After two or three days of unseasonable and depressing warmth, with
lowering but not rainy sky, I woke this morning to find the land covered
with a dense mist. There was no daybreak, and, till long after the due
hour, no light save a pale, sad glimmer at the window; now, at mid-day, I
begin dimly to descry gaunt shapes of trees, whilst a haunting drip, drip
on the garden soil tells me that the vapour has begun to condense, and
will pass in rain. But for my fire, I should be in indifferent spirits
on such a day as this; the flame sings and leaps, and its red beauty is
reflected in the window-glass. I cannot give my thoughts to reading; if
I sat unoccupied, they would brood with melancholy fixedness on I know
not what. Better to betake myself to the old mechanic exercise of the
pen, which cheats my sense of time wasted.
I think of fogs in London, fogs of murky yellow or of sheer black, such
as have often made all work impossible to me, and held me, a sort of
dyspeptic owl, in moping and blinking idleness. On such a day, I
remember, I once found myself at an end both of coal and of lamp-oil,
with no money to purchase either; all I could do was to go to bed,
meaning to lie there till the sky once more became visible. But a second
day found the fog dense as ever. I rose in darkness; I stood at the
window of my garret, and saw that the street was illumined as at night,
lamps and shop-fronts perfectly visible, with folk going about their
business. The fog, in fact, had risen, but still hung above the house-
tops, impermeable by any heavenly beam. My solitude being no longer
endurable, I went out, and walked the town for hours. When I returned,
it was with a few coins which permitted me to buy warmth and light. I
had sold to a second-hand bookseller a volume which I prized, and was so
much the poorer for the money in my pocket.
Years after that, I recall another black morning. As usual at such
times, I was suffering from a bad cold. After a sleepless night, I fell
into a torpor, which held me unconscious for an hour or two. Hideous
cries aroused me; sitting up in the dark, I heard men going along the
street, roaring news of a hanging that had just taken place. "Execution
of Mrs."--I forget the name of the murderess. "Scene on the scaffold!"
It was a little after nine o'clock; the enterprising paper had promptly
got out its gibbet edition. A morning of midwinter, roofs and ways
covered with soot-grimed snow under the ghastly fog-pall; and, whilst I
lay there in my bed, that woman had been led out and hanged--hanged. I
thought with horror of the possibility that I might sicken and die in
that wilderness of houses, nothing above me but "a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapours." Overcome with dread, I rose and bestirred
myself. Blinds drawn, lamp lit, and by a blazing fire, I tried to make
believe that it was kindly night.