At Day's Close

by A. Roger Ekirch

  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., 160915

  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 other
s 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

  No less perilous were threats to life and limb. Before bed, doors and shutters were double-checked. The writer George Herbert affirmed, “Many go to bed in health, and there are found dead.” Such was the alarming fate of the Hegen family in Knezta, Franken, whose members all mysteriously perished while asleep on Christmas Eve in 1558—Hans, his wife, their three sons, and a maidservant. The day before, each had been “fresh, healthy, and in good spirits.” When discovered, the bodies still possessed their “natural coloring” and did not betray any injuries or wounds. From the murder of Ishbosheth to the loss of Samson’s locks, men throughout history had fallen victim while asleep to their enemies, a late sixteenth-century writer reminded his readers; just as easily he could have included the grotesque demise of Sisera and the beheading of Holofernes.20

  Georg Merckel, The Curious Death of the Hegen Family, Christmas Eve, 1558, sixteenth century.

  In preparation for sleep, families engaged in “hunts” of furniture and bedding for both fleas (pulex irritans) and bedbugs (cimex lectularius), which had arrived in Britain by the sixteenth century. Lice (pediculus humanus) needed to be combed from hair and picked from clothing and skin. The French expression “dirty like a comb” (sale comme un peigne) may have originated from this nightly task. Bugs were everywhere, especially given the proximity of dogs and livestock. To keep gnats at bay, families in the fen country of East Anglia hung lumps of cow dung at the foot of their beds, whereas John Locke advised placing the leaves of kidney beans about a bed to avert insect bites.21

  Sheets could never be damp from washing (“dirt is better than death,” observed John Byng), and in frigid weather, beds required warming with copper pans of coals or, in modest dwellings, with hot stones wrapped in rags.22 Temperatures dipped all the more quickly once hearths were banked to keep smoldering embers alive without setting homes ablaze. “In the evening,” advised the Domostroi, “you should again go all around the house, to look it over and to sniff out where the fires have not been banked.” Some households recited verses in order to charm hearths. “Sleep my fire, like a mouse in a nest,” urged a Latvian verse; whereas English families, according to John Aubrey, marked a cross in the ashes before praying. In addition, most lights were snuffed. “Every night we go to bed, we have nothing but combustibles under us and about us,” warned a writer in reference to the frame houses of urban denizens.23

  Not only windows but also chamber doors were shut to “keepe out the evil aire of the night.” If homes boasted curtains, they needed to be drawn to block drafts and stave off rheumatic diseases attributed to sleeping in moonlight. Pepys, to keep from catching a cold, tried to tie his hands inside his bed. To shield heads, nightcaps were customary. “Nothing is more wholesome than to have the head well covered from the dampness of the night air,” proclaimed Boswell.24 Nightdress, for middle- and upper-class families, introduced by the sixteenth century, consisted of simple garments, mostly chemises and smocks. Women cleansed their faces of cosmetics, prompting a Spaniard to jest, “Why, after they have practiced to deceive during the day do they wish to spend the night clean?” The lower classes donned 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. The Westmorland servant Margaret Rowlandson “did not put off her clothes, being to rise early next morning to wash.” On the colonial frontier, a young George Washington wrote of sleeping in his clothes “like a Negro.”25

  Within well-to-do households, feet at bedtime might be washed, 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 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 “night-light,” commonly a squat candle or rushlight in a perforated holder. Few persons, admittedly, went to the lengths of Henry VIII, whose bed each night was “arrayed” by ten attendants with pillows, linen sheets, and fine blankets—only after the bottom mattress had been stabbed with a dagger to guard against an assassin.26

  To calm attacks of anxiety, individuals at bedtime swallowed medicine, which in France was called a dormitoire. Laudanum, a solution made from opium and diluted alcohol, was a popular potion among the propertied classes. The Sussex merchant Samuel Jeake, for a soporific, placed leaves from the poisonous plant nightshade on his forehead and temples. Tiny bags of aniseed bound to each nostril or rags spread with camomile, bread, and vinegar tied to the soles of the feet—“as hot as you can suffer”—were also believed to encourage sleep.27 Alcohol served a dual purpose: it spurred slumber and numbed the flesh on frigid nights. Germans, said Fynes Moryson, refused to “suffer any man to goe to bed” sober. Habitual before bedtime was a Schlafdrincke (sleeping drink). “How many men and women go to bed drunk?” a London newspaper asked rhetorically.28

  On the other hand, to avoid an upset stomach, common wisdom discouraged heavy suppers. Game and beef were risky at best, and sleep should not follow too quickly afterwards. As Stephen Bradwell insisted, “Let it be two houres at the soonest after supper.” Even by the second half of the eighteenth century, when social elites began to ridicule such “vulgar errors,” many persons clung to timeworn conventions. The diarist Sylas Neville, for instance, skipped eating meat at night, whereas Thomas Turner avoided supper altogether every Wednesday evening. “Light suppers make clean sheets,” counseled an English proverb.29 Moreover, to promote proper digestion, medical authorities urged, as Hippocrates once had, that sleep be taken on the right side of the body after first retiring—at least until the “meat” from supper “descended from the mouth of the stomach.” Then, explained an early sixteenth-century scholar, it “may approche the lyver, whiche is to the stomake, as fyre under the pot, & by hym is digested.” To p
revent nightmares and apoplexy, among other maladies, sleeping on one’s back was always unwise. “Many thereby, are made starke ded in their sleepe,” attested the English physician William Bullein.30

  The family patriarch bore a responsibility at bedtime for setting minds at rest by conducting prayers. The fabled “lock” of every night, these afforded pious thoughts during sleep. By the sixteenth century, evening devotions had become commonplace. Many households, including servants, assembled with clasped hands. Family prayers could either be a substitute for or a supplement to personal devotions. Only because he had drunk “so much wine” one Sunday did Pepys neglect reading verses to his household—“for fear of being perceived by my servants in what case I was.” A young East Anglian servant, Isaac Archer, noted that “it was the custome of our lads to pray together,” though he himself was occasionally excluded. “Because my speech was stammering,” he explained in his diary, “they said God would not heare mee.”31