A railway station is an admirable place, although Ruskin did not think
so; he did not think so because he himself was even more modern than the
railway station. He did not think so because he was himself feverish,
irritable, and snorting like an engine. He could not value the ancient
silence of the railway station.
“In a railway station,” he said, “you are in a hurry, and therefore,
miserable”; but you need not be either unless you are as modern as
Ruskin. The true philosopher does not think of coming just in time for
his train except as a bet or a joke.
The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to be late
for the one before. Do this, and you will find in a railway station
much of the quietude and consolation of a cathedral. It has many of the
characteristics of a great ecclesiastical building; it has vast arches,
void spaces, coloured lights, and, above all, it has recurrence or
ritual. It is dedicated to the celebration of water and fire the two
prime elements of all human ceremonial. Lastly, a station resembles the
old religions rather than the new religions in this point, that people
go there. In connection with this it should also be remembered that all
popular places, all sites, actually used by the people, tend to retain
the best routine of antiquity very much more than any localities or
machines used by any privileged class. Things are not altered so quickly
or completely by common people as they are by fashionable people. Ruskin
could have found more memories of the Middle Ages in the Underground
Railway than in the grand hotels outside the stations. The great palaces
of pleasure which the rich build in London all have brazen and vulgar
names. Their names are either snobbish, like the Hotel Cecil, or
(worse still) cosmopolitan like the Hotel Metropole. But when I go in a
third-class carriage from the nearest circle station to Battersea to the
nearest circle station to the DAILY NEWS, the names of the stations are
one long litany of solemn and saintly memories. Leaving Victoria I come
to a park belonging especially to St. James the Apostle; thence I go to
Westminster Bridge, whose very name alludes to the awful Abbey; Charing
Cross holds up the symbol of Christendom; the next station is called a
Temple; and Blackfriars remembers the mediaeval dream of a Brotherhood.
If you wish to find the past preserved, follow the million feet of the
crowd. At the worst the uneducated only wear down old things by sheer
walking. But the educated kick them down out of sheer culture.
I feel all this profoundly as I wander about the empty railway station,
where I have no business of any kind. I have extracted a vast number of
chocolates from automatic machines; I have obtained cigarettes, toffee,
scent, and other things that I dislike by the same machinery; I have
weighed myself, with sublime results; and this sense, not only of the
healthiness of popular things, but of their essential antiquity and
permanence, is still in possession of my mind. I wander up to the
bookstall, and my faith survives even the wild spectacle of modern
literature and journalism. Even in the crudest and most clamorous
aspects of the newspaper world I still prefer the popular to the proud
and fastidious. If I had to choose between taking in the DAILY MAIL and
taking in the TIMES (the dilemma reminds one of a nightmare), I should
certainly cry out with the whole of my being for the DAILY MAIL. Even
mere bigness preached in a frivolous way is not so irritating as mere
meanness preached in a big and solemn way. People buy the DAILY MAIL,
but they do not believe in it. They do believe in the TIMES, and
(apparently) they do not buy it. But the more the output of paper upon
the modern world is actually studied, the more it will be found to be
in all its essentials ancient and human, like the name of Charing Cross.
Linger for two or three hours at a station bookstall (as I am doing),
and you will find that it gradually takes on the grandeur and historic
allusiveness of the Vatican or Bodleian Library. The novelty is all
superficial; the tradition is all interior and profound. The DAILY MAIL
has new editions, but never a new idea. Everything in a newspaper that
is not the old human love of altar or fatherland is the old human love
of gossip. Modern writers have often made game of the old chronicles
because they chiefly record accidents and prodigies; a church struck
by lightning, or a calf with six legs. They do not seem to realise that
this old barbaric history is the same as new democratic journalism. It
is not that the savage chronicle has disappeared. It is merely that the
savage chronicle now appears every morning.
As I moved thus mildly and vaguely in front of the bookstall, my eye
caught a sudden and scarlet title that for the moment staggered me. On
the outside of a book I saw written in large letters, “Get On or Get
Out.” The title of the book recalled to me with a sudden revolt and
reaction all that does seem unquestionably new and nasty; it reminded
me that there was in the world of to-day that utterly idiotic thing,
a worship of success; a thing that only means surpassing anybody in
anything; a thing that may mean being the most successful person
in running away from a battle; a thing that may mean being the most
successfully sleepy of the whole row of sleeping men. When I saw those
words the silence and sanctity of the railway station were for the
moment shadowed. Here, I thought, there is at any rate something
anarchic and violent and vile. This title, at any rate, means the most
disgusting individualism of this individualistic world. In the fury of
my bitterness and passion I actually bought the book, thereby ensuring
that my enemy would get some of my money. I opened it prepared to find
some brutality, some blasphemy, which would really be an exception to
the general silence and sanctity of the railway station. I was prepared
to find something in the book that was as infamous as its title.
I was disappointed. There was nothing at all corresponding to the
furious decisiveness of the remarks on the cover. After reading it
carefully I could not discover whether I was really to get on or to
get out; but I had a vague feeling that I should prefer to get out.
A considerable part of the book, particularly towards the end, was
concerned with a detailed description of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Undoubtedly Napoleon got on. He also got out. But I could not discover
in any way how the details of his life given here were supposed to help
a person aiming at success. One anecdote described how Napoleon always
wiped his pen on his knee-breeches. I suppose the moral is: always wipe
your pen on your knee-breeches, and you will win the battle of Wagram.
Another story told that he let loose a gazelle among the ladies of his
Court. Clearly the brutal practical inference is--loose a gazelle among
the ladies of your acquaintance, and you will be Emperor of the French.
Get on with a gazelle or get out. The book entirely reconciled me to
the soft twilight of the station. Then I suddenly saw that there was a
symbolic division which might be paralleled from biology. Brave men are
vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness
in the middle. But these modern cowards are all crustaceans; their
hardness is all on the cover and their softness is inside. But the
softness is there; everything in this twilight temple is soft.