“I know what you mean; but I want both; for contrast perhaps; no, that’s silly; the grey days for their own sake, the misty atmosphere. Fog. I think a real London fog is perfection; everything and the shapes and outlines of things looming up only as you pass them. Wonderful.”
“Well, there you leave us behind. I can’t see anything either beautiful or in the least wonderful in your town fogs.”
“Quite so. A taste for town fog is an artificial taste. Town fog’s not a natural phenomenon. It’s just, town dirt.”
“I don’t care how it begins. It’s perfect. It makes the whole day an adventure even if you’re indoors. It’s perfect to have the light on and nothing to be seen outside but a copper glare. Outside is a glorious adventure in a new unknown world. … In a way all our weathers are that. In a way the weather’s enough, in itself, without anything else.”
“That seems to me a remarkable, a very extra-ordinairy point of view. You can’t in any circumstances make it a general defence of your climate. It’s a purely personal notion.”
“It isn’t. Even people who say they don’t like fogs are different; interested in the effect while it is on.”
“Uneasy, no doubt, like animals in a trap.”
“I refer to Miss Henderson’s extra-ordinairy valuation of weather as enough in itself. I consider that is one of the most extra-ordinairy points of view I ever heard stated.”
“No one can deny the quahl-ty of interest to the vagaries of your western European climut; from our point of view it’s all interest and no climut; ye can’t tell from day to day what season ye’ll be in and they all seem—stormy.”