At Day's Close

by A. Roger Ekirch

  3.Thomas Cogan, The Haven of Health (London, 1588), 233; [Joseph Hall], The Discovery of a New World (Amsterdam, 1969), 219–244.

  4.The Adventurer, Mar. 20, 1753, 229; Craig Tomlinson, “G. C. Lichtenberg: Dreams, Jokes, and the Unconscious in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 40 (1992), 781. Other than Francis Bacon, who projected a history of sleep, most ardent in highlighting the importance of historical research has been George Steiner. Studies of sleep, Steiner has argued, “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-care, of mental and physical infirmity, which social historians and the historiens des mentalités are at last providing for us” No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1996 [London, 1996], 211–212). More recently, Daniel Roche has implored, “Let us dream of a social history of sleep” (Consumption, 182). Historical accounts of dreams have included Peter Burke, “L’Histoire Sociale des Rêves,” Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 28 (1973), 329–342; 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” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Virginia., 1994); S.R.F. Price, “The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorous,” PP 113 (1986), 3–37; Manfred Weidhorn, Dreams in Seventeenth-Century English Literature (The Hague, 1970); David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds. Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York, 1999); Mechal Sobel, Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era (Princeton, N.J., 2000). Attitudes toward sleep, from the ancient world to the twentieth century, are chronicled in Jaume Rosselló Mir et al., “Una Aproximacion Historica al Estudio Cientifico de Sueño: El Periodo Intuitivo el Pre-Cientifico,” Revista de Historia de la Psicologia 12 (1991), 133–142. For a brief survey of sleep in the Middle Ages, see Verdon, Night, 203–217; 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 (1986), 415–441. More recently, Phillipe Martin has analyzed the attitudes of Catholic authors toward sleep during the eighteenth century. “Corps en Repos ou Corps en Danger? Le Sommeil dans les Livres de Piété (Seconde Moitré du XVIIIe Siècle),” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 80 (2000), 255.

  5.Wodrow, Analecta: or, Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences . . . , ed. Matthew Leishman (Edinburgh, 1843), III, 496; James Miller, The Universal Passion (London, 1737), 46.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1.WR or UJ, Sept. 22, 1738

  2.Cogan, The Haven of Health (London, 1588), 232–233; Karl H. Dannenfeldt, “Sleep: Theory and Practice in the Late Renaissance,” Journal of the History of Medicine 41 (1986), 422–424.

  3.Vaughan, Naturall and Artificial Directions for Health . . . (London, 1607), 53; Henry Davidoff, ed., World Treasury of Proverbs . . . (New York, 1946), 25; Dannenfeldt, “Renaissance Sleep,” 7–12.

  4.John Trusler, An Easy Way to Prolong Life . . . (London, 1775), 11; F.K. Robinson, comp., A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Whitby (London, 1876), 55; Tilley, Proverbs in England, 36.

  5.Wilson, English Proverbs, 389.

  6.The Whole Duty of Man ... (London, 1691), 188–189; Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York, 1995), 124; The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of Good Nourture . . . (London, 1557); An Essay on Particular Advice to the Young Gentry ... (London, 1711), 170; David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York, 1989), 160–161.

  7.Andrew Boorde, A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Health . . . (London, 1547); Levinus Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions ... , trans. T. Newton (London, 1576), 57.

  8.Robert Macnish, The Philosophy of Sleep, ed. Daniel N. Robinson (Washington, D.C., 1977), 279; Boorde, Compendyous Regyment; Lawrence Wright, Warm and Snug: The History of the Bed (London, 1962), 195.

  9.William Bullein, A Newe Boke of Phisicke Called y Goveriment of Health . . . (London, 1559), 91; Boorde, Compendyous Regyment; Tobias Venner, Via Recta ad Vitam Longam ... (London, 1637), 279–280; Directions and Observations Relative to Food, Exercise and Sleep (London, 1772), 22; Dannenfeldt, “Renaissance Sleep,” 430.

  10.Wilson, English Proverbs, 738; Torriano, Proverbi, 76; Wright, Warm and Snug, 194; Gratarolus, A Direction for the Health of Magistrates and Studentes (London, 1574); Sir Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helthe (New York, 1937), iii; Dannenfeldt, “Renaissance Sleep,” JHM, 420.

  11.Jan. 29, 1624, Beck, Diary, 39.

  12.John Wilson, The Projectors (London, 1665), 45.

  13.Nov. 27, 1705, Cowper, Diary; Schindler, Rebellion, 216; Lean, Collectanea, I, 503; Wright, Warm and Snug, 117; Matthiessen, Natten, 8–9.

  14.Eric Sloane, The Seasons of America Past (New York, 1958), 26; Feb. 8, 1756, Dec. 26, 1763, Turner, Diary, 26–27, 283; Carol M. Worthman and Melissa K. Melby, “Toward a Comparative Developmental Ecology of Human Sleep,” in Mary A. Carskadon, ed., Adolescent Sleep Patterns: Biological, Social, and Psychological Influences (Cambridge, 2002), 79.

  15.W. F., The Schoole of Good Manners (London, 1609).

  16.“Letter of M. Brady,” LC, July 31, 1764; Arthur Friedman, ed., Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith (Oxford, 1966), II, 214–218; James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey (Stanford, Calif., 1928), II, 110; George Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays, 1978–1996 (London, 1996), 211–212; Simon B. Chandler, “Shakespeare and Sleep,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 29 (1955), 255–260.

  17.Torriano, Proverbi, 77; “Wits Private Wealth,” in Breton, Works, II, 9; Another Collection of Philosophical Conferences of the French Virtuosi . . . , trans. G. Havers and J. Davies (London, 1665), 419; Richard Oliver Heslop, comp., Northumberland Words ... (1892; rpt. edn., Vaduz, Liecht., 1965), I, 248, II, 659; Alexander Hislop, comp., The Proverbs of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1870), 346.

  18.William Rowley, All’s Lost By Lust (London, 1633); Thomas Shadwell, The Amorous Bigotte (London, 1690), 43; The Dramatic Works of Sir William D’Avenant (New York, 1964), 146; Boswell, Hypochondriack, ed. Bailey, II, 112; Erik Eckholm, “Exploring the Forces of Sleep,” New York Times Magazine, Apr. 17, 1988, 32.

  19.James Hervey, Meditations and Contemplations . . . (London, 1752), II, 42; Boswell, Hypochondriack, ed. Bailey, II, 110; N. Caussin, The Christian Diary (London, 1652), 35; June 2, 1706, Cowper, Diary; Alan of Lille, The Art of Preaching, trans. G.R. Evans (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1981), 135. For Freud’s influential discussion of “neurotic ceremonials” pertaining to sleep, see his “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices,” in James Strachey, ed., The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London, 1975), IX, 117–118; Barry Schwartz, “Notes on the Sociology of Sleep,” Sociological Quarterly 11 (1970), 494–495.

  20.Herbert’s Devotions . . . (London, 1657), 237; Walter L. Straus, ed., The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1550–1600: A Pictorial Catalogue (New York, 1975), II, 739; Stephen Bateman, A Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation . . . (London, 1569).

  21.Eugen Weber, My France: Politics, Culture, Myth (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 85; Thomas Moffett, The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents . . . (London, 1658), II, 956–957; July 16, 1678, John Lough, ed., Locke’s Travels in France, 1675–1679 (Cambridge, 1953), 207; John Southall, A Treatise of Buggs ... (London, 1730); J.F.D. Shrewsbury, The Plague of the Philistines and Other Medical-Historical Essays (London, 1964), 146–161.

  22.July 16, 1784, Torrington, Diaries, I, 174; James P. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 318–319. The day before arriving home from a journey, Sylas Neville dispatched a note requesting that his housekeeper an
d her daughter sleep that night in his bed to “season” it (Basil Cozens-Hardy, ed., The Diary of Sylas Neville, 1767–1788 [London, 1950], 162).

  23.Carolyn Pouncy, ed., The “Domostroi”: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), 170; Anna Brzozowska-Krajka, Polish Traditional Folklore: The Magic of Time (Boulder, Colo, 1998), 119; PA, Mar. 20, 1764.

  24.Steven Bradwell, A Watch-man for the Pest ... (London, 1625), 39; Oct. 20, 1763, Frederick A. Pottle, ed., Boswell in Holland 1763–1764 (New York, 1952), 49–50; Venner, Via Recta, 275; Israel Spach, Theses Medicae de Somno et Vigilia ... (Strasburg, 1597).

  25.Jon Cowans, ed., Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History (Philadelphia, 2003), 121; Alan Macfarlane, The Justice and the Mare’s Ale: Law and Disorder in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1981), 56; John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington . . . (Washington, D.C., 1931), I, 17. 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: The Development of Manners . . . , trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York, 1978), I, 164–165. For the absence of clothing among sleepers, see Edmond Cottinet, “La Nudité au Lit Selon Cathos et l’Histoire,” Le Moliériste (April 1883), 20–25 (June 1883) 86–89; Dannednfeldt, “Renaissance Sleep,” 426.

  26.Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionaire of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611); Laurence Sterne, The Life & Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman (New York, 1950), 568; Sept. 22, 1660, Pepy, Diary, I, 251; Alison Weir, Henry VIII: The King and His Court (New York, 2001), 84.

  27.The Queens Closet Opened ... (London, 1661), 60–61, 101–102; Aug. 11, 1678, Michael Hunter and Annabel Gregory, eds., An Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century: Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1652–1699 (Oxford, 1988), 140; Christof Wirsung, Praxis Medicinae Universalis; or a Generall Practise of Phisicke ... (London, 1598), 618.

  28.Moryson, Itinerary, IV, 44; “T.C.,” PL, Dec. 5, 1765. In the Celestina: A Novel in Dialogue by Fernando de Rojas, trans. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley, Calif., 1971), the protagonist says of wine, “There’s no better warming pan on a winter’s night. If I drink three little jugs like this when I go to bed I don’t feel the cold all night long” (104).

  29.Bradwell, Watch-man, 38; “W.,” LC, Oct. 9, 1763; Henry G. Bohn, A Hand-book of Proverbs ... (London, 1855), 28; May 25, 1767, Cozens-Hardy, ed., Neville Diary, 8; Feb. 29, 1756, Turner, Diary, 32.

  30.Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helthe (London, 1539), fo. 46; Governal, In this Tretyse that Is Cleped Governayle of Helthe (New York, 1969); Bullein, Goveriment of Health, 90.

  31.Sept. 29, 1661, Pepys, Diary, II, 186; East Anglian Diaries, 51; Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 113–128; François Lebrun, “The Two Reformations: Communal Devotion and Personal Piety,” in HPL III, 96–97. References to the “lock” of the night may be found in Owen Feltham, Resolves (London, 1628), 406; Oct. 2, 1704, Cowper, Diary; Andrew Henderson, ed., Scottish Proverbs (Edinburgh, 1832), 48.

  32.John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations . . . , ed. Emily Morison Beck et al. (Boston, 1980), 320; Whole Duty of Man, 388; Thomas Becon, The Early Works . . . , ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, 1843), 403.

  33.Thankfull Remembrances of Gods Wonderful Deliverances ... (n.p., 1628). See also July 18, 1709, Cowper, Diary. Well-known is the venerable Cornish prayer, “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!” (Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, ed. Beck et al., 921).

  34.Martine Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family: Rural France in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago, 1983, 124–125; Phillipe Martin, “Corps en Repos ou Corps en Danger? Le Sommeil dans les Livres de Piété (Second Moitié du XVIIIe Siècle),” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 80 (2000), 253.

  35.Gwyn Jones, comp., The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English (Oxford, 1977), 78; July 15, 1705, Cowper, Diary; Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments ... (London, 1615), 31; William Lilly, A Groatsworth of Wit for a Penny; or, the Interpretation of Dreams (London, [1750?]), 18.

  36.Cogan, Haven of Health, 235.

  37.Harrison, Description, 200–201; Raffaella Sarti, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500–1800, trans. Allan Cameron (New Haven, 2002), 120; John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities & Design in Early Modern Britain & Early America (Baltimore, 2001), 73–76; Anne Fillon, “Comme on Fait son Lit, on se Couche 300 Ans d’Histoire du Lit Villageois,” in Populatiens et Cultures ... Etudes Réunies en l’Honneur de François Lebrun (Rennes, 1989), 153–161.

  38.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,” JSH 14 (1990), 169, 158; Dannenfeldt, “Renaissance Sleep,” 426 n. 31; Crowley, Comfort, passim; F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Home, Work & Land (Chelmsford, Eng., 1976), 12–15; Roche, Consumption, 182–185.

  39.Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, ed. Beck et al., 290; Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions, trans. Newton, 73; Cogan, Haven of Health, 235; Bradwell, Watch-man, 39.

  40.Alan Everitt, “Farm Labourers,” in Joan Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, IV, 1500–1640 (London, 1967), 449; Horn, Adapting to a New World, 310–311, 324–325.

  41.A. Browning, ed., English Historical Documents, 1660–1714 (New York, 1953), 729; [Ward], A Trip to Ireland ... (n.p., 1699), 5.

  42.Harrison, Description, 201; OBP, Sept. 9–16, 1767, 259; Feb. 19, 1665, Pepys, Diary, VI, 39; Cissie Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants & Their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore, 1984), 39; Steven L. Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1775 (Durham, N.C., 1996), 259. A servant in colonial Maryland complained, “What rest we can get is to rap ourselves up in a blanket and ly upon the ground” (Elizabeth Sprigs to John Sprigs, Sept. 22, 1756, in Merrill Jensen, ed., English Historical Documents: American Colonial Documents to 1776 [New York, 1955], 489), which was also the fate of most early American slaves. Although some quarters contained “boarded beds,” more often slaves slept upon the ground amid straw, rags, or, if fortunate, a few coarse blankets (Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 114).

  43.OED, s.v. “bulkers”; John Heron Lepper, The Testaments of François Villon (New York, 1926), 12; Order of Nov. 28, 1732, London Court of Common Council, BL; Menna Prestwich, Cranfield: Politics and Profits Under the Early Stuarts (Oxford, 1966), 529; Paroimiographia (French), 18; H. S. Bennett, Life on the English Manor: A Study of Peasant Conditions, 1150–1400 (Cambridge, 1967), 233; Richard Parkinson, ed., The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom (Manchester, 1854), I, Part 2, 407.

  44.RB, VI, 220; Torriano, Proverbi, 127.

  45.Alain Collomp, “Families: Habitations and Cohabitations,” in HPL III, 507; Flandrin, Families, trans. Southern, 98–99; Flaherty, Privacy, 76–79.

  46.Constantia Maxwell, Country and Town in Ireland under the Georges (London, 1940), 123; Ménétra, Journal, 137; Flandrin, Families, trans. Southern, 100. For the expression “to pig,” see OED; Journal of Twisden Bradbourn, 1693–1694, 1698, 19, Miscellaneous English Manuscripts c. 206, Bodl.; Edward Peacock, comp., A Glossary of Words Used in the Wapentakes of Manley and Corringham, Lincolnshire (Vaduz, Liecht., 1965), 191.

  47.John Dunton, Teague Land, or a Merry Ramble to the Wild Irish: Letters from Ireland, 1698, ed. Edward MacLysaght (Blackrock, Ire., 1982), 21; Howard William Troyer, Five Travel Scripts Commonly Attributed to Edward Ward (New York, 1933), 5, 6; Maxwell, Ireland, 125; Patricia James, ed., The Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert Malthus (London, 1966), 188; Pinkerton, Travels, III, 667.

  48.James E. Savage, ed., The “Conceited Newes” of Sir Thomas Overbury and His
Friends (Gainesville, Fla., 1968), 260.

  49.Elias, Civilizing Process, trans. Jephcott, I, 160–163; Abel Boyer, The Compleat French-Master ... (London, 1699), 6; Elborg Forster, ed. and trans., A Woman’s Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, 1652–1722 (Baltimore, 1984), 149.

  50.John Greaves Nall, ed., An Etymological and Comparative Glossary of the Dialect and Provincialism of East Anglia (London, 1866), 512; Elias, Civilizing Process, trans. Jephcott, I, 166–168.

  51.May 4, 1763, Frederick A. Pottle, ed., Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763 (New York, 1950), 253; June 14, 1765, Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle, eds., Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765–1766 (New York, 1955), 253; Isaac Heller, The Life and Confession of Isaac Heller ... (Liberty, Ind., 1836). See also Mary Nicholson, Feb. 28, 1768, Assi 45/29/1/169; Mar. 23, 1669, Pepys, Diary, IX, 495.

  52.Milly Harrison and O. M. Royston, comps., How They Lived (Oxford, 1965), II, 235; OBP, Sept. 13–16, 1758, 291.

  53.Thomas Newcomb, The Manners of the Age ... (London, 1733), 454; June 22, 1799, Drinker, Diary, II, 1180; Thomas A. Wehr, “The Impact of Changes in Nightlength (Scotoperiod) on Human Sleep,” in F. W. Turek and P. C. Zee, eds., Neurobiology of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms (New York, 1999), 263–285.

  54.LDA, June 10, 1751; Sidney Oldall Addy, comp., A Supplement to the Sheffield Glossary (Vaduz, Liecht., 1965), 19; Kenneth J. Gergen et al., “Deviance in the Dark,” Psychology Today 7 (October 1973), 130.