LEBANON HOUSE
Of all the great stations in the world Euston alone preserves in its Tartarian architecture the spirit in which the first railway travellers must have set out. So long as Euston endures, whatever improvements humanity may achieve in rapidity of travel and transport, we shall understand the apprehension and awe with which the original adventure must have filled the imagination of mankind. Mrs. Browning took to her bed in order to recover from the effects of a first view of Paddington Station; but Paddington is merely an overgrown conservatory set beside Euston, impressive in its way but entirely lacking in that capacity for permanently and intensely expressing the soul of an epoch, which makes Euston worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as St. Peter’s, or the Pyramids of Gizeh, or even the sublime Parthenon itself. Not only does Euston express the plunge of humanity into a Plutonian era, a plunge more lamentable and swift than Persephone’s from Enna in the dark chariot of Hades; but it peculiarly expresses within the lapse of a whole period the descent of the individual Londoner to the industrial Hell.
On an iron-bound day in early March the grimy portico of Euston might oppress the lightest heart with foreboding as, passing through to the eternal twilight of those cavernous and funereal entries, the fearful traveller embarks for the unimaginable North. The high platforms give the trains a weasel shape. The departure bell strikes upon the ear like a cracked Dies Iræ. The porters, in spite of their English kindliness, manage somehow to assume the guise of infernal guardians, so that we tip them as we might propitiate old Charon with an obol or to Cerberus fling the drugged sop. St. Pancras and its High Anglican embellishments impress the observer as simply a Ruskinian attempt to make the best of both worlds. King’s Cross is a mere result of that ugliness and utility of which Euston is the enshrinement. Paddington is an annexe of the Crystal palace. Victoria and Charing Cross are already infected with the fussiness and insignificance of Boulogne. Waterloo is a restless improvisation, Liverpool Street a hideous ant-heap. To get a picture of the spirits of damned Londoners passing for ever from their beloved city, one should wait on a frozen foggy midnight outside the portals of Euston.
Nancy may not have read Virgil, but her heart was heavy enough with foreboding when with Letizia, a tiny Red Riding Hood, she entered the train for Brigham on that iron-bound morning early in March. She wished now that she had waited for an answer to the letter announcing her visit. Visions of a severe man-servant shutting the door in her face haunted her. She tried to recall what Bram had told her about the details of his family life, but looking back now she could not recall that he had told her anything except his hatred of it all. And anyway, what could he have known of the present state of his family, apart from the sardonic commentary upon it in his grandmother’s infrequent letters? It was twelve years since he had escaped from Lebanon House. His brother had been a boy of fourteen; his father was still alive then; his grandfather too; and that strange old grandmother, the prospect of meeting whom had kept Nancy from wavering in her resolution, was not bedridden in those days.
“Muvver,” said Letizia, who had been looking out of the window at the Buckinghamshire fields, “I can count to fifteen. I counted fifteen moo-cows, and then I counted fifteen moo-cows again.”
“You are getting on, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” Letizia echoed, whereupon she burst into a chant of triumph, which caused an old gentleman in the opposite corner of the compartment to look up in some alarm over the top of his newspaper.
“Hush, darling, don’t sing like that. You’ll disturb the ladies and gentlemen who want to read.”
“Why do they want to read?”
“To pass the time away.”