And what, you may ask, has this to do with history? Well, first, as I lie awake at 3:00 a.m., making endless lists in my head, I ponder those halcyon days of nine unbroken hours of sleep, and I remember two things simultaneously. First, Colonial New Englanders did not sleep like we do today, and second, on Saturday nights in Butterfield, I slept like a Puritan.
This could spin out over hours, and indeed, if you corner me at a cocktail party and ask me about lighting, time and sleep, be prepared to stay for a while. The essence of it is this: here in Newbury in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was darkness, real, true, no-Haverhill-lights-on-the-horizon darkness, and silence. To fight this darkness there was a limited arsenal of weapons such as candles, rushlights (plant stems dipped in grease or tar) and oil lamps. Light was inefficient, labor intensive and expensive, so most people went to bed when it got dark and got up when it was light. In communities where houses clustered close together and portable flame could decimate a community in a matter of hours, curfews (from the French couvre-feu or cover fire) enforced the darkness. Light was everything. Cities were built around it, houses oriented to it.
In August in New England there are ten hours of darkness. It is dark for fifteen hours in December. Even the hardest-working Newbury residents did not need quite that much sleep. So what did they do? They got up halfway through the night, had a pee, stoked the fire, went for a walk to smoke a pipe with a neighbor. If there was a full moon, they might do some work, have a drink, run errands, even slaughter some hogs. From 1641, “…after the sow was killed..he killed another for (Goodwife) Goody Chaffy which had a spot in the skin; and another for himself. Mr. Kayne would have his killed at midnight.”
Ever wonder how so many babies were made in the crowded chambers of the 17th century? We have the hours between “first” and “full” bedtime to thank, in part, for the bit of privacy afforded couples while children slept.
Of course, the night was also the perfect time for illicit liaisons, theft and tomfoolery of all sorts. In 1662, in the records, a notorious seduction case involving two doctors and a plethora of potential partners, the following appears, “Dr. Cordwing, being at Hampton at …Goodman Tuck's and Mr. Greenland being also present, it being near midnight or full bedtime, said Cordwing desired deponent to go and get Mary Wedgwood, saying she was the prettiest maid in town, and if she would not come to get Sarah Tayler or Mary Wall, as he had a letter in his pocket for the latter.” It was a young Newbury wife, Mary Rolfe, who succumbed to the charms of Drs. Cordwing and Greenland in the end.
The scene of the seduction is interesting to me, not so much for the actual act, which involved Dr. Greenland whipping off his clothes and jumping into bed with Mary Rolfe, who then shrieked and pretended to faint, but because of how they were discovered. It was January 1663, and there must have been a full moon because Henry Lesenby, a servant of about eighteen, is out doing his master’s business at “eleven or twelve o'clock at night,” when he “heard a shriek so I went straight into the house. I asked Goody Rolfe what was the matter and she said nothing, but I went to the bedside because I thought there was somebody there.”
Dr. Greenland had been let into the house late at night to leap in bed with Mary Rolfe by requesting that he be let in to smoke a pipe with her and her friend, a perfectly routine nocturnal activity.
And what has this to do with a dorm room at UMass? On Saturday nights, my door was open from 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. I would wake up and put in a movie, and all the stragglers, the still-ups and the romantically disappointed, the inebriated, homesick and lonely would pile into my room, sprawled on the floor, on the bed, draped over chairs, and we would spend a delicious hour in peaceful company until one by one, they all trundled off to bed. I remember this hour as a beautiful part of my life, this half-asleep gathering of those in need of comfort and company.
As ruled by the clock as we are these days, I do not expect that this is a tradition I will revive, but as I write this in the wee hours, I like to think of you, the moonlight wanderers, the late-night ponderers, sipping your tea or reading your book as the stars shine over Old Newbury, as they have since time out of mind.
