At Day's Close

by A. Roger Ekirch

  40.George Edward Dartnell and Edward Hungerford Goddard, comps., A Glossary of Words Used in the County of Wiltshire (London, 1893), 192; Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk ... (Edinburgh, 1860), 125–126; Barber, “Traveller,” 48.

  41.Burton E. Stevenson, ed., The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases (New York, 1948), 168; Walter W. Skeat, ed., Five Reprinted Glossaries . . . (London, 1879), 95; Bernard J. Hibbitts, “Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse,” Cardozo Law Review 16 (1994), 229–356; Donald M. Lowe, History of Bourgeois Perception (Brighton, Eng., 1982), 6–8.

  42.Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III, 2; Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago, 1999), 58–59.

  43.John M. Hull, Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (New York, 1990), 166, 83; Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston, 1977), 96–97.

  44.Barber, “Traveller,” 39; Diary of Rev. William Bennet, 1785, Bodl., Eng. Misc. f. 54, fo. 74; E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (New York, 1991), 362; Joshua Lucock Wilkinson, The Wanderer . . . through France, Germany and Italy in 1791 and 1793 (London, 1798), I, 58; Jasper Danckaerts, Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies in 1679–80, ed. and trans. Henry C. Murphy (New York, 1867), 125.

  45.Sept. 20, 1791, Walter Johnson, ed., Gilbert White’s Journals (1931; rpt. edn., New York, 1970), 394; Milne and Milne, World of Night, 13–14, 94; Claire Murphy and William Cain, “Odor Identification: The Blind are Better,” Physiology & Behavior 37 (1986), 177–180. Memories of pungent scents stay with us long after we have forgotten most visual scenes. J. Douglas Porteous, Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor (Toronto, 1990), 34–36.

  46.W. Carew Hazlitt, ed., English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases . . . (London, 1882), 94; Edward Ward, The London Spy (1709; rpt. edn., New York, 1985), 40; Barber, “Traveller,” 39; M. Betham-Edwards, ed., The Autobiography of Arthur Young (1898; rpt. edn., New York, 1967), 194. See also Sept. 15, 1779, Andrew Oliver, ed., The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 560.

  47.OED, s.v. “blind road”; Sept. 16, 1795, “Dr. Pierce’s Manuscript Journal,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 2nd Ser., 3 (1886–1887), 52; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York, 1990), 202; Hull, Touching the Rock, 103.

  48.Faber, ed., Gay Works, 83.

  49.Descartes, Selected Philosophical Writings, trans. John Cottingham et al. (Cambridge, 1988), 58; Harry Porter, The Pleasant History of the Two Angry Women of Abington (n.p., 1599); Oct. 2, 1724, Parkman, Diary, 6.

  50.Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, ed., Admiral’s Wife: Being the Life and Letters of the Hon. Mrs. Edward Boscawen from 1719 to 1761 (London, 1940), 235; Monique Savoy, Lumiéres sur la Ville: Introduction et Promotion de l’Electricité en Suisse: L’Éclairage Lausannois, 1881–1921 (Lausanne, 1988), 50.

  51.L’Estrange, Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections (London, 1699), I, 103.

  52.Torrey, ed., Thoreau Writings, III, 340.

  53.Farley’s Bristol Journal, Feb. 18, 1769; Ward, London Spy, III, 48–49; Aileen Riberio, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715–1789 (New Haven, 2002), 85.

  54.OBP, July 9–11, 1740, 174; Joseph Lawson, Letters to the Young on Progress in Pudsey during the Last Sixty Years (Stanningley, Eng., 1887), 33; Torriano, Proverbi, 170.

  55.Hadrianus Junius, The Nomenclator . . . (London, 1585), 160–161; OED, s.v. “great-coat”; John Owen, Travels into Different Parts of Europe, in the Years 1791 and 1792 ... (London, 1796), II, 81; Tobias Smollett, The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (London, 1762), 239; Daniel Defoe, The Life of ... Robinson Crusoe (London, 1729), 180; Henry Swinburne, Travels in the Two Sicilies ... (London, 1783), II, 308; Jonas Hanway, An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea ... (London, 1753), II, 336; Riberio, Dress, 22–24, 30–31, 87.

  56.W. Hooper, ed., Letters of Baron Bielfeld ... (London, 1768), IV, 166; OED, s.v. “night-kerchief,” “mob”; Tilley, Proverbs in England, 296; John Owen, Travels into Different Parts of Europe, in the Years 1791 and 1792 ... (London, 1796), II, 81; Apr. 24, 25, 1665, Pepys, Diary, VI, 89; F. Pomey and A. Lovell, Indiculus Universalis; or, the Universe in Epitome ... (London, 1679), 68; Riberio, Dress, 49.

  57.Thomas Burke, English Night-Life: From Norman Curfew to Present Black-Out (New York, 1971), 54; Andrew Henderson, ed., Scottish Proverbs (Edinburgh, 1832), 69; OBP, Oct. 4, 1719, 6; Cohens, Italy, 49.

  58.Torrington, Diaries, III, 290.

  59.Nov. 28, 1785, Woodforde, Diary, II, 216; James Peller Malcolm, Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century ... (London, 1810), I, 145. See also July 30, 1755, Parkman, Diary, 293.

  60.LC, Aug. 18, 1785.

  61.Varro, On the Latin Language, trans. Roland G. Kent (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), I, 177–179; Censorinus, De Die Natale, trans. William Maude (New York, 1900), 40; Henry Hibbert, Syntagma Theologicum ... (London, 1662), 30.

  62.Augustin Gallo, Secrets de la Vraye Agriculture ... (Paris, 1572), 213; Leonard Lawrence, A Small Treatise betwixt Arnalte and Lucenda (London, 1639), 7; Nina Gockerell, “Telling Time without a Clock,” in Klaus Maurice and Otto Mayr, eds., The Clockwork Universe: German Clocks and Automata, 1550–1650 (New York, 1980), 137. This chronology is constructed from reading numerous primary sources.

  63.Ralph Knevet, Rhodon and Iris ... (London, 1631); OED, s.v. “hen and chickens,” “seven stars”; Weinsberg, Diary, I, 59; Gockerell, “Telling Time,” 137.

  64.Barber, “Traveller,” 42; Crusius, Nocte, ch. 3.12; Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, 2, 198; The Rape of Lucrece, 113–119.

  65.OBP, Oct. 12, 1737, 205; M. D’Archenholz, A Picture of England ... (London, 1789), II, 79; Ménétra, Journal, 195–196.

  66.SWP, I, 99; Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, 1, 143; Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares, 38; Alan Gailey, “The Bonfire in North Irish Tradition,” Folklore 88 (1977), 18; Crusius, Nocte, ch. 3.36.

  67.William Howitt, The Boy’s Country Book (London, n.d.), 196; Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares, 87, 84, passim; Francis Grose, A Provincial Glossary (1787; rpt. ed., Menston, Eng., 1968), 3, 2. See also James Dawson Burn, The Autobiography of a Beggar Boy, ed. David Vincent (London, 1978), 67; Bartholomäus Sastrow et al., Social Germany in Luther’s Time: Being the Memoirs of Bartholomew Sastrow, trans. H.A.L. Fisher (Westminster, Eng., 1902), 291.

  68.Lynn Doyle, An Ulster Childhood (London, 1926), 61; Charles Jackson, ed., The Diary of Abraham De la Pryme, the Yorkshire Antiquary (Durham, Eng., 1870), 39. See also Life and Struggles of William Lovett . . . (London, 1876), 11.

  69.OBP, Jan. 16–20, 1752, 48; Matthiessen, Natten, 63; Oct. 27, 1771, Basil Cozens-Hardy, ed., The Diary of Sylas Neville, 1767–1788 (London, 1950), 132; Richard Cobb, Paris and Its Provinces, 1792–1802 (New York, 1975), 45; Paul Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland (New York, 1963), 249; James Lackington, Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years ... (London, 1792), 34.

  70.June 23, 1745, Lewis, Diary, 184; “Journal of P. Oliver, 1776–1810,” Egerton Mss. 2672, I, fo. 68, BL; Diary of John Leake, 1713, Rawlinson Mss., D. 428, fo. 37, Bodl.; F. Platter, Journal, 36.

  71.Taillepied, Ghosts, 78; Moryson, Itinerary, IV, 294; Early Prose and Poetical Works of John Taylor the Water Poet (1580–1653) (London, 1888), 156; Letters from Minorca . . . (Dublin, 1782), 213; Matthiessen, Natten, 24.

  72.Clare Williams, ed., Thomas Platter’s Travels in England, 1599 (London, 1937), 150; Sept. 19, 1662, Pepys, Diary, III, 201; Paolo Da Certaldo, Libro di Buoni Costumi, ed. Alfredo Schiaffini (Florence, 1945), 14; OBP, Oct. 17–19, 1749, 163; Mrs. Grant, Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland ... (New York, [1831?]), I, 121; Jackson, ed., De la Pryme Diary, 71;
Schindler, Rebellion, 215.

  73.Yves-Marie Bercé, History of Peasant Revolts: The Social Origins of Rebellion in Early Modern France, trans. Amanda Whitmore (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990), 278; Diary of James Scudamore, ca. 1710, Hereford City Library, Eng.; Feb. 13, 14, 1667, Pepys, Diary, VIII, 60, 62; Lawrence F. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York, 1977), 94.

  74.Nov. 18, 1762, Frederick A. Pottle, ed., Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763 (New York, 1950), 43. See also Dec. 17, 1769, Woodforde, Diary, I, 95.

  75.Brian Hill, Observations and Remarks in a Journey through Sicily and Calabria (London, 1792), 49; Journal of Twisden Bradbourn, 1693–1967, 1698, 103, Miscellaneous English Manuscripts c. 206, Bodl. “The aspersion of Holy Water,” wrote Noël Taillepied, is “a sure protection against the malice and attacks of evil spirits” (Ghosts, 174).

  76.Grose, Provincial Glossary, 70; R. D. Oliver Heslop, comp., Northumberland Words ... (London, 1894), I, 204; Brand 1848, III, 15; Muchembled, Popular Culture, trans. Cochrane, 84–85; Enid Porter, Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore (New York, 1969), 62; Paul-Yves Sébillot, Le Folklore de la Bretagne ... (Paris, 1968), II, 132; Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident, XIVe-XVIIIe Siècles: Une Cité Assiégée (Paris, 1978), 92; William Dillon Piersen, Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (Amherst, Mass., 1988), 85.

  77.Faber, ed., Gay Works, 81; Rousseau, Emile, trans. Bloom, 148; John Burnap, July 10, 1766, Assi 45/28/2/97c. See also Thomas Hardy, The Trumpet-Major ... (1912; rpt. edn., New York, 1984), 274.

  78.Remarks 1717, 175; Watson, ed., Men and Times, 115; Bernard Mandeville, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn, ed. Malvin R. Zirker, Jr. (Los Angeles, 1964), 10; Muchembled, Violence, 65, 120–121.

  79.Schindler, Rebellion, 223; Muchembled, Violence, 120–123, 259; William Mowfitt, Aug. 14, 1647, Assi 45/2/1/229; T. Platter, Journal, 197; Pinkerton, Travels, I, 224; Milly Harrison and O.M. Royston, comps., How They Lived ... (Oxford, 1965), II, 253; OBP, May 2–5, 1739, 73; Rousseau, Emile, trans. Bloom, 138.

  80.Anna Brzozowska-Krajka, Polish Traditional Folklore: The Magic of Time (Boulder, Colo., 1998), 63; Sébillot, Folklore de la Bretagne, II, 162; Autobiography of the Blessed Mother Anne of Saint Bartholomew (St. Louis, 1916), 15; Casey, ed., Jean Paul, trans. Casey, 339; F. Platter, Journal, 104.

  81.Abel Boyer, Dictionaire Royal ... (Amsterdam, 1719); Paul Monroe, Thomas Platter and the Educational Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1904), 161, 107; Dietz, Surgeon, 110–111. See also Stephen Bradwell, A Watch-Man for the Pest ... (London, 1625), 39.

  82.Llewellynn Jewitt, ed., The Life of William Hutton ... (London, 1872), 159; Bräker, Life, 58; David Pulsifer, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England (Boston, 1861), XI, 106; Dec. 13, 1765, Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle, eds., Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765–1766 (New York, 1955), 232.

  83.Feb. 7, 1704, Cowper, Diary.

  84.Jan. 29, 1735, Clegg, Diary, I, 217; June 14, 1757, Turner, Diary, 100.

  85.SWP, II, 560–561; Oct. 28, 1833, McGrath, ed., O’Sullivan Diary, III, 247.

  PART THREE

  PRELUDE

  1.L. E. Kastner, ed., The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden . . . (New York, 1968), I, 46.

  2.Flaherty, Privacy, 94; David Levine and Keith Wrightson, The Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham, 1560–1765 (Oxford, 1991), 280.

  3.Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England, 1547–1603 (Oxford, 1995), 515; G. R. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth Century England (London, 1979), 180–181.

  4.Gottfried Von Bulow, ed., “Diary of the Journey of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, through England in the Year 1602,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Ser., 6 (1892), 65.

  5.Oct. 16, 1773, Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, eds. Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1773 (New York, 1961), 312; A View of London and Westminster ... (London, 1725), 5–6.

  6.Mar. 27, 1782, Sanger, Diary, 409; Yves Castan, “Politics and Private Life,” in HPL III, 49; Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behavior and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London, 1988), 76–77, 80, 88, 168.

  7.“B,” Westminster Magazine 8 (1780), 16. See also Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, ed. R. J. Hollingdale (London, 1990), 44–45; Lena Cowen Orlin, ed., Elizabethan Households: An Anthology (Washington, D.C., 1995), 119–120; SAS, II, 311.

  8.Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939), I, 283; May 17, 1709, PL 27/2; OBP, Apr. 28–May 3, 1742, 77; SAS, II, 311; Levine and Wrightson, Making of an Industrial Society, 281; Roger Thompson, “‘Holy Watchfulness’ and Communal Conformism: The Functions of Defamation in Early New England Communities,” New England Quarterly 56 (1983), 513.

  9.John Aubrey, Miscellanies upon Various Subjects (London, 1857), 215; British Magazine, 2 (1747), 441; Alexandre Wolowski, La Vie Quotidienne en Pologne au XVIIe Siècle (Paris, 1972), 184; Breton, Works, II, 11.

  10.Kathleen Elizabeth Stuart, “The Boundaries of Honor: ‘Dishonorable People’ in Augsburg, 1500–1800” (Ph.D. diss., Yale Univ., 1993), 26, 38–40; Jütte, Poverty, 164; Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley, Calif., 1993), 43–47, 184–190; Raffaella Sarti, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500–1800, trans. Allan Cameron (New Haven, 2002), 207–211.

  11.Weekly Rehearsal (Boston), Apr. 24, 1732; Schindler, Rebellion, 288–289; Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 188–193.

  12.OED, s.v. “privacy,” “private” (also “privy” and “privity”); The Bastard (London, 1652), 71; Herbert’s Devotions ... (London, 1657), 217; Flaherty, Privacy, 1–13; Ronald Huebert, “Privacy: The Early Social History of a Word,” Sewanee Review, 105 (1997), 21–38.

  13.Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Philip Stubbes’s Anatomy of the Abuses in England in Shakespeare’s Youth, a.d. 1583 (London, 1877), I, 329; Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, Calif., 1975), 97–123; Maria José del Rio, “Carnival, the World Upside Down,” in Robert Muchembled et al., Popular Culture (Danbury, Ct., 1994), 83–84.

  14.Harrison, Description, 36; David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London, 1989), passim; Griffiths, Youth, 156–158; Burke, Popular Culture, 194–196.

  15.Richard Lassels, An Italian Voyage . . . (London, 1698), II, 118; Iain Cameron, Crime and Repression in the Auvergne and the Guyenne, 1720–1790 (Cambridge, 1981), 197–198; David Chambers and Trevor Dean, Clean Hands and Rough Justice: An Investigating Magistrate in Renaissance Italy (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1997), 20. See also Donald E. Crawford, ed., Journals of Sir John Lauder (Edinburgh, 1900), 118; Schindler, Rebellion, 200–201.

  16.The Works of Mr. Thomas Brown in Prose and Verse . . . (London, 1708), III, 114; The Poems of the Late Christopher Smart ... (London, 1790), II, 9; Charles Gildon, The Post-Boy Rob’d of His Mail ... (London, 1692), 147; Mr. Dibdin, The Lamplighter ([London, 1790?]); Kenneth J. Gergen et al., “Deviance in the Dark,” Psychology Today 7 (1973), 129–130.

  17.Alastair Fowler, ed., The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse (Oxford, 1991), 416; Bernard Bailyn, “The Boundaries of History: The Old World and the New,” in The Dedication of the Casperen Building ... (Providence, 1992), 36; The London Jilt: or, the Politick Whore ... (London, 1683), Pt. II, 156; Aphra Behn, Five Plays ... , ed. Maureen Duffy (London, 1990), 35; Dionysius, “Contemplations by Moonlight,” European Magazine 34 (1798), 307.

  18.Rétif de la Bretonne, Les Nuits de Paris, ou le Spectateur-Nocturne, eds. Jean Varloot and Michel Delon (Paris, 1986), 38; Edward Young, Night Thoughts, ed. Stephen Cornfield (Cambridge, 1989), 122; Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, trans. H. A. Harg
reaves (Berkeley, Calif., 1990), 10; J. W. Goethe, Italian Journey, 1786–1788 (New York, 1968), 182; Lewis, Diary, 161.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1.Mill, A Nights Search: Discovering the Nature and Condition of all Sorts of Night-Walkers ... (London, 1639).

  2.John 9:4; Paroimiographia (Spanish), 22; Georgina F. Jackson, comp., Shropshire Word-Book ... (London, 1879), 38; Grose, Dictionary.

  3.Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Chicago, 1996), 293, 235, 246; Torriano, Proverbi, 171; Verdon, Night, 110–112; Monica Chojnacka and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds., Ages of Woman, Ages of Man: Sources in European Social History, 1400–1750 (London, 2002), 159; Wilson, English Proverbs, 122; Henri Hauser, Ouvriers du Temps Passé XVe–XVIe Siècles (Paris, 1927), 82–83.

  4.Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour, trans. Dunlap, 311–312, 294; G. C. Coulton, ed., Life in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1929), 99; Hauser, Ouvriers, 82–85; Silvia Mantini, “Per Un’Immagine Della Notte,” Archivio Storico Italino 4 (1985), 578–579; Maurice Bouteloup, “Le Travail de Nuit dans la Boulangerie” (Ph.D. diss., Université de Paris, 1909), 2.

  5.Jan. 13, 1573, I. H. Van Eeghen, ed., Dagboek Van Broeder Wouter Jacobsz (Gaultherus Jacobi Masius Prior Van Stein: Amsterdam, 1572–1578, En Montfoort, 1578–1579) (Gronningen, Neth., 1959), I, 134; R.H. Tawney and Eileen Power, eds., Tudor Economic Documents: Being Select Documents Illustrating the Economic and Social History of Tudor England (London, 1953), I, 342; Pierre Goubert, The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century, trans. Ian Patterson (Cambridge, 1986), 100; Helen Simpson, ed. and trans., The Waiting City: Paris 1782–88 ... (Philadelphia, 1933), 75.

  6.Anthony Horneck, The Happy Ascetick, or, the Best Exercise ([London], 1680), 409; Torriano, Proverbi, 104; Erskine Beveridge, comp., and J. D. Westwood, ed., Fegusson’s Scottish Proverbs from the Original Print of 1641 ... (Edinburgh, 1924), 266.