TO BIAS Smollett is little heard of nowadays. Few of us, for example, are familiar with The Faithful Narrative of Habbakkuk Hilding, or have thrilled to the adventures described in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Yet Smollett was a popular and always controversial novelist in his own time; indeed his writings earned him a period of imprisonment for libel.
Smollett was born in Scotland in 1721, studied at Glasgow University to qualify as a physician, and eked out a somewhat precarious living both as a writer and a surgeon.
In his 30s, however, he began to exhibit the first signs of the consumption that was to result in his early death in 1771. By the 1760s, indeed, he could be described as semi-invalid, and it was for this reason that in 1763 he and his wife betook themselves to live in Nice.
Here it was that Smollett developed the interest that makes him relevant to Weather Eye: he became a keen observer of the weather.
In a letter written 232 years ago today, on April 2nd, 1765, Smollett conveys to his London doctor his impressions of the current local weather: "The east wind sweeping over the Alps and Appennines covered with snow, continues surprisingly sharp and penetrating. Even the people of this country who enjoy good health are afraid of exposing themselves to the air at this season, the intemperature of which may last until the middle of May."
But the Mediterranean climate was not always so discouraging. At other times of year "such is the serenity of the air, that you see nothing above your head for several months together but a charming blue expanse, without a cloud or speck; whatever clouds may be formed by evaporation from the sea, they seldom or never hover over this small territory."
Smollett took daily observations of temperature during the two years he spent in Nice, using thermometers "placed in the shade, in a room without a fire in a southerly exposition". And he also observed the progress of the seasons: "The rainy time is about the autumnal equinox, or rather something later.
The heavy rains generally come with a south-west wind which was the creberque procellis Africus (Africa, prolific in its storms) of the ancients. It is here called the
Lebeche, a corruption of Lybicus; it rolls the Mediterranean before it in huge waves, and it likewise blows before it all the clouds which have formed above the sea, and these being expended in the rain, fair weather ensues. For this reason the Nisards observe that le Lebeche raccomode le temps (the Lebeche repairs the weather)."