伦敦如何甩掉雾都的帽子 London Fog The Biography
How best to solve the pollution problems of a city sunk so deep within sulfurous clouds that it was described as hell on earth? Simply answered: Relocate all urban smoke-creating industry and encircle the metropolis of London with sweetly scented flowers and elegant hedges.
一座城市已经深深沉浸在硫磺雾霾之中，被称之为人间地狱，这样的污染究竟应当如何治理才好？答案很简单：把城市里所有制造浓烟的工业设施都搬出去，用散发扑鼻香味的花朵与优雅的树篱环绕伦敦。
It sounds like one of those wonderfully daffy Fabian schemes for the betterment of mankind that were embraced by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs. In fact, as Christine L. Corton, a Cambridge scholar, reveals in her engrossing and magnificently researched new book, “London Fog,” this fragrant anti-smoke scheme was the brainchild of John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist. King Charles II was said to be “much pleas’d” with Evelyn’s idea, and a bill against the smoky nuisance was duly drafted. Then — it’s the mournful leitmotif of most of Corton’s tale — nothing was done. Nobody at the time, and nobody right up to the middle of the 20th century, was willing to put public health above business interests.
这听上去很像萧伯纳(George Bernard Shaw)和韦伯夫妇(Webbs)等人喜欢的那种疯狂的、旨在改良人类的费边主义(Fabian)方案。事实上，剑桥学者克里斯汀·L·科顿(Christine L. Corton)在她引人入胜、研究周详的新书《伦敦雾》(London Fog)中写道，这种“芬芳抗烟方案”，是17世纪日记作家约翰·伊夫林(John Evelyn)的想法。据说，查理二世国王对伊夫林这个点子“非常满意”，一份相应的抗烟害法案也被拟定出来。之后——这其实是科顿一书悲哀的主旋律——就没有下文了。在那个时候，没有人愿意把公共健康置于商业利益之上，这种情况一直延续到20世纪中叶。
And yet it’s a surprise to discover how beloved a feature of London life these multicolored fogs became. “I am their painter,” Whistler announced with characteristic modesty. Another dabbler, Claude Monet, fleeing besieged Paris in 1870, fell in love with London’s vaporous, mutating clouds. Perched in a riverside room at the Savoy, he looked upon the familiar mist as his reliable collaborator. Confronted by a distressingly untypical instance of fog-free skies, Monet grew desperate: “It seemed all my canvases were going for naught.” He had to bide his time until “little by little, as the fires were lit, the smoke and the mist returned.”
然而，让人惊讶的是，这些五颜六色的雾霾却成了受人喜爱的伦敦生活一景。“我是雾霾的画家，”惠斯勒(Whistler)带着他典型的谦逊说。1870年，另一位画家克劳德·莫奈逃出遭围城的巴黎，爱上了伦敦蒸汽缭绕、如同变异的雾霭。他住在萨沃伊的一处河畔小屋，把常见的雾霭视为可靠的合作伙伴。如果哪一天意外放晴，空中没有笼罩雾霾，莫奈就会特别失望：“我的所有画布好像都要空白一片了，”他不得不等待，直到“随着一家家的炉火渐渐点燃，烟雾与雾霾终于又回来了”。
Visitors from abroad may have delighted in the fog, but homegrown artists lit candles and vainly scrubbed the grime from their gloom-filled studio windows. “Give us light!” Frederic Leighton pleaded to the unmoved guests at a Lord Mayor’s banquet in 1882, begging them to have pity on the poor painter and his “interminable hours, days and weeks of enforced idleness spent in the continuous contemplation of the ubiquitous yellow fog.” J.M.W. Turner never finished his rendering of the smoke-swathed “Thames Above Waterloo Bridge” because it lacked a buyer.
来自国外的访客们或许很喜欢雾霾，但本土艺术家们却得点上蜡烛，还得徒劳地从脏兮兮的画室窗子上擦去煤尘污垢。“给我们光！”1882年，弗里德里克·莱顿(Frederic Leighton)在一次市长大人举办的宴会上向无动于衷的宾客们请求，请求他们可怜可怜这个贫苦的画家，“日复一日，周复一周，他只能在那绵延不绝、无处不在的黄色雾霾中虚度时光。”J·M·W·透纳(J. M. W. Turner)始终未能画完那副弥漫烟雾的《泰晤士河上的滑铁卢桥》(Thames Above Waterloo Bridge)的草图，因为根本就没有买家。
Writers were equally divided. In fiction, Robert Louis Stevenson deployed fog images and vaporous metaphors to create the sense of menace that enfolds the mysterious activities of virtuous Dr. Jekyll’s evil other. In life, the gentle author (who suffered from respiratory problems all his life) attributed his own profound depressions to “nothing more definite than a certain hue of brown,” that same “great chocolate-colored pall” that hangs over the villainous Hyde.
作家们分成两派。在小说中，罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森(Robert Louis Stevenson)使用雾霭弥漫的形象和隐喻，创造出充满威胁的感觉，逐渐揭示出善良的杰克尔博士(Dr. Jekyll)另一个邪恶人格所作出的神秘行为。在生活中，史蒂文斯是个温和的人，毕生都受呼吸道疾病困扰。他说自己深沉的抑郁感“不为别的，就因为这棕褐的色调”，这也正是邪恶的海德身上披挂的“巧克力色的尸衣”。
In contrast, Dickens reveled in fog, characterizing it, above all in “Bleak House,” as a venomous, slithering presence — a force his admirer Joseph Conrad would aspire to match in “The Secret Agent.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, visiting the city, found moral lessons in London’s fog, while Henry James gave it a social aspect (dank mists swirl through his working-class scenes). Mark Twain, barely visible to the tiny audiences who stumbled into a mist-veiled London lecture hall to hear him talk about “roughing it,” cut short that dismal effort.
与他相反，狄更斯陶醉在雾霾之中，为它赋予个性，特别是在《荒凉山庄》(Bleak House)中，把它描述为一种恶毒而滑动着的存在，一种力量，后来他的崇拜者约瑟夫·康拉德(Joseph Conrad)在《密探》(The Secret Agent)中也对之着力进行描写。纳撒尼尔·霍桑(Nathaniel Hawthorne)来访时，从伦敦的雾霾中找到了道德教训，而亨利·詹姆斯(Henry James)则为之赋予了社会意义（在他笔下的工人阶级场景中，总是缭绕着阴冷的雾霭）。马克·吐温(Mark Twain)到烟雾弥漫的伦敦演讲厅演讲“艰苦岁月”，只有为数不多的几个观众摸索着来到这里，几乎看不见台上的他，他只好缩短了这场不幸的讲演。
Twain’s complaints about the impenetrable murk alert us to the fact that London’s yellow pea-soupers (a term that derives from a much despised broth) were not confined to its streets. It’s fine to stand snugly beside Arthur Conan Doyle at a (closed) window above Baker Street while Sherlock Holmes imagines a murderer prowling through the foggy depths below, “as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he .” And it’s funny (but also disquieting) to learn of a post-World WarI service inside St. Paul’s Cathedral when the fog hung so thickly that the text (“I Am the Light of the World”) boomed down from a pulpit that was lost from view.
吐温抱怨这团看不透的黑暗雾霾，这让我们知道，遍布伦敦的黄色浓雾（它还有个别名叫“豌豆汤”，是一种非常难喝的汤）不仅仅是街头才有。隔着贝克街一扇关闭的窗子，它紧贴在阿瑟·柯南·道尔(Arthur Conan Doyle)身边，令夏洛克·福尔摩斯(Sherlock Holmes)想象一个谋杀犯是如何悄悄走过浓雾，“如同猛虎走在丛林，只有突袭时才现出身形。”有意思的是（但也令人不安），书中记载，“一战”后圣保罗大教堂里的一次宗教仪式上，雾霾实在太浓重，讲坛上刻着的字（“我是这世上的光”）都看不见了。
The more serious side of Corton’s book documents how business has taken precedence over humanity where London’s history of pollution is concerned. A prevailing westerly wind meant that those dwelling to the east were always at most risk. Those who could afford it lived elsewhere: The east, where the Thames flows to Gravesend, was abandoned to the underclass. Those with enough means could always take flight from the inconvenient fog; the real sufferers were those with no escape, the voiceless poor.
科顿的书中更严肃的记载是关于伦敦污染史上，商业的考虑是如何战胜了人性。经常刮西风意味着住在东边的人要承担更多风险。有钱人纷纷搬家，而伦敦东部，也就是泰晤士河流入格雷夫森的地方，成了下层阶级居住的所在。有办法的人总可以经常逃离讨厌的雾霾，真正受苦的还要算那些无法逃脱的人，那些无法发出声音的穷人。
East London’s slum dwellers were of no interest to Victorian champions of free trade like John Bright. (A man who might plausibly have jumped from the pages of “Hard Times,” Bright boasted of having shot down every anti-smoke bill proposed in Parliament.) Lord Palmerston spoke up for choking East Enders in the 1850s, pointing a finger at the interests of the furnace owners (all living outside London) as opposed to their victims (all haplessly resident). A bill was passed, but there was little change. Eventually, another connection was established: between London’s perpetual veil of smog and its citizens’ cozily smoldering grates. The conclusion was obvious. Sadly, popular World War I songs like “Keep the Home Fires Burning” didn’t do much to encourage the adoption of smokeless fuel.
东伦敦的贫民区居民们对维多利亚时期约翰·布莱特(John Bright)这样的自由贸易捍卫者一点都不感兴趣（布莱特其人活像是从狄更斯的《艰难时世》小说里跳出来的一样，他自夸自己击败了议会中提出的所有反对雾霾的法案）。19世纪50年代，帕默斯顿勋爵(Lord Palmerston)曾经为受雾霾所苦的东区人说话，责备那些大熔炉的主人们（他们都住在伦敦城外），说他们站在自己的受害者们（所有不幸的居民们）的对立面。后来通过了一项法案，但几乎什么也没有改变。最后，人们发现伦敦持续不断的雾霾也应当归因为市民家里的舒适炉火。这个结论显而易见。悲伤的是，流行的“一战”歌曲，如《让家中的炉火继续燃烧》之类并不能敦促人们改用无烟燃料。
It wasn’t until what came to be known as the “Great Killer Fog” of 1952 that the casualty rate became impossible to ignore and the British press finally took up the cause. Harold Macmillan made cynical use of his powers as minister of housing to ensure that lung-friendly decisions would not be taken. It was left to a bullish M.P., Gerald Nabarro, to steer the Clean Air Act into law in 1956. Within a few years, even as the war against pollution was still in its infancy, the dreaded pea-soupers began to fade into mythology.
直到1952年著名的“杀人大雾”(Great Killer Fog)导致死亡率再也无法忽视，英国媒体才终于行动起来。哈罗德·麦克米伦(Harold Macmillan)动用房屋部长手中的关键权力，阻挠对呼吸有利的决策获得通过。直到1956年，固执的杰拉德·纳巴罗(Gerald Nabarro)下议员才努力令《空气清洁法案》得以通过。短短几年之内，虽然反对污染的战斗还处于初级阶段，但可怕的浓雾便已经开始退去，成了神话般的存在。
Corton’s book combines meticulous social history with a wealth of eccentric detail. Thus we learn that London’s ubiquitous plane trees were chosen for their shiny, fog-resistant foliage. And since Jack the Ripper actually went out to stalk his victims on fog-free nights, filmmakers had to fake the sort of dank, smoke-wreathed London scenes audiences craved. It’s discoveries like these that make reading “London Fog” such an unusual, enthralling and enlightening experience.
科顿的书把内容详实的社会历史和丰富的古怪轶闻结合起来。我们从中读到，伦敦之所以到处都有法国梧桐，主要是因为它们闪闪发亮的叶片能够抵御雾霾。“开膛者杰克”其实都是在没有雾霾的夜晚外出尾随受害者的，电影制作者们却要伪造出雾霾遍布的阴郁伦敦场景，满足观众们的期望。类似的知识令《伦敦雾》成为一次非比寻常、兴奋刺激而又充满教益的阅读体验。
