At Day's Close: Night in Times Past (19 page)

For guidance, ordinary folk drew upon local lore and an intimate awareness of nature acquired from childhood. While adjoining counties sometimes seemed like foreign lands, most persons claimed a detailed knowledge of the parishes in which they had been reared, having committed to memory a mental map of every ditch, pasture, and hedge row. Games like “Round and Round the Village,” popular in much of England, familiarized children at any early age to their physical surroundings, as did fishing, collecting herbs, and running errands. Schooled by adults in night’s perils, children learned to negotiate the landscape “as a rabbit knows his burrow”—careful after dark to skirt ponds, wells, and other hazardous terrain. In towns and cities, shop signs, doorways, and back alleys afforded fixed landmarks for neighborhood youths. As a child, Jacques-Louis Ménétra claimed a first-hand knowledge of the Parisian waterfront, where he played games like hide-and-seek and slept nights when banished from home by an abusive father. Lessons could be painful. Fleeing his stepfather, the peasant Valentin Jamerey-Duval, as a boy, tumbled into the muck of an empty wolf pit, where he lay trapped overnight. The goat-boy Ulrich Bräker, at four years of age, ran off on a “pitch-dark rainy night” across a meadow, nearly somersaulting down a muddy slope into a swift brook. Rescued by his father, they returned to the site the next morning. “Here, lad,” his father declared, “only a few steps more, and the brook rushes over the cliff. If the water had managed to sweep you away, you’d be lying dead down there.”
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Certainly by adolescence, most youths had learned to master the footpaths crisscrossing rural fields, or, in towns, the narrow lanes intersecting serpentine streets. “Be not fearful,” a Berliner counseled his friend at night, “I know by heart the streets of home.” Even in the shadows, asserted Leon Battista Alberti, “those who knew the country by experience and had seen all the places in the light of day would recognize them and could say what they were and who lived there.”
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Only during the winter, in the event of a heavy snowfall, could surroundings lose their familiarity, despite the advantage to travelers of a lighter, more visible landscape. So in 1789, a pair of Pennsylvanians drowned in the Susquehanna River. The “night being dark, and the path covered by the snow, they mistook the road” and fell through the ice.
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Human eyesight, in less than an hour’s time, gradually improves in the dark as the iris expands to permit sufficient light. Despite losses in color recognition and depth perception, peripheral vision may actually sharpen. Humans see better at night than most animals, many of which are virtually blind. Quite possibly, the nocturnal sight of preindustrial populations benefited from consumption of leafy green vegetables and fresh fruit, rich in vitamin A, though availability was largely limited to late spring and summer. In addition, consumption of alcohol, a staple of early diets, improves night vision, unless imbibed to excess. Plainly, some individuals, said to have “cat’s eyes,” exhibited a superior ability to see after dark. A correspondent to the
Gentleman’s Magazine
described “men” whose sight nearly approached that of “the cat, the owl, or the bat.”
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Then, too, lanterns and torches afforded portable sources of light. Made from thick, half-twisted wicks of hemp, dipped in pitch, resin, or tallow, a single torch weighed up to three pounds. Lighter by contrast, lanterns were also dimmer. Featuring a handle attached to a metal frame, either cylindrical or rectangular in shape, the typical lantern contained a single candle protected by sheets of animal horn, though animal skin, talc (mica), and glass were also employed. Some lanterns, made entirely of metal, emitted light through perforated holes. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, with the steady growth of British glassmaking, “bull’s-eye lanterns,” with their central glass lens, bodies of thin sheet brass, and magnified light, gradually gained favor.
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Among propertied families, it was common on black nights for a single servant to light the way. Gracious hosts instructed footmen to escort departing guests safely home. And when a master was late in returning after dark, diligent servants knew where to fetch him. “Met Sam at ye head of St. Clements’ Lane coming for me with a lanthorn,” noted Robert Sanderson in 1729. In the Danish town of Roskilde, a blacksmith’s guild ordered servants to meet their masters with lanterns, candles, and staffs. Wealthy households traveled in grander style. Footmen accompanied coaches through city streets, carrying flambeaux aloft as they trotted alongside. Ahead of the coach, a “moon-man” sometimes served as a guide, holding a globular lantern—the “moon”—atop a long pole.
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In most towns and cities, one could hire a linkboy for a small sum. These, for the most part, were orphans or other impoverished adolescents who, for a pedestrian’s benefit, carried links (torches) or, less often, lanterns. In some English communities, they were nicknamed moon-cursers, for the harm done their trade by moonlight. Within London, they congregated in such well-known spots as Temple-Bar, London-Bridge, and Lincoln Inn-Fields. Samuel Pepys occasionally relied upon linkboys when trudging home to Tower Hill. In Venice, they were termed
codeghe
, and in France
porte-flambeaux
or, for lantern-carriers,
falots
. “Here’s your light,” they cried in Paris streets. Louis-Sébastien Mercier exulted, “The lantern-man’s light is a convenience, and a precaution well worth while for those whose business or pleasure keep them late from home.”
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At least in London, however, linkboys bore a checkered reputation for consorting with street ruffians. “Thieves with lights,” Daniel Defoe charged. It was a common complaint that they conveyed besotted customers into the waiting grasp of robbers, extinguishing their links at the critical moment. Warned John Gay, “Though thou art tempted by the link-man’s call, / Yet trust him not along the lonely wall; / In the mid-way he’ll quench the flaming brand, / And share the booty with the pilf’ring band.” Defoe favored strict regulation by licensing linkboys, akin to the prevailing system in Paris during most of the 1700s. There, in sharp contrast,
falots
became infamous toward the end of the ancien régime for acting as spies. “Hand in glove with the police,” described Mercier, who applauded their contribution to public safety. Customers kept their money if not their secrets.
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Thomas Rowlandson,
A Linkboy
, 1786.

Although lighting was commonly a function of wealth, from a distance it probably offered onlookers few clues of social rank. Apart from the retinues of footmen accompanying individuals of privilege, a lone torch or lantern, at most, remained customary for pedestrians, whether borne by a servant, linkboy, or just oneself. A London victualer of modest purse taught his dog to carry a lantern in its mouth.
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Scrounging small nubs of tallow, the poor fashioned makeshift lanterns, using paper or hollowed-out turnips for protection from the wind and rain. In the French city of Poitiers, a Scottish visitor during the seventeenth century was impressed by the resourcefulness of “the poor folk” at night. “They take a piece [of] wood that’s brunt only at one end, and goes thorow the toune waging it from one syde to the other, it casting a little light.” Rarely did authorities restrict artificial light by social class. On the British Channel Island of Guernsey, a law granted persons of “first rank” the sole privilege of burning three lights in their lanterns, in contrast to one or two lights accorded lesser ranks. “Differently from all other places in the world, it is on a dark night that one can best distinguish the rank of persons passing through the streets,” a bemused visitor remarked in the early 1800s.
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Even the brightest torch illuminated but a small radius, permitting one, on a dark night, to see little more than what lay just ahead. By all accounts, its glow, though superior to that of a lantern, was a dismal substitute for the light of day. “In comparison of the sun,” affirmed an adage, “a torch is but a spark.” Additionally, there was always the risk, with any type of lighting, that strong winds or rain could douse a flame, even when shielded inside a lantern. In his poem
Venus and Adonis
(1593), Shakespeare described the frequent surprise of “night wand’rers,” their “light blown out in some mistrustful wood.”
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Despite access to artificial light, many relied upon the heavens for illumination. The darkness of the night sky, for travelers of all ranks, was their single greatest concern. As contemporaries knew firsthand, nighttime took on many different shades, sometimes over the course of a single evening. From the black gloom known as “pit-mirk” to the bright glow of a full moon, there existed a variety of possibilities, some too subtle for our modern eyes to appreciate. For half of each month, 50 percent or more of the lunar face on clear evenings provides a significant source of reflected light. In spite of the reputed menace its beams posed to human health, residents in many parts of Britain referred to the moon as the “parish lantern.” During evenings when full or nearly full, it was sometimes likened, half in jest, to a second sun.
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Persons even awakened, on occasion, in the middle of the night, thinking that it was daybreak, only to be fooled by a “false dawn.” “The moon shining bright mistook it for day light,” wrote a Pennsylvanian in 1762. “Arrose & drest but after rousing the family & getting a light found it was not 2 o’clock.” In Yorkshire, the apprentice clothier Mary Yates arose at 3:00
A.M.
, thinking “it was day,” though “it being then moonlight” instead.
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Adriaen Brouwer,
Dune Landscape by Moonlight
, seventeenth century.

A full moon rises at dusk and sets at dawn. Unlike most lunar phases, its glow lasts the entire night. In parts of northern England, the inhabitants referred to this as “throo leet.” Full moonlight revealed the contours of preindustrial landscapes in welcome detail—“obliging me with as much light as was necessary to discover a thousand pleasing objects,” noted a writer in 1712. Wayfarers could discern a small spectrum of colors, including red from yellow and green from blue. According to modern-day lighting engineers, direct sunlight ranges in strength from 5,000 to 10,000 foot-candles, with moonlight roughly equal to 0.02 foot-candles. Despite the dramatic difference, only when lighting declines in strength to 0.003 foot-candles does the human eye fail altogether to detect either colors or detailed features. On a practical level, this meant on moonlit evenings that objects could be sighted from afar. Testifying at the Old Bailey about a robbery, the constable Samuel Clay vouched, “It was a very fine moon-shining night. I could distinguish a person at the distance of one hundred yards, and could swear to a person’s face at the distance of ten yards, or more.” Similarly, a bricklayer in 1676 observed the perpetrator of a burglary in the city of York, “it being then very moonlight.” Even when the moon was hazy, the outline of a human figure could be discerned at a distance. It is not surprising that thieves hid in the shadows or avoided plying their trade on such evenings.
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Among rural folk, the phases of the moon, their sequence and duration, were common knowledge, part of the essential lore conveyed to youngsters at an early age. So, in a simple English verse, “The Honest Ploughman,” children learned that the husbandman “finds his way home by the light of the moon.” Urban households were less tutored in such matters, but almanacs were readily accessible by the seventeenth century. Published across Europe, these charted the moon’s progress in monthly tables. In England, upward of four hundred thousand almanacs were published annually by the 1660s, with an estimated one family in every three a consumer; in early America, almanacs represented the most popular publication after the Bible. Although lunar phases had reputed ramifications for the weather and personal health, nothing was more critical than learning what future nights held for being abroad. In 1764, noting the absence of tables in recent almanacs, an Eton resident asserted, “People may know by looking into the almanack, how long they shall have the moon’s light every night it shines; which is of use to so many purposes.”
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