Three years before I was born, my parents drove to London only to be wrapped in the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, the last London smog – born of ten million coal fires insinuating their smoke into the streets and passageways and parks – those lungs of the metropolis – fog turned to smog -mixing its sulphurous poison with fumes from the growing tide of motor vehicles to burn the lungs of the pulmonarily challenge – trees recoiled and people died…
A fog so thick my mother had to walk in front of the car waving a torch – a fog that recalls Dickens’ opening to Bleak House, and at least there weren’t motor cars in his day, but this twentieth-century fog too far, sealed the fate of future smogs by ushering in The Clean Air Act and the advent of smokeless fuel…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Prosery, invites us to write a piece of poetic prose in exactly 144 words to include a line from T.S.Elliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”. This recalled for me, one of my Mother’s stories about driving to London in 1952 and encountering the last great London smog…
I love all those references to the past which is of course also part of Eliot’s poem. Also the opening of Bleak House was something that I thought of.
Some things can change for the better.
Thanks Bjorn – I hadn’t realised that Elliot lived in Oxford and only died in 1965. Around that time, I learned and recited for a competition at the Dragon School, part of “The Wasteland” which appeared in our Dragon Book of Verse – probably the most modern poem in it…
Your Prosery piece resonates with me, Andrew, London smog being familiar, as is Dickens’ opening to Bleak house – as you may know, I am a huge Dickens fan. I remember seeing people walking in front of cars with torches.
I love that opening, Kim, it is so lyrical…
That was a good thing that came out of that fog. Here in my city, every winter- from December to February, we have smog. That makes breathing the polluted air hazardous.
Sorry to hear that Sadje…
Yes, it happens every year and they don’t do anything to stop it. Just close the schools because the air quality is very bad.
That was interesting! I didn’t know that about the last great smog in London. I am glad The Clean Air Act came to be. We need to continue to keep our air clean from pollutants. The future depends on us the stewards of the earth.
Indeed it does Truedessa and we are not doing very well at present…
Beautifully narrated! You took me there.
Thanks, Carol…