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Ballard Dad
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I'm reading a book that references "brown fog". I'm trying to figure out if this is purely symbolic or if there is an actual brown fog in London. A quick google search revealed ideas about the poolution from the industrial revolution. Any other theories?
Thanks.
twintown
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We lived there from 2006 to 2008 and it may be referring to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Some say he's not the brightest bulb. Can you share a sentence how it was used?
London used to be called, and is sometimes still referred to, as the Big Smoke. Coal used to be the primary heat source and produced a lot of air pollution.
jubbjubb
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the reference is a bit older than that. at least 1922.
sammy
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After a semester living in London I can say I definitely think you're onto something with the pollution theory. I didn't hear that specific term, but it fits with some of the industrial history we learned about. When does the book take place?
Jules
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London used to be called "The Smoke" for a reason. Our friend Roger grew up there and as a kid remembers having to feel his way sometimes by following the curb. This is because people burned coal; that, combined with the damp, foggy weather, created it's own distinct miasma of exactly that, brown fog. Keep in mind that central heating is a recent invention, and London homes were heated mainly by fireplaces. Now most homes have electric heating or gas, all my friends in London's cute little Victorian fireplaces have 3-bar electric heaters in them.
Ballard Dad
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The book I'm reading is the Strange Case of Dr. Jekll and Mr. Hyde. Written in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a really great book. Good story about the dualistic nature of us humans. I'm trying to piece the brown fog into the puzzle.
JubbJubb - I thought about the ts eliot reference but J&H was written before then.
I'm leaning toward the pollution side.
Any other thoughts?
twintown
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Definitely pollution related.
Found this ..."In 1886 a week of fog killed between 500 and 700 people which equalled the number of fatalities in the worst cholera years. So perhaps the then currently held 'miasmic' theory of disease that good and bad health was the result of the properties of the air inhaled was to a certain extent understandable.:
@ http://www.glias.org.uk/news/218news.html (searched for 1886.)
Ballard Dad
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Wow! 500-700 people in a week? I thought LA was bad...
Thanks for the lead!
Jeni
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I'm from London and I've never heard of the term!!!! But I would lean towards pollution from coal burning back then.
Laura
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Here is another brown fog reference from Charles Dickens:
Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already-- it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
I definitely think this is a reference to pollution in Victorian London. A Christmas Carol was published in 1843.
Ballard Dad
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Interesting Laura. Thanks for the quote. Here's the Jekyll and Hyde quote:
It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law's officers, which may at times assail the most honest.
Nora Bell
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Still reads like you're there. Stevenson does scene placement really really well, and Jekyll and Hyde is one of my favorites. Enjoy the book, BalalrdDad! Read it twice. :-)
Ballard Dad
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I actually finished it. It was really great. Makes me want to read something else by Stevenson.
I'm now reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. WOW.
MidWest
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...Oh, "The Road"... That book is really, really intense. Not for the faint of heart, but an excellent story. Hard to put down.
Fauxnothing
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My cat is named Cormac McCarthy for good reason. That's what he does -- looks down the road for rats to kill. I LOVED that book.
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