History of the Plague in London by Daniel Defoe (reading fiction TXT) 📖

No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usual concourse of the people in the streets, and which used to be supplied from our end of the town, was abated. The Exchange was not kept shut, indeed, but it was no more frequented. The fires were lost: they had been almost extinguished for some days by a very smart and hasty rain. But that was not all. Some of the physicians insisted that they were not only no benefit, but injurious to the health of the people. This they made a loud clamor about, and complained to the lord mayor about it. On the other hand, others of the same faculty, and eminent too, 174opposed them, and gave their reasons why the fires were and must be useful to assuage the violence of the distemper. I cannot give a full account of their arguments on both sides; only this I remember, that they caviled very much with one another. Some were for fires, but that they must be made of wood and not coal, and of particular sorts of wood too, such as fir, in particular, or cedar, because of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen; and others were neither for one or other. Upon the whole, the lord mayor ordered no more fires, and especially on this account, namely, that the plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all means, and rather seemed to increase than decrease upon any application to check and abate it; and yet this amazement of the magistrates proceeded rather from want of being able to apply any means successfully than from any unwillingness either to expose themselves or undertake the care and weight of business; for, to do them justice, they neither spared their pains nor their persons. But nothing answered. The infection raged, and the people were now terrified to the last degree, so that, as I may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mentioned above, abandoned themselves to their despair.

But let me observe here, that when I say the people abandoned themselves to despair, I do not mean to what men call a religious despair, or a despair of their eternal state; but I mean a despair of their being able to escape the infection, or to outlive the plague, which they saw was so raging, and so irresistible in its force, that indeed few people that were touched with it in its height, about August and September, escaped; and, which is very particular, contrary to its ordinary operation in June and July and the beginning of August, when, as I have observed, many were infected, and continued so many days, and then went off, after having had the poison in their blood a long time. But now, on the contrary, most of the people who were taken during the last two weeks in August, and in the first three weeks in September, generally died in two or three days at the farthest, and many the very same day 175they were taken. Whether the dog days244 (as our astrologers pretended to express themselves, the influence of the Dog Star) had that malignant effect, or all those who had the seeds of infection before in them brought it up to a maturity at that time altogether, I know not; but this was the time when it was reported that above three thousand people died in one night; and they that would have us believe they more critically observed it pretend to say that they all died within the space of two hours, viz., between the hours of one and three in the morning.

As to the suddenness of people dying at this time, more than before, there were innumerable instances of it, and I could name several in my neighborhood. One family without the bars, and not far from me, were all seemingly well on the Monday, being ten in family. That evening one maid and one apprentice were taken ill, and died the next morning, when the other apprentice and two children were touched, whereof one died the same evening and the other two on Wednesday. In a word, by Saturday at noon the master, mistress, four children, and four servants were all gone, and the house left entirely empty, except an ancient woman, who came to take charge of the goods for the master of the family's brother, who lived not far off, and who had not been sick.

Many houses were then left desolate, all the people being carried away dead; and especially in an alley farther on the same side beyond the bars, going in at the sign of Moses and Aaron.245 There were several houses together, which they said had not one person left alive in them; and some that died last in several of those houses were left a little too long before they were fetched out to be buried, the reason of which was not, as some have 176written very untruly, that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead, but that the mortality was so great in the yard or alley that there was nobody left to give notice to the buriers or sextons that there were any dead bodies there to be buried. It was said, how true I know not, that some of those bodies were so corrupted and so rotten, that it was with difficulty they were carried; and, as the carts could not come any nearer than to the alley gate in the High Street, it was so much the more difficult to bring them along. But I am not certain how many bodies were then left: I am sure that ordinarily it was not so.

As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition to despair of life, and abandoned themselves, so this very thing had a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold and venturous. They were no more shy of one another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and began to converse. One would say to another, "I do not ask you how you are, or say how I am. It is certain we shall all go: so 'tis no matter who is sick or who is sound." And so they ran desperately into any place or company.

As it brought the people into public company, so it was surprising how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They inquired no more into who246 they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people seemed to be in; but, looking upon themselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and crowded together as if their lives were of no consequence compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the zeal which they showed in coming, and the earnestness and affection they showed in their attention to what they heard, made it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God if they thought every day they attended at the church that it would be their last. Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away all manner of prejudice at, or scruple about, the person whom they found in the pulpit when they came to the 177churches. It cannot be doubted but that many of the ministers of the parish churches were cut off among others in so common and dreadful a calamity; and others had not courage enough to stand it, but removed into the country as they found means for escape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no scruple of desiring such dissenters as had been a few years before deprived of their livings, by virtue of an act of Parliament called the "Act of Uniformity,"247 to preach in the churches, nor did the church ministers in that case make any difficulty in accepting their assistance; so that many of those whom they called silent ministers had their mouths opened on this occasion, and preached publicly to the people.

Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life, and our putting these things far from us, that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union so much kept and so far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the dissenters to preach to them, so the dissenters, who, with an uncommon prejudice, had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before. But, as the terror of the infection abated, 178those things all returned again to their less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.

I mention this but historically: I have no mind to enter into arguments to move either or both sides to a more charitable compliance one with another. I do not see that it is probable such a discourse would be either suitable or successful; the breaches seem rather to widen, and tend to a widening farther, than to closing: and who am I, that I should think myself able to influence either one side or other? But this I may repeat again, that it is evident death will reconcile us all: on the other side the grave we shall be all brethren again. In heaven, whither I hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall find neither prejudice nor scruple: there we shall be of one principle and of one opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand in hand to the place where we shall join heart and hand without the least hesitation, and with the most complete harmony and affection,—I say, why we cannot do so here, I can say nothing to; neither shall I say anything more of it, but that it remains to be lamented.

I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful time, and go on to describe the objects that appeared among us every day,—the dreadful extravagances which the distraction of sick people drove them into; how the streets began now to be fuller of frightful objects, and families to be made even a terror to themselves. But after I have told you, as I have above, that one man being tied in his bed, and finding no other way to deliver himself, set the bed on fire with his candle (which unhappily stood within his reach), and burned himself in bed; and how another, by the insufferable torment he bore, danced and sung naked in the streets, not knowing one ecstasy248 from another,—I say, after I have mentioned these things, what can be added more? What can be said to represent the misery of these times more lively to the reader, or to give him a perfect idea of a more complicated distress?

179I must acknowledge that this time was so terrible that I was sometimes at the end of all my resolutions, and that I had not the courage that I had at the beginning. As the extremity brought other people abroad, it drove me home; and, except having made my voyage down to Blackwall and Greenwich, as I have related, which was an excursion, I kept afterwards very much within doors, as I had for about a fortnight before. I have said already that I repented several times that I had ventured to stay in town, and had not gone away with my brother and his family; but it was too late for that now. And after I had retreated and staid within doors a good while before my impatience led me abroad, then they called me, as I have said, to an ugly and dangerous office, which brought me out again; but as that was expired, while the height of the distemper lasted