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Why is it that we in England talk so much about the weather? One reason,
I suppose, is because we are shy and awkward in the presence of
strangers, and the weather is a safe subject far removed from
personalities of any kind. Then the variableness of our climate
furnishes an opportunity for comment which does not exist in countries
where for months there is not a cloud in the sky, and you can tell long
before what kind of weather there will be on any particular day.
Whatever else may be said of our English climate, it cannot be accused
of monotony. You are not sure of seeing the same sky every morning you
arise, than which there is no greater source of ennui. Those of us who
have lived long abroad know how tired we got of a cloudless blue sky. We
can sympathise with the sailor who, on returning to London from the
Mediterranean, joyfully exclaimed—"Here's a jolly old fog, and no more
of your confounded blue skies!" Certainly we could do with a little more
sunshine in England than we get. It is not true that while we have much
weather we have no sunshine, but we have not as much of it as many of us
would like. Still England is not as bad as some places; for instance,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they have nine months' winter and three
months' bad weather. Indeed, the English takes rather a good place
amongst the climates of the world. It is free from extremes, and allows
us to go out every day and at all hours.
However, judging from the way we grumble, it would seem that we are
anything but satisfied with our climate.
Scene—Drawing-room at Scarborough. Melissa (writing): "Aunty,
darling, how do you spell damnable?" "Good gracious, darling, never use
such a word. I am surprised." "Well, but, auntie, I am writing to papa,
to tell him about the weather." "Oh, well, my darling, I suppose I may
tell you. D-a-m-n-a-b-l-e; but remember that you must not use the word
except to describe the weather."
I suppose the clerk of the weather office has long ago ceased trying to
satisfy us in this matter. What seems wretched weather to one person
makes another happy. Cold, that the young enjoy because it makes them
feel their vitality to the tips of their fingers, is death to the old.
Those who are fond of skating look out of the windows of their bedrooms,
hoping to see a good hard frost. The man who has three or four hunters
"eating their heads off" in the stable wishes for open weather, so that
he and they may have a run. The farmer says that frost is good for his
land; the sportsman, who has hired an expensive shooting, does not like
it. A young lady enjoys her walk and looks her best on a fine frosty
morning; but she should not forget that the weather which is so
pleasant to her puts thousands of people out of work.
Idle people feel changes of weather most. A man who lives a busy life in
a hot climate once said to me: "I do not know why people growl about the
heat; for my part, I have no time to be hot." And if the energetic feel
heat less than do the indolent, they certainly feel cold less. They are
too active to be cold; and perhaps it is easier to make oneself warm in
a cold climate than cool in a hot one.
A man who had been complaining because it had not rained for a good
while, when the rain did come then grumbled because it did not come
sooner. The rich, however, rather than the poor, talk of the "wretched
weather," because they have fewer real sorrows to grumble at. Indeed,
the poor often set an example of cheerfulness and resignation in this
matter which is very praiseworthy. "What wretched weather we are
having!" said a man to an old woman of his acquaintance whom he passed
on the road. "Well, sir," she replied, "any weather is better than
none." Fuller tells us of a gentleman travelling on a misty morning who
asked a shepherd—such men being generally skilled in the physiognomy of
the heavens—what weather it would be. "It will be," said the shepherd,
"what weather shall please me." Being asked to explain his meaning, he
said, "Sir, it shall be what weather pleaseth God; and what weather
pleaseth God, pleaseth me."
The people who are most satisfied with their climate are the Australians
and New Zealanders. I never met one of them who did not, in five
minutes, begin to abuse the English climate and glorify his own. They
will not admit that it has a single fault, though we have all heard of
the hot winds that make the Australian summer terribly oppressive. The
fact is that every country has a bad wind, or some other kind of
supposed drawback, which is very trying to strangers, but which, whether
they know it or not, suits the inhabitants. God knows better than we do
the sort of weather that each country should have.
What are we to say about the winter we have lately been enduring? Well,
it was very "trying" for us all, and an even stronger word might be used
by the poor, the aged, and the delicate. Still, let us remember that
without omniscience it is impossible to say whether any given season is
good or bad. So infinitely complex are the relations of things that we
are very bad judges as to what is best for us. How do we know that our
past winter of discontent may not be followed by a glorious summer, and
that the two may not be merely antecedent and consequent, but in some
degree cause and effect?
On no other subject are people so prone to become panegyrists of the
past as in this matter of the weather. "Ah," they say, "we never now
have the lovely summers we used to have." Reading the other day
Walpole's Letters, I discovered that so far from the summers in his day
being "lovely," they were not uniformly better than the winters: "The
way to ensure summer in England," he writes, "is to have it framed and
glazed in a comfortable room." This remark was made of the summer of
1773; that of 1784 was not more balmy, judging from the same writer's
comment: "The month of June, according to custom immemorial, is as cold
as Christmas. I had a fire last night, and all my rosebuds, I believe,
would have been very glad to sit by it."
Here is another weather grumble from the same quaint letter-writer: "The
deluge began here but on Monday last, and then rained nearly
eight-and-forty hours without intermission. My poor bag has not a dry
thread to its back. In short, every summer one lives in a state of
mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason: it is because we will
affect to have a summer, and have no title to any such thing."
This reminds us of Quin, who, being asked if he had ever seen so bad a
winter, replied: "Yes, just such an one last summer." If people could be
satisfied about the weather, this sort of summer ought to have pleased
the Irishman who, as he warmed his hands at a fire remarked: "What a
pity it is that we can't have the cold weather in the summer."
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