Crying for the Light, Volume 3

For three months an Englishman sits in sackcloth and ashes. The matter-of-fact reviewer will tell me this is not so; and he is right and so am I.

London is not a place to live in in winter; there is, unfortunately, no place in England that is. People talk of the weather. They cannot help themselves. In his old age Dr. Johnson wrote, ‘I am now reduced to think and am at last content to talk of the weather. ' That was a sign that the Doctor at last had fallen low. As Burney writes: ‘There was no information for which Dr. Johnson was less grateful than for that which concerned the weather. ' If any one of his intimate companions told him it was hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or calm; he would stop them by saying: ‘O-oh, O-oh! You are telling me of that of which none but men in a mine or a dungeon can be ignorant. Let us bear with patience or enjoy in quiet elementary changes either for the better or the worse, as they are never secrets. ' Nevertheless, the state of the weather continues in all circles an unfailing theme. Bad weather affects the spirits by depressing them, fine raises them. We are attuned to every action of the outer atmosphere. Our suicides in November are known all the world over. It is scarcely possible to be cheerful on a dull, cold, raw, foggy day. I wonder people who can afford to go away and have no pressing claims at home do not rush off to the Riviera in search of its blue sky, its summer suns, its wealth of flowers, its richer life for the delicate, or the infirm or old.