Small Talk at Wreyland. Third Series

by Cecil Torr

This kind of evidence needs more careful handling than Cardinal Gasquet has given it in his book on The Black Death of 1348 and 1349. Amongst other things he says there, page 102, “An examination of the institutions of the diocese, in relation to the time when the plague visited the various parts of it, appears to show that it commenced almost simultaneously in north and south. In North Devon it is found at both Northam and Alverdiscott on the 7th of November, at Fremington in the same district on the 8th, and at Barnstaple on December 23rd.... The early outbreak in the coast villages at the mouth of the estuary leading to Barnstaple points to the conclusion that the infection was brought by a ship passing up the Bristol Channel.” He assumes here that the Plague will be ‘found’ at a place on the very day on which a new incumbent has been instituted; and this assumption is quite unfounded unless he also assumes that the previous incumbent must have died of Plague there. But in two of these four places the previous incumbents could not possibly have died of Plague, as they had not died of anything at all: the register says distinctly that these vacancies were caused by resignation, not by death.

In a letter of 30 October 1348 bishop Grandisson cites a letter from the prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, written after the Archbishop’s death, and giving his instructions for processions and other rites to stay the Plague. According to the Prior’s letter (28 September) England was exhausted and impoverished by the War, “guerrarum discriminibus, que ipsius regni diviciarum substanciam exhaurunt et consumunt ... regnum Anglie desolatum extitit et afflictum.” That was the opinion of a man living at the time: yet there are books on history assuring us that England had never been so prosperous before, the country being then enriched with all the spoils of France.

In that letter of 30 October bishop Grandisson ordered solemn public processions in his diocese every Wednesday and Friday up to Christmas. He was living at Chudleigh Manor all the time, about six miles from here; so I imagine that there were processions all around. He also ordered masses, psalms and prayers. These were then the proper weapons for combatting the Plague: nobody smelled Rats. So also at Rhodes in October 1498 the Grand Master of the Knights ordered fasting and prayer, and the people all sang Alleluia. Columbus had brought a new disease from the New World, and it had just reached Rhodes; but these good people had not yet found out how it was propagated. The local poet, Emmanuel Georgillas, wrote a poem on it in medieval Greek, Thanaticon tês Rhodou. He says that the disease claimed victims from amongst them all, old men and matrons, boys and unwedded girls, the Knights themselves, and even the Archbishop. At last John Baptist triumphed over Charon—that is what the poet says—but the Grand Master of the Knights had not relied exclusively upon their patron saint: he had locked the ladies up.

Providence helps those who help themselves, and leaves whole generations to their fate unless they take the trouble to find out how diseases come and how they can be kept away. Plague is carried by rats’ fleas, just as typhus is carried by lice and malaria by mosquitos; the rats themselves are victims. Trichinosis is caused by pigs, and leprosy by fish; but the rats invade us of their own free will, and it is no fault of the pigs or fish that people sometimes eat them ‘cured,’ not cooked.

When the chieftains of the Delta of the Nile went to King Pianchi to tender their submission to him, about 750 B.C., he would not let them come inside the palace, as they were people who ate fish—see lines 149 to 151 of his inscription—and Jews were just as hard on people who ate pigs. Had the Jews abstained from eating fish, they might have been immune from leprosy, which is a worse disease than any they could have caught by eating pigs; and with proper cooking they might have eaten both. All those ancient prohibitions were too wide, like this modern prohibition of strong drink on the mere chance that it may make men drunk.

I doubt the Totem theory of abstinence from certain foods, and fancy somebody had noticed that certain diseases went with certain kinds of food, and had prohibited those foods accordingly. There have been men whose precepts we all follow without quite understanding why, and we say these men were “in advance of their generation” or “born before their time”; and yet the truth may be the other way—they were of their generation and their time, but mankind has deteriorated since.

Whenever I look at bees, I feel misgivings about the future of mankind. Think of the bees that invented the hexagonal cells, and the bees that go on building these cells and yet go buzzing against glass panes in one half of a window when the other half is open. The bees that could invent such cells, would surely have ability enough to find their way round glass. But bees are socialists; and socialism means that individuals of great ability will be kept down, and all ability will gradually be atrophied for want of use. I rather think that this is what has happened to the bees, and may be happening to mankind.

Collingwood ate rats. He said ships’ rats were very clean feeders, and he always had a dish of them at dinner when he was at sea; and I have heard that many officers fought shy of invitations to the Admiral’s table. No doubt his dish of rats was properly cooked; but rat may be as dangerous as pig, considered as diet, since rats are also liable to trichinosis. Amongst human beings the disease is very rare in England as compared with Germany: they eat a great deal of smoked ham there, and mere smoking does not kill trichinæ.

In former ages leprosy was common here. There was a hospital for lepers this side of Newton, founded by John Gilberd, 4 October 1538, “for the releff of powre lazar people wherof grete nomber with that diseas be now infectid in that partis to the grete daunger of infection of moche people to whom they use to resort and be conversant withal for lacke of convenyent hospitals in the county of Devon for them.” There were much older hospitals for lepers outside Exeter and Barnstaple and Tavistock and other towns; but these were more or less monastic, and had suffered from the dissolution of the monasteries. This hospital was then a quarter of a mile outside Newton Bushell; but the town has spread beyond it, and the old buildings have long since been replaced by alms-houses. Leprosy is quite extinct; but I fear that people hereabouts are careless in the cooking of cured food.

Leprosy would naturally be commoner before the Reformation, as so much fish was eaten during fasts; and the fasts themselves made people weaker and less able to resist disease. I agree with old folks here who say that fasts should be a time of feasting for the poor. “Rich folk have money to buy butcher’s meat in Lent as well as other times; and if they will not eat’n, they should give’n to they as cannot buy.” However, fasting was enjoined on rich and poor alike, and was deemed of more importance than almost anything else. Machiavelli was not easily shocked, but he drew the line at Sforza’s coming to Florence and eating meat in Lent, Istorie Fiorentine, VII, anno 1471, “cosa in quel tempo nella nostra città ancora non veduta.” I can myself remember how frightfully Prince Napoleon shocked the pious French by eating beef-steak on Good Friday.