On Saturday evening, we drove up to Old Sturbridge Village for their “Evening of Illumination” tour. The village is by no means as fancy as the house depicted at left, but the gentle quality of the candlelight captured by Henry Sargent reminds me of the evening. I took no photos, because I just wanted to enjoy the experience…and learn from it.
Candles used in New England were usually home made, dipped, and of tallow. (See here for one reference.) The Browns of Providence had a spermaceti candle manufactory, and people in cities and towns often bought candles–by the pound, not by the stick. Spermaceti supposedly burns brighter than beeswax or tallow, but the only spermaceti candles I know of are accessioned museum objects and will never be lit.
In thinking about upcoming programs at two different sites, I’ve been thinking about what it was like to live in the dark, and to work mostly within the sun’s hours, and then judiciously by candle light. Sharon Burnston says, “Sew by daylight, knit by candlelight,” and if you think about process, you can imagine that in low light, even the fine thread of sock knitting is far more manageable than fine sewing.
Large fireplaces provided both heat and light, and candles are surprisingly bright. I suspect that an evening by a fireplace, reading aloud by candlelight while a friend or sibling knit, was pleasant enough in a wool gown, or with a shawl over muslin. The trip to bed would have been another matter, and getting up something else indeed.
It is also well to remember that class difference would have created comfort differences: a servant would have been colder getting up than the master, for the servant would rise in a cold room and be expected to light a fire in the master’s bedroom. Rural workers would also have risen in a cold room, to cold or frozen water.
These are some of the things I’m thinking about as I read and look and get ready for programs, and for winter.
Back during the (last) gas crisis, I stayed in an old farmhouse one Christmas night. Heat came from a banked wood stove and the enormous down comforter over the narrow bed (and my tres chic grey sweats and wooly socks). Getting up WAS another matter, but by pulling my first layer of clothes into the bed with me and dressing clumsily under the covers, I was able to brave the chill. My friend the host explained that in really cold weather (!) they used an old-fashioned warming pan full of the banked coals to take the chill off the beds. (Flannel wrapped bricks were another option.) She also told me that in olden times people just didn’t spend time in their bedrooms alone — they gathered in the kitchen, around the stove, or in the parlor with a fireplace. I also suspect they were tougher and more physically active than we, judging from my hearty grandma’s ability to withstand a chill!
What a great and sensitive thing to ponder, though — what you do during the day being governed by what natural light lets you see. Keep it coming!
Auntie N
Thank you for your lovely comment! I have read about warming pans, in fact, and could write about cold beds…warming pans were for the ill and infirm and sissies, apparently. Count me among the sissies, for I wear socks to bed now.
Thanks for reading!
Hey, I’m with the Swedes, who (apparently) claim “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.” And that would mean, I guess, that we just have to let our inner sissies rule. If I end up looking like a moving mountain of fabric come the next Nor’easter, well, so be it!
NN
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