The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year

Episode 35: Postscript

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0000

Although the London plague was not a pandemic as we now understand the word, for the citizens of that great capital, the experience of it was total. For those that did not flee the disease, the City was the World. In this postscript, I present some reflections on life during the plague in London as Defoe described it and offer some comparisons to our experiences during a pandemic of our own.

Credits: Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard. Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings

Episode 34: A Visible Summons to Thankfulness

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Here at the end we find a bit of literary license, for the abatement of the plague is depicted by Defoe as a swift and decisive stroke from heaven, “the immediate finger of God." Suddenly the plague abates, and one week, on a day (a Thursday!) that is distinguished with such specificity that it is almost like reentering historical time after the nightmare plague, the bills of mortality show a precipitous drop in deaths from the disease. Physicians marvel that their sick patients appear to be recovering; strangers greet each other in the streets with expressions of amazement and gratitude to God; and the city rejoices. Defoe would like to end his account on a positive note, so he brings it to a close without going into the “unpleasing work,” as he puts it, of detailing the return to vice and immorality of the city, its lack of thankfulness for the reprieve that has been granted them. He has clearly made of the plague a morality tale, but here, as throughout the work, he chooses only to report on what he has seen and to allow readers to draw their own conclusions from the account. So this ends the reading of A Journal of the Plague Year. While it’s been a long and harrowing journey, if you’ve come this far you’ve clearly formed some impressions of the work as a whole and, possibly, its relationship to the concerns of our time. In that spirit, I’ve appended a postscript representing some of my own thoughts. If you’re interested, I invite you to “stay tuned” for one more episode. Thank you very much for your time and attention these past few months!

Episode 33: Judge the Most Favourably and According to Charity

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Having reached very near the end of his narrative, the author is in a mood to reconcile his accounts, and in a spirit of tolerance he strikes a balanced tone, urging that compassion color the judgments made, particularly of those clergy and physicians who fled the city in fear. Here and there is a settling of scores, particularly with respect to quacks, mountebanks, and prognosticators, but in general he is inclined to forgive and move on, both as a matter of personal inclination and as a literary device toward concluding his story. He lists various offices that, in the main, distinguished themselves by their devotion to duty, speaks of the largely useless efforts to purge and purify houses affected by the distemper, and ends this episode as he began it, with a swipe at the uninvolved and indifferent national government.

[For notes on the main themes of the novel, visit https://londonplague.com/postscript/. To see some ways in which our reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated in the Journal, see https://londonplague.com/concordance/.]

Episode 32: They Might as Well Have Talked to the Air

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

More on how the decline in the mortality rate put the people of London “past all admonitions.” As in the last episode, the author chronicles the city’s return to the usual vices and immoralities once the danger was perceived to have passed (which it had not), and the failure of all attempts to lessen the chances of reinfection. One of the more moving notes in the episode could almost pass unnoticed, so little emphasis is it given, as he describes how people returning from the countryside found entire families of their acquaintance wiped out, so stricken by the plague that there was no remembrance of them, and no trace of their belongings. At the end of this episode, Defoe describes the premature relocation of certain mass graves.

Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard. Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings

Episode 31: Rash and Foolish Conduct

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 23:32:16 +0000

Here is an account, as they say, “ripped from the headlines.” In the early fall of the year, following a week in which no fewer than 8,200 people died of all diseases, the plague began to abate, and the mortality rate dropped. No sooner did the epidemic begin to loosen its grip on the city than people began restarting their public lives in earnest, gathering in groups, visiting each other’s homes, going to taverns, and returning to work, where they had it. People who had fled the city, hearing this, began to return. Predictably, as their physicians and clergy warned, this behavior allowed the disease to rebound for a time before finally subsiding in earnest with the onset of winter. The author wonders whether the “precipitant disposition” of people to disregard reason and common sense is the same everywhere but will not commit himself to answer. Our own recent experiences, I think, argue strongly in favor of the proposition.

Episode 30: Trade and Commerce II

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Here continues a brief review of trade during the plague, this time with an emphasis on domestic trade. The author discusses the provision of coal and foodstuffs to the city and the general state of the trades, which naturally suffered tremendously during the visitation but which rebounded following the great fire in the summer of the next year, which consumed not only households but also the contents of the great warehouses along the river. In the aftermath of the fire, replacing those goods, including manufactures destined for the rest of England and for the Continent, fueled massive reemployment. This episode also makes mention of the great coal-fueled bonfires that the authorities placed strategically around the city in an effort to ward off the disease. The author punctuates his account with a discussion of the difference between atmospheric and coal-fired heat, the former, he claims, sustaining vermin and venomous creatures that breed in food, plants, and even in our bodies, the latter assisting to clear and purge the air of noxious, disease-bearing particles. While he does not elaborate, apparently the public fires became such a menace in and of themselves that they were extinguished upon the vigorous protest of certain physicians.

Episode 29: Trade and Commerce I

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

In a welcome respite from his catalog of horrors, the author looks beyond the streets of London and considers the effect of the disease on trade and commerce, starting here with its impact on foreign trade. London in 1665 was the second most populous city in Europe, after Paris, and English ships were part of a burgeoning international trade with Europe, certainly, but also with its colonies in the Americas. At the same time, England was involved in a series of wars with the Dutch that would result in continued Dutch naval supremacy. Naturally, the arrival of the plague in London did not help either the war effort or British foreign trade, as ships departing from London were not allowed to dock at most European ports. For a time, English ports along the coasts continued to prosper, but finally the arrival of the plague in those cities, accelerated by trade with the capital, shut them down as well. And, as related here, the Dutch and others fully capitalized on the situation to increase their economic advantage.

Episode 28: Underreporting

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Now the author returns to a consideration of the first months of the visitation. How is it, he wonders, if the plague is spread through contact with infected persons, that the bills of mortality recorded such wide gaps, one as long as nine weeks, between plague-related deaths during the spring of 1665? Could it be that the disease can lie dormant inside people before rendering them contagious? Could the disease be spread by other methods? Did cold weather impede its spread? No, he concludes, the gaps in recording were not caused by a slowing of the rate of infection but were the result of official corruption, as families bribed searchers and parish officers to record deaths under other rubrics and so avoid shunning and the shutting up of their houses. But as the extent of the disease became impossible to conceal and as people came to understand that seemingly well people could be carrying the infection, they began to sequester themselves in earnest, in a manner that is going to sound familiar to those listening to this podcast in the spring and summer of 2020. But then as now, some people could not observe or otherwise ignored this tactic, whether out of need for employment or a disregard of the danger. There follows at this point in the narrative what can only be described as a rant against the poor, who “went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers, full of outcries and lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, foolhardy and obstinate, while they were well.” How closely the accounts in this episode accord with the behavior of some today, including some of our own officials, I will leave to you to decide.

Episode 27: Breathing Death upon Them

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

After some reflections on how mass evacuations (the term he uses here is disposing) of the city, thereby reducing its population density, might proportionally reduce the impact of the disease in any future calamity, the author resumes a familiar theme: the lack of a method to test for the illness among those who have no symptoms, and thus a lack of a means to prevent the spread of the disease. After relating anecdotes of those who were themselves infected, and who infected others, prior to becoming visibly ill, he reviews some theories of the day about how to test for the disease. Some said the plague could be detected in the breath of the infected; others, that their breath would kill birds. In one passage, he mentions the belief of some of his contemporaries that the breath of plague victims, when examined under a microscope (which was unavailable at the time of the plague itself, he says) would reveal tiny monsters: “dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils, horrible to behold.” Just short of a decade after the plague in London, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had used a microscope of his own design to reveal the existence of microbes for the first time, and Robert Hook’s Micrographia was contemporaneous with the London plague, so possibly the author would be referring to these discoveries, or at least, popular misconceptions about them, in this account, written in the 1720s. [For notes on the main themes of the novel, visit https://londonplague.com/postscript/. To see some ways in which our reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated in the Journal, see https://londonplague.com/concordance/.] Credits: Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard. Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings

Episode 26: A Distemper Arising from Natural Causes

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 08:01:00 +0000

This longish episode takes up a terribly important topic: beliefs among the author’s contemporaries as to how the plague was transmitted. Londoners of the 17th century clearly had a notion of contagion, and naturally enough they believed that the plague was transmitted through contact with infected persons, with their breath, or sweat, or even their clothing. The actual agent of transmission was unclear, neither bacteria nor the role of the flea being known to them. Nonetheless, if the plague was the result of contact with infected persons, it follows then that the best form of prevention was to avoid contact with them. Hence the shutting up of houses. The problem, as the author points out, is that the disease also appeared to be transmitted from people who were ostensibly well, and against that contingency no quarantine was practical, although people did practice a form of social distancing by secluding themselves voluntarily, avoiding crowds, and walking in the middle of the streets, this last a practice known to us today. In one particularly interesting passage, he sketches a basic epidemiological technique of discovering the source of an infection by tracing the contacts the sick person had prior to becoming ill, a method (formalized today as “contact tracing”) he acknowledges has problems of its own, for “none knows how far to carry that back, or where to stop.” There is also the question of the role of God in this calamity. The author acknowledges that while the visitation is an act of God, it is an act carried out through natural means, through physical agents, such as those mentioned above. It is in the miraculous recoveries he occasionally sees, including, perhaps, his own escape from infection, that he discerns the possibility of divine intervention in the day-to-day affairs of humans. In the end, unable to assign either a first cause or a specific means of avoiding the plague, he recommends the one true method of staying safe: flight.

Episode 25: Doing Their Duty

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 14:20:16 +0000

Although I haven’t mentioned it in these notes before, throughout the Journal the author has praised the work of the city administration—the Lord Mayor, the Court of Aldermen, magistrates, the city council, the sheriffs, and others—for their leadership and devotion to duty in such a time. This episode highlights several of the steps taken by them to preserve civic order, from the prompt disposal of the dead and an attention to what little they knew about public health to the regulation of the markets to the administration of justice. The presence of the Lord Mayor himself on market day helped to sustain morale until that time when no such gesture could have any effect. At the end of this episode the author excerpts the Bills of Mortality to chart the progress of the disease from west to east, and from the suburban parishes to the city itself, and from there across the Thames to Southwark.

Episode 24: Provisions Were Always to be Had in Full Plenty

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

This episode continues the author’s cataloging of the miseries endured during the epidemic. From the weekly bills he notes that close to 40,000 people died in the five weeks between August 22d and September 26th (although not all from the plague), but he is skeptical of that number, believing that as many as 10,000 a week may have died during that period. Another theme he enlarges upon here is the effectiveness of the city government in maintaining adequate supplies of provisions for the poor and seeing to it that the dead were promptly disposed of. As one of the effects of their administration, he notes, the price of bread remained relatively stable throughout the entire period, and communal ovens remained open for households that made their own bread.

Episode 23: A Close Conversing with Death

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 16:34:06 +0000

After several episodes in which the author has been content simply to relay incidents and anecdotes of suffering and distress, here now he draws a breath and offers his personal reflections about the experience of Londoners at the height of the plague. I believe that some of the most moving passages in the Journal are to be found in this episode. He speaks of the way in which, at the most extreme hour, the populace became heedless of the differences among them or the things they fought over so vigorously, and, because they anticipated death coming at any moment, thronged together in their churches, regardless of who was preaching, “as if their lives were of no consequence compared to the work which they came about there.” And he is eloquent in expressing the way the immanence of death removes all animosity and petty strife. But the author is no sentimentalist. He is only a faithful recorder of what he observed, and he knows that this mood, which he says possessed the city for several weeks in the late summer of the year, cannot be sustained, and that a true transformation of the human heart has not yet occurred.

Episode 22: All Regulations and Methods Were in Vain

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Episode 22: All Regulations and Methods Were in Vain

By now the author’s belief that the policy of shutting up households was futile and cruel should be abundantly clear, but just in case it isn’t, here are more anecdotes illustrating that point. You will recall that a few episodes ago the author mentioned that he was appointed a watcher himself, over his most strident protests, including his assertion that he couldn’t discharge his duties faithfully because of his objections to the policy. Here he reveals that he was able to pay someone to take his place after a mere three weeks, but particularly as these weeks were at the height of the epidemic, his experiences overwhelmingly confirmed his objections. During his brief tenure as a watcher, he comes to the conclusion that a superior way to manage the disease would be to remove the healthy from infected households rather than imprisoning them there. Finally, however, as the epidemic reaches the apex of its fury, even the shutting up of houses stops, and “the people sat still looking at one another” in shocked silence.

Credits: Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard. Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings

Episode 21: Raving Mad, to Be Sure

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

But what happened when the infected got out? When they escaped from shut up houses or roamed the streets, delirious, before the authorities became aware of their illness? This episode relates several incidents in which persons dying of the disease ran amok, assaulted others, threw themselves in the river, or other equally dire things. So, notwithstanding his belief in the general inefficacy of the quarantine, the author allows as how it had one beneficial effect: reducing the number of these incidents, thus saving many lives.

Episode 20: A House in Whitechappel

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 08:00:00 +0000

While praising the “prudence” and “moderation” of the magistrates who oversaw the shutting up of houses, the author nevertheless continues his condemnation of the practice as ineffective and unfair. Yes, he says, if all and only infected persons could be quarantined, the method would have been effective, but he allows as how the disease appeared to have been spread “insensibly” between persons who appeared completely healthy, which was quite true, inasmuch as it was the bite of a flea, not person-to-person contact, that was the principal vector of transmission.

But in any case, the quarantine didn’t work that way, and the sick were indiscriminately sequestered with their entire household, with ill effects for them all. If ever there were an unfortunate example, it’s a family in a house in Whitechappel, who just can’t catch a break. This family had a maid who was erroneously diagnosed with the plague. So the household was quarantined for forty days. Examiners arrived near the end of that period, found that one family member had a fever, and quarantined them for another forty days. One by one the family fell ill from various ailments, most associated with being shut up in their home, and the quarantines were extended again, until on a subsequent visit, the author says, it was the examiner himself who introduced the plague into the household, and they all died.

This episode also gives some small details of the relationship between families shut up and the watchers posted to keep them there. As you might imagine, these relationships were not in the main cordial, and the life of a watchman was not of a sort to inspire pity. Included here are some observations on the process of reassigning watchmen accused of neglecting their duties and harassing the family.

Episode 19: A Wicked Inclination to Infect Others

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 30 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Readers of the novel will note that at this point I have entirely passed over a long account about three men from Wapping, whose tale of taking to the highways and fields is instructive, but perhaps too long and detailed for modern listeners. However, the final paragraphs of their story are so compelling, and so seamlessly connected with what follows, that I have inserted them, out of order, at the beginning of this episode.

The main theme of this episode centers around a phenomenon seen again in our own times: the resistance of rural areas to the arrival of strangers fleeing the epidemic. More generally, it speaks to our habit of ascribing all manner of wickedness to outsiders. The author mentions the several species of rumor and myth, some even sanctioned by official voices, that charged the victims of the plague with the desire to infect others. On their part, fleeing Londoners spoke of the uniform cruelty and inhumanity of rural folk, who forced them to return to the city to face death. Here as before, Defoe is careful to separate fact from rumor. He understands how isolated incidents can be accepted as innate characteristics and is having nothing of it.

Episode 18: The Most Deplorable Cases

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 28 May 2020 11:02:36 +0000

This episode is one of the most disturbing in the novel. It concerns the death of newborn infants and their mothers at or shortly after childbirth as the result, direct or indirect, of the plague. Some died along with their mothers at the moment of birth, others died for lack of skilled midwives, the better of whom had fled, and there were even cases of infants dying at the hands of their mothers driven mad from the disease. From the Bills of Mortality published weekly during the visitation, the author reports that maternal mortality, so-called deaths in Birth-Bed, and incidents of miscarriages, premature births, and stillborn infants were roughly twice as high in 1665 as in the preceding year, on a population base he estimates as one-third smaller.

And of course, newborns were no less susceptible to the plague than any others, and many died in their mother’s arms in the first weeks of life as disease swept through the entire household. In sum, this episode is a litany of horrors, told without literary embellishment of any kind, horrors that lead the author to conclude that in future visitations pregnant women and women nursing young children should use every means at their disposal to flee at the first rumor of plague.

Episode 17: The Devout Waterman

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 26 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Here is a pious little tale about an act of loyalty and human kindness that the author witnessed on one of his forays along the waterfront. It contains some information about how the more resourceful among those who lived near the river found provisions for their survival and how some people lived on boats, thinking themselves safer there than on land. Near the end of episode, the narrator is taken to Greenwich, where, from the top of a hill, he sees hundreds of ships moored in the river and estimates that as many as ten thousand people survived the plague sequestering themselves in them.

[For notes on the main themes of the novel, visit https://londonplague.com/postscript/. To see some ways in which our reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated in the Journal, see https://londonplague.com/concordance/.]

Episode 16: A Thousand Unaccountable Things

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 23 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Although Defoe’s account is scarcely chronological, at this point in the novel we have come to the height of the epidemic, when, by official accounts, around 7,000 people were falling victim to the plague every week. Here he describes what are by now the familiar horrors of the epidemic and his growing restlessness at his self-imposed seclusion.

By the way, the so-called Solomon Eagle mentioned in this account was a real person, a composer by the name of Solomon Eccles, who became a Quaker and renounced music as profane entertainment.

Episode 15: All Trades Being Stopped, Employment Ceased

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 21 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Having already treated social distancing, quarantine, crime, fake news, lack of preparation, fake remedies, and the inadequate facilities for the treatment of the sick and the disposition of the dead, the author now takes up another all-too-familiar effect of pandemic: what happens to a great metropolis when the wheels of commerce come to a full stop. Wanting to make his point with even more care than usual, he lists the rolls of the unemployed in several broad areas and describes the cascading effect the shutdown of one trade has on several others. Only a vigorous program of social relief, he asserts, prevented rioting and mass starvation. As part of this program, many of the unemployed were given jobs as watchmen at shut-up houses or as nurses tending victims of the plague. The author notes that, in a grim irony, the high death rate in these occupations actually reduced the burden on the remaining citizenry and the likelihood of widespread starvation.

He also takes up the inherent difficulty in accurately reporting cases of the disease and the number that died of it, only in this case the causes are largely from the high rate of mortality caused by the plague, which overwhelmed the capacity of the authorities to manage it, rather than from official misadministration.

[The way in which job losses in one trade result in a cascade of job losses in industries dependent upon them is reflected in our own time in the April 2020 unemployment figures: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/upshot/virus-jobless-rate-demand-collapse.html. See also https://londonplague.com/concordance/.]

Episode 14: The Story of the Piper

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 19 May 2020 13:59:00 +0000

This episode contains one of the better-known anecdotes to emerge from the novel and offers a rare moment of gallows humor amidst the unrelenting horror. The story of the piper was evidently widely known at the time of the visitation itself, for the author remarks on its being a story, “with which the people made themselves so merry.” He also mentions use of what must have been a popular preventative measure, the holding of garlic and rue in one’s mouth, and the liberal use of vinegar. I’ll leave the details to you.

In the second part of this episode the author touches upon a theme all too familiar to us today, the general lack of preparedness of both the citizenry and the authorities for situations of this sort. Their slowness to respond to this calamity. Recall also his remarks in a previous episode about the so-called “supine negligence of the people themselves.” Outbreaks of the plague, you’ll remember, were not new to London. The previous one had occurred only a decade before, and the failure to plan for another was as hard for the author to understand then as our own lack of planning and slowness to respond, despite plenty of advance warning, is now.

The episode ends with an account of instances of private charity and the distribution of money to the poor and unemployed, a kind of stimulus package we also know about.

Episode 13: The Most Rash, Fearless, and Desperate Creatures

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 16 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

It was inevitable that in the breakdown of trade and civil authority, and in a time of widespread hunger, that crime would increase. Serious crime, including murder, was widely reported, but the author is skeptical of these accounts. He believes that murder was unlikely, and even unnecessary, in a time when imminent and sudden death was otherwise so prevalent. In fact, the author proves himself a very discerning analyst of what we now call urban legends, noting the patterned similarity in so many of these tales and the fact that they were always said to take place at the other end of town.

Petty crime, and crimes of opportunity, on the other hand, were indeed widespread, and he concludes this episode with an account of a visit to his brother’s warehouse, where he found women from the neighborhood making off with stylish “high-crowned” hats, which, they claimed, no longer had an owner.

Episode 12: Social Distancing

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 14 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

The accounts in the first part of this episode will be especially familiar to those of you hearing it during the spring of 2020, particularly if you have been sequestering yourself against the COVID-19 pandemic. Here the author describes how some families attempted to shut themselves in voluntarily, laying in stores of food so that they went to market as infrequently as possible. Some of them spent their time shut in making bread or beer, or, like the author himself, passed the time reading or writing a diary. The all-too-familiar pastimes of the housebound.

He also describes the length people went to to avoid contact with each other—and with the bodies of people who literally fell down dead in front of them—during necessary trips to the market and other places. As we learned from the last episode, at that time there was no true understanding of the causes of the disease—which is spread by flea bites and only rarely by simple contact with the infected—but the social distancing they practiced was effective nonetheless when strictly observed. The right practice for the wrong reason.

Toward the end of this episode the tone darkens considerably as the author describes his forays out into the city and the terrors he encounters there.

Episode 11: Houses Inhabited and Houses Forsaken

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 12 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Here the author continues his insistence that the forced shutting up of houses is not only bad policy but actually led to the death of many more than would have succumbed if they had been able to voluntarily sequester themselves and send away the remainder of their households, who more often than not died as a result of their continued presence there. As it was, those wishing to spare their families were often forced to flee into the streets before notice could be taken of their illness, thereby infecting countless others with whom they came in contact.

Defoe ends this episode with his narrator’s personal observations on the causes of the sickness and best course of treatment for its victims, from the standpoint of public health. While he scornfully discounts theories of what sound close to our modern understanding of bacterial infections transmitted through the lungs or skin, his recommendations are otherwise sensible and sound.

Episode 10: Abominable Wickedness

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 09 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

In a direct continuation of the narrative from the preceding episode, the author relates how he went home after visiting the pit at Aldgate but, being unable to sleep, ventures back out in the middle of the night to the tavern where the man grieving for his family had been taken by the buriers. There he confronts “a dreadful set of fellows” who were jeering and mocking the grieving man. When the author admonishes them for their behavior, they turn their insults on him and enlarge upon them by blaspheming God and religion and making fun of all who take comfort in it.

Well, later the plague carries this entire gang off, to the barely concealed satisfaction of the author, who spends much time in prayer satisfying himself that his horror at their behavior was not motivated by anger at their insults. Methinks he doth protest too much.

Episode 9: A Speaking Sight

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 07 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

For me, at least, this is one of the grimmest chapters in the entire account. I first read it over thirty years ago, and in revisiting the work now it is the one series of passages I remembered best and sought out first. The author begins by resuming his account of the plight of families whose houses were shut up, illustrated by the graphic story of a young woman who died within hours of falling ill and how her mother went mad with grief before dying herself. He then goes on to describe the pit, “this dreadful gulf,” he calls it, dug in Aldgate for the burial of the parishioners, and in one of the most shocking scenes in the novel, describes his visit to the pit and the burial of the dead. Take your time with this episode; there’s a lot to absorb. ["Great gulfs" for the burial of the poor continue to this day. See, for instance, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/nyregion/coronavirus-deaths-hart-island-burial.html]

Episode 8: Prisons without Bars and Bolts

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 05 May 2020 15:59:33 +0000

Episode 8: Prisons without Bars and Bolts

With this episode the emphasis shifts a bit. Having previously set out a brief history of the onset of the plague and the steps taken to contain it by the authorities, the author now relates a series of incidents that, in the particulars of their telling, lend great emotional depth to his novel. This episode is the first of several that will focus on the plight of families shut up and the stratagems they devised, some of them quite violent, to escape a house arrest that was in many cases tantamount to a death sentence. Of particular note here is the distinction the author draws between the poor and those wealthy enough to have second homes to which they might escape, and means to lay in provisions for a long quarantine. It is distinction he refers to time and again throughout the novel, and as the author has chosen to remain in the city, it is to the fate of those not wealthy enough to flee that he is most often eyewitness. And it is in this episode that, for the first time, we’re introduced to the dead carts and to the now famous cry “Bring out your dead!”

Episode 7: The Shutting Up of Houses

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Sat, 02 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode Defoe includes the text of orders issued by the Lord Mayor concerning the shutting up of houses, notification of the authorities, the appointment of watchers and guards, disposition of the bodies of the dead, public sanitation, and what we now refer to as “social distancing,” with bans on "loose persons and idle assemblies." It’s a grim catalogue. What is perhaps most noticeable about this account, apart from the evident terror the shutting up of houses provoked, was the careful insistence of the authorities on the gathering of accurate information about the number and location of all those infected, mirroring our own contemporary concern for testing and accurate reporting, or the lack thereof. I have to say, the recitation of these orders makes for some tedious listening, but the comparison of the steps taken then with our own is really quite instructive. For an index of contemporary issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and their historical precursors in the Journal, visit https://londonplague.com/concordance/

Credits: Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings

Episode 6: And None Durst Come Near to Comfort Them

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode the author graphically describes the tenor of the moment, saying that death no longer seemed to be hovering overhead but was now entering into homes and staring directly into people’s faces, and he notes the spirit of repentance and confession its presence provoked. He also continues his diatribe against quacks, pretenders, and deceivers, here mentioning what he considers an even greater madness than those previously described, the resort to magic, in the form of things like charms, amulets, and exorcisms. “As if,” he says, “the plague was not the hand of God but a kind of possession of an evil spirit.” He concludes this portion of his narrative by describing how the Lord Mayor, seeing the way the poor, especially, were being victimized, appointed physicians and surgeons for their relief. Of course, there was little medically that could be done for them, given the level of understanding of the disease at that time. But there was another, deeper reason so little could be done, Defoe says again, for the plague is God’s judgment, “eminently armed from heaven from executing the errand it was sent about.”

Episode 5: Death was Before Their Eyes

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Resuming his comments from the last episode, the author here mounts a spirited criticism of fortune-tellers, cunning men, astrologers, conjurers, witches, and deceivers, but he doesn’t spare their audiences and followers, either, whose ignorance leads them into “a thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things.” He’s particularly keen in observing how, despite the restoration of the Church of England, a multitude of sects continued to attract devotees and how, in their terror, the people flocked to religious leaders of all types, ignoring sectarian divisions in their overwhelming need for consolation. But when the plague abated and the terror had passed, the usual sectarian barriers were re-erected.

A significant portion of this episode is devoted to quacks, faith-healers, and purveyors of useless and sometimes poisonous remedies against the plague, a practice that continues even today. In these matters, Defoe displays a dry sense of humor. In one of his accounts, a woman who had been lured by false promises of free treatment by one of these quacks creates her own version of a Twitterstorm by standing outside his office for an entire day, enlarging upon his dishonesty to every passer-by until the so-called physician relents and gives her his remedy for nothing, which, the author says, “was perhaps good for nothing when she had it.”

Episode 4: Signs and Wonders

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 08:00:00 +0000

The most important element in dealing with the terrible and the inexplicable is to be able to put an interpretative framework around it, to give it meaning. Giving things meaning makes them comprehensible and perhaps even manageable, and if that doesn’t reduce our fears it at least gives us reason to hope. It’s tempting to think that our attempts at explaining natural phenomena are better and more scientific than those of the 17th century, but while it’s certainly true that we have developed powerful mathematical and experimental tools for understanding the world, we are no less prone than our forebears to create comprehensive systems of meanings that are not dependent on empirical evidence alone. In this chapter the author speaks of the attempts of his contemporaries to see in the heavens or in clouds, or through the interpretation of dreams, confirmation of what everyone believes, that the plague is a visitation by God and a judgement on the city. The author believes this as well, clearly, but he is openly skeptical, even scornful, of the attempts of astrologers, fortune tellers, and others to play upon peoples’ fears for their own gain.

Episode 3: Sorrow and Sadness Sat Upon Every Face

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 18:10:47 +0000

As much as anything, this episode is a meditation on the mood of the city as the plague swept over it. His mind made up to stay, the author now settles into the daily routine of his business, helped in part by the fact that the plague still spared his part of town from the worst of its virulence. Meanwhile, however, further to the west, the death toll mounted steadily through the summer of 1665. As the impact of the plague began to affect a larger area, the author notes that the face of the city was much altered—“sorrow and sadness sat upon every face,” he says—and that the city seemed to be all in tears. In walks through the city, he remarks on how deserted the streets had become, and how frequent the cries and screams coming from the houses of the sick. And he observes that the restoration of the monarchy a scant five years earlier had led to a rapid increase in the population of London, which in turn meant that many more died than might have even a few years before.

Episode 2: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 16:56:39 +0000

With the plague now beginning to spread and intensify, and having witnessed so many of his neighbors fleeing the city, the author realizes that he must soon decide whether to stay or go himself, and he offers his reflections and decision-making process as a guide to others who might find themselves in similar circumstances. Like many of us would be, he is torn between the desire to protect his belongings and property or to flee and perhaps save his life. In a particularly interesting conversation with his more well-traveled brother, he considers whether his fate is foreordained and thus not affected at all by any decision he might make.

In the end, after a series of incidents prevents him from leaving, he settles on considering what we might call the “preponderance of the evidence” as a method for making such a decision. By this he means that we should look upon the entirety of opportunities and obstacles that present themselves, to view them “complexly” as being “intimations from Heaven.” Finding guidance and solace in the 91st Psalm, and after a brief bout of some minor but worrisome illness, he is confirmed in his resolve to stay in London, placing his fate in God’s hands.

Episode 1: Terrible Apprehensions Were Among the People

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 16:15:40 +0000

Defoe begins his story with an account of the discovery of a few cases of the plague in St. Giles parish in the winter of 1664-65. The slow and close-grained way in which he describes the alternating terror and relief caused by the reporting of new cases followed by periods of abatement builds dramatic tension very effectively. One of the highlights of this episode is the little editorializing he does about the ability of the media to both report rumors and to embellish them for effect. This, along with his remarks about the speed at which news traveled in the author’s day—"instantly over the whole nation,”—lend a faint irony to the account, as they are pretty much how we would describe our situation today. Defoe concludes the episode with descriptions of the mass exodus from the city of those who were wealthy enough and of rumors of restrictions on travel soon to come.

For an account of a modern-day exodus, see https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/15/upshot/who-left-new-york-coronavirus.html

An Introduction to The Visitation: Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year

The Visitation: Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 15:48:54 +0000

Welcome to The Visitation!

This podcast is a reading of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, an account of the plague that afflicted London in 1665. Published in 1722, the work represents itself as the testimony of an eyewitness living in London at the time of the plague, but it is actually a work of fiction, based on exhaustive historical research. Many of the topics related in the novel will have an immediate resonance with our own experiences, particularly as we are now facing a pandemic of our own (granted that COVID-19 is nearly so devastating). They include the author’s indecision about whether to stay in the city or to flee to the countryside, the relaxing of sectarian religious affiliations in a population united by terror, the role class distinctions played in determining who lived and who died, and the proliferation of quacks, faith healers, fortune tellers, and others, who profited from the general misery.

To make the work accessible to modern readers, we have divided it into manageable episodes of between fifteen and twenty minutes each, and we have omitted certain passages in the interest of time, and when doing so did not harm the narrative flow of the work as a whole.

This brief (9 minutes) introductory episode introduces the podcast and contains some more information about the novel and about the great plague of 1665. Then it’s on to this remarkable and disturbing tale!