& shades of green in-between
Eighteenth century writer and critic Samuel Johnson was highly reproachful of any person ‘endowed with reason’ who allowed their state of ‘tranquility and benevolence’ to be influenced by the weather. Johnson took a hard stance against atmospheric sensitivities, declaring:
To look up to the sky for the nutriment of our bodies, is the condition of nature; to call upon the sun for peace and gaiety, or deprecate the clouds lest sorrow should overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and the idolatry of folly.1
Yet, modern studies suggest the workings of the human mind are rarely insulated from the effects of daily weather conditions. Atmospheric changes not only exert overt effects on our mood and sense of well being, but covertly influence our decision making and social interactions. Research investigating university admissions decisions, for example, revealed that assessment of applicants’ achievements was mediated by cloud cover and sunshine levels. On cloudier days, the most influential factor was the applicants’ academic attributes. On sunnier days, extracurricular achievements were weighted more heavily.2
Social interactions are also influenced by levels of sunshine. It has been found that people approached by an interviewer are more likely to agree to participate in a survey when the weather is sunny than when cloudy.3 A study in France tested the effects of sunshine on drivers’ willingness to offer roadside hitchhikers a lift. Both male and female drivers were more likely to stop and offer a lift on sunny days than on those when skies were overcast (regardless of whether hitchhikers were male or female). The suggestion is that sunshine may elevate mood, thereby promoting helpful behaviour.4
Not everyone is affected by the weather equally. Writing to a friend, Daphne du Maurier once declared that she was only truly happy ‘in the middle of Dartmoor in a hail storm within an hour of sundown of a late November afternoon’.5 According to Dutch and German researchers, individual differences in responses to the weather fall into four distinct categories: Unaffected types are people showing weak associations between weather and mood; Summer Lovers show elevated mood with warmer, sunnier weather; Summer Haters display worsening mood in warmer, sunnier weather; and, lastly, Rain Haters experience a particularly bad mood on days of wet weather.6
There is clearly no ‘one size fits all’ (or ‘one sky fits all’) relationship between atmospheric conditions and happiness. And despite Samuel Johnson’s disapproving reference to those inclined to ‘deprecate the clouds’, the condensed water vapours in our skies are for many a source of joy, wonder, insight, even obsession. In the metaphors of his plays, William Shakespeare harnessed communal experience of the shifting shapes and ominous gatherings of clouds to present his audience with evocative symbols for human inconsistency, melancholy, loss, anxiety, betrayal, mortality, conflict, and loathing. Artist John Constable considered the billowing clouds that dominate his landscapes to be the ‘chief organ of sentiment’.7 Poets have woven through their words the association with clouds as doorways to spiritual planes controlled by higher powers. In ‘After the Storm’, poet Derek Walcott writes:
Sometimes is just me, and the soft-scissored foam
as the deck turn white and the moon open
a cloud like a door, and the light over me
is a road in white moonlight taking me home.8
Diarists have often imbued their observations with a poetic turn of phrase when describing the shape, size, texture, and locomotion of clouds. American philosopher, poet and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau variously described:
a melon-rind arrangement of clouds, clouds at war with the moon, clouds spun from rainbows, snow from a single cloud, the need for clouds, drifting and downy clouds, clouds in the mind.9
In the daily weather records of an anonymous English diary, written in 1703, the author detailed the influence of weather on his mood and health, describing how ‘a chill driving rain’ represents ‘a kind of weather as never fails to discompose me’, whilst a sense of spiritual ecstasy is experienced on a fine, clear August day which ‘perfectly revived & fed me & I drunk it in at the open windows of the soul’. Clouds presented the enraptured diarist with a celestial landscape of mountains and valleys, where the author imagined the ‘exquisite’ experience of scaling great ramparts of cloud-borne castles and cities in the skies. At other times, the sky was described as though a great ocean, with voluminous clouds ‘Riding over our heades like vast carracks or hulks of ships in huge Flota of rarified Sea’.10
From unbridled turbulence to gentle transient beauty, clouds provide author, artist, casual gazer, and obsessed observer alike with a weather system of human emotion, as well as a vicarious yet glorious sense of true celestial freedom.
Suffolk-born artist John Constable (1776-1837) skilfully captured the structure, movement, depth, and illumination of clouds in all weathers, with incredible veracity and feeling. His clouds defy fixture on canvas, animating Constable’s skies beyond a single moment in time. The following images are from the Constable collection at Yale Centre for British Art.
There are no known copyright restrictions on images of these paintings.
Golding Constable’s House East Bergholt: the Artist’s Birthplace, ca. 1809
Coastal Scene with Cliffs, ca. 1814
Harwich: The Low Lighthouse and Beacon Hill, ca. 1820
Cloud Study (Evening Landscape After Rain), ca. 1821
A Cloud Study, Sunset, ca. 1821
Extensive Landscape with Grey Clouds, 1821
Cloud Study (Study of Cumulus Clouds), 1822
Hove Beach, 1824 to 1826
Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of The Thames – Morning After A Stormy Night, 1826
Sir Richard Steele’s Cottage Hampstead, 1831-1832
Excerpts below are from the anonymous English weather diary of 1703, a richly detailed record believed to have been written by Thomas Appletree of Edgiock, Worcestershire.
‘perfectly revived & fed me & I drunk it in at the open windows of the soul’
‘dismall piece of night stalking on with a solemn pace to envelop’
‘ye smoak in a laboratory, or Reek of a huge furnace’.
‘they enclosed & stufft ye whole visible Hemisphere in colour like Lead’
‘ye indefatigable Alchymy of wind & sea’
References
1 Samuel Johnson (1758, June 24) No. 11: Discourses on the weather, in Arthur Murphey (Ed.) (1842) The works of Samuel Johnson, (p.367). Alexander V. Blake
2 Uri Simonsohn (2007). Clouds make nerds look good: Field evidence of the impact of incidental factors on decision making. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 143-152.
3 Michael Robert Cunningham (1979), Weather, mood, and helping behavior: Quasi experiments with the Sunshine Samaritan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1947-1956.
4 Nicholas Guéguen & Jordy Stefan (2013). Hitchhiking and the ‘Sunshine Driver’: Further effects of weather conditions on helping behavior. Psychological Reports, 113(3), 994-1000.
5 Patrick McGrath (2007, May 5). Mistress of menace. The Guardian.
6 Theo A. Klimstra, Tom Frijns, Loes Keijsers, Jaap J. A. Denissen, Quinten A. W. Raaijmakers, Marcel A. G. van Aken, Hans M. Koot, Pol A. C. van Lier, Wim H. J. Meeus (2011). Come rain or come shine: Individual differences in how weather affects mood. Emotion 11(6), 1495-1499.
7 Tate (n.d.) John Constable. www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/constable-harnham-ridge-salisbury-n01824
8 Derek Walcott (1986). Collected poems 1948-1984. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
9 Chris Dodge (2007). Messages from above: Why the clouds are worth watching. Utne (Minneapolis, Minn.), 139, 64.
10 Jan Golinski (2001). ‘Exquisite atmography’: Theories of the world and experiences of the weather in a diary of 1703. The British Journal for the History of Science, 34(2), 149-171.