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| British Beach Scene, Summer 1914 |
By Dr. Esther MacCallum-Stewart
As another hot summer hits Britain, my local area announces its umpteenth hosepipe ban and all the lawns start to go a parched yellow colour, I'm once again reminded of the 'last' Edwardian summer, that of 1914. The mythology that surrounds this summer is astronomical, and any self respecting novel about the war seems to contain obligatory references to tea parties, sweltering heat and sunny days. In the vocabulary of the war, this summer has become a sign of impending doom and an oppressive and dangerous moment of pathetic fallacy. Whilst the worlds politicians steel themselves for war, everyone else pays tennis whilst occasionally glancing at the newspapers with a flippant comment about how the situation in Europe has nothing to do with Britain. The odd shaking of heads before heading out on country walks or for another round of suppressed sexual desire on the garden lawn seems rather to be the norm. Innocence and coming of age are combined, all of which are expected to pale into the background when war breaks out, everyone rushes to the recruitment office, and the progression towards disillusion and shattered lives can begin.
These ideals feed into a perfect depiction of England and its population. The rather dotty British obsession with the weather; the lounging about outdoors, the beauty of the countryside, the emphasis on a 'green and pleasant land', and finally, the traditional British reserve; ignoring the big events and unable to articulate the small. The summer of 1914 works as a perfect counterpoise to the war itself. At the same time it's become an inevitable part of the war story.
What has however struck me is the assumption that the summer of 1914 seems to addle people's brains in some way. For a start, nobody does anything except sit about outside. No domestic jobs are done, nobody works for a living (they go off and do that during the war, obviously!), and it gets dark suspiciously late. Secondly, the heat seems to somehow prevent political debate. Surely not everyone's reaction to the situation in Europe was either 'Oh, don't worry about some silly country no-one has ever heard of!' or 'There'll be a war; you mark my words!'. It seems to me that authors are very keen to induce a type of collective heatstroke that avoids anyone discussing war in complex ways. This of course means that when it does take its casualties, they will be all the more surprising to the participants.
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| Marienbad Spa, June 1914 |
The summer of 1914 was indeed, the hottest on record, and since British newspapers reported the weather on a regular basis since 1860, this is a fair claim to make. However, despite this, it all sounds rather good fun, in a jolly sort of way. Even the torrid affairs doomed to failure because of the inevitable shadow of war seem rather interesting. The reader is meant to see these acts as the last of an era, and after 1914 it always rains in the summertime of these novels. Yet somehow, I can't really see why loafing about outside until it gets dark and eyeing up carefree young men is such a bad thing at all. . .
Esther MacCallum-Stewart wrote this entry in the garden with a glass of Pimms, of course, but who cares about some silly war!
Dr. Esther MacCallum-Stewart once ran one of our favorite First World War blogs, Break of Day in the Trenches. She is now Chair of the British Digital Gaming Research Associaton and is heavily involved with the science fiction and fantasy fan communities.
Originally published in the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, August 2006
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