Indian summer, all the way from the United States
I ALWAYS understood the phrase “Indian Summer” to be of colonial provenance. It evokes images of sweaty civil servants of the Raj sipping pale ales in their shirtsleeves and moaning about the “bloody heat”.
Yet it turns out to come from another part of the Empire altogether, at a time when its residents were casting off the yoke of British rule and telling us in no uncertain terms to stuff off.
On Jan 17, 1778 – in the midst of the American War of Independence – J Hector St John de Crèvecoeur, a French-American traveller and author wrote the first recorded use of the phrase. Describing the weather of the Mohawk country of the eastern US, he said: “Sometimes the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warm which is called the Indian summer.”
For Crèvecoeur there was to be no such peaceful end to the turbulence. During the war he was jailed by the British, only to return to find his home had been burned, his wife had died and his children had been scattered to other cities. At least work provided some form of consolation; his letters, essays and books were later widely published and heralded for the insight they provided into American rural life. It did not take long in Britain for his phrase to seep into popular parlance.
So think of poor old Crèvecoeur this week. High pressure is building and – as with last weekend – expect plenty of golden autumnal sunshine.
According to the Met Office there is no real statistical data to support the notion of Indian summers occurring at any particular time of year, only that belated warm spells at this time of year are not uncommon. The warmest recorded temperature in the UK for October was 85F (29.9C) in Gravesend, Kent, in 2011. For November it was 71F (21.7C) on the eve of Bonfire Night 1946 in Prestatyn, Denbighshire.
Expect no such heights to be scaled this weekend. Only the last glorious days of an inglorious summer before the cold months ahead.