Lambeth Fantastical - September 2024

 

War of the Worlds In Waterloo

The 21st of September marks 158 years since the birth in 1866 in Bromley High Street of writer and scifi pioneer HG Wells. One of his best remembered and most influential works is of course his pioneering 1897 alien invasion novel 'The War of the Worlds'.

At the time of writing Wells was living near Woking on the South Western rail route leading into Surrey from Waterloo. The impact of the novel comes to a large extent from its use of real locations as the backdrop to the alien invasion. After their initial incursion on Horsell Common near Woking the route of the Martian advance on London essentialy follows the South Western commuter route that would have been very familiar to Wells.

In letter written at the time to Elizabeth Healey, who'd been a  student in his year at the Normal School  (Imperial College) Wells gleefully tells her about the new serial he is writing for Pearson's Magazine.

" I completely wreck and sack Woking – killing my neighbours in painful and eccentric ways – then proceed via Kingston and Richmond to London,which I sack..."

Waterloo gets its first mention in Chapter Three of the novel when the narrator, having witnessed the events unfolding on Horsell Common is sent to speak to the local aristocrat, Lord Hilton. He is told that the Lord is not at home but is due to arrive on the 6pm from Waterloo. The narrative then progresses to do exactly as Wells had outlined in his letter, taking the action and Martian devastation to various destinations on the South Western Rail routes, including Leatherhead, Weybridge and Shepperton.

Waterloo itself is the subject of Chapter Fourteen, in which the narrator's brother hears about the Martian cannister falling on Horsell Common and decides to pay a visit to Woking. He sends a telegram to the narrator explaining his intentions and then spends his evening at a music hall. Wells doesn't name the actual music hall but in the 1890s there would have been several to choose from. The Royal Victoria on Waterloo Road (these days known as the Old Vic), The Surrey Theatre on Blackfriars Road (formerly known by the illustrious title of the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy), and the Canterbury Music Hall on Westminster Bridge Road (where Charlie Chaplin had seen his father perform a few years earlier).

Wells displays a working knowledge of Waterloo referencing the 'theatre trains' which ran late into the night to take theatre goers home to the Surrey suburbs and the 'Sunday League Excursions', special services laid on to take football supporters to fixtures in Southampton and Portsmouth. However, when the narrator's brother takes a horse-drawn cab to Waterloo after his sojourn to the Music Hall he finds that the midnight train which would have taken him to Woking has been cancelled and that trains are being diverted via Virginia Water or Guildford. It isn't clear at that stage that the disruption has been caused by the rampaging of the three legged Martian war machines.

By the following day however the papers are carrying reports of people fleeing from areas such as Walton and Weybridge and heading toward London. The brother arrives back at Waterloo to find services in the direction of Windsor are also now disrupted. Station porters tell him of telegrams coming in from Byfleet and Chertsey reporting fighting around Weybridge.

Here Wells makes reference to the opening of the 'communication line' for trains from Chatham and Woolwich carrying troops and heavy artillery to Kingston to be brought through. The 'communication line' was a line which joined South Eastern Rail's Waterloo East (then known as Waterloo Junction) to South Western Rail's Waterloo mainline. The line could be used to bring rolling stock from one network to the other via rail tracks that ran through the middle of Waterloo's main concourse. The remains of the rail bridge from Waterloo East that spanned Waterloo Road can still be seen today beneath the newer pedestrian footbridge that now joins the two stations.

The Chapter describes a few trains arriving into Waterloo from Richmond, Putney and Kingston carrying people who'd travelled out to enjoy a day's boating only to find the locks closed. One commuter in a blue and red blazer, typical of the Sunday boating attire of the era, describes refugees flooding into Kingston on horse-drawn carts loaded with their belongings. And of hearing guns firing at Hampton Court Station.

Beneath Waterloo mainline is of course Waterloo Underground Station and here commuters who'd planned days out in Surrey's Parks in destinations such as Barnes, Wimbledon and Kew (referred to in the Chapter as the South-Western Lungs) are returning unsettled and disappointed.

At the time Waterloo was also the Terminus for the Necropolis Railway (it later moved further along Westminster Road to allow for Waterloo's extension in 1902). Founded in 1854 the Necropolis transported coffins and corpses by train carriage to Brookwood Cemetery near Woking and Horsell Common. Some of the land purchased around Brookwood was sold by the Necropolis Company for the Brookwood Asylum and the Royal Military Police Training Barracks. Another purchased site became the Oriental Instute and the Shah Jahan Mosque, both of which are mentioned in War of the Words as coming under devastating attack from the Martian heat ray.

Having failed to catch a train once more the narrator's brother leaves station at around five in the evening. He hears the church bells ringing for evensong. Dating back to the 1820s, St John's church still stands on Waterloo Road where it stood in Wells' day. Its tower boasts eight bells which remain operational. Wells also describes a squad of Salvation Army lasses coming singing down Waterloo Road. In those days there was a Salvation Army barracks in nearby Blackfriars Road. It was here in 1902 that American author, Jack London, posing as an out of work sailor came looking for a free breakfast when writing his social study of London's poor, 'The People of the Abyss'.

On Waterloo Bridge the brother finds a group of 'loafers' peering down at the 'curious brown scum' that is floating down the Thames in patches. The scene is depicted in one of Warwick Goble's illustrations of the novel for it's original serialisation in Pearson's Magazine. As he crosses the bridge he hears rumours of a floating body also in the river. This would have been the original Waterloo Bridge completed in 1817 and named after the Battle of Waterloo. In Wells' day a body floating down the Thames beneath the bridge might not have been an unusual occurance. It had a notorious reputation as a suicide bridge. There was a police station on a floating pontoon beneath the bridge at the Waterloo side. Attempted suicides would be hauled out of the river, revived and then charged with the criminal offence of attempting to take their own life.

On the other side of the Bridge is Wellington Street where the brother encounters newspaper sellers, their wares still bearing wet ink from the printing presses nearby Fleet Street, yelling about a 'dreadful catastrophe' and 'fighting at Weybridge'. Of course  Wellington Street is the location of the Lyceum Theatre where Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, published in the same year as War of the Worlds, was working at the time as Henry Irving's theatrical manager.

Toward the end of the novel the narrator also finds himself in Wellington Street in the aftermath of the defeat of the Martians by the common cold. Here he sees bread donated by the French being distributed to the ragged, yellow skinned survivors of the invasion. Looking toward Waterloo Bridge he sees the creeping Martian red weed clambering over the butresses, having also previously witnessed Lambeth Palace similarly afflicted.
He crosses the bridge to Waterloo Station where he finds free trains have been laid on to take survivors back to whatever might remain of their homes. On his journey back to Woking he sees blackened houses and clerks and shopmen working alongside navvies to repair the war damaged rail tracks. He witnesses the heat ray inflicted devastation around Clapham Junction and Wimbledon stations as well as Thames tributary rivers, such as the Wandle and the Mole, choked by the red weed. The line toward Woking is still under repair so he disembarks at Weybridge and travels the remainder of his journey by foot.

Wells wasn't the only author of the late Victorian era to depict Waterloo station in a novel.

'Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)' (1889) by Jerome K Jerome starts with a train journey from Waterloo to Kingston. The waiting room on Waterloo Station is where the main character of W Somerset Maughan's 'Liza of Lambeth' (1897) has her clandestine encounters with her married lover. In 'The Violet Flame' (1899) by another pioneering scifi writer, Fred T Jane, the  villainous central character Professor Mirzarbeau (also known as the Beast) harnesses the atom and blows up Waterloo Station as a demonstration of its power.

2023's 'War of the Worlds: The Attack' was was avaliable recently on a number of streaming channels. Despite its young adult vibe modern day setting it is quite faithful to the locations and story lines of the original. And it recreates an iconic scifi scene filmed in Waterloo in 1964. The Doctor Who serial 'Daleks Invasion of the Earth' has Daleks rather than Martians laying waste to London. One of the episodes features a mad dash by Barbara, one of the Doctor's first companions,  along the Thames walkway behind St Thomas Hospital and over Westminster Bridge, pushing the wheelchair bound leader of the Earth resistance and narrowly avoiding Dalek patrols. In a nod to the serial, which clearly took inspiration from the Wells classic, director of 'The Attack', Junaid Syed, gives a nod back by having his young protagonists enter Martian occupied London via the exact same route.

Another Doctor Who link comes in the Jon Pertwee era serial 'Frontier in Space' filmed around Waterloo's South Bank complex. In one of the scenes an incarcerated Master (Roger Delgado) is seen engrossed in a copy of 'War of the Worlds'.

Wells himself appeared as a character in the two part 1984 Doctor Who serial 'Timelash' featuring the sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, who was born in the Lying In hospital in Waterloo's York Road.

So remember, the next time you are waiting for a train at Waterloo and wondering why it has been delayed. 'The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one they say. And still...'

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Steampunk Guided Walk