The Awakening • 249increase in his free time, perhaps because he felt conflicted by her impending
move. He happily changed the subject to a trip to Denis’s London office,
where Denis handed him a letter from Elizabeth. The visit and letter quick-
ened Symon’s desire to see her.^11
Elizabeth scribbled the beginning of her reply on the back of Symon’s
letter. “What shall I think? For I cannot speake enough of that laborious love
of yours that digs so deepe to please and ease.” She had grown more hopeful
than he of their coming together soon; the overall lessening of the sickness
and the coming cold season augured well. The bill for the next week and the
week after showed significant drops in London’s mortality figures. Elizabeth
read the first of these two encouraging bills on her own. Without waiting to
hear what Symon thought, she set her sights on leaving for Clapham. Two
days after Christmas she broke the news that her lonely friend might not
hear from her for some time as she journeyed homeward.^12
Symon got the news after a quiet Christmas; he saved a goose and hare in
case his brother visited him soon. After New Year’s he learned of Elizabeth’s
arrival at the Gauden mansion across the river, a tonic for both of them.
They were so close that they wrote of their signs of love reaching one
another. Cautiously, he waited for a further drop in mortality around his par-
ish before going to see her.^13
One last scare came in January. “Blessed be God, wee are in a pretty good
state of health at this end of the towne,” Symon assured Elizabeth. The surge
in fatalities, he said, was partly due to the carelessness of returning residents
and of those who had stayed on and were throwing caution to the winds. He
was far from alone in thinking this way. Dr. Hodges blamed people for sleep-
ing in the beds of deceased persons before they were cold. Boghurst criti-
cized returnees for exposing themselves needlessly to likely sources of the in-
fection. A high official at the Exchequer exclaimed that people coming into
London “tumble over the goods and household stuff in infected houses.”^14
The vital statistics of the bills in part caused and in part reflected these con-
cerns (table 10 ).^15
For all the agonizing bill reading and deliberation by Londoners, there
was comic relief in the flamboyant return from his country estate of Charles
II’s boon companion and navy commissioner Lord Brouncker, in the van-
guard of returning peers. On January 5 , 1666 , he set out with his mistress and
his fellow member of the Navy Board and the Royal Society, Samuel Pepys,
for London Bridge. As they clattered through the slowly awakening city
streets, the eyes of Londoners stared in disbelief. Such a scene of a great lord
in his elegant coach had not been witnessed in the city for five or six months.