Dan and Meri: Fiction based on actual events

The weather is wild, even for London in late autumn. Recently released from Newgate Prison and anxious about his future, Dan Foe hardly notices a timber house collapsing as he struggles past. He is lost in thought: how am I going to look after my growing family? Can writing do it? He tightens his greatcoat and presses on towards home.

Saved from the lion’s den! He remembers he still hasn’t told Meri about the condition of his release from Newgate. She was sure to be supportive as she had always been, through all their adventures. Dearest Meri, my muse, my Clio — I was desperate to be with you, especially with our twentieth anniversary almost upon us. I needed to see the children and now the baby boy. It seemed a good way of getting out of bankruptcy, too!

Home with Meri, Dan chats about his work: “I thought Essay on the Regulation of the Press was more likely to offend the government than The Shortest Way with the Dissenters but I’m thinking now that the press freedom pamphlet did offend them. They were reluctant to prosecute me for fear of embarrassment so they prosecuted over Dissenters instead. Anyway, maybe thanks to that, Dissenters outsold Press Regulation by a long way.”

Their hands touch. Perhaps it was both, they are thinking. We thought that Dissenters could cause us trouble but not in the way it did. Instead of being seen as a parody, many people thought it was genuine and asked embarrassing questions about why only members of the Anglican Church can hold government jobs. We were held responsible for starting the questioning. The Tories and the Liberals both wanted revenge — hence the seditious libel charge.

Dan interrupts, “Anyway, let’s get ready for this storm; it looks like a big one.” It’s the afternoon of 26th November, 1703.

Later, after an improvised meal with the other tenants, they are lying on a straw mattress on the floor of their basement room, the seven children huddled around them.

“It’s too noisy to sleep,” Meri says, “That wind is really screaming. What are those other crashing sounds?”

“Something collapsing or giving way. We must get some sleep. Let’s pray for deliverance from this storm.” Dan is exhausted from his time in prison but, curious and restless, Meri climbs the ladder and listens. Is that voices I can hear? She pulls her coat together tightly and opens the front door a crack. A group of people are talking nervously. She joins them but immediately there comes another crash. As she turns around and looks back, a section of timber wall slams into the group.

Meri regains consciousness in the gutter, a sharp pain in the back of her head. Dazed, she feels blood in her hair and hears a familiar voice, “Meri! It IS you! I’ve been praying for you! Let’s get you safely back into the house.” Inside, Dan finds a lantern and washes her injury, tying an old shirt-sleeve around her head.

“How long was I there, I wonder,” she asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe half an hour. Come on. Let’s get some rest.”

The next day, she is feeling better. Dan begins, “I thought I’d lost you and asked God to guide my footsteps. Then, there you were. I nearly tripped over you! Praise be to God.”

Always practical, Meri is unconvinced. “There must have been many killed and injured despite their loved ones praying for their deliverance. Why didn’t God save them?”

“It’s not for us to understand why God does things or not. I believe the answer will be revealed to us in time.”

“I hope so. Your faith seems to have been strengthened by this storm but mine is shaken.”

Two mornings later, Meri has been to the city and seen the latest news-books at the local coffee house. She joins Dan, checking the damage around their home, talking with neighbours. Some are still upset. Brick chimneys are down everywhere and many timber houses are wrecked.

“This is a huge story,” says Meri. “It’s all over the news-books — the worst storm ever in England. Thousands dead on land and sea! A fifth of the Navy’s sailors drowned! Hundreds of merchant and fishing vessels swamped! The worst cities are London and Bristol. The countryside is also wrecked. Millions of trees uprooted. At the moment, it’s a more important cause for us than our pamphlets, Dan!”

“You’re right,” his faith rising to the fore. “It’s a great opportunity for a sermon. It’s obviously a divine judgement on the failure of the navy to defeat the Spanish Catholics. Also on the sins of the nation. I’ll write a poem as well.”

“A sermon is a good idea but haven’t you had enough of poetry after your last effort?”

“You mean my Hymn to the Pillory? No, that saved my skin. We sold copies around the crowd and won them over. I got more flowers and laughter directed at me than rocks and rotten food! Listen to this:

Contempt, that false new word for shame,

Is, without crime, an empty name –

A shadow to amuse mankind

But never frights the wise or well-fixed mind…”

Clio the muse interrupts before he gets too carried away by his own brilliance: “Dan, I think we should also write about the people who went through the storm. Many are still upset and I’m sure they’d appreciate seeing their stories in print. I reckon we can get Sawbridge to print it.”

He stares at her. “That’s a strange idea, Meri — printing ordinary people’s stories. That’s not journalism. Journalism is arguing and printing your own opinions to benefit the community. That’s what Thomas Dekker and many others were doing with their pamphlets a hundred years ago. Preaching sermons is speaking to a few of mankind; printing books and pamphlets is talking to the whole world but where’s the community benefit in printing ordinary people’s stories? That’s not arguing for my opinions!”

Meri interrupts: “But what’s the use of writing about Christian convictions if all it gets us is trouble? It doesn’t advance the cause of Christianity.”

“I suppose not.”

His frown reveals his embarrassment: “By the way, I meant to tell you what the ‘good behaviour’ condition for getting out of jail really means. I’m locked into writing in support of the government for the next seven years. It’s a sleep of legal death! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

“So, getting out of jail wasn’t such a miracle after all!” Her anger flashes at him.

“No, dearest. It was my idea. I was desperate to see you and went to them with a deal. I should have mentioned it earlier. I’m sorry!”

“I see. Your idea of journalism hasn’t served us very well, has it? We started off reasonably wealthy with your inheritance and my dowry; you were lucky to survive prison and three sessions in the pillory; you got a heavy fine and then more imprisonment for not paying it. Now all we own is a derelict brickworks and a pile of unpaid bills.”

They are standing together in the ruins of the front garden of their rented room in Cornhill, quite close to the pillory, and surrounded by chaos: broken tiles, timber and wreckage — the current state of their life. They turn towards each other. We don’t even own the brickworks; the creditors got that. It’s ironic — rebuilding London will create a huge market for bricks and tiles.

Speaking of rebuilding, this book idea might be a way of earning a little much-needed cash. Let’s do it. We’ll advertise. Some people might welcome the opportunity to tell their stories but others will hate it. It could upset them all over again. Merely answering the advertisement will mean they’d like their story to be told. That way, anyone who doesn’t want to be in the book won’t be. We’ll also be able to check if people are just making it up. They’ll be putting it in writing, with signatures and return addresses. If something doesn’t look genuine, we can look at it and perhaps drop it.

With their printer’s support, Dan and Meri advertise in the Daily Courant and the London Gazette for “exact, faithful and true first-hand observations” of the storm and its aftermath. The replies and interviews are enough for three publications: a layman’s sermon, a book and a long poem.

“Here’s a good one for the book, Meri. I wrote it down after talking to a family member:

In Threadneedle street, one Mr. Simpson, a scrivener, being in bed and fast asleep, heard nothing of the storm; but the rest of the family being more sensible of danger, some of them went up and woke him; and telling him their own apprehensions, pressed him to rise; but he … could not be prevailed with to rise: they had not been gone many minutes out of his chamber, before the chimneys fell in, broke through the roof over him, and killed him in his bed.”

“Let’s use this one, too, Dan. It’s straight from a letter and has a less dramatic ending:

SIR, — I cannot but write to you of the particulars of our sad and terrible voyage to this place. You know we were, by my last, riding safe in the Downs, waiting a fair wind, to make the best of our way to Portsmouth, and there to expect the Lisbon convoy. (From on board a ship blown out of the Downs and west to Norway)”

Sawbridge wants it to be called A Collection of the Most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters Which Happen’d in the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land. That’s a mouthful. Let’s call it The Storm. Here is part of the Preface: ’…conveying hereby to the ages to come the memory of the dreadfullest and most universal judgement that ever Almighty Power thought fit to bring upon this part of the world’. We’ll sign it, “The Age’s Humble Servant” — it’s a new kind of journalism.

A few weeks later, Dan comes back from the printing works in Little Britain Street. “Our big book is doing well, Meri. Sawbridge is already looking at reprinting it.”

“Yes, but I’m still having bad dreams about that night.”

I’m glad we included women’s stories. More women are learning to read so we are able to print more stories aimed at them.

“In the meantime, my muse, there’s this government newsletter. It’s a weekly pamphlet called A Review of the Affairs of France. Initially, I’ll be pushing the government’s plan to increase trade with France, something I agree with. Then, they want to promote the union of England and Scotland. I’d better get on with it before they put me back in the lion’s den.”

– — 00 — –

Dan and Meri are sitting in front of a small fire: It’s hard to believe it’s nearly 25 years since the pillory. Now that we’re well into our sixties, we need another book to help us in our old age. The children are grown up with children of their own but slowing down is not our way.

“Thinking about those days, doing Storm,” Dan says, “we had to deal with lots of people who wanted their stories told. Later, doing Plague Year, all I did was listen to uncle Henry and write it down.”

“I think you did a lot more than that,” Clio responds. “Plague Year has more imagined things than Storm and is the better for it.”

The government did well out of my release conditions, didn’t it? The Review came out three times a week for nine years. Preparing for the Act of Union was a good cause, worth spying on old companions like the Scottish Presbyterians.

We also did well. Very few people re-establish themselves after a spell in the pillory. The Storm and The Review certainly helped, followed by Robinson Crusoe and the other big books.

The new book will include suggestions for making London a better place. We’ll take some of the causes we’ve written about, update them, and add a few new ones. We’ll promote things like building a university, education for poor people funded by the boroughs, a hospital for foundlings, and a musical academy as well as controlling streetwalkers, gambling, gin, and street robberies.

They smile in agreement. Governments should pay for the education of ordinary folk. Generations to come will thank us. If all those children roaming London in street gangs were in classrooms, the number of street robberies would go down as well.

London has settled down after the plague, the fire and the storm; before them came the civil war and the conflicts that followed. Queen Anne and the Stuarts’ medieval “divine right of kings” has been replaced by the more collaborative Hanoverian attitude. London is growing up and the things we’ll be pushing will help.

“Here’s another suggestion, Dan. We could campaign against those fake madhouses where women are declared insane and locked up so that their husbands can steal their property.”

“Good idea. We’ve done quite a bit for women’s causes, haven’t we, not to mention those two story books, Roxana and Moll Flanders which were really your idea, Clio my muse.”

She smiles. “I suppose so, my dear. Anyway, here’s a start:

…the vile Practice now so much in vogue among the better Sort, as they are called, but the worst sort in fact, namely, the sending their Wives to Mad-Houses at every Whim or Dislike, that they may be more secure and undisturb’d in their Debaucheries: Which wicked Custom is got to such a Head, that the Number of private Mad-Houses in and about London, are considerably increased within these few Years. This is the heighth of Barbarity and Injustice in a Christian Country, it is a clandestine Inquisition, nay worse.”

Dan sips his tea. “Excellent! Let’s call it something with authority. Perhaps some Latin. How about Augusta Triumphans? That’s just the thing to provide for our old age.

“Some of our big story books are still selling, especially Robinson Crusoe. I don’t understand why. Thousands of other things we’ve done are much more worthwhile.”

Meri has an answer. “Reading has become popular more for entertainment than instruction. Most of our work has been pushing a point of view. After the pamphlet has been read, it gets put aside ’til the next cause comes along. On the other hand, people reading for entertainment will come back to a favourite book like an old friend whose company can be enjoyed over and over. Also, they might buy copies for friends.”

Dan is annoyed. “So, they’ll recommend a book like Crusoe but a pamphlet might threaten friendships. You’re saying that fiction has a better chance of surviving than non-fiction. I should have concentrated on stories, not on causes. Is that it?”

Their eyes meet. We put a lot of effort into so many causes, our own and the government’s, some worthwhile and some not. The entertainment factor is just a bonus.

“Our reward will be in heaven, together, forever.”

Meri is more skeptical. “I’m looking forward to that…”

He smiles: “Amen.”

– — 00 — –

Postscript: Daniel Defoe died bankrupt in 1731 and was buried in Bunhill Fields in central London. His sermons, poems, pamphlets and essays are almost forgotten. His wife Mary died a year later and was buried in the same grave. In the 19th Century, London schoolchildren raised enough money to build a monument over the grave of the author of their beloved Robinson Crusoe, not over the grave of one of the passionate campaigners for their free education. Fiction apparently outlived non-fiction, again. Dan and Meri would have appreciated the irony.

Rest in peace.