A Little More Lao She on London’s Foul Air in the 1920s

The terrible fogs that smothered London in the 1920s were clearly one of the things Lao She remembered most vividly from his time in London. In his classic (and recently republished courtesy of Penguin Modern Classics) London novel Mr Ma and Son (1926), old Mr Ma, recently arrived from Peking in the English capital ruminates on the thick smog he encountered in what was obviously also the author’s experience of the city then….

“Even the weather in London grew busier. It was either windy or raining, and if it was neither of those, there was a fog. Sometimes, when the fancy took it, it’d be both rainy and foggy. London fog’s fascinating. Just take its colours, for instance. It may be several all at once. In some parts it’s light grey, and you can still see things within a range of forty or fifty feet or so. In other parts, it’s such a dark grey that there’s no slightest difference between night and day. In some places it’s greyish yellow, as if the whole of London City is burning damp wood that’s giving off a yellow smoke. In yet other places, it’s a reddish brown, and when the fog gets to such a state, you can forget about being able to see anything any more. All you can see if you’re standing indoors looking out at it through the window-pane, is the reddish brown colour. And if you walk in the fog, it’s dark grey just ahead of you, and not until you raise your head and make an actual effort to pick out a lamp shining somewhere, can you see the faintest yellow tinge to it. That sort of fog doesn’t come in wisps, but in one whole piece, and makes all the world except yourself a fog.

As you walk, the fog follows you. You can’t see anything, and nobody can see you. You don’t even know where you are. Only the fiercest-burning gas- lamps float forth any slightest light upon the air, and all you can distinguish is the wisps of steam that your own breathing hangs before your lips. All else is hazy and unidentifiable. The big vehicles crawl along so slowly, step by step, only declaring their presence to you by the sounds of their horns. But for those horns, you might feel really afraid, thinking perhaps that the whole world had been suffocated by the fog. You’re conscious that there are things to the right and left of you, and in front and behind, but you simply can’t pluck up the courage to move in any of these directions. That object in front of you may be a horse, or a car, or perhaps a tree, but unless you put your hands on it, you won’t know which one of those it is.

Mr. Ma was London’s leading man of leisure. When it was rainy, he didn’t go out. When it was windy, he didn’t go out. And when it was foggy, he stayed at home.”

Fog in Charing Cross in the 1920s – note the hastily erected acetylene lamp to help the police direct traffic

Chinese traffic police this week wonder whether they can get an old English acetylene lamp on ebay?