London Victoria Station

“ District Railway, commenced in 1863 and opened in 1868. The line runs in a curve underground from Sloane Square, crossing Ebury Street at Eaton Terrace, and Buckingham Palace Road at Grosvenor Gardens. From the Underground Station a subterranean passage leads to the Victoria terminus, the starting-point of the London, Brighton, and South Coast and London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Companies. The present station, which has no pretension to architectural beauty, is being greatly enlarged and partly rebuilt. ”

“ The West End palmists and fortune-tellers flourished for a time and had their day, and went down before the arm of the law; but a far more dangerous trade than theirs, which did but minister to a foolish, fashionable craze, is still carried on daily and nightly in secret in unsuspected places.
It is nine o'clock at night and the darkness has descended over London. At the top of a street near Victoria Station, once inhabited by the well-to-do, but now fallen into the seediness of floor-letting, a cab stops and a lady closely veiled alights. ”

“ Now, I can never pass the Post Office without a tremor, for its swart, squat exterior is, for me, bowered with delicious thrills.
Never keep an appointment under the Clock at Victoria. A meeting here is fatal to the sweetness of the intercourse that is to follow. Always he or she who arrives first will be peevish or irate by the time the second party turns up; for [Pg 142] Victoria Station, with its lowering roof, affects you with a frightful sense of being shut in and smothered. ”

“ The sudden change from the dreary lifelessness of the veldt to the exciting crush and bustle of the station platform crowd is almost bewildering, because it is so different from what is expected in interior Africa. The station, a magnificent structure of stone and iron, presents more animated scenes whenever trains arrive than the Grand Central in New York or the Victoria in London, because every passenger is invariably met at the train by all his friends and as many of their friends as the station platform will accommodate. ”

“ On the Chatham and Dover, most of the stations are about equidistant from the Ludgate and Victoria termini. The places reached by steamers are marked St.; while Om. signifies Omnibus, in cases where there is no very available railway route. When a town is some little distance from the nearest station, two mileages are named: thus, ‘Beddington, 101⁄2 Croydon + 21⁄2,’ implies that after a railway journey of 101⁄2 miles to Croydon, there are 21⁄2 miles of road.
CHIEF OMNIBUS ROUTES.
There are few better ways for a man to see London, on a fine day, than by riding through it on an omnibus. ”

“ On the whole I think the best way is the one which I mean to adopt myself at the earliest opportunity. Let us suppose that you are going to Brighton. At Victoria Station you will purchase (1) a return ticket to Streatham Common, (2) a platform ticket. The platform ticket entitles you to walk on to the platform from which the Brighton train starts, and, when it is just moving out and all the tickets have been looked at, you will leap on board. ”

“ But those ways have nothing whatever to do with people coming from London proper. You arrive at Victoria Park Station; you turn immediately to the right and follow the pavement down, with the park on your left, until you come to the archway where the road unites with that coming from Homerton. One is absolutely safe, therefore, assuming that one has not to deal with watchful criminals, in standing under the arch with the certitude that sooner or later, if you wait long enough, the man whom you expect to enter Hackney Wick will pass within ten yards of you. ”

“ I must spend two days in London, alas! I must order some new clothes. Victoria Station, with all its doors and cab stands, and book-stalls, the Sussex scenery, the woodlands, the Downs, the plunging through tunnels, and then you. Darling, I cannot believe that such happiness is in store for me.”
All happened as he had anticipated. At Victoria the usual difficulties had arisen about the dog. Triss was growling, the guard was cringing, and, with reference to no stoppage before we come to Redhill, the necessity of a muzzle was being argued. ”

“ Visitors to London are frequently in need of such a guide. The following is a list of omnibus lines which run through or into London.
Acton and Charing Cross (viâ Shepherd's Bush, Bayswater Road, Oxford Street, and Upper Street) .
Baker-street Station and Victoria (viâ Baker Street, Grosvenor Square, and Hyde Park Corner) .
Baker-street Station and Waterloo (viâ Baker Street, Bond Street, and Westminster Bridge) .
Barnes and Uxbridge Road (viâ Hammersmith Broadway) .
Barnes Common and Liverpool Street (viâ Putney Bridge, Walham Green, Brompton Road, Piccadilly, and Strand) . ”

“ The Duchess therefore brought the matter under the consideration of those whom, from their eminent piety, great learning, and high station, she considered best calculated to afford her valuable advice upon so important a subject. She stated to the Bishops of London and Lincoln [3] the particular course which had been followed in the Princess’s education, and requested their Lordships to test the result by personal examination. ”

“ The seaside termini of the line are at Margate, Ramsgate, Deal, Dover, and Hastings. The Greenwich and North Kent branches are important feeders; while there are others of less value. The company have spent a vast sum of money in extending their line to the north of the Thames—by forming a city station in Cannon Street, with a bridge over the river midway between London and Southwark Bridges; and a West-end Station at Charing Cross, with a bridge over the river at (what was till lately) Hungerford Market. There is also a connection with the South-Western terminus in the Waterloo Road. ”

“ When the train stopped at what is called the London Bridge station, the passengers all stepped out of their respective cars upon the platform. In the English cars the doors are at the sides, and not, as in America, at the ends; so that the passengers get out nearly all at once, and the platform becomes immediately crowded. Beyond the platform, on the other side, there is usually, when a train comes in, a long row of cabs and carriages drawn up, ready to take the passengers from the several cars ”

“ In this respect public feeling has greatly changed, for now no railway is thought complete which has not a terminus in the heart of London; and it is considered an advantage for houses to be within easy reach of a railway station ”

“ With us it is either too cold or too hot to do that, and at all the great stations we are now fenced off from the tracks, as on the Continent, and unless we can make favor with the gateman, must despatch our farewells before our parting dear ones press forward to have their tickets punched. But at no London station, and far less at any provincial station in England, are you subjected to these formalities; and the English seem to linger out their farewells almost abusively, especially if they are young and have much of life before them. ”

“ A goods station which possesses certain features of interest, chiefly on account of its somewhat unique mode of construction, is Broad Street, which is the City Depot of the London and North-Western Company, in London. The North London Railway, which is connected with the North-Western, passes round the Northern suburbs of London to Dalston Junction, where it trends almost due South to its passenger terminus at Broad Street, in the very heart of the City. ”

“ Run-of-the-mill English railway stations of the forties, mostly designed by engineers and minor architects, clearly rank in their dullness with the most utilitarian French work of that decade. They indicate to what depths of conventionality late Romantic Classicism in England had sunk by this time. Yet Lewis Cubitt’s long-demolished Bricklayers’ Arms Station in London of 1842-4, with its entrance screen compounded of rustic Italian elements derived from the books of Charles Parker, [81] seems to have had considerable plastic interest. ”

“ A PHOTOGRAPH. There are two railway stations in Sparkton, which is a town of sufficient size and importance to have two different railway companies competing for its patronage; and this circumstance rendered it all the easier for me to escape without leaving traces for any pursuers to follow. The train by which I intended to go to London would not leave until about two hours later than Miss Smith's train to the north, and did not start from the same station. ”

“ On one single exceptional occasion 1,111 trains, carrying 145,000 persons, were reported as entering and leaving this station in the space of eighteen hours, being rather more than a train a minute. Indeed it may well be questioned whether the world anywhere else furnishes an illustration so apt and dramatic of the great mechanical achievements of recent times as that to be seen during the busy hours of any week-day from the signal and interlocking galleries which span the tracks as they enter the Charing Cross or Cannon street stations in London. ”

“ My impression is that you habitually drive to a London station as nearly in time to take your train as may be, and that there is very little use for waiting-rooms. This may be why the waiting-room seems so small and unattractive a part of the general equipment. It never bears any such proportion to the rest as the waiting-rooms in the great Boston stations, or even that of the Grand Central in New York, and is by no chance so really fine as that of the Atchison and Topeka at Omaha, or that of the Lake Shore at Pittsburg. ”

“ Taking only one of the many railway termini in London, the average number of suburban passengers who arrive at the Liverpool Street station of the Great Eastern Railway Company every week-day (exclusive of 12,000 from places beyond the suburban district) is 81,000, and of these about 66,000 come by trains arriving, in rapid succession, up to 10 a.m. To convey 81,000 suburban dwellers by motor-omnibus instead of by train would necessitate 2382 journeys, assuming that every seat was occupied. ”

“ Without such a convenience a carriage must be hired every time any member of the family has occasion to go to the railway station; and besides that, it is useful for bringing home a variety of articles which in the country are frequently purchased at places five or six miles from home. Then it is a great pleasure to be able to meet your friends at the station, whenever they are kind enough to leave London for the purpose of passing a few days with you in the country. ”

“ But it is conceivable that some of those weary and dejected men whom one sees at Victoria Station, for example, in the summer, eternally making an effort, however unsuccessful, to cope with the exodus of Londoners to the south coast, really would like also to repose on Brighton beach. But they may not. Their destiny is for ever to help others to that paradise, and remain at Victoria themselves. ”

“ And what of that picturesque railway station of St. Pancras, picturesque with the combined glamour of blue London mist and distance, towering like some shadowy mediæval fortress over the murky modernity of the Euston Road! (Even the Euston Road, saddest and least inspiring of thoroughfares, can, on occasion, be glorified.) In one of London's lurid autumn sunsets, the large red sun, obscured through fog and mist, sinks slowly behind the embattled towers of St. Pancras, lending it such an appearance of romance that even a French writer (not, however, M. Taine!) ”

“ London is ringed round with these residential quarters, these little towns outside the walls. A visitor to any one of them is at once struck with its striking and painful similarity to all the others. There is a railway station belonging to one of the metropolitan lines; there is a High Street, fronted with lofty and rather gaudy shops; there is a reasonable sprinkling of churches and chapels ”

“ The powers of the stations in this respect are exceedingly various. The station in question is generally rendered useless during easterly winds by the smoke of London, which fills the valley of the Thames between this spot and Chelsea hospital; or more commonly between the shorter distance of the Admiralty and Chelsea. Dead flats are found to be universally unfavourable; and generally stations are useless nearly in the proportion of the miles of dead flat looked over. On the contrary, stations between hill and hill, looking across a valley, or series of valleys, are mostly clear ”

“ Fresh, perchance, from the streets of London, the odours of the underground railway still in his nostrils, the vapour of its smoky streets still lingering in his lungs, a little heated, it may be, and still mindful of towns in his walk from the railway station through Richmond streets to the bridge, he walks rapidly for a brief space along the towing-path, and then perforce halts in another and a new land. ”

“ Though it must be remembered that the trains to such parts of the globe are maddening,—the only difference between an express and an ordinary train being that one waits outside a station and the other inside,—and the smallest amount of snow or fog will disorganise the traffic altogether, yet they do go to civilized parts of London, while those from the northern portions do not. ”

“ The railway termini on the north side of London have been kept as remote as Eastry had kept the railway-station from Wimblehurst, they stop on the very outskirts of the estates, but from the south, the South Eastern railway had butted its great stupid rusty iron head of Charing Cross station, that great head that came smashing down in 1905—clean across the river, between Somerset House and Whitehall. The south side had no protecting estate. ”