For our discussion on Wednesday, May 10, 2018, the Classics Book Club selected A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. I think Defoe wrote the book in the early 19th Century. He wrote it as an account of the plague that spread through London in the late 18th Century. Defoe was just a child at that time and the book is written from the point of view of an adult. I think he makes like he's writing from the point of view of his uncle or another older relative. Late in the book he writes, "There is a piece of ground in Moorfields, … the author of this journal lies buried in that very ground." (p. 181) But I don't think that's true. I think most of the book is fiction if not all of it. The dates and some of the major events may be true along with some of the death counts per week he gives. But the first person narrator seems like a fictional character to me. Defoe just does a good job making the story seem like a true account.
Defoe gives a detailed account of how the spread of the plague affects the people of London. When the plague first emerges, "we began to hope that, as it was briefly among the people at that end of town, it might go no further." (p. 4) He refers to the plague as "the distemper" and describes how every house visited by it is "marked with a red cross." (p. 33) A principal cause of the spread is the "necessity of going out of our houses to buy provisions was in a great measure the ruin of the whole city." (p. 59) Self-preservation obliges "the people to these severities which they would otherwise be concerned in." (p. 110) Some commit "a great many petty thieveries in the houses where they were employed." (p. 106) Hearing that the plague had abated in St. Giles-in-the-Fields makes "the people of Redriff and Wrapping, Ratcliff, and Limehouse, so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the plague's going off without reaching them, that they took no care to either fly into the country or shut themselves up." (p. 88) Fraud is also committed by "parish officers, searchers, and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what diseases they died of; and as people were very loth at first to have the neighbors believe their houses were infected, so they gave money to procure, or otherwise procure, the dead persons to be returned as dying of other distempers." (p. 159)
Some people have interesting responses to the distemper and the displacement caused by it. One woman's remedy is "washing her head in vinegar and sprinkling her head-clothes so with vinegar as to keep them always moist, and if the smell of any of those she waited on was more than ordinary offensive, she snuffed vinegar up her nose and sprinkled vinegar upon her clothes, and held a handkerchief to her mouth." (p. 68) One infected person escapes quarantine, strips down, swims across the Thames and back, and returns home. The "terrible experiment cured him of the plague, that is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs stretched the parts where the swellings he had upon him were, that is to say, under his arms and his groin, and caused them to open and break; and that the cold of the water abated the fever in his blood." (p. 126) Grief causes to happen to one person "by degrees his head sank into his body, so between his shoulders that the crown of his head was very little seen." (p. 94) Another person has "a wound in his leg, and whenever he came among any people that were not sound, and the infection began to affect him, he said he could know it by the signal, viz., that his leg would smart." (p. 149)
People must also consider their reputations caused by whether they catch the distemper or how they treat others. A character John argues with people in the country how "they would be loth to have it remembered, hereafter, and have it told how barbarous, how inhospitable, and how unkind they were to the people of London when they fled from the face of the most terrible enemy in the world." (p. 183) The narrator describes how "we had no such thing as a printed newspaper in those days to spread rumors and reports of things … so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now." (p. 1) I'm a little surprised they didn't have newspapers back then. If newspapers could spread things instantly, how fast do they spread now? One danger is that "all that conceal their distemper did it, to prevent their neighbors shunning and refusing to converse with them." (p. 5) The narrator later reflects that "on the other side of the grave we shall see each other again." (p. 137)
Not surprisingly, such an old book contained some words that were new to me. The distemper is "brought down among them chiefly by the higlers, and such people as went to London with provisions (p. 188) Higlers are traveling peddlers. In one family, one falls sick "of one distemper, one of another, chiefly scorbutic ailments." (p. 205) Scorbutic means related to scurvy. The book uses the word Hackney for a carriage for hire. It mentions citizens of the highest probity or those who adhere to the highest principles and ideas, uprightness. The book also mentions some funny and familiar place names. The latter include "the parishes of St. Giles and St. Martin-in-the-Fields alone there died 421." (p. 11) Also "about Brentwood, or that way, several perished in the fields." (p. 105) Funny place names include Spitafields, Bunhill Fields, and a street "which is now called Blowbladder Street." (p. 188)
The author's statements about himself made me doubt that this was a true account. He resolves "that I would stay in town, and casting myself entirely upon the goodness and protections of the Almighty, would not seek any other shelter whatever." (p. 10 ) Though he confines his family, "I could not prevail upon my unsatisfied curiosity to stay entirely within myself." (p. 61) He even gets "admittance into the churchyard … I told (the sexton) I had pressed in my mind to go and that perhaps it might be an instructive sight." He mentions how, "I had in family only an ancient woman who managed the house, a maid-servant, two apprentices, and myself." He comments that he is "too impatient of being so long within doors." (p. 86) With all that's going on and the dangers, I just don't think someone could really have experience as much as the narrator did without catching the distemper. Though his account seems legitimate, I doubt he actually saw as much as he wrote about. Later he ponders, "I should be counted censorious, and perhaps unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of reflecting." (p. 194)
The narrator makes some interesting observations of what happens after the plague. During the plague, merchants were not able to sell merchandise. But not long after, the Great Fire of London "even terrible too of its kind, enriched the country and made (the merchants) amends … there never was known such trade all over England for the time as was in the first seven years after the plague, and after the fire of London." (p. 174) Later the "houses in the same row with that house northward are built on the same ground where the poor people were buried." (p. 181) The narrator reveals some class bias when he writes, "As to inferior people, I think there died six and forty constables and head-boroughs in the two parishes of Stepney and Whitechaple." (p. 184)
The book contained several relatable references. The frost "which began in December, still continuing very severe even till near the end of February." (p. 3) As Black Box Recorder would say, "Yes, I know it's February, but you lot could use a bit of toughening up." Another music-related reference appears in "the jack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet shows, rope-dames, and such-like doings, which bewitched the poor common people, shut up their shops." (p. 23) Pulp have a song "Common People." The narrator describes someone actually pushing a cart and calling out, "Bring out your dead." (p. 62) I wonder if Monty Python got the idea for their scene in The Holy Grail movie from this book. In the book a piper is described, "The poor fellow … was laid all alone upon the top or stall, and fast asleep … the people … thinking that this poor fellow had been a dead body … threw him into the cart …" They later realized their error and exclaimed, "Lord, bless us! There's somebody in the cart not quite dead!" (p. 69) A similar thing occurs in the Monty Python scene. Someone brings an old man to the cart who protests, "I'm not dead!" One of the songs from the musical Spamalot is "Not Dead Yet."
I did not attend the discussion of A Journal of the Plague Year because my spouse and I went to an the open mic at Stonegate Pizza. Though the book was quite long and sometimes hard to follow I still learned much from it and found some if it relatable.
Comments