倫敦如何甩掉霧都的帽子 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.
一座城市已經深深沉浸在硫磺霧霾之中，被稱之爲人間地獄，這樣的污染究竟應當如何治理纔好？答案很簡單：把城市裏所有制造濃煙的工業設施都搬出去，用散發撲鼻香味的花朵與優雅的樹籬環繞倫敦。
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.
這聽上去很像蕭伯納(George Bernard Shaw)和韋伯夫婦(Webbs)等人喜歡的那種瘋狂的、旨在改良人類的費邊主義(Fabian)方案。事實上，劍橋學者克里斯汀·L·科頓(Christine L. Corton)在她引人入勝、研究周詳的新書《倫敦霧》(London Fog)中寫道，這種“芬芳抗煙方案”，是17世紀日記作家約翰·伊夫林(John Evelyn)的想法。據說，查理二世國王對伊夫林這個點子“非常滿意”，一份相應的抗菸害法案也被擬定出來。之後——這其實是科頓一書悲哀的主旋律——就沒有下文了。在那個時候，沒有人願意把公共健康置於商業利益之上，這種情況一直延續到20世紀中葉。
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，讓人驚訝的是，這些五顏六色的霧霾卻成了受人喜愛的倫敦生活一景。“我是霧霾的畫家，”惠斯勒(Whistler)帶着他典型的謙遜說。1870年，另一位畫家克勞德·莫奈逃出遭圍城的巴黎，愛上了倫敦蒸汽繚繞、如同變異的霧靄。他住在薩沃伊的一處河畔小屋，把常見的霧靄視爲可靠的合作伙伴。如果哪一天意外放晴，空中沒有籠罩霧霾，莫奈就會特別失望：“我的所有畫布好像都要空白一片了，”他不得不等待，直到“隨着一家家的爐火漸漸點燃，煙霧與霧霾終於又回來了”。
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.
來自國外的訪客們或許很喜歡霧霾，但本土藝術家們卻得點上蠟燭，還得徒勞地從髒兮兮的畫室窗子上擦去煤塵污垢。“給我們光！”1882年，弗裏德里克·萊頓(Frederic Leighton)在一次市長大人舉辦的宴會上向無動於衷的賓客們請求，請求他們可憐可憐這個貧苦的畫家，“日復一日，周復一週，他只能在那綿延不絕、無處不在的黃色霧霾中虛度時光。”J·M·W·透納(J. M. W. Turner)始終未能畫完那副瀰漫煙霧的《泰晤士河上的滑鐵盧橋》(Thames Above Waterloo Bridge)的草圖，因爲根本就沒有買家。
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.
作家們分成兩派。在小說中，羅伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森(Robert Louis Stevenson)使用霧靄瀰漫的形象和隱喻，創造出充滿威脅的感覺，逐漸揭示出善良的傑克爾博士(Dr. Jekyll)另一個邪惡人格所作出的神祕行爲。在生活中，史蒂文斯是個溫和的人，畢生都受呼吸道疾病困擾。他說自己深沉的抑鬱感“不爲別的，就因爲這棕褐的色調”，這也正是邪惡的海德身上披掛的“巧克力色的屍衣”。
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.
與他相反，狄更斯陶醉在霧霾之中，爲它賦予個性，特別是在《荒涼山莊》(Bleak House)中，把它描述爲一種惡毒而滑動着的存在，一種力量，後來他的崇拜者約瑟夫·康拉德(Joseph Conrad)在《密探》(The Secret Agent)中也對之着力進行描寫。納撒尼爾·霍桑(Nathaniel Hawthorne)來訪時，從倫敦的霧霾中找到了道德教訓，而亨利·詹姆斯(Henry James)則爲之賦予了社會意義（在他筆下的工人階級場景中，總是繚繞着陰冷的霧靄）。馬克·吐溫(Mark Twain)到煙霧瀰漫的倫敦演講廳演講“艱苦歲月”，只有爲數不多的幾個觀衆摸索着來到這裏，幾乎看不見臺上的他，他只好縮短了這場不幸的講演。
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.
吐溫抱怨這團看不透的黑暗霧霾，這讓我們知道，遍佈倫敦的黃色濃霧（它還有個別名叫“豌豆湯”，是一種非常難喝的湯）不僅僅是街頭纔有。隔着貝克街一扇關閉的窗子，它緊貼在阿瑟·柯南·道爾(Arthur Conan Doyle)身邊，令夏洛克·福爾摩斯(Sherlock Holmes)想象一個謀殺犯是如何悄悄走過濃霧，“如同猛虎走在叢林，只有突襲時才現出身形。”有意思的是（但也令人不安），書中記載，“一戰”後聖保羅大教堂裏的一次宗教儀式上，霧霾實在太濃重，講壇上刻着的字（“我是這世上的光”）都看不見了。
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.
科頓的書中更嚴肅的記載是關於倫敦污染史上，商業的考慮是如何戰勝了人性。經常刮西風意味着住在東邊的人要承擔更多風險。有錢人紛紛搬家，而倫敦東部，也就是泰晤士河流入格雷夫森的地方，成了下層階級居住的所在。有辦法的人總可以經常逃離討厭的霧霾，真正受苦的還要算那些無法逃脫的人，那些無法發出聲音的窮人。
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.
東倫敦的貧民區居民們對維多利亞時期約翰·布萊特(John Bright)這樣的自由貿易捍衛者一點都不感興趣（布萊特其人活像是從狄更斯的《艱難時世》小說裏跳出來的一樣，他自誇自己擊敗了議會中提出的所有反對霧霾的法案）。19世紀50年代，帕默斯頓勳爵(Lord Palmerston)曾經爲受霧霾所苦的東區人說話，責備那些大熔爐的主人們（他們都住在倫敦城外），說他們站在自己的受害者們（所有不幸的居民們）的對立面。後來通過了一項法案，但幾乎什麼也沒有改變。最後，人們發現倫敦持續不斷的霧霾也應當歸因爲市民家裏的舒適爐火。這個結論顯而易見。悲傷的是，流行的“一戰”歌曲，如《讓家中的爐火繼續燃燒》之類並不能敦促人們改用無煙燃料。
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“殺人大霧”(Great Killer Fog)導致死亡率再也無法忽視，英國媒體才終於行動起來。哈羅德·麥克米倫(Harold Macmillan)動用房屋部長手中的關鍵權力，阻撓對呼吸有利的決策獲得通過。直到1956年，固執的傑拉德·納巴羅(Gerald Nabarro)下議員才努力令《空氣清潔法案》得以通過。短短几年之內，雖然反對污染的戰鬥還處於初級階段，但可怕的濃霧便已經開始退去，成了神話般的存在。
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.
科頓的書把內容詳實的社會歷史和豐富的古怪軼聞結合起來。我們從中讀到，倫敦之所以到處都有法國梧桐，主要是因爲它們閃閃發亮的葉片能夠抵禦霧霾。“開膛者傑克”其實都是在沒有霧霾的夜晚外出尾隨受害者的，電影製作者們卻要僞造出霧霾遍佈的陰鬱倫敦場景，滿足觀衆們的期望。類似的知識令《倫敦霧》成爲一次非比尋常、興奮刺激而又充滿教益的閱讀體驗。
