RLL Container Report - 14 May 2014
From: John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd Email: john.keir@telia.com Date: 14 May 2014
All aboard the train!
It is often assumed that the Russian word for station “Вокзал” (Vokzal) is derived from a station of the same name in London. Although this explanation seems highly plausible, it is in fact chronologically wrong by a quarter of a century. Alexander Pushkin used the word “voksal” in his poem “To Natalie” written in 1813:”На гуляньях иль в воксалах”. What Pushkin and a whole host of Romantic Poets were referriing to was, in fact, a hugely popular attraction, namely Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, which satisfied the demands of the populace for something more entertaining than the serious tomes churned out by the Rationalist philosophers on the other side of the Channel.
In the early 1800`s, the Rationalists’ writings were carried across Europe on the coat tails of the advancing armies of the new French Republic. The French had seen a new dawn and were determined to convert the whole continent to this new way of rationalist thinking. On the other side of the Channel, however, the populace was more concerned about pursuing earthly pleasures, before Napoleon and his boring little revolutionnaries imposed their warped thinking on the good people of Britain. And so each night, they filled the music halls, bars and opium dens of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens determined to live life to the full, before succumbing to a bullet on the battlefield or being bored to death by the French philosophes.
Those countries opposing Napoleon and his revolution embraced the counter-philosophy of Romanticism, which was a somewhat intangble concept that could best be described as basically everthing that Rationalism was not. ”Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die” became the motto of the youth, who flocked to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens before being packed off in cramp vessels to fight the Frenchies in distant lands like Egypt and Spain, or to man the cannon in major sea battles like Trafalgar.
The concept of the pleasure gardens had first been brought to Russia by an Englishman called Maddox, who, in 1783, set up a Vauxhal Gardens in Pavlovsk. Most probably, Pushkin was referring to this establishment rather than some noisy, smoke-filled rail yard. The ”Vauxhall” franchise spread across Europe and so the famous Tivoli in Copenhagen was originally named the ”Tivoli and Vauxhall Gardens”. Sixteen years before Pushkin penned ”To Natalie”, the English Romantic poet, Samuel Coleridge wrote the introductory lines to his epic poem Kubla Khan ”in Xanadu did Kubla Khan a pleasure dome decree”. Together with Wordsworth and Lord George Byron, Coleridge formed the Romantic Poets, which dominated English literature for the first half of the 19th Century. Coleridge suffered from poor health and was, like many at that time, treated with laudanum, which was freely available at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
And so in this heady mixture of Romanticism, born in the ”Vauxhalls”, spread throughout Europe, where it merged with rampant Nationalism to defeat Napoleon, first at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig and then, finally, at Waterloo in 1815. Of the Romantic poets, Lord Beorge Byron died fighting in Greece helping to free the land from Ottoman oppression. His remains were sent to England for burial in Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused for reason of "questionable morality". His compatriot, Coleridge died in London on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium.
Tragically, in 1837 Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès put an end to the life of Russia’s greatest poet. Fearing a great outpouring of emotion, the Russian government ordered Pushkin’s body to be buried quietly late at night. Of all the Romantic poets, William Wordsworth lived the longest, dying at the ripe old age of eighty. He had been appointed Poet Laureate in 1843 and kept the post until his death in I850. Ironically, Wordsworth is the only Poet Laureate never to have had any poetry published during his tenure of the post. Romanticism was for the young and it had already been buried long before along with Pushkin, Coleridge and Byron.
Britain and Europe were now in the grip of a new age - the Age of Industry that, in turn, spawned the birth of the Railways. The poets of the first half of the century quickly gave way to engineers, who were determined to build a new age using iron and steel rather than pen and ink. No sooner had George Stephenson demonstrated the efficiency of his steam locomotive, than the whole world was caught up in a building frenzy. People were in awe of speed and the race was on to construct rail lines that would connect all the cities in the land. To this end, every available plot in the centre of major cities was bought up to build railway stations.
One such site was in south London, at a bend in the River Thames. There, United Dairies had a large factory supplying the capital with dairy products made from fresh milk transported from the West Country. The fresh milk was delivered at night to the station, which in the morning reverted to its normal role as a major commuter terminal carrying passengers from South-West London to the capital of a rapidly expanding empire. As the money poured in from eager and gullible investors, the property developers came up with ever more glamorous and glorious names for their stations – Victoria, in honour of the Queen and Waterloo in memory of the great victory over the French (and Rationalism). For the new station in south, they revived a name that was still remembered with much affection by the local residents: it would be called “Vauxhall”. Vauxhall station was completed in 1848, the year of another French Revolution and the Second Republic, which was declared by the French Poet, Alphonse de Lamartine – rather appropriately, the first French Romantic poet.
John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd.
14 May 2014
Copyright ©, 2014, John Keir