At Day's Close: Night in Times Past by Ekirch A. Roger

Author:Ekirch, A. Roger [Ekirch, A. Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2006-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

Such, then, was the alternate realm inhabited by substantial segments of the early modern population on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. One can only speculate on the broader consequences this nocturnal universe had for the character of daily life, including whether its impact had any positive value from the perspective of the established order. It is after all true that some youth groups contributed to social control, disciplining adulterers, abusive husbands, and cuckolds for violating common morality. Often occurring at night, charivaris in France, mattinata in Italy, and “skimmington rides” in England subjected errant neighbors to “rough music,” mockery, and on occasion, physical abuse. Such traditional rituals helped to reaffirm the sanctity of marriage, which the young themselves expected one day to embrace. For the same reason, bachelors were known to battle adolescent bands from rival communities in order to protect the virginity of local maidens. And, too, gangs of apprentices sometimes razed houses of prostitution, prompting Charles II to inquire incredulously, “Why do they go to them then?”66

Still, did these bands represent moral watchdogs or, more often perhaps, wolves in sheeps’ clothing? For there remains a strong possibility that such outbursts served as a frequent pretext for mischief, as the historian Daniel Fabre has remarked in noting the contradiction of “achieving order through disorder.” An early eighteenth-century poem, “The Libertine’s Choice,” suggested as much in recounting the drunken antics of the young when attacking brothels: “When thus well freighted with the chearful juice, / We’d sally forth and give our selves a loose, / Break brothel windows, scowre the crazy watch, / And with fresh mischiefs crown the nights debauch.” Charivaris, despite their conservative purpose, were condemned, beginning in the sixteenth century, by civil and religious leaders. Too often, from the authorities’ point of view, these “nocturnal assemblies” degenerated into riots. “Frequently there are brawls,” Felix Platter observed in France.67 Further, the incidence of such popular rituals, however an expression of communal values, paled in comparison to the number of times bands voiced slogans and perpetrated violence diametrically opposed to the prevailing social order.

So, also, in the political realm, the threat of nighttime violence enforced conformity. In English and American cities, especially during the eighteenth century, street crowds celebrated military triumphs as well as more radical causes by compelling households to place lit candles in their windows—those that did not thus signal their solidarity risked having their homes pelted with rocks. Of anti-Irish mobs on a summer evening in London in 1736, an onlooker reported, “Late that night assembled many hundred disturbers of the peace, proclaiming thro’ the streets a law of their own making, viz. that every Englishman should put out lights in their windows; and then the cry run, Down with the Irish.” Whatever the source of agitation, the “mob,” rather than guardians of the law, controlled the streets after dark.68

Perhaps, in the eyes of authorities, nighttime served the well-known function of a safety valve, a concept familiar to the age. Resigned to the human capacity

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