This station was an after-thought, the result of early experience in railway
traffic. Originally the line was to have ended at Camden Town, but a
favourable opportunity led to the purchase of fifteen acres, which has turned
out most convenient for the public and the proprietors. It is only to be
regretted that it was not possible to bring the station within a few yards of
the New Road, so as to render the stream of omnibuses between Paddington and
the City available, without compelling the passenger to perspire under his
carpet-bag, railway-wrapper, umbrella, and hat-box, all the way from the
platform to the edge of Euston Square.
The great gateway or propylaeum is very imposing, and rather out of place; but
that is not the architect's fault. It cost thirty thousand pounds, and had
he been permitted to carry out his original design, no doubt it would have
introduced us to some classic fane in character with the lofty Titanic
columns: for instance, a temple to Mercury the winged messenger and god of
Mammon. But, as is very common in this country,--for familiar examples see
the London University, the National Gallery, and the Nelson Column,--the
spirit of the proprietors evaporated with the outworks; and the gateway leads
to a square court-yard and a building the exterior of which may be described,
in the language of guide books when referring to something which cannot be
praised, as "a plain, unpretending, stucco structure," with a convenient
wooden shed in front, barely to save passengers from getting wet in rainy
weather.
[EUSTON SQUARE, LONDON: ill1.jpg]
As Melrose should be seen by the fair moonlight, so Euston, to be viewed to
advantage, should be visited by the gray light of a summer or spring morning,
about a quarter to six o'clock, three-quarters of an hour before the starting
of the parliamentary train, which every railway, under a wise legislative
enactment, is compelled to run "once a-day from each extremity, with covered
carriages, stopping at every station, travelling at a rate of not less than
fifteen miles an hour, at a charge of one-penny per mile." We say wise,
because the competition of the Railway for goods, as well as passengers,
drove off the road not only all the coaches, on which, when light-loaded,
foot-sore travellers got an occasional lift, but all the variety of vans and
broad-wheeled waggons which afforded a slow but cheap conveyance between our
principal towns.
At the hour mentioned, the Railway passenger-yard is vacant, silent, and as
spotlessly clean as a Dutchman's kitchen; nothing is to be seen but a tall
soldier-like policeman in green, on watch under the wooden shed, and a few
sparrows industriously yet vainly trying to get breakfast from between the
closely packed paving-stones. How different from the fat debauched-looking
sparrows who throve upon the dirt and waste of the old coach yards!
It is so still, so open; the tall columns of the portico entrance look down
on you so grimly; the front of the booking-offices, in their garment of clean
stucco, look so primly respectable that you cannot help feeling ashamed of
yourself,--feeling as uncomfortable as when you have called too early on an
economically genteel couple, and been shown into a handsome drawing-room, on
a frosty day, without a fire. You cannot think of entering into a gossip
with the Railway guardian, for you remember that "sentinels on duty are not
allowed to talk," except to nursery maids.
Presently, hurrying on foot, a few passengers arrive; a servant-maid carrying
a big box, with the assistance of a little girl; a neat punctual-looking man,
probably a banker's clerk on furlough; and a couple of young fellows in
shaggy coats, smoking, who seem, by their red eyes and dirty hands, to have
made sure of being up early by not going to bed. A rattle announces the
first omnibus, with a pile of luggage outside and five inside passengers, two
commercial travellers, two who may be curates or schoolmasters, and a brown
man with a large sea-chest. At the quarter, the scene thickens; there are
few Hansoms, but some night cabs, a vast number of carts of all kinds, from
the costermonger's donkey to the dashing butcher's Whitechapel. There is
very little medium in parliamentary passengers about luggage, either they
have a cart-load or none at all. Children are very plentiful, and the
mothers are accompanied with large escorts of female relations, who keep
kissing and stuffing the children with real Gibraltar rock and gingerbread to
the last moment. Every now and then a well-dressed man hurries past into the
booking-office and takes his ticket with a sheepish air as if he was pawning
his watch. Sailors arrive with their chests and hammocks. The other day we
had the pleasure of meeting a travelling tinker with the instruments of his
craft neatly packed; two gentlemen, whose closely cropped hair and pale plump
complexion betokened a recent residence in some gaol or philanthropic
institution; an economical baronet, of large fortune; a prize fighter, going
down to arrange a little affair which was to come off the next day; a half-
pay officer, with a genteel wife and twelve children, on his way to a cheap
county in the north; a party of seven Irish, father, mother, and five grown-
up sons and daughters, on their way to America, after a successful residence
in London; a tall young woman and a little man, from Stamford, who had been
up to London to buy stone bottles, and carried them back rattling in a box; a
handsome dragoon, with a very pretty girl,--her eyes full of tears,--on his
arm, to see him off; another female was waiting at the door for the same
purpose, when the dragoon bolted, and took refuge in the interior of the
station. In a word, a parliamentary train collects,--besides mechanics in
search of work, sailors going to join a ship, and soldiers on furlough,--all
whose necessities or tastes lead them to travel economically, among which
last class are to be found a good many Quakers. It is pleasing to observe
the attention the poor women, with large families and piles of packages,
receive from the officers of the company, a great contrast to the neglect
which meets the poorly clad in stage-coach travelling, as may still be seen
in those districts where the rail has not yet made way.
We cannot say that we exactly admire the taste of the three baronets whom a
railway superintendent found in one third-class carriage, but we must own
that to those to whom economy is really an object, there is much worse
travelling than by the Parliamentary. Having on one occasion gone down by
first-class, with an Oxford man who had just taken his M.A., an ensign of
infantry in his first uniform, a clerk in Somerset House, and a Manchester
man who had been visiting a Whig Lord,--and returned third-class, with a
tinker, a sailor just returned from Africa, a bird-catcher with his load, and
a gentleman in velveteens, rather greasy, who seemed, probably on a private
mission, to have visited the misdemeanour wards of all the prisons in England
and Scotland; we preferred the return trip, that is to say, vulgar and
amusing to dull and genteel. Among other pieces of information gleaned on
this occasion, we learned that "for a cove as didn't mine a jolly lot of
readin and writin, Readin was prime in winter; plenty of good vittles, and
the cells warmed."
It must be remarked that the character of the Parliamentary varies very much
according to the station from which it starts. The London trains being the
worst, having a large proportion of what are vulgarly called "swells out of
luck." In a rural district the gathering of smock-frocks and rosy-faced
lasses, the rumbling of carts, and the size, number, and shape of the trunks
and parcels, afford a very agreeable and comical scene on a frosty,
moonlight, winter's morning, about Christmas time, when visiting commences,
or at Whitsuntide. No man who has a taste for studying the phases of life
and character should fail to travel at least once by the Parliamentary.
The large cheap load having rumbled off from the south side of the station,
about nine o'clock preparations are commenced for the aristocratic Express,
which, on this line, is composed of first-class carriages alone, in which, at
half the price of the old mail coach fares, the principal stations on the
line are reached at railway speed.
To attend the departure of this train, there arrive not only the republican
omnibi and cabs, from the damp night crawler to the rattling Hansom, but
carriages, with coronets and mitres emblazoned, guarded by the tallest and
most obsequious of footmen, and driven by the fattest and most lordly of
coachmen; also the neatest of broughams, adorned internally with pale pink
and blue butterfly bonnets; dashing dogcarts, with neat grooms behind,
mustached guardsmen driving; and stately cabriolets prance in, under the
guidance of fresh primrose-coloured gloves.
But, although the passengers by the Express train are, in every respect, a
contrast to those by the Parliamentary, the universal and levelling tendency
of the railway system is not less plainly exhibited.
The earl or duke, whose dignity formerly compelled him to post in a coupe and
four, at a cost of some five or six shillings a mile, and an immense
consumption of horse-flesh, wax-lights, and landladies' curtsies on the road,
now takes his place unnoticed in a first-class carriage next to a gentleman
who travels for a great claret and champagne house, and opposite another
going down express to report a railway meeting at Birmingham for a morning
paper. If you see a lady carefully and courteously escorted to a carriage
marked "engaged," on a blackboard, it is probably not a countess but the wife
of one of the principal officers of the company. A bishop in a greatcoat
creates no sensation; but a tremendous rush of porters and superintendents
towards one carriage, announces that a director or well-known engineer is
about to take his seat. In fact, civility to all, gentle and simple, is the
rule introduced by the English railway system; every porter with a number on
his coat is, for the time, the passenger's servant. Special attention is
bestowed on those who are personally known, and no one can grumble at that.
Some people, who have never visited the continent, or only visited it for
pleasure, travelling at their leisure, make comparisons with the railways of
France and Germany, unfavourable to the English system. Our railways are
dearer than the foreign, so is our government,--we make both ourselves; but
compare the military system of the continental railways; the quarter of an
hour for admission before the starting of the train, during which, if too
early or too late, you are locked out; the weighing of every piece of
baggage; the lordly commanding airs of all the officials if any relaxation of
rules be required; the insouciance with which the few porters move about,
leaving ladies and gentlemen to drag their own luggage;--compare all this with
the rapid manner in which the loads of half-a-dozen cabs, driving up from
some other railway at the last moment, are transferred to the departing
Express; compare the speed, the universal civility, attention, and honesty,
that distinguish our railway travelling, and you cannot fail to come to the
conclusion that for a commercial people to whom time is of value, ours is the
best article, and if we had not been a lawyer-ridden people we might also
have had the cheapest article.
Before starting the Express train, we must not fail to note one new class of
passengers, recruited by the speed of railways, viz., the number of gentlemen
in breeches, boots, and spurs, with their pinks just peeping from under their
rough jackets, who, during the season, get down to Aylesbury, Bletchley, and
even Wolverton, to hunt, and back home again to dinner. But the signal
sounds. The express train moves off; two gentlemen at the last moment are,
in vain, crying out for Punch and the Times, while an unheeded hammering at
the closed door of the booking-office announces that somebody is too late.
There is always some one too late. On this occasion it was a young gentleman
in a pair of light top-boots, and a mamma and papa with half-a-dozen children
and two nursery-maids in a slow capacious fly.
We cannot bestow unqualified praise upon the station arrangements at Euston.
Comfort has been sacrificed to magnificence. The platform arrangements for
departing and arriving trains are good, simple, and comprehensive; but the
waiting-rooms, refreshment stand, and other conveniences are as ill-contrived
as possible; while a vast hall with magnificent roof and scagliola pillars,
appears to have swallowed up all the money and all the light of the
establishment.
The first-class waiting-room is dull to a fearful degree, and furnished in
the dowdiest style of economy. The second-class room is a dark cavern, with
nothing better than a borrowed light.
The refreshment counters are enclosed in a sort of circular glazed pew, open
to all the drafts of a grand, cold, uncomfortable hall, into which few ladies
will venture.
A refreshment-room should be the ante-room to the waiting-room, and the two
should be so arranged with reference to the booking-office and cloak-rooms,
that strangers find their way without asking a dozen questions from busy
porters and musing policemen.
Euston Station reminds us of an architect's house, where a magnificent
portico and hall leads to dungeon-like dining-room, and mean drawing-room.
Why are our architects so inferior to our engineers?
On the platform is the door of the telegraph office, which also has offices
for receiving and transmitting messages at all the principal stations.