on January 18th of a perforated duodenal ulcer. Whatever that is, perforated-anything is never good, and isn't the most pleasant of endings. Kipling was 70-years old.

His funeral included his body lying in a marble casket adorned with a Union Jack, after which his body was cremated and his ashes buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Tombstone Notes:
Kipling's remains at Westminster Abbey are surrounded by a who's-who of British literary history, including Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. It's tough when, in death, you're probably the third most famous person in the immediate neighborhood.

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Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein lived a wealthy life as the child of Daniel Stein, a businessman who owned real estate and street car lines in San Francisco. After her mother and father died while she was a teenager, Stein and her two brothers largely lived off a trust supplied by their parents--using that money, in part, to purchase vast sums of artwork from the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, and Cézanne. In time, that trust was also used to pick up their lives and move to Europe. A scrappy, ramshackle bunch, those Stein kids.

In was in France she met her life partner, Alice B. Toklas, and it was in France where Stein would die. Such is the yin and yang of life. By 1946, Stein developed stomach cancer--and when wheeled into an operating room for surgery famously asked Toklas, "What is the answer?" Toklas, apparently not a fan of opaque riddles, didn't speak. Stein followed-up, asking, "In that case, what is the question?"

If this all sounds like Stein was impersonating her inner Alex Trebek, you're right. The answer--and question--is how old was Gertrude Stein when she died shortly after this surgery? She was 72, having died in the French town of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Tombstone Notes:
Stein's headstone references Alice B. Toklas on the back, continuing in perpetuity the years Toklas always spent in Stein's shadow.

Stein's remains are buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where the likes of Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Georges Bizet, Molière, Frederic Chopin, Richard Wright, and Jim Morrison are buried. And, yes, that's the only time Jim Morrison and Gertrude Stein are ever mentioned together in the same breath.

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Ayn Rand

The creator of the Objectivist philosophical movement, Rand loved smoking cigarettes fiendishly. One can only assume the chain smoking came out of stress, because she was usually busy offending large swaths of citizenry--from calling homosexuals "immoral," Vietnam War draft dodgers "bums," citizens of Arab nations "savages," and claiming that western European nations had every right to take land of Native Americans. A lover of humanity, that Ayn Rand!

That love of nicotine led to a battle with lung cancer in 1974, for which she underwent surgery. While slowly pulling away--and eventually retiring--from writing, Rand held on for another eight years. She eventually died of heart failure (also not helped by smoking) in 1982 at the age of 77 while living in her home in New York City, proving once and for all that even Death is objective, too.

Tombstone Notes:
Rand is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY, where the likes of Danny Kaye, Lou Gehrig, Rachmaninoff, and a who's who of B-grade celebrities from the 20th-century are buried.

Fun Fact: At Rand's funeral, a 6-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar bill was placed near her casket. I've always said that nothing keeps a funeral classy quite like subtly obnoxious floral displays that channel your inner backwoods hillbilly just yearning to breathe free.

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T.S. Eliot

Continuing on the chain smoking parade...

Eliot was in declining health in the final decade of his life, but that didn't stop him from getting married (for a second time) at the age of 68 to his 30-year old secretary. Nothing turns on young women quite like nebbish academics with wheezing lungs.

And wheezing lungs Eliot indeed had, from habitual bronchitis to tachycardia caused by his heavy smoking. That addiction led to emphysema, which eventually took his life. Eliot's remains were cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, where the likes of Bram Stoker, Sigmund Freud, H.G. Wells, Amy Winehouse, and Keith Moon were also cremated.

Best collection of potential dinner guests ever? Best collection ever of potential dinner guests ever.

Tombstone Notes:
Eliot's ashes were taken to St. Michael's Church, in East Coker within the village of Somerset, where a plaque commemorates and quotes his poem "East Coker."

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" just didn't fit apparently.