Snow this morning, and bone-chilling rain much of the day, freezing cold and wet and miserable; ideal weather to stay out of. From Austen’s Emma (read last month — two down, four to go), a bit of indirect weather-writing that I immediately take to: Mr. John Knightley’s appealingly grouchy monologue to Emma, in the carriage en route to the Westons’ dinner party, on the annoyance of having to go out in the snow:

‘A man,’ said he, ‘must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest absurdity – Actually snowing at this moment! – The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home – and the folly of people’s not staying comfortably at home when they can!

(I adore that indignant “Actually snowing at this moment!” that he bursts out with. A line I resolve to use whenever possible this winter. The grousing continues:)

If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it; – and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can; – here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man’s house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow. Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse; – four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home.’

Poor bastards. And nineteenth-century snow at that. Understandable.