At Day's Close

by A. Roger Ekirch

  III

  The bed is a far better place to go courting.

  BARDUS LOCHWD,

  EARLY 19TH CENTURY26

  In part, it was in response to such passion—and the adult desire to control it—that the preindustrial custom of bundling emerged among the young. Broadly speaking, couples were permitted to remain together overnight at the home of the girl’s parents without engaging in intercourse. An intermediate stage of courtship, bundling followed a period of wooing, marked by private walks and public encounters. Only once flirtations yielded to mutual affection were young men and women allowed to bundle. That notwithstanding, there was no formal expectation of marriage, though hopes for such a union usually ran high.

  Contrary to popular thought, bundling was not an early American innovation, despite its prevalence in New England. Its origins, though obscure, were deeply rooted in the European countryside. Within the British Isles, the custom was most common in Wales. Even in the late eighteenth century, a resident claimed that “bundling very much abounds, in many parts in country towns.” On the Orkney Islands in the North Sea, young men and maidens typically kept company on a layer of sheaves known as a “lang bed”; while in the Lowlands, despite opposition from the Church of Scotland, bundling was said to be the “custom of the place.” Brought before a kirk court in 1721 for sharing a bed with Isobel Midy, the laborer Duncan McCurrie protested “that there were many others who lay together as they did.” So, too, in Ireland, a traveler discovered a traditional pattern of night visiting “among the common people.”27

  The evidence for England is more checkered. That bundling, or “sitting up,” was popular in the north is not in doubt. In 1663, for example, Roger Lowe, a young Lancashire mercer, arranged to “sit up awhile” with Mary Naylor. “This was the first night that ever I stayd up a wooing ere in my life,” he jotted in his diary. Much later, a town clerk in Yorkshire noted the “practice in this county, of young men and women sitting up alone at nights, with the permission of their masters or mistresses.” For other sections of the country, information is more scattered. In the village of Dullingham, for instance, Walter Appleyard regularly visited his Cambridgeshire girlfriend at her mother’s home. By one report, he “manie times stayed there all night and manie time a great part of the nighte, and would not suffer her to goe to bed and sometimes a maide sate up with them and sometimes no bodie at all.” Thomas Turner in Sussex twice remained overnight with his future bride, whereas Wheatcroft did so on several occasions with his Derbyshire love. “I stayd all night again with my dear and chief delight, using unto her many sweet expressions of my love.”28

  Elsewhere in Europe, various forms of bundling were practiced among the common sort, though not in the Mediterranean, where serenades by young males were a customary method of courting. Bundling was prevalent both in Scandinavia and in parts of the Netherlands, where it was known as queesting (chatting). Nightcourting was no less accepted in Germany and Switzerland; in fact, a rural minister observed in a visitation report that zu Licht gehen, or “going to the light” of a girl’s chamber, was “considered a right and a freedom” at night among the young. And in seventeenth-century Savoy, a contemporary wrote of the custom of albergement: “It is usual for young peasants to stay up until late at night in the company of marriageable girls, and pleading that their homes are far away, they ask for hospitality, and seek to share the girls’ beds,” which usually “the girls do not refuse.”29

  Almost everywhere, nightcourting seems to have followed a common pattern, a testament to the diffusion of European popular culture. Saturday and Sunday evenings were favorite times for boys to visit. At least some entered through unlocked windows lit by candles. According to a Cambridgeshire song, “So when the moon is waxing bright, across the fen you make for a light.” A German tract claimed that youthful pride required a lad to scale the home of his beloved in order prove his merit. All the same, nearly always bundling enjoyed parental permission. Indeed, among other benefits, it afforded a way for parents to supervise a daughter’s courtship.30 To be certain, some couples met illicitly while parents slept, but the dangers were great, including being mistaken for a thief. Awakened from bed, a Somerset minister in 1717 spied two men crossing his yard in the moonlight. He shot both, one fatally, only to learn that they had come to court his maidservants—“it being their practice,” recounted a contemporary, “to visit them when their master & mistress was in bed & they, to accommodate their sparks, used to stock beer, ale, & cyder & bread & cheese for their night adventures.”31

  As a consequence of parental control, rules for nightcourting governed both attire and conduct. Undergirding these strictures was a strong injunction against sexual intercourse, which, at the least, imperiled a maiden’s eligibility for marriage. Boys in Savoy were required to take an oath against violating a girl’s virginity, which New England suitors reputedly “regarded as a sacred trust.” In some locales, both parties were expected to remain seated, but, more often, they lay next to one another on the girl’s bed. Modesty necessitated that males remove just their waistcoats and shoes, if any garments at all. In Norway, a young lady, unaccustomed to the rituals of her suitor’s village, vociferously objected when he shed his jacket. “If you’re taking off your jacket,” she exclaimed, “you’ll be taking off your trousers.” Females remained in shifts or petticoats, which in Wales were occasionally tied at the bottom. In Scotland, by contrast, a maiden’s thighs were bound in order to underscore the symbolic importance of chastity. And in early America, a German traveler reported, “If the anxious mother has any doubt of the strict virtue of her daughter, it is said she takes the precaution of placing both the daughter’s feet in one large stocking.” So, too, in New England were “bundling boards” reportedly employed to separate youths in bed.32

  Few couples opted to sleep. In the Netherlands, according to Fynes Moryson, they devoted the night to “banqueting and talking together.” Besides conversation, a modicum of physical contact was assumed, during subsequent visits if not at first. This included warm embraces and kissing. “Coupling and cheeking,” described a Welsh poem. Noncoital forms of sexual play often followed, “stopping short of those reserved for marriage alone,” found a French visitor to America. Scandinavians were quite explicit about which parts of the body might be caressed, as were Russian households, which in some nineteenth-century provinces restricted suitors to fondling their girlfriends’ breasts. (On the other hand, in the Melnki district of Novgorod province, touching a maiden’s genitals was permitted.) Gentle caresses sometimes gave way to hard blows among peasant populations that equated rough play with expressions of passion. Moreover, slapping one another on the back tested a lover’s strength and physical health, important considerations for potential mates in rural communities. Should sexual play get out of hand, despite precautions, families lay nearby—some parents stayed awake in the same room as chaperones. Most trusted their daughters’ probity, ready to intervene, however, if called. “Woe to him,” related a contemporary, “if the least cry escapes her, for then everybody in the house enters the room and beats the lover for his too great impetuousity.”33

  Even so, the most honorable intentions could be swept away by sudden paroxysms of passion. “In a cosy bed much mischief can occur,” warned a Welsh song, while a Connecticut ballad in 1786 affirmed, “Breeches nor smocks, nor scarce padlocks / The rage of lust can bind.” On both sides of the Atlantic, moralists forecast the worst whenever “the fire” lay “much too near the tinder,” as a French storyteller cautioned. Though scanty, surviving statistics appear to confirm prevailing fears. For whatever combination of reasons, illegitimacy rates climbed appreciably in eighteenth-century New England, roughly the time when bundling grew in popularity. “This cursed course,” wrote an opponent, “is one great source / Of matches undersigned, / Quarrels and strife twixt man and wife, / And bastards of their kind.” In rural New England after American independence, almost
one-third of brides were pregnant at the time of marriage. As were, it would seem, many European maidens. “It is a very common thing,” concluded a visitor to Wales, “for the consequence” of bundling “to make its appearance in the world within two or three months after the marrage ceremony.” How many unions were compelled by premature pregnancies is impossible to say. It seems just as likely, as some historians have posited, that couples only elected to have intercourse once marriage was in the offing. According to this view, pregnancy was less often a cause for marriage than were marital plans a precondition of copulation. Noting the popularity of “bundelage” in America, a European visitor observed that once “the swain promises marriage” his partner “gives herself without reserve.”34

  Despite periodic opposition from religious authorities, bundling survived in parts of Europe well into the nineteenth century. Doubtless, some of its popularity derived from the ingrained belief, shared by countless generations, that adolescent courtships belonged at home under parental surveillance. Remarked a German in the sixteenth century, “When their parents are questioned about these familiarities, they answer ‘caste dormiunt’ [sleeping chastely]; it is a game devoid of villainy, where good and happy marriages are prepared and begin.”35 In addition, some persons have claimed that bundling was designed to save families the costs of “fire and candle” for courting couples. That, however, fails to explain why the young retreated to beds on warm summer nights. Or why candlelight had anything to do with whether one sat upright when courting or lay prone. Then, too, at least one observer speculated whether bundling was not just “a cunning trick to know whether the wives would be fruitful.”36

  A more compelling explanation for the enduring popularity of this convention lies in the twin functions that night visits served. For one thing, they permitted young couples a measure of privacy for courting, shielded from the scrutiny of friends and neighbors. Bundling could not always protect couples from snoops and eavesdroppers. The New Hampshire farmer Abner Sanger spied on the home of his cherished Nab Washburn whenever his arch-rival, Unction, was calling. “I spy Unction before sunrise coming from Old Mr. Washburn’s very gaily dressed,” Sanger sulked one morning. But in most cases, darkness and domestic seclusion granted couples an uncommon degree of privacy, particularly for that age. “Let’s blow the candle out” was the standard refrain in “The London Prentice,” a song describing how one pair of lovers escaped the prying eyes of “peeping” pedestrians.37

  Still more important, bundling provided a trial period enabling the young to probe a potential mate’s suitability for marriage—“hugging and fooling and talking till dawn,” described the Swiss shepherd Ulrich Bräker. Of courting his beloved “Annie,” he fondly recalled, “We had thousands and thousands of different kinds of lovers’ conversations.” Amid all the soft entreaties and passionate embraces, amid the still darkness was a rare chance to become deeply acquainted with a lover’s character and temperament. Reported a contemporary in New England, “The girls seek only to please and to use their freedom in associating with men to make a good choice, on which their future happiness depends.” Of some bearing, as well, was a couple’s sexual compatibility. As a Cambridgeshire youth bluntly informed his skeptical parson, “But vicar, you wouldn’t buy a horse without getting astride it to see how it trotted.” In fact, in parts of Germany, after several nights of courting (known as “welcome nights”), couples embarked upon a more telling sequence of “trial nights” that could eventually lead to marriage. Should matters turn out differently, no embarrassment or dishonor, barring a pregnancy, attached to either party, with each free to commence a future relationship.38

  IV

  This grand volume of epistles, for which the final draft is now being copied out, bears witness, letter by letter, to whatever muses I have managed to muster in the dead of night.

  LAURA CERETA, 148639

  “What is more conducive to wisdom than the night?” asked St. Cyril of Jerusalem. For all of the opportunities that nighttime afforded for courting and companionship, it also permitted preindustrial folk unprecedented freedom to explore their own individuality. On myriad evenings, growing numbers of men and women devoted an hour or more to solitude and mental reflection, resulting ultimately in an enhanced self-awareness. Individuals found evenings particularly well suited to contemplation, as religious sages had for centuries. Competing obligations were fewer, while the silence created an ideal environment for self-scrutiny. “Much more fit for any employment of the mind, than any other part of the day,” opined a French writer in the seventeenth century. The author of La Ricreazione del Savio observed, “The day counts on labor; the night counts on thinking. Clamor is useful for the first; silence for the second.”40

  Naturally, members of the middle and upper classes, by retiring to their bedchambers, enjoyed the greatest opportunity for personal reflection. Farther down the social ladder, inadequate time and space invariably made solitude harder. Still, as early as the mid-1600s, many laboring families resided in homes with more than just a single room; plus there were occasions, on pleasant evenings, to retreat to a barn or shed. In the late fifteenth century, the Parisian servant Jean Standonck labored by day at a convent only to ascend a bell tower at night to read books by moonlight. Thomas Platter, as a rope-maker’s apprentice, regularly defied his master by rising silently at night to learn Greek by the faint glow of a candle. To avoid falling asleep, he put pieces of raw turnip, pebbles, or cold water in his mouth. (Other individuals were known to wrap their heads in wet towels to stay awake.) Plainly, the well-traveled saying “The night brings counsel” held meaning for people of varying social backgrounds.41

  Reading was an increasingly common pastime, despite the multitudes that remained unlettered. For the poor, exposure to printed materials was predominantly communal, limited to oral readings at spinning bees and other intimate gatherings. Early modern literacy, nevertheless, was more prevalent than one might suspect. During the late Middle Ages, a few persons outside the clergy could read and write, a trend greatly accelerated by both the Reformation and the growth of printing. Already by the seventeenth century, a large majority of yeomen and skilled artisans in the English countryside were literate, as were many urban males. Enjoying fewer educational opportunities, women were less fortunate, though there were numerous exceptions. The Stuart playwright Sir William Davenant wrote of “those mourning histories of love, which in / The dreadful winter nights, our innocent maids / Are us’d to read.” In general, literacy rates were highest in northern and northwestern Europe, though many regions witnessed a marked rise during the 1700s, caused in part by the spread of Pietism, a Protestant movement that stressed personal study of the Bible.42

  Gerrit Dou, Scholar with a Globe, seventeenth century.

  Within well-educated households, the critical transition from reading aloud to silent reading occurred during the fifteenth century. In time, other readers would master this liberating technique. Revolutionary in scope, silent reading let individuals scrutinize books with ease and speed. No less important, it allowed them to explore texts in isolation, apart from friends and family, or masters. Reading became vastly more personal, as more people pondered books and formed ideas on their own. As Machiavelli related in a letter in 1513:

  When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off the muddy, sweaty clothes of every day, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients where, being welcomed by them, I taste the food that alone is mine, for which I was born. And there I make bold and speak to them and ask the motives of their actions. And they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I am wholly absorbed in them.43

  Besides other times of the day, an hour or two before bedtime was set aside by many for reading. According to estate invento
ries, personal libraries were frequently located in chambers where persons slept. Pepys, for one, often read at night. “I to my book again, and made an end of Mr. Hooker’s Life, and so to bed,” he recorded on May 19, 1667. On scattered evenings, he requested a servant to read aloud to him. During the nine years covered by his diary, Pepys read an estimated 125 books, most in their entirety. His tastes were far-flung. Along with traditional works of history and theology, he read widely in science and literature. Books sometimes occupied David Beck past midnight. “Came home at 11:00, read the entire Gospel of St. John,” he noted one November evening in 1624. Favorite fare for this budding Dutch poet included the verse of Jakob Cats and Pierre de Ronsard. In Somerset, John Cannon’s adolescent tastes ran to the occult as well as to Aristotle and the Bible. At age sixteen, he explored a book about midwifery in order to learn the “forbidden secrets of nature.” A hardworking husbandman, he read avidly despite the disapproval of the uncle who employed him. “For all these my hard & laborious employments,” noted Cannon in 1705, “I never slighted or disregarded my books, ye study of which augmented my understanding, stealing an opportunitie by day, but more by night and that when all was safe in bed, sitting up late.”44

  Joseph Wright of Derby, Girl Reading a Letter by Candlelight, with a Young Man Peering over Her Shoulder, ca. 1760–1762.

  Most of all, in this religious age, nocturnal solitude was reserved for expressions of personal piety. In the wake of the Reformation, growing numbers of theologians emphasized the importance of private acts of spirituality. Despite differences in doctrinal beliefs, Protestant and Catholic leaders alike sought to strengthen an individual’s relationship with God through private prayer. That occurred with greatest regularity at bedtime when individuals prepared for sleep. But even earlier, men and women were expected to perform devotional readings as well as to reflect on the day’s events. “Meditation and retired thoughts fit us for prayer,” noted Sarah Cowper.45 Jewish theologians encouraged nocturnal exercises, believing in the Maimonidean precept that “man acquires most of his wisdom by study at night.” According to the eighteenth-century rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz, God, in punishing the “first man” for his “sin,” reserved daylight for labor. Long winter nights, by contrast, were meant for study of the Torah. “God darkened his world so man could study” and “focus and concentrate his mind and thoughts on God,” explained Eibeschütz.46