美国国家公共电台 NPR London Literally Stank In The Summer Of 1858 — Just Ask Dickens And Darwin

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Just in time for these hot days of summer, British historian Rosemary Ashton has written the history of one very hot summer in London many years ago, in 1858. That year, the talk of the town was all about marital¹ mores² and public sanitation³. In a city confronting an inescapable environmental disaster, it was a time of disregard for good science. And it was a momentous⁴ year for three famous Victorians whom Ashton follows through the steamy months May through August 1858. The book is called "One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, And The Great Stink⁵ Of 1858." Professor Ashton, thanks for joining us.

ROSEMARY ASHTON: It's my pleasure.

SIEGEL: First, the heat. How hot was it in the summer of 1858?

ASHTON: Well, hot by British standards, I would say. It was continuously hot for two to three months with temperatures up into the 90s quite often. And the hottest recorded day up to that point in history was the 16 of June 1858, when the temperature reached 94.5 degrees Fahrenheit⁶ in the shade apparently⁷.

SIEGEL: And of course, there was no - there were no electric fans to help cool one off, certainly no air conditioning.

ASHTON: Certainly not. That's right.

SIEGEL: Now, the environmental disaster that assaulted the nostrils⁸ of Londoners in the summer of 1858 was in the River Thames. Explain what happened.

ASHTON: Yes. We are dealing⁹ with a very hot summer at the moment, actually, and it's quite uncomfortable at times. But we do not have a stink coming from our major river, which runs right through the middle of London. But at that time, unfortunately, as a matter of sanitary¹⁰ reform, the effluent of the 2 million inhabitants of London was being directly pitched into the Thames through the drains, rainwater drains. And the Thames flowed up and down, back and forth¹¹, and never got rid of its toxic¹² load.

And meanwhile, drinking water was being hauled out of the Thames at the other end. And so, of course, disease was rife¹³. The smell was impossible. And something had to be done. And the newspapers in particular really got on the case of Parliament. You're doing nothing. What are you going to do? For goodness sake, decide what to do and get on with it.

SIEGEL: And this had been the result of a well-intentioned reform to install a great many WCs, or great many water closets or toilets, in London.

ASHTON: That's correct because beforehand everything had been collected by night soil men, who then took the stuff out to the countryside and gave it to the farmers to put on their fields. But the population of London had doubled in 50 years from the beginning of the century, and so it all became quite impossible. But finally, in the summer of 1858, Parliament got its act together and passed the Thames Purification Bill which then let the rather wonderful, innovative¹⁴ engineer Joseph Bazalgette take the sewage in intersecting sewers¹⁵ right out of London.

SIEGEL: As I read in your book, what people in 1858 were reading about in the newspapers, in addition to it being very hot and there being a smell, was divorce and adultery and marital discord¹⁶. First, explain why that was so much in the papers at that time.

ASHTON: Well, the previous year, 1857, Parliament had after many years of trying passed a divorce act which made divorce somewhat easier than it had been before. Divorce before the 1857 act was well nigh impossible unless you had a great deal of time and money on your side. And of course, for women it was actually not possible at all. It was during our hot summer that some of the most interesting and difficult cases came to the court, to the new divorce court. And of course, this was avidly¹⁷ followed by the reading public, and also by some of my famous people because Dickens feared for half a moment in that summer that his wife might try to divorce him on the grounds of adultery with her sister.

SIEGEL: Did Dickens actually come close to giving up writing novels in that year, in 1858? He devoted¹⁸ himself to a new - he had a new career which was publicly acting¹⁹ out his novels, becoming a public speaker.

ASHTON: Yes, he did that. And he certainly - for the first year since he started writing novels, he was writing no novel at all during the whole of 1858. But what he did do was he escaped the heat in both senses in July, August 1858 and went off on a very successful reading tour. And he went night after night, day after day. He gave performances from his novels, which he really acted out in every way. And of course, he later came and did the same thing in America.

SIEGEL: For you it seems the heat and the stench were what these literary, scientific and political circles of London in 1858 that you're writing about - this is what they all had in common. They were all inhabiting this environment. And from time to time, they remark on the discomfort²⁰ they're experiencing.

ASHTON: Yes, they do, Disraeli a lot because he's the one that's trying to get the act through which will actually do something about the stink. And of course, there's the famous moment - very famous in sanitation history, I suppose - when on the 30 of June a valiant²¹ committee of MPs, members of Parliament, had to rush from its committee room with handkerchiefs pressed to their noses because, of course, the Thames was washing to and fro along the walls of the Houses of Parliament. And of course, the newspapers took this up with glee - serves them right. If they won't do anything, they'll finally have to do something because they can't do their job with this stink going on underneath²² their collective nose.

SIEGEL: It seems that in 1858 in London you've found a moment that's kind of on a knife's edge between modernity and medieval Britain. The world's biggest ocean liner has been built, but it's so big it can barely get out of the Thames and there are no ports big enough for it. Darwin's about to publish his theory of evolution, but he's very reluctant to do it because he's afraid of what the reaction from religious people will be to it. Dr. John Snow had discovered a few years earlier that waterborne germs could cause cholera²³, but no one accepted his findings. So there's a great deal of the future that we see on the horizon at least and the world isn't quite ready for it yet. London is still stuck in the past, it seems.

ASHTON: That's right. And that's actually why I chose the year 1858 or the summer of that year. If you look very closely, close and deep, really, at a short period of time in 1858, you hear Darwin - I mean, his great shock then was that he got a letter from his fellow naturalist²⁴, Alfred Russel Wallace, who was out in the field working away in the Malay Archipelago. And there in eight pages is Darwin's own theory of evolution by natural selection, which was the very mechanism²⁵ that Darwin was - had found.

And Darwin had been working on it for 20 years but was very anxious to keep on getting more and more evidence and not to rush into publication partly because he knew that religious figures would get upset. And his wife was devout²⁶, and he was very anxious not to upset her. But what it did do was it galvanized him because instead of him taking another four or five years and writing a book four or five times as long as "Origin Of Species," he was fortunately forced into getting on with it and finishing it in one fairly brief volume and publishing it in 1859. So 1858 really is kind of the cradle for that.

SIEGEL: Rosemary Ashton, author of "One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, And The Great Stink Of 1858." Thank you.

ASHTON: It's a pleasure.

(SOUNDBITE OF FUNKADELIC SONG, "CAN YOU GET TO THAT")

1 marital   

adj.婚姻的，夫妻的

参考例句：

• Her son had no marital problems.她的儿子没有婚姻问题。
• I regret getting involved with my daughter's marital problems;all its done is to bring trouble about my ears.我后悔干涉我女儿的婚姻问题, 现在我所做的一切将给我带来无穷的烦恼。

2 mores   

n.风俗，习惯，民德，道德观念

参考例句：

• The mores of that village are hard to believe.那村子的习俗让人难以置信。
• We advocate a harmonious society where corruption is swept away,and social mores are cleared.我们提倡弊绝风清，建设一个和谐社会。

3 sanitation   

n.公共卫生，环境卫生，卫生设备

参考例句：

• The location is exceptionally poor,viewed from the sanitation point.从卫生角度来看，这个地段非常糟糕。
• Many illnesses are the result,f inadequate sanitation.许多疾病都来源于不健全的卫生设施。

4 momentous   

adj.重要的，重大的

参考例句：

• I am deeply honoured to be invited to this momentous occasion.能应邀出席如此重要的场合，我深感荣幸。
• The momentous news was that war had begun.重大的新闻是战争已经开始。

5 stink   

vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭

参考例句：

• The stink of the rotten fish turned my stomach.腐烂的鱼臭味使我恶心。
• The room has awful stink.那个房间散发着难闻的臭气。

6 Fahrenheit   

n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的)

参考例句：

• He was asked for the boiling point of water in Fahrenheit.他被问到水的沸点是华氏多少度。
• The thermometer reads 80 degrees Fahrenheit.寒暑表指出华氏80度。

7 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

8 nostrils   

鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Her nostrils flared with anger. 她气得两个鼻孔都鼓了起来。
• The horse dilated its nostrils. 马张大鼻孔。

9 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

10 sanitary   

adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的

参考例句：

• It's not sanitary to let flies come near food.让苍蝇接近食物是不卫生的。
• The sanitary conditions in this restaurant are abominable.这家饭馆的卫生状况糟透了。

11 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

12 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

13 rife   

adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的

参考例句：

• Disease is rife in the area.疾病在这一区很流行。
• Corruption was rife before the election.选举之前腐败盛行。

14 innovative   

adj.革新的，新颖的，富有革新精神的

参考例句：

• Discover an innovative way of marketing.发现一个创新的营销方式。
• He was one of the most creative and innovative engineers of his generation.他是他那代人当中最富创造性与革新精神的工程师之一。

15 sewers   

n.阴沟，污水管，下水道( sewer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sewers discharge out at sea. 下水道的污水排入海里。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Another municipal waste problem is street runoff into storm sewers. 有关都市废水的另外一个问题是进入雨水沟的街道雨水。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

16 discord   

n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐

参考例句：

• These two answers are in discord.这两个答案不一样。
• The discord of his music was hard on the ear.他演奏的不和谐音很刺耳。

17 avidly   

adv.渴望地，热心地

参考例句：

• She read avidly from an early age—books, magazines, anything. 她从小就酷爱阅读——书籍、杂志，无不涉猎。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Her melancholy eyes avidly scanned his smiling face. 她说话时两只忧郁的眼睛呆呆地望着他的带笑的脸。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）

18 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

19 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

20 discomfort   

n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便

参考例句：

• One has to bear a little discomfort while travelling.旅行中总要忍受一点不便。
• She turned red with discomfort when the teacher spoke.老师讲话时她不好意思地红着脸。

21 valiant   

adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人

参考例句：

• He had the fame of being very valiant.他的勇敢是出名的。
• Despite valiant efforts by the finance minister,inflation rose to 36%.尽管财政部部长采取了一系列果决措施，通货膨胀率还是涨到了36%。

22 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

23 cholera   

n.霍乱

参考例句：

• The cholera outbreak has been contained.霍乱的发生已被控制住了。
• Cholera spread like wildfire through the camps.霍乱在营地里迅速传播。

24 naturalist   

n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者)

参考例句：

• He was a printer by trade and naturalist by avocation.他从事印刷业，同时是个博物学爱好者。
• The naturalist told us many stories about birds.博物学家给我们讲述了许多有关鸟儿的故事。

25 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

26 devout   

adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness)

参考例句：

• His devout Catholicism appeals to ordinary people.他对天主教的虔诚信仰感染了普通民众。
• The devout man prayed daily.那位虔诚的男士每天都祈祷。