The Gambler

1

The original Vauxhall was a seventeenth-century pleasure garden in London. The word entered Russian as a common noun meaning an outdoor space for concerts and entertainment, with tearoom, tables, casino, and so on. The first railway line in Russia was the Petersburg–Pavlovsk line, and the first vauxhall was near the Pavlovsk railway station, so near, in fact, that vokzal also became the Russian word for “railway station.”