#Haverstock Hill

[dubmill]

112 Haverstock Hill (rebuilt), Belsize Park, London; 12.9.2020. (Nick Drake lived in the house formerly on this site.)

[skelecha1rs]

Robert Smith in The Lovecats music video. Filmed on the 30th August 1983 in a house on Haverstock Hill in London, England.

[random-brushstrokes]

George Clausen - A Spring Morning, Haverstock Hill (1881)

[geritsel]

Stephen Bone - The Artist's Studio, Haverstock Hill, London, c.1938.

[oliveryuchan]

House in Haverstock Hill, London, 2023, acrylic on canvas paper, 508x405mm, sold

[driftwork]

I reached the pages in my copy of Finnegans Wake where there are uncut sheets, never read sheets. That is a strange thing. Where is the read copy? Not in this house, not with me. The copy copy stolen long ago in the earlier phase on haverstock hill. I don't even remember what that vopy looked like , a different life anyway. Such a long long history ago., ten years or more before i even even had children. Years before I even knew her. I loathe this culture, about the time when I still imagined democratic change was imaginable. There that delightfully implausible book sat, pages turning. The sheep look up. You think you'll never understand this. And then looking up past a dozen, then a hundred and more ideologies and discourses you begin to realize that your not young anymore and the woman you cannot imagine living without, your children are adults are remaking the world, erhaps more successfully than you did and certainly from a position of greater power, better more intelligently. True you wish your son read more, as interestingly as your daughter. But then would he be saving lives evryday if he did ? No, probably not. So here is a picture of the paper knife about to start cutting the pages of this copy of Finnegans Wake, cutting the 80 year old pages open.... carefully. My head has stopped hurting.

[talesofpassingtime]

Durrant quoted Aeschylus—Jacob Sophocles. It is true that no Greek could have understood or professor refrained from pointing out—Never mind; what is Greek for if not to be shouted on Haverstock Hill in the dawn?

— Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room

[karisohara]

part 4: maps

As I’m writing this I’m listening to the sublime ‘Maps’ by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It’s a song that carries a certain nostalgia to it, reminding me of a time when I was just coming of age, the last time the node’s of the moon were in Taurus, whilst chaos was all around me. It’s a beautiful song, and for years it graced the video channels, rock clubs and alt-pubs, soundtracking a time post 9/11 where life was still coming to terms that perhaps our 90s bubbles were a dream. Maps is, me, the teenager on the verge of adulthood, discovering substances and having a taste for them, and how scary everything was at the time. Maps is that dusty London summer heat which is still and strangles the breath out of the air. My first introduction was whilst I was sitting on the steps of Haverstock Hill, with my then neighbour and friend Louis. He handed their record ‘Fever To Tell’, the plastic slightly shattered in corners and the ‘most sorry for itself’ looking gatefold, the record had clearly been used as a coaster and covered in weed crystals. “you should listen to this” he said, coupled with another record peeping behind. Another early noughties classic, The Libertines ‘Up The Bracket’. A year or two later, Maps would tinker through the TV at 5am in a YMCA in New York on an art trip. I remember with terrible jet lag, how I suddenly reached for my Nokia 3310, to see if my then boyfriend had reached out. Only for my heart to sink, realising he had ignored me and this being the first experience of knowing your partner is pulling away. The words ‘wait, they don't love you like I love you’ echoed as I shed a few tears wishing I could go back to sleep.

My sisters mother in law passed the other day, and with any death I think back to all the times of grief. Grief has this way of shaping you, it's an absolute. My grandmother’s passing shaped me especially. I don’t believe we realise that the media we are surrounded by become a time capsule. Everything from the songs soundtracking that time, to the scent of a favorite perfume, clutches onto your memory. Only for a ghost, be that a scent that seems familiar, or a track comes on randomly for you to transport to that time. Maps was part of the soundtrack where I first experienced womanhood, grief, love and heartbreak. The only consistent I have from that time is my own family. 

When my sister announced to me of the Kim’s passing, she ended the message with ‘time is precious and family is golden’. Time moves so fast you blink and yes, you do miss it. How can you know that it might be the last time you see somebody or that you only get that one chance, one moment, and then it drifts by? They then, like Maps, become ghosts, memories drifting in time and every so often, I’ll be reminded by magic fm at 2am in an uber, or Glastonbury footage and I’ll cry watching Cat Stevens as i’m reminded of my grandmother and her love for his music. Tears for a time, a soul, a moment. How wonderful music touches us so deeply.

Monday 17th July 2023

[romantiklen]

Making Of The Lovecats Video (UK)

Steve Rapport captured The Cure during the filming of The Lovecats video on 30 August 1983 in a house on Haverstock Hill in London, England.

Source:

[profamer]

The Origins of - Haverstock Hill: From a stockaded dwelling among the oats. See “Haversack.” #english #ingles

The Origins of – Haverstock Hill: From a stockaded dwelling among the oats. See “Haversack.” #english #ingles

From a stockaded dwelling among the oats. See “Haversack.” Source: Phrases and Names Their Origins and Meanings by Trench H. Johnson Thank you for visiting EL4E.com Tomorrows phrase or name will be I’ll be through directly.

[dubmill]

Belsize Park, London; 28.4.2019 (This isn’t the house where Nick Drake lived. It’s on the opposite corner to the one he lived in – 112 Haverstock Hill – which has been demolished.)

[onlineantiques]

A captivating watercolour painting with pen and ink of Notting Hill Gate, London the artist Sydney Arrobus eBay item number 234376688588 Artist Info Painter Sydney Samuel Arrobus was born in Cricklewood, London in 1901. After taking private art classes as a child, he studied at Heatherley's School of Fine Art in London. He began his career as a commercial artist, designing book jackets, posters and greeting cards, then served as a non-commissioned officer in France, Egypt, Syria, and Greece during the Second World War. In Egypt, his duties included drawing people in night clubs for security reasons and his artistic output while attached to the Psychological Warfare Branch included portraits and sketches for aerogrammes; in Greece, he shared a studio with Greek artists and made propaganda posters. Although he was not appointed an official war artist, he later presented a number of these wartime sketches to the Imperial War Museum, which also holds his oral testimony. After returning home in 1946, he participated regularly in mixed exhibitions with the Ben Uri Art Society between 1947 and 1978. His work was shown widely, including at the Royal Institute of Painters and Watercolours, and by the Hampstead Artists' Council. He also held solo exhibitions at the Woodstock Gallery, the Cooling Gallery, the Everyman Foyer Gallery in Hampstead, and at Finsbury Library, Islington. Following a successful exhibition, he established an Award for watercolour painters in 1989. Arrobus was a well-known figure in Hampstead, often visible sketching the local streets, houses, and shops; examples of which are held in the collection of Burgh House, Hampstead. Arrobus died in Haverstock Hill, Hampstead in 1990. (at Notting Hill Gate) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf_n38bo6_E/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[publicdomainbooks]

XVI. THE EXODUS FROM LONDON.

So you understand the roaring wave of fear that swept through the greatest city in the world just as Monday was dawning—the stream of flight rising swiftly to a torrent, lashing in a foaming tumult round the railway stations, banked up into a horrible struggle about the shipping in the Thames, and hurrying by every available channel northward and eastward. By ten o’clock the police organisation, and by midday even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body.

All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and trains were being filled. People were fighting savagely for standing-room in the carriages even at two o’clock. By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect.

And as the day advanced and the engine drivers and stokers refused to return to London, the pressure of the flight drove the people in an ever-thickening multitude away from the stations and along the northward-running roads. By midday a Martian had been seen at Barnes, and a cloud of slowly sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and across the flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges in its sluggish advance. Another bank drove over Ealing, and surrounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but unable to escape.

After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western train at Chalk Farm—the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods yard there ploughed through shrieking people, and a dozen stalwart men fought to keep the crowd from crushing the driver against his furnace—my brother emerged upon the Chalk Farm road, dodged across through a hurrying swarm of vehicles, and had the luck to be foremost in the sack of a cycle shop. The front tire of the machine he got was punctured in dragging it through the window, but he got up and off, notwithstanding, with no further injury than a cut wrist. The steep foot of Haverstock Hill was impassable owing to several overturned horses, and my brother struck into Belsize Road.

So he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware Road, reached Edgware about seven, fasting and wearied, but well ahead of the crowd. Along the road people were standing in the roadway, curious, wondering. He was passed by a number of cyclists, some horsemen, and two motor cars. A mile from Edgware the rim of the wheel broke, and the machine became unridable. He left it by the roadside and trudged through the village. There were shops half opened in the main street of the place, and people crowded on the pavement and in the doorways and windows, staring astonished at this extraordinary procession of fugitives that was beginning. He succeeded in getting some food at an inn.

For a time he remained in Edgware not knowing what next to do. The flying people increased in number. Many of them, like my brother, seemed inclined to loiter in the place. There was no fresh news of the invaders from Mars.

At that time the road was crowded, but as yet far from congested. Most of the fugitives at that hour were mounted on cycles, but there were soon motor cars, hansom cabs, and carriages hurrying along, and the dust hung in heavy clouds along the road to St. Albans.

It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where some friends of his lived, that at last induced my brother to strike into a quiet lane running eastward. Presently he came upon a stile, and, crossing it, followed a footpath northeastward. He passed near several farmhouses and some little places whose names he did not learn. He saw few fugitives until, in a grass lane towards High Barnet, he happened upon two ladies who became his fellow travellers. He came upon them just in time to save them.

He heard their screams, and, hurrying round the corner, saw a couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise in which they had been driving, while a third with difficulty held the frightened pony’s head. One of the ladies, a short woman dressed in white, was simply screaming; the other, a dark, slender figure, slashed at the man who gripped her arm with a whip she held in her disengaged hand.

My brother immediately grasped the situation, shouted, and hurried towards the struggle. One of the men desisted and turned towards him, and my brother, realising from his antagonist’s face that a fight was unavoidable, and being an expert boxer, went into him forthwith and sent him down against the wheel of the chaise.

It was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him quiet with a kick, and gripped the collar of the man who pulled at the slender lady’s arm. He heard the clatter of hoofs, the whip stung across his face, a third antagonist struck him between the eyes, and the man he held wrenched himself free and made off down the lane in the direction from which he had come.

Partly stunned, he found himself facing the man who had held the horse’s head, and became aware of the chaise receding from him down the lane, swaying from side to side, and with the women in it looking back. The man before him, a burly rough, tried to close, and he stopped him with a blow in the face. Then, realising that he was deserted, he dodged round and made off down the lane after the chaise, with the sturdy man close behind him, and the fugitive, who had turned now, following remotely.

Suddenly he stumbled and fell; his immediate pursuer went headlong, and he rose to his feet to find himself with a couple of antagonists again. He would have had little chance against them had not the slender lady very pluckily pulled up and returned to his help. It seems she had had a revolver all this time, but it had been under the seat when she and her companion were attacked. She fired at six yards’ distance, narrowly missing my brother. The less courageous of the robbers made off, and his companion followed him, cursing his cowardice. They both stopped in sight down the lane, where the third man lay insensible.

“Take this!” said the slender lady, and she gave my brother her revolver.

“Go back to the chaise,” said my brother, wiping the blood from his split lip.

She turned without a word—they were both panting—and they went back to where the lady in white struggled to hold back the frightened pony.

The robbers had evidently had enough of it. When my brother looked again they were retreating.

“I’ll sit here,” said my brother, “if I may”; and he got upon the empty front seat. The lady looked over her shoulder.

“Give me the reins,” she said, and laid the whip along the pony’s side. In another moment a bend in the road hid the three men from my brother’s eyes.

So, quite unexpectedly, my brother found himself, panting, with a cut mouth, a bruised jaw, and bloodstained knuckles, driving along an unknown lane with these two women.

He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian advance. He had hurried home, roused the women—their servant had left them two days before—packed some provisions, put his revolver under the seat—luckily for my brother—and told them to drive on to Edgware, with the idea of getting a train there. He stopped behind to tell the neighbours. He would overtake them, he said, at about half past four in the morning, and now it was nearly nine and they had seen nothing of him. They could not stop in Edgware because of the growing traffic through the place, and so they had come into this side lane.

That was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently they stopped again, nearer to New Barnet. He promised to stay with them, at least until they could determine what to do, or until the missing man arrived, and professed to be an expert shot with the revolver—a weapon strange to him—in order to give them confidence.

They made a sort of encampment by the wayside, and the pony became happy in the hedge. He told them of his own escape out of London, and all that he knew of these Martians and their ways. The sun crept higher in the sky, and after a time their talk died out and gave place to an uneasy state of anticipation. Several wayfarers came along the lane, and of these my brother gathered such news as he could. Every broken answer he had deepened his impression of the great disaster that had come on humanity, deepened his persuasion of the immediate necessity for prosecuting this flight. He urged the matter upon them.

“We have money,” said the slender woman, and hesitated.

Her eyes met my brother’s, and her hesitation ended.

“So have I,” said my brother.

She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, besides a five-pound note, and suggested that with that they might get upon a train at St. Albans or New Barnet. My brother thought that was hopeless, seeing the fury of the Londoners to crowd upon the trains, and broached his own idea of striking across Essex towards Harwich and thence escaping from the country altogether.

Mrs. Elphinstone—that was the name of the woman in white—would listen to no reasoning, and kept calling upon “George”; but her sister-in-law was astonishingly quiet and deliberate, and at last agreed to my brother’s suggestion. So, designing to cross the Great North Road, they went on towards Barnet, my brother leading the pony to save it as much as possible. As the sun crept up the sky the day became excessively hot, and under foot a thick, whitish sand grew burning and blinding, so that they travelled only very slowly. The hedges were grey with dust. And as they advanced towards Barnet a tumultuous murmuring grew stronger.

They began to meet more people. For the most part these were staring before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, unclean. One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground. They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things. His paroxysm of rage over, he went on his way without once looking back.

As my brother’s party went on towards the crossroads to the south of Barnet they saw a woman approaching the road across some fields on their left, carrying a child and with two other children; and then passed a man in dirty black, with a thick stick in one hand and a small portmanteau in the other. Then round the corner of the lane, from between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the high road, came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust. There were three girls, East End factory girls, and a couple of little children crowded in the cart.

“This’ll tike us rahnd Edgware?” asked the driver, wild-eyed, white-faced; and when my brother told him it would if he turned to the left, he whipped up at once without the formality of thanks.

My brother noticed a pale grey smoke or haze rising among the houses in front of them, and veiling the white façade of a terrace beyond the road that appeared between the backs of the villas. Mrs. Elphinstone suddenly cried out at a number of tongues of smoky red flame leaping up above the houses in front of them against the hot, blue sky. The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs. The lane came round sharply not fifty yards from the crossroads.

“Good heavens!” cried Mrs. Elphinstone. “What is this you are driving us into?”

My brother stopped.

For the main road was a boiling stream of people, a torrent of human beings rushing northward, one pressing on another. A great bank of dust, white and luminous in the blaze of the sun, made everything within twenty feet of the ground grey and indistinct and was perpetually renewed by the hurrying feet of a dense crowd of horses and of men and women on foot, and by the wheels of vehicles of every description.

“Way!” my brother heard voices crying. “Make way!”

It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of the lane and road; the crowd roared like a fire, and the dust was hot and pungent. And, indeed, a little way up the road a villa was burning and sending rolling masses of black smoke across the road to add to the confusion.

Two men came past them. Then a dirty woman, carrying a heavy bundle and weeping. A lost retriever dog, with hanging tongue, circled dubiously round them, scared and wretched, and fled at my brother’s threat.

So much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent in between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past, and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust.

“Go on! Go on!” cried the voices. “Way! Way!”

One man’s hands pressed on the back of another. My brother stood at the pony’s head. Irresistibly attracted, he advanced slowly, pace by pace, down the lane.

Edgware had been a scene of confusion, Chalk Farm a riotous tumult, but this was a whole population in movement. It is hard to imagine that host. It had no character of its own. The figures poured out past the corner, and receded with their backs to the group in the lane. Along the margin came those who were on foot threatened by the wheels, stumbling in the ditches, blundering into one another.

The carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making little way for those swifter and more impatient vehicles that darted forward every now and then when an opportunity showed itself of doing so, sending the people scattering against the fences and gates of the villas.

“Push on!” was the cry. “Push on! They are coming!”

In one cart stood a blind man in the uniform of the Salvation Army, gesticulating with his crooked fingers and bawling, “Eternity! Eternity!” His voice was hoarse and very loud so that my brother could hear him long after he was lost to sight in the dust. Some of the people who crowded in the carts whipped stupidly at their horses and quarrelled with other drivers; some sat motionless, staring at nothing with miserable eyes; some gnawed their hands with thirst, or lay prostrate in the bottoms of their conveyances. The horses’ bits were covered with foam, their eyes bloodshot.

There were cabs, carriages, shop-carts, waggons, beyond counting; a mail cart, a road-cleaner’s cart marked “Vestry of St. Pancras,” a huge timber waggon crowded with roughs. A brewer’s dray rumbled by with its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood.

“Clear the way!” cried the voices. “Clear the way!”

“Eter-nity! Eter-nity!” came echoing down the road.

There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.

But varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had in common. There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them. A tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent the whole host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and broken that his knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into renewed activity. The heat and dust had already been at work upon this multitude. Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. They were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. And amid the various cries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; the voices of most of them were hoarse and weak. Through it all ran a refrain:

“Way! Way! The Martians are coming!”

Few stopped and came aside from that flood. The lane opened slantingly into the main road with a narrow opening, and had a delusive appearance of coming from the direction of London. Yet a kind of eddy of people drove into its mouth; weaklings elbowed out of the stream, who for the most part rested but a moment before plunging into it again. A little way down the lane, with two friends bending over him, lay a man with a bare leg, wrapped about with bloody rags. He was a lucky man to have friends.

A little old man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black frock coat, limped out and sat down beside the trap, removed his boot—his sock was blood-stained—shook out a pebble, and hobbled on again; and then a little girl of eight or nine, all alone, threw herself under the hedge close by my brother, weeping.

“I can’t go on! I can’t go on!”

My brother woke from his torpor of astonishment and lifted her up, speaking gently to her, and carried her to Miss Elphinstone. So soon as my brother touched her she became quite still, as if frightened.

“Ellen!” shrieked a woman in the crowd, with tears in her voice—“Ellen!” And the child suddenly darted away from my brother, crying “Mother!”

“They are coming,” said a man on horseback, riding past along the lane.

“Out of the way, there!” bawled a coachman, towering high; and my brother saw a closed carriage turning into the lane.

The people crushed back on one another to avoid the horse. My brother pushed the pony and chaise back into the hedge, and the man drove by and stopped at the turn of the way. It was a carriage, with a pole for a pair of horses, but only one was in the traces. My brother saw dimly through the dust that two men lifted out something on a white stretcher and put it gently on the grass beneath the privet hedge.

One of the men came running to my brother.

“Where is there any water?” he said. “He is dying fast, and very thirsty. It is Lord Garrick.”

“Lord Garrick!” said my brother; “the Chief Justice?”

“The water?” he said.

“There may be a tap,” said my brother, “in some of the houses. We have no water. I dare not leave my people.”

The man pushed against the crowd towards the gate of the corner house.

“Go on!” said the people, thrusting at him. “They are coming! Go on!”

Then my brother’s attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle-faced man lugging a small handbag, which split even as my brother’s eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to break up into separate coins as it struck the ground. They rolled hither and thither among the struggling feet of men and horses. The man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab struck his shoulder and sent him reeling. He gave a shriek and dodged back, and a cartwheel shaved him narrowly.

“Way!” cried the men all about him. “Make way!”

So soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands open, upon the heap of coins, and began thrusting handfuls in his pocket. A horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half rising, he had been borne down under the horse’s hoofs.

“Stop!” screamed my brother, and pushing a woman out of his way, tried to clutch the bit of the horse.

Before he could get to it, he heard a scream under the wheels, and saw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch’s back. The driver of the cart slashed his whip at my brother, who ran round behind the cart. The multitudinous shouting confused his ears. The man was writhing in the dust among his scattered money, unable to rise, for the wheel had broken his back, and his lower limbs lay limp and dead. My brother stood up and yelled at the next driver, and a man on a black horse came to his assistance.

“Get him out of the road,” said he; and, clutching the man’s collar with his free hand, my brother lugged him sideways. But he still clutched after his money, and regarded my brother fiercely, hammering at his arm with a handful of gold. “Go on! Go on!” shouted angry voices behind. “Way! Way!”

There was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that the man on horseback stopped. My brother looked up, and the man with the gold twisted his head round and bit the wrist that held his collar. There was a concussion, and the black horse came staggering sideways, and the carthorse pushed beside it. A hoof missed my brother’s foot by a hair’s breadth. He released his grip on the fallen man and jumped back. He saw anger change to terror on the face of the poor wretch on the ground, and in a moment he was hidden and my brother was borne backward and carried past the entrance of the lane, and had to fight hard in the torrent to recover it.

He saw Miss Elphinstone covering her eyes, and a little child, with all a child’s want of sympathetic imagination, staring with dilated eyes at a dusty something that lay black and still, ground and crushed under the rolling wheels. “Let us go back!” he shouted, and began turning the pony round. “We cannot cross this—hell,” he said and they went back a hundred yards the way they had come, until the fighting crowd was hidden. As they passed the bend in the lane my brother saw the face of the dying man in the ditch under the privet, deadly white and drawn, and shining with perspiration. The two women sat silent, crouching in their seat and shivering.

Then beyond the bend my brother stopped again. Miss Elphinstone was white and pale, and her sister-in-law sat weeping, too wretched even to call upon “George.” My brother was horrified and perplexed. So soon as they had retreated he realised how urgent and unavoidable it was to attempt this crossing. He turned to Miss Elphinstone, suddenly resolute.

“We must go that way,” he said, and led the pony round again.

For the second time that day this girl proved her quality. To force their way into the torrent of people, my brother plunged into the traffic and held back a cab horse, while she drove the pony across its head. A waggon locked wheels for a moment and ripped a long splinter from the chaise. In another moment they were caught and swept forward by the stream. My brother, with the cabman’s whip marks red across his face and hands, scrambled into the chaise and took the reins from her.

“Point the revolver at the man behind,” he said, giving it to her, “if he presses us too hard. No!—point it at his horse.”

Then he began to look out for a chance of edging to the right across the road. But once in the stream he seemed to lose volition, to become a part of that dusty rout. They swept through Chipping Barnet with the torrent; they were nearly a mile beyond the centre of the town before they had fought across to the opposite side of the way. It was din and confusion indescribable; but in and beyond the town the road forks repeatedly, and this to some extent relieved the stress.

They struck eastward through Hadley, and there on either side of the road, and at another place farther on they came upon a great multitude of people drinking at the stream, some fighting to come at the water. And farther on, from a lull near East Barnet, they saw two trains running slowly one after the other without signal or order—trains swarming with people, with men even among the coals behind the engines—going northward along the Great Northern Railway. My brother supposes they must have filled outside London, for at that time the furious terror of the people had rendered the central termini impossible.

Near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon, for the violence of the day had already utterly exhausted all three of them. They began to suffer the beginnings of hunger; the night was cold, and none of them dared to sleep. And in the evening many people came hurrying along the road nearby their stopping place, fleeing from unknown dangers before them, and going in the direction from which my brother had come.

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for the EASTER VIGIL 2021

This most holy night is about journeys and movement. It is about a journey that we as Christians, as followers of Jesus, enact tonight and that we participate in throughout our lives. This is a journey, our journey from darkness into light; from death into life; and from sinfulness into virtue. 

Hence we, who sat in darkness, were enlightened by the one great Light who is Christ, and as the Paschal Candle moved from the back to the front of the church, the whole building became radiant and our faces were illuminated. For as the psalmist says: “let your face shine on us and we shall be saved.” And so, sitting in the light of Christ, we recalled the manifold ways in which God has come to save us.   

We heard first about the movement of creation, remembering that God summons into being all that is, calling life and flourishing and beauty, out of nothingness and chaos. For we were saved from non-existence, and from chaos, and the dark abyss. It is good to be alive! But it is even better for us, brothers and sisters, to be alive in Christ; hallowed by his grace to become temples of the Holy Spirit. For that is who we are, we Christians, we who journey with Jesus. 

We heard also of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, recalling that they were miraculously rescued by God and saved from the tyranny of Pharaoh their great slave master. It is good to be alive and free! But it is even better for us, my friends, to be alive in Christ; rescued from the tyranny of sin and our all our enslaving addictions, and set free so that we can worship and love God and serve our fellow men and women with a Christ-like love. For this is what we do, we Christians, who are sent forth with Jesus. 

And we heard of the divine intervention that saved Isaac from a bloody death. For it is good to be alive! It is good that we are here tonight, and able to be together after the year we’ve had! But it is even better for us, Christians, to behold and to receive the wonderful gift of faith through which we are saved by Christ. For God’s Son has come into this world, becoming part of our human history, intervening to rescue Mankind from the stranglehold of sin and death. “Mors et vita duello”, says the Easter Sequence hymn – Death and Life contended in battle! And Christ, the Risen Christ, reigns now, our Champion over death and the deadly snares of sin. Alleluia! Christ has set us free!

Which is why we have been celebrating this Sacred Triduum, these past three days we have been following Jesus in his journey from death into life, from darkness into light. For we are not to be merely passive spectators in this divine work of salvation, but actual participants, active agents in this darkened world of God’s saving work. Tonight,  then, we receive Christ’s light; we receive his grace; and so we stand together in this church and we recommit ourselves to our baptismal promises. Thus we pledge to be sent out from here with Christ, empowered by the Risen Christ, filled with his Holy Spirit, to journey from sinfulness to virtue. For he has told us: “You are the light of the world… Nobody lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but they place it on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Mt 5:14, 16) 

So, tonight, my dear friends, we shine. For as I sang in the Exsultet, that great hymn in praise of the Easter Candle: “This is the night that even now, throughout the world sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.” Tonight, we shine with the light of Christ illuminating our faces, and the fire of divine love burning in our hearts. 

Shine, my friends, shine out, for you are the light of the world, and let this church, let St Dominic’s, let this Rosary Shrine, be your lamp stand. For it is here, in this place and here as one community that I want us Christians to shine with good works, with acts of love and justice for one another, with a care for the poor, the sick, and the needy. Let our good works sweeten the world, just as bees produce honey that brings delight and a smile to our lips. So let us shine forth with Christian virtue, thus giving glory to God our Father who creates us, who rescues us, and who sets us free from sin and sickness in order that we can love truly.

The design painted onto this Paschal Candle traces journeys that were made for us 800 years ago, and we, today, are the beneficiaries of those journeys. In 1221, our holy father St Dominic, who is called the “light of the Church” journeyed from this life to heavenly glory. He promised to pray for us and to send us God’s help from heaven, to bring healing and consolation for us who struggle and are wearied by our current journey. Therefore, let us look confidently to St Dominic our father. Shortly before his death, St Dominic sent twelve of his brothers out to the furthest reaches of Europe. So in 1221, the first Dominican friars set out from Bologna and landed on the shores of Kent, and they travelled through Canterbury and London to Oxford where they established the first Dominican priory in England. We give thanks for that journey. The first Dominicans were called “champions of the faith and true lights of the world”. So we friars are here today because of what they accomplished by the grace of God and with the tremendous support and help of the people they met in these lands. This is as true as ever, and your prayers, your support, your gifts, your encouragement , and your friendship are as necessary as ever especially in the past year. Going forward in 2021, together, we can hold high the torch of faith and Gospel truth; Christ’s light to enlighten Haverstock Hill, our neighbourhoods, our homes, and perhaps even further afield as more and more people learn of the beauty and splendour of Our Lady’s Rosary Shrine. 

Which brings me to my final point. The journey we enacted tonight, and those that we recalled – the journeys of our salvation – are not something we do once and for all, for the Christian journey is a daily commitment. Each morning, as the light dawns, we say “Yes” to God, just as Mary did, and we step out of bed and make steps closer to God and his love. Some days, we falter and stumble, but each day, as we journey from darkness into light; from death into life; and from sinfulness into virtue, remember that we do not journey alone. We are united as a Christian community, as a parish, as the people of God’s holy Church. And our steps are made lighter, in my experience, by praying the Holy Rosary, which I have painted spiralling around this Paschal Candle. For, through the Rosary, Christ journeys with us, and we follow his steps from Bethlehem to Galilee, up to Jerusalem and through the Empty Tomb, then homewards to heaven. With her Rosary, Mary our Mother takes us by the hand, and she guides us forward just as the stars help sailors navigate to a safe harbour. So, tonight, follow Mary’s starlight, and journey home to the Son – to God, who is our light, our freedom, and our life! Alleluia! 

[justzawe]

Oh, I thought he lived in primrose Hill. I don't know London very well.

Tom and Zawe technically live in Belsize Park. Primrose Hill and Haverstock Hill are very close to those areas and a lot actors, musicians and artists live there.

.

[coltonwbrown]

Spring Morning: Haverstock Hill

George Clausen (1852–1944)

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/spring-morning-haverstock-hill-164085