HILDA DEVOS, 29 x oil on canvas.
Unable - or unwilling - to cross the border, am left to ponder the strange times. For some cheer, reading Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. About he early stages of the 'Distemper', he writes:
"But the Fright was not yet near so great in the City, abstractly so called; and particularly because, tho' they were at first in the most inexpressible Consternation, yet as I have observ'd, that the Distemper intermitted often at first; so they were as it were, allarm'd, and unallarmed again, and this several times, till it began to be familiar to them; and that even, when it appear'd violent, yet seeing it did not presently spread into the City, or the East and South Parts, the People began to take Courage, and to be, as I may say, a little hardn'd."
Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, Penguin Classics
Strangely - considering Defoe's accurate psychological insight - the author was 5 years old when the Great Plague broke out, in 1665. His 'account' wasn't published until 1722, 57 years later.
