Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep19: Loremen S3 Ep19 - 1816: The Year Without A Summer

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Alasdair takes a deep dive into an epic, extraordinary year! 1816 was a real shocker, by all accounts. The world seemed to have been turned upside down. Holidays were ruined. Worst of all, people moped around indoors writing POETRY. Maybe life two centuries ago wasn't so different after all... Hmmm? (Puts on sunglasses.) (Takes sunglasses off because of the lack of summer.) @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And in this episode, I'm bringing you a story from planet Earth. Ooh. That lasts for an entire year year we're going to cover it in 30 minutes though right yeah we'll cover it in about 30 minutes it's just the highlights okay it's 1816 the year without a summer Hello there, James Shakeshaft.

Hello, Alistair BK. Thank you. Yeah, I don't think that works, does it, as a way of saying your name? As a nickname, Alistair BK. alistair bk thank you yeah i don't think that works does it as an as a way of saying your name as a nickname alistair bk alistair bk it sounds a bit like louis ck which um at one time might have been a good thing but yeah not now not now not now louis i have a story for you which is it's not exactly a local legend but it is an obscure curiosity from days of yore that is very much in the remit then are you prepared to accept that oh yeah well it sort of is a local legend insofar as it begins in one small place but then it expands to fill the entire planet earth

oh i can't think of any modern day parallels with such a thing. Yeah. As I was reading about this, it is alarmingly topical. So I apologise to you and to anybody who's listening to this during the ongoing coronavirus. Malarkey? I feel like Malarkey is too light a word for it. I regret that instantly. Cthufl? Tragedy.

Somewhere between Cthufuffle and tragedy somewhere yes incident unpleasantness my story is about the year 1816 also known as the year without a summer yeah that's a really good name and it features prophecy worldwide panic and celebrity guest stars brilliant well the first character i have to introduce to you is the bolognese astronomer pardon the bolognese astronomer well now if he was an alfabeti spaghetti librarian i can understand the link but a Bolognese astronomer? An astronomer from Bologna in Italy. Ah, that makes a lot more sense, but it's not as fun as the picture I had in my head.

Yeah, no, there's no mince meatballs. No, he's from Bologna. A Bolognese astronomer. It's still a nice idea, though, isn't it? I hope we've all got the same picture in our head. Just looking through one long, noodly piece of spaghetti instead of a telescope. I'm imagining someone using a telescope as a microscope to look at their dinner. Yeah, and just the movements of the chunks of... I'm a vegan, so I can't remember what goes in a normal bolognese.

Mince? Is it just mince? Well, I mean, if it is from Bologna, there's like a very prescriptive set recipe, which I think doesn't include tomatoes, which is a mistake that like everyone else, everyone else puts tomatoes in bolognese. What the, what the, you are blowing this case wide open, James. I know.

A bolognese doesn't include tomatoes. I think an official bolognese doesn't include tomatoes. A bolognese bolognese doesn't include tomatoes. I think an official bolognese doesn't include tomatoes. A bolognese bolognese. A bolognese bolognese doesn't include... I suppose it kind of makes sense because tomatoes are so important in Italian food, but we've only had them since the discovery of America because they're an American fruit. Are they? Yeah.

Are you confusing potatoes with tomatoes? No, no, potatoes and tomatoes. Potatoes with tomatoes. Potato, tomato. They're both American. And potatoes, of course, are central to British cuisine, for want of a better word. Fish and chips. Chips and chips.

Roast potatoes. Waffles. Crisps. They're related, the potato and the tomato. Are they? Not just through rhyme. I think it's called the Mandrake family. Really?

Yeah. Is that true? It's true that they're related. It might not be true that it's called the Mandrake family because that is the magician from Defenders of the Earth. It is also a plant. Mandrake. How can you be a superhero called Mandrake who isn't half man, half duck?

What a missed opportunity. It's right there So Quan Quan On the 21st of June in 1816 The Morning Chronicle reported that And I quote According to the calculations of an astronomer of Bologna Who has lately published some observations on the subject

On the 18th of July a great solar catastrophe Is to put an end to the world by conflagration. The signs of these are the spots to be remarked at present on the sun's disk. The government, thinking it improper to suffer the circulation of such predictions, has put the astronomer under arrest. Yeah. And this Bolognese astronomer remains anonymous. Nobody knows who he or they were, because apparently they were arrested. How did they arrest him if they don't know who it was?

I assume the government knew who it was. Ah. And then just gave them a stern talking to, in an Italian sort of way. An anonymous Bolognese astronomer. That's a delicious mouthful. You heard the reference in the Morning Chronicle report there to eight sunspots that appeared on the face of the sun that year. Right. And this is also verifiably a thing that happened.

Oh. And this is something that normal people, or I say normal people, this is something that like gentlemen scientists who own telescopes would be able to see. The secret was to, first of all, look directly at it, but through a telescope. And they would interpose pieces of coloured glass, which were sold for this express purpose. And that would allow them to make up eight distinct sunspots, which were referred to as being spots of black bile on the surface of the sun. And so, unsurprisingly, the story really caught on. So a correspondent from the New British Ladies magazine, which I think is one of my favourite magazines of the era. Yes.

One of them wrote from Paris, on July 17th, one day before the world was scheduled to end, their superstition is extravagant. A gossip story has travelled all the way from Bologna, according to which the world is to be at an end tomorrow, the 18th of July. Alarm and consternation pervade all ranks, even those who affect a laugh at the prediction

evidently feel its influence all await the event with patient horror although ashamed of openly avowing it because Frenchmen love making fun of people

and everybody's too afraid to take the apocalypse seriously for fear of being embarrassed in front of a Frenchman. Yeah you would be wouldn't you? The last thing you want is someone laughing away.

I can only imagine what their laugh would have sounded like. These weren't the only prophecies flying around at the time. Geoffrey Vale has gathered together several others of the era. In Liege, a huge cloud in the shape of a mountain hovered over the town, in very much the way clouds do. Yeah.

Causing alarm among the, quote, old women. Oh. Mm-hmm. Old Belgian women, new British women. Everyone's talking about it. In Ghent, a regiment of cavalry passing through the town during a thunderstorm blew their trumpets, causing, quote,

three-fourths of the inhabitants to rush forth and throw themselves on their knees, thinking they'd heard the seventh trumpet. Ah, Bible stuff. And a girl in Bath woke her aunt and shouted that the world was ending, and the old woman instantly fell into a coma. Oh my... If not necessarily a bath.

Now perhaps, James, perhaps you don't want to put too much stock in the Bolognese prophecy. Can you imagine how pleased I was when I wrote that in my notes? Definitely. That's the high point of the story. Maybe you imagine how pleased I was? Yeah. When I wrote that in my notes. Definitely. That's the high point of the story. Maybe you don't take the Bolognese prophecy seriously,

but there are yet more apocalypses being predicted. According to John Club, people thought that a chunk of the sun was about to break off and destroy the world. And in Naples, a priest named Carrillo, I'm not sure how that's pronounced, preaching in the Church of St. James, announced that the city was going to be destroyed by fire.

Not again. On the 27th of June, and it was going to rain fire for four hours, and those who escaped the fire were going to be devoured by serpents. Oh, very much a case of out of the fire into the serpent path. The impact of these prophecies was massive and spread across the whole world.

So you hear people talking about it in Paris and in Britain and in America and presumably other countries. Definitely Belgium. But they were the main ones. And Ghent. But why did these prophecies take hold? I'll tell you why. It's because they came true. Oh.

But wait a minute sort of i mean the world didn't end on the 27th oh yeah i'm pretty sure i live in the world you know you are right don't panic the world didn't end but 1816 was known as the year without a summer because summer didn't happen in that year 1816 is also known as uh colloquially 1800 and froze to death which which I really like as sort of a working title. Yes, very good. For the year without a summer. Yeah. According to Clingerman and Clingerman's book, 1816, I don't know if they're father and son or brothers or just two guys both called Clingerman. I'm guessing that they aren't related otherwise,

because you would normally go with like Clingerman and son or Clingerman Bross. related otherwise because you would normally go with like clingerman and cern or yeah clingerman bros in 1816 it snowed in june in vermont uh the farmers had to tie the fleeces back onto their sheep but it didn't help and the sheep all froze to death anyway oh yeah i'm sorry i laughed that i know it was going funny having a fleece tied back onto a sheep very very funny yeah but the annoying thing i think also from the sheep's point of view, is the likelihood of you getting back your own fleece is slim. And you'd be like, this is clearly Alan's. In Bangor, which I think is the one in Maine, not the one in Wales,

snowflakes fell that were two inches in diameter. Wow. And all across Europe, crops were destroyed by frost, hail, and rain. It was the end of the frost, hail and rain. It was the end of the world, Geoff. Yeah. Can you imagine such a thing? Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Most nights. Geoffrey Vale, who I mentioned before, describes the fact that the sun was unnaturally pale, probably due to the sunspots or what have you, and the moon actually disappeared from sight for a time during the lunar eclipse of June 9th to 10th. Whoa. And one day in July, it was so dark that candles had to be lit at noon. Where? Indoors, I assume.

No, but like what country? Ah, in this case, we're in Geneva, because I'm about to introduce the celebrity special guest stars of this story. And they are Lord Byron. Ooh. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. MWS. Percy Psh Shelley. Psh. Friend of the podcast, Percy Bish Shelley.

Yeah, he's always doing those fun, practised handshakes. Psh, psh, psh, psh. Oh, the old, yeah, the fist bump and the fadeaway. Percy Fist Bump Shelley, who, of course, has featured on the podcast before. Yeah. As well as the legendary friends of them, Dr Polidori and Claire Claremont. Oh, Dr... Yeah.

Claire Claremont, so annoying, they named her twice. Well, these guys are all pretty famous, and also slightly annoyingly, since this is supposed to be about obscure folklore, they were all in a recent episode of Doctor Who. Oh. But they missed out loads of important details and added in a cyberman i

think we're safe lord byron and shelly and shelly and polidori and claremont had taken a house on lake geneva that summer they were doing the grand tour of europe seeing loads of stuff and having poetic feelings about all sorts of things but summer was completely ruined by the fact that it didn't happen that's's annoying. That is annoying. And this is probably where most people will have heard about 1816. One night they had sort of a little game where they all decided to write a ghost story. Dr. Polidori wrote The Vampire, which is one of the first vampire novels in the English language, predating Dracula.

And way more importantly than that, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, which is like the first science fiction book and super, super important. And Lord Byron, not on that particular night, but during this summer, wrote the poem Darkness, which describes a world in which the sun just switched off that descends into darkness and madness. And it's really, really good, but very emo. So any teenagers listening, let's be honest, there are no teenagers who listen to this. Can I read a little bit of Darkness? Yeah, I'm not good with poems, but go on.

I'll tell you what, I'll just, I'll read it to you in a sort of an actory voice. Okay. Will that work? Yeah. All right. But two of an enormous city did survive and they were enemies.

They met beside the dying embers of an altar place where had been heaped a mass of holy things for an unholy usage they raked up and shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands the feeble ashes and their feeble breath blew for a little life and made a flame which was a mockery then they lifted up their eyes as it grew lighter and beheld each other's aspects saw and shrieked and died even of their mutual hideousness they died unknowing who he was upon whose brow famine had written fiend and when i read that i thought that's sort of why we do the podcast remotely now oh yeah because if we were to look into each other's faces and see

how we'd changed i haven't shaved since it started i've shaved the word fiend into my face a bit like prince and luckily you had a very hairy face to begin with oh yeah you could put a book I haven't shaved since it started. I've shaved the word fiend into my face a bit like Prince. And luckily you have a very hairy face to begin with. Oh yeah, you could put a book. Just a shopping list, normally. Razors. Just the word get milk. You always need it.

Do I have time to give you a little bit of background to these guys, our celebrity guest stars? Because the dynamic of that house on Lake Geneva is quite interesting. I think it might have been a bit much for me. I do think so. So if you haven't heard of any of these people, Lord Byron is an aristocrat and extremely successful poet,

dilettante revolutionary and seducer of people, including his own half-sister, probably. Don't go into it. One of my favourite things about Lord Byron is our friend the comedian barry ferns told me that at one point he was running out of money and so he had to strip down all of his his belongings he had to just get rid of everything that wasn't essential and after that he still kept his bear he has in his house just he absolutely couldn't do without the bear fair enough per percy bisch shelly has just left his wife from the previous podcast and shacked up with mary woolston craft shelly um his his new wife who is the daughter of mary woolston craft the philosopher who wrote

vindication of the rights of man uh vindication of the rights of woman so these are incredibly progressive thinkers except when it comes to mirrors yeah look you're referencing percy shelly shooting a ghost a genuine ghost through a window percy shelly yeah he's a he's a romantic nut bar uh and genius and polidori and claremont are quite interesting dr polidori is a would-be writer who is totally obsessed with byron and that byron really doesn't like i have any time for but he's there well he's there he's like byron's doctor which I think means drug dealer I think that's what that is because it's like I'm traveling with Dr. Polidori what's wrong with you nothing ah Lordenum is the reason Dr. Polidori's there I think

and Claire Claremont is there because she's extremely in love with Byron and she thinks Byron might be in love with her because he keeps doing, you know, little things like having sex with her. But he isn't. And so it's kind of awkward. And I don't know how Claremont keeps coming out of this badly, but she does, even though it's clearly Byron is being the bad guy there.

And Polidori ends up really offending Byron because when he writes The Vampire, which he publishes anonymously, which was the style at the time, but it was widely thought, well, first of all, it was widely thought that Byron because when he writes The Vampire, which he publishes anonymously, which was the style at the time, but it was widely thought, well, first of all, it was widely thought that Byron had written it and Polidori is a significantly less good writer than Byron, so Byron was very offended about that.

But also a lot of people think that the character of the vampire in it, the seductive vampire, was based on Byron, which I think he might have found a little insulting. Did this vampire have a pet bear? I just want to be clear. Vampire is spelt with a Y. Oh, I could hear that. I hoped I was saying it correctly.

I just want to make sure I'm getting the names, the points for names that I deserve here. So we have a year without a summer and a prophecy that begins in a tiny Italian town and both of them spread all across the world. And they have all kinds of impact on human culture, including the production of a really important novel in Frankenstein. The weather has effect on immigration patterns, even things like the anti-slavery movement, the abolitionist movement in America. Some people think that that was affected by the abolitionists left the East Coast and moved to get better weather.

So there's all sorts of subtle ways that this incredible and unprecedented weather change might have changed the world. But what caused it? And now, James, what I'd like to do is present the suspects for you to judge. Ooh, yeah. A la Hercule Poirot. Okay. Am I Poirot then? Or am I a Hastings still?

I would not Hastings you at this stage. Thanks, man. You're Poirot. Yeah. So I'm going to lay out the suspects for you now. Right. The first suspect you've already met. The eight sunspots. The black bile that appeared on the surface of the sun. People were obsessed with bile in those days. And so

they assumed it was bile. And it seemed quite reasonable. You know, people were speculating that, well, it stands to reason that the heat from the earth comes from the sun. Absolutely. And so if there are holes in the sun, you know, like if there were holes in a piece of fabric,

it doesn't work as well. So maybe that's the reason that the whole world has gone cold. Makes sense. Checks out. Yeah. A German writer, according to History Extra. Is he a hamburger? Let's assume that.

A German hamburger or a frankfurter. A German writer put the cold down to a lack of gunpowder in the atmosphere following the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815. So that was his idea. Was it cooled down? It just got colder. Because people weren't shooting enough. Yes.

Right. And running about. Third theory, Benjamin Franklin was responsible, even though he was dead, because he had installed lightning rods on buildings. The idea being that they would draw out the electrical fire from the skies before lightning could strike. Electrical fire was what Benjamin Franklin called lightning.

But the critics thought that the lightning rods were stopping the Earth from releasing its heat back into the atmosphere. Oh, so it was draining the clouds of their power. Yes, and so it was all trapped in the Earth and that they were going to be stuck in a perpetual winter as a consequence of Franklin's meddling. And I suppose also the lightning's not setting fire to as many trees anymore. Yeah, so it's colder.

Yes. Okay, so that was our third suspect. The fourth suspect, the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815. This was a pretty big eruption. It was 2.2 million times as powerful as the first atomic bomb. Wow. It was heard 800 miles away and it rained down 175 cubic kilometres of debris, ash and stone, for weeks afterwards. Wow. Or, suspect number five. Go on. Napoleon went into the sun. Napoleon. And made it colder on purpose, like an evil Care Bear what that's the fifth theory

did Care Bears fly into the sun no they control the weather Care Bears control the weather nobody remembers Care Bears as well as me they definitely control the weather surely it's just the weather-based Care Bear controlled the weather like oh there was Sunshine Bear

yeah and there's a rainbow rainbow bear isn't there yeah yeah so that so that's not Napoleon to be fair that last theory was uh proposed by uh under the name syntax sidroffel and was definitely satirical because the the newspapers were very very sniffy about all the theories flying around and were regularly

printing sarcastic hot takes ouch making fun of people so uh which of those do you think it was was it spots in the sun the lack of wall benjamin franklin the one that it obviously was or napoleon being in the sun uh hmm yes it's the it's i'm gonna go with the volcano please alistair uh i'll just check that and that is well we we don't know but that is the one that scientists think it was. The year earlier, the volcano Tambora had exploded. And we're at the beginning of a globalized world here. So people had heard about the fact that it had happened. Word had spread around the world.

But nobody at the time, no one made the connection between that explosion and the fact that the entire summer was ruined. Ah. So they have a chance. that the entire summer was ruined. Ah. So there you have it, James. That was The Year Without a Summer, featuring celebrity guest stars and a mystery and a prophecy which came true, sort of. Yeah, that's great. I think a similar thing happened after the eruption at Pompeii,

Vesuvius. You say that as if Vesuvius is a close personal friend? Yeah, I think there was a similar problem with crops and stuff after Vesuvius is a close personal friend. Yeah, I think there was a similar problem with crops and stuff after Vesuvius. Well, I think it's time for the scores. Yes. My first category is supernatural. Okay. We've got a prophecy.

We've got about three prophecies. We've got a Frankenstein. We've got a Frankenstein's monster. We've got a vampire. We've got Napoleon flying into the's monster we've got a vampire we've got napoleon flying into the sun like a care bear like an evil care bear yes yeah we've got byron's apocalyptic vision captured in the poem darkness of a world gone dark we've got the bolognese prophecy no there's no ghosts though are there oh flipping heck no there's no ghosts in it we've got a a woman in bath in a coma yeah there's old old belgian ladies we've

got clouds in liege oh you do have a cloud that looks a cloud that looks like a mountain and it's in the shape of a mountain which is the shape of a volcano so maybe the cloud is warning them isn't it that's almost unheard of isn't it a cloud looking like a thing people really believed and it's understandably so like um peasants were up in arms and rioting because because they had no food and people really thought it was the end of the world and churches were full of people you know full of penitence the newspapers reported and it's a weird time i think because the newspapers are extremely sneering and scoffing about it one of them wrote a satirical sketch where an angel appears to a weaver in yorkshire and and says there are there are 17 flea bites on your arms and there are 17 sunspots on the sun and both of them have the same likelihood of affecting the weather as each other oh

which is a bit of yeah like a bit of a burn on weavers yeah so what's the score for supernatural oh it's like two like not really happened james yeah so that's that's even less supernatural one all right that's how we're gonna play it fine then fine uh next category names oh Fine, then. Fine. Next category, names. Oh, yeah. All right. Okay. I don't think I didn't see you playing the game. What game? What game? Take it up with Clingerman and Clingerman.

Clingerman, Bros and Sons. Take it up with Dr. Polidori. The Many Doors. Take it up with Syntax Sidruffle. Syntax Sidruffle. And old Claire Claremont. Clairele. And old Claire Claremont. Claire Claremont. 100cc of slightly creepy stalker.

And? And the Bolognese astronomer. Oh, I just got that picture back in my head again. Lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Even the name 1800 and Froz to Death is quite good. That's a great one, yeah. Oh, it's got to be five.

There were loads more as well that you were just dropping in throughout. I was overwhelmed by the amount of excellent names. Even the anonymous name had the best name. The anonymous Bolognese composer. What was it? No. The next category is emo. Oh, yeah. It's very emo they've gone they've gone into railing

yep it's a it's a gap year they're hanging out with people who they are not as good friends with as they thought they were at the start of the trip and they're writing poems they're trapped indoors because of bad weather they can't go out because it's raining. Byron can't even see his bear. And the peasants are having an emo time of it. I'm not sure if starving to death is that emo. But they do look skinny. It's very emo, really, isn't it? Yeah, and the new British Lady magazine reports that everyone in Paris is feeling a bit mopey,

which is probably par for the course in France, especially Paris. Still. Yeah. I can't think of a more emo set of circumstances, unless like the soot in the air from the volcanic eruption mixed with the tears of people not having any food and gave them permanent eyeliner. So are you knocking it down because of the lack of eyeliner? Because there wasn't naturally occurring eyeliner.

No, it's five. It is five. It's five. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Final category, explosivity. Oh, boom time. I've saved a little faxlet for you here.

Oh, yeah. The eruption of the volcano Tambora is a seven on the volcanic explosivity index. Right. Now, you might be thinking of other explosions, like you mentioned Vesuvius. Vesuvius. Vesuvius was a five. Whoa.

Yeah. Vesuvius was just a five. Just a five. Tambora was a seven. That's two more. And bear in mind, the volcanic explosivity index only goes up to eight. Whoa. If you want to find an eight you

have to go back two million years in recent human history there's been no volcanic explosion bigger than the explosion of tambora in 1815 what was that recent one yeah it won't have been as big james otherwise we would it would have been on the news i think there was something else on the news small fry james this is nothing these arenat's wings. These are little burps. Yeah. Compared to the massive trump of... Sorry, any American listeners. Trump to us means a smelly wind.

That's one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs. To English people, Trump is something that's very unpleasant to be in a lift with. Don't know if that translates. So I guess what I'm saying,ames is it was a really it was really explosive yeah i mean explosivity i want to give it a seven now i think it's a seven i honestly think it's a seven i think i want to give it a seven yeah is that it it changed the world

it really changed the world it starts somewhere in bologna and it starts in a volcano in tambora and it spreads all across the world and has all kinds of different effects without anybody managing to connect it all together it's incredible definitely i'm gonna break the rules i'm ripping up the rule book oh i'm changing the format just for this one not okay forever to give you a seven out of five oh thank you very much for explosivity i appreciate you clarifying that you're not setting a precedent here, like a judge specifically making it clear. No, this is just for this one.

Well, it really was. Even a rarer thing than a once-in-a-lifetime event. The story itself very much resonates with me as well, because back in the Christmas of 2010, I went on a once-in-a-l trip to australia for some winter sun and it um it was the wettest summer in australia that they'd had there were floods everywhere the bundaberg rum distillery got flooded for example so i can really you know know... You can relate there, yeah. I wrote a couple of poems which I... like to read.

It's called The Dampness. So, James, that was 1816, the year without a summer. It was the opposite of 1996. That was a very big summer. It was Euro 96, wasn't it? It was Euro 96. It was the height of Britpop. I think I had my first Alco-Pop.

You've been listening to Lawmen with me, Alistair Beckett-King. And me, James Shakeshaft. A little bit defensive there, James. Did sound a bit defensive, actually, didn't it? If you enjoyed this episode, you can like, subscribe, give us a comment, email us to suggest a story, or even recommend the podcast to a friend. Thank you for listening. Thanks. one two three i'm quite i'm annoyed that you weren't recording for that bit where you asked what other famous scales were there extremely on brand question question. Yeah. Richter, Mose, volcanic explosivity.

I listed pentatonic, justice and fish. Kitchen. Oh. Dragon. Oh, no, wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was going to get into the never-ending story. Is it a dog or a dragon debate?

It's a dragon. It's canonically a dragon. Yes, yes, yes.