Archway and Highgate 2

Above:  on my walk from Archway into Highgate I went into Highgate cemetery.  There are in fact two cemeteries - the West one, which I went into; and the East one which I will have to return to see.  Actually I will have to return to see the West cemetery more thoroughly as all I had time for was a walk around the circuit path.

Highgate was one of the great Victorian cemeteries of London and contains a huge number of graves - ordinary Victorians, famous Victorians, Victorians who used to be famous but are now forgotten ("long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone" if you will forgive a Govean lapse into poetry learned by heart).  And not just Victorians.  The West cemetery is still in use, although you get the impression that people are being squeezed into gaps and soon the elysian field will be complete.

Above:  the circuit path is about a mile in circumference (I am guessing) and is well kept.  Away from the path the graves are jumbled and overgrown.  Some of the monuments are fabulous, although not to be compared with those in the East cemetery.

I have always had a tendency to melancholia, and walking alone around the circuit path made me feel very philosophical about my life, how little I have achieved, how brief our lives are compared to the eternity of the grave.

Above:  as a dog-lover I was cheered by this monument to "Emperor".  Fidelity even unto death.  Often I wonder if dogs have souls and whether I will see my long-gone dogs again.

Above:  Anna Mahler's grave.  Who would have thought that London would have a connection to the great composer?  His daughter fled to England in 1939.

Above:  on a corner you suddenly come across Karl Marx.  Obviously I knew he was in Highgate, but I was expecting more of a setting than just a roadside grave.  There was something about this squat monument that seemed to suggest all the dead historical weight of communism.

One thing that surprised me was how many "lefties" have been buried around Karl Marx in a sort of marxist valhalla.  Presumably these people are all atheists, so why would they be concerned about the final location of their remains rather than having them tipped into a utilitarian socialist compost heap?  Do they expect to follow their philosopher into some kind of utopian communist after-life?

I continued walking and was approached by four young men in jeans and t-shirts, dark Mediterranean appearance (or were they South Americans?).  They asked me where Karl Marx was, and after I had given them directions I asked on impulse whether they were communists.  "No, we are humans" one of them replied.

Above:  one of the last mausoleums before I left the West cemetery, pink granite and classical.  Eventually we will all have to pass through our own equivalent of those verdigris bronze doors.  Who knows what will await us ("We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come").