By Philip Eden
A climatological literalist would tell us that the Christmas festivities at Dingley Dell should have taken place against a backdrop of grey skies, scuds of drizzle, a soft sou'wester, and muddy Kentish lanes. For Dickens set "Pickwick Papers" in 1827, and records show that in London and the Home Counties this was an exceptionally mild but gloomy Christmas.
Mild rainy weather is more typical of an average British winter than hard frosts and widespread snow as we have seen so often in recent years. Yet when winter weather features in literature it is ice and snow and perhaps fog which we are more likely to read about. This is hardly surprising: the drab, inconsequential nature of so many winter days in this country would fail to create much of an atmosphere.
Dickens did not cheat. It has been observed that he fiddled about with the chronology of "Pickwick Papers"; his original setting for Christmas at Dingley Dell was 1830, and - you've guessed it - Christmas 1830 coincided with a notable wintry spell. Reliable meteorological records for the period are scarce, but Luke Howard, the best-known meteorologist of the day, noted early-morning temperatures of -11°C on Christmas Eve and -8°C on Christmas Day at Stratford, then on the eastern fringe of London. His maxima were below zero throughout the Christmas period, and he reported snow falling on the 24th.
One of the most famous literary winters is found in R.D. Blackmore's "Lorna Doone" which illustrates just how severe snowstorms on Exmoor can be.
It is not widely known that Blackmore, who lived from 1825 to 1900, was a keen amateur meteorologist. He sent daily rainfall records to the British Rainfall Organisation from his home in Teddington from 1866 until his death, and he was a regular contributor to the meteorological journals of the time. He wrote a lengthy account of the severe cold spell in January 1867; a brief extract gives a flavour of the weather:
"January 4th ... sky grows brighter and of a lovely violet colour; thermometer stationary all the forenoon at 12 degrees [fahrenheit]; trees and bushes clad with the deepest rime I ever saw, as if all the earth were 'twelve-caked'; a scene of wonderful beauty. The frost was so intense that the feet of my dogs became lumps of ice which I was obliged from time to time to cut out with a pruning-knife. The maximum of the day was 18 in the shade."
© Philip Eden