IN THE summer of 1883 a massive volcano erupted on the small island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Straits, between Java and Sumatra, in what is now called Indonesia. The explosion was heard over 3,000 miles away, and is believed to have been the loudest sound ever heard on earth since prehistoric, times. Giant tidal waves were generated which surged across the Indian Ocean reaching heights of 120 feet, and when everything had settled down again, it was found that more than 30,000 people had been killed. An estimated four cubic miles of debris was hurled into the atmosphere in a few frenzied hours.
But for those not in the immediate vicinity, there were positive aesthetic aspects to this spectacular event. Tiny particles of ash penetrated the stratosphere to heights of 30 miles or more, and as they spread with time around the entire globe, they caused the sun to appear blue and green in many parts of the tropics. The volcanic dust also gave spectacular sunsets right around the world during the succeeding two years. Gerard Manley Hopkins, more comprehensible in prose than he very often is in poetry, has left a graphic description of conditions in Stonyhurst, in "England, in December, 1883.
"The glow is intense; it has prolonged daylight and optically changed the season; it bathes the whole sky. It is mistaken for the reflection of great fire, more like inflamed flesh than the lurid red of ordinary sunsets, and lines the clouds so that their brims look like gold, brass, bronze or steel. It gives to a mackerel or dappled cloud rack the appearance of quilted, crimson silk, or a ploughed field glazed with crimson ice.
Hopkins, however, was not the only one to notice these displays. Here in Ireland in 1884, the young song writer, Percy French, was an inspector of drains in Co Cavan, and his daughter, Ettie, tells us of the effect that Krakatoa had on him: "My father was 30 when he was first attracted to landscape painting. He was enjoying a full life of congenial activities and deeply in love with the girl he was going to marry, when a series of wonderful sunsets over Lough Sheelin completely bowled him over. He went out every evening and tried to capture in paint, colours which were due to volcanic dust."
Thus it was that Krakatoa started Percy French on his subsidiary career as a celebrated water colour painter. Who knows, but that the recent eruption in Iceland may in time unleash a talent just as great?