At Day's Close: Night in Times Past (40 page)

Rather than performing the function of a safety valve, nocturnal license helped to pave the way instead for greater disorder. Not only did nighttime suggest an alternate way of life, but organized violence among the lower classes most often erupted after dark. For reasons habitual as well tactical, obscurity was their preferred stage. In Britain, apprentices, hedge-breakers, Spitalfields weavers, and Jacobins all drew on a longstanding tradition of nocturnal revelry and resistance, as did vandals of turnpikes and dikes. The Waltham Blacks, boasted a member in 1723, “could raise 2,000 men in a night’s time.” Often, darkness was central to prolonged hours of preparation in remote locations. In order to drill with the United Irishmen, a secret society pledged, beginning in the mid-1790s, to home rule, the adolescent John “Michael” Martin made off from home once his parents fell asleep. “The meetings,” he later recalled, “were generally appointed at different places each night—sometimes near my father’s; and frequently many miles off.”
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Almost everywhere, arsonists struck at night, from incendiaries in Chesapeake tobacco fields to bands of
mordbrenner
in Central Europe. The vicar of a
Hampshire
village lamented in 1729, “As oft as night returns we are all under the dreadful apprehension of having our houses & barns fired.”
77
In 1712, upwards of thirty slaves in New York City ignited a building and then killed a handful of whites drawn to fight the blaze. Time and again, slave insurrections were set for the dead of night—for example, conspiracies in Barbados (1675 and 1816), Stono in South Carolina (1739), Tacky’s Revolt in Jamaica (1760), and the Virginia rebellions of Gabriel Prosser (1800) and Nat Turner (1832). Most plots involved nights of clandestine meetings to map strategy, with messengers crossing miles of terrain in the dark or, in the West Indies, beating drums or blowing conch shells to summon conspirators. Often, midnight became the bleeding edge of early-morning violence. On the eve of the American Revolution, such was the close association between slaves and nocturnal resistance that some Loyalists dreamed of enlisting black support against their Whig enemies. A Maryland Tory reputedly declared, “If I had a few more white people to join me, I could get all the negroes in the county to back us, and they would do more good in the night than the white people could in the day.”
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Besides secrecy and surprise, darkness afforded insurgents other familiar advantages. In England, for instance, fenland commoners in 1653 routed at midnight a military guard appointed to protect drainage works in Norfolk. Unfamiliar with the local terrain, the soldiers put up a weak defense, having “lost themselves in the night.” Even the distant rumble of advancing cavalry, the Luddites knew, could better be heard in the still darkness. Magic, too, occasionally played a supporting role. Conspirators in the New York uprising of 1712 believed that a supernatural powder would make them invincible. During the nights leading up to an abortive slave rebellion on Antigua in 1736, an obeahman administered a ritual oath to conspirators. In southern Ireland, agrarian rebels known as White Boys, whose nighttime musters attracted hundreds of followers, even called themselves “fairies,” as much to bolster morale as to intimidate their adversaries. Years later, for the same reasons, peasant rioters in France, dressed in white robes, adopted the name
Demoiselles
, “white fairies of the past.” Because, for the lower orders, night represented their day, it also became their chosen field of battle for insurgencies large and small. Luddites, having drilled in darkness for many evenings, proclaimed in the cropper’s song, “Night by night, when all is still, / And the moon is hid behind the hill, / We forward march to do our will / With hatchet, pike and gun!”
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PART FOUR

PRIVATE WORLDS

PRELUDE

Half our dayes wee passe in the shadowe of the earth, and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE,
n.d.
1

W
HAT,” ASKED JOHN MILTON
, “hath night to do with sleep?” Surprisingly little, perhaps, at the inception of the human race. Contrary to common belief, our earliest ancestors may not have instinctively slept after dark. The custom of reserving nighttime for rest, some psychologists now surmise, evolved gradually among prehistoric peoples. Only with the passage of time did these first generations learn to sleep away the dangers of darkness by resting in caves, sheltered from foraging predators. Sleep made nighttime seem both shorter and safer. Rather than night, according to the Talmud, having been created for sleep, self-preservation may have required that sleep be reserved for night. “Man slept through the dark hours,” Stanley Coren has remarked, “because it was too inefficient and too dangerous to do anything else.” Intense physiological activity during intervals of dreaming might have served the purpose of a sentinel, readying the body to respond quickly to imminent peril. Irregular heart rates and respiration, muscular twitches, and eye movements, all may have permitted potential prey to awaken prepared for battle or flight.
2

Whether “diurnal man” evolved slowly or emerged, instead, practically overnight, genetically configured from day’s first dawn, certainly by the early modern era nocturnal repose had become inseparable from life’s natural order. Despite the high level of human activity after dark, never was there any doubt that sleep remained best suited for evening hours. “We must follow the course of nature,” affirmed Thomas Cogan, a Manchester physician, “to wake in the day, and sleepe in the night.” Thus in the imaginary world of the
Leigerdumaynians
, where none stirred but at night, reigned thieves, usurers, and knaves. “They hate the sun,” related the Elizabethan satirist Joseph Hall, “and love the moone.”
3

Few characteristics of sleep in past ages have received examination since Samuel Johnson complained in 1753 that “so liberal and impartial a benefactor” should “meet with so few historians.” More even than the subject of night itself, sleep has long eluded historical attention. “Our entire history,” lamented the eighteenth-century scholar Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, “is only the history of waking men.” Sleep in preindustrial communities remains largely unstudied, for only the subject of dreams has drawn sustained scrutiny.
4
Historical indifference has stemmed partly from a seeming shortage of sources, in particular our misguided notion that contemporaries rarely reflected upon a state of existence at once common yet hidden from the waking world. In truth, however, buried within such disparate evidence as diaries, medical books, imaginative literature, and legal depositions are regular references to sleep, often lamentably terse but nonetheless revealing. Far from being ignored, the subject frequently absorbed people’s thoughts.

And, too, the relative tranquillity of modern slumber has dulled perceptions of sleep’s past importance. Much like the Scottish cleric Robert Wodrow, historians appear to have concluded that “sleep can scarce be justly reconed part of our life.” Lacking the drama and intensity of life’s waking hours, sleep has suffered from its association with indolence and inactivity. Whereas our daily lives are animated, volatile, and highly differentiated, sleep seems, by contrast, passive, monotonous, and uneventful—qualities scarcely designed to spark the interest of historians dedicated to charting change across time, the faster-paced the better. “I cannot see how sleeping can offend any one,” contends Porco in
The Universal Passion
(1737), an attitude that could easily explain our current ignorance.
5

CHAPTER TEN

ORDINANCES OF
THE BEDCHAMBER:
RITUALS

I

There is not any one thing in the constitution of animals which is more to be wonder’d at than sleep.

WEEKLY REGISTER, OR, UNIVERSAL JOURNAL
, SEPT.
22
,
1738
1

A
MONG LEARNED AUTHORITIES
, a night’s sound slumber was thought critical not only for withered spirits but also for bodily health. Most medical opinion by the late Middle Ages still embraced the Aristotelian belief that the impetus for sleep originated in the abdomen by means of a process called
concoction
. Once food has been digested in the stomach, Thomas Cogan explained in
The Haven of Health
(1588), fumes ascend to the head “where through coldnesse of the braine, they being congealed, doe stop the conduites and waies of the senses, and so procure sleepe.” Not only did nighttime invite repose “by its moisture, silence and darkness,” but those properties were thought enormously well suited to concoction.
2
Among sleep’s other salutary effects, according to William Vaughan in 1607, it “strengthenth all the spirits,” “comforteth the body,” “taketh away sorrow,” and “asswageth furie of the mind.” Noted an Italian adage, “Bed is a medicine.”
3
A parallel belief was that by retiring early, one could best reap the benefits of slumber. “By going early to asleep and early from it, we rise refreshed, lively and active,” claimed the author of
An Easy Way to Prolong Life
(1775). How widespread this notion was may be seen in such proverbs as “Go to bed with the lamb and rise with the lark,” and, well before it was adopted by Benjamin Franklin, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
4

Less clear, in retrospect, was the time of night intended by the injunction “early to bed,” a judgment, perhaps, that truly rested in the heavy-lidded eyes of the beholder. Did popular convention favor sunset or some later hour as a time for repose? Another proverb affirmed, “One hour’s sleep before midnight is worth three after,” suggesting that going to bed “early” may have borne an altogether different meaning from retiring at the onset of darkness.
5
And while contemporaries routinely lauded sleep’s contributions to personal health, they even more frequently scorned excessive slumber. Sleep’s purpose, emphasized the author of
The Whole Duty of Man
(1691), is to restore “our frail bodies” to “make us more profitable” spiritually and materially, “not more idle.” Imbued by a strong work ethic, Puritans in England and America often railed against what Richard Baxter called “unnecessary sluggishness,” but so, too, did myriad others who were increasingly time-conscious by the sixteenth century. Most condemned immoderate slumber for its sinful association with idleness and sloth, but it was also thought dangerous to personal health. Apart from a heightened propensity for lechery, ill consequences included damaged digestion, undernourished blood, and troubled spirits. “Much slep ingendereth diseases and payne, / It dulles the wyt and hurteth the brayne,” claimed
The Schoole of Vertue
in 1557. Far better, remarked an author, “to redeem as much time from sleeping as our health will permit, and not profusely waste it in that state of darkness so nearly resembling death.” It was “to
redeem
more
time
” that in 1680 the English Puritan Ralph Thoresby, determined to rise every morning by five o’clock, devised an early alarm clock. “So much precious time,” he regretted, having already been slept away.
6

What, in the eyes of moralists and physicians, was the proper amount of sleep? Several authorities, like the Tudor physician Andrew Boorde, believed that sleep needed to be taken as the “complexcyon of man” required. One author singled out porters, laborers, carvers, and sailors as exceptions deserving more than his standard recommendation of eight hours.
7
Some prescribed seasonal adjustments, such as sleeping eight hours in the summer and nine hours during long winter evenings. In a distinct minority, Jeremy Taylor, onetime chaplain to Charles I (1600–1649), prescribed a nightly regimen of only three hours.
8
More commonly, writers, not just in Britain but throughout the Continent, urged from six to eight hours in bed, unless special circumstances such as illness, melancholy, or just a large supper mandated more. Fundamental to most of this spillage of ink was the conviction that not more than one quarter to one third of every twenty-four hours should be allotted to nightly repose.
9

At least that is what writers on the subject of sleep reasoned. Although medical books were widely reprinted (Thomas Elyot’s
Castel of Helthe
, appearing in 1539, went through more than a dozen editions in the sixteenth century), it is difficult to gauge their influence. Whether these opinions shaped popular mores or instead reflected them, as seems likely, common aphorisms expressed similar attitudes toward sleep’s proper length. The adage “Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool” had numerous variations. Different in substance but alike in tone was “Nature requires five,
custom takes seven
[my italics], laziness nine, and wickedness eleven.” The physician Guglielmo Gratarolo, in
A Direction for the Health of Magistrates and Studentes
(1574), pointedly distinguished slumber of eight hours duration according to “common custome” from more prolonged sleep in “ancient time” as Hippocrates had advised.
10

To be certain, some laborers retired early, exhausted from the day’s toil, especially in rural areas during summer months. In the winter, frigid temperatures occasionally hastened families to bed. The schoolmaster David Beck one January evening retired prematurely, “not being able to do anything because of the cold.”
11
And at least a few individuals went to bed to conserve fuel and light. Instructs a character in the Restoration comedy
The Projectors
(1665), “Eat little, drink less, and sleep much, to save fire and candle-light.”
12
Still, few adults beneath the higher ranks could afford to sleep more than six to eight hours, much less the entire night, for both work and sociability claimed precious hours of their own.

Diaries, though weighted toward the upper classes, not only suggest as much but also indicate that the standard bedtime fell between nine and ten o’clock. “This family goes to bed between 9 and 10,” noted Dame Sarah Cowper, a rule that likely applied to other social ranks. “Breeches-off time” was the customary term for nine o’clock in parts of Germany, whereas a seventeenth-century English proverb instructed, “To sup at six and go to bed at ten, will make a man live ten times ten.” Consider, wrote a London resident in 1729, “the life of a careful honest man who is industrious all day at his trade . . . spends the evening in innocent mirth with his family, or perhaps with his neighbors or brother tradesmen; sometimes sits an hour or two at an alehouse, and from thence goes to bed by 10 and is at work by 5 or 6.” An inscription over the parlor of a Danish pastor read: “Stay til nine you are my friend, til ten, that is alright, but if you stay til 11, you are my enemy.”
13

Of course, not only did large numbers of people routinely remain awake past ten o’clock, but personal curfews, whatever the hour, proved elastic. Although the writer Thomas Tusser advised, “In winter at nine, and in summer at ten,” seasonal variations appear to have been minor. More important, as in other traditional cultures, bedtime often depended less upon a fixed timetable than upon the existence of things to do. Samuel Pepys, whose late hours alternated between temptations of the flesh and the burdens of government, kept a particularly erratic schedule. Others, too, worked or socialized past their normal bedtimes, in rural as well as urban settings. “Always go to bed at or before ten o’clock when it can be done,” wrote the Sussex shopkeeper Thomas Turner. Although he tried to allow himself between seven and eight hours of slumber, Turner’s duties as a parish officer and his thirst for drink, among other “emergent” occasions, sometimes delayed his rest. One December evening after a vestry meeting, he stumbled “home about 3:20 [
A.M.
] not very sober. Oh, liquor,” he moaned, “what extravagances does it make us commit!”
14

II

O Lord, now that the darke night is come, which is a signe of horror, death, and woe; and that I am to lie and sleepe on my bedde, which is an image of the grave wherein my body after this life is like to rest; let thy holy spirit so guarde, protect, direct, and comfort mee, that neither terrours of conscience, assaultes of Sathan, suggestions to sinne, fleshly concupiscence, idle slothfulnesse, nor tearefull dreames, may trouble mee.

W. F.,
1609
15

In 1764, readers of the
London Chronicle
learned that “an extraordinary sleeper” near the French village of Mons for fifteen years had slept each day from three in the morning until eight or nine at night. Such mysteries of sleep, including instances of narcolepsy and sleepwalking, received lengthy exploration both in literary works and newspapers. Whether in
Macbeth,
Henry V
, or
Julius Caesar
, many of Shakespeare’s works patently appealed to a popular preoccupation with sleep. And not just dreams, long a source of fascination in their own right. Oliver Goldsmith recounted in the pages of the
Westminster Magazine
the story of Cyrillo Padovano, a pious Paduan, who stole from a convent and plundered a cemetery while walking in his sleep—undoing in his slumber “all the good actions for which he had been celebrated by day.” In his journal, James Boswell, who thought sleep “one of the most unaccountable and marvellous” wonders of nature, recorded that he and another attorney once conducted a brief conversation while both were asleep in their beds.
16

For the most part, these curiosities represented aberrations born in the shadowlands separating sleep from wakefulness. Vastly more relevant to most people was the quality of their own repose. “To sleep soundly is a treasure,” proclaimed an Italian adage. Nicholas Breton deemed poor slumber, by contrast, one of the greatest “miseries in the life of man.” After all, explained a French author, “Sleep and waking being the hinges on which all the others of our life do hang, if there be any irregularity in these, confusion and disorder must needs be expected in all the rest.” Such was its importance that sleep inspired a typology more nuanced than that routinely employed today. The widely used expressions “dog,” “cat,” or “hare” sleep referred to slumber that was not only light but anxious. “He is so wary,” wrote the cleric Thomas Fuller, “that he sleeps like a hare, with his eyes open.” “Ye sleep like a dog in a mill,” declared a Scottish saying.
17
More desirable was “dead” or “deep” sleep, what Boswell described as “absolute, unfeeling, and unconscious.” Most coveted, still, was sleep both deep and continuous, or “soft” and “calm” as it was sometimes described. “Quiet sleep,” emphasized an early text, “although it is short, bears more usefulness,” a link confirmed by modern research emphasizing that whether or not individuals feel rested in the morning chiefly depends upon the number of times they awaken during the night.
18

Families went to enormous lengths to ensure both the tranquillity and the safety of their slumber. As bedtime neared, households followed painstaking rituals. Such habitual if not compulsive behavior no doubt helped to alleviate anxieties as persons surrendered themselves to the vulnerability of sleep. “We are unable to think of, much more to provide for, our own security,” noted an eighteenth-century poet. Even a cosmopolitan figure of the Enlightenment like Boswell wrote of “gloomy” nights when he was “frightened to lie down and sink into helplessness and forgetfulness.” With Satan and his disciples at large—“an enemy,” fretted Cowper, “who is alwaies awake”—moral dangers were many. A seventeenth-century devotion likened the devil at night to a lion pacing back and forth outside a sheepfold. Mental and physical exhaustion weakened personal defenses against intemperate passions, including the wickedness of “self-pollution.” A soft bed, writers warned, helped to fuel sensual thoughts, whether one was awake or asleep. The twelfth-century theologian Alan of Lille urged Christians “to restrain stirrings of the flesh and the attacks of the devil which are the most to be feared and avoided in the darkness of this world.”
19