There were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost in January
1776, so singular and striking, that a short detail of them may not be
unacceptable.
The most certain way to be exact will be to copy the passages from my
journal, which were taken from time to time, as things occurred. But it
may be proper previously to remark that the first week in January was
uncommonly wet, and drowned with vast rains from every quarter; from
whence may be inferred, as there is great reason to believe is the case,
that intense frosts seldom take place till the earth is perfectly glutted
and chilled with water; and hence dry autumns are seldom followed by
rigorous winters.
January 7th.--Snow driving all the day, which was followed by frost,
sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass overwhelmed
all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the gates, and filling
the hollow lanes.
On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much abroad; and thinks he never
before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian weather. Many of
the narrow roads were now filled above the tops of the hedges, through
which the snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque shapes, so
striking to the imagination as not to be seen without wonder and
pleasure. The poultry dared not to stir out of their roosting places;
for cocks and hens are so dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow
that they would soon perish without assistance. The hares also lay
sullenly in their seats, and would not move till compelled by hunger,
being conscious--poor animals--that the drifts and heaps treacherously
betray their footsteps, and prove fatal to numbers of them.
From the 14th the snow continued to increase, and began to stop the road
waggons, and coaches, which could no longer keep on their regular stages;
and especially on the western roads, where the fall appears to have been
deeper than in the south. The company at Bath, that wanted to attend the
Queen's birthday, were strangely incommoded: many carriages of persons
who got in their way to town from Bath as far as Marlborough, after
strange embarrassments, here met with a _ne plus ultra_. The ladies
fretted, and offered large rewards to labourers if they would shovel them
a track to London; but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be
removed; and so the 18th passed over, leaving the company in very
uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and other inns.
On the 20th the sun shone out for the first time since the frost began; a
circumstance that has been remarked before much in favour of vegetation.
All this time the cold was not very intense, for the thermometer stood at
29 degrees, 28 degrees, 25 degrees, and thereabout; but on the 21st it
descended to 20 degrees. The birds now began to be in a very pitiable
and starving condition. Tamed by the season, sky-larks settled in the
streets of towns, because they saw the ground was bare; rooks frequented
dunghills close to houses; and crows watched horses as they passed, and
greedily devoured what dropped from them. Hares now came into men's
gardens, and, scraping away the snow, devoured such plants as they could
find.
On the 22nd the author had occasion to go to London through a sort of
Laplandian scene, very wild and grotesque indeed. But the metropolis
itself exhibited a still more singular appearance than the country; for,
being bedded deep in snow, the pavement of the streets could not be
touched by the wheels or the horse's feet, so that the carriages ran
about without the least noise. Such an exemption from din and clatter
was strange, but not pleasant; it seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea
of desolation:--
"--Ipsa silentia terrent."
On the 27th much snow fell all day, and in the evening the frost became
very intense. At South Lambeth, for the four following nights, the
thermometer fell to 11 degrees, 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 6 degrees; and at
Selborne to 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 10 degrees; and on the 31st January,
just before sunrise, with rime on the trees and on the tube of the glass,
the quicksilver sank exactly to zero, being 32 degrees below the freezing
point; but by eleven in the morning, though in the shade, it sprang up to
16.5 degrees,--a most unusual degree of cold this for the south of
England! During these four nights the cold was so penetrating that it
occasioned ice in warm chambers and under beds; and in the day the wind
was so keen that persons of robust constitutions could scarcely endure to
face it. The Thames was at once so frozen over, both above and below
bridge, that crowds ran about on the ice. The streets were now strangely
encumbered with snow, which crumbled and trod dusty, and, turning grey,
resembled bay-salt; what had fallen on the roofs was so perfectly dry
that, from first to last, it lay twenty-six days on the houses in the
city--a longer time than had been remembered by the oldest housekeepers
living. According to all appearances we might now have expected the
continuance of this rigorous weather for weeks to come, since every night
increased in severity; but behold, without any apparent cause, on the 1st
February a thaw took place, and some rain followed before night, making
good the observation above, that frosts often go off as it were at once,
without any gradual declension of cold. On the 2nd February the thaw
persisted; and on the 3rd swarms of little insects were frisking and
sporting in a courtyard at South Lambeth, as if they had felt no frost.
Why the juices in the small bodies and smaller limbs of such minute
beings are not frozen is a matter of curious inquiry.
Severe frosts seem to be partial, or to run in currents, for at the same
juncture, as the author was informed by accurate correspondents, at
Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, the thermometer stood at 19 degrees; at
Blackburn, in Lancashire, at 19 degrees; and at Manchester, at 21
degrees, 20 degrees, and 18 degrees. Thus does some unknown circumstance
strangely overbalance latitude, and render the cold sometimes much
greater in the southern than the northern parts of this kingdom.
The consequences of this severity were that in Hampshire, at the melting
of the snow, the wheat looked well, and the turnips came forth little
injured. The laurels and laurustines were somewhat damaged, but only in
hot aspects. No evergreens were quite destroyed, and not half the damage
sustained that befell in January 1768. Those laurels that were a little
scorched on the south sides were perfectly untouched on their north
sides. The care taken to shake the snow day by day from the branches
seemed greatly to avail the author's evergreens. A neighbour's laurel-
hedge, in a high situation, and facing to the north, was perfectly green
and vigorous, and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt.
As to the birds, the thrushes and blackbirds were mostly destroyed; and
the partridges, by the weather and poachers, were so thinned that few
remained to breed the following year.