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.
The first is called _The Wonderful Year_, 1603. The author, who is
anonymous, begins with weeping over the death of Queen Elizabeth. This
tribute paid, with such exaggerated grief as belongs to his sense of
loyalty, he rejoices, with equal extravagance, over the accession of
James. This brings him to his real subject:
A stiffe and freezing horror sucks vp the riuers of my blood: my
haire stands an ende with the panting of my braines: mine eye balls
are ready to start out, being beaten with the billowes of my teares:
out of my weeping pen does the inke mournfully and more bitterly
than gall drop on the pale-faced paper, even when I do but thinke
how the bowels of my sicke country have bene torne. _Apollo_,
therefore, and you bewitching siluer-tongd _Muses_, get you gone: I
inuocate none of your names. Sorrow and truth, sit you on each side
of me, whilst I am delivered of this deadly burden: prompt me that I
may utter ruthfull and passionate condolement: arme my trembling
hand, that I may boldly rip up and anatomize the ulcerous body of
this _Anthropophagized_ Plague: lend me art (without any counterfeit
shadowing) to paint and delineate to the life the whole story of
this mortall and pestiferous battaile. And you the ghosts of those
more (by many) than 40000, that with the virulent poison of
infection haue bene driuen out of your earthly dwellings: you
desolate hand-wringing widowes, that beate your bosomes over your
departing husbands: you wofully distracted mothers that with
disheueld haire falne into swounds, while you lye kissing the
insensible cold lips of your breathlesse infants: you out-cast and
down-troden orphans, that shall many a yeare hence remember more
freshly to mourne, when your mourning garments shall looke olde and
be forgotten; and you the _Genii_ of all those emptyed families,
whose habitations are now among the _Antipodes_; joine all your
hands together, and with your bodies cast a ring about me; let me
behold your ghastly vizages, that my paper may receiue their true
pictures: _Eccho_ forth your grones through the hollow trunke of my
pen, and raine downe your gummy tears into mine incke, that even
marble bosomes may be shaken with terrour, and hearts of adamant
melt into compassion.
[Illustration: BELOW BRIDGE]
In this extravagant vein he plunges into the subject. Death, he says,
like stalking Tamberlaine, hath pitched his tent in the suburbs; the
Plague is muster-master and marshal of the field; the main army is a
"mingle-mangle" of dumpish mourners, merry sextons, hungry
coffin-sellers, and nastie grave-makers. All who could run away, he
says, did run; some riding, some on foot, some without boots, some in
slippers, by water, by land--"in shoals swom they." Then the Plague
invaded the City. Every house looked like Bartholomew's Hospital; the
people drank mithridatum and dragon-water all day long; they stuffed
their ears and noses with rue and wormwood. Lazarus lay at the door, but
Dives was gone; there were no dogs in the streets, for the Plague killed
them all; whole families were carried to the grave as if to bed. "What
became of our Phisitions in this massacre? They hid their synodical
heads as well as the prowdest; for their phlebotomes, losinges, and
electuaries, with their diacatholicons, diacodions, amulets, and
antidotes had not so much strength to hold life and soule together as a
pot of Pindar's ale and a nutmeg." When servants and prentices were
attacked by the disease, they were too often thrust out-of-doors by
their masters, and perished "in fields, in ditches, in common cages, and
under stalls." Then he begins to tell the gruesome stories that belong
to every time of Plague. In this he is followed by Defoe, who most
certainly saw this pamphlet. What happened in 1603 also happened in
1665. Those who could run away did so; the physicians--who could do
nothing--ran; the rich merchants ran; there was a general stoppage of
trade; there was great suffering among the poor; those who dared to sit
together, sat in the taverns drinking till they lost their fears. His
stories told, the writer concludes:
I could fill a whole uolume, and call it the second part of the
hundred mery tales, onely with such ridiculous stuffe as this of the
Justice; but _Dii meliora_; I haue better matters to set my wits
about: neither shall you wring out of my pen (though you lay it on
the racke) the villainies of that damnd Keeper, who killd all she
kept; it had bene good to haue made her Keeper of the common Jayle,
and the holes of both Counters; for a number lye there that wish to
be rid out of this motley world; shee would haue tickled them and
turned them ouer the thumbs. I will likewise let the Church-warden
in _Thames-street_ sleep (for hees now past waking) who being
requested by one of his neighbors to suffer his wife or child (that
was then dead) to lye in the Church-yard, answered in a mocking
sort, he keept that lodging for himselfe and his household: and
within three days after was driuen to hide his head in a hole
himself. Neither will I speake a word of a poore boy (seruant to a
Chandler) dwelling thereabouts, who being struck to the heart by
sicknes, was first caryed away by water, to be left anywhere; but
landing being denyed by an army of brownebill men, that kept the
shore, back againe was he brought, and left in an out-celler, where
lying groueling and groaning on his face, among fagots (but not one
of them set on fire to comfort him), there continued all night, and
dyed miserably for want of succor. Nor of another poore wretch, in
the Parish of St. _Mary Oueryes_, who being in the morning throwne,
as the fashion is, into a graue vpon a heap of carcases, that kayd
for their complement, was found in the after-noone gasping and
gaping for life: but by these tricks, imagining that many thousand
haue bene turned wrongfully off the ladder of life, and praying that
_Derick_ or his executors, may liue to do those a good turne, that
haue done so to others: _Hic finis Priami_; heeres an end of an old
song.
The second tract was written by one whose Christian name is surely
Jeremiah. It is called _Vox Civitatis_. It is the Lamentation of London
under the Plague. The City mourns her departed merchants. "Issachar
stands still for want of work." Her children are starving; her
apprentices, "the children of knights and justices of the county," are
rated with beggars, and buried in the highway like malefactors. As for
the clergy, they did not forsake their flocks; they sent them away--all
who could go--before they themselves fled. The physicians and the
surgeons have fled. Yet some have remained--parsons, physicians, and
surgeons. The Lord Mayor, too, remained at his post. Then he argues that
no one, in whatever station, has the right to desert his post. None are
useless. He declaims against the inhumanity of those who refuse shelter
to a stricken man, and he calls upon those who have food to return. The
whole composition is filled with pious ejaculations; it certainly is the
work of some city clergyman. London is stricken for her sins; yet there
is mercy in the chastisement. The author is always finding consolation
in the thought that the punishment will lead to reformation. Yet the
work is a cry of suffering, of pity, and of indignation. The writer does
not relate, he alludes to what everybody knows; yet he makes us see the
workshops closed, 'Change deserted, churches shut, all the better class
fled, prentices thrust out to die in the streets, the people with no
work and no money, the servants left to guard the warehouses dead; even
in Cheapside not a place where one can change a purse of gold; "Watling
Street like an empty Cloyster." The Plague is terrible, but it is the
chastisement of the Lord. He hath taken the City into His own hands;
that may be borne; the worst, the most terrible thing is the desertion
of the City and the people by the masters; the abandonment of those
dependent upon their employers--this is the burden of the cry. To those
who study the gleams and glimpses of Plague-time in these papers, the
worst suffering in every time of pestilence was caused by the cessation
of work and of trade. The master gone, the servants had no work and no
wages--how were the children to be fed?
With one little touch of human nature the tract concludes. The writer
was a scholar; he is jealous concerning his style. "If," he says, "this
Declaration wants Science, or that Eloquence that might beseem me,
consider my Trouble, the Absence of my Orators, the shutting up of my
Libraries, so that I was content with a common Secretary." It is _Vox
Civitatis_ London that speaks; her libraries are those of St. Paul's,
Zion College, Gresham College, Whittington College; the "common
Secretary" is the writer. Such is his proud humility--a "common
Secretary!"
* * * * *
Now for another twice-told tale.
The last cross had not been removed from the last infected house, the
last person dead of the Plague had not been buried, before the Great
Fire of London broke out and purged the plague-stricken city from end to
end.
Three great fires had destroyed London before this of the year 1666,
viz., in 962, in 1087, which swept away nearly the whole of the City,
and in 1212, when a great part of Southwark and of the City north of the
bridge was destroyed.
This fire began early in the morning of Sunday, September 2d. It broke
out at the house of one Farryner, a baker in Pudding Lane, Thames
Street. All the houses in that lane, and, one supposes, in all the
narrow lanes and courts about this part of the City, were of wood,
pitched without; the lane was narrow, and the projecting stories on
either side nearly met at the top. The baker's house was full of faggots
and brushwood, so that the fire instantly broke out into full fury and
spread four ways at once. The houses stood very thick in this, the most
densely populated part of the City. In the narrow lanes north and south
of Thames Street lived those who made their living as stevedores,
watermen, porters, carriers, and so forth; in Thames Street itself, on
either side, were warehouses filled with oil, pitch, and tar, wine,
brandy, and such inflammable things, so that by six o'clock on Sunday
morning all Fish Street was in flames, and the fire spreading so fast
that the people barely had time to remove their goods. As it drew near
to a house they hurriedly loaded a cart with the more valuable effects
and carried them off to another house farther away, and then to another,
and yet another. Some placed their goods in churches for safety, as if
the flames would respect a consecrated building. The booksellers, for
instance, of Paternoster Row carried all their books into the crypt of
St. Paul's, thinking that there, at least, would be a safe place, if any
in the whole world. Who could look at those strong stone pillars with
the strong arched roof and suspect that the stones would crumble like
sand beneath the fierce heat which was playing upon them? All that
Sunday was spent in moving goods out of houses before the flames caught
them; the river was covered with barges and lighters laden with
furniture. Pepys watched the fire from Bankside. "We stayed till, it
being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this
to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of
above a mile long; it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and
all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and
the crackling of houses at their ruin." On Monday morning Pepys puts his
bags of gold and his plate into a cart with all his best things, and
drove off to Sir William Rider's, at Bethnal Green. His friend, Sir W.
Batten, not knowing how to move his wine, dug a pit in his garden and
put it there. In this pit, also, Pepys placed the papers of the
Admiralty.
[Illustration: OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE]
On Wednesday he walked into the town over the hot ashes. Fenchurch
Street, Gracechurch Street, Lombard Street, Cheapside, he found in dust.
Of the Exchange nothing standing of all the statues but that of Sir
Thomas Gresham--a strange survival. On Saturday he went to see the ruins
of St. Paul's: "A miserable sight; all the roofs fallen, and the body of
the Quire fallen into St. Faith's; Paul's school, also Ludgate and Fleet
Street."
The fire was stayed at length by blowing up houses at the Temple Church,
at Pie Corner, Smithfield (where the figure of a boy still stands to
commemorate the fact), at Aldersgate, Cripplegate, and the upper part of
Bishopsgate Street. It had consumed five-sixths of the City, together
with a great piece beyond the western gates. It had covered an area of
436 acres, viz., 387 acres within the walls, and 73 without; it had
destroyed 132,000 dwelling-houses, St. Paul's Cathedral, eighty-nine
parish churches, four of the City gates, Sion College, the Royal
Exchange, the old Grey Friars Church, the Chapel of St. Thomas of Acon,
and an immense number of great houses, schools, prisons, and hospitals.
The area covered, roughly speaking, an oblong nearly a mile and a half
in length by half a mile in breadth. The value of the property destroyed
was estimated at £10,000,000. There is no such fire of any great city on
record, unless it is the burning of Rome under Nero.
[Illustration: SION COLLEGE]
Their city being thus destroyed, the citizens lost no time, but set to
work manfully to rebuild it. The rebuilding of London is a subject of
some obscurity. One thing is quite certain: that as soon as the embers
were cool enough to enable the people to walk among them, they returned,
and began to find out the sites of their former houses. It is also
certain that it took more than two years to clear away the tottering
walls and the ruins.
It was at first proposed to build again on a new plan; Sir Christopher
Wren prepared one plan, and Sir John Evelyn another. Both plans were
excellent, symmetrical and convenient. Had either been adopted, the City
of London would have been as artificial and as regular as a new American
town, or the City of Turin. Very happily, while the Lord Mayor and
aldermen were considering the matter, the people had already begun to
build. A most fortunate thing it was that the City rose again on its old
lines, with its winding streets and narrow lanes. At first the houseless
people, 200,000 in number, camped out in Moorfields, just north of the
City. Very happily, these fields, which had long been a swamp or fen
intersected by ditches, a place of pasture, kennels, and windmills, had
been drained by the City in 1606, and were now laid out in pleasant
walks, a place of resort for summer evenings, a wrestling and cudgel
playing-ground, and a ground for the muster of the militia. Here they
set up tents and cottages; here they presently began to build
two-storied houses of brick.
As they had no churches, they set up "tabernacles," whether on the site
of the old churches or in Moorfields does not appear. As they had no
Exchange, they used Gresham College for the purpose; the same place did
duty for the Guildhall; the Excise Office was removed to Southampton
Fields, near Bedford House; the General Post-office was taken to Brydges
Street, Covent Garden; the Custom-house to Mark Lane; Doctors' Commons
to Exeter House, Strand. The part of the town wanted for the shipping
and foreign trade was first put up. And thus the town, in broken-winged
fashion, renewed its old life.
On September 18th the Houses of Parliament created a Court of Judicature
for settling the differences which were sure to arise between landlord
and tenants, and between owners of land, as to boundaries and other
things. The Justices of the Court of King's Bench and Common Pleas, with
the Barons of the Exchequer, were the judges of the Court. So much
satisfaction did they give that the grateful City caused their portraits
to be placed in Guildhall, where, I believe, they may be seen to this
day.
In order to enable the churches, prisons, and public buildings to be
rebuilt, a duty was laid upon coals. This duty was also to enable the
City to enlarge the streets, take over ground for quays, and other
useful purposes. Nothing, however, seems to have been granted for the
rebuilding of private houses.
The building of the churches took a long time to accomplish. The first
to be completed was that of St. Dunstan's in the East, the tower of
which is Sir Christopher Wren's; the body of the church, which has since
been pulled down, was by another hand. That was built two years after
the Fire. Six years after the Fire another church was finished; seven
years after three more; eight years after three more; ten years after
five, and so on, dragging along until the last two of those rebuilt--for
a great many were not put up again--were finished in the year 1697,
thirty-one years after the Fire.
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN'S MEETING-HOUSE IN ZOAR STREET]
Within four years the rebuilding of the City was nearly completed. Ten
thousand houses were built, a great many companies' halls, and nearly
twenty churches. One who writes in the year 1690 (_Angliæ Metropolis,
or, The Present State of London_) says, "As if the Fire had only purged
the City, the buildings are infinitely more beautiful, more commodious,
more solid (the three main virtues of all edifices) than before. They
have made their streets much more large and straight, paved on each side
with smooth hewn stone, and guarded the same with many massy posts for
the benefit of foot-passengers; and whereas before they dwelt in low,
dark, wooden houses, they now live in lofty, lightsome, uniform, and
very stately brick buildings." This is great gain. And yet, looking at
the houses outside Staple Inn and at the old pictures, at what loss of
picturesqueness was this gain acquired? The records are nearly silent as
to the way in which the people were affected by the Fire. It is certain,
however, that where the Plague ruined hundreds of families, the Fire
ruined thousands. Thirteen thousand houses were burned down; many of
these were houses harboring two or three families, for 200,000 were
rendered homeless. Some of them were families of the lower working
class, the river-side laborers and watermen, who would suffer little
more than temporary inconvenience, and the loss of their humble
"sticks." But many of them were substantial merchants, their warehouses
filled with wine, oil, stuffs, spices, and all kinds of merchandise;
warehouses and contents all gone--swept clean away--and with them the
whole fortune of the trader. And there were the retailers, whose stock
in trade, now consumed, represented all they had in the world. And there
were the master-workmen, their workshops fitted with such machinery and
tools as belonged to their craft and the materials for their work--all
gone--all destroyed. Where was the money found to replace these
treasures of imported goods? Who could refurnish his shop for the
draper? Who could rebuild and fill his warehouse for the merchant? Who
could give back his books to the bookseller? No one--the stock was all
gone.
The prisoners for debt, as well as those who were imprisoned for crime,
regained their freedom when the prisons were burned down. Could the
debts be proved against them when the papers were all destroyed?
The tenant whose rent was in arrears was safe, for who could prove that
he had not paid?
All debts were wiped clean off the slate. There were no more mortgages,
no more promissory bills to meet, no more drafts of honor. Debts as well
as property were all destroyed together. The money-lender and the
borrower were destroyed together. The schools were closed--for how long?
The almshouses were burned down--what became of the poor old bedesmen
and bedeswomen? The City charities were suspended--what became of the
poor? The houses were destroyed--what became of rents and tithes and
taxes?
[Illustration: OLD GROCERS' HALL, USED FOR BANK OF ENGLAND]
The Fire is out at last; the rain has quenched the last sparks; the
embers have ceased to smoke; those walls which have not fallen totter
and hang trembling ready to fall. I see men standing about singly; the
tears run down their cheeks; two hundred years ago, if we had anything
to cry about, we were not ashamed to cry without restraint; they are
dressed in broadcloth, the ruffles are of lace, they look like reputable
citizens. Listen--one draws near another. "Neighbor," he says, "a
fortnight ago, before this stroke, whether of God or of Papist, I had a
fair shop on this spot." "And I also, good friend," said the other, "as
you know." "My shop," continued the first, "was stocked with silks and
satins, kid gloves, lace ruffles and neckties, shirts, and all that a
gentleman or a gentlewoman can ask for. The stock was worth a thousand
pounds. I turned it over six or seven times a year at least. And my
profit was four hundred pounds." "As for me," said the other, "I was in
a smaller way, as you know. Yet such as it was, my fortune was all in
it, and out of my takings I could call two hundred pounds a year my
own." "Now is it all gone," said the first. "All gone," the other
repeated, fetching a sigh. "And now, neighbor, unless the company help,
I see nothing for it but we must starve." "Must starve," the other
repeated. And so they separated, and went divers ways, and whether they
starved or whether they received help, and rose from the ashes with new
house and newly stocked shop, I know not. Says Dryden on the Fire:
"Those who have homes, when home they do repair
To a last lodging call their wandering friends:
Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care
To look how near their own destruction tends.
"Those who have none sit round where it was
And with full eyes each wonted room require:
Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place,
As murdered men walk where they did expire.
"The most in fields like herded beasts lie down,
To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor:
And while their babes in sleep their sorrow drown,
Sad parents watch the remnant of their store."
I think there must have been a return for a while to a primitive state
of barter and exchange. Not quite, because every man carried out of the
Fire such money as he had. Pepys, for instance, placed his bags of gold
in a cart and drove it himself, "in my night gown," to a friend at rural
Bethnal Green. But there could have been very little money in comparison
with the millions invested in the merchandise destroyed.
[Illustration: LONDON AFTER THE FIRE]