London

by Walter Besant

The plague was no new thing; it was always threatening; it broke out on board ship; it was carried about in bales; it was brought from the Levant with the figs and the spices; some sailor was stricken with it; reports were constantly flying about concerning it; now it was at Constantinople; now at Amsterdam; now at Marseilles; now at Algiers; everybody knew that it might come again at any time. But it delayed; the years went on; there was no plague; the younger people ceased to dread it. Then, like the Deluge, which may stand as the type of disaster long promised and foretold, and not to be avoided, yet long delayed, it came at last. And when it went away it had destroyed near upon a hundred thousand people.

We read the marvellous history of the Plague as it presented itself to the imagination of Daniel Defoe, who wrote fifty years after the event. Nothing ever written in the English language holds the reader with such a grip as his account of the Plague. It seems as if no one at the time could have been able to speak or think of anything but the Plague; we see the horror of the empty streets; we hear the cries and lamentations of those who are seized and those who are bereaved. The cart comes slowly along the streets with the man ringing a bell and crying, "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!" We think of the great fosses communes, the holes into which the dead were thrown in heaps and covered with a little earth; we think of the grass growing in the streets; the churches deserted; the clergymen basely flying; their places taken by the ejected nonconformists who preach of repentance and forgiveness—no time, this, for the Calvinist to number the Elect on his ten fingers—to as many as dare assemble together; the roads black with fugitives hurrying from the abode of Death; we hear the frantic mirth of revellers snatching to-night a doubtful rapture, for to-morrow they die. The City is filled with despair. We look into the pale faces of those who venture forth; we hear the sighs of those who meet; nobody—nobody, we imagine—can think of aught else than the immediate prospect of death for himself and all he loves.

Pepys, however, who remained in the City most of the time, not only notes down calmly the progress of the pestilence, but also allows us to see the effect it produced on his own mind. It is very curious. He reads the Bills of Mortality as they are published: he, as well as Defoe, records the silent and deserted appearance of the town: he confesses, now and then, that he is fearful; but his mind is all the time entirely occupied with his own advancement and his own pleasures. He feasts and drinks with his friends; he notes that "we were very merry." Occasionally he betrays a little anxiety, but he is never panic-stricken.

In the entry of September, when the Plague was at its height, and the terror and misery of London at their worst, he writes: "To the Tower, and there sent for the weekly Bill, and find 8252 dead in all, and of these 6978 of the Plague, which is a most dreadful number and shows reason to fear that the Plague hath got that hold that it will yet continue among us. Thence to Branford, reading 'The Villaine,' a pretty good play, all the way. There a coach of Mr. Povy's stood ready for me, and he at his house ready to come in, and so we together merrily to Swakely to Sir R. Viner." And the same week, hearing that Lord Sandwich with the fleet had taken some prizes—"the receipt of this news did put us all into an extasy of joy that it inspired into Sir J. Minner and Mr. Evelyn such a spirit of mirth, that in all my life I never met with so merry a two hours as our company this night was." Perhaps, however, this excess of mirth was not due to insensibility, but was a natural reaction from the gloom and terror that stalked the streets.

The summer of 1665 was curiously hot and dry. Every day a blue sky, a scorching sun, and no breath of wind. If bonfires were kindled to purify the air, the smoke ascended and hung overhead in a motionless cloud. From May till September, no wind, no rain, no cloud, only perpetual sunshine to mock the misery of the prostrate city.

At the first outbreak of the disease the people began to run away; the roads were black with carts carrying their necessaries into the country; the City clergy for the most part deserted their churches; physicians ran from the disease they could not cure, pretending that they had to go away with their patients; the Court left Whitehall; the Courts of Justice were removed to Oxford. The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, remained at Lambeth Palace, and the Duke of Albemarle and Lord Craven remained in their town houses. And the Lord Mayor, Sir John Laurence, ordered that the aldermen, sheriffs, common councilmen, and all constables and officers of the City should remain at their posts.

As the Plague increased, business of all kinds was suspended; works were closed; ships that arrived laden, went down the river again and across to Amsterdam; ships that waited for their cargoes lay idle in the Pool by hundreds; shops were shut; manufactories and industries of all kinds were stopped.

Consider what this means. London was not only a city of foreign trade and a great port, but a city, also, of many industries. It made an enormous quantity of things; the very livelihood of the City was derived from its trade and its industries. These once stopped, the City perished. We have seen how the Roman Augusta decayed and died. The people had no longer any trade or any work, or any food. Therefore, the City died. The same thing, from different causes, happened again. Trade and work were suspended. Therefore, the people began to starve.