“It isn’t a question of agreement or disagreement. It’s a simple fact.” Dr. Hurd again struck his chair and sat forward feeling for a handkerchief in a side pocket, his face a tearful grin turned upon Dr. von Heber.
“You are a loyal champion.”
“English weather does not want a champion. It’s so wonderful. Perhaps you are thinking of Italian skies and that sort of thing; in countries where the weather does not change or not suddenly; only at fixed seasons. That’s very nice in a way. You can make plans. But I know I should long for grey days and changes in the sky. A grey day is not melancholy; it’s exciting. You can see everything. The sun makes everything pale and blinds you.”
“There I think you mistaken. Nothing beautifies like sunlight, and if you’ve the sun behind you, you get the ahead prospect without being blinded.”
“I know what you mean; but I want both; for contrast perhaps; no, that’s silly; the grey days for their own sake, the misty atmosphere. Fog. I think a real London fog is perfection; everything and the shapes and outlines of things looming up only as you pass them. Wonderful.”
“Well, there you leave us behind. I can’t see anything either beautiful or in the least wonderful in your town fogs.”
“Quite so. A taste for town fog is an artificial taste. Town fog’s not a natural phenomenon. It’s just, town dirt.”
“I don’t care how it begins. It’s perfect. It makes the whole day an adventure even if you’re indoors. It’s perfect to have the light on and nothing to be seen outside but a copper glare. Outside is a glorious adventure in a new unknown world.... In a way all our weathers are that. In a way the weather’s enough, in itself, without anything else.”
“That seems to me a remarkable, a very extra-ordinairy point of view. You can’t in any circumstances make it a general defence of your climate. It’s a purely personal notion.”
“It isn’t. Even people who say they don’t like fogs are different; interested in the effect while it is on.”