WET SUMMERS

Dunstan Times, 2 November 1936, Page 7

WET SUMMERS

SOME ENGLISH TRIALS OUR HARDY ANCESTORS' LIFE “ Wo have no climate here and no seasons. We have only long and short days and north, east, or south-west winds.” Thus in the middle of the last century a typical Englishman described one of those summers which, while we are suffering from them, always seem to bo worse than anything ever known before, says a writer in the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ Diarists and letter writers have generally had something to say about the weather, and by glancing at some of them we can make for ourselves a mournful pleasure in thinking that our ancestors suffered worse things. Here, for instance, is William Hardman, at the end of the summer of 1860: “ Wo have had, take it altogether, this year without exception the very worst season I ever remember. At Liverpool a friend told me that rain had fallen more or less on 24 clays in June, 26 days in July, and 29 days in August.” The ‘ Annual Register ’ bears out fully this description. “ The weather of the spring quarter exhibited . . . the cold, wet, stormy character of this miserable year. June was not only colder than any since 1821, but the cold was aggravated by a rainfall greater than any since 1815 In June the fall was three inches more than the average.”

“ IP EVER THE WATERS SUBSIDE." Before we consider other wet years of the nineteenth century, we may consult Horace Walpole for the second half of the eighteenth century. Here he is writing from Daventry in 1751.: ' “ I am on my way from Ragley, and if ever the waters subside and my ark rests upon dry land again I think of stepping over to Tonghes, but your own journey has filled my post chaise’s head with such terrible ideas of your roads that I think I shall let it have done raining for a month or six weeks, which it has not done for as much time past.” Pour years later he was able to reflect that even wot seasons may have advantages, for there was an invasion scare. “ The season has been the wettest ever known, consequently the roads are not very invadable.” In August, 1763; “ It has rained such deluges that I had some thought of turning my gallery into an ark, and began to pack up a pair of bantams, a pair of cats, in short, a pair of every living creature about my house; but it is fine at last, and the workmen quit my gallery to-day without hoisting a sail in it.” Nineteen years later ho had perhaps forgotten (most of us do) the deluges of the past, for he notes: ‘‘The most deplorably wet summer that ever I remember. . . ; Nebuchadnezzar, who used to eat his dominions, would here be the most opulent prince on earth. . . .”

IN A DRIER AREA. Parson Woodforde lived in the drier cast, but there were times when he too suffered from a wet summer. In August, 1797, he was noting: “ Thunderstorms almost every day for some time last past. In many places it hath been very dreadful indeed. Many lives lost and much damage done. Almost every day for the last three weeks we have had tempests.” What these tempests might mean is indicated by an entry at the end of May, 1782- “ A most terrible tempest of thunder, lightning, and hail . . . broke many of my windows. . . . The corn in Weston field almost all destroyed by the hail, which were as big as bullets and were twelve inches deep in Weston field.” With this we may compare a storm o; August, 1664, described by Fepys:— “ Wakuvwd about 2 o’clock this morning with a noise of thunder, which lasted for an hour, witli such continued lightenings, not flashes, but flames, that all the sky and ayre was light, and that for a great while; not a minute’s space between new flames all the time, such a thing as I never did see, nor could have believed had even been in Nature . . ■ and that accompanied with such a storm of rain as I never heard in my life.”

EVELYN’S EVIDENCE

He adds that he fully expected to find his house Hooded, and was greatly relieved that it was not so. This reminds us of a respect in which a wet summer was even more unpleasant for our forefathers than for us. Houses were generally less substantially built and the roads, deeply rutted, in winter became rivers. Pepys recalls Evelyn, and if the year 1664 “ hath had the most of thunder and lightning of any in man’s memory,” Evelyn has also some dismal reports. The year 1703, for instance, which was to culminate in the great November gale, “ such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed,” seems to have ,been of the worst English variety. “ Great and continual rain and now near midsummer cold and wet.” And here is an entry on July 7, 1696, damply familiar to us who have lived through this summer: “ A northern wind altering the weather with a constant and impetuous rain of three days and nights changed it into perfect winter.” And in June, 1668, Evelyn makes one of those entries which have been made by every Englishman who ever kept a diary: “Such storms, rain, and foul weather seldom known at this time of year.” Coming on into the nineteenth century, here is Cobbett in the year, by the way, in which Mr Charles Macintosh patented that invention for which we have all some reason to be grateful, 1823; “ All depends on the weather, which appears to be clearing up in spite of St. Swithin. This saint’s birthday is the 15th of July, and it is said that if rain fall on his birthday it will fall on forty days successively. But 1 believe that you reckon retrospectively as well as prospectively, and if this be the" case we may this time escape the extreme unction, for it began to rain on the 26th of June, so that it rained 19 days before the 15th of July, and as it has rained 16 days since, it has rained on the whole 35 days . . . but if the saint will give us no credit for the 19 days and will insist upon his 40 daily drenchings after the 15th of July ... let us hope that he is prepared with a miracle for feeding us.” RIDING IN THE RAIN. It was in this wot summer that Cobbett worked out. apparently to his own satisfatcion, his remarkable cure for whooping cough, which consisted in riding through the rain every day, and ho remarked eventually that he could congratulate himself “on (he success of the remedy, for really, though I had a spell or two of coughing on Saturday morning ... I have not had . . any spell at all since I got wet.” He had tried everything “ except riding, wet to the skin, two or throe hours amongst the clouds on the South Downs.” Apparently when he got 100 wet he stopped at an inn and dried all his clothes before different fires.

This brings us to the question of rain protection before the days when Macintosh’s invention was widely used. Though I,he umbrella was known at a remote period, it does not seem to have been used at all generally. Drayton mentions it at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but as late as 1752 Colonel Wolfe, writing from Paris, mentioned the carrying of an umbrella as a defence against rain or sun and wondered that they were not introduced into England. Railway's “ small parapluic to defend his face and wig ” is

mentioned as the first in general use, and wo know that umbrellas for young men were laughed at. EFFECT ON POLITICS. Wet summers have had their effect on politics, for wet summers mean distress in agriculture and consequent discontent, though with a brighter side, since, as with the potato famine in 1845, bad seasons may hasten reforms. It might be argued that wet summers have been disastrous to the Conservative Party more often than not. It was the terrible season of the 1820’s, with their legacies of inferior crops, mildew in wheat, mould in hops, blight in other crops, and disease in cattle, which put an end to the Tory ascendancy; 1845 was another bad year. In August, 1852, Macaulay wrote: “The deluge which Lord Maidstone told us was to come after Lord Derby lias come already, so that we are cursed with Derby and the deluge.” As soon as Disraeli came in in 1874 a scries of dreadful seasons, especially in 1875 and 1879, followed; 1879 was one of the worst summers of the century, and it was estimated that many millions of pounds were lost in the failure of crops. Farmers were saying that there had been no fine weather since the Tories came in. Again in 1903 there was a terrible wet summer, which saw the decline and fall of the long Tory supremacy. Who knows what this summer may presage?