Washington DC; Arlington Cemetery

 Washington DC

 

I failed to read my guidebook before a recent brief trip to Washington. This was not because of lack of time: I had bought the Rough Guide in 1998, just before going to the US for a family funeral. 

 

On that occasion it turned out that there was no opportunity to see the sights of DC. The visit was spent at the funeral in Arlington Cemetery and at a family memorial gathering in Virginia. The Rough Guide (1997 edition) remained unread, but on-shelf, for the next 26 years.

 

The journey this Autumn was also for a funeral in Arlington Cemetery. My aunt, the last survivor of her generation, died earlier this year aged 103. Her husband was the one buried in 1998, entitled to Arlington because he was a career officer in the US Army. His widow had the right to be buried in the same grave.

 

My aunt had insisted on a Roman Catholic funeral service, in the non-denominational Chapel on the military post that houses the personnel who look after the Cemetery. Such is the demand for services at the chapel that there was a 6 month wait after her death. That length of time, and her very ripe age, meant that the occasion was not one of sorrow but remembrance, and especially one of family reunion.

 

Arlington Cemetery is truly vast. There are approaching half a million graves, spread in long ordered lines over the hilly west bank of the Potomac River.

There is no point from which the whole may be observed. Once, before the Civil War, it was part of the Virginian landed estates of a prominent family (General Robert E Lee was a member). The ante-bellum mansion, Arlington House, still stands in the Cemetery. It’s a memorial to Lee himself.

 

Several funerals take place every day. The military provided pall bearers and escorts, the size and lavishness of which depend on the rank of the deceased (my aunt got the pall bearers but not the military honours accorded her husband).

 

Arlington attracts large numbers of visitors – there are many graves of the famous, including President John F Kennedy. There is one never-ending ceremony at the heart of the Cemetery: the guarding of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In fact, there are several Tombs of several Unknowns, commemorating the anonymous fallen in different modern conflicts. No doubt there will be more to come.

 

For 24 hours a day, every day, a solitary armed soldier slowly marches up and down a marked strip laid on a wide marble platform containing the Tomb(s). Depending on the season of the year, every hour or half hour the sentry is relieved by another in an elaborate ritual. While the current soldier still paces, the commander of the Guard marches steadily into view, followed by the relief sentry. Briefly, all three are in choreographed movement. (Marching involves putting one foot precisely in front of the other, with a curious Chaplinesque inward swing of the leg.) Then the weapon, uniform and person of the incoming soldier are lengthily and closely inspected by the Commander, the soldier standing to attention except when deftly presenting arms. That test passed, the two sentries fall briefly into step before the relieved one marches off with the Commander, the incomer already settled into his shift.

 

This is the ultimate in military existentialism, the determined and unceasing ceremony of guarding the dead against no likely threat.

 

……

 

Not reading the DC guidebook meant I could be surprised by central Washington, having made my way by the impressive Washington area Metro to the edge of the Mall.

 

I knew, of course, about the buildings and monuments (or at least the main ones). What I hadn’t appreciated, from the years of news clips and photographs, is the awesome symmetry of Federal area, laid out for two miles mostly along the wide and green Mall. The Capitol at the Eastern end looks West to the Washington Monument, which in turn looks onward West to the Lincoln Memorial on the Potomac and North to the White House. 

 

Then there are the museums, also mostly on the Mall. I’d heard of the Smithsonian but had never quite understood which museum it was. Now I understand: The Smithsonian is most of the museums. It’s a philanthropic institution manifesting in many buildings containing different collections. The one imposing museum on the Mall that is not a Smithsonian is the National Gallery of Art. And the one that has the most eye-catching C19 interior, whist being a Smithsonian, was not purpose built: it’s the Old Patent Office, now devoted to modern American art.

 

In addition to memorials, monuments, Capitol, White House and museums, the area is full of brooding huge blocks of government offices. Just when one has concluded that office blocks could get no bigger, one turns a corner and sees the 400-metre frontage of another. (These are the homes of The Swamp..)

 

Having been in Egypt earlier this year, I couldn’t help thinking that all this was the modern equivalent of Thebes (Luxor), the capital of ancient Egypt in its prime: both built on a monumental scale, celebrating government, battles and rulers, both imbued with religion. The Washington Monument is of course a direct copy of ancient Egyptian style.

 

The other striking general fact is that entrance to everywhere is free. Ironically, in a country deeply antagonistic to the concept of “socialism” in its political discourse, there is probably nowhere in the world where so much cultural socialism is on offer for citizen and visitor alike. 

 

In the Smithsonian Museum of American History there is a wing called the Hall of Democracy (a history of the Constitution, elections, the franchise, parties and protests). This was a must-see. Who knows – in the near future the Hall may be closed indefinitely for renovations.

 

November 2024