Blow the doubtful weather,
Never mind the rain!
Fun, April 27, 1867.
“The South-West Trains and the Speaker’s Clock.—(To the Editor of the Daily News.)—Sir,—The writer of an article in your edition of to-day, in quoting these lines of Kingsley’s: ‘Oh, blessed south-west train; Oh, blessed, blessed Speaker’s clock, All prophesying rain,’ describes them as being ‘rather mysterious.’ As it is quite unusual to see anything of Kingsley’s thus characterised, it may perhaps be instructive to your writer, and interesting to your readers, to know that these lines simply have reference to the sounds which were wafted towards Eversley Rectory from the South-Western Railway and the clock at Heckfield Place, the residence of the then Speaker of the House of Commons, when the ‘bless’d southwind’ was blowing; always welcome to Kingsley as heralding a day’s fishing, when—
I’m off at eight to-morrow morn
To bring such fishes back.
—Faithfully yours, Fred. W. Gill.—Dartford, Kent.”—
The Daily News, April, 1885.
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