Welcome to The Visitation!

This podcast is a reading of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, an account of the plague that afflicted London in 1665. Published in 1722, the work represents itself as the testimony of an eyewitness living in London at the time of the plague, but it is actually a work of fiction, based on exhaustive historical research. Many of the topics related in the novel will have an immediate resonance with our own experiences, particularly as we are now facing a pandemic of our own (granted that COVID-19 is nearly so devastating). They include the author’s indecision about whether to stay in the city or to flee to the countryside, the relaxing of sectarian religious affiliations in a population united by terror, the role class distinctions played in determining who lived and who died, and the proliferation of quacks, faith healers, fortune tellers, and others, who profited from the general misery.

To make the work accessible to modern readers, we have divided it into manageable episodes of between fifteen and twenty minutes each, and we have omitted certain passages in the interest of time, and when doing so did not harm the narrative flow of the work as a whole.

This brief (9 minutes) introductory episode introduces the podcast and contains some more information about the novel and about the great plague of 1665. Then it’s on to this remarkable and disturbing tale!

Credits: Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings

Defoe begins his story with an account of the discovery of a few cases of the plague in St. Giles parish in the winter of 1664-65. The slow and close-grained way in which he describes the alternating terror and relief caused by the reporting of new cases followed by periods of abatement builds dramatic tension very effectively. One of the highlights of this episode is the little editorializing he does about the ability of the media to both report rumors and to embellish them for effect. This, along with his remarks about the speed at which news traveled in the author’s day—"instantly over the whole nation,”—lend a faint irony to the account, as they are pretty much how we would describe our situation today. Defoe concludes the episode with descriptions of the mass exodus from the city of those who were wealthy enough and of rumors of restrictions on travel soon to come.

For an account of a modern-day exodus, see https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/15/upshot/who-left-new-york-coronavirus.html

Credits: Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings

With the plague now beginning to spread and intensify, and having witnessed so many of his neighbors fleeing the city, the author realizes that he must soon decide whether to stay or go himself, and he offers his reflections and decision-making process as a guide to others who might find themselves in similar circumstances. Like many of us would be, he is torn between the desire to protect his belongings and property or to flee and perhaps save his life. In a particularly interesting conversation with his more well-traveled brother, he considers whether his fate is foreordained and thus not affected at all by any decision he might make.

In the end, after a series of incidents prevents him from leaving, he settles on considering what we might call the “preponderance of the evidence” as a method for making such a decision. By this he means that we should look upon the entirety of opportunities and obstacles that present themselves, to view them “complexly” as being “intimations from Heaven.” Finding guidance and solace in the 91st Psalm, and after a brief bout of some minor but worrisome illness, he is confirmed in his resolve to stay in London, placing his fate in God’s hands.

[For notes on the main themes of the novel, visit https://londonplague.com/postscript/. To see some ways in which our reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated in the Journal, see https://londonplague.com/concordance/.]

Credits: Podcast produced by Sam Brelsfoard Music from Funeral Sentences of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), performed by the Choir of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, Timothy Brown conducting. Used by permission. Visit our website: www.londonplague.com © 2020 Mark Cummings