Judges’ Wigs
On a countryside ramble in West Sussex, William Cobbett finds the weather turning against him.
1823
King George IV 1820-1830
On a countryside ramble in West Sussex, William Cobbett finds the weather turning against him.
1823
King George IV 1820-1830
William Cobbett’s Rural Rides (1830) was a best-seller in its day, a travelogue of his wanderings through England’s green and pleasant land, and a diary of his meetings with farmers and their families. August 2nd, 1823, found William atop Duncton Hill as he made his way across the South Downs from Petworth to Singleton in West Sussex, looking up at an ominous sky.
From this hill I ought to have had a most extensive view. I ought to have seen the Isle of Wight and the sea before me; and to have looked back to Chalk Hill at Reigate, at the foot of which I had left some bonnet-grass bleaching.* But, alas! Saint Swithin had begun his works for the day,* before I got to the top of the hill. Soon after the two turnip-hoers had assured me that there would be no rain, I saw, beginning to poke up over the South Downs (then right before me) several parcels of those white, curled clouds, that we call Judges’ Wigs.
And they are just like Judges’ wigs. Not the parson-like things which the Judges wear when they have to listen to the dull wrangling and duller jests of the lawyers; but, those big wigs which hang down about their shoulders, when they are about to tell you a little of their intentions, and when their very looks say, “Stand clear!” These clouds from the South West hold precisely the same language to the great-coatless traveller. Rain is sure to follow them. The sun was shining very beautifully when I first saw these Judges’ wigs rising over the hills. At the sight of them he soon began to hide his face! and, before I got to the top of the hill of Donton,* the white clouds had become black, had spread themselves all around, and a pretty decent and sturdy rain began to fall.
* A few months earlier, inspired by the example of an American lady, Cobbett had published some instructions on making straw bonnets in the hope that countrywomen and their daughters might make a little extra money from the craft. Four days after this ramble to Singleton, he met a farmer’s family at Durley in Hampshire where the two daughters of the house had increased the family income from seven shillings a week to nineteen through making bonnets, and Cobbett was over the moon about it.
* A reference to the old fragment of weather-lore, that runs:
St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St Swithun’s day if thou be fair,
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair [no more].
St Swithun’s (or Swithin’s) Day falls on July 15th, which was a little over two weeks before Cobbett took his rural ride from Petworth. On July 30th, he noted that it had started raining on June 26th, and had rained for thirty-five days since then; perhaps, he said, the kindly saint would backdate his forty days of rain to June 26th, and give him a dry spell as early as August 5th. His ramble from Petworth to Singleton on August 2nd showed that St Swithin was determined to get his forty days however you counted them.
* This is the village of Duncton, which lies on Cobbett’s route. Duncton Hill viewing point is 398 feet above sea-level and offers magnificent views of the countryside around.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.