London Waterloo Station

“ Was it any wonder that some of these young men who had laughed on the way to Waterloo Station, and held their heads high in the admiring gaze of London crowds, sure of their own heroism, slunk now in the backyards of French farmhouses, hid behind hedges when men in khaki passed, and told wild, incoherent tales, when cornered at last by some cold-eyed officer in some town of France to which they had blundered? ”

“ Railway trains, running frequently during the day, give access to the Crystal Palace, from the Pimlico and London Bridge stations of the Brighton Company, from the Kensington and Chelsea stations of the West London Railway, from the Waterloo station of the South-Western viâ Wimbledon, and from the Ludgate Hill and other stations of the Chatham and Dover. The last-named company have built an elegant and convenient ‘high-level’ station, in front of the main centre transept. The Crystal Palace is a shilling exhibition; but the greater number of visitors only pay 1s. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ours was a quick train, and went straight through to London without stopping. After arriving at Waterloo station, therefore, we were obliged to wait for nearly an hour before we could get another which would take us to Haslemere. ”

“ It will be seen, therefore, that Twickenham was not a bad place for a suburban residence: the roads were excellent, the scenery and associations delightful, and, by taking the train, one could be at Waterloo railway-station, in the heart of London, in half an hour. I lived there several years, and know something about it.
The most agreeable expedition of all, taking one month with another, was to Kew Gardens. In winter, it was a luxury to sit in the hot-houses; in summer it was lovely throughout. You could travel thither by train; but the best way was to go on foot. ”

“ To me she seems to be growing weaker. I will be back at noon."
And the busy, white-headed doctor went out and drove away in his car.
Now on that same morning about eleven o'clock a tall, gaunt, hollow-eyed young man in a shabby tweed suit and golf cap walked quickly up from the Empress Dock at Southampton and across Canute Road to the railway-station, where he bought a third-class ticket for Waterloo.
"Back in England at last!" he muttered to himself as he entered an empty compartment. "I shall soon see Marigold again! ”

“ First-rate run, through lovely scenery, with the London and South-Western Pack; found at Waterloo, and, with the exception of a slight check of only three minutes at Southampton Water—scent generally lost where water is, I believe—and another of a few seconds at Brockenhurst, ran into our quarry at Bournemouth Station West, in just two hours and a half. [Happy Thought.—Lunch en route, between 12·30 and 3. Pullman cars attached to some trains, not all. Certainly recommend Pullman, where possible; all comforts at hand for eating and drinking: likewise smoking-room, &c., &c.] ”

“ In the days before the railway was made between Alton and Farnham the old bailiff on the Will Hall Farm at Alton, who, though quite an elderly man, had never visited London, expressed a wish to visit it for once in his life. His master gave him a holiday and paid his expenses, and the old man drove the ten miles to Farnham Station. Arrived in London he started to walk over Waterloo Bridge, but the further he got the more astonished he became at the traffic, and began to wonder what "fair" all the people could be going to. ”

“ But our time is up; the chiming of "Big Ben" causes the genial inspector gently to remind us that we must be off, and once more we are seated in the boat, and, cutting right across the river, move slowly on our way to Greenwich, where the old Royalist is transformed into a station, a familiar institution some sixteen or seventeen years ago at Waterloo.
The whole scene is wonderfully impressive—not a sound is to be heard but the distant rumbling of the vehicles over London Bridge. Our men pause for a moment and rest their oars. ”

“ I had seen him off at Waterloo a week before, and I remember that I had walked away from the station wishing that I could summon up the energy to pack and get off to the country somewhere. I hate London in July. ”

“ Ruskin. On the other hand, the view from Waterloo Bridge is thus described by the late Mr. Samuel Butler:
"When ... I think of Waterloo Bridge and the huge wide-opened jaws of those two Behemoths, the Cannon Street and Charing Cross railway stations, I am not sure that the prospect here is not even finer than in Fleet Street. See how they belch forth puffing trains as the breath of their nostrils, gorging and disgorging incessantly those human atoms whose movement is the life of the city. How like it all is to some great bodily mechanism.... And then ... the ineffable St. Paul's. ”

“ THE NEW CUT. At nine o'clock on the same evening, Mr. Greenwood, muffled in a cloak, alighted from a hackney-cab in the Waterloo Road at the corner of the New Cut.
That wide thoroughfare which connects the Waterloo and Blackfriars' Roads, is one of the most busy and bustling, after its own fashion, in all London.
Nowhere are the shops of a more miscellaneous nature: nowhere are the pathways so thronged with the stalls and baskets of itinerant venders. ”

“ Not even the porters understand it. "I couldn't say, sir," is the civil but unsatisfying reply with which research is met. Now and then one, more gifted than his colleagues, will inform the [34] traveler that his train starts from "No. 3 or No. 7," but a moment's reflection and he hedges with No. 12.
Waterloo is the home of imperfect knowledge. The booking clerks cannot state in a few words where tickets may be bought for any station. They are only certain that they themselves cannot sell them.
The gloom of the station was lightened on the following morning at ten minutes to eleven when Mr. ”

“ I wish country gentlemen, when airing their vocabularies at agricultural dinners, would not talk so much of our friends across the water being desirous to avenge the disgrace of Waterloo, as if there were any disgrace to France, after having been a match, single-handed, for all Europe for a generation, in being compelled to succumb at last. ”

“ If in the course of Revolutions, the nations of a future age should one day demand where{124} was formerly the new Sidon, and what has become of the Tyre of the West, which covered with her vessels the sea, most of the edifices devoured by a destructive climate will no longer exist; but the Waterloo Bridge will exist to tell remote generations ‘here was a rich and powerful city.’ The traveller on beholding this superb monument will suppose that some great Prime Minister wished by many years of labour to consecrate for ever the story of his life by this imposing structure. ”

“ At 9 o'clock the stations of the Northwestern, the Metropolitan, and the London and Northwestern Railways—at Waterloo, Vauxhall, Clapham Junction, Wadsworth, Putney, Ludgate Hill, London and Blackfriars Bridges, Euston, Chalk Farm, Hammersmith, Paddington, and Westminster—were swarming with masses of men, women, and children, vainly endeavoring, struggling, pushing, and trying to obtain precedence of each other, in order to get tickets to be carried to the boat race. ”

“ Before us is Waterloo Bridge, Cecil, Duke, Salisbury, Surrey, Buckingham, Villiers, and other streets called after the mansions once inhabited by the favorites of Charles, James, and William of Blessed Memory.
At a little before two o'clock the Sunflower steams off on her journey up the river. The course of the steamer is impeded at almost every foot by small craft of all descriptions, en route to Putney and the race.
We pass, on our way down, Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, with its huge railroad trains thundering over our heads, bound to Dover, with passengers for the Continent ”

“ The majestic beauties of London seem to have developed by accident rather than by design. The view down Waterloo Place to the Abbey and the Victoria Tower and the view eastward from the Serpentine Bridge in Hyde Park have certainly done so. The view down the river from Waterloo Bridge, or Westminster, was never planned; it grew slowly, being first blessed by every natural advantage that a patient Providence could bestow. In its buildings of a private character, its domestic architecture, London still has much to seek ”

“ A traveller in the eastern, western, and southern counties who does not bring his book with him can satisfy his love of reading only by the commonest and cheapest trash—for the pretences to the appearance of a bookseller’s shop made at Waterloo, at Shoreditch, at Paddington, and at London Bridge, are something ridiculous. This should not be. It shows little for the public spirit of the directors of our railways that such a system should remain. Mr. Smith has, we believe, as many as thirty-five shops at railway stations, extending from London to Liverpool, Chester and Edinburgh. ”

“ No city in the world furnishes a cheaper, better, and quicker meal for the weary traveller, than a London eating-house.
After spending a day in looking about through this great thoroughfare, the Strand, I sallied forth with letters of introduction, with which I had been provided by my friends before leaving America; and following the direction of one, I was soon at No. 6, A, Waterloo Place. A moment more, and I was in the presence of one of whom I had heard much, and whose name is as familiar to the friends of the slave in the United States, as household words. ”

“ It is a remarkable spectacle to contemplate, fraught with portent and symbol, though the mouth is a subway kiosk, my Sandwich friend.
Now, there are men who walk about London just as some men collect books. They are amateurs of London. Year by year they add precious souvenirs to their rich collections, the find of an old passage way here, there the view when the light is quite right from one precise spot, say, on Waterloo Bridge. ”

“ In these parts you hardly see a discontented face, and never a morbid one. Right in to the very bottom of the Waterloo Road, and nearly up to Westminster Bridge, old villas, new houses and new shops lie side by side, or stare at one another. They are all mixed together, it is not possible to get any zones to "synchronise", it is not possible to say "early Georgian London had reached here, middle Victorian here, the railways produced this district, the short stages this". They are dropped down in terraces anywhere, nearer Whitehall, or further away. But the general effects is a pleasant one. ”

“ It has always been the fashion to speak of the plaster palaces, and the pretence of the architecture, but there can be no doubt that Waterloo Place, the Quadrant, and the houses of Regent Street are the most effective and gayest portions of London. The general design is admirable, and the Quadrant is particularly graceful and original. Waterloo Place and the terrace and steps leading into the Park are picturesque and foreign. Even the Insurance Office, with its piazza, closing the vista afar off, could not be spared. ”

“ Londoners profess to be somewhat proud of Waterloo Bridge, and it is a tradition among them that Canova, when he saw it, said that it was worth a journey across Europe to see. It, therefore, seems the more incredible that the grandchildren of those who could build such a bridge and appreciate such a man, could have erected, and even affect to admire, such a monstrosity as the Tower Bridge.
The last of the older bridges to be built was that of Southwark, which was the speculation of a private company, who hoped to profit by the continuously congested state of London Bridge ”

“ Arrived at the confusion of the railway station known as Waterloo, Herr Kreutzer helped his Anna from the cab, paid the cabman from his slender store of silver, hired a porter with another shilling to take all their luggage to the train and went to get their third-class railway tickets, keeping, meanwhile, a keen eye for anyone who looked to be a German of position, and noting with delight that in the crowd not one pair of moustaches stuck straight up beside its owner's nose. ”

“ It may be nearer or farther, as related to one's own abode, but it has not the positive remoteness from the great centres, by force of which, for instance, Waterloo seems in a peripheral whirl of non-arrival, and Vauxhall lost somewhere in a rude borderland, and King's Cross bewildered in a roar of tormented streets beyond darkest Bloomsbury. ”

“ Aside from the romance that is indigenous to all railway stations, there are peculiar characteristics of the great London termini that are of absorbing interest. And so strong are the claims each puts forth for pre-eminence, it is indeed difficult to award a palm.
Euston has its columns, Charing Cross its Tribute to Queen Eleanor, St. Pancras a spacious roominess, and Victoria a wofully-crowded and limited space. Each station has its own sort of people, and, though indubitably they must mingle upon occasion, yet the type of crowd at each station is invariably the same. ”