ABOUT THE WEATHER.
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."
