Clerk of the Weather

Lore & Background

The Clerk of the Weather appears in children's stories by Rose Fyleman ('The Weather Clerk'), Robert Swindells (The Weather-Clerk), and others. He also appears in facetious turns of phrase such as 'another fine day was supplied by the clerk of the weather'.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1836 short story 'A Visit to the Clerk of the Weather', he is imagined as a 6,000-year-old man living on another planet. Within his dwelling, he has a stock of thunderbolts, rainbows, hailstones, sacks of wind, and a 'portable tempest, firmly secured with iron bands'. His companions include Jack Frost and Spring.

In Herman Melville's poem 'Pebbles', one finds 'Though the Clerk of the Weather insist, / And lay down the weather-law, / Pintado and gannet they wist / That the winds blow whither they list / In tempest or flaw'. In Samuel Clemens' 1876 speech, he attributed New England weather to 'raw apprentices in the Weather Clerk's factory'. U. A. Fanthorpe, in her poem 'Special', refers to a class of children looking after a dog as 'Clerks of the Weather'.

Reader's Guide

The Clerk of the Weather serves as a playful literary device to personify the forces of nature, appearing across genres from children's literature to poetry and oratory. Hawthorne's depiction as an ancient being on another planet with a store of meteorological items established a vivid image that later writers adapted. Melville used the figure to contrast human attempts to impose order on nature with the wild freedom of winds. Clemens humorously employed the Weather Clerk's factory as a metaphor for the unpredictable, experimental weather of New England. Fanthorpe's modern usage extends the term to children caring for a dog, showing its adaptability. The figure's persistence in English-language culture reflects a human tendency to imagine a whimsical bureaucrat behind the weather, blending humor with a sense of cosmic order. Its significance lies in its versatility as a cultural shorthand for the idea that weather is directed by a comical, quasi-official authority.

Did You Know?

• In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1836 story, the Clerk of the Weather is a 6,000-year-old man living on another planet.
• His dwelling contains thunderbolts, rainbows, hailstones, sacks of wind, and a 'portable tempest, firmly secured with iron bands'.
• Samuel Clemens, in an 1876 speech, said New England weather was made by 'raw apprentices in the Weather Clerk's factory'.
• U. A. Fanthorpe's poem 'Special' calls a class of children looking after a dog 'Clerks of the Weather'.

The Concept and Its Literary Home

The Clerk of the Weather is a whimsical, entirely fictional official — a personification of atmospheric control that writers and speakers invoke with playful seriousness. Rather than being a real position, this imaginary functionary is facetiously credited with directing the weather, much as one might blame a bureaucratic clerk for a misfiled document. The figure has found a natural home in children's literature, appearing in works by Rose Fyleman under the title "The Weather Clerk" and in Robert Swindells' "The Weather-Clerk," among others. Beyond dedicated stories, the concept permeates everyday facetious language, where a pleasant day might be described as having been "supplied by the clerk of the weather," lending a mock-official tone to the simple act of sunshine or rain. This blend of bureaucratic imagery and natural phenomena gives the Clerk a uniquely English flavor of dry, understated humor.

Hawthorne's Grand Imagining

Nathaniel Hawthorne gave the Clerk of the Weather his most elaborate literary treatment in his 1836 short story "A Visit to the Clerk of the Weather." In this tale, the functionary is no mere office worker but a 6,000-year-old man residing on another planet, suggesting a being of immense age and cosmic responsibility. His dwelling is a warehouse of meteorological raw materials: shelves hold thunderbolts, rainbows, and hailstones, while sacks of wind and a "portable tempest, firmly secured with iron bands" suggest that even the most violent weather is catalogued, packaged, and shipped like ordinary goods. The Clerk is not alone in this celestial workshop; his companions include Jack Frost and Spring, personified seasonal forces who presumably assist in the daily production of weather. Hawthorne's vision transforms a facetious phrase into a richly detailed fantasy of bureaucratic nature.

Defiance and Satire in Melville and Clemens

Herman Melville's poem "Pebbles" introduces a crucial twist: the Clerk of the Weather may insist and lay down the weather-law, yet the Pintado and gannet know that winds blow whither they list, in tempest or flaw. Here the Clerk's authority is gently undermined by the irreducible will of nature, which answers to no administrative decree. Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, took a different satirical angle in his 1876 speech at the New England Society of New York. He attributed New England's notoriously fickle weather to raw apprentices in the Weather Clerk's factory, who experiment and learn their trade there for board and clothes before being promoted to produce weather for more demanding markets. Clemens's joke implies that New England serves as a training ground, its inhabitants receiving substandard atmospheric product while the apprentices still fumble their craft. Both writers use the Clerk to explore the tension between human desire for control and nature's indifference.

The Clerk in Later and Unexpected Voices

The Clerk of the Weather continued to appear in later literary and poetic contexts, sometimes in surprising guises. U. A. Fanthorpe, in her poem "Special," repurposes the title entirely, referring to a class of children looking after a dog as "Clerks of the Weather." This usage strips the figure of its meteorological specificity and recasts the phrase as a playful label for small, earnest responsibility — children performing their duties with the solemnity of official functionaries. The broader tradition, from Fyleman and Swindells to Fanthorpe, shows how the Clerk has become a flexible literary device: a way to impose mock-bureaucratic order on chaos, to credit an invisible hand for the mundane, or to grant children a grand-sounding title for small acts of care. The figure endures because it sits at the intersection of humor, personification, and the human need to assign blame or credit for the weather we cannot control.

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