DEFOE'S JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR PT 1

#A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

The text of my abridgement which appeared on my Twitter-feed in 300-character bites at least daily between 1 April and 1 July.

Introduction

The extraordinary book first appeared in 1722 and takes the form of a first-person narrative by H.F., a London saddler who tells us he has drawn from diaries he kept day by day during the outbreak of plague in 1665. The Journal is a highly realistic document with all the appearance of being what it claims to be. H.F. describes the course of the outbreak from a first-hand point of view, passing on what he has seen and heard and augmenting this with statistics and other data that (we assume) he has diligently researched in the years since. It is full of observed details, from the lockdown of families to the digging of burial pits, from the plague symptoms to the possible cures. It is also full of H.F.'s own curiosity: what is the cause of the disease? How may infection be prevented? Is household lockdown an effective response?

Despite this persuasive realism the whole thing is a kind of hoax. There was no such a person as H.F. and the personal experiences he relates were concocted by the long-time journalist and pamphleteer, and more recently novelist, Daniel Defoe. They are emphatically not Defoe's own experiences recast in the voice of H.F. Defoe was 5 years old when the events of the book occurred.

Is it a novel? If so it has few of the attributes we usually associate with the genre, and is superficially much more like a hybrid of journalism and a memoir. Yet it is a novel, because it hinges on the imaginative creation of H.F. as a character: independent, stubborn, pious, impatient with the poor, deferential towards the city government, fussy about the unsociable habits of others. It is also a portrait of a city and its people in crisis. As we have been going through a comparable crisis over the past few months, it is a marvellous thing to see the many parallels between the pandemic of 1665 and that of 2020.

PART 1

Restoration London. It all begins with rumour & speculation, secrecy & alarm. Now follow Daniel Defoe’s brilliant piece of faux narrative journalism abridged in twitter-size bites. Be warned: it gets quite dark before it’s over.  

It was about the beginning of September 1664 I heard that plague was returned to Holland. It was brought, some said, from Italy, from the Levant, from Canada, from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

It seems that the Government had a true account of it & several councils were held about ways to prevent it coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence this rumour died off as a thing we were very little concerned in & that we hoped was not true.

At the beginning of December two men said to be Frenchmen died at the upper end of Drury Lane & the Secretaries of State got knowledge of it. Two Physicians & a Surgeon were ordered to the house & they gave their opinion that they died of Plague. 

Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, & it was printed in the weekly bill of mortality in the usual manner thus: Plague 2. Parishes infected 1. The people showed great concern at this.

Then we were easy again for six weeks when none having died with any marks of infection it was said the distemper was gone. But, I think it was on the 12^th of February, another died in another house, but in the same parish & in the same manner.

The weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St Giles’s parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the Plague was among the people at that end of town, though they had taken care to keep it from the knowledge of the public. 

It was observed with great uneasiness by the people that the weekly mortality bills in general now increased & burials in St Giles from the beginning of April were thirty whereof 2 of the plague & 8 of spotted fever which was looked upon as the same thing. 

Terrible apprehensions were among the people, the weather being changed & growing warm as the distemper spread into 2 or 3 other parishes. 1 died in Bearbinder Lane who having lived in Long Acre had removed for fear, not knowing he was already infected.

They searched the houses & found that several families lay all sick together & in the weekly bills the thing now began to show itself. In St Giles they buried 40 whereof it was certain most of them died of the plague though they were set down of other distempers.

All that could conceal their distempers did it to prevent their neighbours shunning & refusing to converse with them & also to prevent Authority shutting up their houses, which was threatened, & people were extremely terrified at the thought of it.

I lived midway between Aldgate Church & Whitechapel Bars & our neighbourhood continued very easy but at the other end of town their consternation was very great & the richer sort of people from the west part of the city thronged out of town with their families & servants

Nothing was to be seen but wagons & carts with goods, women, servants, children & coaches filled with people of the better sort all hurrying away besides innumerable men on horseback all loaded with baggage & fitted out for travelling.

There was no getting at the Mayor’s door without exceeding difficulty; there were such pressing & crowding to get passes & certificates of health, for without these there was no being admitted to pass thro the towns on the road, or lodge in any inn.

This hurry to escape continued all of May & June. It was rumoured that the Government was to place turnpikes & barriers on the road to prevent people travelling & that towns on the road would not suffer people from London to pass for fear of infection.

As for myself, I was a saddler & a single man but I had a house, shop & warehouses filled with goods which to leave without any overseer fit to be trusted with them had been to hazard the loss not only of my trade but of all I had in the world.

Turning the Bible I cried out ‘I know not what to do. Lord Direct me!’ & happened to stop at the 91^st Psalm: ‘Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler & the noisesome pestilence.’ From that moment I resolved that I would stay in town.

The next day I was very much out of order & continued ill for 3 or 4 days. It was an ill time to be sick for if anyone complained it was immediately said he had the plague, though I had indeed no symptoms of that & in about 3 days grew better & went about my business as usual.

It was now mid-July & within the walls was indifferently healthy. The infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes which being fuller of poor the distemper found more to prey on. But this face of things soon changed as the city began to be visited within the walls.

The Court went to Oxford where the distemper did not so much as touch them. They showed no great token of thankfulness though their crying vices might without breach of charity be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible judgement on the whole nation.

Lamentation was seen in almost every house at first though towards the end of the visitation men’s hearts were hardened. With death so always before their eyes they did not concern themselves for the loss of friends expecting that themselves would be summoned the next hour.