Chapter II: A Perambulation (2)

When the play was finished, the ale, the apples, and the nuts were passed round, and the noise began again. Then the clown came in and began to sing, and the music played--but oh, how poor it seemed after the great emotions of the play! The old man plucked me by the sleeve, and we went out, and with us most of the better sort.

"The first plays," said the antiquary, "that ever I saw were those that were played on stages put up in the court-yards of inns, where the galleries afforded place for the audience, and the stage was made of boards laid upon trestles. Tarleton used to play at the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate, and at the Cross Keys, Grasse Street. He was reckoned a famous player, yet, compared with those we have seen this day, a fustian mouther, no doubt. Rude plays they were, and rude players; but I dare say they moved the spectators as much as this fine theatre."

Not far from the Globe stood another building of circular form; a throng of people pressed about the doors, and a great noise of barking and shouting came from within. "It is the Bull-baiting," said my guide. "But the place is full of rough men, whose wrath is easily moved, and then out come knives and there is a tumult. I am too old for such things. Nevertheless, it is a noble sport; and when you come to whipping the blinded bear, who lately broke away and bit a piece out of a man's thigh, it passes all." He lingered as if he would join in it once more with a little encouragement. Finding none, he walked slowly away to the river-bank.

"This place," said Stow, "hath an ill name, by reason of evil-doers, who were long permitted to live here--a place notorious for three hundred years as the common sink of the city. No reputable citizen would have his country-house and garden on Bank Side. Why, there are private gardens all round London as far north as Islington, and as far east as Ratcliffe Cross, but none here. The air is fresh and wholesome coming up the river, the ground fertile: see the trees and hedges how they flourish; yet there is never a private garden in the place. For this reason the bull-baiting was here, and Paris Gardens with its bears--an' it were Sunday, I would show you the bears--old Harry Hunks and Sackerson. For this reason was the Globe built here, without the city precincts. Where are the theatres and the baitings, the musicians and the shows, thither must gather together the poets, singers, mummers, and all those who live by ministering to the merriment and pleasure of the world. A company of keen wits they are, their tongues readier than most, and their talk bolder. Sober merchants, who think more of the matter and less of the manner, like not such company." Here the tinkling of a guitar, followed by a burst of laughter, interrupted the discourse. "I doubt not," said Stow, "that we have here--'tis the Falcon Tavern--a company of wits and poets and players. Let us tarry but the drinking of a single flask. It may be, unless their tongues are more free than is seemly, that we shall be rewarded."

The Falcon Inn stood at the western end of Bank Side, at the head of the Falcon stairs. In front a small garden stretched out towards the river. Part of the garden was an arbor, formed by a vine raised on poles, so as to form a roof of leaves. Here was a table placed, and round the table a company of ten or a dozen. At the head of the table was a young gentleman richly dressed. Behind him stood two servants. At his right sat a man of about thirty, of large frame and already corpulent, his brown hair short and curly, his beard cut short, his eyes singularly bright.

"'Tis Ben Jonson," whispered Stow. "Let us sit here, without the arbor, so that we can drink and listen. Ben is but lately out of prison, where he was cast for writing reflections on the Scottish nation. 'Twas said that he would lose his ears and have his nose slit, but the King showed mercy. He at the head of the table is some young nobleman, patron of poets, but, alas! I live now so retired that I know not his name. On the left of him is William Shakespeare, whom some think a better poet than Ben--a quiet man who says little. I have seen him here before. 'Twas he wrote the piece we have seen this day. He has a share in the theatre of Blackfriars. Burbage, the actor, sits next to Shakespeare, and then Alleyn and Hemying opposite, and Henslowe. And there is John Marston, another poet."

Alleyn it was who held the guitar. At this time he was in the prime of life, not yet forty, his face full of mobility and quickness. He ran his fingers carelessly over the notes, and then began to sing in a clear, high voice:

"'Twas I that paid for all things,
'Twas others drank the wine;
I cannot now recall things,
Live but a fool to pine.
'Twas I that beat the bush,
The bird to others flew!
For she, alas! for she, alas! hath left me.
Falero--lero--loo!

"If ever that Dame Nature
(For this false lover's sake)
Another pleasant creature
Like unto her would make,
Let her remember this,
To make the other twice!
For this, alas! for this, alas! hath left me.
Falero--lero--loo!

"No riches now can raise me,
No want make me despair;
No misery amaze me,
Nor yet for want I care.
I have lost a World itself;
My earthly Heaven, adieu!
Since she, alas! since she, alas! hath left me.
Falero--lero--loo!"

"Sir," said the young gentleman, "'tis an excellent song well sung. I drink your health."

This he did rising, and very courteously.

Now, in the talk that followed I observed that, while the players amused by relating anecdotes, Ben Jonson made laughter by what he said, speaking in language which belongs to scholars and to books, and that Shakespeare sat for the most part in silence, yet not in the silence of a blockhead in the presence of wits, and when he spoke it was to the purpose. Also I remarked that the guitar passed from hand to hand, and that everybody could play and sing, and that the boldness of the talk showed the freedom of their minds. Who can repeat the unrestrained conversation of a tavern company? Nay, since some of them were more than merry with the wine, it would be an ill turn to set down what they said. We drank our cups and listened to the talk.

Presently Ben Jonson himself sang one of his own songs, in a rough but not unmelodious voice:

"Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
Seem to fly it, it will pursue.
So court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone--she will court you.
Say, are not women truly, then,
Styled but the shadows of us men?

"At morn or even shades are longest,
At noon they are or short or none;
So men at weakest, they are strongest,
But grant us perfect, they're not known.
Say, are not women truly, then,
Styled but the shadows of the men?"

We came away about sunset, or near half-past eight in the evening. Some of the company were by this time merry with their wine, and as we rose one began to bawl an old tavern ditty, drumming on the wood of the guitar with his knuckles:

"There was a Ewe had three lambs,
And one of them was blacke;
There was a man had three sons--
Jeffrey, James, and Jack.

"The one was hanged, the other drown'd;
The third was lost and never found;
The old man he fell in a sound--
Come fill us a cup of Sacke."

It was nearly high tide on the river, which spread itself out full and broad between the banks, reflecting the evening glow in the western sky. Numberless swans floated about the stream. It was also covered with boats. Some were state barges belonging to great people, with awnings and curtains, painted and gilt, filled with ladies who sang as the boat floated quietly with the current to the music of guitars. Others were the cockle-shell of humble folk. Here was the prentice, taking his sweetheart out upon the river for the freshness of the evening air; here the citizen, with his wife and children in a wherry; here the tilt-boat, with its load of passengers coming up from Greenwich to Westminster. There were also the barges and lighters laden with hay, wool, and grain, waiting for the tide to turn in order to unload at Queenhithe or Billingsgate.

"This," said Stow, "is the best place of any for a prospect of the city. Here we can count the spires and the towers. I know them every one. Look how Paul's rises above the houses. His walls are a hundred feet high. His tower that you see is near three hundred feet high, and his spire, which has been burned down these forty years, was two hundred feet more. Alas, that goodly spire! It is only from this bank that you can see the great houses along the river. There the ruins of White Friars--there those of the Dominicans. Ruins were they not, but splendid buildings in the days of my youth. Baynard's Castle, the Steel Yard, Cold Harbor, the Bridge--there they stand. The famous city of Venice itself, I dare swear, cannot show so fair a prospect. See, now the sun lights up the windows of Nonesuch on the Bridge--see how the noble structure is reflected in the water below. Good sir," he turned to me with glowing face and eyes aflame with enthusiasm, "there is no other city in the whole world, believe me, which may compare with this noble City of London, of which--glory to God!--I have been permitted to become the humble historian."

We took boat at Falcon stairs--Stow told me there were two thousand boats and three thousand watermen on the river--and we returned to Queenhithe, the watermen shouting jokes and throwing strong words at each other, which seems to be their custom. By the time we landed the sun had gone down. Work for the day was over, and the streets were thronged with people. First, however, it was necessary to think of supper. My guide took me to an old inn in Dowgate; you entered it as at the Mitre by a long passage. This was the well-known Swan, where we found a goodly company assembled. They seemed to be merchants all; grave men, not given to idle mirth, so that the conversation was more dull (if more seemly) than at the Falcon. For supper they served us roast pullet with a salad of lettuce, very good, and a flask of right Canary. My ancient guide swore--"Bones a' me"--that it contained the very spirit and essence of the Canary grape. "Sir," he said, "can a man live in London for eighty years and fail to discern good wine from bad? Why, the city drinks up, I believe, all the good wine in the world. Amsterdam is built on piles set in the ooze and mud. London floats on puncheons, pipes, and hogsheads of the best and choicest. This is truly rare Canary. Alas! I am past eighty. I shall drink but little more."

So he drank and warmed his old heart and discussed further, but it would be idle to set down all he said, because most of it is in books, and my desire has been to record only what cannot be found, by the curious, already printed.

After supper we had more wine and tobacco. Some of the company fell to card-playing, some to dice. Then the door opened, and a man came in with two children, boys, who sang with him while he played the guitar. They sang madrigals very sweetly, each his own part truly and with justice. When they finished, the boys went around with a platter and collected farthings. And having paid our reckoning we went away.

In the streets outside, the women sat at their doors or stood about gossiping with each other. At every corner a bonfire was merrily burning. This was partly because it was the Vigil of St. John the Baptist, partly because in the city they always lit bonfires in the summer months to purify and cleanse the air. But because of the day every door was shadowed with green branches--birch, long fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like--garnished with garlands of beautiful flowers. They had also hung up lamps of colored glass, with oil to burn all the night, so that the streets looked gay and bright with the red light of the bonfires playing on the tall gabled fronts, and the red and green light of the lamps. From all the taverns, as we passed, came the sound of music, singing, and revelry, with the clink of glasses and the uplifting of voices thick with wine. There was the sound of music and singing from the private houses. Everywhere singing--everywhere joy and happiness. In the streets the very prentices and their sweethearts danced, to the pipe and tabor, those figures called the Brawl and the Canary, and better dancing, with greater spirit and more fidelity to the steps, had I never before seen.

At last we stopped once more before the door of John Stow's house.

"Sir," he said, taking my hand, "the time has come to bid you farewell. It has been a great honor--believe me--to converse with one of a generation yet to come, and a great satisfaction to learn that my name will live so long beside those of the poets of this noble age. Many things there are into which I would fain have inquired. The looking into futurity is an idle thing, yet I would fain have asked if you have put a new steeple on Paul's; if you still suffer the desecration of that place; if London will spread still more beyond her walls; if her trade will still more increase; if the Spaniard will be always permitted to hold the Continent of America; if the Pope will still be reigning; with many other things. But you came this day to learn, and I to teach. When next you come, suffer me in turn to put questions. And now, good sir, farewell. Behold!" He raised his hands in admiration. "I have spent a day--a whole day--with a man of the nineteenth century!! Bones a' me!!!"

So he went within and shut the door.

VIII

CHARLES THE SECOND

It is not proposed here to swell with any new groans the general chorus of lamentation over the deplorable morals of King Charles's court. Let us acknowledge that we want all the available groans for the deplorable morals of our own time. Let us leave severely on one side Whitehall, with the indolent king: his mistresses, his singing boys, his gaming tables, his tinkling guitars, his feasting and his dancing. We will have nothing whatever to do with Chiffinch and his friends, nor with Rochester, nor with Nell Gwynne, nor with Old Rowley himself. Therefore, of course, we can have nothing to do with Messrs. Wycherley, Congreve, and company. It is, I know, the accepted excuse for these dramatists that their characters are not men and women, but puppets. To my humble thinking they are not puppets at all, but living and actual human creatures--portraits of real men and women who haunted Whitehall. Let us keep to the east of Temple Bar: hither come whispers, murmurs, rumors, of sad doings at court: sober and grim citizens, still touched with the Puritan spirit, speak of these rumors with sorrow and disappointment; they had hoped better things after the ten years' exile, yet they knew so little and were always ready to believe so well of the King--and his Majesty was always so friendly to the City--that the reports remained mere reports. It is really no use to keep a king unless you are able to persuade yourself that he is wiser, nobler, more virtuous, braver, and greater than ordinary mortals. Indeed, as the head and leader of the nation, he is officially the wisest, noblest, bravest, best, and greatest among us, and is so recognized in the Prayer-book. Even those who are about the court, and therefore are so unhappy as to be convinced of the exact contrary, do their best to keep up the illusion. The great mass of mankind still continue to believe that moral and intellectual superiority goes with the crown and belongs to the reigning sovereign. The only change that has come over nations living under the monarchic form of government as regards their view of kings is that they no longer believe all this of the reigning sovereign's predecessor; as regards the present occupant of the throne, of course. Are the citizens of a republic similarly convinced as regards their President?

The evil example of the court, therefore, produced very little effect upon the morals of the City. At first, indeed, the whole nation, tired to death of grave faces, sober clothes, Puritanic austerity, godly talk, downcast eyes, and the intolerable nuisance of talking and thinking perpetually about the very slender chance of getting into heaven, rushed into a reckless extreme of brave and even gaudy attire and generous feasting, the twang of the guitar no longer prohibited, nor the singing of love ditties, nor the dancing of the youths and maids forbidden. Even this natural reaction affected only the young. The heart of the City was, and remained for a hundred and fifty years afterwards, deeply affected with the Puritanic spirit. It has been of late years the fashion of the day--led by those who wish to saddle us again with sacerdotalism--to scoff and laugh at this spirit. It has nearly disappeared now, even in America; but we may see in it far more than what has been called the selfish desire of each man to save his own soul. We may see in it, especially, the spirit of personal responsibility, the loss of which--if we ever do lose it, should authority be able to reassert her old power--will be fatal to intellectual or moral advance. Personal responsibility brings with it personal dignity, enterprise, courage, patience, all the virtues. Only that man who stands face to face with his Maker, with no authority intervening, can be called free. But when the young men of the City had had their fling, in the first rush and whirlpool of the Restoration, they settled down soberly to business again. The foundation of the Hudson's Bay Company proves that the Elizabethan spirit of enterprise was by no means dead. The Institution of the Royal Society, which had its first home in Gresham College, proves that the City thought of other useful things besides money-getting. The last forty years of the seventeenth century, however, might have been passed over as presenting no special points of change, except in the gradual introduction of tea and coffee. As London was in the time of Elizabeth, so it was, with a few changes, in the time of Charles the Second. A little variation in the costumes; a little alteration in the hour of dinner; a greatly extended trade over a much wider world; and, in all other respects, the same city.

Two events--two disasters--give special importance to this period. I mean the Plague and the Fire.

The Plague was the twelfth of its kind which visited the City during a period of seven hundred years. The twelfth and the last. Yet not the worst. That of the year 1407 is said to have killed half the population: that of 1517, if historians are to be believed in the matter of numbers, which is seldom the case, killed more than half. Of all these plagues we hear no more than the bare, dreadful fact, "Plague--so many thousands killed." That is all that the chronicles tell us. Since there was no contemporary historian we know nothing more. How many plagues have fallen upon poor humanity, with countless tragedies and appalling miseries, but with no historian? We know all about the Plague of Athens, the Plague of Florence, the Plague of London--the words require no dates--but what of the many other plagues?

The plague was no new thing; it was always threatening; it broke out on board ship; it was carried about in bales; it was brought from the Levant with the figs and the spices; some sailor was stricken with it; reports were constantly flying about concerning it; now it was at Constantinople; now at Amsterdam; now at Marseilles; now at Algiers; everybody knew that it might come again at any time. But it delayed; the years went on; there was no plague; the younger people ceased to dread it. Then, like the Deluge, which may stand as the type of disaster long promised and foretold, and not to be avoided, yet long delayed, it came at last. And when it went away it had destroyed near upon a hundred thousand people.

We read the marvellous history of the Plague as it presented itself to the imagination of Daniel Defoe, who wrote fifty years after the event. Nothing ever written in the English language holds the reader with such a grip as his account of the Plague. It seems as if no one at the time could have been able to speak or think of anything but the Plague; we see the horror of the empty streets; we hear the cries and lamentations of those who are seized and those who are bereaved. The cart comes slowly along the streets with the man ringing a bell and crying, "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!" We think of the great _fosses communes_, the holes into which the dead were thrown in heaps and covered with a little earth; we think of the grass growing in the streets; the churches deserted; the clergymen basely flying; their places taken by the ejected nonconformists who preach of repentance and forgiveness--no time, this, for the Calvinist to number the Elect on his ten fingers--to as many as dare assemble together; the roads black with fugitives hurrying from the abode of Death; we hear the frantic mirth of revellers snatching to-night a doubtful rapture, for to-morrow they die. The City is filled with despair. We look into the pale faces of those who venture forth; we hear the sighs of those who meet; nobody--nobody, we imagine--can think of aught else than the immediate prospect of death for himself and all he loves.

Pepys, however, who remained in the City most of the time, not only notes down calmly the progress of the pestilence, but also allows us to see the effect it produced on his own mind. It is very curious. He reads the Bills of Mortality as they are published: he, as well as Defoe, records the silent and deserted appearance of the town: he confesses, now and then, that he is fearful; but his mind is all the time entirely occupied with his own advancement and his own pleasures. He feasts and drinks with his friends; he notes that "we were very merry." Occasionally he betrays a little anxiety, but he is never panic-stricken.

In the entry of September, when the Plague was at its height, and the terror and misery of London at their worst, he writes: "To the Tower, and there sent for the weekly Bill, and find 8252 dead in all, and of these 6978 of the Plague, which is a most dreadful number and shows reason to fear that the Plague hath got that hold that it will yet continue among us. Thence to Branford, reading 'The Villaine,' a pretty good play, all the way. There a coach of Mr. Povy's stood ready for me, and he at his house ready to come in, and so we together merrily to Swakely to Sir R. Viner." And the same week, hearing that Lord Sandwich with the fleet had taken some prizes--"the receipt of this news did put us all into an extasy of joy that it inspired into Sir J. Minner and Mr. Evelyn such a spirit of mirth, that in all my life I never met with so merry a two hours as our company this night was." Perhaps, however, this excess of mirth was not due to insensibility, but was a natural reaction from the gloom and terror that stalked the streets.

The summer of 1665 was curiously hot and dry. Every day a blue sky, a scorching sun, and no breath of wind. If bonfires were kindled to purify the air, the smoke ascended and hung overhead in a motionless cloud. From May till September, no wind, no rain, no cloud, only perpetual sunshine to mock the misery of the prostrate city.

At the first outbreak of the disease the people began to run away; the roads were black with carts carrying their necessaries into the country; the City clergy for the most part deserted their churches; physicians ran from the disease they could not cure, pretending that they had to go away with their patients; the Court left Whitehall; the Courts of Justice were removed to Oxford. The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, remained at Lambeth Palace, and the Duke of Albemarle and Lord Craven remained in their town houses. And the Lord Mayor, Sir John Laurence, ordered that the aldermen, sheriffs, common councilmen, and all constables and officers of the City should remain at their posts.

As the Plague increased, business of all kinds was suspended; works were closed; ships that arrived laden, went down the river again and across to Amsterdam; ships that waited for their cargoes lay idle in the Pool by hundreds; shops were shut; manufactories and industries of all kinds were stopped.

Consider what this means. London was not only a city of foreign trade and a great port, but a city, also, of many industries. It made an enormous quantity of things; the very livelihood of the City was derived from its trade and its industries. These once stopped, the City perished. We have seen how the Roman Augusta decayed and died. The people had no longer any trade or any work, or any food. Therefore, the City died. The same thing, from different causes, happened again. Trade and work were suspended. Therefore, the people began to starve.

Defoe, in his cataloguing way, which is the surest way of bringing a thing home to every one's understanding, enumerates all the different trades thrown out of work. That is to say, he catalogues all the trades of London. Let it be understood that the population of London was then about 350,000. This means about 100,000 working men of sixteen and upward. All these craftsmen, living from week to week upon their wages, with nothing saved, were turned out of employment almost at the same time--they and their families left to starve. Not only this, but clerks, book-keepers, serving-men, footmen, maid-servants, and apprentices were all turned into the streets together. Add to this the small shopkeepers and retailers of every kind, who live by their daily or weekly takings, and we shall have a population of a quarter of a million to keep.

The Lord Mayor, assisted by the Archbishop and the two lords, Albemarle and Craven, began and maintained a service of relief for these starving multitudes. The King sent a thousand pounds a week; the City gave six hundred pounds a week; merchants and rich people sent thousands every week; it is said that a hundred thousand pounds a week was contributed; this seems too great a sum--yet a whole city out of work! Employment was found for some of the men as constables, drivers of the carts that carried the dead to the burial-places, and so forth--and for the women as nurses. And, thanks to the Mayor's exertions, there was a plentiful supply of provisions during the whole time.

The disease continued to spread. It was thought that dogs and cats carried about infection. All those in the City were slaughtered. They even tried, for the same reason, to poison the rats and mice, but apparently failed. The necessity of going to market was a great source of danger; people were warned to lift their meat off the counter by iron hooks. Many families isolated themselves. The journal of one such household remains. The household, which lived in Wood Street, Cheapside, consisted of the master, a wholesale grocer, his wife, five children, two maid-servants, two apprentices, a porter, and a boy. He sent the boy to his friends in the country; he gave the elder apprentice the rest of his time; and he stationed his porter, Abraham, outside his door, there to sit night and day. Every window was closed, and nothing suffered to enter the house except at one upper window, which was opened to admit necessaries, but only with fumigation of gunpowder. At first the Plague, while it raged about Holborn, Fleet Street, and the Strand, came not within the City. This careful man, however, fully expected it, and when it did appear in July he locked himself up for good. Then they knew nothing except what the porter told them, and what they read in the Bills of Mortality. But all day long the knell never ceased to toll. Very soon all the houses in the street were infected and visited except their own. And when every day, and all day long, he heard nothing but bad news, growing daily worse, and when every night he heard the dismal bell and the rumbling of the dead cart, and the voice of the bellman crying, "Bring out your dead!" he began to give up all for lost. First, however, he made arrangements for the isolation of any one who should be seized. Three times a day they held a service of prayer; twice a week they observed a day of fasting; one would think that this maceration of the flesh was enough in itself to invite the Plague. Every morning the father rose early and went round to each chamber door asking how its inmates fared. When they replied "Well," he answered "Give God thanks." Outside, Abraham sat all day long, hearing from every passer-by the news of the day, which grew more and more terrifying, and passing it on to the upper window, where it was received with a fiery fumigation. One day Abraham came not. But his wife came. "Abraham," she said, "died of the Plague this morning, and as for me, I have it also, and I am going home to die. But first I will send another man to take my husband's place." So the poor faithful woman crept home and died, and that night with her husband was thrown into a great pit with no funeral service except the cursing and swearing of the rough fellows who drove the cart. The other man came, but in a day or two he also sickened and died. Then they had no porter and no way of communicating with the outer world. They remained prisoners, the whole family, with the two maids, for five long months. I suppose they must have devised some necessary communication with the outer world, or they would have starved.

Presently the Plague began to decrease; its fury was spent. But it was not until the first week of December that this citizen ventured forth. Then he took all his family to Tottenham for a change of air. One would think they needed it after this long confinement, and the monotony of their prison fare.

By this time the people were coming back fast--too fast; because their return caused a fresh outbreak. Then there was a grand conflagration of everything which might harbor the plague--curtains, sheets, blankets, hangings, stuffs, clothes--whatever there was in which the accursed thing might linger. And every house in which a case had occurred was scoured and whitewashed, while the church-yards were all covered with fresh earth at least a foot thick.

All this is a twice-told tale. But some tales may be told again and again. Consider, for instance, apart from the horror of this mighty pestilence, the loss and injury inflicted upon the City. If it is true that a hundred thousand perished, about half of them would be the craftsmen, the skilled workmen who created most of the wealth of London. How to replace these men? They could never be replaced.

Consider, again, that London was the great port for the reception and transmission of all the goods in the whole country. The stoppage of trade in London meant the stoppage of trade over the whole land. The cloth-makers of the West, the iron-founders, the colliers, the tin mines, the tanners, all were stopped, all were thrown out of work.

Again, consider the ruin of families. How many children of flourishing master-workmen, tradesmen, and merchants were reduced to poverty by the death of the father, and suddenly lowered to the level of working-men, happy if they were still young enough to learn a craft? How many lost their credit in the general stoppage of business? How many fortunes were cast away when no debts could be collected, and when the debtors themselves were all destroyed? And in cases when children were too young to protect themselves, how many were plundered of everything when their parents were dead?

Defoe, writing what he had learned by conversation with those who could remember this evil time, speaks of strange extravagances on the part of those who were infected. Very likely there were such things. Not, however, that they were common, as his story would have us believe. I prefer the picture of the imprisoned citizen, which represents a city sitting in sorrowful silence, the people crouching in their houses in silence or in prayer, gazing helpless upon each other, while the blue sky and the hot sun look down upon them, and the Plague grows busier every day.

When it abated at last, and the runaways went back to town, Pepys among them, he notes the amazing number of beggars. These poor creatures were the widows or children of the craftsmen, or the craftsmen themselves whose ruin we have just noted.

This was in January. The Plague, however, dragged on. In the week ending March 1, 1666, there were forty-two deaths from it. In the month of July it was still present in London, and reported to be raging at Colchester. In August, Pepys finds the house of one of his friends in Fenchurch Street shut up with the Plague, and it was said to be as bad as ever at Greenwich. This was the last entry about it, because in a week or two there was to happen an event of even greater importance than this great Plague.

Observe that this was the last appearance of the Plague. Since 1665 it 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.

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.

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.

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.