Talking about the weather

Press, 12 May 1984, Page 20

Talking about the weather

Four Seasons: An Anthology. Chosen by Edward Phelps and Geoffrey Summerfield. Oxford, 1983. 208 pp. $43.75.

(Reviewed by

Mhairi Erber)

Conversation about the weather oils the wheels of social intercourse — something of which one was not altogether appreciative when one was younger and cleverer! This book is a celebration of the weather as a topic of conversation and to some extent, therefore, a celebration of the English spirit. As the editors of “Four Seasons,” Phelps and Summerfield, remark in their thoughtful introduction: “... we talk of the season’s weather because it is an accepted and acceptable way of allowing us to talk, however obliquely about ourselves.” They also state, less controversially perhaps, that: “... The literature of the English weather is remarkably various, rich and eloquent.” This anthology is a sampling of that literature. As one would hope, there are extracts from Thomson, Clare,

Wordsworth, Keats, Hopkins, and Edward Thomas, as well as Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Also represented, less predictably, are Gissing, Van Gogh, Colette, A. A. Milne, and Michael Frayn. Furthermore, the book is interspersed with folk wisdom of the, “they talk of Christmas so long that it comes,” variety. Add to this recipes from Alison Uttley for “Summer Pudding,” and from the Readers Digest “Food From Your Garden” for crystallising primroses, and one has a book of great charm. The taste which informs it may be conservative but there is a nice balance between the familiar and unfamiliar and the book’s attractions are enhanced by the wood-cuts by Gibbings, Nash, Raverat, Ravilious and Tunnicliffe. “Four Seasons” would be a delightful present to give or receive, provided that the recipient is Anglican in taste, unsophisticated in inclination, and takes pleasure in “earth’s diurnal course.”