At Day's Close

by A. Roger Ekirch

  39.Caroline Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles, 1650–1950 (London, 1982), 73–75; SAS, V, 424, XII, 297, 747; SAI, I, 4, 198; James Ayres, Domestic Interiors: The British Tradition, 1500–1850 (New Haven, 2003), 16.

  40.SAS, XVIII, 480; Edward Ward, A Journey to Scotland ... (London, 1699), 9; Thirsk, Agrarian History, IV, 453; Davidson, Woman’s Work, 81–87; E. Veryard, An Account of Divers Choice Remarks ... in a Journey . . . (London, 1701), 19; Paul Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland (New York, 1963), 45–46, 302.

  41.Robert W. Malcolmson, Life and Labour in England, 1700–1780 (New York, 1981), 46–47; Davidson, Woman’s Work, 76–77; Carl Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590–1642 (New York, 1967), 99.

  42.Llewellynn Jewitt, ed., The Life of William Hutton ... (London, 1872), 160; Davidson, Woman’s Work, 101.

  43.Pounds, Culture, 120; A. Alvarez, Night: Night Life, Night Language, Sleep, and Dreams (New York, 1995), 6.

  44.Anne Elizabeth Baker, comp., Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases (London, 1854), I, 89; Wilson, English Proverbs, 377.

  45.Joan Wildeblood and Peter Brinson, The Polite World: A Guide to English Manners and Deportment from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1965), 84; Witold Rybczynski, Home: A Short History of an Idea (New York, 1986), 138; O’Dea, Lighting, 217. The sum of 28,000 livres was roughly equivalent to £900. W. S. Lewis et al., eds., Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with Hannah More . . . (New Haven, 1961), 80. For the cost of candles in England, see Lord Beveridge et al., Prices and Wages in England: From the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1939), I, passim.

  46.Eric Sloane, Seasons of America Past (New York, 1958), 107; Shakespeare, Cybleline, I, 6, 110–111; O’Dea, Lighting, 35–37, 43; Crowley, Comfort, 112–115; Davidson, Woman’s Work, 104–105, 110; R. D. Oliver Heslop, comp., Northumberland Words . . . (London, 1894), II, 666; S. K. Tillyard, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740–1832 (New York, 1994), 202.

  47.Nov. 1, 1794, Dec. 25, 1799, Woodforde, Diary, IV, 150, V, 231.

  48.8 Anne c.9; Sarti, Europe at Home, trans. Cameron, 105.

  49.Cobbett, Cottage Economy . . . (1926; rpt. edn., New York, 1970), 144; SAS, V, 335; Gilbert White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne ... (1789; rpt. edn., Menston, Eng., 1972), 197–199; John Caspall, Making Fire and Light in the Home Pre-1820 (Woodbridge, Eng., 1987), 171–179.

  50.“A Dissertation on the Instruments that Communicate Light,” UM, May, 1749, 229; Max J. Okenfuss, ed., The Travel Diary of Peter Tolstoi, a Muscovite in Early Modern Europe (DeKalb, Ill., 1987), 304; Oct. 8, 1773, Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, eds., Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., 1773 (New York, 1961), 281; Pinkerton, Travels, I, 766, III, 587; O’Dea, Lighting, 40–41; Crowley, Comfort, 111–113; Davidson, Woman’s Work, 106, 109; Maurice Vaussard, Daily Life in Eighteenth Century Italy, trans. Michael Heron (New York, 1963), 194.

  51.Caspall, Making Fire and Light, 176; Journal of James Robertson, 1767, 91–92, Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; “16th Century Lighting in Sweden,” Rushlight 15 (1949), 4; Rushlight 39 (1973), 8; Jean Kathryn Berger, “The Daily Life of the Household in Medieval Novgorod (Russia)” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Minnesota, 1998), 92–94; Davidson, Woman’s Work, 107–108; James Brome, Travels over England, Scotland and Wales (London, 1700), 99, 218; Perceval, English Travels, ed. Wenger, 139; Burt, Letters, II, 127–128; Ménétra, Journal, 32.

  52.Everett Emerson, ed., Letters from New England: The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629–1638 (Amherst, Mass., 1976), 36; Thomas Coulson, “The Story of Domestic Lighting,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 256 (1953), 207–208; Caspall, Fire and Light, 262.

  53.Tilley, Proverbs in England, 144; June 6, 1712, Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, eds., The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709–1712 (Richmond, 1941), 540.

  54.Garnert, Lampan, 104–105, 278–279; Magnús Gíslason, Kvällsvaka: En Isländsk Kulturtradition Belyst Genom Studier i Bondebefolkningens Vardagsliv ... (Uppsala, 1977), 144, 149; Jonathan Swift, Directions to Servants: and Miscellaneous Pieces, 1733–1742, ed. Herbert John Davis (Oxford, 1959), 20.

  55.George Washington Greene, ed., The Works of Joseph Addison (Philadelphia, 1883), I, 314; O’Dea, Lighting, 2; Domestic Management ... (London, n.d.), 22, 48.

  56.J. J. Evans, ed., Welsh Proverbs: A Selection, with English Translations (Llandysul, Wales, 1965), 31; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York, 1979), 133; Craufurd Tait Ramage, Ramage in South Italy ... , ed. Edith Clay (London, 1965), 150; Garnert, Lampan, 76–77; Robert Cleaver, A Godly Forme of Houshold Government (London, 1621); Tour of Sotterley Plantation, Md., Oct. 11, 1992.

  57.Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (1893; rpt. edn., Detroit, 1968), 127; Henry Davidoff, World Treasury of Proverbs ... (New York, 1946), 81; UM, May, 1751, 220; Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400–1600 (New York, 1991), 276; Moryson, Itinerary, IV, 201–202.

  58.Cotgrave, Dictionarie.

  59.Ruff, Violence, 76; Rétif de la Brétonne, My Father’s Life, trans. Richard Veasey (Gloucester, Eng., 1986), 6; Rudolf Dekker, Childhood, Memory and Autobiography in Holland: From the Golden Age to Romanticism (New York, 2000), 33.

  60.Apr. 30, 1645, Josselin, Diary, 39; May 18, 1668, Pepys, Diary, IX, 204.

  61.James Gregory, Nov. 26, 1773, Assi 45/31/2; Sept. 6, 11, 1794, June 6, 1795, Drinker, Diary, I, 590, 592, 689; Dec. 2, 1766 and Feb. 8, 1767, Cole, Diary, 161, 184.

  62.Vittore Branca, ed., Mercanti Scrittori: Ricordi Nella Firenze Tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Milan, 1986), 379; Mar. 31, 1771, Carter, Diary, I, 554–555; Dec. 15, 1780, Apr. 14, 1781, Apr. 13, 1785, Dec. 28, 1794, Mar. 14, 17, 1795, Woodforde, Diary, I, 298, 307, II, 184, IV, 163, 182, 183.

  63.Pinkerton, Travels, II, 94; May 20, 1786, Diary of Dr. Samuel Adams, 1758–1819, New York Public Library, and passim; June 7, 1745, Kay, Diary, 97, and passim.

  64.Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine,” in Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988), 70; D. B. Horn and Mary Ransome, eds., English Historical Documents, 1714–1783 (New York, 1957), 671–672; Apr. 10, 1785, Oct. 1, 1804, “Mrs. Ballard’s Diary,” in Charles E. Nash, The History of Augusta, Maine (Augusta, Maine, 1904), 237, 421, and passim; PL, Oct. 22, 1765; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York, 1990), 203; Anthony F. Aveni, Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures (New York, 1989), 35.

  65.Apr. 1, 1657, Josselin, Diary, 395; Apr. 14, 1768, Woodforde, Diary, I, 74.

  66.Abel Boyer, Dictionaire Royal ... (Amsterdam, 1719); Marvin Lowenthal, trans., The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln (n.p., 1932), 120; Frank D. Prager, ed., The Autobiography of John Fitch (Philadelphia, 1976), 41; Mary J. Dobson, Contours of Death and Disease in Early Modern England (New York, 1997), 274–276.

  67.Paroimiographia (English), 8; Apr. 6, 1669, East Anglian Diaries, 119; Benjamin Franklin, Writings, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay (New York, 1987), 221; Thoresby, Diary, I, 7.

  68.Smith, De Republica Anglorum, ed. Mary Dewar (Cambridge, 1982), 107; OBP, passim; Brettone, Father’s Life, trans. Veasey, 119; Henry Brisker, Apr. 9, 1766, Assi 45/28/2/124; Elizabeth S. Cohen, “Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome,” JIH 22 (1992), 614.

  69.Dec. 13, 1672, Isham, Diary, 175; Henry Preston, Assi 45/14/1/135; OBP, Apr. 24–27, 1745, 137.

  70.OBP, May 10, 1722, 7; Select Trials, I, 305.

  71.ECR, VIII, 101; OBP, Oct. 16–21, 1728, Apr. 15, 1724, 4–5, Apr. 8–14, 1752, 131.

  72.Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge, 1979), 44; Oct. 5, 1725, Sanderson, Diary, 80–81; OBP, Jan. 16–18, 17
45, 62–63; Samuel H. Baron, ed. and trans., The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford, Calif., 1967), 150. See also A. Voisin, “Notes sur la Vie Urbaine au XV. Siécle: Dijon la Nuit,” Annales de Bourgogne 9 (1937), 276.

  73.Bonaventure Des Périers, Cymbalum Mundi: Four Very Ancient Joyous and Facetious Poetic Dialogues (New York, 1965), 66. See also OBP, May 2–5, 1739, 86; Select Trials, III, 336; The Authentick Tryals at large of John Swan and Elizabeth Jeffryes ... (London, 1752), 10, 11.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1.Davenant, The Platonick Lovers (London, 1636).

  2.Aug. 28, 1624, Beck, Diary, 159–160; Nov. 27, 1683, Heywood, Diaries, II, 341; Sandford Fleming, Children & Puritanism (New York, 1969), 148.

  3.Suzanne Chantal, La Vie Quotidienne au Portugal, après le Tremblement de Terre de Lisbonne de 1755 (Paris, 1962), 245.

  4.Dec. 24, 1647, Yorkshire Diaries & Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Durham, Eng., 1886), 81–82; Jan. 5, 1763, Frederick A. Pottle, ed., Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763 (New York, 1950), 125; Aug. 7–31, 1732, Clegg, Diary, I, 151–152.

  5.Samuel Briggs, The Essays, Humor, and Poems of Nathaniel Ames, Father and Son, of Dedham, Massachusetts, from Their Almanacks, 1726–1775 (Cleveland, 1891), 67; May 21, 1707, Cowper, Diary; Robert W. Malcolmson, Life and Labour in England, 1700–1780 (New York, 1981), 95–96; Burke, Popular Culture; Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge, 1985), 1–107.

  6.Rousseau, Emile: or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York, 1979), 63.

  7.Bacon, Essays (Oxford, 1930), 3; Le Loyer, Specters, fo. 105; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things: De Rerum Nautra, ed. and trans. Anthony M. Esolen (Baltimore, 1995), 93; Leon Battista Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence, trans. Renée Neu Watkins (Columbia, S.C., 1969), 63.

  8.Bacon, Essays, 3; Scott, Witchcraft, 139; Herman W. Roodenburg, “The Autobiography of Isabella de Moerloose: Sex, Childrearing, and Popular Belief in Seventeenth Century Holland,” JSH 18 (1985), 522, 521, 523–524; Rudolf Dekker, Childhood, Memory and Autobiography in Holland: From the Golden Age to Romanticism (New York 2000), 28, 81–84; Mark Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility, 1580–1715 (Princeton, N.J., 1990), 48–49.

  9.H. C. Barnard, trans., Fénelon on Education (Cambridge, 1966), 8; Pinkerton, Travels, II, 757; Timothy J. Casey, ed., Jean Paul: A Reader, trans. Erika Casey (Baltimore, 1992), 339; Olwen Hufton, “Women, Work, and Family,” in HWW III, 40; Linda A. Pollock, “Parent-Child Relations,” in FLEMT, 197.

  10.Thomas Bewick, A Memoir of Thomas Bewick, ed. Iain Bain (London, 1975), 16.

  11.Dialogues on the Passions, Habits, and Affections Peculiar to Children ... (London, 1748), 40; William Hazlitt and Elbridge Colby, eds., The Life of Thomas Holcroft (New York, 1968), I, 14–15. See also Hibernicus; or Memoirs of an Irishman ... (Pittsburgh, 1828).

  12.Rousseau, Emile, trans. Bloom, 137; Mollie Harris, A Kind of Magic (London, 1969), 104–105; Restif de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas; or, the Human Heart Laid Bare (London, 1966), 29; Autobiography of John Younger, Shoemaker, St. Boswells (Kelso, Eng., 1881), 45; Mrs. Laura M., Oct. 7, 14, 1938, “Game Songs and Rhymes,” American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1940, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Percy B. Green, A History of Nursery Rhymes (1899; rpt. edn., Detroit, 1968), 78–80.

  13.Thomas Balston, The Life of Jonathan Martin ... (London, 1945), 3. See also, for example, Joseph Bougerel, Vie de Pierre Gassendi ... (1737; rpt. edn., Geneva, 1970), 3.

  14.Torriano, Proverbi, 171.

  15.Mar. 7, 1787, Diary of Dr. Samuel Adams, Diary, 1758–1819, New York Public Library; Jan. 4, 1705, Cowper, Diary.

  16.Griffiths, Youth, 135; Robert Morgan, My Lamp Still Burns (Llandysul, Wales, 1981), 64; Bräker, Life, 57–58, 63, 67; Ménétra, Journal, 24; Valentin Jamerey-Duval, Memoires: Enfance et Éducation d’un Paysan au XVIIIe Siècle, ed. Jean Marie Goulemot (Paris, 1981), 114; Pounds, Culture, 273–274, 409.

  17.Joachim Schlör, Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin, London 1840–1930, trans. Pierre Gottfried Imhof and Dafydd Rees Roberts (London, 1998), 57; Alberti, Family in Renaissance Florence, trans. Watkins, 107.

  18.PG, Feb. 11, 1789.

  19.OED, s.v. “cat’s eye”; T. Row, “Hints for Constructing Glasses to Shew Objects in the Night,” GM, 1777, 59; Lorus Johnson Milne and Margery Joan Milne, The World of Night (New York, 1956), 8–9; Faber Birren, The Power of Color . . . (Secaucus, N.J., 1997), 228–229. See also C. E. Roybet, ed., Les Serées de Guillaume Bouchet Sieur de Brocourt (Paris, 1874), III, 238–239.

  20.John Caspall, Making Fire and Light in the Home Pre-1820 (Woodbridge, Eng., 1987), 223–227; O’Dea, Lighting, 70–76.

  21.Nov. 15, 1729, Sanderson, Diary, 30; OBP, Apr. 4, 1733, 119; Thomas Wright, The Homes of Other Days: A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England . . . (New York, 1871), 460.

  22.Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of the Underworld ... (New York, 1950), 448; Eugène Defrance, Histoire de l’Éclairage des Rues de Paris (Paris, 1904), 30–33; Christopher Hibbert, Venice: The Biography of a City (New York, 1989), 166; Jeremy D. Popkin, ed., Panorama of Paris: Selections from Le Tableau de Paris, Louis-Sébastien Mercier (University Park, Pa., 1999), 132.

  23.Defoe, Second Thoughts Are Best ... (London, 1729), 15; G. C. Faber, ed., The Poetical Works of John Gay . . . (London, 1926), 81; Popkin, ed., Panorama of Paris, 132; The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel Defoe (London, 1885), 515.

  24.OBP, Oct. 4, 1719, 5.

  25.Donald E. Crawford, ed., Journals of Sir John Lauder (Edinburgh, 1900), 120; Harry Ross-Lewin, With “The Thirty-Second” in the Peninsular and other Campaigns, ed. John Wardell (Dublin, 1904), 146.

  26.Torriano, Proverbi, 89; Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 825–826. Then, also, localities steadily restricted the use of flambeaux. Because of the threat of fire from open flames, cities by the late seventeenth century instead began to encourage reliance on lanterns. Stockholm in 1725 reserved torches for the royal family. Matthiessen, Natten, 28.

  27.Tilley, Proverbs in England, 471; Anne Elizabeth Baker, comp. Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases ... (London, 1854), 95; G. F. Northall, comp., A Warwickshire Word-Book ... (1896; rpt. edn., Vaduz, Liecht, 1965), 167; J. W. Goethe, Italian Journey, 1786–1788 (New York, 1968), 325; OED, s.v. “night-sun.”

  28.Victor Hugo Paltsits, “Journal of Benjamin Mifflin on a Tour from Philadelphia to Delaware and Maryland, July 26 to Aug. 14, 1762,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 39 (1935), 438; Mary Yates, Dec. 11, 1764, Assi 45/28/1/16.

  29.William Dickinson, comp., A Glossary of Words and Phrases Pertaining to the Dialect of Cumberland (London, 1878), 103; OBP, Sept. 15–18, 1762, 164; Street Lighting Manual: Prepared by the Street and Highway Lighting Committee of the Edison Electric Institute (New York, 1969), 63–64; Milne and Milne, World of Night, 10.

  30.Robert Bator, Masterworks of Children’s Literature, 1740–1836: The Middle Period (New York, 1983), 254; “A.B.,” SJC, Sept. 13, 1764; Margaret Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (Athens, Ga., 1981), 2; Michael O’Malley, “Time, Work and Task Orientation: A Critique of American Historiography,” Time & Society 1 (1992), 350.

  31.Bradford Torrey, ed. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Boston, 1906), II, 372; Nov. 21, 1786, Woodforde, Diary, II, 284; Edward Browne, Journal of a Visit to Paris in the Year 1664, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1923), 22; Feb. 28, 1664, Pepys, Diary, V, 68, I–IX, passim; Swift, Journal, I, 356, passim; Nov. 9, 1792, Dorothy Heighes Woodforde, ed., Woodforde Papers and Diaries (London, 1932), 80.

  32.OBP, Dec. 8, 1742, 16; OED, s.v. “shepherd’s lamp”; John Clare, Cottage Tales, ed. Eric Robinson et al. (Manchester, 1993), 88; Baker, comp., Northamptonshire Glossary, III, 225; H.
J. Deverson, ed., Journey into Night (New York, 1966), 138; OBP, May 30–31, 1745.

  33.Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure 12 (Jan. 1753), 3; OED, s.v. “Milky Way,” “Walsingham,” “Watling-street”; Eveline Camilla Gurdon, Suffolk (London, 1893), 166; “Impressions of a Night Sky Unaffected by Light Pollution,” International Dark-Sky Association, Information Sheet #111, Web: www.darksky.org.

  34.Torrey, ed., Thoreau Writings, II, 383.

  35.June 24, 1801, Drinker, Diary, II, 1422; M. McGrath, ed., Cinnine Amhiaoibh Ui Shuileabháin: The Diary of Humphrey O’Sullivan (London, 1936–1937), I–IV, passim; Peter Barber, “Journal of a Traveller in Scotland, 1795–1796,” Scottish Historical Review 36 (1957), 43.

  36.Mansie Wauch, The Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith (Edinburgh, 1827), 85; ECR, VIII, 387; William H. Cope, ed., A Glossary of Hampshire Words and Phrases (1883; rpt. edn., Vaduz, Liecht., 1965), 23; Walter W. Skeat, ed., A Collection of English Words . . . (London, 1874), 57, 87, 93; Baker, comp., Northamptonshire Words and Phrases, II, 119; Frederic Thomas Elsworthy, comp., The West Somerset Word-Book ... (1886; rpt. edn., Vaduz, Liecht., 1965), 575; Jan. 18, 1666, Pepys, Diary, VII, 18; Giuseppe Marco Antonio Baretti, A Dictionary, Spanish and English ... (London, 1794); OBP, Apr. 24–May 1, 1754, 183.

  37.Jan. 23, 1786, Woodforde, Diary, II, 226; William Hazlitt, Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (London, 1826), 179.

  38.Diary of Robert Moody, 1660–1663, Bodl., Rawlinson Coll. D.84; Crawford, ed., Lauder Journals, 177; George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Wesport, Ct., 1972) XIII, 109. See also Oct. 9, 1662, Pepys, Diary, III, 217; Oct. 1, 1794, Woodforde, Diary, IV, 138; Barber, “Traveller,” 49.

  39.William Cobbett, Rural Rides in Surrey, Kent, and Other Counties (London, 1948), II, 139; Winslow C. Watson, ed., Men and Times of the Revolution; or, Memoirs of Elkanah Watson, Including Journals of Travels (New York, 1856), 59. See also Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders (1887; rpt. edn., London, 1991), 12.