HG Wells and Waterloo Bridge
The Metropolis Toll Bridges Act 1877 officially passed and received Royal Assent on 12 July 1877. Consequently, a year later a number of private toll bridges, including the original Waterloo Bridge, passed into public ownership and became free to cross. It was a huge boost to the economies of areas on the south side of the river and made it easier for residents in areas such as Waterloo to cross over into Central London.
Twenty years later HG Wells, in 1897, would make Waterloo one of the locations in his groundbreaking alien invasion novel 'The War of the Worlds' A while back I posted a blog on HG Wells and the connections between 'War of the Worlds' and Waterloo Station. You can skip back to that on the link below.
This month I am going to look more specifically at the connections between Wells and Waterloo Bridge.
The summer of 1897 was productive period for the Bromley born author. By July the fourth instalment of 'War of the Worlds' was on sale in the monthly periodical Pearsons Magazine. Simultaneously, 'The Invisible Man' was running in serialised form in sister publication Pearson's Weekly. Both were written while he was living in Woking. I have previously written about how the Martian invasion, which starts in Woking, more or less follows the South West Rail commuter route into Waterloo. The average rate for magazine serialisation rights at the time was £200, about £20,000 in today's money. So, Wells was already earning a handsome return from two of his best known tales before they'd even appeared in hardback novel form.
Waterloo Bridge first makes its appearance in what in the novel is called 'Book One - The Coming of the Martians'. The narrator’s brother has given up trying to catch a train from Waterloo to Woking, and, as the rumours of the terrible events unfolding begin to fly, he crosses over the bridge with the intention of returning to his apartment. As the sun sets on what appears to be a normal day, he sees two men leaning over the bridge to look at a film of strange dark scum that is floating on the surface of the Thames. Unbeknown to them it is the residue of the toxic black smoke released by the Martians as part of their arsenal of advanced weaponry.
The Waterloo Bridge scene was depicted by one of Warwick Goble's famous illustration and accompanied by the caption - "On Waterloo Bridge, London—a couple of 'idle loafers' watch a 'curious brown scum' that came drifting down the stream in places."
Goble would also provide illustrations for the full novelisation later that year.
Waterloo Bridge makes its second appearance toward the end of 'Book Two - Life Under the Martians'. In this instance it's the narrator himself crossing over from the Strand side on his weary journey back to Woking, having witnessed the collapse of the three-legged war machines on Primrose Hill as the Martians succumb to the common cold. Here he too sees evidence of the advanced weaponry of the invaders in the form of their invasive, terraforming red weed. 'I saw little of the mischief wrought by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street,' says the narrator. 'There I saw the red weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge.’ Before crossing over to Waterloo Station he sees at the corner of Waterloo Bridge, pinioned by a stick against a thicket of the red weed, by then withering and decaying, a placard for the Daily Mail—the very first newspaper to resume publication in aftermath of the war the worlds.
Three decades later Wells would return to Waterloo Bridge in 'The Shape of Things to Come' (1933). Here Wells describes the war torn wreck of Waterloo Bridge - '...the peculiar appearance of the old Waterloo Bridge, crumpled up to a pent-house shape, and the grotesque obliquity of the Egyptian obelisk, once known as Cleopatra's Needle, that venerable slab of hieroglyphics, cracked and splintered by air-raid shrapnel, which slanted incredibly for some years before it fell into the banked-up water of the Lambeth-Chelsea lake.’ In this depiction the Thames has become a huge stagnant lake that stretches from Waterloo through Lambeth to Chelsea. While the script of the movie version, released by Alexander Korda in 1936, was co-written by Wells, the Waterloo Bridge scene unfortunately never made the cut.
If you are interested in finding out more HG Wells’ connections to Waterloo and Lambeth in general, I will be running my ‘Waterloo, Wells and War of the Worlds’ guided walk as part of Lambeth Heritage month at 11am on Sunday 20th September.
Details here…
Waterloo, Wells and War of the Worlds
You can also read my substack on the Invisible Man's London here.
Invisible Man statue HG Wells pub Woking
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