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If you are one of those rare individuals who enjoys strolling through cemeteries and contemplating the past, you may appreciate this post. If historic cemeteries are not your cup of tea, please indulge this writer’s request for a few moments of your time to consider nevertheless the conjunction in history of some notable persons who once took such a stroll together and wrote about the meaning it had for them.
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
The year was 1878. Dean Stanley (A.P. Stanley), the English Anglican historian, was touring America and had occasion to give a lecture on the noted Biblical geographer Edward Robinson. Both Philip Schaff and Theodore L. Cuyler tell the story of the tour of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York that followed.
In David S. Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff, in Part Autobiographical, pp. 329-330, we find this account:
The following day [after Dean Stanley’s lecture], Dr. Schaff, in company with Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler and Dr. Henry M. Field, accompanied the dean on a pilgrimage to Greenwood Cemetery to visit the grave of Dr. Edward Robinson. "This was a most interesting and touching visit," he notes, "of four mourners to the grave of that eminent scholar to whom Stanley paid such a graceful tribute in Union Seminary. Dr. Robinson's son and daughter were there by appointment to meet us. After looking at the simple granite monument, the dean exclaimed, 'That granite crown is simple solidity, just like the man himself.'" From there, the party went to the grave of Dr. Cuyler's little boy, George, whose death was the occasion of that book of comfort to the bereaved, The Empty Crib.
The site where Georgie Cuyler is laid to rest at Green-Wood Cemetery.
Dr. Cuyler writes in Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography, pp. 96-97, speaking of the book written after the death of his young son Georgie:
Dean Stanley read it aloud to Lady Augusta Stanley in the Deanery of Westminster ; and when I took him to our own unrivalled Greenwood Cemetery he asked to be driven to the spot where the dust of our dear boy is slumbering. many thousands have visited that grave and gazed with tender admiration on the exquisite marble medallion of the childface, — by the sculptor, Charles Calverley, — which adorns the monument.
Cuyler goes (pp. 113-114) to speak at greater length of that 1878 visit to the cemetery with his friends.
When Dean Stanley visited America in the autumn of 1878, I met him several times, and he was especially cordial, and all the more so because of my out-spoken letter [offering a gentle criticism of a sermon preached by Dean Stanley]. The first time I met him was at the meeting of ministers of New York to give him a reception, and hear him deliver a discourse on Dr. Robinson, the Oriental geographer. He recognized me in the audience, came forward to the front of the platform, beckoned me up, and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. I arranged to take him to Greenwood Cemetery on the morning before he sailed for home, and after breakfasting with him at Cyrus W. Field's we started for the cemetery. Dr. Phillip Schaff and Dr. Henry M. Field met us at the ferry, and accompanied us. When we entered the elevated railroad car, Stanley exclaimed: "This is like the chariots on the walls of Babylon." With his keen interest in history he inquired when we reached the lower part of the Bowery, near the junction of Chatham Square: "Was it not near here that Nathan Hale, the martyr, was executed?" and he showed then a more accurate knowledge of our local history than one New Yorker in ten thousand can boast! That was probably the exact locality, and Dean Stanley had never been there before. Before entering the Greenwood Cemetery he requested me to drive him to the spot where my little child was buried, whose photograph in "The Empty Crib" I have referred to in a previous chapter. When we reached the burial lot he got out of the carriage, and in the driving wind, of a raw November morning, spent some time in examining the marble medallion of the child, and in talking with my wife most sweetly about him. I could have hugged the man on the spot. It was so like Stanley. I do not wonder that everybody loved him. We then drove to the tomb of Dr. Edward Robinson and the Dean said to us: “In all my travels in Palestine I carried Dr. Robinson's volume, 'Biblical Researches,' with me on horseback or on my camel; it was my constant guide book."
Dr. Cuyler certainly had a special place in his heart for this cemetery. In 1870, he wrote a short article called A Walk in Greenwood Cemetery, New York, in which he states: “For some years past, my favorite resort has been the beautiful and incomparable Greenwood. It has no rival in the world.” He speaks of the connection between this spot and his little Georgie:
Yesterday I went to Greenwood alone. How often, in times past, have I walked there with a pair of little feet tripping beside me, which now, alas! are laid under a mound of green turf and flowers. The night before the precious child departed, having wearied himself with play, he quaintly said, “My little footies are tired at both ends.” Ere twenty-four hours were past, the tired feet had ended life’s short journey, and were laid to the dreamless rest.
Further on, in his concluding remarks on that particular 1870 visit, he shares his farewell thoughts:
To me, the most captivating view is from Sylvan Cliff, overlooking Sylvan Water. On that green brow stands a monument which bears the figure of Faith kneeling before a cross, and beneath it the world-known lines of Toplady: —
”Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling!”
As I stood beside that graceful tablet yesterday, the light of an October sun threw its mellow radiance over the crimsoning foliage, and the green turf, and the sparkling water of the fountain which played in the vale beneath. In the distance was the placid bay, with one stately ship resting at anchor, — a beautiful emblem of a Christian soul whose voyage had ended in the peaceful repose of the “desired haven.” The sun went down into the purpling horizon as I stood there; a bird or two was twittering its evening song; the air was as silent as the unnumbered sleepers around me; and, turning toward the sacred spot where my precious dead is lying, I bade him as of old, Good-night!
The Cuyler family plot at Green-Wood Cemetery.
To this “garden of souls” Dr. Cuyler would eventually return, along with many of his family members, to await to the final resurrection. Among those with whom his body is laid to rest, besides little Georgie, are his wife Annie (d. 1915), his daughter Louise (d. 1881), whose death inspired Cuyler to write his classic devotional work of comfort God’s Light on Dark Clouds, others that bear his name such as Theodore L. Cuyler, Jr. (d. 1943), Theodore L. Cuyler III (d. 1976), and Theodore L. Cuyler IV (d. 2003).
The cemetery may seem to be full of death, but to those who tread lightly and take time to study the epitaphs on the tombstones, it may be found that one seemingly in the midst of death is in fact in the midst of life. The lives of those who have gone before remind us of precious blessings that God has given for a time, and the journey that is not yet over. We may not recognize all the names we pass, but “no man is an island…because I am involved with mankind” (Donne). For those personally touched by the tombstones we visit, “weeping may endure for a night” (Ps. 30:5), but what comfort in these words, “unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings” (Mal. 4:2).
