"A journal of the plague year" is actually a fictional account covering this time in history, and although Defoe was alive, we are given a narrator instead, and this was written near enough sixty years afterwards. We are certainly not told much about this narrator, apart from the fact he has family and servants, and we get a brief description of where he lives, but that is about it. I think due to this lack of character description, I was unable to completely empathise with him, and I also noticed there was a terrible amount of ramblings, where the narration went entirely off course, which made at times, for a rather bothersome and irritating read. I also did not appreciate that there were no clear chapters, and it all kind of flowed awkwardly, into a giant sludge.
However, despite the negativity there, I do have some positives regarding this book. The plague and the history around it fascinates me. I cannot say exactly why, but it's just so interesting. I thought the detailed and grim descriptions of the mass graves were interesting, and, the madness and chaotic scenes that the plague caused humans to endure, were so frightening, and to be in the middle of that, I just cannot even begin to imagine what that was like.
Overall, this book was let down mainly by the narrator and the layout, but, it does have some interesting snippets, but you'll need to dig rather deep to discover them.

I hadn’t realized that Defoe was only 5 or 6 during the great plague of London; the Journal which was based apparently on an uncle’s diaries, was written some 50 years later, and is more of a dramatized documentary than a first-person account. I’m not sure how much is purely fictional either, but a moralistic tale of how three friends fled London and lived for some time on the outskirts clearly falls into that realm.

There are some interesting parallels with today’s coronavirus pandemic in that the population is initially traumatized by the extent and suddenness of the plague’s onset, with isolation being the only effective response, but later becomes quite casual. Defoe was also apparently pretty impressed with the City of London’s - and the Lord Mayor’s in particular - response to the plague. According to him, there was an extensive infrastructure both of control (compulsory isolation of families with even one infected member) – which was mainly unsuccessful - but also support (through food distribution).

The main problem though with the Journal is that it is excessively repetitive: there are pages and pages of repeated statistics of deaths by month and by parish; and worse, Defoe’s writing is leaden, even allowing for the sixteenth century style. So 2.5 stars for this.

Because writing is an expression of human character, what is true of one's character is true of one's writing as well. A person's strengths and weaknesses are often two sides of the same coin—the sympathetic character is often permissive, the assertive unreasonable, the ardent rash—and the same thing can be said of an author's beauties and his faults. A brief study of Daniel Defoe's book on the London plague of 1665-1666 illustrates this principle.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about “A Journal of the Plague Year" is that it is an extraordinarily convincing account narrated by the voice of a mature, solid citizen—thoroughly respectable and reliable--who has personally witnessed the extraordinary and often horrific incidents he describes. Defoe, however, although did he live in London at the time, was born in 1660, and was therefore only five years old when the Hand of Death fell upon the city of London.

Defoe creates a convincing persona by making his narrator a stolid burgher who fears his God, respects his fellow Londoners, and admires his city, an unimaginative man who above all reverences reliable testimony and verifiable facts. “Plague Year” is crammed with rolls of the dead and other helpful lists, as well as page upon page of city regulations governing the duties of citizens, the conduct of the inspectors, etc. Although there are many vivid glimpses of life during plague—crazed sufferers expiring in the streets, healthy families shut up in their houses by decree, diseased individuals defying city orders, open pits waiting for wagons stacked high with the dead—-these scenes are often obscured by heaps of accumulated detail, piles of haphazardly organized materials. The book, although impressive, is inelegant, its organizational principles unclear; it appears to be the work of a literate layman, not a professional writer. Paradoxically, it is precisely this impression of amateurishness that makes the voice—and therefore the work itself—so powerful and convincing a performance.

As with “Robinson Crusoe,” so it is with “A Journal of the Plague Year”: I can never decide whether Defoe is merely an unsophisticated novelist, addicted to lists and repetitive details, or whether—like the poet satirists of his own 18th Century—he is a master at constructing personae that convince the reader with their sincerity and authority.

Is the hobbling, inartful appearance of “Plague Year” a strength or is it a weakness? I for one think it's a toss up. Two sides of the same coin.

It's fiction that reads like nonfiction. One can be forgiven while reading Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year for thinking that its author was actually there in 1665 while the bubonic plague raged. In fact, Defoe was only five at the time and wasn't even in London.

What we have in A Journal of the Plague Year is an early example of credible journalism. The book was well researched, and much of the research was cited in the body of the text.

This review is being written during the coronavirus epidemic of 2020. I wanted to get a feeling for what it was like to live during times of quarantine. In London, that quarantine was absolute: If anyone within a dwelling came down with the plague, all the tenants were locked in; and the quarantine was enforced by two guards, one during the day and one at night.

One thing, however, was better than the situation in 2020: There was no shortage of toilet paper.

“
Fathers and Mothers have gone about as if they have been well, and have believ’d themselves to be so, till they have insensibly infected, and been the Destruction of their whole Families: Which they would have been far from doing, if they had the least Apprehensions of their being unsound and dangerous themselves.... It is very sad to reflect, how such a Person as this last mentioned above, had been a walking Destroyer, perhaps for a Week or Fortnight before that; how he had ruin’d those, that he would have hazarded his Life to save, and had been breathing Death upon them, even perhaps in his tender Kissing and Embracings of his own Children; Yet this certainly it was, and often has been, and I cou’d give many particular Cases where it has been so; if then the Blow is thus insensibly stricken; if the Arrow flies thus unseen, and cannot be discovered; to what purpose are all the Schemes for shutting up or removing the sick People? those Schemes cannot take place, upon those that appear to be sick, or to be infected; whereas there are among them, at the same time, Thousands of People, who seem to be well, at the same time, but are all that while carrying Death with them into all Companies which they come into. “

redundant, boring; boring, redundant.

(did I mention BORING?)

A couple of questions. Why did I read this account of London’s devastating plague of l665, and why did Defoe write what appears to be a factual account but is really fiction.? In this time of the c-virus pandemic you think I’d be satisfied with the present reality, but perhaps perversely, I was curious about this earlier epidemic. As to Defoe, he seems to have wanted to accurately describe the great plague of London, and to make it convincing he wrote as though he were a first person narrator who lived through it. He wrote the book 50 years after the plague had subsided so he obviously did extensive research from journals and eyewitness accounts
t
I’d say, based on the present conditions, that he wrote very convincingly of the plague. First, there was denial of its seriousness, and when it could no longer be denied, there was an exodus from the city by rich residents who secured their residences and left caretakers behind. As with today, there was early recognition that close contact with others would spread the bubonic plague. Citizens who developed the plague were shut up in their houses with their families and forbidden to come out. Guards were posted, mostly ineffectually, and people easily escaped from their houses . Food was a problem, but there were markets where it was usually available, having been brought in from the countryside, a “supply chain” that worked fairly well. There were all kinds of quack cures being promoted, none of which worked to relieve or cure the symptoms which included abdominal pains, diarrhea, fever and chills, weakness, and of course the gangrenous turning black of the skin which gave the plague its “black death” name.
t
Secondary effects were the same as today – massive unemployment as anyone who worked in secondary trades, as well as what today would be called the “service industry”, made up then of servants and shopkeepers. London was effectively quarantined, meaning that all foreign trade in this seaport was cut off from the city of roughly 800,000 people, of whom it is estimated nearly a quarter died.
t
The death toll fell heaviest on poor people who had no way of supporting themselves. Food was in short supply for them, not helped by horrible sanitation problems. And they paid little attention to precautions, “they did not take the least care or make any scruple of infecting others.” And eventually when the plague began to subside, they began to celebrate, ignoring the few precautions they had heeded, and caused a rise in deaths again.
t
One point of interest was that the city was organized fairly well in dealing with dead bodies. Corpses were gathered and disposed of daily, the work being at night. Bodies were piled in wagons and taken to huge trenches that had been dug where they were dumped in layers, each layer being covered by dirt. Who did this dangerous work where infection was rampant? Poor people one of whom said, “What must I do? I can’t starve, I had as good have the plague as perish for want. I must do this, or beg.”
t
Overall, it was like reading about today’s Covid 19 pandemic. The good thing , if it can be called that, was that the plague eventually passed (ironically the next year London had its great fire), and while a fourth of the population died, most did survive. The city dealt with corpse disposal or it would have been much worse, and surprisingly there was a fair amount of of charitable work accomplished for victim. Present day parallels are obvious, and reading Defoe gives some valid historical perspective.

I bought this a couple of summers ago in a second-hand bookshop because I’ve always been intrigued and it was one of those pretty Modern Library Classics that I love. And then it hovered near the top of my TBR pile but never quite surfaced. Just as well as it turned out, because I got to read it now, in late April of 2020.

Anyone reading this during the coronavirus lockdown is bound to comment on the similarities to our times: blame the foreigners, government dithering, rising death rates in neighbouring countries/parishes, limitations on movement, the rich fare better than the poor, livelihoods lost overnight, pestilence in the air! My favourite parallel was the “people are assholes,” continuity between 1665 and 2020: nowadays you might be rebuked on the street but are probably more likely to be attacked on twitter, whereas Defoe’s narrator H.F., having gone to the pub to check on an acquaintance who had just lost his whole family, came upon a group who

fell upon me with ill Language and Oaths; ask’d me what I did out of my Grave at such a Time when so many honester Men were carried into the Church-Yard? and why I was not at Home saying my Prayers, against the Dead-Cart came for me? and the like.

Overall though, it’s a text to make a person glad they live in the 21st century. We may not have a vaccine, but at least we know what’s causing the virus and don’t go about accidentally making it worse. Nor are we tortured in the name of a cure.

The writing style here is energetic and direct, with some biblical references but generally sticking to the topic at hand (because, what a topic!) without too much editorializing. Defoe is at his best here when he tells stories of individual experience, some the narrator’s, some hearsay. There are wonderful exchanges with a waterman who takes H.F. upon the river to see all the ships full of Plague refugees. A story that starts in the first pages is interrupted for almost a hundred but proves well worth the read when we eventually get back to it. This roving style allows us to take in a wide range of experiences, from the urban poor to the doctors (quack and otherwise, though they are all a bit quack) to those who escaped on foot to the country and were rejected by the villages they passed through. Even the bills of the dead are interesting.

The whole thing did get a bit bogged down by repetition in places but actually not as much as I was expecting. It would be an engaging read at any time, a thrilling read right now.

n  LESSONS TO DRAW FROM DEFOE'S 'A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR'n

Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year offers important lessons amid our COVID-19 pandemic. Here are nine lessons that we can pick.


A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!
H. F.


This is the second pandemic book that I have read. The first was Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. I shared with you the lessons we could learn from the book and the 1918 Spanish Influenza. I shared four lessons: one, are we prepared for the next epidemic? two, the Philadelphia's painful lessons on disregard of medical advice; three, the failings of the US Press in not disclosing truthfully the Spanish flu pandemic in the US; and four, the need to foster dissemination of information between countries particularly on the outbreak of a pandemic. I ended my reflections on the book in the following words: "As the pandemic continues to affect the world, these lessons and others can help us in our conversation on this subject. Barry quotes Albert Camus and perhaps this is a good quote to inspire: “What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.”

In my TBR list, Daniel Defoe's A Plague of the Journal Year showed up. As you will gather, the Great Plague of London hit London in 1665 and 1666 and wiped 100,000 people. Daniel Defoe, who was five years old in 1665 when the bubonic plague struck, narrates to us through a narrator initialled as H.F, the experiences of that calamitous year. It has been written that the accounts are based on the journals of Defoe's uncle Henry Foe who lived through the Plague. The book was first published in March 1722.

The book is a verisimilitude of the actual events that happened in 1665, told through a narrator who takes us through the streets of London as the plague visited people. This historical fiction has a lot of lessons we can learn from even as the coronavirus visits the world.

1. THE DANGER LAY IN PEOPLE WHO APPEARED WELL:

As the Great Plague raged in London in 1665, Defoe writes that it was easy to avoid the sick since they showed the signs. But those that appeared well were the most dangerous. A seemingly healthy person would mix with people yet infect many.

2. SHUTTING UP OF HOUSES:

The Lord Mayor of London at that time, Borif De Pfeffel Jonffon, had ordered that if a family member fell sick, then you were to be shut up in your house as a family. Two watchmen guarded the door: one during the day and the other at night. Defoe paints a grim picture of families that stayed with dead relatives in their houses. Defoe also tells us of crafty ones who sent the watchmen on errands (for that was allowed) and took the opportunity to flee. The idea was to contain the contagion. But many families perished since they ended up infecting each other with the Bubonic plague. Defoe paints a vivid picture of the perils of those times:

n  "...for whoever considers all the particulars in such cases must acknowledge, and we cannot doubt but the severity of those confinements made many people desperate, and made them run out of their houses at all hazards, and with the plague visibly upon them, not knowing either whither to go or what to do, or, indeed, what they did; and many that did so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities, and perished in the streets or fields for mere want, or dropped down by the raging violence of the fever upon them. Others wandered into the country, and went forward any way, as their desperation guided them, not knowing whither they went or would go: till, faint and tired, and not getting any relief, the houses and villages on the road refusing to admit them to lodge whether infected or no, they have perished by the roadside or gotten into barns and died there, none daring to come to them or relieve them, though perhaps not infected, for nobody would believe them."n

3. THE QUACKS REIGNED:

The waganga were there too in Defoe's London at that time. And they advertised their wares to the effect that they would treat the Bubonic plague or the "distemper" as Defoe keeps referring to it. Defoe writes:

n  "On the other hand it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctors' bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering in physic, and inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which was generally set off with such flourishes as these, viz.: 'Infallible preventive pills against the plague.' 'Neverfailing preservatives against the infection.' 'Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air.' 'Exact regulations for the conduct of the body in case of an infection.' 'Anti-pestilential pills.' 'Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before.' 'An universal remedy for the plague.' 'The only true plague water.' 'The royal antidote against all kinds of infection';--and such a number more that I cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a book of themselves to set them down."n

Ironically, at the height of the distemper, these charlatans fled. The writer offers numerous examples of these kinds of adverts. Here's another:

n  

'An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of antidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has, after forty years' practice, arrived to such skill as may, with God's blessing, direct persons how to prevent their being touched by any contagious distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis.'

n

The poor died for relying on these to protect themselves. But we can only sympathise with their desperation. Defoe chillingly writes:

n  "How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead-carts and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along."n

4. BE WARY OF CALM WATERS, BE VERY WARY:

There were periods when the plague killed many. The Bills of Mortality were high up there. Then there were times the deaths reduced, so much to the point that people got out of their houses and let their guard off. Many died. The lesson therefore it never to be deceived by the calmness of the sea.

5. THE DEAD CARTS:

Despite the devastation, the dead were still buried in mass graves-- at night. The dead carts would be pulled at night, collecting dead people from their houses. We can only empathize while reading the following lines:

n  "This occasioned, that notwithstanding the infinite number of people which died and were sick, almost all together, yet they were always cleared away and carried off every night, so that it was never to be said of London that the living were not able to bury the dead."n

6. THE ORDERS AND WHAT WE CAN LEARN:

Defoe shows us the Orders by the Lord Mayor titled Orders Conceived and Published by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London Concerning the Infection of the Plague, 1665. The Order provides for the appointment of examiners in every Parish, examiners, watchers, searchers, chirurgeons, nurse-keepers.

In the Orders, we encounter quarantine:

n  "Sequestration of the Sick.

'As soon as any man shall be found by this examiner, chirurgeon, or searcher to be sick of the plague, he shall the same night be sequestered in the same house; and in case he be so sequestered, then though he afterwards die not, the house wherein he sickened should be shut up for a month, after the use of the due preservatives taken by the rest."n

In the same Orders, we also encounter the shutting of houses command:

n  "Shutting up of the House.

'If any person shall have visited any man known to be infected of the plague, or entered willingly into any known infected house, being not allowed, the house wherein he inhabiteth shall be shut up for certain days by the examiner's direction."n

Freedom of assembly is also curtailed. And the Orders are a tad harsh on beggars. Here's how it is worded:

n  "Beggars.

'Forasmuch as nothing is more complained of than the multitude of rogues and wandering beggars that swarm in every place about the city, being a great cause of the spreading of the infection, and will not be avoided, notwithstanding any orders that have been given to the contrary: It is therefore now ordered, that such constables, and others whom this matter may any way concern, take special care that no wandering beggars be suffered in the streets of this city in any fashion or manner whatsoever, upon the penalty provided by the law, to be duly and severely executed upon them."n

7. CHARITY TO THE POOR:

It is heartwarming to read of the generosity of people towards the poor amid calamities. Perhaps we should take note of not ending the help so soon after a calamity. Defoe captures it well in the following memorable words:

n  "For it is to be observed, that though the occasions of relief and the objects of distress were very many more in the time of the violence of the plague than now after all was over, yet the distress of the poor was more now a great deal than it was then, because all the sluices of general charity were now shut. People supposed the main occasion to be over, and so stopped their hands; whereas particular objects were still very moving, and the distress of those that were poor was very great indeed."n

8. A TOAST TO THE HEALTH WORKERS:

Throughout history, doctors and nurses have always overcome great challenges to save a population on the precipice of decimation. And they have always paid the price with their lives.The clergy also deserve praise. Defoe writes:

n  "I only remember that there died sixteen clergymen, two aldermen, five physicians, thirteen surgeons, within the city and liberties before the beginning of September."n

9. A PANDEMIC CHANGES US FOR THE BETTER:

A pandemic should change us for the better. It could be the simple things like a smile or handshake. A pandemic makes us human. How better can it get than this?

n  "It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the very countenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly bill came out. It might have been perceived in their countenances that a secret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody's face. They shook one another by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the same side of the way with one another before. Where the streets were not too broad they would open their windows and call from one house to another, and ask how they did, and if they had heard the good news that the plague was abated. Some would return, when they said good news, and ask, 'What good news?' and when they answered that the plague was abated and the bills decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, 'God be praised I' and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had heard nothing of it; and such was the joy of the people that it was, as it were, life to them from the grave. I could almost set down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief; but that would be to lessen the value of it."n

You can also read the review on my ayes and nays blog.

You also listen to the audio on my sound cloud.

You may also read  my review of Barry's book The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History on the Spanish flu.

We shall overcome. Stay safe, family.

n  Diario del año de la pesten: 3 estrellas.

Este es un libro atípico, y no fue para nada lo que me esperaba.

Narrado desde la perspectiva de un supuesto sobreviviente de la epidemia de la peste bubónica que asoló a la ciudad de Londres en 1666, este diario pronto adquiere un perfil más informativo-divulgativo, que de testimonio en sí. Aunque Defoe trae de esta manera una novela de no ficción cuando el género aún no existía, también lo convierte en una suerte de crónica periodística con un formato indefinido y redundante.

Los momentos que me resultaron interesantes fueron aquellos en los que se dedicaba a describir la concepción de la enfermedad en ese entonces, ya sea a un nivel científico incipiente o en el imaginario de la gente; el comportamiento de las personas ante el temor generalizado por una muerte acechante y las medidas de prevención tomadas para evitar la propagación del virus. En este aspecto, el paralelismo con la situación reciente y actual del coronavirus se vuelve más notorio todavía. Por un lado, el mecanismo de aislamiento y cuarentena, la importancia de la higiene (muy precaria en esos años), el hecho de que hubiese vigiladores para controlar que las personas no salieran de sus casas (cuyas puertas eran cerradas con candados desde afuera y se tapiaban las ventanas), los carros para llevar a los muertos a una sepultura profunda y común, entre otros detalles, me parecieron muy curiosos. Asimismo, siempre que relataba cómo se escuchaban los llantos y los gritos de los familiares de enfermos que fallecían a cada momento, y cómo eso se impregnaba en un ambiente lúgubre y triste en las calles, la sensación de temor y miedo se transmitía muy bien.

No obstante, debo reconocer que los aspectos que no me gustaron son subjetivos, y más aún si consideramos el contexto en el que fue escrito el libro. En primer lugar, en su esfuerzo por dar al relato un carácter verosímil, el autor arroja constantemente datos de cantidades de muertos por semana y meses en las distintas ciudades; y digo que lo arroja, porque en verdad inserta varios cuadros con esa información en muchas partes del texto, sin hacer un análisis que lo justifique. A mí parecer esto le quitaba coherencia a la forma del relato, que así se volvía impredecible y no mantenía un hilo conductor más que la existencia de la epidemia. Entiendo que probablemente para la época en realidad no había un formato a seguir tampoco, pero me veo obligada a expresar lo que sentí al leerlo.

Por otra parte, tanto desde el inicio como hasta el final, se manifiesta la relevancia de la religión y cuán partícipe era la obra de Dios en todo lo que estaba ocurriendo. Esto no me molestó demasiado. En algún punto lo veo como ejemplo de su propia creencia y también como alternativa a la falta de conocimientos científicos en esos años. Para Defoe, la aparición de la peste fue un castigo mandado por Dios, y la posterior y repentina desaparición de la enfermedad, no es más que la prueba de su voluntad. Bajo este concepto, que como muchas cosas en el texto se vuelve reiterativo, el diario-relato-crónica toma cualidades de sermón. Sin embargo, insisto que no me pareció agresivo, sino algo más propio del contexto.

Acerca de la escritura, al principio me desagradó un poco, pero finalmente me acostumbré. Tiene un estilo bastante descuidado, como si escribiera a los tumbos, sin saber dónde pausar o qué decir en verdad. Creo que a medida que avanzan las páginas él mismo se va adecuando y esto mejora. Eso sí, se destaca su vocación periodística y, sin que esto sea un insulto, de gacetillero. El prólogo de la edición de Impedimenta, a cargo de José C. Vales, es bastante elocuente y contundente al respecto. Pese a que no comparto su enojo por descubrir que el libro es ficticio o que no tiene índice (?), hubiese preferido leerlo después de la obra para evitar cualquier tipo de influencia.

Diario del año de la peste es un libro interesante más por su concepto que por su contenido en sí. Un escrito de no ficción novelado, con aires de crónica periodística, que simula haber vivenciado y sobrevivido la epidemia de la peste bubónica que padeció Londres en la década de 1660. Defoe parece escribir con un objetivo más cercano a informar y a contar lo sensacional para conmover, que a describir con sensibilidad la atmósfera circundante. En otras palabras, una guía de supervivencia de años pasados, con datos que se repiten y sobran, y que también demuestran que algunas cosas no cambian.

n  A Journal of the Plague Yearn is a novel by Daniel Defoe, telling the story of the Great Plague in London in the year 1665. The book was first published in March 1722, 57 years after the event. n  A Journal of the Plague Yearn is an account, a "journal", of one man's experiences in the year 1665, in which the Great Plague struck the city of London. The book is told mostly in the order things happened, as far as I can tell anyway, though there are no chapters, it's just all one big story, which come to think of it, doesn't sound like a journal at all, at least not one of my journals. And now that I have come to think of it, it bugs me, no one writes a journal that isn't separated into days, weeks, or at least months I would think.

Oh well, I'll try to move on from that now annoying detail to say that the book is written in the first person, told by a narrator who couldn't have been Defoe himself because Defoe was only five years old in 1665. Whoever the mysterious narrator is, he signs the book at the end with the initials H. F. and is probably based on the journals of Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe. At least that's what the introduction says, and I didn't go on a big Henry Foe search to see if it is true, at least not yet anyway. The book begins with H.F. telling us of the rumors that the plague may be coming back.

"It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again."

It goes to show how little I know of the plague because I didn't think it "returned again" at all. I thought the plague swept through wherever it swept through and was gone forever. And I certainly didn't think anyone could get it more than once. However, it seems that not only does it return, but it returns over and over again. At least it did a long time ago. Which now has me wondering if it is possible that the bubonic plague is still around. Another thing I'll have to go look up. A few pages later it says:

"This last bill was really frightful, being a higher number than had been known to have been buried in one week since the preceding visitation of 1656."

So now as far as I can tell, we have the plague in 1656, 1663, 1664 and now again in 1665. That must have been terrifying, not knowing when it may come back. Oh, and although in the book we have all sorts of people believing all sorts of things as to how the plague started in the first place, it is now known that it was caused by fleas that come from rats. Figures, I hate rats. And mice, and fleas for that matter. And a whole lot of other bugs and rodents come to think of it. Oh, by the way, if you happen to look up the Great Plague you get a lot of pictures of fleas and rats. Wonderful, I'm not going to look it up anymore.

There are lots of details in this book that I enjoyed, but I kept wishing I had a map of London in 1665 to see where all these places were. There are names of streets, names of churches, pubs, shops and parishes. Did you know there are 97 parishes in London? I didn't, but I do now. One of the things that puzzled me about people's behavior during this terrible time was how they would try to hide the fact that they or someone in their family had the disease:

" it began to be suspected that the plague was among the people at that end of the town, and that many had died of it, though they had taken care to keep it as much from the knowledge of the public as possible."

" The family they were in endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighbourhood,"

It seems like the main reason people wanted to hide that they had the plague is because they didn't want to be "shut up" in their houses and so they did all sorts of things to break out when the house was shut up. The shutting up of houses is just what it sounds like, if someone in the house had the plague than the house was "shut up". It was locked and guarded, no one leaves, whether they have the plague or not. After all, they've been living for who knows how long with a plague victim, there is a good chance they already have the plague. So everyone in the house stays in the house. And because of this people were always either trying to hide the fact that someone in the house had the plague at all, or were thinking of ways to escape from the house. While I can see why the healthy people didn't want to be locked up in the same house as the sick people, I didn't understand why the sick people went to so much trouble to escape, and for that matter although I could understand how the healthy people felt I wouldn't have tried to escape. At least I hope I wouldn't have, for I would have been afraid of just what the authorities seemed to be afraid of, that I would give this horrible plague to someone else. So hopefully I would have locked myself in the house without any help from watchmen or other authorities.

Which brings me to watchmen and other authorities. Now not only do we have infected people escaping and running through the street, we also have occupants of the infected house escaping into the streets, and then we have Examiners, they are appointed to go into houses and confirm there is plague, next there are the Watchmen, they are to keep the infected and exposed locked in their houses, Searchers are to search the bodies for plague, Chirurgeons (which is an odd name) are to assist the searchers, Nurse-keepers are obviously supposed to be taking care of the sick, all these positions are appointed and you must accept your position or go to jail. There are also Physicians who are treating the sick and Buriers who are burying the dead. With all these people running around the city, going in and out of plague victim's houses, I'm surprised more people didn't have the plague.

And speaking of physicians (among others) reminded me of this quote mentioning not only physicians but quacks, as Defoe calls them:

"So the Plague defied all medicines; the very physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their mouths; and men went about prescribing to others and telling them what to do till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to oppose. This was the case of several physicians, even some of them the most eminent, and of several of the most skillful surgeons. Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to trust to their own medicines, which they must needs be conscious to themselves were good for nothing, and who rather ought, like other sorts of thieves, to have run away, sensible of their guilt, from the justice that they could not but expect should punish them as they knew they had deserved."

Defoe does spend some time on quacks as he calls them telling us things like this:

...."now led by their fright to extremes of folly; and, as I have said before, that they ran to conjurers and witches, and all sorts of deceivers, to know what should become of them (who fed their fears, and kept them always alarmed and awake on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets), so they were as mad upon their running after quacks and mountebanks, and every practicing old woman, for medicines and remedies; storing themselves with such multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as they were called, that they not only spent their money but even poisoned themselves beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it. On the other hand it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctors' bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering in physic, and inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which was generally set off with such flourishes as these, viz.: 'Infallible preventive pills against the plague.' 'Neverfailing preservatives against the infection.' 'Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air.' 'Exact regulations for the conduct of the body in case of an infection.' 'Anti-pestilential pills.' 'Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before.' 'An universal remedy for the plague.' 'The only true plague water.' 'The royal antidote against all kinds of infection';—and such a number more that I cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a book of themselves to set them down"

This I have to mention because of how strange it seems. According to Defoe the people were deceived into believing in wearing charms, amulets, and things like that to strengthen the body against the plague. Defoe says:

"as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as particularly the word Abracadabra, formed in triangle or pyramid, thus:— "

ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB
ABRACADA
ABRACAD
ABRACA
ABRAC
ABRA
ABR
AB
A

I can't imagine why the word Abracadabra in the form of a triangle would be thought to cure anything, or who could have come up with such an idea in the first place. Of course, I'm not even sure Abracadabra is a real word. Defoe spends a lot of time telling or showing us bills of mortality, this is the bill of mortality published in December of 1664:

"Plague, 2. Parishes infected, 1."

And the bill of mortality released in August of 1665 says this:

"From August the 22nd to the 29th Plague, 7496."

At one point during the novel H.F. has spent two weeks inside his house and feels like he must go out for a walk. He walks out into the fields going towards the river, for he wanted to see how things were going on there. As he reaches the water he meets a poor man walking on the bank. Our narrator asks the man how the people in that area are doing and the replies:

'Alas, sir!' says he, 'almost desolate; all dead or sick. Here are very few families in this part, or in that village' (pointing at Poplar), 'where half of them are not dead already, and the rest sick.' Then he pointing to one house, 'There they are all dead', said he, 'and the house stands open; nobody dares go into it. A poor thief', says he, 'ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard too last night.' Then he pointed to several other houses. 'There', says he, 'they are all dead, the man and his wife, and five children."

At this point H.F. asks him why he is in the area and he tells him that he is a poor, desolate man; and although he has not yet been infected, his family is, and one of his children dead.' He points to a little, low-boarded house saying that is where his poor wife and children live, 'if they may be said to live, for my wife and one of the children are visited, but I do not come at them.'

When the narrator asks how he could abandon his family the man tells him that he hasn't abandoned them but works for them as much as he is able and has been able to provide for them and keep them from want. When asked how he can make a living at such a time he replies:

“Do you see these five ships lie at anchor (pointing down the river a good way below the town), and do you see eight or ten ships lie at chain there? (pointing above the town)…All these ships have families on board, of their merchants and owners, and such-like; who have locked themselves up and live on board, close shut in, for fear of the infection; and I tend on them and fetch things for them, carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not be obliged to come on shore; and every night I fasten my boat on board one of the ship's boats, and there I sleep by myself, and, blessed be God, I am preserved hitherto.'

He then goes on to say that he rarely comes on shore, but only to check on his family and give them money when he has it. He has called his wife to come and get the money and food he brought her, but she hasn't come out yet. He tells our narrator that he always places the money on a large rock by the street and calls his wife, then when he has moved away she comes out and gets it. As they talk his wife finally calls to him:

"At length, after some further talk, the poor woman opened the door and called, 'Robert, Robert'. He answered, and bid her stay a few moments and he would come; so he ran down the common stairs to his boat and fetched up a sack, in which was the provisions he had brought from the ships; and when he returned he hallooed again. Then he went to the great stone which he showed me and emptied the sack, and laid all out, everything by themselves, and then retired; and his wife came with a little boy to fetch them away, and called and said such a captain had sent such a thing, and such a captain such a thing, and at the end adds, 'God has sent it all; give thanks to Him.' When the poor woman had taken up all, she was so weak she could not carry it at once in, though the weight was not much neither; so she left the biscuit, which was in a little bag, and left a little boy to watch it till she came again.

'Well, but', says I to him, 'did you leave her the four shillings too, which you said was your week's pay?'

'Yes, yes,' says he; 'you shall hear her own it.' So he calls again, 'Rachel, Rachel,' which it seems was her name, 'did you take up the money?' 'Yes,' said she. 'How much was it?' said he. 'Four shillings and a groat,' said she. 'Well, well,' says he, 'the Lord keep you all'; and so he turned to go away.

As I could not refrain contributing tears to this man's story, so neither could I refrain my charity for his assistance. So I called him, 'Hark thee, friend,' said I, 'come hither, for I believe thou art in health, that I may venture thee'; so I pulled out my hand, which was in my pocket before, 'Here,' says I, 'go and call thy Rachel once more, and give her a little more comfort from me. God will never forsake a family that trust in Him as thou dost.' So I gave him four other shillings, and bid him go lay them on the stone and call his wife.

I have not words to express the poor man's thankfulness, neither could he express it himself but by tears running down his face. He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon hearing their condition, to give them all that money, and a great deal more such as that he said to her. The woman, too, made signs of the like thankfulness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; and I parted with no money all that year that I thought better bestowed."

And I do believe with that I will be done. Well, almost done. I've learned a lot about the Great Plague by reading this book, and I've got things to go look up, that's always a good thing, if I remember to do it. I liked the book as much as you can like a book about lots and lots of people dying horrible deaths because of rats and fleas. I would and possibly will read it again, there are just so many books out there to read and re-read who knows if I'll actually get around to it again. The book is definitely creepy, things like carts for the dead and big pits for the bodies, and bodies laying in houses for days until someone figures out the people in the house must all be dead. Things like that. I'll give it four stars anyway, unless that "a journal should be separated into days" thing bugs me too much, then it will go down to a three star. For now it's four.

A fictional journal of the bubonic plague that struck London in 1665. Defoe wrote it as if he recollected it directly although he would have been four years old that year. It was fascinating to learn how the worries Londoners had about their pandemic mirror our own: food shortages and stockpiling, how to dispose of the dead, people who behave irresponsibly, how the virus is transmitted, scammers taking advantage of desperate people, and lots more. But because Defoe wrote it as though it were a real journal there are some rather tedious sections and places where he repeats himself. Interesting.