Page 75 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Williamsom, who was familiar with Espy’s theory, remarked to a companion that
the fire should soon produce rain unless disturbed by upper currents:

Up went the column strait as an arrow, and anon it began to expand at the top
and assume the appearance of cloud. This cloud, with its base stationary, expanded
upward, and swelled as if a huge engine was below with its valve open for the escape
of steam. . . . Soon the rain began to descend . . . [and the cloud] sailed off in an east-
ern direction, pouring down torrents of rain. . . . I have ever regarded [this event] as
a perfect and undeniable demonstration of the truth of [your] theory, and I can no
more doubt it than I can doubt the evidence of my senses. 16

For his work in mapping and forecasting and for his tireless promotion of
rainmaking, Espy earned the derisive sobriquet “the Storm King.”

eliza leslie’s “rain king”

The year Espy moved to Washington, the popular magazine writer Eliza Les-
lie published a short story in Godey’s Lady’s Book called “The Rain King, or, A
Glance at the Next Century,” a fanciful account of rainmaking a century in the
future, in 1942. In the story, Espy’s great-great-grand-nephew, the new Rain King,
offers weather on demand for the Philadelphia area. Various factions vie for the
weather they desire. Scores of alfalfa farmers and three hundred washerwomen
petition the Rain King for fine weather forever, while corn growers, cabmen, and
umbrella makers want consistent rains. Fair-weather and foul-weather factions
apply in equal numbers until the balance is tipped by a late request from a high-
society matron desperately seeking a hard rain to muddy the roads and prevent a
visit by her country-bumpkin cousins.
When the artificial rains come, they satisfy no one and raise widespread sus-
picions. The Rain King, suddenly unpopular because he lacks the miraculous
power to please everybody, takes a steamboat to China, where he studies magic
in anticipation of returning someday with new offerings. “Natural rains had
never occasioned anything worse than submissive regret to those who suffered
inconvenience from them, and were always received more in sorrow than in
anger,” Leslie wrote. “But these artificial rains were taken more in anger than in
sorrow, by all who did not want them.” 17
Leslie’s short, humorous fantasy revealed a dramatic and instantaneous
change in public attitudes “precipitated” by artificial weather control. Although
Leslie was no meteorologist, her tale “showed a far better grasp of weather’s

58 | rain makerS