British Isles
A. ROGER EKIRCH
Our entire history is only the history of waking men.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
DURING THE FIRST DAYS OF AUTUMN IN 1878, Robert Louis Stevensoti, at age twenty-seven, spent twelve days trudging through the Cévennes, France's southern highlands, despite having suffered from frail health during much of his youth. His sole companion was a donkey named Modestine. With Treasure Island and literary fame five years off, Stevenson's trek bore scant resemblance to the grand tours of young Victorian gentlemen. Midway through the journey, having scaled one of the highest ranges, he encamped at a small clearing shrouded by pine trees. Fortified for a night's hibernation by a supper of bread and sausage, chocolate, water, and brandy, he reclined within his "sleeping sack," with a cap over his eyes, just as the sun had run its course. But rather than resting until dawn, Stevenson awoke shortly past midnight. Only after lazily smoking a cigarette and enjoying an hour's contempla-tion did he fall back to sleep. "There is one stirring hour," he later reeorded in his journal, "unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet," men and beasts alike. Never before had Stevenson savored a "more perfect hour"—free, he delighted, from the "bastille of civilization." "It seemed to me as if life had begun again afresh, and T knew no one in all the universe but the almighty maker."'
Aside from spending the night outdoors, no explanation sufficed for the wistful hour of consciousness that Stevenson experienced in the early morning darkness. "At what inaudible summons," he wondered, "are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life?" Were the stars responsible or some "thrill of mother earth below our resting bodies? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who are the
This article draws from a book I am writing. At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, for which I have been fortunate enough to receive fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Virginia Center for the Humanities. I am grateful for research grants from the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the American Philosophical Society. A previous version of this article was presented to the Charles M. Andrews Seminar at Johns Hopkins University on February 28, 1998, the members of which, especially Nuran Cinlar and Amy Turner Bushneil, I would like to thank for their comments. I also appreciate suggestions made by Thomas A. Wehr, Philip D. Morgan, Robert J. Brugger, the anonymous readers for this journal, and the editors.
' Robert Louis Stevenson, The Cevennes Journal: Notes on a Journey through the French Highlands, Gordon Golding, ed. (New York, 1979), 79-82.
deepest read in these arcana," he marveled, "have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place; and neither know or inquire further." Unknown to Stevenson, his experience that fall evening was remarkably reminiscent of a form of sleep that was once commonplace. Until the modern era, up to an hour or more of quiet wakefulness midway through the night interrupted the rest of most Western Europeans, not just napping shepherds and slumbering woodsmen. Families rose from their beds to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors. Remaining abed, many persons also made love, prayed, and, most important, reflected on the dreams that typically preceded waking from their "first sleep." Not only were these visions unusually vivid, but their images would have intruded far less on conscious thought had sleepers not stirred until dawn. The historical implications of this traditional mode of repose are enormous, especially in light of the significance European households once attached to dreams for their explana-tory and predictive powers. In addition to suggesting that consolidated sleep, such as we today experience, is unnatural, segmented slumber afforded the unconscious an expanded avenue to the waking world that has remained closed for most of the Industrial Age.
THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO EXPLORE the elusive realm of sleep in early modern British society, with the aid of occasional illustrations from elsewhere in Europe and British North America. Although England forms the heart of my inquiry, I have focused on facets of slumber common to most Western societies, including, most significantly, the predominant pattern of sleep before the Industrial Revolution. Few characteristics of sleep in past ages, much less the "arcana" of "old country-folk," have received examination since Samuel Johnson complained that "so liberal and impartial a benefactor" should "meet with so few historians." Apart from fleeting references in scholarly monographs to the prolonged sleeping habits of pre-industrial communities, only the subject of dreams has drawn sustained scrutiny. Early modern scholars have neglected such topics as bedtime rituals, sleep deprivation, and variations in slumber between different social ranks.^ In the first
- Samuel Johnson, The Adventurer (Mareh 20, 1753): 229. Nearly twenty years ago, George Steiner argued that studies of sleep "would be as essential, if not more so, to our grasp of the evolution of mores and sensibilities as are the histories of dress, of eating, of child-eare, of mental and physieal infirmity, which social historians and the historiens des mentalités are at last providing for us." "The Historicity of Dreams," in Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays ¡978-1996 (London, 1996), 211-12. More recently, Daniel Roche has implored, "Let us dream of a social history of sleep.'M History of Everyday
Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600-1800, Brian Pearce, trans. (Cambridge, 2000), 182.
Historical accounts of dreams have included Peter Burke, "L'histoire sociale des rêves," Annales:
E.S.C. 28 (1973): 329-42; Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley. Calif., 1990); Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge,
1992); Carole Susan Fungaroli, "Landscapes of Life: Dreams in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction and Contemporary Dream Theory" (PhD dissertation. University of Virginia, 1994); Alan Macfarlane, The
Family Life of Ralph Josselin, a Seventeenth-Century Clergyman (Cambridge, 1970), 183-87; S. R. F.
Price, "The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorous," Past and Present 113 (November 1986): 3-37; Manfred Weidhorn, Dreams in Seventeenth-Century English Literature (The Hague, 1970); Dream
Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming, David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa,
eds. (New York, 1999); Charles Carlton, "The Dream Life of Archbishop Laud," History Today 36 (December 1986): 9-14. Attitudes toward sleep, from the ancient world to the twentieth century, are
portion of this article, I explore these and other features, not only to map sleep's principal contours but also to underscore its manifold importance in everyday life. More significantly, this section lays the foundation for a detailed investigation of segmented sleep and, ultimately, its relationship to early modern dreams. If the overall subject of slumber for historians has remained eloaked in obscurity, the age-old pattern of "first" and "second sleep" has been wholly ignored. Central to the entire article is the profound role pre-industrial sleep played in the lives of ordinary men and women, which by no means included the assurance of sound slumber.
Historical indifference to sleep stems partly from a seeming shortage of sources, in particular our misguided notion that contemporaries rarely reflected on a state of existence at once common yet hidden from the waking world. But within such disparate evidence as diaries, medical books, imaginative literature, and legal depositions, there are regular references to sleep, often lamentably terse but nonetheless revealing. Far from being ignored, the subject frequently absorbed people's thoughts, with most sharing the opinion of the character "Grave" in a late seventeenth-century comedy that "we must desire it should be as sedate, and quiet as may be."^ Then, too, social historians have normally displayed less interest in the mundane exigencies of human behavior than in broader issues relating to class, religion, race, and gender. Only recently have scholars systematically begun to address how individuals genuinely lived, with fresh attention to such basic aspects of pre-industrial existence as hygiene, dress, and diet.'' Sleep has remained among the most neglected topics primarily because the relative tranquility of modern slumber has dulled our perceptions of its past importance. Much like the Scottish cleric Robert Wodrow, we seem to have concluded that "sleep ean scarce be justly reconed part of our life.'"^ Whereas our waking hours are animated, volatile, and highly differentiated, sleep appears, by contrast, passive, monotonous, and unevent-ful—qualities scarcely designed to spark the interest of a scholarly discipline dedicated to charting change across time, the faster-paeed the better.
Grist for our prejudices lies strewn throughout English literature. With the explosive expansion during the sixteenth century in imaginative writing, the
chronicled in Jaume Rosselló Mir, et al., "Una aproximación histórica al estudio cientiflco de sueño: El periodo intuitivo el pre-cientifico," Revista de historia de la psicología 12 (1991): 133-42. For a brief survey of sleep in the Middle Ages, see Jean Verdón, La nuit au Moyen Age (Paris, 1994), 203-17; and for an examination of key medical texts touching on sleep during the early modern era, see Karl H. Dannenfeldt, "Sleep: Theory and Practice in the Late Renaissance," Journal of the History of Medicine 41 (October 1986): 415-41.
•' Charles Gildon, The Post-Boy Rob'd of His Mail. . . (London, 1692), UI9.
'* For several recent explorations of ordinary life, see A History of Private Life, Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, eds., Arthur Goldhammer, trans., 5 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1987-91), esp. vols. 2 and 3; Roche, History of Everyday Things; Annik Pardaiihé-Galabrun, The Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and
Domestic Life in Early Modern Paris, Jocelyn Phelps, trans. (Philadelphia, 1991). Research devoted to
recapturing everyday realities has included a growing appreciation for the senses. See, for instance, Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); and Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside, Martin Thom, trans. (New York, 1998); Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England:
Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago, 1999).
^ Robert Wodrow, Analecta: or. Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences; Mostly Relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1842-43), 3: 496.
peacefulness of sleep became a favorite topic for all forms of literary adulation, especially verse drama and poetry. Johnson later claimed that because poets required "respite from thought," they were naturally "well affected to sleep," which "not only" bestowed "rest, but frequently" led "them to happier regions." No doubt, life's daily miseries made beds appear all the more oases of serenity/' Typically, when not likening slumber to the gentle embrace of death ("No diffrence," wrote the London poet Francis Quarles, "but a little Breath"^), writers celebrated sleep as a sanctuary that locked "Sences from their Cares." In "balmy Sleep," people "forgot the Labours of the Day" and "in Oblivion buried all their Toils," opined the author of Night Thoughts among the Tombs.^ Nor were its blessings reserved just for persons of privilege. At a time when distinction, rank, and preferment ordinarily reigned, slumber alone made "the Wretched equal with the Blest." Sir Philip Sidney called sleep "the poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, the indifferent judge between the hight and low."" A corollary to this assumption, rooted in the medieval concept of the "sleep of the just," was the belief that the soundest slumber, in fact, belonged to those with simple minds and callused hands, society's toiling classes. "Whilst the Peasant takes his sweet repose," wrote John Taylor the Water-Poet, "the peere is round behem'd with cares and woes.""*
^Johnson, Adventurer (March 20, 1753): 232. Among poets, Christof Wirsung echoed, sleep represented "the pleasantess amongst all goods, yeas the oneiie giver of tranquility on earth." Praxis
Medicinae Universalis: or, A General! Practise of Phisicke . . . (London, 1598), 618. See also Albert S.
Cook, "The Elizabethan Invocations to Sleep," Modern Language Notes 4 (1889): 457-61.
'' The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Francis Quarles, Alexander B. Grosart, ed., 3 vols. (New York, 1%7), 2: 206. See also, for example, Thomas Cheesman, Death Compared to Sleep in a Sermon
Preacht upon the Occasion of the Funeral of Mrs. Mary Allen . . . (London, 1695); William Jones, A Disquisition Concerning the Metaphorical Usage and Application of Sleep in the Scriptures (London,
1772).
'^ T. D. Gent, Cotlin's Walk through London and Westmin.ster, A Poem in Burlesque (London, 1690), 43; Night Thoughts among the Tombs.. . (London, 1753), 37. See also, for example, Michelangelo, "The
Speech of Night," and Samuel Daniel, "A Plea," in Journey into Night, H. J. Deverson, ed. (New York, 1966), 194, 196; Sir Philip Sidney,/Ircflí/iíj, 2 vols. (1598; rpt. edn., Delmar, N.Y., 1984), 2: 396-97; "On Sleep," in Four Odes (London, 1750), 1; "To Sleep," The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside (New York, 1969), 262.
'' Burton E. Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases (New York, 1948), 2134; Sir Philip Sidney. Astrophel and Stella (London, 1591). Sancho Panza reflected, "While I sleep 1 have no fear, nor hope, nor trouble, nor glory. God bless the inventor of sleep, the cloak that covers all man's thoughts, the food that cures all hunger, the water that quenches all thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools the heart; the common coin, in short, that can purchase all things, the balancing weight that levels the shepherd with the king, and the simple with the wise.' Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Adventures of Don Quixote, J. M. Cohen, trans. (195(1; rpt. edn., Baltimore, 1965), 906. See a\so Another Collection of Philosophical Conferences of the French Virtuosi. . ., G. Havers and J. Davies, trans. (London, 1665), 3; Elkanah Settle, Ibrahim the ¡Ihtstrious Bassa (London, 1677), 51; Jean-François Senault, Man Become Guilty: or. The Corruption of Nature by Sinne, Henry, Earle of Monmouth, trans. (London, 1650), 247; Abraham Cowley, "Sleep," in Minor English Poets, ¡660-1780:
A Selection from Alexander Chalmers' The English Poets, David P. French, comp., 10 vols. (New York,
1967), 2: 115; Mr. A., "To Sleep," The Diverting-Post, Made Up into a Packet for the Entertainment of
the Court, City, and Country (January 1706); Christopher Jones, "Midnight Thoughts," St. James Chronicle (London), March 22, 1774.
'" Works of John Taylor the Water Poet Not Included in the Folio Volume of 1630, 5 vols. (1870; rpt. edn,. New York, 1967), vol. 1. For the "sommeil du juste," see Verdón, La nuit au Moyen Age, 203-06. Earlier, the belief that "the sleep of a labouring man is sweet" was expressed in Ecclesiastes 5: 12. See also Du Bartas: His Divine Weekes and Workes, Joshua Sylvester, trans. (London, 1621), 465; Robert Daborne, The Poor-Mans Comfort (London, 1655); John Collop, "On Homer," in Poesis Rediviva (London, 1656), 63; Cheesman, Death Compared to Sleep, 12; William Somervile, Ocassional Poems.
Translations, Fables, Tales .. . (London, 1727), 275; "The Peasant," General Advertiser (London),
Sleep, to be sure, granted weary men and women of all ranks some measure of relief from daily eares as well as an interval of hard-won rest from their labors. Rare was the early modern family that did not shoulder its share of petty tribulations, much less endure disease, violence, or poverty. Even for those of upper-class birth like Dame Sarah Cowper, "The greatest part of our time is spent in pain, trouble and vexation . . . we being continuously liable to Accidents. Infirmitys, Crosses, and Afflictions." Sleep's principal contribution was not merely physiological but psy-chological. Thus, according to London street slang, falling asleep was to "forget oneself." If only because "its pleasures are purely negative," surmised Cowper, "Sleep may be reckon'd one of the Blessings of Life."" Also possible is that the solace persons derived varied in inverse proportion to their quality of life, with those farther down the social scale most looking forward to slumber. Affirmed a Jamaican slave proverb, "Sleep hab no Massa."'- Set against the drudgery of their waking hours, retiring to bed for most laborers, if only on a thin mattress of straw, must have been welcome indeed, all the more since few claimed furniture of any greater comfort.
But did sleep routinely offer individuals a genuine asylum? Did most, in an era before sleeping pills, body pillows, and earplugs, enjoy the reasonable expectation of undisturbed rest? In her diary, Cowper further noted that "even sleep it self" was "not altogether free from uneasiness," and the Elizabethan Thomas Nashe wrote of "our thoughts troubled and vexed when they are retired from labor to ease."" Moreover, did all social classes enjoy sleep equally? If the lower orders had reason to anticipate bedtime most eagerly, how, if at all, did the nature of their slumber compare to that of privileged classes? Did the commonalty rest more soundly, as widely depicted in early modern literature, or were sleeping conditions no better than the quality of their waking lives? And finally, of no less importance, what benefits might sleep have conferred, apart from providing people with a reprieve from daily life? Was its value strictly "negative," or did men and women have more compelling reasons for embracing their exhaustion?
So INGRAINED HAS BEEN HISTORICAL INDIFFERENCE toward sleep that such elementary matters as the time and length of slumber before the nineteenth century remain an
November 16, 1751; ballad quoted in Carl Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen: 1590-1642 (New York, 1968), 84.
" "When our spirits are Exhausted," Cüwper noted, "we wish tor sleep as old men for Death, only because we are tired with our present condition." She also complained that her own husband. Sir William, commonly went to bed early in order to avoid her presence. February 13, July 22. 1712. Diary of Dame Sarah Cowper. Hertfordshire County Record Office. England; Statement of Elizabeth Israel,
The Proceedings on the King's Commissions of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol Delivery for the City of London; and also Gaol Delivery for the County of Middlesex, held al Justice-Hall in the Old Bailey
(hereafter. Old Bailey Sessions Papers), June 7-11, 1764.
'^ Quoted in Philip D. Morgan. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century
Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hilt, N.C, 1998). 524-25.
'-'' July 22, 1712, Cowper Diary; Thomas Nashe, "The Terrors of the Nighl," in The Works of Thomas
Nashe, F. P. Wilson, ed., 5 vois. (1910; rpt. edn., Oxford, 1%6). 1:355. For the latest in luxury bedding
available to modern consumers, see Amy Zipkin, "Counting Sheep, and Dollar Signs," New York Times, May 31, 1998.
enigma. The hour at which most individuals went to bed, when they awakened the following morning, and whether the duration of their sleep varied from one night to the next have never received serious analysis, except for the occasional suggestion that people fled to their beds soon after sunset to cope with the onset of darkness. Because the light afforded by candles was available chiefiy to the wealthiest families, the members of most households, presumably, were unable or too fearful, once enveloped by darkness, to work or socialize. "No occupation but sleepe, feed, and fart," to paraphrase the Stuart poet Thomas Middleton, might best express this view of what transpired after sunset.'^
Among 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 "meate" and other foods have been digested in the stomach, explained Thomas Cogan in The Haven of Health, 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 sleep "by its moisture, silence and darkness," but those properties were thought enormously well suited to concoction.'^^ Virtually all writers credited sleep with physical vitality, lively spirits, and increased longevity. Declared an Italian proverb, "Bed is a medicine."'^ A parallel belief was that retiring early could best reap the full benefits of sleep. "By going early to asleep and early from it, we rise refreshed, lively and active," claimed the author oí An Easy Way to Prolong Life.^''
Less clear, in retrospect, was the time of night intended by the expression "early to bed," a judgment, perhaps, that truly rested in the heavy lidded eyes of the beholder. Did popular convention favor sunset as a time for repose or some later hour? Another proverb claimed, "One hour's sleep before midnight is worth three after," suggesting that going to bed "early" may have borne an altogether different
'* Thomas Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters .. . (London, 1608). For a sampling of this belief, see Pierre Goubert, The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century, Ian Patterson, trans. (Cambridge, 1986), 39; Jacques Wilhelm, La vie quotidienne des Parisiens au temps du Roi-Soleil, ¡660-1715 (Paris, 1977), 70; Maria Bogucka, "Work, Time Perception and Leisure in an Agricultural Society: The Case üf Poland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in Labour and Leisure in Historical Perspective,
Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries, Ian Blanchard, ed. (Stuttgart, 1994), 50; Barbara and Cary Carson
quoted in James P. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century
Chesapeake (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 315; David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989), 214.
'5 Thomas Cogan, The Haven of Health (London, 1588), 232-33; Dannenfeldt, "Sleep," 422-24. "• Henry DavidoffM World Treasury of Proverbs from Twenty-Five Languages (New York, 1946), 25. See, for example, Levjnus Lemnius, The Touchstone of Complexions . . ., T. Newton, trans. (London, 1576), 57; John Northbrooke,/4 Treatise wherein Dicing, Dauncing. Vaineplayes or Enterluds with Other
Idle Pastimes . .. (London, 1577), 8; William Vaughan, Naturall and Artificial Directions for Health . . .
(London, 1607), 53; The Workes of That Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, Thomas Johnson, trans. (London, 1649), 26-27; Henry Hibbert, Syntagma theologicum . . . (London, 1662), 282; Dannenfeldt, "Sleep," 407-12.
'^ John Trusler, An Easy Way to Prolong Life, By a Little Attention to Our Manner of Living .. . (London, 1775), 11. How widespread this notion was may be seen in such proverbs as "go to Bed with the lamb and rise with the lark" and "would you have a settled head. You must early go to bed." Morris Palmer Tilley. A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1950; rpt. edn., Ann Arbor, Mich., 1966), 36.
meaning from retiring at the onset of darkness.^^ Moreover, while contemporaries routinely lauded sleep and its manifest contributions to personal health, they also, even more frequently, scorned slumber that appeared excessive. 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,'*^ So what, in the eyes of contemporary moralists, 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.-° Some prescribed seasonal adjustments, such as sleeping eight hours in the summer and nine hours during long winter evenings, whereas Jeremy Taylor, one-time chaplain to Charles I (1625-49), prescribed a nightiy regimen of only three hours!-' 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 or melancholy mandated more.22 Whether these opinions shaped popular mores or instead reflected them, as seems likely, common aphorisms expressed similar attitudes toward the proper length of sleep, including "Nature requires five. Custom takes seven. Laziness nine, And wickedness eleven."^3
Of course, some laborers must have collapsed soon after returning home, barely able from numbing fatigue to take an evening meal, especially in rural regions during the summer when fieldwork grew most strenuous. In southern Wiltshire, complained John Aubrey, workers, "being weary after hard labour," lacked "leisure to read and contemplate of religion, but goe to bed to their rest."24 jn truth, however, few adults beneath the upper ranks enjoyed the opportunity to sleep more than seven or eight hours, much less the entire night. Despite the biblical injunction to rest at nighttime, "when no man can work," pre-industrial subsistence pressures
•s F. P. Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3d edn. (Oxford, 1970), 389.
•'' Baxter quoted in Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan
New England (New York, 1995), 124; Thomas Elyot, The Castle of Helthe (London, 1539), fols. 45-46; The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of Good Nourture . . . (London, 1557); William Bullein, .4 Newe Boke of Phisicke Called y Goveriment of Health . .. (London, 1559), 91; Andrew Boorde, A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Health . . . (London, Í547); Michael Cope, A Godly and Learned Exposition uppon the Proverbes of Solomon, M.O., trans. (London, 1580), fols. 85, 415v-16; Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions, 58; Northbrooke, Treatise, passim; Sir Thomas Overbury, The "Conceited Newes" of Sir Thomas Overbury and His Friends, James E. Savage, ed. (1616; rpt. edn., Gainesville, Fla., 1968), 167; The Whole Duty of Man .. . (London, 1691), 188-89; Richard L. Greaves, Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, 1981), 385-87.
^" Boorde, Compendyous Regyment. See also Cogan, Haven of Health, 237; Tobias Venner, Via recta
ad vitam longam . . . (London, 1637), 279-80; Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions, 57; Whole Duty of Man, 189.
^1 Lawrence Wright, Warm and Snug: The History of the Bed (London, 1962), 195; Boorde,
Compendyous Regyment.
^^ Bullein, Newe Boke of Phisicke, 91; Boorde, Compendyous Regyment, Venner, Via recta, 279-80; Directions and Observations relative to Food, Exercise and Sleep (London, 1772), 22; Dannenfeldt,
"Sleep," 430.
"* Wright, Warm and Snug, 194, my italics. The physician Guglietmo Gratarolo pointedly distin-guished slumber of eight hours' duration according to "common custome" from prolonged sleep in "ancient time," as Hippocrates had advised. A Direction for the Health of Magistrates and Studentes (London, 1574). See also Giovanni Torriano, Piazza universale di proverbi italiani: or, A Common Place
of Italian Proverbs (London, 1666), 194; Gosta Langenfelt, The Historic Origin of the Eight Hours Day: Studies in English Traditionalism (1954; rpt. edn., Westport, Conn., 1974), 78, 80.
and demands of the workplace kept many from slumber.25 Nighttime, too, afforded households precious opportunities for sociability and leisure, which frequently accompanied spinning, mending, and other "evening workes" by the hearth. In villages, men frequented taverns, and neighbors gathered within homes to enjoy the resonant talents of storytellers. Large towns and cities featured a growing array of nighttime diversions ranging from masquerades and assemblies to brothels and nighthouses.^"
Darkness, naturally, proved a menacing deterrent to nocturnal activity. "The night is no man's friend," attested a proverb. Yet many residents of urban and rural communities, when navigating the dark, learned to rely on local lore, magic, and their knowledge of the natural universe. Time, place, and weather became critical concerns while treading abroad. The quality of moonlight (called by some the "parish-lantern") varied greatly, as did the nocturnal landscape, which children learned to negotiate early on "as a rabbit knows his burrow." Most people, robbed of their vision in a world of face-to-face relationships and hence their ability to discern gestures, dress, and facial expressions, depended heavily on hearing, smell, and touch (feet as well as hands). They also resorted to charms to ward off evil spirits.-'' And although the cost of candles—tallow as well as beeswax—remained prohibitively high for most households, early modern folk relied on a broad range of more primitive illuminants, including rushlights and candlewood, for small measures of light.-"
Diaries, though heavily weighted toward Britain's upper classes, suggest not only that adults typically slept for periods of from six to eight hours but that the standard time for retiring to bed fell between nine and ten o'clock. "This family goes to Bed between 9 and 1Ü," noted Sarah Cowper, a rule with occasional exceptions that
--^ John 9: 4. See, for example. Rev. John CVàyXon. Friendly Advice to the Poor. . . (Manchester, 1755), 37; Thomas Porter.^ Witty Combat: or. The Female Victor (London, 1663); Franco Sacchetti, Tales from
Sacchetti, Mary G. Steegmann, trans. (1908; rpt. edn., Westport, Conn., 1978), 223-32; Thomas Dekker, The Seven Deadly Sinnes of London, H. F. B. Brett-Smith, ed. (New York. 1922), 29-30; Richard Baxter, The Practical Works of Richard Baxter. 4 vols. (London, 1838-45), 1: 242, 466; Robert Greene, Ciceronis Amor: Tullies Love (¡589) and A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592) (Gainesville, Fla., 1954); Anthony
Horneck, The Happy Ascetick: or. The Best Exercise ([London], 1680), 394, 409: Statement of Anne
R\s%?.c\, Old Bailey Sessions Papers, idx\u?iry 16-21, 1755; A. KO^ZT E\Í\XQ\\, At Day's Close: Night in Times Past (forthcoming).
-'' See, for example. Deposition of Mary Greenwood, August 16, 1772, Assi 45/31/1/315, Public Record Office, London; Francis Jollie. Jollie's Sketch of Cumberland Manners and Customs . . . (Beckermet, Eng., 1974), 45; Robert Bell. A Description of the Condition and Manners . .. of the
Peasantry of Ireland. Such as They Were between the Years ¡780 <& 1790 .. . (London, 1804), 20-21;
Jean-Louis Flandrin. Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality, Richard Southern, trans. (Cambridge, 1979), 107-10; Peter Kalni quoted in English Historical Documents, ¡714-1783, D. B. Horn and Mary Ransom, eds. (New York, 1969), 530; Ekirch,/li Da>''s Close. For the growth in urban entertainment, see Thomas Burke, English Night-Life: From Norman Curfew to Present Black-out (New York. 1971), 1-70; Angus Mclnnes, "The Emergence of a Leisure Town: Shrewsbury 1660-1760,"
Past and Present 120 (August 1988): 65-66; Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, ¡660-1760 (Oxford, 1989), passim.
^^ B. Stevenson, Home Book of Proverbs, 1686; Robert Morgan, My Lamp Still Bums (Llandysul, Wales, 1981), 64; Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases .. ., Anne Elizabeth Baker, comp. (London, 1854), M5; Ekirch, At Days Close.
"" Norman John Greville Pounds, The Culture of t¡ie English People: Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1994), 121-24; Pardaiihé-Galabrun, Birth of Intimacy, 125-30; William T.
O'Dca, The Social History of Lighting (New York, 1958), 17-21, 36-45; Roche, History of Everyday
Things, 121; Ekirch, v4i Day's Close.
seems to have applied to less fortunate households. Advised Thomas Tusser, "In winter at nine, and in summer at ten," whereas 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." Although the Sussex shopkeeper Thomas Turner tried to allow himself between seven and eight hours of slumber, either his duties as a parish officer or his thirst for drink, among other "emergent" occasions, sometimes delayed his normal ten o'clock bedtime. One December evening after a vestry meeting, he stumbled "home about 3:20 [a.m.] not very sober. Oh, liquor," he bemoaned, "what extravagances does it make us
HAD PRE-INDUSTRIAL FAMILIES, in fact, retreated to their beds soon after sunset, able
to rest for as much as twelve hours rather than just seven or eight, sleep might have seemed less important. Instead, the subject provoked widespread interest. Whether Macbeth, Henry K, or Julius Caesar, many of William Shakespeare's plays patently appealed to that preoccupation. And not just dreams, long a source of fascination in their own right, but other mysteries, including instances of narcolepsy and sleepwalking, were explored at length in newspapers as well as literary works.^" For the most part, however, 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 and the ways in which it could be improved. After all, explained a French writer, "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. In the environs of Northumberland alone, two terms, "dover" and "slum," signified light sleep, whereas the widely used expressions "dog," "cat," or "hare" sleep referred to slumber that was not only light but anxious. "Ye sleep like
-' November 27, 1705, Cowper Diary; Tusser quoted in Eric Sloane, The Seasons of America Past (New York, 1958), 26; Hugo Matthiessen, Natten: Stuier I Gammelt Byliv ([Copenhagen], 1914), 8-9; February 8, 1756, and December 26, 1763, The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754-1765. David Vaisey, ed. (Oxford, 1985), 26-27, 283. Similarly, for both sides of Ihe Atlantic, see the regulations quoted in the
Liverpool Mercury, February 7, 1812; January 19, 1711, Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, Harold
Williams, ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1948), I: 170; "Letter of Edward Shippen of Lancaster, 1754,"
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 30 (1906): 86; June 25, 1794, The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, Elaine Forman Crane, ed., 3 vols. (Boston, 1991), 1: 568; Lawrence Wright, Clockwork Man: The Story of Time. Its Origins. Its Uses, Its Tyranny (New York, 1968), 74. A seventeenth-century proverb
instructed, "To sup at six and go to bed at ten, will make a man live ten times ten." Vincent Stuckey Lean, Lean's Collectanea, 4 vols. (Bristol, 1902-04), 1: 503. A French variation, common in the sixteenth century, counseled: "To rise at five, to dine at nine. To sup at five, to sleep at nine. Lengthens life to ninety-nine." Lloyd's Evening Post (London), February 19, 1768.
^" Steiner, "Historicity of Dreams," 212; Simon B. Chandler, "Shakespeare and Sleep," Bulletin of
the History of Medicine 29 (1955): 255-60. See, for example. The True Relation of Two Wonderfull Sleepers . . . (London, 1646); ^ General Collection of Discourses of the Virtuosi of France . . . . G. Havers,
trans. (London, 1664), 197-201; Journals of Sir John Lauder, Donald Crawford, ed. (Edinburgh, 1900), 84; "Letter of M. Brady," LOÍIÍ/OÍI Chronicle, July 31, 1764; "The History of Cyrillo Padovano, the Noted Sleep-Walker," in Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Arthur Friedman, ed., 5 vols. (Oxford, 1966), 2: 214-18;/I Relation of Several Hundreds of Children ¿¿ Others That Prophesie and Preach in Their Sleep (London, 1689); "Somniücus," Weekly Journal: or, British Gazetteer (London), February 27, 1725; James Boswell, ["On Sleep and Dreams"], September 1781, in The Hypochondriack, Margery Bailey, ed., 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif., 1928), 2: ltO.
a dog in a mill," declared a Scottish proverb.^' More desirable was "dead" or "deep" sleep, what James Boswell described as "absolute, unfeeling, and unconscious." Attested a Welsh aphorism, "Men thrive by sleep, not long but deep," an observation supported by modern research emphasizing that whether or not individuals feel rested in the morning chiefly depends on the number of times they awaken during the night.•'^
Families went to great lengths to ensure the tranquility of their slumber. Of particular importance were a household's beds, typically the most expensive articles of family furniture. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, English beds evolved from straw pallets on bare floors to wooden frames complete with pillows, sheets, blankets, coverlets, and "flock mattresses," which were typically filled with rags and stray pieces of wool. Affluent homes boasted elevated bedsteads, feather mattresses, and heavy curtains to ward off dangerous drafts and inquisitive eyes. Recalled William Harrison in 1557 of his youth, "Our fathers, yea, and we ourselves also, have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hapharlots . . . and a good round log under their heads, instead of a bolster." "Pillows," he noted, "were thought meet only for women in childebed." But already families were investing heavily in superior beds not only as a mark of social prestige but also for their greater comfort. "Because nothing," remarked the sixteenth-century Dutch physician Levinus Lemnius, "is hoiesomer than sound and quiet Sleepe," a person needed "to take his full ease and sleepe in a soft bedde." Such was their importance that beds were among the first possessions purchased by newlyweds as well as the first items bequeathed in wills to favored heirs. In modest homes, beds often represented over one-quarter of the value of all domestic assets, while for more humble families, the bed was the piece of furniture first acquired upon entering the "world of goods." Only half in jest, Carole Shammas has quipped that the early modern era might be rechristened "The Age of the Bed.""
^^ Another Collection of Philosophical Conferences, 419; Northumberland Words, Richard Oliver
Heslop, comp , 2 vols. (1892; rpt. edn., Vaduz, 1965), 1: 248, 2: 659; The Proverbs of Scotland. Alexander Hislop, comp. (Edinburgh, 1870), 346. For similar comparisons to the sleep of animals, see, for example, Wilson, Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 742; Thomas Dekker, North-Ward Hoe (London, 1607); The Works of Thomas Adams, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1861-62), 2: 193; Thomas Duffett,
The Empress of Morocco (London, 1674), 15; Overbury, "Conceited Newes, " 260; Statement of Richard
Wager, Old Bailey Sessions Papers, October 16, 1728; Bartlett J. Whiting, Proverbs, Sentences, and
Proverbial Phrases: From English Writings Mainly before 1500 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 30.
^2 William Rowley, All's Lost by Lust (London, 1633); Thomas Shadwell, The Amorous Bigotte (London, 169Ü), 43; The Dramatic Works of Sir William D'Avenant (New York, 1964), 146; Boswell, ["On Sleep and Dreams"], 2: 112; Henry Vaughan, Welsh Proverbs with English Translations (Felinfach, Wales, 1889), 35; Erik Eckhotm, "Exploring the Forces of Sleep," New York Times Magazine (April 17, 1988): 32.
^-^ William Harrison, The Description of England, Georges Edelen, ed. (Ithaca. NY., 1968), 201; Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions, 73; Stephanie Grauman Wolf, As Various as Their Land: The
Everyday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans (New York, 1993), 66; Carole Shammas, "The
Domestic Environment in Early Modern England and America," Journal of Social History 14 (Fall 1990): 169, 158; F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Home, Work and Land (Chelmsford, Eng., 1976), 12-15; Pounds, Culture of the English People, 145-47; Flandrin, Families in Former Times, 102; Daniel Roche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the 18th Century, Marie Evans, trans. (Leamington Spa. Eng., 1987), 130-31; Roche, History of Everyday Things, 182-85; Robert Jütte, Poverty
and Deviance in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge, 1994), 69-70; Pardailhé-Galabrun, Birth of Intimacy,
73-81. Anthony Burgess interpreted the elevated height of bedsteads "as a symbol of overlordship" for which there was "no utilitarian rationale." Not only did raised beds remain accessible to vermin, but it
As bedtime neared, households followed painstaking rituals. Such habitual if not compulsive behavior no doubt helped alleviate anxieties many people felt when surrendering themselves to sleep, a condition of unparalleled vulnerability in pre-industrial times. Threats to body and soul as well as to sound slumber seemingly lurked everywhere. 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." "We lie in the shadow of death at Night, our dangers are so great," affirmed a country vicar."** To forestall thieves, propertied households prepared for bed as if girding for an impending siege. "Barricaded," "bolted," and "barred," as a Georgian playwright described an English home— "backside and foreside, top and bottom." Nighttime saw quarters made fast, with doors and shutters locked once dogs had been loosed outdoors. Nor could the working poor rest easily. As one who earned her bread by washing, Anne Towers had "a great charge of linen" besides her own belongings in her London quarters on Artichoke Lane—"I always go round every night to see that all is fast."-^^ Not only did domestic arsenals contain swords and firearms, or cudgels, sticks, and bed staves in less affluent homes,-^** but on especially foreboding nights friends and relations remained together, sleeping under the same roof if not the same covers, to allay common fears.^^
Then also, as portrayed in Gerrit van Honthorst's painting The Elea Hunt, domestic pests necessitated nightly.removal (see Figure 1), sometimes resulting in
was "easier for your enemies to stab you than if you were on the floor." Burgess, On Going to Bed (New York, 1982), 84. To be sure, the height of bedsteads dramatically distinquished men and women of property from other household members, including children confined to trundle beds and servants, but my experience as a graduate student without the benefit of a bedstead makes me skeptical that persons found it no more comfortable to enter and exit a raised bed. Moreover, medical opinion warned against resting "upon the ground, nor uppon colde stones, nor neere the earth; for the coldnesse of stones, and the dampe of the earth, are both very hurtfull to our bodies." Cogan, Haven of Health, 235. See also Steven Bradwell,yl Watch-man for the Pest. . . (London, 1625), 39.
^ Boswell, ["On Sleep and Dreams"], 2: 110; Richard Steele, The Husbandmans Calling: Shewing the
Excellencies, Temptations, Graces, Duties, etc. of the Christian Husbandman (London, 1670), 270. "We
are unable to think of, much more to provide for, our own Security," observed the eighteenth-century poet James Hervey. Meditations and Contemplations, 2 vols. (London, 1752), 2: 42. See also Stephen Bateman, A Chrislall Glasse of Christian Reformation . .. (London, 1569); Thomas Amory, Daitv
Devotion Assisted and Recommended, in Four Sermons .. . (London, 1772), t5; Benjamin Bell, Sleepy Dead Sinners (Windsor, Vt., 1793), 8. For Sigmund Freud's influential discussion of "neurotic
ceremonials" pertaining to sleep, see "Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices," in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, ed., 23 vols. (London,
1957-66), 9: 117-18; Barry Schwartz, "Notes on the Socio]ogy of Sleep," Sociological Quarterly It (Fall 1970): 494-95; Stanley Coren, Sleep Thieves: An Eye-Opening Exploration into the Science and Mysteries
of Sleep (New York, 1996), 165.
^^ David Ogborne, The Merry Midnight Mistake. .. (Chelmsford, Eng., 1765), 34; Statement of Anne
Towers, Old Bailey Sessions Papers, July 15-17, 1767; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (New York, 1983), 101; Pounds, Culture of the English People, 128-29; and Norman J. G. Pounds. Hearth and
Home: A History of Material Culture (Bloomington, Ind., 1989), 184-86.
^^ Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, ¡660-1730 (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), 243; Oxford English Dictionary, 1st edn. (Oxford, 1888-1928), s.v.
"bedstaff"; Old Bailey Sessions Papers, 1716-1766, passim.
" See, for example, September 8, 11, 1794, Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, 1: 590,592; December 2, 1766, and February 8, 1767, The Blecheley Diary of the Rev. William Cole, ¡765-67, Francis Griffin Stokes, ed. (London, 193t), t6I, 184; The Justiciary Records of Argyll and the ¡stes, ¡664-¡742, John Cameron and John Imrie, eds., 2 vois. (Edinburgh, 1949, 1969), 2: 466; Old Bailey Sessions Papers, May t9-20, 1743, December 5-9, 1746; Deposition of Mary Nicholson, February 20, 1768, Assi 45/29/t/169.
"bug hunts" of furniture and bedding for both fleas (pulex irritans) and bedbugs {cimex lectularius) after their arrival in Britain by the sixteenth century. To keep gnats at bay, families in the fen country of East Angha hung lumps of cow dung at the foot of their beds.^** Sheets could never be damp from washing ("dirt is better than death," observed John Byng), and in winter weather, beds required warming with pans of hot coals or, in modest dwellings, with hot stones wrapped in rags.-^^ Temperatures dipped all the more quickly once hearths were banked and most lights snuffed to prevent the threat of fire, an even greater peril than crime in densely packed cities and towns/" If windows boasted curtains, they needed to be drawn to forestall the harmful consequences of sleeping in moonlight and the dreaded properties of evening drafts. Samuel Pepys even tried to tie his hands inside his bed to keep from catching a cold/' To shield heads from the cool air, nightcaps were worn. While nightdress for middle and upper-class families, introduced at least by the sixteenth century, included chemises and smocks, the lower classes wore coarse "night-gear," slept unclad in "naked" beds, or remained in "day-clothes," either to save the expense of blankets or to rise quickly in the morning.^^
'*• Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents . . ., 2 vols. (London, 1658), 2: 956-57; The Goodman of Paris: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen of Paris (New York, 1928), 65-67; John Southall, A Treatise ofBuggs . . . (London, 1730); J. F. D. Shrewsbury, The
Plague of the Philistines and Other Medical-Historical Essays (London, 1964), 146-61; L. O. J. Boynton,
"The Bed-Bug and the Age of Elegance,"" Furniture History 1 (1965): 15-31.
'"^ July 16, 1784, John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, The Torrington Diaries, C. Bruyn Andrews, ed.,
4 vols. (New York, 1934-38), 1: 174. Remarked William Cole while in France, "Certainly the French are a more hardy People than we are: they never air their Linnen, but constantly go to Bed in damp, or rather wet Sheets .. . whereas the same practice would give an Englishman, if not his Death, at least the Rheumatism." November 28, 1765, Rev. William Cole,/i Joumal of My Journey to Paris in the Year
1765, Francis Griffin Stokes, ed. (London, 1931), 344. For the prevalence of warming pans, see Horn, Adapting to a New World, 318-19. For their preparation by chambermaids, see Domestic Management: or. The Art of Conducting a Family; With Instructions to Sen-ants in General (London, 1740), 56.
•*" The devastating consequences of tires in early modern society have been well documented in A
Gazetteer of English Urban Fire Disasters, ¡500-¡900, E. L. Jones, et ai, eds. (Norwich, 1984); Bernard
Capp, "Arson, Threats of Arson, and incivility in Early Modern England," in Civil Histories: Essays
Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, Peter Burke, et al., eds. (Oxford, 2000), 197-213; Pounds, Culture of the English People, 131-34; Penny Roberts, "Agencies Human and Divine: Fire in French Cities,
1520-1720," in Fear in Early Modern Society, William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, eds. (New York, 1997), 9-27.
•" Bradwell, Watchman for the Pest, 39; Venner, Via recta, 275; Dannenfeldt, "Sleep," 425; Israel Spach, Tlieses medicae de somno et vigilia . . . (Argentorati, 1597); Giovanni Florio, Florios Second
Frutes (1591; rpt. edn.. New York, 1969), 157; May 17, 1664, Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys,
Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., 11 vols. (Berkeley, Calif., 1970-83), 5: 152; James Nelson,
An Essay on the Govemment of Children . . . (London, 1756), 132. Only in the eighteenth century did
people begin to grow less fearful of the "night air." Just as Samuel Johnson, to Boswell's shock, gladly stood before an open window one fall night [October 14, 1773, Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the
Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., ¡773, Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, eds. (New
York, 1961), 297], Benjamin Franklin horrified John Adams, when sharing a bed in 1776, by insisting that opening the window would prevent contracting colds. Bernard Bailyn, "Butterfield's Adams: Notes for a Sketch," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 19 (April 1962): 247.
^^ Information is sparse about sleeping garments, but see C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, The History of Underclothes (London, 1951), 41-43, 52, 61; Almut Junker, Zur Geschichte der Unterwäsche 1700-1960: Eine Ausstellung des Historischen Museums Frankfurt, 28 April bis 28 August 1988 (Frankfurt,
1988), 10-78; Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process. Vol. I: The History of Manners, Edmund Jephcott, trans. (New York, 1978), 164-65. For the absence of clothing among sleepers, see Cheesman, Death
Compared to Sleep, 6; Erasmus Jones, A Trip through London . . . (London, 1728), 56-57; Edmond
Cottinet, "La nudité au lit selon cathos et l'histoire," Le Moliériste (April 1883): 20-25, (June 1883): 86-89; Edward MacLysaght, Irish Life in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1969), 66; Dannenfeldt,
Within well-to-do households, feet might be washed before bed, hair cut and combed, beds beaten and stirred, and chamber pots set, all by servants. Laurence Sterne referred to these and other servile duties as "ordinances of the bed-chamber." Of a young lad in training, Pepys wrote, "I had the boy up tonight for his sister to teach him to put me to bed," which included singing or reading to his master with the aid of a "watch-candle" or *'night-light," commonly a squat candle in a perforated holder not easily overturned/^ To calm attacks of anxiety, brandy or medicine was swallowed, with laudanum, a solution made from opium and an especially popular potion among the propertied classes/'^ For much the same purpose, alcohol may have been imbibed at bedtime by the lower orders, though also intended, no doubt, to embalm the flesh on frigid nights. For John Gordon, newly arrived in the capital from Bristol, a half-pint of wine was guarantee enough, he hoped, "in order to sleep all night." On the other hand, to avoid upset stomachs, common wisdom discouraged late night suppers and counseled that sleep first be taken on the right side of the body to facilitate digestion^''
Finally, the family patriarch bore a responsibility for setting minds at rest, normally by conducting household prayers, the fabled "lock" of every night. "Discompose yourselves as little as may be before Bed-time," urged the writer Humphrey Brooke, "the Master of the Family prudently animating and encouraging his Wife, Children and Servants against Fear and Disorder." By the sixteenth century, evening devotions had grown habitual among families readying for bed. Whether voiced spontaneously or recited by rote, prayer each night brought many
"Sleep," 426. References to "lying rough, " that is, wearing "day-clothes" to bed. may be found in Erancis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London, 1785); [Thomas Deloney], The
Gentle Craft: A Discourse Containing Many Matters of Delight, Very Pleasant to Be Read . . . (London,
1637); R.B., Admirable Curiosities, Rarities, <& Wonders in England, Scotland, and Ireland . . . (London, 1688), 5; Alan Macfarlane, The Justice and the Mare's Ale (Oxford, 1981), 56; Constantia Maxwell,
County and Town in Ireland under the Georges (Dundalk, 1949), 123. On the necessity of nightcaps, see
Venner, Via recta, 275; J. Nelson, Essay on the Government of Children, 132; October 20, 1763, Boswell's
London Joumal. ¡762-3, Erederick A. Pottle, ed. (New York, 1950), 49-50.
••-' Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman, Samuel Holt Monk, ed. (New York, 1950), 568; September 22, 1660, Pepys Diary, 1: 251. Boswell opined, "I have sometimes been apt to laugh when I contemplated a bed-room with all its contrivances." l"On Sleep and Dreams"], 2: 111. See also How They Lived: An Anthology of Original Accounts Written between ¡485 and ¡700, Molly Harrison and O. M. Royston, comps. (Oxford, 1962), 122-25, 167; The Elizabethan Home
Discovered in Two Dialogues, M. St. Clare Byrne, ed. (London, 1930), ll-lS; December 12, 1762, Boswell's London Journal, 81; Domestic Management, 50-56. Of night-lights, the Public Advertiser of
October 20, 1763, advised, "Every sensible family, or Person should have a lighted Lamp all Night, particularly during the Winter, in the House, having many great Conveniences, as the Prevention of Robberies, Murders, &c. likewise is of Use in cases of Eire, and of sudden Sickness." See also Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400-1600 (New York, 1991), 278.
•'•' See, for example, Wirsung, Praxis Medicinae Universalis, 618; November 1, 1695, The Life and
Times of Anthony Wood. Antiquary, of Oxford, ¡632-1695 . . . , Andrew Clark, comp., 5 vols. (Oxford,
1891-1900), 5: 493; October 3, 1704, Cowper Diary; September 7, 1771, October 7, 1775, The Diary of
Sylas Neville, ¡767-¡788, Basil Cozens-Hardy, ed. (London, 1950), 113, 191, 230; January 7, 1782, Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck, 1778-1782, Joseph W. Reed and Erederick A. Pottle, eds. (New York,
1977), 418.
^^ Statement of John Gordon, Old Bailey Sessions Papers, September 15-20, 1756. See also, for
example, Eynes Moryson, An Itinerary Containing His Ten Yeeres Travell. . . , 4 vols. (Glasgow, 1907), 4: 44; Edward Ward, Miscellaneous Writings, in Verse and Poetry . .. (London, 1712), 89; "To the Editor," British Chronicle (London), Eebruary 2, 1763; "T.C.," Public Ledger (London), December 5, 1765. In truth, only sleep's first hours are enhanced by alcohol; thereafter, people grow very restless. Coren, Sleep Thieves, 138.
households much comfort, with some families, including servants, praying togeth-er."'^ Protestant and Catholic verses shared distinctive features. Along with giving thanks for heavenly guidance, requesting peaceful sleep, and asking forgiveness for moral failings, most prayers appealed directly for divine protection from nocturnal harm, including "sudden Death, Fears and Affrightments, Casualties by Fire, Water, or Tempestuous Weather, [and] Disturbance by Thieves."'*'^ In addition, less afñuent households, in preparing for sleep, routinely invoked magic, an important dimension of pre-industrial life that gained added resonance at bedtime. Besides potions to prevent bedwetting and spur sleep on, nightspells were employed to shield households from fire, thieves, and evil spirits. To keep demons from descending down chimneys, suspending the heart of a bullock or pig over the hearth was a common ritual in western England, whereas early modern families hung amulets and recited charms to avert nightmares, widely thought to be imps seeking to suffocate their prey. "Whosoe'er these words aright Three times o'er shall say each night. No ill dreams shall vex his bed. Hell's dark land he ne'er shall tread," comforted an early Welsh verse.'''^
IMPLICIT IN MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF SLEEP before the Industrial Revolution remains the wistful belief that our forebears enjoyed tranquil slumber, if often little else, in their meager lives. Notwithstanding the everyday woes of pre-industrial existence, most families at least rested contentedly from dusk to dawn, we like to think.
^ Humphrey Brooke, Cautionary Rules for Preventing the Sickness (London, 1665), 6; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England
(London, 1971), 113-28; François Lebrun, "The Two Reformations: Communal Devotion and Personal Piety," in Passions of the Renaissance, Roger Chartier, ed., Arthur Goldhammer, trans., vol. 3 of Aries and Duby, History of Private Life, 96-97. References to the "lock" of the night may be found in Owen Feltham, Resolves (London, 1628). 406; October 2, 1704, Cowper Diary; Scottish Proverbs, Andrew Henderson, ed. (Edinburgh, 1832), 48. For personal references to meditation and prayer, see, for example, April 4, 1605, Diary of Lady Margaret Moby 1599-1605, Dorothy M. Meads, ed. (London, 1930), 217; March 4, 1666, Pepys Diary, 7; 65; Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, 1682-1693, George Morison Paul, ed. (Edinburgh, 1911), 59; Two East Anglian Diaries, 1641-1729: Isaac Archer
and William Coe, Matthew Storey, ed. (Woodbridge, Eng., 1994), 51, 267; November 13, 1700, The Diary of John Evelyn, E. S. De Beer, ed., 6 vols. (Oxford, 1955), 5:435; February 28, 1704, May 8, 1712,
Cowper Diary: December 25, 1727, The Diary of James Clegg of Chepet en le Frith, 1708-1755, Vanessa S. Doe, ed. (Matlock, Eng, 1978), 24; Old Bailey Sessions Papers, October 15, 1718; Deposition of William Smith, August 27, 1774, Assi 45/32/1/113.
"' July 18, 1709, Cowper Diary. See also, for example. The Writings of John Bradford .. . , Aubrey Townsend, ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1848), 1: 239; Phillip Stubbes's Anatomy of the Abuses in England in
Shakespere's Youth, A.D. ¡583, Frederick James Furnival!, ed. (London, 1877), 1: 220; Thankfull Remembrances of Gods Wonderful Deliverances, with Other Prayers (n.p., 1628); F.S., Schoole of Vertue
(London, 1630); Maister Beza 's Houshold Prayers: For the Consolation and Perfection of a Christian Life, John Barnes, trans. (London, 1607); The Whole Duty of Prayer (London, 1657), 31-32; April 7, 1700,
Diary of John Evelyn, 5: 400.
"* "Mary's Dream," quoted in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English, Gwyn Jones, comp.
(Oxford, 1977), 78; Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments.. . (London, 1615), 31; George Sinclair,
Satan's Invisible World Discovered (Gainesville, Fla., 1969), 217-18; Kingsley Palmer, The Folklore of Somerset (Totowa, N.J., 1976), 45; William Lilly,/! Groatsworth of Wit fora Penny: or. The Interpretation of Dreams (London, [1750?]), 18; The Oxford Book of Local Verses, John HoUoway, comp. (Oxford,
1987), 81-82, 285; Eveline Camilla Lady Gurdon, Eolk-Lore of Suffolk (Suffolk, 1893), 159; Dialects,
Proverbs and Work-tore, George Laurence Gomme, ed. (London, 1884), 131; Marie Nelson, "An Old
English Charm against Nightmare," Germanic Notes 13 (1982): 17-18; N. Bailey, English Dialect Words
Evening silence coupled with overpowering darkness contributed to unusually peaceful repose, as did the fatigue ordinary men and women suffered from their labors. Upon reliving this "more primitive pattern" when camping outdoors, a leading authority on sleep recently rhapsodized, "With the stars as our only night-light, we are rocked in the welcoming arms of Mother Nature back to the dreamy sleep of the ancients. It's little wonder we wake the next morning feeling so refreshed and alive."'''^
If one defining characteristic of sleep is the barrier it erects between the conscious mind and the outside world, another is that sleep's defenses are easily breached. Unlike sleep-like states resulting from anesthesia, coma, or hibernation, sleep itself is interrupted with ease.'*" Indeed, notwithstanding idyllic stereotypes of repose in simpler times, early modern slumber remained highly vulnerable to intermittent disruption, much more so, in all likelihood, than does sleep today. Despite elaborate precautions taken by households, many early references to sleep contain such adjectives as "restless," "troubled," and "frighted." A seventeenth-century religious devotion spoke of "terrors, sights, noises, dreames and paines, which afflict manie men" at rest.*^' Exacting the greatest toll were physical maladies, all the more severe after sunset, ranging from angina, gastric ulcers, and rheuma-toid arthritis to such respiratory tract illnesses as asthma, influenza, and consump-tion (pulmonary tuberculosis). Making sleep all the more onerous, whatever the strain of sickness, is that sensitivity to pain intensifies at night."^^ ^ ^ early painting by William Hogarth unabashedly portrays an anguished gentleman, perched
•*y William C. Dement, The Promise of Sleep (New York, 1999), tOl.
^" Despite his idealized view of sleep in past ages. Dement himself notes the ease with which slumber can be broken. Promise of Sleep, 17.
•^' Herbert's Devotions: or, A Companion for a Christian .. . (London, 1657), 1. See also, for example, Edmund Spenser quoted in Deverson, Journey into Night, 133; Ouarles, Complete Works, 2: 206; October 12, 1703, Cowper Diary; Lady Charlotte Bury. The Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting, A. F. Steuart, ed., 2 vols. (London, 1908), 1: 31; Richard Brathwait, Natures Embassie: or. The Wilde-mans Measvres (London. 1621), 120; Thomas Shadwell, The Miser (London, 1672), 18; George Powell, The Imposture
Defeated: or. A Trick to Cheat the Devil (London, 1698), 28; April 4, 1782, Journal of Peter Oliver,
Egerton Manuscripts. British Library, London; Benjamin Mifflin, "Journal of a Journey from Fhiladadeiphia to the Cedar Swamps & Back, 1764," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 52 (1928): 130-31. The supplement to Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie identified numerous obstacles to sleep; "Hunger prevents sleeping, indigestion, any irritating cause that constantly agitates some part of the body, the cold in one part of the body, feet for example, while the rest is covered, violent sounds, anxieties & annoyances, a preoccupation, melancholy, mania, pain, shiverings, warm drinks, drunk from time to time, like tea, coffee, several diseases of the brain that are not yet well determined, all these prevent sleep." Supplément a L'Encyclopédie, ou. Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des
métiers .. . , 4 vols. (1777; rpt. edn., New York, 1969), 4: 809. For an extended discussion of sleep
disturbances, see Ekirch, At Day's Close.
" Kenneth Jon Rose, The Body in Time (New York, 1989), 87-88; Jane Wegscheider Hyman, The
Light Book: How Natural and Artificial Light Affect Our Health, Mood and Behavior (Los Angeles, 1990),
140-41; Mary Carskadan, ed.. Encyclopedia of Steep and Dreaming (New York, 1993), 269-70; Gay Gaer Luce, Body Time (London, 1973), 15t, 178. For the common association of nighttime with heightened discomfort, see, for example, Diary of the Rev. John Ward. . . , Charles Severn, ed. (London, 1839), 199; September 24, 1703, October 18,' 1715, Cowper Diary; Vaughan, Welsh Proverbs, 85; Thomas Legg, ¡..ow-Life: or. One Half of the World, Knows Not How the Other Half Live . . . (London,
1750). 9; "A Night-Piece, on a Sick-Bed," The British Magazine 2 (1747): 272; The Autobiography of
William Stout, i. D. Marshall, ed. (Manchester, 1967), 238; August 14. November 29, December 30,
1774, The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752-1778, Jack P. Greene, ed. (Charlottes-ville, Va., 1965). 2: 850, 890, 907; March 10, 1798, Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, 2: 1011; Richard Cobb,
Death in Paris: The Records of the Basse-Geôle de la Seine, October 1795-September ¡801, Vendémiaire Year IV-Fructidor Year ¡X (Oxford, 1978), n. 1, 90.
FlGURt 2: William 1 logarth, ¡rancis Mullhaw .Schulz in His Bet!.
Service (Norwich Castle Museum). uiiesv of the Norfolk Museums
halfway out of bed, vomiting into a basin (see Figure 2). Illness only magnified anxiety and depression, insidious sources of disturbed slumber in their own right, especially when aggravated by fears of fire and crime. No social elass was spared, but those having the fewest resources to cope with life's problems were most subject to insomnia. Of the urban poor, a contemporary remarked, "They feel their sleep interrupted by the cold, the filth, the screams and infants' cries, and by a thousand other anxieties.'"^^
In most respects, the sleep of the working poor and the destitute remained acutely vulnerable to the vexations of everyday existence. Certainly, their quarters lay more exposed to unwelcome intrusions, including frigid temperatures, annoying noises, voracious insects, and the stench of nightsoil. In Paris, due to the high cost of obtaining quiet quarters, Nicolas Boileau remarked, "Sleep like other Things is sold. And you must purchase your Repose with Gold."^^ Much of the population
5-' G. C. L. Canali quoted in Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern
Europe, David Gentilcore, trans. (Chicago, |t)80). 64: John Wilson, The Projectors (London, Í66S). 18;
Coren, Sleep Thieves, 157; Karl Wegcrt, Popular Culture. Crime, and Social Control m ISth-Century
Württemberg (Stuttgart, 19^4), 79-80; Matlhicsscn, Naticn, 128; Eugen Weber, Peasants into French-men: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stiinford, Calif.. 1976), 151.
FIGURE 3: William Hogarth, industry and Idleness, 1747, plate 7. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.
beneath the middling orders still suffered from tattered blankets and coarse mattresses, with many families scarcely able to afford even those essentials. In an engraving by Hogarth, a bed shared by the "Idle Prentice" and a prostitute features sheets and a blanket, but the wooden bedstead has collapsed amid the squalor of their rat-infested garret. Notably, "Idle" has just been abruptly awakened by the noise of a eat, probably in pursuit of the rat in the foreground (see Figure 3). Without "fire" or "place," the urban poor often slept in public streets or, if lucky, atop or beneath wooden platforms protruding from shop windows—"bulkers" these unfortunates were widely called. Hayracks, stables, and barns afforded "nests" for rural vagabonds, such as the "thirty persons, men, women and children" found "naked in straw" in a barn near Tewkesbury in 1636. In Coventry and Nottingham, many of the "poorer sort" took refuge at night within eaves.^^
Inadequate bedding meant that families in the lower ranks routinely slept two,
Proceedings at the Sessions-House in the Old-Bayly. . . , December 8-9, 1680 (London, 1680); "Rusticus,"
Si. James Chronicle, November 12, 1772; Ben Jonson, Volpone: or, The Fox; Epicene: or. The Silent
Woman; The Alchemist; Bartholomew Fair, Gordon Campbell, ed. (Oxford, 1995), 127.
" William Hill quoted in Menna Prestwich, Cranfield: Politics and Profits under the Early Stuarts (Oxford, 1966), 529; Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 13; Collected Works of Oliver
Goldsmith, 1: 432; A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, ¡560-¡640 (London,
1985), 83-84; Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, 69-70; Legg, Low-Life, 18. "Bulkers" are mentioned in the
