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.
[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.
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© 2020 Mark Cummings