(_For the Mirror_.)
"John's temper depended very much upon the air; his spirits rose and fell
with the weather-glass."--ARBUTHNOT.
No one can deny that the above is a _floating_ topic; and we challenge all
the philosophy of ancients or moderns to prove it is not. After the
memorable July 15, (St. Swithin,) people talk of the result with as much
certainty as a merchant calculates on _trade winds_; and in like manner,
hackney-coachmen and umbrella-makers have their _trade rains_. Indeed,
there are, as Shakespeare's contented Duke says, "books in the running
brooks, and good in every thing;"[1] and so far from neglecting to turn
the ill-wind to our account, we are disposed to venture a few seasonable
truisms for the gratification of our readers, although a wag may say our
subject is a dry one.
[1] Only the other evening we heard two sons of the whip on a
hackney-coach stand thus invoke the showery deity: "God send us a
good heavy shower;" then the fellows looked upwards, chuckled, and
rubbed their hands.
In England, the weather is public news. Zimmerman, however, thinks it is
not a safe topic of discourse. "Your company," says he, "may be _hippish_."
Shenstone, too, says a fine day is the only enjoyment which one man does
not envy another. All this is whimsical enough; but doubtless we are more
operated on by _the weather_ than by any thing else. Perhaps this is
because we are islanders; for talk to an "intellectual" man about the
climate, and out comes something about our "insular situation, aqueous
vapours, condensation," &c. Then take up a newspaper on any day of a wet
summer, and you see a long string of paragraphs, with erudite authorities,
about "the weather," average annual depth of rain, &c.; and a score of
lies about tremendous rains, whose only authority, like that of most
miracles, is in their antiquity or repetition. In short, _water_ is one of
the most popular subjects in this age of inquiry. What were the first
treatises of the _Useful Knowledge_ Society? _Hydrostatics_ and
_Hydraulics_. What is the attraction at Sadler's Wells, Bath, and
Cheltenham, but water? the Brighton people, too, not content with the sea,
have even found it necessary to superadd to their fashionable follies,
artificial mineral waters, with whose fount the grossest duchess may in a
few days recover from the repletion of a whole season; and the minister,
after the jading of a session, soon resume his wonted complacency and good
humour.[2] Our aquatic taste is even carried into all our public
amusements; would the festivities in celebration of the late peace have
been complete without the sham fight on the Serpentine? To insure the run
of a melo-drama, the New River is called in to flow over deal boards, and
form a cataract; and the Vauxhall proprietors, with the aid of a
_hydropyric_ exhibition, contrive to represent a naval battle. This
introduction during the past season was, however, as perfectly
_gratuitous_ as that of the _rain_ was uncalled for. Had they contented
themselves with the latter, the scene would have been more true to nature.
[2] Even the greatest hero of the age, who has won all his glory _by
land_, has lately been drinking the Cheltenham _waters_. The proprietor
of the well at which he drank, jocosely observed that his was "the best
_well-in-town_."
We carry this taste into our money-getting speculations, those freaks of
the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel
is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship
canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the _penchant_ for working
mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to
royalty, since our good King builds a fishing-temple, and dines on the
Virginia Water; and the Duke of Clarence, as Lord High Admiral, gives a
_dejeuné à la fourchette_ between Waterloo and Westminster bridges.
Whoever takes the trouble to read a paper in a late _Edinburgh Review_ on
the _Nervous System_, will doubtless find that much of our predilection
for hanging and drowning is to be attributed to this "insular situation."
Every man and woman of us is indeed a self _pluviometer_, or rain-gauge;
or, in plain terms, our nerves are like so many musical strings, affected
by every change of the atmosphere, which, if screwed up too tight, are apt
to snap off, and become useless; or, if you please, we are like so many
barometers, and our animal spirits like their quicksilver; so "servile"
are we to all the "skyey influences." Take, for example, the same man at
three different periods of the year: on a fine morning in January, his
nerves are braced to their best pitch, and, in his own words, he is fit
for any thing; see him panting for cooling streams in a burning July day,
when though an Englishman, he is "too hot to eat;" see him on a wet, muggy
ninth of November, when the finery of the city coach and the new liveries
appear tarnished, and common councilmen tramp through the mud and rain in
their robes of little authority--even with the glorious prospect of the
Guildhall tables, the glitter of gas and civic beauty, and the six pounds
of turtle, and iron knives and forks before him--still he is a miserable
creature, he drinks to desperation, and is carried home at least three
hours sooner than he would be on a fine frosty night. Then, instead of
fifteen pounds to the square inch, atmospheric pressure is increased to
five-and-forty, not calculating the _simoom_ of the following morning,
when he is as dry as the desert of Sahara, and eyes the pumps and
soda-water fountains with as much _gout_ as the Israelites did the water
from Mount Horeb.
Man, however, is the most helpless of all creatures in water, and with the
exception of a few proscribed pickpockets and swindlers, he is almost as
helpless on land. This infirmity, or difficulty of keeping above water,
accounts for the crammed state of our prisons, fond as we are of the
element. On the great rivers of China, where thousands of people find it
more convenient to live in covered boats upon the water, than in houses on
shore, the younger and male children have a _hollow ball_ of some light
material attached constantly to their necks, so that in their frequent
falls overboard, they are not in danger. Had we not read this in a grave,
philosophical work, we should have thought it a joke upon poor humanity,
or at best a piece of poetical justice, and that the hollow ball, &c.
represented the head--fools being oftener inheritors of good fortune than
their wiser companions. As the great secret in swimming is to keep the
chest as full of air as possible, perhaps the great art of living is to
keep the head a _vacuum_, a state "adapted to the meanest capacity." But
had kind Nature supplied us with an air-bladder at the neck, the heaviest
of us might have floated to eternity, Leander's swimming across the
Hellespont no wonder at all, and the drags of the Humane Society be
converted into halters for the suspension and recovery of old offenders
and small debts.
_A wet day in London_ is what every gentleman who does not read, or does
not recollect, Shakspeare, calls _a bore_,[3] and every lady decides to be
a _nuisance_. Abroad, everything is discomfiture; at home all is fidget
and uneasiness. What is called a smart shower, sweeps off a whole stand of
hackney-coaches in a few seconds, and leaves a few leathern conveniences
called cabriolets, so that your only alternative is that of being soaked
to the skin, or pitched out, taken up, bled, and carried home in "a state
of insensibility." The Spanish proverb, "it never rains but it pours" soon
comes to pass, and every street is momentarily washed as clean as the most
diligent housemaid could desire. Every little shelter is crowded with
solitary, houseless-looking people, who seem employed in taking
descriptions of each other for the _Hue and Cry_, or police gazette. On
the pavement may probably be seen some wight who with more than political
obstinacy, resolves to "weather the storm," with slouched hat, which acts
upon the principle of capillary attraction, drenched coat, and boots in
which the feet work like pistons in tannin: now
The reeling clouds,
Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet,
Which master to obey.
Company, in such cases, usually increases the misery. Your wife, with a
new dress, soon loses her temper and its beauty; the children splash you
and their little frilled continuations; and ill-humour is the order of the
day; for on such occasions you cannot slip into a tavern, and follow Dean
Swift's example:
On rainy days alone I dine,
Upon a chick, and pint of wine:
On rainy days I dine alone,
And pick my chicken to the bone.
Go you to the theatre in what is called a wet season, and perhaps after
sitting through a dull five-act tragedy and two farces, your first
solicitude is about the weather, and as if to increase the vexation, you
cannot see the sky for a heavy portico or blind; then the ominous cry of
"carriage, your honour"--"what terrible event does this portend"--and you
have to pick your way, with your wife like Cinderella after the ball,
through an avenue of link-boys and cadmen,[4] and hear your name and
address bawled out to all the thieves that happen to be present. Or,
perchance, the coachman, whose inside porosity is well indicated by his
bundle of coats, as Dr. Kitchiner says, is labouring under "the
unwholesome effervescence of the hot and rebellious liquors which have
been taken to revive the flagging spirits," and like a sponge, absorbs
liquids, owing to the pressure of the surrounding air.
[3] This expression is not the exclusive property of Oxford,
Cambridge, or the Horse Guards. See Shakspeare's Henry VIII, where
the Duke of Buckingham says of Wolsey, "He _bores_ me with some
trick;" like another great man, the Cardinal must have been a great
bore.
[4] Towards the close of the last opera season we heard a ludicrous
mistake. One of these fellows bawled out "the Duke of Grafton's
carriage;" "No," replied the gentleman, smiling, and correcting the
officious cadman, who had caught at the noble euphony, "Mr.
Crafter's."
That we are attached to wet weather, a single comparison with our
neighbours will abundantly prove. A Frenchman seldom stirs abroad without
his _parapluie_; notwithstanding he is, compared with an Englishman, an
_al fresco_ animal, eating, drinking, dancing, reading, and seeing
plays--all out of doors. A shower is more effectual in clearing the streets
of Paris than those of London. People flock into _cafés_, the arcades of
the Palais Royal, and splendid covered passages; and as soon as the rain
ceases, scores of planks are thrown across the gutters in the _centre_ of
the streets, which species of _pontooning_ is rewarded by the sous and
centimes of the passengers. In Switzerland too, where the annual fall of
rain is 40 inches, the streets are always washed clean, an effect which is
admirably represented in the view of Unterseen, now exhibiting at the
_Diorama_. But in Peru, the Andes intercept the clouds, and the constant
heat over sandy deserts prevents clouds from forming, so that there is no
rain. Here it never shines but it burns.
_Wet-weather in the country_ is, however, a still greater infliction upon
the sensitive nerves. There is no club-house, coffee-room, billiard-room,
or theatre, to slip into; and if caught in a shower you must content
yourself with the arcades of Nature, beneath which you enjoy the
unwished-for luxury of a shower bath. Poor Nature is drenched and drowned;
perhaps never better described than by that inveterate bard of Cockaigne,
Captain Morris:
Oh! it settles the stomach when nothing is seen
But an ass on a common, or goose on a green.
We were once overtaken by such weather in a pedestrian tour through the
Isle of Wight, when just then about to leave Niton for a geological
excursion to the Needles. Reader, if you remember, the Sandrock Hotel is
one of the most rural establishments in the island. Think of our being
shut up there for six hours, with a thin duodecimo guide of less than 100
pages, which some mischievous fellow had made incomplete. How often did we
read and re-read every line, and trace every road in the little map. At
length we set off on our return to Newport. The rain partially ceased, and
we were attracted out of the road to Luttrell's Tower, whence we were
compelled to seek shelter in a miserable public-house in a village about
three miles distant. No spare bed, a wretched smoky fire; and hard beer,
and poor cheese, called Isle of Wight rock, were all the accommodation our
host could provide. His parlour was just painted; but half-a-dozen
sectarian books and an ill-toned flute amused us for an hour; then we
again started, in harder rain than ever, for Newport. Compelled to halt
twice, we saw some deplorable scenes of cottage misery, almost enough to
put us out of conceit of rusticity, till after crossing a bleak, dreary
heath, we espied the distant light of Newport. Never had we beheld gas
light with such ecstasy, not even on the first lighting of St. James's
Park. It was the eve of the Cowes' regatta, and the town was full; but our
luggage was there, and we were secure. A delicious supper at the Bugle,
and liberal outpourings of Newport ale, at length put us in good humour
with our misfortunes; but on the following morning we hastened on to Ryde,
and thus passed by steam to Portsmouth; having resolved to defer our
geological expedition to that day twelve months. Perhaps we may again
touch on this little journey. We have done for the present, lest our
number should interrupt the enjoyment of any of the thousand pedestrians
who are at this moment tracking
The slow ascending hill, the lofty wood
That mantles o'er its brow.
or coasting the castled shores and romantic cliffs of Vectis, or the Isle
of Wight.