Even poets when they are on their travels feel the depressing influence
of bad weather. Those lines of the Laureate—
'But when we crossed the Lombard plain,
Remember what a plague of rain—
Of rain at Reggio, at Parma,
At Lodi rain, Piacenza rain,'
are not among his best, but they evidently come from his very heart.
When he used prose upon that journey his language was probably
stronger. It is no wonder, then, that ordinary folks who have only a
limited time in which to enjoy themselves, free from the fetters of
toil, resent wet days. They are worst of all when we are touring on the
Continent, where it is a popular fallacy to suppose the skies are
always smiling, but at home they are bad enough. In Scotland, nobody
but a Scotchman believes in fine weather, and consequently there is no
disappointment; in England the Lake District is, perhaps, the most
unfortunate spot for folks to be caught in by rain, because if there is
no landscape there is nothing. _Spectare veniunt_, and when there are
only the ribs and lining of their umbrellas to look at, their lot is
hard indeed.
Wastwater is a charming place in sunshine—almost the only locality in
England where things are still primitive and pastoral; but in rain! I
hate exhibitions, but rather than Wastdale in wet weather, give me a
panorama. Serious people may talk of 'the Devil's books,' but even a
pack of cards, with somebody to play with you, is better under such
circumstances than no book.
There is no limit to what human beings may be driven to by stress of
weather, and especially by that 'clearing shower,' by which the
dwellers in Lakeland are wont euphemistically to describe its
continuous downpours. The Persians have another name for it—'the
grandmother of all buckets.' I was once in Wastdale with a dean of the
Church of England, respectable, sedate, and a D.D. It had poured for
days without ceasing; the roads were under water, the passes were
impassable, the mountains invisible; there was nothing to be seen but
waterfalls, and those in the wrong place; there was no literature; the
dean's guide-books were exhausted, and his Bible, it is but charitable
and reasonable to suppose, he knew by heart. As for me, I had found
three tourists who could play at whist, and was comparatively
independent of the elements; but that poor ecclesiastic! For the first
few days he occupied himself in remonstrating against our playing cards
by daylight; but on the fourth morning, when we sat down to them
immediately after breakfast, he began to take an enforced interest in
our proceedings. Like a dove above the dovecot, he circled for an hour
or two about the table—a deal one, such as thimble-riggers use,
borrowed, under protest, from his own humble bedroom—and then, with a
murmurous coo about the weather showing no signs of clearing up, he
took a hand. Constant dropping—and it was much worse than dropping—will
wear away a stone, and it is my belief if it had gone on much longer
his reverence would have played on Sunday.
The spectacle that the roads of the district present at such a time is
most melancholy. Everyone is in a closed car—a cross between a bathing
machine and that convenient vehicle which carries both corpse and
mourners; all the windows seem made of bottle glass, a phenomenon
produced by the flattening of the noses of imprisoned tourists; and
nothing shines except an occasional traveller in oilskin. In such
seasons, indeed, oilskin (lined with patience) is your only wear.
Ordinary waterproofs in such a climate become mere blotting paper, and
with the best of them, without leggings and headgear to match, the poor
Londoner might, I do not say just as well be in London (for that is his
aspiration all day long), but just as well go to bed at once, and stop
there. 'But why does he not go home?' it may be asked: a question to
which there are several answers. In the first place (for one must take
the average in such cases) because he is a fool. Secondly, like the
rest of the well-to-do world, he has suffered the summer, wherein
warmth and sunshine are really to be had, to slip by, and has only the
fag end of it in which to take holiday. It is now or never—or at all
events now or next year—with him. All his friends, too, are out of
town, flattening _their_ noses against window panes; his club is under
repair, his house in brown holland, his servants on board wages. Like
the young gentleman in Locksley Hall, he is so absolutely at the end of
his resources, that an 'angry fancy' is all that is left to him. Of
course, under its influence he sits down and writes to the _Times_;
but, if the humblest of its correspondents may venture to say so
without offence, even that does not help him much. That suicides
increase in wet autumns is notorious; but that murders should in these
sequestered vales maintain the even tenor of their way is a feather in
the cap of human nature. In lodgings, where the pent-up tourist has no
one but his wife and family to speak to, where Dick and Tom _will_ romp
in his only sitting-room, and Eliza Jane practises all day on the crazy
piano, this forbearance is especially creditable.
Even in hotels, however, there is great temptation. On the
north-eastern coast, in particular, when the weather has, as the phrase
goes, 'broken up,' and the sky and sea have both become one durable
drab, the best of women grow irritable, the men morose. At the _table
d'hôte_, which even the most exclusive are driven to frequent for
company, as sheep huddle together in storm, Dislike ripens to Hate with
frightful rapidity. Our neighbour, who always—for it seems always—gets
the last of the mushrooms at breakfast, or finishes the oyster sauce at
dinner before our very eyes, we are very far, indeed, from loving as
ourselves. Our _vis-à-vis_, the man on his honeymoon, is even still
more offensive. We resent his happiness, which is apparently
uninfluenced by the state of the weather, and our wife wonders what he
could have seen in that chit of a girl to attract his attention. To
ourselves she seems a great deal too good for him, and in our rare
intervals of human feeling we regard her with the tenderest
commiseration. The importance attached to meals, and the time we take
over them, have no parallel save among the Esquimaux. The least
incident that happens in the hotel is of more moment to us than the
overthrow of Empires. The whispered news that a fellow guest has been
taken seriously ill, and that a medical consultation has been held upon
the case, is a matter to be deplored, of course, but one which is not
without its consolations. 'Who is it? What is it? Nothing catching I do
hope?' (this last uttered with genuine anxiety) are questions that are
heard on every side. The general impression is that some lovely young
lady of fashion on the drawing-room floor has been seized with pains in
her limbs—and no wonder—from exposure to the elements. Her mother comes
down every morning and selects dainties for the sick-room from the
public breakfast table; those who are near enough to do so inquire in
dulcet tones, 'How is your invalid this morning?' The reply is,
'Better, much better,' which somehow falls short of expectation. Even
the most giddy and frivolous of girls has no excuse for frightening
people for nothing.
At luncheon one day a very fat, strong boy makes his appearance, and is
supplied with soup. All his neighbours who have no soup are wild with
envy, though they are well acquainted with that soup at dinner, and
know that it is bad. 'What is the meaning of it? Why this favouritism?'
we inquire of the waiter furiously. 'Well, you see, sir, he is better
now; but that is the invalid.' The delicate, attractive creature we
have pictured to ourselves with pains in her limbs turns out, after
all, to be a hulking schoolboy, probably bilious from over-eating. The
public indignation is excessive, while the subject of it, quite
unconscious of the fact, has another plate of soup.
The wild weather out of doors is not, of course, confined to the land,
and the sea would be a fine sight if it was not invisible. The waves,
indeed, are so high that the fishing-boats which have remained out all
night are often warned off, or, as it is locally termed, 'burned off,'
from the harbour bar. A tar barrel is lighted for this purpose on the
headland, and it is the only thing which the eternal rain cannot
utterly squelch and extinguish. Occasionally we venture down upon the
pier to see the boats make the harbour, which, not a little to our
disappointment, they never fail to do. There are huge buttresses of
stone against the pier-head, behind which the new comer imagines he may
crouch in perfect safety, till the third wave comes in and convinces
him to the contrary. No one ever dreams of 'burning' _him_ off—giving
him one word of warning of that unpleasant contingency; for to behold a
fellow creature more drenched and dripping than ourselves is very
soothing. As to the dangers of maritime life, we are all agreed that
they are greatly overrated; and some sceptics even go so far as to
suggest that the skeleton ship, half embedded in the sands, which so
impresses visitors in fine weather, is not a genuine wreck at all, but
has been placed there by the Town Corporation to delude the public.
Now and then we splash down to the quay to see a few million of
herrings sold at four shillings a hundred, which will presently induce
philanthropic fishmongers in London to advertise 'a glut this morning,'
and to retail them at threepence apiece. At rare intervals we explore
the dripping town. It is amazing what a fascination the small
picture-shops, to which at home we should never give a glance, afford
us; even the frontispieces to popular music have unwonted attractions;
while the pottery-shops, full of ware made from clay 'peculiar to the
locality,' are only too seductive to our wives, who purchase largely
what they believe to be great bargains, till they find on their return
home the identical articles in Oxford Street, at half the price. In
London we never visit the British Museum itself, unless to escort some
country cousin, but at Barecliff-on-Sea, in wet weather, the miserable
little local Institute, with its specimens of strata, its calf with two
heads in spirits, and its petrified toad, is an irresistible
temptation. The great event of the day, however, is the wading down to
the railway-station (which is in a quagmire) to meet the express train
which brings more victims, 'unconscious of their doom,' to Barecliff,
and who evidently flatter themselves that the pouring rain is an
exceptional phenomenon; it also brings the London newspapers, for which
we fight and struggle (the demand being greatly in excess of the
supply) and think ourselves fortunate if we secure a supplement. It is
true there is a _Times_ in the smoking-room of the hotel, but it is
always engaged five deep, is the cause of terrible quarrels, and every
afternoon we expect to see it imbrued in gore.
In the evening, when one does not mind the wet so much—'its tooth is
not so keen because it is not seen'—there are dissipations at 'the
Rooms by the Sea.' Amateur charitable concerts are given there, in
which it is whispered that this and that lady at the _table d'hôte_
will take part, who become public characters and objects of immense
interest in consequence. Thither, too, come 'the inimitable Jones,'
from the Edgware Road Music Hall, with his 'unrivalled _répertoire_ of
comic songs;' the Spring Board Family, who have been 'pronounced by the
general consensus of the medical faculty in London to be unique,' as
having neither joints nor backbone; and Herr von Deft, 'who will repeat
the same astounding performances which have electrified the reigning
families of Europe.' The serious people (for whom 'the glee-singers of
Mesopotamia' are also suspected of dropping a line) are angled for by
white-cravatted lecturers, who enhance their statistics of conversion
by the exhibition of poisoned arrows, and of clubs, on which, with the
microscope, may be detected the hairs of missionary martyrs. In fine
weather, of course, these attractions would be advertised in vain; but
the fact is, our whole community has been reduced by the cruelty of the
elements to a sort of second childhood; the rain which permeates
everything is softening our brain.
This is only too evident from the conversation in the hotel porch where
the men meet every morning to discuss the topic of the day—the weather.
A sullen gloom pervades them—the first symptom of mental aberration.
Those, on the other hand, who express their opinion that it 'really
seems to be clearing a little' are in more advanced stages. We who are
less afflicted shake our heads, and murmur painfully, but also with a
considerable touch of contempt, 'Poor fellows!'
The piano in the ladies' drawing-room is always going, but it excites
no soothing influence; there is an impression in the hotel that the
performers are foreigners, and should be discouraged. But there is one
instrument hanging in the hall on which everyone plays, native or
alien, and every note is discord. It is the barometer. People talk of
the delicacy of scientific instruments; if they are right, the shocks
which that barometer survives proves it to be an exception. Batter it
as we may, and do, the faithful needle, with a determination worthy of
a better cause, maintains its position at 'Much Rain.' The manager is
appealed to vehemently, coarsely; he shrugs his shoulders, protests
with humility that he cannot help the weather, or affirms it is
unprecedented—which we do not believe. Other managers—in the Engadine,
for example—the papers say, are providing excellent weather; what does
he mean by it?
At last one morning, wetter than ever, some noble spirit, the Tell of
our liberties, exclaims, 'Who would be free, himself must strike the
blow.' His actual words (if one was not writing history) are, 'Hang me
if I stand this any longer,' and they strike the keynote of everybody's
thought. He goes away by the next train, and his departure is followed
by the same effects as the tapping of a reservoir. The hotel company—I
mean the inmates; the company goes into bankruptcy—stream off at once
to their own homes. That journey through the pouring rain is the
happiest day of our wet holiday. How beautiful looms soaking, soppy,
smoky London! In that excellent town who cares for rain?
'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes spout.'
Pooh! pooh! Call a cab—call two!