Vituperation of the English climate is foolish. A better climate does
not exist--for healthy people; and it is always as regards the average
native in sound health that a climate must be judged. Invalids have no
right whatever to talk petulantly of the natural changes of the sky;
Nature has not _them_ in view; let them (if they can) seek exceptional
conditions for their exceptional state, leaving behind them many a
million of sound, hearty men and women who take the seasons as they come,
and profit by each in turn. In its freedom from extremes, in its common
clemency, even in its caprice, which at the worst time holds out hope,
our island weather compares well with that of other lands. Who enjoys
the fine day of spring, summer, autumn, or winter so much as an
Englishman? His perpetual talk of the weather is testimony to his keen
relish for most of what it offers him; in lands of blue monotony, even as
where climatic conditions are plainly evil, such talk does not go on. So,
granting that we have bad days not a few, that the east wind takes us by
the throat, that the mists get at our joints, that the sun hides his
glory too often and too long, it is plain that the result of all comes to
good, that it engenders a mood of zest under the most various aspects of
heaven, keeps an edge on our appetite for open-air life.
I, of course, am one of the weaklings who, in grumbling at the weather,
merely invite compassion. July, this year, is clouded and windy, very
cheerless even here in Devon; I fret and shiver and mutter to myself
something about southern skies. Pshaw! Were I the average man of my
years, I should be striding over Haldon, caring not a jot for the heavy
sky, finding a score of compensations for the lack of sun. Can I not
have patience? Do I not know that, some morning, the east will open like
a bursting bud into warmth and splendour, and the azure depths above will
have only the more solace for my starved anatomy because of this
protracted disappointment?