The Last Man
something to throw off the clinging evil, and, while in action, they
fancied that a remedy was applied. The inhabitants of the smaller towns
left their houses, pitched tents in the fields, wandering separate from
each other careless of hunger or the sky’s inclemency, while they
imagined that they avoided the death-dealing disease. The farmers and
cottagers, on the contrary, struck with the fear of solitude, and madly
desirous of medical assistance, flocked into the towns.
But winter was coming, and with winter, hope. In August, the plague had
appeared in the country of England, and during September it made its
ravages. Towards the end of October it dwindled away, and was in some
degree replaced by a typhus, of hardly less virulence. The autumn was
warm and rainy: the infirm and sickly died off—happier they: many young
people flushed with health and prosperity, made pale by wasting malady,
became the inhabitants of the grave. The crop had failed, the bad corn,
and want of foreign wines, added vigour to disease. Before Christmas
half England was under water. The storms of the last winter were
renewed; but the diminished shipping of this year caused us to feel
less the tempests of the sea. The flood and storms did more harm to
continental Europe than to us—giving, as it were, the last blow to the
calamities which destroyed it. In Italy the rivers were unwatched by
the diminished peasantry; and, like wild beasts from their lair when
the hunters and dogs are afar, did Tiber, Arno, and Po, rush upon and
destroy the fertility of the plains. Whole villages were carried away.
Rome, and Florence, and Pisa were overflowed, and their marble palaces,
late mirrored in tranquil streams, had their foundations shaken by
their winter-gifted power. In Germany and Russia the injury was still
more momentous.
But frost would come at last, and with it a renewal of our lease of
earth. Frost would blunt the arrows of pestilence, and enchain the
furious elements; and the land would in spring throw off her garment of
snow, released from her menace of destruction. It was not until
February that the desired signs of winter appeared. For three days the
snow fell, ice stopped the current of the rivers, and the birds flew
out from crackling branches of the frost-whitened trees. On the fourth
morning all vanished. A south-west wind brought up rain—the sun came
out, and mocking the usual laws of nature, seemed even at this early
season to burn with solsticial force. It was no consolation, that with
the first winds of March the lanes were filled with violets, the fruit
trees covered with blossoms, that the corn sprung up, and the leaves
came out, forced by the unseasonable heat. We feared the balmy air—we
feared the cloudless sky, the flower-covered earth, and delightful
woods, for we looked on the fabric of the universe no longer as our
dwelling, but our tomb, and the fragrant land smelled to the
apprehension of fear like a wide church-yard.
Pisando la tierra dura
de continuo el hombre està
y cada passo que dà
es sobre su sepultura.[10]
Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages winter was breathing time; and
we exerted ourselves to make the best of it. Plague might not revive
with the summer; but if it did, it should find us prepared. It is a
part of man’s nature to adapt itself through habit even to pain and
sorrow. Pestilence had become a part of our future, our existence; it
was to be guarded against, like the flooding of rivers, the
encroachments of ocean, or the inclemency of the sky. After long
suffering and bitter experience, some panacea might be discovered; as
it was, all that received infection died— all however were not
infected; and it became our part to fix deep the foundations, and raise
high the barrier between contagion and the sane; to introduce such
order as would conduce to the well-being of the survivors, and as would
preserve hope and some portion of happiness to those who were
spectators of the still renewed tragedy. Adrian had introduced
systematic modes of proceeding in the metropolis, which, while they
were unable to stop the progress of death, yet prevented other evils,
vice and folly, from rendering the awful fate of the hour still more
tremendous. I wished to imitate his example, but men are used to
—move all together, if they move at all,[11]
and I could find no means of leading the inhabitants of scattered towns
and villages, who forgot my words as soon as they heard them not, and
veered with every baffling wind, that might arise from an apparent
change of circumstance.
I adopted another plan. Those writers who have imagined a reign of
peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country,
where each small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This
was the key of my design. Each village, however small, usually contains
a leader, one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they
seek in difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value. I was
immediately drawn to make this observation by occurrences that
presented themselves to my personal experience.
In the village of Little Marlow an old woman ruled the community. She
had lived for some years in an alms-house, and on fine Sundays her
threshold was constantly beset by a crowd, seeking her advice and
listening to her admonitions. She had been a soldier’s wife, and had
seen the world; infirmity, induced by fevers caught in unwholesome
quarters, had come on her before its time, and she seldom moved from
her little cot. The plague entered the village; and, while fright and
grief deprived the inhabitants of the little wisdom they possessed, old
Martha stepped forward and said— “Before now I have been in a town
where there was the plague.”—“And you escaped?”—“No, but I
recovered.”—After this Martha was seated more firmly than ever on the
regal seat, elevated by reverence and love. She entered the cottages of
the sick; she relieved their wants with her own hand; she betrayed no
fear, and inspired all who saw her with some portion of her own native
courage. She attended the markets—she insisted upon being supplied with
food for those who were too poor to purchase it. She shewed them how
the well-being of each included the prosperity of all. She would not
permit the gardens to be neglected, nor the very flowers in the cottage
lattices to droop from want of care. Hope, she said, was better than a
doctor’s prescription, and every thing that could sustain and enliven
the spirits, of more worth than drugs and mixtures.
It was the sight of Little Marlow, and my conversations with Martha,
that led me to the plan I formed. I had before visited the manor houses
and gentlemen’s seats, and often found the inhabitants actuated by the
purest benevolence, ready to lend their utmost aid for the welfare of
their tenants. But this was not enough. The intimate sympathy generated
by similar hopes and fears, similar experience and pursuits, was
wanting here. The poor perceived that the rich possessed other means of
preservation than those which could be partaken of by themselves,
seclusion, and, as far as circumstances permitted, freedom from care.
They could not place reliance on them, but turned with tenfold
dependence to the succour and advice of their equals. I resolved
therefore to go from village to village, seeking out the rustic archon
of the place, and by systematizing their exertions, and enlightening
their views, encrease both their power and their use among their
fellow-cottagers. Many changes also now occurred in these spontaneous
regal elections: depositions and abdications were frequent, while, in
the place of the old and prudent, the ardent youth would step forward,
eager for action, regardless of danger. Often too, the voice to which
all listened was suddenly silenced, the helping hand cold, the
sympathetic eye closed, and the villagers feared still more the death
that had selected a choice victim, shivering in dust the heart that had
beat for them, reducing to incommunicable annihilation the mind for
ever occupied with projects for their welfare.
Whoever labours for man must often find ingratitude, watered by vice
and folly, spring from the grain which he has sown. Death, which had in
our younger days walked the earth like “a thief that comes in the
night,” now, rising from his subterranean vault, girt with power, with
dark banner floating, came a conqueror. Many saw, seated above his
vice-regal throne, a supreme Providence, who directed his shafts, and
guided his progress, and they bowed their heads in resignation, or at
least in obedience. Others perceived only a passing casualty; they
endeavoured to exchange terror for heedlessness, and plunged into
licentiousness, to avoid the agonizing throes of worst apprehension.
Thus, while the wise, the good, and the prudent were occupied by the
labours of benevolence, the truce of winter produced other effects
among the young, the thoughtless, and the vicious. During the colder
months there was a general rush to London in search of amusement—the
ties of public opinion were loosened; many were rich, heretofore
poor—many had lost father and mother, the guardians of their morals,
their mentors and restraints. It would have been useless to have
opposed these impulses by barriers, which would only have driven those
actuated by them to more pernicious indulgencies. The theatres were
open and thronged; dance and midnight festival were frequented—in many
of these decorum was violated, and the evils, which hitherto adhered to
an advanced state of civilization, were doubled. The student left his
books, the artist his study: the occupations of life were gone, but the
amusements remained; enjoyment might be protracted to the verge of the
grave. All factitious colouring disappeared—death rose like night, and,
protected by its murky shadows the blush of modesty, the reserve of
pride, the decorum of prudery were frequently thrown aside as useless
veils. This was not universal. Among better natures, anguish and dread,
the fear of eternal separation, and the awful wonder produced by
unprecedented calamity, drew closer the ties of kindred and friendship.
Philosophers opposed their principles, as barriers to the inundation of
profligacy or despair, and the only ramparts to protect the invaded
territory of human life; the religious, hoping now for their reward,
clung fast to their creeds, as the rafts and planks which over the
tempest-vexed sea of suffering, would bear them in safety to the
harbour of the Unknown Continent. The loving heart, obliged to contract
its view, bestowed its overflow of affection in triple portion on the
few that remained. Yet, even among these, the present, as an
unalienable possession, became all of time to which they dared commit
the precious freight of their hopes.
The experience of immemorial time had taught us formerly to count our
enjoyments by years, and extend our prospect of life through a
lengthened period of progression and decay; the long road threaded a
vast labyrinth, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in which it
terminated, was hid by intervening objects. But an earthquake had
changed the scene—under our very feet the earth yawned—deep and
precipitous the gulph below opened to receive us, while the hours
charioted us towards the chasm. But it was winter now, and months must
elapse before we are hurled from our security. We became ephemera, to
whom the interval between the rising and setting sun was as a long
drawn year of common time. We should never see our children ripen into
maturity, nor behold their downy cheeks roughen, their blithe hearts
subdued by passion or care; but we had them now—they lived, and we
lived—what more could we desire? With such schooling did my poor Idris