London Bridge in Plague and Fire: A Novel

To My Reader

To MY reader i acquired hundreds of books for research into the murder of Thomas à Becket and the building of London Bridge during the late twelfth century, the ongoing history of the bridge, life in the shops and houses on the Bridge, and the events of the plague and the fire. The original inspiration came from seeing in 1944 the haunting image of the Bridge in the credits for Laurence olivier’s film Henry V. a more detailed inspiration was London in Plague and Fire, 1665–1666: Selected Source Material for College Research Papers, a textbook i used at Centre College in 1960, my second year of teaching. among other books, the most useful were gordon Home, old London Bridge (the second book i read and the best); Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket; William urry, Thomas Becket: His Last Days; Walter george Bell, The Great Plague of London and The Great Fire of London; Samuel Pepys’s Diary; John evelyn’s Diary; roland Bartel, London in Plague and Fire: 1665–1666; and daniel defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (a fabric of fact and fiction). a longer, selected list appears at the end of this novel. even so, this is not a novel that claims accuracy, plausibility, or credibility in the way a reader would expect from a historian. i imagined the Poet-Chronicler, who imagines the life of Peter de Colechurch, architect of the Bridge, about whom very little is on record, and his building of the Bridge. i share the Poet-Chronicler’s passion for researching the facts and his compulsion to overwhelm and transform them in imagination. The Poet-Chronicler and i enmesh the facts in imaginative contexts, a process that began in the first draft. reading only in gordon Home’s book about the bridge, i heard nocturnal voices from ancient London Bridge. every night, just before going to bed, from Christmas eve 1992 to the next Christmas eve, i xii To MY reader wrote the first draft in brief sessions as if in a trance, facts stimulating almost surrealistic images. Then as i looked at the many drawings and paintings of ancient London Bridge and read about it in numerous other books, i listened to the voice of a young poet living on the Bridge during plague and fire and imagined him listening to voices from the twelfth century when the master builder began his unique engineering feat—the first bridge of stone since the romans—and writing fifty-six years later his own account of the plague and the fire, drawing upon memory, eyewitnesses, and historical sources in wild combinations. a clear narrative threads through the labyrinthine phantasmagoria. Since the historical record provides only a few simple facts about Peter de Colechurch, the Poet-Chronicler fully imagines the life of Peter and his relationship with archbishop Thomas à Becket, murdered in Canterbury Cathedral, about whom an astonishing archive of eyewitness accounts and facts exists. The power of the Poet’s imagination enhances the power of his compassion. Writing this meditative narrative, i mingled the voices i heard with the voices i imagined the Poet heard. during plague and fire, sometimes a “voice,” sometimes the named characters, especially the merchants, speak, with variations, lines that historical witnesses wrote, along with the lines the Poet actually hears or imagines. a young seaman writes in his journal and in the margins of his books memories of his childhood on London Bridge, memories he tells an older seaman who becomes his enemy. Speaking, writing, mingling, we three are poet-historians, web weavers, weaving webs of connections out of our emotions, imaginations , and intellects, moving not along a compulsory narrative line so much as from one impression to another. The very mingling of facts and imagination is the experience. The flow and confluence of those nocturnal voices, the act of weaving, matter most—not who, when, not even where, not even facts—because when imagination soars, it triumphs, in the end, over facts, if from the beginning, you have been my collaborator. i trust you. David Madden ...