Consider, again, that London was the great port for the reception and transmission of all the goods in the whole country. The stoppage of trade in London meant the stoppage of trade over the whole land. The cloth-makers of the West, the iron-founders, the colliers, the tin mines, the tanners, all were stopped, all were thrown out of work.
FLEET STREET
Again, consider the ruin of families. How many children of flourishing master-workmen, tradesmen, and merchants were reduced to poverty by the death of the father, and suddenly lowered to the level of working-men, happy if they were still young enough to learn a craft? How many lost their credit in the general stoppage of business? How many fortunes were cast away when no debts could be collected, and when the debtors themselves were all destroyed? And in cases when children were too young to protect themselves, how many were plundered of everything when their parents were dead?
Defoe, writing what he had learned by conversation with those who could remember this evil time, speaks of strange extravagances on the part of those who were infected. Very likely there were such things. Not, however, that they were common, as his story would have us believe. I prefer the picture of the imprisoned citizen, which represents a city sitting in sorrowful silence, the people crouching in their houses in silence or in prayer, gazing helpless upon each other, while the blue sky and the hot sun look down upon them, and the Plague grows busier every day.
When it abated at last, and the runaways went back to town, Pepys among them, he notes the amazing number of beggars. These poor creatures were the widows or children of the craftsmen, or the craftsmen themselves whose ruin we have just noted.
This was in January. The Plague, however, dragged on. In the week ending March 1, 1666, there were forty-two deaths from it. In the month of July it was still present in London, and reported to be raging at Colchester. In August, Pepys finds the house of one of his friends in Fenchurch Street shut up with the Plague, and it was said to be as bad as ever at Greenwich. This was the last entry about it, because in a week or two there was to happen an event of even greater importance than this great Plague.
Observe that this was the last appearance of the Plague. Since 1665 it has never appeared in Europe, except in Marseilles in the year 1720. It is not extinct. It smoulders, like Vesuvius. There is nothing, so far as can be understood, to prevent its reappearance in London or anywhere else, unless it is the improved sanitation of modern cities. For instance, it was at Astrakhan in 1879. But it travelled no farther west. It is generated in the broad miasmatic valley of the Euphrates; there it lies, ready to be carried about the world, the last gift of Babylon to the nations. When that great city is built again, the centre of commerce between Europe and the East, the valley will once more be drained and cultivated, and the Plague will die and be no more seen. But who is to rebuild Babylon and to repeople the land of the Assyrians?
There were two great Plagues of London in the seventeenth century before this—the last and greatest—one in 1603 and the other in 1625. I have before me two contemporary tracts upon these plagues. They illustrate what has been said of the Plague of 1665. Exactly the same things happened. In listening either to him of 1603, or to him of 1625, one hears the voice of 1665. I think that these tracts have never before been quoted. Yet it is quite clear to me that Defoe must have seen them both.