Waterloo Bridge

“ With Big Ben in Parliament Watch Tower throwing his full thirteen tons into an effort to advise as many Londoners as possible that it is eight o’clock at last, and with a band concert in progress in the Villiers Street Garden of the Embankment, as agreeable a lounging-place as one could desire is the beautiful expanse of Waterloo Bridge. Not only is the prospect fair and inspiring, but the great bridge itself is worthy of it. ”

“ Only, should you turn aside into one of those little bays on Waterloo Bridge to think the matter over, it will probably seem to you all a muddle—all a mystery.
They cross the Bridge incessantly. Sometimes in the midst of carts and omnibuses a lorry will appear with great forest trees chained to it. Then, perhaps, a mason's van with newly lettered tombstones recording how some one loved some one who is buried at Putney. ”

“ It is true our English engineers—who ruin hundreds of their fellow citizens by spending millions upon a bridge that nobody will take the trouble to pass over, and cutting tunnels under rivers, only to let the water into them when they have got all the money they can by the job—would treat this pier with infinite contempt as a thing that merely answers all the purposes for which it was erected! as if that were a merit of any but the very lowest degree. "Look at Waterloo Bridge!" they say; "we flatter ourselves that was not a thing built (like the pier of Calais) merely for use. ”

“ There is nothing in the great city like the scene from Waterloo bridge at sunset. I see it in my mind's eye at this instant.
It is not, however, of the Loddon that I am now to speak. The scene of my little story belongs to a spot quite as solitary, but far less beautiful, on the banks of the Kennett, which, a few miles before its junction with the Thames, passes through a tract of wild, marshy country—water-meadows at once drained and fertilised by artificial irrigation, and totally unmixed with arable land ”

“ Fifteen of the finest structures of their kind in the world span with mighty and enduring arches, the surface of the Thames; in a distance of seven miles on the river from London Bridge, to the Suspension Bridge, at Hammersmith. Paris alone can rival London in her super-aqueous structures, but in massiveness and grandeur there is no bridge covering the Seine, and having such a magnificent roadway and arches as Waterloo Bridge. ”

“ When, again, 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 of which the people are the blood. ”

“ I wonder how many people have stood on Waterloo Bridge, looking down upon the ever-moving river, and feeling themselves irresistibly attracted by the weird fascination of its cruel waters! But one cannot wonder at the eerie influence it exerts upon the miserable. ”

“ Our police galley is now alongside the station, just below Waterloo Bridge. It is not far to seek why it has been found necessary to establish a depôt here. We look up at the great bridge which spans the river at this point, named alas! with only too much truth, "The Bridge of Sighs." The dark water looks inviting to those burdened with trial and trouble, a place to receive those longing for rest and yearning for one word of sympathy. ”

“ Nowhere are the many contrasts in the appearance of our metropolis more strikingly assembled than in the view from Waterloo Bridge. As yet the sunshine, which produces the deep shadows deeper for its own brightness, was only prophesied by the clear gray light that brought out every object in the same dim but distinct atmosphere. ”

“ The river was now tinted with setting light, the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge showed like lace-work, the glass roofing of Charing Cross station was golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splashing of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The "Citizen" passed! She was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. ”

“ My face confessing a surprised desire to have some friendly conversation with Waterloo Bridge, and my friend Pea being the most obliging of men, we put about, pulled out of the force of the stream, and in place of going at great speed with the tide, began to strive against it, close in shore again. Every colour but black seemed to have departed from the world. The air was black, the water was black, the barges and hulks were black, the piles were black, the buildings were black, the shadows were only a deeper shade of black upon a black ground. ”

“ Beyond comparison the night is the best time for this place; a merciful darkness hides the dirt of the waters, and the lights of this transition age, red, glaring orange, gas-yellow, and electric white, are set in shadowy outlines of every possible shade between grey and deep purple. Through the arches of Waterloo Bridge a hundred points of light mark the sweep of the Embankment, and above its parapet rise the towers of Westminster, warm grey against the starlight. ”

“ 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 Waterloo Bridge, as well known, consists of nine equal semi-elliptical arches, 120 feet span each, with a rise of 34 feet 6 inches, the keystones at the crown being 4 feet 6 inches deep and 10 feet at the spring, and 18 inches thick at the soffit; inverted arches on each [33] pier between the main arches 4 feet 6 inches deep. The piers were 20 feet wide, each having projecting buttresses, supported by two three-quarter Doric columnar pilasters, over each pier, the whole being surmounted by a Doric block cornice and balustrade parapet, level from end to end, the same as the roadway. ”

“ 'In the firm expectation that, when London shall be an habitation of bitterns;... when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream; some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing, in the scales of some new and unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians, I remain,' &c. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One, laden with yellow straw till it appears like a huge barn, is stranded right in mid-stream. The long ends of the straw sweep in the water, and there is no moving until the current increases. [216]
Here and there red-brown sails, patched and stained, spring up, and others still furled, stand up along the wharves like crooked warning fingers. Just before Waterloo Bridge there is, neatly tucked away below the Embankment, so that few ever know of its existence, a station of the river police, with trim muslin curtains over the windows. ”

“ Next morning there appeared a paragraph in the dailies with the headline—‘Mysterious Suicide from Waterloo Bridge.’
‘Last evening, as the large audiences were turning out of the transpontine theatres, and wending their way homewards, a thrilling accident, or what may have been so, occurred on Waterloo Bridge. A tall, lady-like, well-dressed young woman, was walking quietly amongst the passengers, apparently as soberly-disposed as any amongst them, when, without sound or warning, she suddenly vaulted over the parapet and dashed into the river. ”

“ When the centres are not rigid enough, arches sink a good deal while the masons are at work and after the scaffolding is carefully struck. In Perronet’s bridge at Neuilly-sur-Seine, for example, the sinking amounted to twenty-three inches, 338; thirteen inches while the centre was in its place, and ten inches after the centre was removed. On the other hand, when the centres of Waterloo Bridge were taken down, no arch sank more than 11⁄2 inches. There is reason to believe that modern centres are more complicated than were the mediæval. ”

“ It must be done purely for the sake of the seclusion and quiet that, as a lodging, are afforded by Waterloo Bridge as compared with London and Blackfriars - though, indeed, it is hard to understand how a human being reduced to such a deplorable strait can for a moment hesitate between the open air and the cold stones, and a refuge in a. ”

“ Bower did not utter a syllable until they struck out toward the center of the glacier. A crevasse some ten feet in width and seemingly hundreds of feet deep, barred the way; but a bridge of ice, covered with snow, offered safe transit. The snow carpet showed that a number of climbers had passed quite recently in both directions. Even Helen, somewhat awed by the dimensions of the rift, understood that the existence of this natural arch was as well recognized by Alpinists as Waterloo Bridge is known to dwellers on the south side of the Thames. ”

“ I was able to avoid the crowded streets and to select those where traffic was lighter, thus reducing the time of reaching our hotel fully an hour. There is much difference in the traffic on the eight bridges which cross the Thames. London Bridge, which crosses near the Bank of England, is the most congested of all. There is hardly an hour when it is not a compact mass of slowly moving vehicles. The bridge by Parliament House is less crowded, but I should say that Waterloo Bridge furnishes the best route for motorists in getting across the river. ”

“ Seen from the bridge which arches the flood, that placid flood of Tweed, and a five-arched bridge ambitiously and successfully like the Waterloo bridge of London, one wonders if after all perhaps Wordsworth wrote his Bridge sonnet here—"Earth hath not anything to show more fair." ”

“ A bridge over the Thames, to be erected near the site of the later Waterloo Bridge, formed part of the scheme. His wealth increasing he became a colliery owner in South Staffordshire, and was the first to open the West Bromwich coalfield. ”

“ The distance is somewhat idealized. To left is Somerset House. Waterloo Bridge is not yet built, but near its site at south end is one of the shot towers, still standing though put to other uses. The bridge shown is old Blackfriars, opened 1769, as we have said elsewhere.
John Claude Nattes, painter of this and of the next watercolour, numbered 110, was an industrious topographical artist. He exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy and was one of the foundation members of the Old Watercolour Society, but was expelled for exhibiting what was held to be not his own work. ”

“ His immediate neighbourhood was also peculiar. It was there that weary wanderers came to seek the waters of oblivion. Suicide could pitch upon no spot so favourable for its sacrifices as the gateway leading into the river enclosure before Charles Lamb’s cottage. Waterloo Bridge had not long been built, and was not then a fashionable theatre for self-destruction. The drags were always kept ready in Colebrook Row, and are still so kept at a small tavern a few doors from the cottage. ”

“ It was then nearly one o'clock, and nothing particularly worth mentioning occurred for nearly an hour, except the amazing number of wretched girls and women who came hurrying from the Strand side of the bridge, and, with an aspect exactly as opposite to "gay" as black is to white, making haste, through the rain which had saturated their flimsy skirts and covered the pavement with a thick paste of mud, cruelly cold to ill-shod feet, towards the miserable "lodgings" in the poorer neighbourhoods of Lambeth and Blackfriars which were dignified with the name of home. ”

“ Some turn off from the Elephant (as all the omnibus people call it) and go down the New Kent-road to the Dover railway-station; while others run the same route, but to and from the Nightingale, Lisson-grove, instead of the Eyre Arms. The Waterloos journey from the York and Albany, Regent’s-park, by way of Albany-street, Portland-road, Regent-street, and so over Waterloo-bridge, by the Waterloo, London, and Walworth-roads, to Camberwell-gate. The Waterloo Association have also a branch to Holloway, viâ the Camden Villas. ”

“ The tide runs very low, and often the mud is exposed to view against the buildings on both sides of the river, especially on the London side in the vicinity of Blackfriars.
The river is crossed by many fine bridges; among them are London, Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Hungerford, Westminster, Vauxhall, and Chelsea, besides two or three large ones for the railroads. London and Waterloo bridges are of stone, and are respectively 928 feet and 1,242 feet long, and 53 feet and 42 feet wide. ”