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A review by grubstlodger
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
4.0
‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ is an unusual book. For a start, it isn’t actual presented as a journal, more a reflection. It pretends to be the account of ‘HF’, a saddler who stayed in London during the whole of the plague’s ravaging. Defoe was five years old in 1665 and was evacuated into the country with his family for the duration of the sickness and so was not drawing on his own memories. It is very possible he drew on the memories of those around him, his uncle was a HF and did stay, it is possible he interviewed him. It is also possible he had access to Pepys diaries, as an acquaintance was a librarian of the Pepys library - if he did, I don’t think he used them much, Pepys’ unique perspective is not much seen in the book. It is clear Defoe also used plague literature and the recently published death lists of the time to help him.
Irrespective of the veracity of the tales told in the ‘Journal’, Defoe creates a feeling of realism and an aura of truth. Defoe plays to his strengths as a writer, describing the processes by which London tried to contain and protect itself from the plague as well as the methods and systems used by the people themselves. In doing so, he manages to create a very moving, dignified telling of a distressing tale.
He also manages to conjure up universal truths about people and London in particular. For example, when the plague starts, it begins in the West End. Those in the City, East and South of the river consider these sicknesses to only be the West’s problem. There’s sympathy, but an overriding feeling that ‘it won’t come here’. As a result, those places are utterly unprepared when the disease spreads. Were such an illness to occur today, London would treat it in exactly the same manner, it still being a city made of different parishes and ‘ends’, even if those parishes aren’t tied to churches.
After the initial panic and exodus of the city, what’s most notable about the book is the calm, rational way the people left behind organised themselves. Although Defoe has definite criticism of locking the healthy with the sick, he is very clear that it was at least a response, which isn’t coming from the King or court. The Lord Mayor of London and the officials of the city are highly praised for the way they set up systems of containment and burial, for the appeal and fair handing out of charity and for their dedication to their duty - a dedication not shown by clergy and doctors.
He gives a very fair account of plague nurses, pilloried in other texts for killing off their patients and stealing from them - accounts he reckons to be more a projection of people’s fears than an accurate description of the actions of the nurses themselves. Similarly, he doesn’t castigate the medical profession for being unable to get on top of the plague, seeing it as a problem that no one could control.
There are pictures of people running mad, of plague victims drowning themselves or setting themselves alight in their beds to avoid the painful death and (in September) of bodies dumped in the streets but these are the exceptions. When I think of how London would cope if a mysterious and untreatable disease killed 20% of the population in three months, those hardworking people of the 1600s are a wonder of civil duty and good sense. In modern London, in 2011, there were three days of widespread riots after a protest about a police shooting went out of hand. In 1665 there were none.
Another element that I found very recognisable was how, when the plague was at its height and every Londoner had accepted death, they stopped the precautions that had characterised the plague until then. No longer did they walk in the middle of the street and avoid people, nor did they leave payment in vinegar to sanitise it - a fatalism swept the city. Similarly, when the incidence of infection was still high but the death rate lower, they joyfully hugged and touched each other without fear… thus causing the plague to increase a little.
For a writer who often struggles with atmosphere, ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ is dripping in it. The close, hot summer of 1665, the voluntary (or involuntary) confinement to houses, the creeping and paranoid fear of infection - they are all simply and clearly evoked. The joy when the death count goes down, full of delight and release of tension is also communicated to the reader.
This might be my favourite Defoe book yet.
William Harrison Ainsworth also wrote a novel about London during the plague and fire called ‘Old Saint Pauls’. I look forward, at some point, to seeing what his particular technicolour imagination make of the material.
Irrespective of the veracity of the tales told in the ‘Journal’, Defoe creates a feeling of realism and an aura of truth. Defoe plays to his strengths as a writer, describing the processes by which London tried to contain and protect itself from the plague as well as the methods and systems used by the people themselves. In doing so, he manages to create a very moving, dignified telling of a distressing tale.
He also manages to conjure up universal truths about people and London in particular. For example, when the plague starts, it begins in the West End. Those in the City, East and South of the river consider these sicknesses to only be the West’s problem. There’s sympathy, but an overriding feeling that ‘it won’t come here’. As a result, those places are utterly unprepared when the disease spreads. Were such an illness to occur today, London would treat it in exactly the same manner, it still being a city made of different parishes and ‘ends’, even if those parishes aren’t tied to churches.
After the initial panic and exodus of the city, what’s most notable about the book is the calm, rational way the people left behind organised themselves. Although Defoe has definite criticism of locking the healthy with the sick, he is very clear that it was at least a response, which isn’t coming from the King or court. The Lord Mayor of London and the officials of the city are highly praised for the way they set up systems of containment and burial, for the appeal and fair handing out of charity and for their dedication to their duty - a dedication not shown by clergy and doctors.
He gives a very fair account of plague nurses, pilloried in other texts for killing off their patients and stealing from them - accounts he reckons to be more a projection of people’s fears than an accurate description of the actions of the nurses themselves. Similarly, he doesn’t castigate the medical profession for being unable to get on top of the plague, seeing it as a problem that no one could control.
There are pictures of people running mad, of plague victims drowning themselves or setting themselves alight in their beds to avoid the painful death and (in September) of bodies dumped in the streets but these are the exceptions. When I think of how London would cope if a mysterious and untreatable disease killed 20% of the population in three months, those hardworking people of the 1600s are a wonder of civil duty and good sense. In modern London, in 2011, there were three days of widespread riots after a protest about a police shooting went out of hand. In 1665 there were none.
Another element that I found very recognisable was how, when the plague was at its height and every Londoner had accepted death, they stopped the precautions that had characterised the plague until then. No longer did they walk in the middle of the street and avoid people, nor did they leave payment in vinegar to sanitise it - a fatalism swept the city. Similarly, when the incidence of infection was still high but the death rate lower, they joyfully hugged and touched each other without fear… thus causing the plague to increase a little.
For a writer who often struggles with atmosphere, ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ is dripping in it. The close, hot summer of 1665, the voluntary (or involuntary) confinement to houses, the creeping and paranoid fear of infection - they are all simply and clearly evoked. The joy when the death count goes down, full of delight and release of tension is also communicated to the reader.
This might be my favourite Defoe book yet.
William Harrison Ainsworth also wrote a novel about London during the plague and fire called ‘Old Saint Pauls’. I look forward, at some point, to seeing what his particular technicolour imagination make of the material.