The second novel in the Mr Pepys series by popular historical novelist Deborah Swift, featuring the Great Plague Sometimes the pursuit of money costs too much… Ambitious Bess Bagwell is determined that her carpenter husband, Will, should make a name for himself in the Navy shipyards. To further his career, she schemes for him to meet Samuel Pepys, diarist, friend of the King and an important … friend of the King and an important man in the Navy.
But Pepys has his own motive for cultivating the attractive Bess, and it’s certainly not to benefit her husband. Bess soon finds she is caught in a trap of her own making.
As the summer heat rises, the Great Plague has London in its grip. Red crosses mark the doors, wealthy citizens flee and only the poor remain to face the march of death.
With pestilence rife in the city, all trade ceases.
With no work as a carpenter, Will is forced to invest in his unscrupulous cousin Jack’s dubious ‘cure’ for the pestilence which horrifies Bess and leaves them deeper in debt.
Now they are desperate for money and the dreaded disease is moving ever closer. Will Mr Pepys honour his promises or break them? And will they be able to heal the divide that threatens to tear their marriage apart?
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Elizabeth Bagwell figures in the diary of Samuel Pepys, the seventeenth century Naval administrator, as one of his most enduring mistresses. The diary provides us with no hint of how Elizabeth, a married woman, achieved this position, especially as Pepys initially described her as ‘a virtuous modest woman’ who he had ‘a kindness’(!) for. In A Plague on Mr Pepys, Deborah Swift plausibly imagines how this might have come about.
Bess Bagwell is happily married to Will, a carpenter who is happiest in his workshop fashioning beautifully finished wooden furniture. But Bess has risen from poverty and has aspirations of a far better life – she wants to be a lady – so she pushes Will into borrowing money to buy a house and workshop on Flaggon Row in Deptford that is barely within their means, and then only if the future is prosperous. She is flattered by the attention of the pushy and snobbish wife of the head draftsman at the King’s shipyard who lives across the road from her and allows herself to be drawn into the woman’s social activities. But this is 1663, the King may be back on his throne but, with the benefit of hindsight, the reader knows there are storms ahead.
Bess believes their future will be secure if Will can get a position in the naval dockyards but the Shipwright’ Guild is more than taking its time to approve his papers. Debts pile up and Will’s work is slow coming in, so Bess decides to approach Samuel Pepys, an administrator in the Naval Treasury, who she thinks will be able to use his influence to improve Will’s situation. Pepys is charmed by Bess and charming to her, agreeing to do what he can to help. At first, although he flirts with Bess, even in the presence of her husband, he seems to be merely helpful but as the story progresses the reader sees the extent and the price of his help and the ultimate cost to Bess and Will Bagwell.
While much of the novel is Bess’s life and her daily struggles, it is set against the backdrop of the Second Anglo-Dutch war, rumours of plague in Amsterdam and its eventual arrival in London. The sights, sound and smells of seventeenth-century London are vividly imagined as are the social attitudes, the extremes of poverty and wealth, the social pretensions and snobbery, the constant struggle of those at the lower levels of society and the viciousness of those who would do anything for money and brute power. The section of the novel that deals with the plague is harrowing, describing not only the physical effects of the disease but the behaviour of those threatened by it, displaying the range of behaviour from desperate fear, callous exploitation to compassion and selflessness.
Both Bess and Will Bagwell are realistically flawed characters – Bess is cheerful, ambitious and impetuous, Will is a quiet man who would rather hide away with his wood. He is too willingly swayed by his predatory cousin, Jack Sutherland, a ruthless creature who can easily manipulate Will into financially backing his shady schemes. All the minor characters are well drawn, from the Jack Sutherland and Agatha Prescott, Bess’s mother, to the snobbish Mrs Fewick, the draftsman’s wife, and Jack Sutherland’s children, three boys, each unique in speech and behaviour. Samuel Pepys is presented very much as the man found in his diaries, for the most part affable, but there is a glimpse of the single-minded determination that would have been necessary for him to achieve and maintain his position and to undertake his numerous ‘dalliances’. While he is central to the progress of the novel, A Plague on Mr Pepys is primarily Bess’s story.
The novel is beautifully written, the prose an unobtrusive vehicle for the story yet able to conjure the realities of seventeenth-century life and the terrors of a period of death-dealing plague. It is an absolute page turner at times, especially as it progresses. Tension is present even from the first pages – Bess’s character is made so quickly and deftly apparent that the reader knows, even at that early stage, that she is going to get herself into difficulties. This is truly a riveting immersive read.
A Plague on Mr Pepys is the second in Deborah Swift’s Women of Pepys’ Diary series. Each novel stands alone and looks at a woman who played a part in his life.
I LOVED this book, so much I think I may run out of superlatives! Without doubt the best book I’ve read this year, and has taken over from The Gilded Lily as my previous favourite of Ms Swift’s.
Set in London in the mid-late 17th century, the main characters are Bess and Will Bagwell. Will is a modest, unassuming but exceptionally talented carpenter, while Bess is a spirited girl who comes from the dingy and dank slums and is determined to build a better life for the couple. But from the moment they buy the house in respectable Flaggon Row, their troubles multiply. Financial disaster is ever-looming, as one stroke of bad luck and bad judgement follows another, not helped by the slippery presence of Will’s cousin Jack Sutherland, a man with the eye for a good swindle.
Will longs for work on a ship, in dock, and Bess knows the only person who can help is Naval big shot Samuel Pepys. But for his help there will be a price, and one which might destroy her marriage. Pepys features in the book as a secondary character and the reason for much of what happens to the Bagwells rather than as a main character; I mention this in case potential readers think it is a book primarily about the man himself. For me, though, the real star of the book was London itself, dirty, noisy, 17th Century London, with its dangerous characters, dodgy dealings, the vast chasm between rich and poor, social snobbery, and finally, the plague, which lurks in the background until the last quarter of the book when it takes a terrifying centre stage. It’s riveting. The whole book is, but especially the way in which the plague takes hold of the city.
Ms Swift’s characterisation is so compelling, her storytelling is a dream, and her descriptions of the time and place and the way the people lived are so vivid, so detailed and intricately researched (without you ever feeling that you’re reading research notes), that I felt as if I was being given a window back in time. A special mention for Beth’s mother, Agatha, a former prostitute and wonderful character. A short author’s note at the back gives more information about Pepys and reveals the real identity of Bess Bagwell.
Utterly brilliant, you have to read it. I’ve just finished it at one in the morning after being engrossed for two evenings, and had to write the review immediately. Thank you, Deborah Swift ~ I don’t think I will be able to pick up another book for a couple of days!
I loved the ice the book is based on real people. An entertaining read which brings to life 17th Century England.