ekirch - sleep we have lost

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Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in theBritish IslesA. ROGER EKIRCH

Our entire history is only the history of waking men.Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

URING THE FIRST DAYS OF AUTUMN IN 1878, Robert Louis Stevensoti, at agetwenty-seven, spent twelve days trudging through the Cvennes, France's southernhighlands despite having suffered from frail health during much of his youth. Hissole companion was a donkey named Modestine. WithTreasure Islandand literaryfame five years off, Stevenson's trek bore scant resemblance to the grand tours ofyoung Victorian gentlemen. Midway through the journey, having scaled one of thehighest ranges, he encamped at a small clearing shrouded by pine trees. Fortifiedfor a night's hibernation by a supper of bread and sausage, chocolate, water, andbrandy, he reclined within his sleeping sack, with a cap over his eyes, just as thesun had run its course. But rather than resting until dawn, Stevenson awoke shortlypast midnight. Only after lazily smoking a cigarette and enjoying an hour's contempla-tion did he fall back to sleep. There is one stirring hour, he later reeorded in hisjournal unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroadover the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet, men andbeasts alike. Never before had Stevenson savored a more perfect hour free, hedelighted, from the bastille of civilization. It seemed to me as if life had begunagain afresh, and T knew no one in all the universe but the almighty maker. '

Aside from spending the night outdoors, no explanation sufficed for the wistfulhour of consciousness that Stevenson experienced in the early morning darkness. At what inaudible summons, he wondered, are all these sleepers thus recalled inthe same hour to life? Were the stars responsible or some thrill of mother earthbelow our resting bodies? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who are theThis article draws from a book I am writing.At Day s Close: Night in Times Past,for which I have beenfortunate enough to receive fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, theNational Endowment for the Humanities, and the Virginia Center for the Humanities. I am grateful forresearch grants from the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech,the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the AmericanPhilosophical Society. A previous version of this article was presented to the Charles M. AndrewsSeminar at Johns Hopkins University on February 28, 1998, the members of which, especially NuranCinlar and Amy Turner Bushneil, I would like to thank for their comments. I also appreciatesuggestions made by Thomas A. Wehr, Philip D. Morgan, Robert J. Brugger, the anonymous readers


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344 A. Roger Ekirchdeepest read in these arcana, he marveled, have not a guess as to the means orpurpose of this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare thething takes place; and neither know or inquire further. Unknown to Stevenson, hisexperience that fall evening was remarkably reminiscent of a form of sleep that wasonce commonplace. Until the modern era, up to an hour or more of quietwakefulness midway through the night interrupted the rest of most WesternEuropeans not just napping shepherds and slumbering woodsmen. Families rosefrom their beds to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors.Remaining abed, many persons also made love, prayed, and, most important,reflected on the dreams that typically preceded waking from their first sleep. Notonly were these visions unusually vivid, but their images would have intruded farless on conscious thought had sleepers not stirred until dawn. The historicalimplications of this traditional mode of repose are enormous, especially in light ofthe significance European households once attached to dreams for their explana-tory and predictive powers. In addition to suggesting that consolidated sleep, suchas we today experience, is unnatural, segmented slumber afforded the unconsciousan expanded avenue to the waking world that has remained closed for most of theIndustrial Age.

THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO EXPLORE the elusive realm of sleep in early modern Britishsociety, with the aid of occasional illustrations from elsewhere in Europe andBritish North America. Although England forms the heart of my inquiry, I havefocused on facets of slumber common to most Western societies, including, mostsignificantly, the predominant pattern of sleep before the Industrial Revolution.Few characteristics of sleep in past ages, much less the arcana of old country-folk, have received examination since Samuel Johnson complained that so liberaland impartial a benefactor should meet with so few historians. Apart fromfleeting references in scholarly monographs to the prolonged sleeping habits ofpre-industrial communities, only the subject of dreams has drawn sustainedscrutiny. Early modern scholars have neglected such topics as bedtime rituals, sleepdeprivation, and variations in slumber between different social ranks.^ In the first

- Samuel Johnson, TheAdventurer(Mareh 20, 1753): 229. Nearly twenty years ago, George Steinerargued that studies of sleep would be as essential, if not more so, to our grasp of the evolution ofmores and sensibilities as are the histories of dress, of eating, of child-eare, of mental and physiealinfirmity, which social historians and thehistoriens des mentalits are at last providing for us. TheHistoricity of Dreams, in Steiner,No Passion Spent: Essays 978-1996 (London, 1996), 211-12. Morerecently, Daniel Roche has implored, Let us dream of a social history of sleep.'MHistory ofEverydayThings: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600-1800, Brian Pearce, trans. (Cambridge, 2000), 182.Historical accounts of dreams have included Peter Burke, L'histoire sociale des rves, Annales:E.S.C. 28 (1973): 329-42; 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 andContemporary Dream Theory (PhD dissertation. University of Virginia, 1994); Alan Macfarlane, TheFamily Life of Ralph Josselin, a Seventeenth-Century Clergyman (Cambridge, 1970), 183-87; S. R. F.Price, The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorous, Past and Present113 (November 1986):3-37; Manfred Weidhorn,Dreams in Seventeenth-Century English Literature(The Hague, 1970);Dream


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Sleep We Have Lost 345portion of this article, I explore these and other features, not only to map sleep'sprincipal contours but also to underscore its manifold importance in everyday life.More significantly, this section lays the foundation for a detailed investigation ofsegmented sleep and, ultimately, its relationship to early modern dreams. If theoverall subject of slumber for historians has remained eloaked in obscurity, theage-old patte rn of first and second sleep has been wholly ignored. Cen tral tothe entire article is the profound role pre-industrial sleep played in the lives ofordinary men and women, which by no means included the assurance of soundslumber.

Historical indifference to sleep stems partly from a seeming shortage of sources,in particular our misguided notion that contemporaries rarely reflected on a stateof existence at once common yet hidden from the waking world. But within suchdisparate evidence as diaries, medical books, imaginative literature, and legaldepositions, there are regular references to sleep, often lamentably terse butnonetheless revealing. Far from being ignored, the subject frequently absorbedpeo ple's thoughts, with most sharing the opinion of the chara cter G rav e in a lateseventee nth-century comedy that we must desire it should be as seda te, and quietas may be. ^ Then, too, social historians have normally displayed less interest in themundane exigencies of human behavior than in broader issues relating to class,religion, race, and gender. Only recently have scholars systematically begun toaddress how individuals genuinely lived, with fresh attention to such basic aspectsof pre-industrial existence as hygiene, dress, and diet.' ' Sleep has remained amongthe most neglected topics primarily because the relative tranquility of modernslumber has dulled our perceptions of its past importance. Much like the Scottishcleric Robe rt W odrow, we seem to have concluded that sleep ean scarce be justlyreconed part of our life.' ^ Whereas our waking hours are animated, volatile, andhighly differentiated, sleep appea rs, by contra st, passive, m ono tono us, and unevent-fulqualities scarcely designed to spark the interest of a scholarly disciplinededicated to charting change across time, the faster-paeed the better.

Grist for our prejudices lies strewn throughout English literature. With theexplosive expansion during the sixteenth century in imaginative writing, the

chronicled in Jaume Rossell Mir,et al., Un a aproximacin histrica al estudio cientiflco de sueo : Elperiodo intuitivo el pre-cientifico, Revista de historia de la psicologa 12 (1991): 133-42. For a briefsurvey of sleep in the Middle Ages, see Jean Verdn, La nuit au Moyen Age (Paris, 1994), 203-17; andfor an examination of key medical texts touching on sleep during the early modern era, see Karl H.Dann enfeldt, Sleep: Theory and Practice in the Late Renaissance, Journal oftheHistory of Medicine41 (October 1986): 415-41.' Charles Gildon, The Post-Boy Rob d of His Mail. . . (London, 1692), UI9.'* For several rec ent explo ration s of ordinary life, see A History ofPrivate Life, Philippe Aries andGeorges Duby, eds., Arthur Goldhammer, trans., 5 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1987-91), esp. vols. 2 and3; Roche, History of verydayThings; Annik Pardaiih-Galabrun, The Birth of Intimacy: Privacy andDomestic Life in Early Modern Paris,Jocelyn Phelps, trans. (Philadelphia, 1991). Research dev oted torecapturing everyday realities has included a growing appreciation for the senses. See, for instance,Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant Odor and the French Social Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.,1986); and Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and M eaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside,Martin Thom, trans. (New York, 1998); Bruce R. Smith,TheAcoustic Worldo f arlyM odern England:


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346 A. Roger Ekirchpeacefulness of sleep became a favorite topic for all forms of literary adulation,especially verse drama and poetry. Johnson later claimed that because poetsrequired respite from though t, they were naturally well affected to sleep , which not only bestowed rest, but frequently led them to happ ier region s. No doubt,life's daily miseries made beds appear all the more oases of serenity/' Typically,when not likening slumber to the gentle embrace of death ( No diffrence, wr otethe London poet Francis Qua rles, but a little Breath ^), writers celebrated sleep asa sanctuary that locked Sences from their Ca res. In balmy Slee p, peop le forgotthe Lab ours of the Day and in Oblivion buried all their Toils, opined the autho rof Night Thoughts among the Tombs.^ Nor were its blessings reserved just forpersons of privilege. At a time when distinction, rank, and preferment ordinarilyreigned, slumber alone made the W retched eq ual with the Blest. Sir Philip Sidneycalled sleep the poor man 's wealth, the prisoner's releas e, the indifferent jud gebetween the hight and low. A corollary to this assum ption, rooted in the medievalcon cept of the sleep of the jus t, was the belief that the soun dest slum ber, in fact,belonged to those with simple minds and callused hands, society's toiling classes. W hilst the Peasant takes his sweet rep ose , wro te Joh n Taylor the W ater-P oet, the peere is round beh em 'd with cares and woes. *

^Johnson , Adventurer (March 20, 1753): 232. Among poets, Christof Wirsung echoed, sleeprepresented the pleasantess amongst all goods, yeas the oneiie giver of tranquility on earth . PraxisMedicinae U niversalis: or, A General Practiseof Phisicke .. . (Lo ndo n, 1598), 618. See also Alb ert S.Cook, The Elizabethan Invocations to Sleep, Modern Language Notes 4 (1889): 457-61.'' The CompleteWorksinProsea nd Verseof Francis Quarles,A lexander B. Gro sart, ed., 3 vols. (NewYork, 1%7), 2: 206. See also, for example, Thomas Cheesman,Death Compared to Sleep in a SermonPreacht upon the O ccasion of the Funeral of Mrs. Mary Allen . . . (London, 1695); William Jones, ADisquisition Con cerning the Metapho rical Usage and Application of Sleep in the Scriptures (London,1772).

^T. D. Gent, Cotlin's WalkthroughLondon and Westmin.ster A Poem in Burlesque (London, 1690),43 ;Night Thoughts among the Tombs.. . (London, 1753), 37. See also, for example, M ichelangelo, TheSpeech of Night, and Samuel Dan iel, A Plea, inJourney into Night, H. J. Deverson, ed. (New York,1966),194, 196; Sir Philip Sidney,/Ircfl/ij, 2 vols. (1598; rpt. edn ., De lma r, N .Y., 1984), 2: 396 -97; OnSleep, inFour Odes(Lond on, 1750), 1; To Sleep, The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside (New York,1969), 262.'' Burton E. Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases (New York,1948), 2134; Sir Philip Sidney. Astrophel and Stella (London , 1591). Sancho Panza reflected, While Isleep 1 have no fear, nor hop e, nor trou ble, nor glory. God bless the invento r of sleep , the cloak that

covers all man's thoughts, the food that cures all hunger, the water that quenches all thirst, the fire thatwarms the cold, the cold that cools the heart; the common coin, in short, that can purchase all things,the balancing weight that levels the shepherd with the king, and the simple with the wise.' Miguel deCervantes Saavedra, The Adventures of Don Q uixote, J. M. Cohen, trans. (195(1; rpt. edn., Baltimore,1965),906. Seea\soAnotherCollectionof PhilosophicalConferencesof theFrenchVirtuosi.. ., G. Haversand J. Davies, trans. (London, 1665), 3; Elkanah Settle, Ibrahim the Ihtstrious Bassa (London, 1677),51; Jean-Franois Senault, Man Become Guilty: or. The C orruption of N ature by Sinne, Henry, Earle ofMo nm outh, trans. (Lon don, 1650), 247; Abraham Cowley, Sleep, inMinorEnglish Poets, 660-1780:A Selectionfrom Alexander Chalmers' The English Poets, David P. French, comp., 10 vols. (New York,1967), 2: 115; Mr. A., To Slee p, Th eDiverting-Post Made Up into a Packet for the Entertainment ofthe Court, City, and Country (January 1706); Christoph er Jones , Midnigh t Thou ghts, St. JamesChronicle (London), March 22, 1774.' Works of John Taylor theWaterPoet Not Included in the Folio Volume of 1630, 5vols. (1870; rpt.

edn,. New York, 1967), vol. 1. For the sommeil du just e, see Verd n,La nuit au Moyen Age, 203-06.Earl ier, the belief that the sleep of a labourin g man is sweet was expressed in Ecclesia stes 5: 12. Seealso Du Bartas: His Divine Weekes and Workes,Joshua Sylvester, trans. (Londo n, 1621), 465; Robe rt


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Sleep W e Have Lost 347Sleep, to be sure, granted weary men and women of all ranks some measure ofrelief from daily eares as well as an interval of hard-won rest from their labors. Rarewas the early modern family that did not shoulder its share of petty tribulations,

much less endure disease, violence, or poverty. Even for those of upper-class birthlike D am e Sarah Cow per, The greatest p art of our time is spent in pain, troub leand vexation . . . w e being continuously liable to Accidents. Infirmitys, Crosses, andAfflictions. Sle ep's princip al con tribu tion was not merely physiological but psy-chological. Th us, according to London street slang, falling asleep was to forgetoneself. If only becau se its plea sures are purely negative, surmised Cow per, Sleep may be recko n'd one of the Blessings of Lif e. Also possible is that thesolace persons derived varied in inverse proportion to their quality of life, withthose farther down the social scale most looking forward to slumber. Affirmed aJam aican slave proverb, Sleep hab no Ma ssa. '- Set against the drudgery of theirwaking hours, retiring to bed for most laborers, if only on a thin mattress of straw,must have been welcome indeed, all the more since few claimed furniture of anygreater comfort.

But did sleep routinely offer individuals a genuine asylum? Did most, in an erabefore sleeping pills, body pillows, and earplugs, enjoy the reasonable expectationof undistur bed rest? In her diary, Cow per further noted that even sleep itself was not altogethe r free from uneas iness, and the Elizabethan Thom as Nashe wrote of our thou ghts troubled and vexed when they are retired from labor to e a se .Moreover, did all social classes enjoy sleep equally? If the lower orders had reasonto anticipate bedtime most eagerly, how, if at all, did the nature of their slumbercompare to that of privileged classes? Did the commonalty rest more soundly, aswidely depicted in early modern literature, or were sleeping conditions no betterthan the quality of their waking lives? And finally, of no less importance, whatbenefits might sleep have conferred, apart from providing people with a reprievefrom daily life? Was its value strictly neg ative , or did m en and wo m en have m orecompelling reasons for embracing their exhaustion?

S o INGRAINED HAS BEEN HISTORICAL INDIFFERENCE to w a rd s le e p th a t su ch e le m e n ta rymatters as the time and length of slumber before the nineteenth century remain an

Novem ber 16, 1751; ballad qu oted in Carl B ridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen: 1590-1642(New York, 1968), 84. Wh en our spirits are Exhausted, Cwper noted, we wish tor sleep as old men for Death , onlybecause we are tired with our present condition. She also complained that her own husband. SirWilliam, commonly went to bed early in order to avoid her presence. February 13, July 22. 1712. Diaryof Dame Sarah Cowper. Hertfordshire County Record Office. England; Statement of Elizabeth Israel,Th eProceedingson the King s Commissions of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol elivery for theCity of London; and also Gaol eliveryfor the County of Middlesex, held al Justice-Hall in the O ld Bailey(hereafter. Old Bailey Sessions Papers), June 7-11, 1764.' Qu oted in Philip D . Morgan. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-CenturyChesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hilt, N .C , 1998). 524 -25 .'-'' July 22, 1712, Cow per Diary; Tho ma s Nash e, The Te rro rs of the Nig hl, in Th eWorks of Thomas


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348 A. Roger Ekirchenigma. The hour at which most individuals went to bed, when they awakened thefollowing morning, and whether the duration of their sleep varied from one nightto the next have never received serious analysis, except for the occasionalsuggestion that people fled to their beds soon after sunset to cope with the onset ofdar kn ess . Bec ause the light afforded by cand les was available chiefiy to thewealthiest families, the members of most households, presumably, were unable ortoo fearful, on ce enveloped by darkn ess, to work or socialize. No occu pation butsleepe, feed, and fart, to para phr ase the Stuart poet Tho m as Middleton, mightbest express this view of what transpired after sunset.'^

Among learned authorities, a night's sound slumber was thought critical not onlyfor withered spirits but also for bodily health. Most medical opinion by the lateMiddle Ages still embraced the Aristotelian belief that the impetus for sleeporiginated in the abdom en by mea ns of a process called conco ction. Onc e m ea te and othe r foods have been digested in the stomach, explained Th om asCogan in The Haven of Health, fumes ascend to the head wh ere through coldnesseof the braine, they being congealed, doe stop the conduites and waies of the senses,and so proc ure sleep e. Not only did nighttime invite sleep by its m oisture, silenceand dar kne ss, but those pro per ties were thoug ht enormou sly well suited toconcoction.'^^ Virtually all writers credited sleep with physical vitality, lively spirits,and increased longevity. Declared an Italian proverb , Bed is a m edicine . '^ Apara llel belief was that retiring early could best rea p the full benefits of slee p. Bygoing early to asleep and early from it, we rise refres hed , lively and ac tive, claimedthe author o An Easy Wa y to Prolong Life.^Less clear, in retro spe ct, was the time of night intend ed by the expression earlyto bed, a judgm ent, per hap s, that truly rested in the heavy lidded eyes of thebeholder. Did popular convention favor sunset as a time for repose or some laterhou r? A noth er proverb claimed, O ne hour 's sleep before midnight is worth thre eafter, suggesting that going to bed early may have bor ne an altogethe r different

'* Thomas Middleton, A Mad World My Masters .. . (London, 1608). For a sampling of thisbeliefsee Pierre Goubert, Th eFrench Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century, Ian Patterson, trans. (Cambridge,1986), 39; Jacques Wilhelm, La vie quotidienne des Parisiens au temps du Roi-Soleil, 660-1715 (Paris,1977), 70; Maria Bog ucka, W ork, Time Perce ption an d Leisure in an Ag ricultura l Society: Th e Casef Poland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centu ries, in Labour and Leisure in Historical Perspective,Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries, Ian Blanchard, ed. (Stuttgart, 1994), 50; Barbara and Cary Carsonquoted in James P. Horn, Adapting to a New World:English Society in the Seventeenth-C enturyChesapeake(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 315; David D. H all,Worldsof Wonder Days of Judgm ent: PopularReligious BeliefinEarly New England (New York, 1989), 214.'5 Thomas Cogan, The Haven ofHealth (London , 1588), 232-33 ; Dann enfeldt, Sleep , 422-24. Henry DavidoffM WorldTreasuryo fProverbsfrom Twenty FiveLanguages (New York, 1946), 25.See, for example, Levjnus Lemnius, The Touchstone of Complexions . . ., T. New ton, trans. (Lond on,1576),57; John N orthbrooke,/4 Treatise whereinDicing Dauncing. Vaineplayes or Enterluds with OtherIdle Pastimes . .. (London , 1577), 8; William Vaughan,Naturall and ArtificialDirections for Health .. .(London, 1607), 53; The Workes of That Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey,Thom as Johnson, trans.(London, 1649), 26-27; Henry Hibbert, Syntagma theologicum . . . (Lo ndon, 1662), 282; Dann enfeldt,

Sleep, 407-12.' John Trusler, An Easy Way to Prolong Life, By a Little Attention to Our Manner of Living .. .(Lon don , 1775), 11. How widesp read this notion was may be seen in such proverb s as go to Bed with


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Sleep We Have Lost 349meaning from retiring at the onset of darkness.^^ Moreover, while contemporariesroutinely lauded sleep and its manifest contributions to personal health, they also,even more frequently, scorned slumber that appeared excessive. Puritans inEngland and America often railed against what Richard Baxter called "unnecessarysluggishness," but so, too, did myriad others who were increasingly time consciousby the sixteenth century,'*^ So what, in the eyes of contemporary moralists, was theproper amount of sleep? Several authorities like the Tudor physician AndrewBoorde believed that sleep needed to be taken as the "complexcyon of man"required.- Some prescribed seasonal adjustments, such as sleeping eight hours inthe summer and nine hours during long winter evenings, whereas Jeremy Taylor,one-time chaplain to Charles I (1625-49), prescribed a nightiy regimen of onlythre e ho urs -' M ore commonly, writers, not just in Britain but through out theContinent, urged from six to eight hours in bed, unless special circumstances suchas illness or melancholy mandated more.22 Whether these opinions shaped popularmores or instead reflected them, as seems likely, common aphorisms expressedsimilar attitudes toward the proper length of sleep, including "Nature requires five.Custom takes seven. Laziness nine, And wickedness eleven."^3

Of course, some laborers must have collapsed soon after returning home, barelyable from numbing fatigue to take an evening meal, especially in rural regionsduring the summer when fieldwork grew most strenuous. In southern Wiltshire,complained John Aubrey, workers, "being weary after hard labour," lacked "leisureto read and contemplate of religion, but goe to bed to their rest."24 jn truth,however, few adults beneath the upper ranks enjoyed the opportunity to sleep morethan seven or eight hours, much less the entire night. Despite the biblical injunctionto rest at nighttime, "when no man can work," pre-industrial subsistence pressures

s F. P. Wilson, The O xford Dictionary ofEnglishProverbs,3d edn . (Oxford, 1970), 389.'' Baxter quoted in Stephen Innes, Creating the Comm onwealth: The Economic Culture of PuritanNew England (New York, 1995), 124; Thomas Elyot,The Castle of Helthe (London, 1539), fols. 45-46;The Schoole of Vertue, and Booke of Good Nourture . . (London, 1557); William Bullein, .4Newe Bokeof Phisicke C alled y Goverime nt of Health . .. (Lond on, 1559), 91; Andrew Boo rde,A CompendyousRegyment or a D yetary of Health . . . (London, 547); Michael Cope,A Godly and Learned Expositionuppon theProverbesof Solomon, M.O., trans. (London, 1580), fols. 85, 415v-16; Lemnius, Touchstoneof Com plexions,58; Northbrooke, Treatise,passim; Sir Thom as O verbury, The Conceited Newes of SirThomasOverbury and His Friends, James E. Savage, ed. (1616; rpt. edn., Gainesville, Fla., 1968), 167;The Whole Duty of Man .. . (London, 1691), 188-89; Richard L. Greaves, Society and Religion inElizabethan England (Minneapolis, 1981), 385-87.^" Bo orde,Compendyous Regyment.See also Cogan,Haven of H ealth,237; Tobias Venner, Viarectaad vitam longam . . . (London, 1637), 279-80; Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions,57 ; Whole Duty ofMan, 189.1 Law rence Wrig ht, Warm and Snug: The History of the Bed (London, 1962), 195; Boorde,Compendyous Regyment.^^ Bullein,Newe Boke of Phisicke,91; Boorde,Compendyous Regyment, Venner, Via recta,279-80;Directions and Observations relative to Food Exercise and Sleep (London, 1772), 22; Dannenfeldt,"Sleep," 430."* W right, Warm and Snug, 194, my italics. The physician Guglietmo Gratarolo pointedly distin-guished slumber of eight hours' duration according to "common custome" from prolonged sleep in"ancient time," as Hippocrates had advised. A Direction for the Health ofMagistrates and Studentes(London, 1574). See also Giovanni Torriano,Piazzauniversaled iproverbiitaliani:or A Common Place


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35 0 A. Roger Ekirchand demands of the workplace kept many from slumber.25 Nighttime, too, affordedhouseholds precious opportunities for sociability and leisure, which frequentlyaccom panied spinning, mend ing, and othe r evening wo rkes by the hea rth. Invillages, men frequen ted taverns, and neighbo rs gathered within hom es to enjoy theresonant talents of storytellers. Large towns and cities featured a growing array ofnighttime diversions ranging from masquerades and assemblies to brothels andnighthouses.^Dark ness, naturally, proved a mena cing det err ent to noctu rnal activity. Thenight is no man's friend, attested a prov erb. Yet many residents of urban an d ruralcommunities, when navigating the dark, learned to rely on local lore, magic, andtheir knowledge of the natural universe. Time, place, and weather became criticalconcerns while treading abroad. The quality of moonlight (called by some the parish-lantern ) varied greatly, as did the nocturnal landscape, which childrenlearned to negotiate early on as a rabbit knows his burro w. Most people, robbedof their vision in a world of face-to-face relationships and hence their ability todiscern gestures, dress, and facial expressions, depended heavily on hearing, smell,and touch (feet as well as hands). They also resorted to charms to ward off evilspirits.-' ' And although the cost of candlestallow as well as beeswaxremainedprohibitively high for most households, early modern folk relied on a broad rangeof more primitive illuminants, including rushlights and candlewood, for smallmeasures of light.-

Diaries, though heavily weighted toward Britain's upper classes, suggest not onlythat adults typically slept for periods of from six to eight hours but that the standardtime for retiring to bed fell betwe en nine and ten o'clock. Th is family goes to Bedbetween 9 and 1, noted Sarah C owper, a rule with occasional exceptions that

--^ John 9: 4. See, for example. Rev. John CVyXon. F riendly Advice to the Poor. . . (Manchester, 1755),37; Thomas Porter . WittyCombat:or The Female Victor (London, 1663); Franco Sacchetti, Tales fromSacchetti,Mary G. Steegm ann, trans . (1908; rpt. edn., Westport, C onn., 1978), 223-32; Thom as Dekk er,The Seven Deadly Sinnes of London, H. F. B. Brett-Smith, ed. (New Yo rk. 1922), 29-30 ; Richard Baxter,Th ePractical Worksof RichardBaxter 4 vols. (Lond on, 1838-4 5), 1: 242, 466; Rob ert Gr een e,C iceronisAmor: Tullies Love (589) and A Quipfor anUpstartCourtier (1592) (Gainesville, Fla., 1954); AnthonyHorneck, The Happy Ascetick: or. The Best Exercise ([London], 1680), 394, 409: Statement of AnneR\s ?.c\, OldBaileySessions Papers,idx\u?iry 16-21, 1755; A. KO^ZT E\\XQ\\,At D ay's Close: NightinTimePast (forthcoming).-'' See, for exam ple. Depo sition of Mary Gre enw ood , Augu st 16, 1772, Assi 45/31/1/315, PublicRecord Office, London; Francis Jollie. Jollie's Sketch of Cumberland Manners and Customs . . .(Beckermet, Eng., 1974), 45; Robert Bell. A Description of the C ondition an d M anners . .. of thePeasantry of Ireland Such as They Were between the Years 780''s Close. For the growth inurban entertainment, see Thomas Burke,English Night-Life: F rom Norman Curfew toPresentBlack-out(New York. 1971), 1-70; Angus M clnnes, The E mergenc e of a Leisure Town: Shrewsbury 1660-1760,Past andPresent 120 (August 1988): 65-66; Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture andSociety in the Provincial Town, 660-1760 (Oxford, 1989), passim.^ B. S tevenson , Home Book of Proverbs, 1686; Robert Morgan, My Lamp Still Bums (Llandysul,Wales, 1981), 64;Glossary of N orthamptonshire Words and P hrases.. ., Anne Elizabeth Baker, comp .(London, 1854), M5; Ekirch, At Days Close.


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Sleep We Have Lost 351seems to have applied to less fortunate households. Advised Thomas Tusser, Inwinter at nine, and in summer at ten, whereas an inscription over the parlor of aDanish pastor read: Stay til nine you are my friend / Til ten, that is alright / but ifyou stay til 11, you are my enemy. Although the Sussex shopkeeper ThomasTurner tried to allow himself between seven and eight hours of slumber, either hisduties as a parish officer or his thirst for drink, among other emergent occasions,sometimes delayed his normal ten o'clock bedtime. One December evening after avestry meeting, he stumbled home about 3:20 [a.m.] not very sober. Oh, liquor, hebemoaned, what extravagances does it make us

HAD PRE-INDUSTRIALFAM ILIES,in fact, retreated to their beds soon after sunset, ableto rest for as much as twelve hours rather than just seven or eight, sleep might haveseemed less important. Instead, the subject provoked widespread interest. WhetherMacbeth HenryK,or Julius Caesar,many of William Shakespeare's plays patentlyappealed to that preoccupation. And not just dreams, long a source of fascinationin their own right, but other mysteries, including instances of narcolepsy andsleepwalking, were explored at length in newspapers as well as literary works.^ Forthe most part, however, these curiosities represented aberrations born in theshadowlands separating sleep from wakefulness. Vastly more relevant to mostpeople was the quality of their own repose and the ways in which it could beimproved. After all, explained a French writer, Sleep and waking being the hingeson which all the others 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 itsimportance that sleep inspired a typology more nuanced than that routinelyemployed today. In the environs of Northumberland alone, two terms, dover and slum, signified light sleep, whereas the widely used expressions dog, cat, or ha re sleep referred to slumber that was not only light but anxious. Ye sleep like

-' November 27, 1705, Cowper Diary; Tusser quoted in Eric Sloane, The Seasons of America Past(New York, 1958), 26; Hugo Matthiessen, Natten: Stuier I Gammelt Byliv([Copenhagen], 1914), 8-9;February 8, 1756, and December 26, 1763,The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754-1765. David Vaisey, ed.(Oxford, 1985), 26-27, 283. Similarly, for both sides of Ihe Atlantic, see the regulations quoted in theLiverpool Mercury, February 7, 1812; January 19, 1711, Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, HaroldWilliams, ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1948), I: 170; Letter of Edward Shippen of Lancaster, 1754,Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography30 (1906): 86; June 25, 1794,The Diary of ElizabethDrinker, Elaine Forman Crane, ed., 3 vols. (Boston, 1991), 1: 568; Lawrence Wright,Clockwork Man:TheStoryofTime.ItsOrigins. ItsUses Its Tyranny(New York, 1968), 74. A seventeenth-century proverbinstructed, To sup at six and go to bed at ten, will make a man live ten times ten. Vincent StuckeyLean, Lean s Collectanea, 4 vols. (Bristol, 1902-04), 1: 503. A French variation, common in thesixteenth century, counseled: To rise at five, to dine at nine. To sup at five, to sleep at nine. Lengthenslife to ninety-nine. Lloyd s Evening Post (London), February 19, 1768.

^ Steiner, Historicity of Dreams, 212; Simon B. Chandler, Shakespeare and Sleep, Bulletin ofthe History of Medicine 29 (1955): 255-60. See, for example. The True Relation of Two WonderfullSleepers. . . (London, 1646); General Collection ofDiscoursesof theVirtuosiofFrance. . . . G. Havers,trans. (London, 1664), 197-201;Journals of Sir John Lauder, Donald Crawford, ed. (Edinburgh, 1900),84; Letter of M. Brady, LOI/OIChronicle,July31,1764; The History of Cyrillo Padovano, the NotedSleep-Walker, inCollected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Arthur Friedman, ed., 5 vols. (Oxford, 1966),2:214-18;/I Relation of Several Hundreds ofChildren Others ThatProphesieandPreachin Their Sleep


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352 A. Roger Ekircha dog in a mill, declared a Scottish proverb.^' M ore desirable was de ad or de epsleep, what Jam es Boswell described as abso lute, unfeeling, and uncon scious.Atteste d a Welsh aphorism , M en thrive by sleep, not long but deep , anobservation supported by modern research emphasizing that whether or notindividuals feel rested in the morning chiefly depends on the number of times theyawaken during the night.'^Families went to great lengths to ensure the tranquility of their slumber. Ofparticular importance were a household's beds, typically the most expensive articlesof family furniture. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, English bedsevolved from straw pallets on bare floors to wooden frames complete with pillows,she ets, bla nk ets, cove rlets, and flock m attr ess es, which were typically filled withrags and stray pieces of wool. Affluent homes boasted elevated bedsteads, feathermattresses, and heavy curtains to ward off dangerous drafts and inquisitive eyes.Recalled W illiam H arrison in 1557 of his youth , Ou r fathers, yea, and we ourselvesalso, have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered only with a sheet,unde r cov erlets made of dagswain or ha phar lots . . . and a good round log u nde rtheir hea ds, instead of a bolste r. Pillows, he noted , were thoug ht meet only forwomen in childebed. But already families were investing heavily in superio r bed snot only as a mark of social prestige but also for their greate r com fort. Becau senothin g, rem arked the sixteenth-century Dutch physician Levinus Lem nius, ishoiesom er than sound and quiet Slee pe, a person need ed to take his full ease andsleepe in a soft bed de. Such was their imp ortance that beds were am ong the firstpossessions purchased by newlyweds as well as the first items bequeathed in wills tofavored heirs. In modest homes, beds often represented over one-quarter of thevalue of all domestic assets, while for more humble families, the bed was the pieceof furniture first acquired upon enterin g the world of goo ds. Only half in jest,Caro le Shamm as has quipped that the early mo dern era might be rechr istened Th eAge of the Bed.

^^Another Collection of Philosophical Conferences, 419; Northumberland Words, Richard OliverHe slop, com p , 2 vols. (1892; rpt. ed n., V aduz, 1965), 1: 248, 2: 659;TheProverbsof Scotland.AlexanderHislop, comp. (Edinburgh, 1870), 346. For similar comparisons to the sleep of animals, see, forexample, Wilson, Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 742; Thomas Dekker, North-Ward Hoe(London, 1607);The Works of Thomas Adams, 3 vols. (Edinb urgh, 1861-62), 2: 193; Thom as Duffett,The Empress ofMorocco(London , 1674), 15; Overbury, Conceited Newes, 260; Statem ent of RichardWager, Old Bailey Sessions Papers, Oc tobe r 16, 1728; Bartle tt J. W hiting, Proverbs, Sentences, andProverbialPhrases: From English WritingsM ainly before 1500 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 30.2 William Rowley, All's Lost by Lust (London, 1633); Thomas Shadwell, The Amorous Bigotte(London, 169), 43; The Dramatic Works of Sir William D'Avenant (New York, 1964), 146; Boswell,[ On Sleep and Dreams ], 2: 112; Henry Vaughan,Welsh Proverbswith English Translations(Felinfach,Wales, 1889), 35; Erik Eckhotm, Exploring the Forces of Sleep , New York Times Magazine (April 17,1988): 32.- W illiam Harr iso n, The Description of England, Georges Edelen, ed. (Ithaca. N Y ., 1968), 201;Lemnius, Touchstone of Complexions, 73; Stephanie Grauman Wolf As Various as TheirLand Th eEveryday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans (New York, 1993), 66; Carole Shamm as, TheDomestic Environment in Early Modern England and America, Journal of Social History 14 (Fall1990): 169, 158; F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Home, Work and Land (Chelmsford, Eng., 1976),12-15; Pounds, Culture oftheEnglish People,145-47; Flandrin,Fam ilies in Former Times, 102; DanielRoche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the 18th Century, Marie Evans, trans.


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Sleep We Have Lost 353As bedtime neared, households followed painstaking rituals. Such habitual if notcompulsive behavior no doubt helped alleviate anxieties many people felt whensurrendering themselves to sleep, a condition of unparalleled vulnerability in

pre-indu strial times. Th reats to body and soul as well as to sound slum ber seeminglylurked everywhere. Even a cosmopolitan figure of the Enlightenment like Boswellwro te of gloomy nights when he was frightened to lie down and sink intohelpless ness and forgetfulnes s. W e lie in the shadow of dea th at Night, ourdan ger s are so gr eat , affirmed a coun try vicar. ** To forestall thieves, p rop erti edhouse holds prep ared for bed as if girding for an impen ding siege. Ba rricade d,bolted , and bar red , as a Ge orgian playwright described an English hom e backside and foreside, top and bottom . Nighttime saw qua rter s made fast, withdoors and shutters locked once dogs had been loosed outdoors. Nor could theworking poor rest easily. As one who earned her bread by washing, Anne Towershad a great charge of linen besides her own belongings in her London q uar terson Artichoke Lane I always go round every night to see that all is fast. -^^ Notonly did domestic arsenals contain swords and firearms, or cudgels, sticks, and bedstaves in less affluent homes,- ** but on e specially forebo ding nigh ts friends andrelations remained together, sleeping under the same roof if not the same covers,to allay common fears.^^

Then also, as portrayed in Gerrit van Honthorst's painting The Elea Hunt,dom estic pests necessitated nightly.removal (see Figure 1), som etimes resu lting in

was easi er for your enem ies to stab you than if you we re on the floor. Burgess,On Going to Bed (NewYork, 1982), 84. To be sure, the height of bedsteads dramatically distinquished men and women ofproperty from other household members, including children confined to trundle beds and servants, butmy experience as a graduate student without the benefit of a bedstead makes me skeptical that personsfound it no more comfortable to enter and exit a raised bed. M oreover, medical opinion warned againstresting upon the ground, nor uppon colde stones, nor neere the earth; for the coldnesse of stones, andthe dam pe of the earth, are both very hurtfull to our bodies. Cogan, Haven of Health, 235. See alsoSteven Bradwell,yl Watch-man for the Pest. . . (Lon don, 1625), 39.^ Boswell, [ On Sleep and Dreams ], 2: 110; Richard Steele, The HusbandmansCalling:Shewing theExcellencies, Temptations, Graces, Duties, etc. of the Christian Husbandman (Lon don , 1670), 270. W eare unable to think of, much m ore to provide for, our own Security, observed the eighteenth-c enturypoet James Hervey. Meditations and Contemplations, 2vols. (Lon don , 1752), 2: 42. See also Ste phenBateman, A Chrislall Glasse of Christian Reformation . .. (Londo n, 1569); Thom as Am ory, DaitvDevotion Assisted and Recommended, in Four Sermons . . . (London, 1772), t5; Benjamin Bell,SleepyDead Sinners (W indsor , Vt., 1793), 8. For Sigmund Fr eud 's influential discussion of neu roticcerem onials pertaining to sleep, see Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, in The StandardEdition oftheCompletePsychologicalWorks of Sigmund Freud James Strachey, ed., 23 vols. (London,1957-66), 9: 117-18; Barry Schwartz, Notes on the Socio]ogy of Sleep, SociologicalQuarterlyIt (Fall1970): 494 -95 ; Stanley Core n,Sleep Thieves: An Eye-Opening Exploration into the Science andMysteriesofSleep (New York, 1996), 165.^^ David Ogb orne, TheMerry Midnight Mistake. .. (Chelmsford, Eng., 1765), 34; Statem ent of AnneTowers,Old Bailey Sessions Papers, July 15-17, 1767; Keith Thomas,Man and the Natural World(NewYork, 1983), 101; Pounds,C ulture of the Eng lish People, 128-29; and Norman J. G. Pounds.H earth andHome: A History ofMaterialCulture (Bloom ington, Ind., 1989), 184-86.^^ Peter Earle, The Making oftheEnglish Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London,660-1730 (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), 243;Oxford English Dictionary, 1st edn. (Oxford, 1888-1928), s.v.

bedstaff ; Old Bailey Sessions Papers,1716-1766, passim. See, for exam ple, Sep tem ber 8, 11, 1794, iaryof Elizabeth Drinker,1: 590,592; Decem ber2,1766,


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354 A Roger Ekirch


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Sleep We Have Lost 355 bug hu nts of furniture and bedding for both fleas (pulex irritans) and bedbugs{cimex lectularius) after their arrival in Britain by the sixteenth century. To keepgnats at bay, families in the fen country of East Angha hung lumps of cow dung atthe foot of their beds. ** She ets could never be dam p from w ashing ( dirt is be tte rthan death , observed Joh n Byng), and in winter weather, beds required w armingwith pans of hot coals or, in modest dwellings, with hot stones wrapped in rags.-^^Temperatures dipped all the more quickly once hearths were banked and mostlights snuffed to prevent the threat of fire, an even greater peril than crime indensely packed cities and tow ns / If windows boas ted curtains, they needed to bedrawn to forestall the harmful consequences of sleeping in moonlight and thedreaded properties of evening drafts. Samuel Pepys even tried to tie his handsinside his bed to keep from catching a cold/' To shield heads from the cool air,nightcaps were worn. While nightdress for middle and upper-class families,introduced at least by the sixteenth century, included chemises and smocks, thelower classes wo re coarse night-ge ar, slept unclad in nak ed beds, or rem ainedin day -cloth es, eith er to save the expense of blan kets or to rise quickly in themorning.^^

'* Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents . . ., 2 vols. (London, 1658), 2:956-57; The Goodman of Paris: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen ofParis(NewYork, 1928), 65-67; John Southall, A Treatise ofBuggs . . . (London, 1730); J. F. D. Shrewsbury, Th ePlague ofthePhilistines and Other Medical-Historical Essays (London, 1964), 146-61; L. O. J. Boynton, The Bed-Bug and the Age of Elegan ce, Furniture History1 (1965): 15-31.' ^ July 16, 1784, Joh n Byng, 5th Viscount To rring ton , Th eTorrington Diaries,C. Bruyn A ndrews, e d.,4 vols. (New York, 193 4-38) , 1: 174. Rem arke d William Cole while in Fran ce, Certainly the Frenc hare a more hardy People than we are: they never air their Linnen, but constantly go to Bed in damp,or ra ther wet Sh eets . . . whereas the same practice would give an Englishman, if not his Death, at leastthe Rheum atism. Novem ber 28, 1765, Rev. William Col e,/ i Joumal of My Journey toParisin the Year1765, Francis Griffin Stokes, ed. (London, 1931), 344. For the prevalence of warming pans, see Horn,Adapting to a New World 318-19. For their preparation by chambermaids, see Domestic Management:or. The Art of Conducting a Family; With Instructions to Sen-ants in General (London, 1740), 56.

The devastating consequences of tires in early modern society have been well documented in AGazetteer ofEnglishUrban Fire Disasters, 500-900, E. L. Jones ,et ai, eds. (Norwich, 1984); BernardCap p, Arson , Thr eats of Arson, and incivility in Early Modern Eng land, in Civil Histories: EssaysPresented to Sir Keith Thomas, Peter Burke,et al.,eds. (Oxford, 2000), 197-213; Pounds,Culture of theEnglish People, 131-34; Penny Roberts, Agenc ies Human and Divine: Fire in French Cities,1520-1720, in Fear in Early Modern Society, William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, eds. (New York,1997), 9-27. Bradwell, Watchman for the Pest, 39; Venner, Via recta,275; Dann enfeldt, Sleep, 425; IsraelSpach, Tlieses medicae de som no et vigilia . .. (Arg entora ti, 1597); Giovanni Florio, Florios SecondFrutes(1591; rpt. edn.. New York, 1969), 157; May 17, 1664, Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Sam uel Pepys,Robe rt Latham and W illiam Matthews, eds., 11 vols. (Berkeley,Calif. 1970-83), 5: 152; Jam es Nelson,An Essay on the Govemm ent of Children. . . (Lon don , 1756), 132. Only in the eigh teen th c entury didpeo ple begin to grow less fearful of the night air. Just as Sam uel Johns on, to Boswell's shock, gladlystood before an open window one fall night [October 14, 1773, Boswell s Journal of a Tour to theHebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 773, Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, eds. (NewYork, 1961), 297], Benjamin Franklin horrified John Adams, when sharing a bed in 1776, by insistingthat opening the window would prevent contracting colds. Bernard Bailyn, Butterfield's Adam s: Notesfor a Sketch, William and Mary Q uarterly,3d ser., 19 (April 1962): 247.^^ Information is sparse abou t sleeping garm ents, but see C. Willett and Phillis Cunning ton, Th eHistory ofUnderclothes(Lond on, 1951),41-43 , 52, 61; Almut Ju nker, Zur Geschichte der Unterwsche1700-1960: Eine Ausstellung desHistorischenMuseumsFrankfurt 28April bis28August 1988 (Frankfurt,1988), 10-78; Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process.Vol. I: The History of M anners, Edmund Jephcott,


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356 A. Roger EkirchWithin well-to-do households, feet might be washed before bed, hair cut andcombed, beds beaten and stirred, and chamber pots set, all by servants. LaurenceSterne referred to these and other servile duties as ordin ance s of the bed-

cham ber. Of a young lad in training, Pepys wro te, I had the boy up tonight for hissister to teac h him to put m e to bed , which included singing or read ing to hisma ster with the aid of a wa tch-can dle or *'night-light, comm only a squat candlein a perforated holder not easily overturned/^ To calm attacks of anxiety, brandyor medicine was swallowed, with laudanum, a solution made from opium and anespecially popular potion among the propertied classes/'^ For much the samepurpose, alcohol may have been imbibed at bedtime by the lower orders, thoughalso intended, no doubt, to embalm the flesh on frigid nights. For John Gordon,newly arrived in the capital from Bristol, a half-pint of wine was guarantee enough,he hope d, in ord er to sleep all night. On the othe r hand, to avoid upset stoma chs,common wisdom discouraged late night suppers and counseled that sleep first betaken on the right side of the body to facilitate digestion^''

Finally, the family patriarch bore a responsibility for setting minds at rest,normally by conduc ting househ old prayers, the fabled lock of every night. Discom pose yourselves as little as may be before Bed -time, urged the writerHum phrey Brooke, the M aster of the Family prudently animating and encouraginghis Wife, Children and Servants against Fear and Dis orde r. By the sixteenthcentury, evening devotions had grown habitual among families readying for bed.Whether voiced spontaneously or recited by rote, prayer each night brought many Sleep, 426. References to lying rough, that is, wearing day-clothes to bed. may be found inErancis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London, 1785); [Thomas Deloney], TheGentle C raft: A Discourse Containing Many Matters ofDelight Very Pleasant to Be Read . . . (London,1637); R.B.,Adm irable C uriosities, Rarities,< Wonders in England, Scotland, and Ireland.. . (London,1688), 5; Alan Macfarlane, The Justice and the Ma re s Ale (Oxford , 1981), 56; Con stantia Maxw ell,County and Town in Ireland under theGeorges (Dundalk, 1949), 123. On the necessity of nightcaps, seeVenner,Via recta,275; J. N elson,Essay on the Government of Children,132; Octo ber 20, 1763,Bosw ell sLondon Joumal. 762-3, Erederick A. Pottle, ed. (New York, 1950), 49-50.

-' Lau ren ce Ste rne , The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman, Samuel Holt Monk, ed.(New York, 1950), 568; September 22, 1660, Pepys Diary, 1: 251. Boswell opined, I have som etimesbeen apt to laugh when I contem plated a bed-room with all its contrivanc es. l O n Sleep and Dream s ],2: 111. See also How They Lived:An Anthology ofOriginalAccounts Written between 485 and 700,Molly Harrison and O. M. Royston, comps. (Oxford, 1962), 122-25, 167; The Elizabethan HomeDiscovered in Two Dialogues, M. St. Clare Byrne, ed. (London, 1930), ll-lS; Dece mbe r 12, 1762,Boswell s London Journal, 81 ; Domestic Management, 50-56. Of night-lights, the Public AdvertiserofOc tobe r 20, 1763, advised, Every sensible family, or Person should have a lighted L amp all Night,particularly during the Winter, in the House, having many great Conveniences, as the Prevention ofRobbe ries, Murd ers, &c. likewise is of Use in cases of Eire, and of sudden S ickness. See also Pe terThornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400-1600 (New York, 1991), 278.'' See , for ex am ple, W irsun g, Praxis Medicinae Universalis,618; Novem ber 1, 1695, The Life andTimes of Anthony Wood. Antiquary, of Oxford 632-1695 . . . , Andrew Clark, comp., 5 vols. (Oxford,1891-1900), 5: 493; Octo ber 3, 1704, Cowper Diary; Septem ber 7, 1771, Octo ber 7, 1775,The Diary ofSylas Neville, 767-788, Basil Coze ns-H ardy, ed . (Lon don , 1950), 113, 191, 230; Janu ary 7, 1782,Boswe ll: Laird of Auchinleck, 1778-178 2, Joseph W. Reed and Erederick A. Pottle, eds. (New York,1977), 418.^^ Statement of John Gordon, Old Bailey Sessions Papers, Sep tem ber 15-20, 1756. See also, forexample, Eynes Moryson,An Itinerary Containing His Ten Yeeres Travell. . . , 4 vols. (Glasgow, 1907),


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Sleep We Have Lost 357households much comfort, with some families, including servants, praying togeth-er."'^ Protestant and Catholic verses shared distinctive features. Along with givingthanks for heavenly guidance, requesting peaceful sleep, and asking forgiveness formoral failings, most prayers appealed directly for divine protection from nocturnalharm, including "sudden Death, Fears and Affrightments, Casualties by Fire,Water, or Tempestuous Weather, [and] Disturbance by Thieves."'*'^ In addition, lessafuent households, in preparing for sleep, routinely invoked magic, an importantdimension of pre-industrial life that gained added resonance at bedtime. Besidespotions to prevent bedwetting and spur sleep on, nightspells were employed toshield households from fire, thieves, and evil spirits. To keep demons fromdescending down chimneys, suspending the heart of a bullock or pig over the hearthwas a common ritual in western England, whereas early modern families hungamulets and recited charms to avert nightmares, widely thought to be imps seekingto suffocate their prey. "Whosoe'er these words aright Three times o'er shall sayeach night. No ill dreams shall vex his bed. Hell's dark land he ne'er shall tread,"comforted an early Welsh verse.'''^

IMPLICITIN MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF SLEEPbefore the Industrial Revolution remainsthe wistful belief that our forebears enjoyed tranquil slumber, if often little else, intheir meager lives. Notwithstanding the everyday woes of pre-industrial existence,most families at least rested contentedly from dusk to dawn, we like to think.^ Humphrey Brooke,Cautionary Rules for Preventingthe Sickness(London, 1665), 6; Keith Thomas,Religion and the Decline ofMagic:Studies in PopularBeliefsin Sixteenth and SeventeenthCenturyEngland(London, 1971), 113-28; Franois Lebrun, "The Two Reformations: Communal Devotion and PersonalPiety," inPassions oftheRenaissance, Roger Chartier, ed., Arthur Goldhammer, trans., vol. 3 of Ariesand Duby,History ofPrivateLife, 96-97. References to the "lock" of the night may be found in OwenFeltham, Resolves (London, 1628). 406; October 2, 1704, Cowper Diary; Scottish Proverbs,AndrewHenderson, ed. (Edinburgh, 1832), 48. For personal references to meditation and prayer, see, forexample, April 4, 1605,Diary of Lady Margaret Moby 1599-1605, Dorothy M. Meads, ed. (London,1930 217; March 4, 1666,Pepys Diary,7; 65;Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston,1682-1693,George Morison Paul, ed. (Edinburgh, 1911), 59;Two East Anglian Diaries, 1641-1729: Isaac Archerand William Coe, Matthew Storey, ed. (Woodbridge, Eng., 1994), 51, 267; November 13, 1700,TheDiary of John Evelyn,E. S. De Beer, ed., 6 vols. (Oxford, 1955), 5:435; February 28, 1704, May 8, 1712,

Cowper Diary: December 25, 1727,The Diary of JamesCleggof Chepet en leFrith 1708-1755, VanessaS. Doe, ed. (Matlock, Eng, 1978), 24;Old Bailey Sessions Papers,October 15, 1718; Deposition ofWilliam Smith, August 27, 1774, Assi 45/32/1/113."' July 18, 1709, Cowper Diary. See also, for example. The Writingsof John Bradford .. . ,AubreyTownsend, ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1848), 1: 239;Phillip Stubbes's Anatomy of the Abuses in England inShakespere's Youth, A.D. 583, Frederick James Furnival , ed. (London, 1877), 1: 220; ThankfullRemembrances of Gods WonderfulDeliverances, with OtherPrayers (n.p., 1628); F.S.,Schoole ofVertue(London, 1630);Maister Beza sHousholdPrayers:For the Consolation andPerfectionof a Christian Life,John Barnes, trans. (London, 1607);The Whole Duty of Prayer (London, 1657), 31-32; April 7, 1700,Diary of John Evelyn,5: 400. * "Mary's Dream," quoted in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English, Gwyn Jones, comp.(Oxford, 1977), 78; Gervase Markham,Countrey Contentments.. . (London, 1615), 31; George Sinclair,Satan's Invisible World Discovered (Gainesville, Fla., 1969), 217-18; Kingsley Palmer, The Folklore ofSomerset(Totowa, N.J., 1976), 45; William Lilly,/ Groatsworth of Wit fora Penny:or.The Interpretationof Dreams (London, [1750?]), 18; The Oxford Book of Local Verses, John HoUoway, comp. (Oxford,


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358 A. Roger EkirchEvening silence coupled with overpowering darkness contributed to unusuallypeaceful repose, as did the fatigue ordinary men and women suffered from theirlabors. Upo n reliving this m ore primitive pa tte rn when camping outd oor s, aleading authority on sleep recently rhapso dized, W ith the stars as our onlynight-light, we are rocked in the welcoming arms of Mother Nature back to thedreamy sleep of the ancients. It 's little wonder we wake the next morning feeling sorefreshed and alive. '''^

If one defining characteristic of sleep is the barrier it erects between theconscious mind and the outside world, another is that sleep's defenses are easilybreached. Unlike sleep-like states resulting from anesthesia, coma, or hibernation,sleep itself is inte rru pte d with ease.'* Ind eed , notw ithstan ding idyllic ster eoty pes ofrepose in simpler times, early modern slumber remained highly vulnerable tointermittent disruption, much more so, in all likelihood, than does sleep today.Despite elaborate precautions taken by households, many early references to sleepcontain such adjectives as restle ss, trou bled , and frighted. A seve nteen th-century religious devotion spoke of terr ors , sights, noises, drea m es and paine s,which afflict m anie m en at rest.* ' Exacting the greate st toll w ere physical ma ladie s,all the more severe after sunset, ranging from angina, gastric ulcers, and rheuma-toid arthritis to such respiratory tract illnesses as asthma, influenza, and consump-tion (pulmonary tuberculosis). Making sleep all the more onerous, whatever thestrain of sickness, is that sensitivity to pain intensifies at night. ^^ ^ ^ early pain tingby William Hogarth unabashedly portrays an anguished gentleman, perched William C. Dement, The Promise ofSleep (New York, 1999), tOl.^ De spite his idealized view of sleep in past ages. Dem ent himself note s the ease with which slum bercan be broken. Promise of Sleep, 17. 'Herbert's Devotions:or A Comp anion for a Christian .. .(Lon don, 1657), 1. See also, for exam ple,Edmund Spenser quoted in Deverson, Journey into Night, 133; Ouarles, Complete Works, 2: 206;Octo ber 12, 1703, Cowper Diary; Lady Charlotte Bury. The Diary ofa Lady-in-Waiting, A. F. Steuart,ed., 2 vols. (Londo n, 1908), 1: 31; Richard Brathwait, Natures Embassie: or. The Wilde-mans Measvres(London. 1621), 120; Thomas Shadwell, The Miser (London, 1672), 18; George Powell, The ImpostureDefeated: or. A Trick to Cheat the Devil (London, 1698), 28; April 4, 1782, Journal of Peter Oliver,Ege rton M anu scripts . British Library, Lon don; Benjamin Mifflin, Jou rna l of a Journ ey fromFhiladadeiphia to the Cedar Swamps Back, 1764, Pennsylvania M agazine ofHistoryand Biography52 (1928): 130-31. The supplement to Denis Diderot's Encyclopdie identified numerous obstacles tosleep; Hu nger prevents sleeping, indigestion, any irritating cause that constantly agitates some part ofthe body, the cold in one part of the body, feet for example, while the rest is covered, violent sounds,anxieties & annoyances, a preoccupa tion, melancholy, mania, pain, shiverings, warm drinks, drunk fromtime to time, like tea, coffee, several diseases of the brain that are not yet well determined, all theseprevent sleep. Supplment a L'Encyclopdie, ou. Dictionnaire raisonn des sciences, des arts et desmtiers .. ., 4 vols. (1777; rpt. edn., New York, 1969), 4: 809. For an extended discussion of sleepdisturbances, see Ekirch, At Day's Close. Kenneth Jon Rose, The Body in Time (New York, 1989), 87-88; Jane Wegscheider Hyman, Th eLight Book: H ow N atural and Artificial Light Affect Our Health, Mood and Behavior(Los Ange les, 1990),140-41; Mary Carskadan, ed.. Encyclopedia of Steep and Dreaming (New York, 1993), 269-70; GayGaer Luce, Body Time (London, 1973), 15t, 178. For the common association of nighttime withheightened discomfort, see, for example,Diaryof the Rev. John Ward . . , Charles Severn, ed. (L ondon,1839), 199; Sep tem ber 24, 1703, O ctob er 18,' 1715, Cow per D iary; Vau ghan , Welsh Proverbs,85 ;Thomas Legg,..ow-Life: or. One Half of theWorld Knows Not How the Other Half Live . . . (London,1750). 9; A Nig ht-Piece, on a Sick-Bed, The British Magazine 2 (1747): 272; The Autobiography ofWilliam Stout, i. D. M arshall, ed. (M anche ster, 1967), 238; August 14. Novem ber 29, Decem ber 30,


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Sleep We Have Lost 359

FlGURt 2: W illiam logarth,rancis Mullhaw Schulz in HisBet .Service (Norwich Castle Museum). uiiesv of the Norfolk Museums

halfway out of bed, vomiting into a basin (see Figure 2). Illness only magnifiedanxiety and depression, insidious sources of disturbed slumber in their own right,especially when aggravated by fears of fire and crime. No social elass was spared,but those having the fewest resources to cope with life's problems were most subjectto insomnia. Of the urban poor, a contem porary rem arke d, They feel their sleepinterrupted by the cold, the filth, the screams and infants' cries, and by a thousandother anxieties.' ^^In most respects, the sleep of the working poor and the destitute remainedacutely vulnerable to the vexations of everyday existence. Certainly, their quarterslay more exposed to unwelcome intrusions, including frigid temperatures, annoyingnoises, voracious insects, and the stench of nightsoil. In Paris, due to the high costof obtaining quiet quarte rs, Nicolas Boileau rem ark ed, Sleep like othe r Things issold. And you must purchase your Repose with Gold. ^^ Much of the population5-' G. C. L. Canali quoted in Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early M odernEurope David Gentilcore, trans. (Chicago, |t)80). 64: John Wilson, The Projectors (London, 66S). 18;


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6 A . Roger Ekirch

F I G U R E 3: William Hogarth, industry and Idleness 1747, plate 7. Courtesy of the Print Collection, LewisWalpole Library, Yale U niversity.

beneath the middling orders still suffered from tattered blankets and coarsemattresses, with many families scarcely able to afford even those essentials. In anengraving by H oga rth, a bed shared by the Id le Pre ntice and a pro stitute featuressheets and a blanket, but the wooden bedstead has collapsed amid the squalor oftheir rat-infested garret. Notably, I dle has just been abruptly awa kened by thenoise of a eat, probably in pursuit of the rat in the foreground (see Figure 3).W ithout fire or place , the urban poor often slept in public streets or, if lucky,atop or beneath wooden platforms protruding from shop windows bulkers theseunfo rtuna tes were widely called. Hayrack s, stables, and barn s afforded nes ts forrural vagabon ds, such as the thirty perso ns, men , wom en and childre n found na ked in straw in a barn ne ar Tewkesbury in 1636. In Coventry and No ttingham ,ma ny of the po or er sort took refuge at night within eaves.^^

Inadequate bedding meant that families in the lower ranks routinely slept two,Proceedingsat the Sessions-House in the Old-Bayly. . . , Decem ber 8-9, 1680 (Londo n, 1680); R usticus,Si. James Chronicle November 12, 1772; Ben Jonson, Volpone: or The Fox; Epicene: or. The SilentWoman; The Alchemist; Bartholomew Fair G ordon Cam pbell, ed. (Oxford, 1995), 127.


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SleepWeHave Lost 361three, or more to a mattress, with overnight visitors included. Sharing not only thesame room but also the same covers conserved resources and generated welcomewa rm th. Adv ised an Italian proverb , In a narrow bed , get thee in the m idd le,w here as to pig was a com mon English expression for sleeping with one or mo rebedfellows. Probably most parents slept apart from children other than infants,although occasionally entire households of European peasants shared the samebeds.-'^'^ So, too, some families throughout the British Isles brought farm animalswithin sleeping quarters at night. Besides protecting cows, sheep, and otherlivestock from predators and thieves, boarding with beasts allowed greater warmth,notwithstanding the nastiness of theire ex cre m en ts.Perhaps for the laboring population, as poets so often claimed, fatigue alleviatedsuch hardships. The Virginia tutor Philip Fithian studied during many evenings tothe point of exhaustion in order to rend er his sleep sound & unbro ken andimm une to cursed Bugs. ^ But probab ly more realistic than most pieces of verse,if less well-kno wn , was a passag e from The Complaints of Poverty by Nicholas Jam es:

And when, to gather strength and still his woes.He seeks his last redress in .soft repose.The tattered blanket, erst the fleas' retreat.Denies his shiv'ring limbs sufficient hea t;Teased with the squalling babes' nocturnal cries.He restless on the dusty pillow lies.Similarly, the author of L tat de servitudebem oan ed, In an att ic with no door andno lock / Open to cold air all winter long / In a filthy and vile sort of garret / ARotten mattress is laid out on the ground. '^' 'Sleep, the poor man 's wealth, the husb and ma n's delight? Not in any conv entionalOld Bailey Sessions Papers, July 5, 1727; Legg,Low -Life, 99; Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,Lance Bertelsen, The Nonsense Club: Literature and Popular Culture. 749-1764 (Oxford, 1986), 29.^^ Torriano.Piazza universale di proverbi, 127. For the prevalence of communal sleeping, see JohnJervis, Jou rna l of Tou r of Fra nce , 1772, Ad diton al M anusc ripts 31192/fol. 40, British Library,Lond on; Alain Collomp, -Fam ilies: Hab itations and Cohabitatio ns, in Chartier, Passions of theRenaissance,57; Flandrin, Families in Former Times,98-9 9; Peter Benes, Sleeping Arran gem ents inEarly Massachusetts: The Newbury Household of Henry Lunt, Ha tter. in Early American ProbateInventories. Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife,Annual Proceedings,Benes, et al., eds. (1987):145-47. For the expression to pig, see theOED, s.v. pig ; Journal of Twisden [B radboan? ], 1693-94,1698, Miscellaneous English Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford; Edward Peacock, A Glossary ofWords Used in the Wapentakes of Maniey and Corringham, Lincolnshire (1877; rpt. edn., Vaduz, 1965),191; John Dunton,TeagueLand:or. A erryRamble to theWildIrish; L etters from Ireland 1698,EdwardMacLysaght, ed. (Blackrock, Ire., 1982), 32.'^ Dunton, Teague Land. 21;Five T ravel Scripts Com monly Attributed to Edward Ward HowardWilliam Troyer, ed. (New York, 1933), 5, 6; The T ravel Diaries of Thomas Robert Malthus, PatriciaJam es, ed. (London, 1966), 188;The Great Dirunal of Nicholas Blundell of Little Crosby . Lancashire,J. J.Bagley, ed., 3 vols. (Chester, Eng., 1968-72), 2: passim; G. E. and K. R. Fussell, The EnglishCountrywoman: A Farmhouse Social History. A.D. 500-1900 (New York, 1971), 102.

July 9, 1774, Philip Vickers Fithian, Joumal and Letters ofPhilip Vickers Fithian. 1773-1774: APlantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, Hunter Dickinson Farish, ed. (Williamsburg, Va., 1943), 178.


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36 2 A. Roger Ekirchsense, except for allowing a sometimes troubled respite from what was likely aneven mo re onerou s day. Th e Gods have bestowed Sleep upon us that we mighttake Rest for our Care s and forget our Sorrow s, noted a conte mp orary , not tomake it a continual To rm en tor. Especially, he adde d, since the Soul has noother Sleep to fly to. ' ' Not that most people regularly faced prolonged bouts ofwakefulness when in bed, for almost certainly they did not. It would be easy toexaggerate the toll taken by nightly annoyances. On the other hand, merely a seriesof brief disturbances of at most several minutes apiece, unknown even to thesleeper, can impose an enormous burden on the mind and body in terms of qualityof rest and physical repair. Far from consistently enjoying blissful repose, ordinarymen and women likely suffered some degree of sleep deprivation, feeling morefatigued upon awakening at dawn than when retiring at bedtime. All the morearduous as a consequence were their waking hours, especially when sleep debtswere allowed to accumulate from one day to the next and superiors remainedunsympathetic. Upon returning to his London quarters one evening to find his ma n asleep, Virginia's William Byrd II delivered a prom pt beating, as did th eYor kshire yeoman A dam Eyre to a maidserva nt for her sloathfulnesse. '^' Ifcomplaints are to be believed, the work of laborers was erratic and their behaviorlethargic deadene d slowness was one description of rural labor. At noon hemus t have his sleeping tim e, grou sed B ishop Jam es Pilkington in the late 1500s ofthe typical laborer. Previous historians have explained such behavior as the productof a pre-industrial work ethic, but allowance must also be made for the chronicfatigue that probably afflicted much of the early modern population, as depicted inThomas Rowlandson's drawing.Haym akers at Rest (see Figure 4). Indeed, nappingduring the day appears to have been common, with sleep less confined to nocturnalhours than it is in Western societies today.' '^ We can only wonder whether

without any real knowledge of such people's matters. Autobiography of John Younger, Shoemaker, St.Boswells (Edinburgh, 1S81), 133.'' ' Of Sup erstiti on, ^mcm -trt Weekly Mercury(Philade lphia), D ecem ber 16, 1742.f Ap ril 13. 1719, William By rd,The London Diary {717-1721) and O ther Writings,Louis B. Wrightand Marion Tinling, eds. (Oxford, 1958), 256; October 9, 1647, YorkshireDiaries and Autobiographiesin the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,2 vols. (Durha m, Eng., 1875), 1: 67; Charles P. Pollak, TheEffects of Noise on Slee p, inN oise and H ealth,Thom as H . Eay, ed. (New Yo rk, 99 ),4 3; Coren,SleepThieves, 72-74, 286; Lydia Dotto, Lo.sing Steep: How Your Sleep Habits Affect Your Life (New York,1990), 31. A story in the Middlesex Journal, September 19, 1772, criticized a wealthy widow forcontributing to the want of rest at night among her servants, whose hea lth was totally ruined anddestroyed . See also Di Giacao mo Agostinetti, C ento, e died ricordi che formano il buon fattor di villa(Venice, 1717), 257; Legg,Low -Life, 97; Tim Meldrum, Domestic Service and G ender 660-750: Lifeand Work in the London Household (Harlow, Eng., 211), 168. Little wonder that among the lowerclasses througho ut early mod ern Europe the mythical Land of Cockaign e exerted wide appeal. Notonly did this Utopian paradise overflow with food and drink, according to popular legend, but menrested in 'silken bed s, and he who Sleeps most earn s the mo st. The Delightful Journey toCockaig ne, quoted in Piero Cam poresi, The Land ofHunger Tania Croft-Murray, trans. (Cambridge,1996). 160-64; Edward Peter Caraco, -Pieter Bruegel's Lartd of Cockaigne (MA thesis. University ofVirginia, 1978); Herman Plei],D reaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life, DianeWebb, trans. (New York. 2001).42-43. 365-71. (My thanks to Columbia University Press for allowingme to see the pre-publication proofs.) Eor the unconventional view that ample rest among ser\ants and Le s E


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Sleep We Have Lost

F I G U R E 4: Thomas R owlandson, aymakersa t Rest 1798. Courtesy of W indsor Castle, The R oyai Collection 2000, Her Majesty Oueen Elizabeth II.

exhaustion occasioned other common symptoms of sleep deprivation, includinglosses in motivation and physical well-being as well as increases in irritability andsocial friction. W het her du e lo sleeping on a bed fouler than a rubbish hea p, or notbeing able to cover oneself, observed a Bolognese curate about insomnia amongthe poor, who can explain how much harm is d o n e ?

I AM AWAKE, bu t 'tis not tim e to rise , neith er have I yet slept eno ugh . . . I amawake , yet not in paine, anguish or feare, as thousa nds ar e. So went a sevente enth-cen tury re ligious m edita tion inte nd ed for the d ead of night. '' As if illness,inclement weather, and fleas were not enough, there was yet another, even morefamiliar, source of broken sleep, though few contemporaries regarded it in thatlight. So routine was this nightly interruption that it provoked little comment at thetime. Neither has it ever attracted scrutiny from historians, much less systematicinvestigation. But R obe rt Louis Stevenson share d the experienc e when hiking in theCv ennes; and because it had been a vital com m onplace of an earlier age, oldDurham, R ev. Jam es Scholefield, ed . (Lond on, 1842), 446. F or discussions of a pre-industrial workethic, see, for example, Sobel, World They Made Together, 25-26; E . P. Thomp son, Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism, Past and Present 38 (December 1967): 56-97; E dmund S.


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364 A. Roger Ekirchcountry-folk knew about it in the late nine teen th century . Som e probably still dotoday.

Until the close of the early modern era. Western Europeans on most eveningsexperienced two major intervals ofsleep bridged by up to an hour or more of quietwakefulness. In the absence of fuller descriptions, fragments in several languagesthat I have surveyed survive in sources ranging from depositions and diaries toimaginative literature. From these shards of information, we can piece together theessential features of this puzzling pattern of repose. The initial interval of slumberwas usually referred to as first sle ep , or, less often , first nap or dead sleep. ^- ^In Fren ch, the term was prem ier som me il or prem ier somme, ^*' in Italian, prim o so nn o or pri m o sono, ** ^ and in La tin, prim o so m no or conc ubia** Th e inte rven ing p eriod of consc iousnes s wh at Steven son poetically

For the term first slee p, I have discovered sixty-three referen ces within a total of fifty-eightdifferent sources from the period 1300-1800. See below in the text for examples. First nap appe arsin Colley Cibber, The Lady s Last Stake: or. The Wife s Resentment (London, 1708). 48; Tobias GeorgeSmollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, 2 vols. (Lond on, 1753), 1: 73; Emily B ron te,Wuthering Heights, Ian Jack, ed. (Oxford, 1981), 97. For dea d sleep , see Geoffrey Ch auce r, TheCanterbury Tales (Avon, Conn.. 1974), 93; Henry Roberts, Honurs Conquest (London, 1598). 134;RoviXey,All s Lost by Lust: Thomas Randolph, Poems w ith the Muses Looking-glasse .. (Oxford. 1638);Shirley James, The Constant Maid (London, 1640); Robert Dixon. Canidia: or, The Witches . . .(London, 1683), 6. The fewer references to segmented sleep I have found in early American sourcessuggests that this pattern, though present in North America, may have been less widespread than inEurope, for reasons ranging from differences in day/night ratios to the wider availability of candles andother forms of artificial illumination in the colonies. Two sourcesBenjam in Franklin. Letter of theDrutn. Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), April 23, 1730. and Hudson Muse to Thomas Muse. April19, 1771, in Original Letters . Willam and MaryQuarterly 2(April 1894): 240 contain the expression first na p. I have also found refe rence s to segm ented sleep in twelve works of Am erican fictionpublished during the first half of the nineteenth century. All the stories take place either in Americaor in Europe, with nearly half set before 1800. See. for example, Washington Irving. The Beauties ofWashington Irving. . . (Philadelphia. 1835). 152; \rv\ng, A Book of the Hudson . .(New Y ork, 1849), 51;Irving,BracebridgeHall, Tales ofaTraveller, TheAlhambra (New York, 1991), 398. 813; Richard PennSmith. The Forsaken: A Tale, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1831), 2: 211; James Fenimore Cooper. The Waysof the Hour (New York, 1850), 276; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches: A Wonder Book for Girlsand Boys, TanglewoodTalesfor G irls and Boys, Roy Harvey Pearce. ed. (New York, 1982), 293. Whilevisiting London one winter. Hawthorne, in fact, noted a difference in the nature of English nights andsleep from his own experience in New Engla nd: At this season, how long the nights arefrom the firstgathering gloom of twilight, when the grate in my office begins to grow ruddier, all through dinnertime,and the putting to bed of the children, and the lengthened evening, with its books or its drowsiness,our own getting to bed, the brief awakenings through the many dark hours, and then the creepingonward of morning. It seems an age between light and light. January 6, 1854, Haw thorne , The EnglishNotebooks (New Y ork. 1962). 44.

^ I have found twenty-one references to these terms within a total of nineteen sources from theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Pierre de Deimer. L acadmie de l artpotique (Paris,1610), 260; Honor d'Urf, L astre, M. H ughes Vaganay, ed., 5 vols. (Genev a. 1966), 2: 267, 3: 442;Madame de Svign, Correspondance, 2 vols. (Paris. 1972), 1: 598; [Claude-Phillippe de Tubires,Comte de Caylus],Feries nouvelles, 2vols. ([Paris], 1741), 1: 298, 2; 48; and b oth the tales and fablesof Jean de La Fontaine. For primo sonn o and primo sono, the Op era del Vocab olario Italiano datab ase of earlyItalian literature, furnished by the ItalNet consortium (on the World Wide Web at www.lib.uchica-go.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/OVI/). contains fifty-seven references within a total of thirty-two textsfrom just the fourteenth century. See, for example. Giovanni Boccaccio. Decameron, V. Branca, ed.(Floren ce, 1976). 229, 270, 353, 542, 543. 568, 591,592; F ranco Sacchetti. Trecentonovelle,V. Pernicone,ed. (Florence, 1946), 433, 536.


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SleepWeHave Lost 365labeled a nightly resurrection bore no name, other than the generic term watch or wa tching to indicate a period of wakefulness that stem m ed, aceordingto theOxford English Dictionary, from disinclination or incapacity for sleep . Twocon trastin g texts refer to the time of first waking. Th e succe eding interval ofslumb er was called seco nd or m orn ing sleep.^ Both phases lasted roughly thesame length of time, with individuals waking sometim e after midnight beforeultimately falling back to sleep. Not all people, of course, including most whoretired early enough to experience two intervals of slumber, slept according to thesame timetable. The later at night that individuals went to bed, the later they stirredafter their initial sleep; or, if they retired past midnight, they would likely not haveawak ened at all until dawn . Thu s in Th e Squ ire's Ta le, C an ace e slept soonafter evening fell and subsequently awa kened in the early mo rning following herfirst sleep ; w hereas he r com panio ns, staying up much later, lay asleep till it wasfully p rim e (daylight). Similarly, William Baldwin's sixteenth-century sa tireBewarethe Cat recounts a quarrel between the protagonist, newly come unto bed, andtwo roo m m ates who had already slept their first sleep. ^'

Western Europeans of varying backgrounds referred to both intervals as if theprospect of awakening in the middle of the night was utterly familiar to contem-pora ries and thus require d no elabo ration . At mid-night when thou wak'st fromsleepe . . . , wrote the Stuart poet George W ither; while in the view of John Locke, Th at all men sleep by intervals was a comm on f eature of life, extending as well tomuch of brute creation, as Stevenson would later discern.^2 Although details of thispattern are scarce, for the thirteenth-century Catalan philosopher Ramn Lull, prim o som no stretched from mid-evening to early mo rning, wh ereas WilliamHarrison in his mid-sixteenth-centuryDescriptionof England referred to the dull or

Christian Philippus Brinck, Dodecas thesium inauguralium juridicarum de somno (Basil, [1669]). For concubia noc te, see D. P. Simpson, C asselVs Latin Dictionary (London, 1982), 128; Cicero, DeSenectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, William A rmistead Falconer, tran s. (Camb ridge, 1964), 287;Tacitus in Five Volumes,Clifford H. Mo ore and John Jackson, tra ns. (Cam bridge, Mass., 1969), 2: 446,3: 310; Livy with an English Translation in Fourteen Volumes, F. G. Moore, trans. (Cambridge, Mass.,1966), 6; 372; Ptautus with an English Translation, Paul Nixon, trans., 5 vols. (London, 1960), 5: 182;Pliny, Natural History, with an English Translation in Ten Volumes, W. H. S. Jones, trans. (Cambridge,Mass., 1963), 8: 254; Paulus Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos libri VII, Marie-Pierre Arnaud-Lindet, trans., 3 vols. (Paris, 1990-91), 2: book 4, cap. 18; Jacobus Andreas Crusius, De nocte etnocturnis o fficiis . . . (Bremae, 1660), 44; Macrobius, The Saturnalia, Percival Vaughan Davies, trans,(New York, 1969), 42.

^OED, s.v. wa tching ; M id-night Though ts, Writ, as Some Think, by a London-W higg, or aWestminster Tory . . (London, 1682), A 2, 17;Private P rayers, Put Forth by Authority during the Reign ofQueen Elizabeth, Rev. William Keatinge Clay, ed. (1851; rpt. edn., London, 1968), 440-41 . Bullein, New Boke of Phisicke, 90; Charles Johnstone, Chrysal: or. The Adventures of a Guinea(London, 1760), 20; Notes and Queries, 2d ser., 5 (M arch 13, 1858): 207; Richard Saun ders,Physiognomie, and Chiromancie, Metoposcopie . . . (London, 1653), 216; Thomas Tryon, A Treatise ofDream s Visions . .. (London, 1689), 14.^' Chaucer,Canterbury Tales,403; William Baldwin,Bewarethe Cat: TheFirst EnglishNovel,William

A. Ringler, Jr., and Michael Flachmann, eds. (San Marino, Calif. 1988), 5.^- Geo rge W ither, Ivvenila (London, 1633), 239; John Locke, An Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding (London, 1690), 589. See also Francis Peck,Desiderratacuriosa:or A Collection of Divers


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366 A. Roger Ekirchdead of the night, which is midnight, when men be in their first or dead slCustom ary usage confirms that first sleep constituted a distinct period of timefollowed by an interval of wakefulness. Typically, descriptions recounted how anaroused individual had had , take n, or gotte n his or her first sleep . I ammo re watchful, asserted Ra m pino in Sir William D'A venan t 's The UnfortunateLovers, than a sick cons table after his first sleep on a cold be nc h. An earlyseventeenth-century Scottish legal deposition referred to Jon Cokburne, a weaver, haveing gottin his first sleip and awaiking furth thairof, while Noel Tai l lepied 's^Treatise of Ghostsalluded even more directly to abou t midnight when a man wakesfrom h is first sleep, ''* Altho ugh in some de scrip tions a neig hb or's q ua rre l or abarking dog woke people prematurely from their initial sleep, the vast weight ofsurviving evidence indicates that awakening naturally was routine, not the conse-quence of disturbed or fitful slumber. Medical books, in fact, from the fifteenth toeighteenth centuries frequently advised sleepers, for better digestion and moretranq uil rep ose , to lie on their right side durin g the fyrste sle pe and after th efyrste slepe turn e on the lefte syde. ^ ^ An d even thoug h E m m anu el Le Roy L adu rieinvestigated no further, his study of fourteen th-centu ry M ontaillou notes that thehou r of the first sle ep was a custom ary division of night, as was th e hou r half-waythrough the first sleep. ^ ^

At first glance, it is tem pting to view this patte rn of broke n sleep as a cultural relicrooted in early Christian experience. Ever since St. Benedict in the sixth centuryrequired that monks rise after midnight for the recital of verses and psalms, this likeother regulations of the Benedictine order had spread to growing numbers ofFrankisb and German monasteries. By the High Middle Ages, the Catholic Churchactively encouraged early morning prayer among Christians as a means of appealingto God during the still hours of darkness^'' But while Christian teachings un-

'' Raim undus Lullus, Liber d e regionibus sanitatis et informitatis (n.p., 1995), 107; Harrison,Description of England, 382.^'iThe Dramatic Worksof Sir W illiam D Avenant, 5vois. {1872-74; rpt. edn.. New York, 1964), 3: 75;Dittay, December 18, 1644, in Selected Justiciary Cases. 624-1650. J. Irvine Sm ith, ed.. 3 vols.(Edinburgh, 1953-74), 3: 642; Nol Taillepied, ^ Treatise of Gho sts . . . , Montague Sum mers, t rans.(1933; rpt. edn., Ann Arbor, Mich., 1971), 97-98. See also, for example, Tristan and the Round Table,Anne Sbaver, ed. (Binghamton, N.Y., 1983), 101, 153; Boccaccio, The Decameron, Edward Hutton,trans. (New York, 1940), 396. 397; The Facetious Nights of Straparola, W. G. Waters, trans., 4 vols.(Bos ton, 1915), 2: 190; Baldwin. Bewarethe Cat,5; Geo rge Fidge, The English Gusman (London, 1652),11,17;Endimion: An Excellent Fancy First Composed in French by Mounsieur Gombauld, Richard Hurst,trans. (London, 1639), 74; The Works of George Farquhar. Shirley Strum Kenny, ed., 2 vols. (Oxford,1988), I: 100.

^^ Governal, In His Tretyse That Is Cleped Governayle of Helthe (New York, 1969); Bullein, NeweBoke of Phisicke, 90; Boorde, Compendyous Regyment: Andr Du Laurens, A Discourse of thePreservation of theSight: Of Melancholike Diseases . . . , Sanford V. Larkcy, ed., Richard Surftet, trans.([LondonI, 1938), 190; Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York, 1938), 464-65;yaughm , Naturall and ArtificialDirections for Health,53; Venner. Via recta.275; Francis de Valangin,A Treatise on D iet: or. The Management of H uman Life (London, 1768), 288. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error Barbara Bray, trans. (NewYork, 1978), 277, 227. See also Jean Duvernoy, ed.. L e registred inquisition de Jacques Fournier (Evcquede Pamiers). 38-325, 3 vols. (Toulo use, 1965), 1: 243. Nigh t vigils, declared tbe twelfth-century sc holar Alan of Lille, were not instituted withou t


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Sleep We Have Lost 367doubtedly popularized the regimen of early morning prayer, the ehurch itself wasnot responsible for introducing segmented sleep. However much it colonized theperiod of wakefulness between intervals of slumber, references to "first sleep"antedate Christianity's early years of growth. Not only did such figures outside thechurch as Pausan ias and Plutarch invoke the term in their writings, so, too , did earlyclassical writers, including Livy in his history of Rome, Virgil in the Aeneid bothcomposed in the first century B C, and Homer in the Odyssey,written in either thelate eighth or early seventh century BC ^"Conversely, in the twentieth century, somenon-Western cultures with religious beliefs other than Christianity have longexhibited a segmented pattern of sleep remarkably similar to that of pre-industrialEuropeans. Anthropologists have found villages of the Tiv, Chagga, and G/wi, forexample, in Africa to be surprisingly alive after midnight with newly roused adultsand children . Of the Tiv in centra l Nigeria, a study in 1969 recor ded, "At night, theywake when they will and talk with anyone else awake in the hut." The Tiv evenemploy the terms "first sleep" and "second sleep" as traditional intervals of time,^"Thus the basic puzzle remainshow to explain this curious anomaly or, in truth,the more genuine mystery of consolidated sleep that we experience today. For thereis every reason to believe that segmented sleep, such as many wild animals stillexhibit, had long been the natural pattern of our slumber before the modern age,with a provenance as old as humankind. Contrary to Stevenson's suspicions, the keyto this enigma has little to do with sleeping outdoors, although shepherds andhunters were beneficiaries. Instead, the answer appears to lie in what theseindividuals shared with most other people at night during the early modern era. Assuggested by recent experiments at the National Institute of Mental Health inB ethesd a, M aryland, the explanation likely rests in the darknes s that envelopedmost pre-industrial families. In attempting to recreate conditions of "prehistoric"sleep. Dr. Thomas Wehr and his colleagues at NIMH found that human subjects,deprived at night of artificial light over a span of several weeks, eventually exhibiteda pattern of broken slumberastonishingly, one practically identical to that ofpre-industrial households. Without artificial light for up to fourteen hours eachnight, Wehr's subjects first lay awake in bed for two hours, slept for four, awakenedcentury. Alan of Lille, The Art of Preaching.Gillian R. Evans, tra ns. (Kalam azoo, Mich., 1981), 136;Abbot Gasquet,English Monastic Life (London, 1905), 111-12; C. H. Lawrence,Medieval Monasticism:Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the M iddle Ages (London, 1984), 28-30; John M.Staudcnmaier, S.J., "What Ever Happened to the Holy Dark in the West? The Enlightenment Idealand the European Mystical Tradition," in Progress: Fact or Illusion? Leo Marx and B ruce Mazlish, eds.(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996). 184., ^ F .G. Moore, Livy,6: 372-73 ; Virgil,TheAeneid, Robert Fitzgerald, ed., John Dryden, trans. (NewYork, |1965]), 43; Pausanias, Description o

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