England's last victory in any five-Test rubber was extracted from Australia in 1986-87, which is so long ago that only four players from the tour are still playing - the captain Mike Gatting, Phil DeFreitas, Gladstone Small and James Whitaker.
The current South Africa series has faint echoes from 1888, England's only successful comeback, when a similarly rainy summer affected the three-Test series against Australia.
Percy McDonnell's touring Australians lost the decider at Old Trafford by an innings after they had been snared by Bobby Peel on a drying pitch. Only six hours 34 minutes of playing time was needed, still the shortest completed Test on record.
If Stewart's team are to emulate W G Grace's old-timers, their methods will be radically different on a dry, covered pitch. Peel's left-arm spin took 11 wickets in the 1888 match. Australia followed on and lost before lunch on the second day, with 18 wickets falling in the morning. Their second innings lasted only 69 minutes.
England had lost the first Test at Lord's under Allan Steel, a Lancastrian, who was dropped and Grace took over the captaincy. The Surrey committee chose the side for the successful second Test at the Oval, drafting in five Surrey players - a presence echoed in modern times.
Old Trafford was McDonnell's last Test and he died eight years later of consumption at the age of 37. Peel was sacked by Yorkshire at the age of 40, accused of going out to field in an inebriated state.
If England were to choose a venue where they could overturn history, Headingley would be high on the list, because South Africa have won only one of their nine Tests at Leeds - that was in 1955 - and they have lost five.
Umpiring note from a different era: England complained so persistently about standards in the fifth Test against Australia at Melbourne in 1885 that one official was substituted for the last two days and the other refused to stand after tea on the third day, being replaced by Tom Garrett, one of the Australian seamers. A lawyer by profession, one assumes he would have been adept at handling appeals.
Today's equivalent would perhaps be Mervyn Kitchen handing his coat in exasperation to Allan Donald to bear the brunt of the big screen replays.