To think that Victorian rain was much more malevolent than contemporary rain?

[squoosh]

Whenever a character in a Wilkie Collins novel goes for a walk in the rain they either get pneumonia resulting in near death or develop sudden onset rain related delirium and then die. In Pride and Prejudice Jane Bennett's illness meant she was confined to Netherfield for a week after hoofing it over in the rain.

Am I alone in my disappointment with our weedy modern rain that doesn't even provoke a sneeze much less madness and pneumonia?

i have a poetic great uncle (my grandmothers cousin?) who died of hiccups.

or maybe it was suicide, and they didn't want to say.

but hiccups is the story.

guesses at caillins..

Lucky you having such a figure in the family. Did you inherit the gift?

It would do I suppose :)

Died of hiccups? That's the most comi-tragic way to die. More comic than tragic though.

For those trying to guess, if you aint Irish you are very unlikely to get it.

I do write, though not poetry. My DH claims I have a talent, I'm not so sure. My family tells me I'm a lot like him, which I suppose is a compliment, though I'm not sure they mean it that way!

As recently as 'Just William', Mrs Brown caught a cold in the rain and had to go to bed for a whole week...for a cold.

See..already much less malevolent by then. If it'd been 50 years earlier she'd've been a goner.

he was comi-tragic poet :)

There are legions of Honours Irish Leaving Cert students probably feeling a bit less kindly to your relative at this moment.

The sun always shines before exam season.

What about Alicia in Malory Towers? Never a days illness in her life then she starts brewing measles and even before the rash comes out she's too thick to pass her School Cert.

If I was William Brown's morther I'd have taken to bed for life. I always wanted to know what a blancmange was when reading William books. I imagined something much more delicious than a milky jelly.

It was definitely galloping consumption in Anne of Green Gables (or was it in Anne of Avonlea?). Ruby dies of it. She wastes away looking more and more beautiful. I don't know whether she caught it from walking in malevolent rain though, the book is unclear on that point.

I caught a nasty cold last year and chose to roll around in snow. It then turned into a very unpleasant infection and I needed antibiotics. So malevolent snow 1, Smegs 0.

My Mum used to be frightened of the rain when she was a little girl.

It turned out to be because every time it started raining her Mum shrieked and yelled and ran outside in a panic. To get the washing in. Because there was nowhere to dry it indoors. But Mum remembered the panic and the "Aaaargh!!! It's RAINING!!!" and was scared for years until she worked out why.

He's not on the Leaving any more squoosh, taken off for being too difficult. They do utter bullshit now.

Isn't malevolent a great word?

And don't forget you can get piles sitting on a cold step.

Excellent title Squoosh. I suspect you are actually suppoesd to be writing a phd/masters thesis but are instead perfecting the art of procrastination.

ScrambledSmegs - Ruby Gillis caught galloping consumption because she was 'fast'

And there's nothing as malevolent as a breeze at an open door in The Chalet School. It could block the San for at least a fortnight!!

"Once an engine attached to a train was afraid of a few drops of rain. He went into a tunnel, and squeaked through it's funnel, and wouldn't come out again!"

this must have been a continuation of Victorian rain scaring Henry the Green Engine!

i had raspberry cheesecake yesterday. i invited my parents around specially, as an excuse to eat it before actual pudding time.

hmmm

This thread is great. And the Ingalls family had ague in Little House on the Prairie (can't remember exactly which book) caught from malevolent water melons. But actually from malevolent mosquitoes. But Pa said it was the water melons. And Ma caught it even though she refused to eat the water melons.

Joey Maynard in chalet school stood by the door to watch the snow and shivered.

Next she was dying in bed with pneumonia and given calfs foot jelly!!!

Also falling through the ice with Maureen, pleuro pneumonia but miraculously produces 12 children like shelling peas.

I clicked on this thread wondering how on EARTH the current weather in Melbourne could have generated so much interest.

A month's rain fell yesterday (late autumn here) malevolent by anyone's standards.:)

You see I spoiled my own crappy joke, Melbourne being in Victoria.

I'll get me coat.

Please please remind me ruby gillis?? I know the name but brain block!!

eleven childre Clare is adopted
And she Jo was always a "delicate" child - (so was the Robin, she was so delicate she went to bed at six o clock every night for 18 years, and was forced to become a nun because the strain of an adult relationship would kill her), but was able to trek over the Alps on the run from the Nazis (in rain) in perfect health...

Well, echt, Victoria is well known for its bizarre weather.

And if you don't like it, just wait 5 minutes........