The Dark Side of Lighting:Early Modern Candlelight As Reflected in Period Satires

By Mark A. Turdo

© 2013

A Guide for Museum Professionals, Docents, Reenactors, and Lighting Historians.

IntroductionToday we use candles to create ambiance. Lit for special occasions, we tend to leave them alone to burn brightly until the moment or the meal is over. We only have to think about them when we light them and when we blow them out.

However, in early modern Britain and America (encompassing the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries) candles were used for more than atmosphere. Because daily reliance on them is so foreign to us, candles and candlelight have always attracted a great deal of attention from historians of domestic life. They are fond of saying how expensive candles were or which kind (tallow, bayberry, spermaceti, or beeswax) provided better light.1

Most of these studies also mention that tallow candles were particularly nasty, smoking and dripping as they burned. But what does that mean really? How bad could they have been?

Most observers in the early-modern period did not record their daily relationship with artificial light because it was so mundane. When they do talk about candles and candlelight they mention the extraordinary, such as when candles burned brightly and with less smoke and mess or, more commonly, when they created a miserable atmosphere. The exception to this are the satirists and humorists who took the time to record their daily interaction with artificial light.

Satirical SourcesSatires of all kinds have become a favorite source for those studying life in the early modern era. It has provided a wealth of details for everything from clothing to table settings to sex.2 Since these satires exposed reality (and its accompanying absurdity) and no topic was off-limits, they are a rich source for understanding early modern life, including candlelight.

Fortunately, the internet has provided renewed access to period satires. Satirical books and prints are now readily available. Almost all of the sources for this essay are accessible online, including:

The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), By Francis Grose3

The Miseries of Human Life (1816), Volume I, By James Beresford4

The Miseries of Human Life (1817), Volume II, by James Beresford5

Directions to Servants (originally 1731), by Jonathon Swift6

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Pleasant scenes such as this hide the reality of early modern lighting. December by Thomas Burford, 1745-1747. © Trustees of the British Museum.

The Dark Side of LightingCandles made before the early nineteenth century did not have self-consuming wicks and wax. Instead wicks were essentially a length of spun or twisted linen or cotton, encased in a soft, meltable substance.7 While several types of candle wax were available, tallow (rendered animal fat) candles were the most common. When lit, they required constant attention: you had to snuff the wick, or trim it, every few minutes. If you did not, you invited a "thief in a candle," which meant that, "part of the wick or snuff, which falling on the tallow, burns and melts it, and causing it to gutter, thus steals it away."8 In other words, the candle would burn itself out while distributing soot and grease about the immediate vicinity.

Even before you lit one, candles provided a sensory assault. Rendering tallow for candle-making was an odorous task, even for a passerby who would receive

News from your nose that you are passing by a Tallow chandler's shop on melting-day, - and on setting off, as you would from a mad dog, finding yourself still hunted down by the fumes; till you sink with fatigue, and burst for want of wind.9

Having survived the chandler's and brought a parcel of his work home, you now had the joy of:

Attempting to light a tallow candle of which the short wick is so effectually crushed down and buried into the body of the tallow, that it cannot be set up; so that, on stooping it to the flame of another candle, you, for a long time, only melt the grease in a stream over the table, or carpet: when you have, at length, caught a precarious glimmer, it is extinguished as soon as you have crept to the door, or (what is worse) to the stairs... this three or four times over. At last, to be sure, the wick attains its proper length; - but, fair and softly! - this advantage is not purchased but at the exorbitant price of seeing the well of tallow overflow its sides and pour down a bumper of blubber into the socket.10

Once lit, you need to keep the wick constantly trimmed or it burned too quickly and melted the candle. A pair of snuffers, a scissor-like tool with a box on the end for catching wick soot, was used to keep wicks in good order. Despite their usefulness, they had the potential for making a mess:

The snuffers scattering their contents over the card table; while, in trying to remedy the affliction, you crush the black mischief into the green cloth, from which it spreads to the cards, and thence to your fingers, with the rapidity (and almost the fatality) of poison.11

Carrying a flat candle stick in such a manner that the snuffers (not to mention the extinguisher) tilt off, open in their fall, and scatter their contents over the carpet.12

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CAUTION: Do not operate snuffers while distracted. The Family Party, or, Prince Bladduds Man Traps!! by Isaac Cruikshank, 1799. Collection of the Lewis Walpole Library.

Either this happened a lot or it was an easy joke. Lady Godina's rout; -or- Peeping-Tom spying out Pope-Joan by James Gillray, 1796. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Once the candle is lit, you could sit back, relax, and turn your attention back to the candle:

Being startled from a nap in your chair by a dazzling blaze of light, which, on examination proves to proceed from your candles having been, each, fluted down on one side by a foot and a half of lobbing wick, which having first flooded the table and every thing upon it, in a torrent of tallow, - descends in a cataract to the carpet.13

Reading or writing by one candle, and that so dim, that it would give no light, but for a fresh thief which rises in it every moment, and which perpetually calls you from your book, or letter, to poke it off - in doing which, you find your paper always ready to receive it.14

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Holding the candle closer was not such a good idea either. The Politician by John Keyse Sherwin after William Hogarth, 1775. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Despite the leash a candle had on you, you still needed to move about, thus creating new memorable moments:

Elbowing off both your candles at once, and then setting them up in this state:15

Walking home late by the brink of the cliff, on a black, blustering night, with a lantern perforated at the sides, as well as at the top; till the wind, after repeatedly trying to blow out your candle for you, at last - succeeds.16

Waking, stiff and frozen, from a long sleep in your chair, by the fire-side; then, crouching closer and closer over the miserable embers, for want of courage to go up to bed; and so, keeping in the cold to be warm! - when you go at last, your candle stinks out in the passage, and you are left to grope your way, blundering, and breaking your shins at every step, against the bannisters...17

Being still didn't help either:

On the precious Concert-night, you must know, I had stood almost the whole evening; till, at length, I had the good luck to find a vacant seat, immediately under a huge chandelier! - Mem: my new black coat presently turned to grey by the tears of the candles.18

The flame (but not the smell) of your candle going out, as you [lie] sick and sleepless...19

Candles added another misery in a world without window screens:

On an August evening - windows open, and candles lighted - the incessant visits of gnats, moths, earwigs, &c. &c. without invitation; so that one half of your time passes in killing some of your guests, and the other in helping the rest to kill themselves.20

Like so many things, candles worked well when you didn't want them to:

The effect of the sudden entrance of lighted candles upon your eyes and mind, when you are buried in a drowsy, muzzing, solitary, twilight reverie.21

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Getting HelpMaintaining candles was a messy, unpleasant job. If possible you tried to get others to tend them for you. For example in the British Army a junior officer had the job of snuffing candles and keeping the fire. He was called the skink or the boots.22 In civilian life you had servants to mind the candles, if you could afford them. But the help were not always so helpful.

Jonathan Swift's Directions to Servants is perhaps the most accurate reflection of what really went on in English and American gentry homes. Swift's Directions covered just about every aspect of household management. It even reached down to the maintenance and use of candles among servants.

First and foremost, was the butler, the king of the household servants and their candlelight:

There is nothing wherein the skill of a butler more appears, than in the management of candles, whereof, although some part may fall to the share of the other servants, yet you being the principal person concerned, I shall direct my instructions upon this article to you only, leaving to your fellow servants to apply them upon occasion.23

Butlers were expected to manage the household and its candle usage as economically as possible, even if it meant inconveniencing everyone else:

You cannot but observe of late years the great extravagance among the gentry, upon the article of candles, which a good butler ought by all means to discourage, both to save his own pains and his master's money: this may be contrived several ways; especially when you are ordered to put candles into the sconces.24

Sconces are great wasters of candles, and you, who are always to consider the advantage of your master, should do your utmost to encourage them: therefore your business must be to press the candle with both your hands into the socket, so as to make it lean in such a manner, that the grease may drop all upon the floor, if some lady's head-dress or gentleman's perriwig be not ready to intercept it: you may likewise stick the candle so loose, that it will fall Upon the glass of the sconce, and break it into shatters; this will save your master many a fair penny in the year, both in candles and to the glass-man, and yourself much labour; for the sconces spoiled cannot be used.

...to avoid burning day-light, and to save your master's candles, never bring them up till half an hour after it be dark, although they are called for never so often.25

After supper, if it be dark, carry your plate and china together in the same basket, to save candle light, for you know your pantry well enough to put them up in the dark.26

No matter how sparingly candles were used, at some point after dusk they needed to be lit. But it was not a simple matter of putting a fresh candle in a candlestick. Occasionally servants had to install candles in rather inventive ways:

When you prepare your candles, wrap them up in a piece of brown paper, and so stick them into the socket: let the paper come half way up the candle, which looks handsome if anybody should come in.27

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When your candle is too big for the socket, melt it to a right size in the fire; and to hide the smoke, wrap it in paper half way up.

Let your sockets be full of grease to the brim, with the old snuff at the top, and then stick on your fresh candles. It is true, this may endanger their falling, but the candles will appear so much the longer and handsomer before company. At other times, for variety, put your candles loose in the sockets to shew they are clean to the bottom.28

Sometimes servants didn't have candlesticks. To overcome this, they could be rather creative:

The servants candlesticks are generally broken, for nothing can last for ever. But you may find out many expedients; you may conveniently stick your candle in a bottle, or with a lump of butter against the wainscot, in a powder-horn, or in an old shoe, or in a cleft stick, or in the barrel of a pistol, or upon its own grease on a table, in a coffee-cup, or a drinking glass, a horn can, a teapot, a twisted napkin, a mustard pot, an inkhorn, a marrowbone, a piece of dough, or you may cut a hole in the loaf, and stick it there.29

In all fairness, servants could be just as careless with their master's lighting equipment as their own:

There is no indignity so great to one your station, as that of lighting your master in the streets with a lanthorn; and therefore it is very honest policy to try all arts how to evade it: besides, it shews your master to be either poor or covetous, which are the two worst qualities you can meet with in any service. When I was under these circumstances, I made use of several wise expedients, which I here recommend to you: sometimes I took a candle so long, that it reached to the very top of the lanthorn and burned it: but my master after a good beating ordered me to

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One did not always need to be with the servants to find, "in a bottle neck was fix'd a candle," such as the one on the mantle. Untitled by John June, c. 1745. © Trustees of the British Museum.

paste it over with paper. I then used a middling candle, but stuck it so loose in the socket, that it leaned towards one side, and burned a whole quarter of the horn. Then I used a bit of candle of half ah inch, which sunk in the socket, and melted the folder, and forced my master to walk half the way in the dark. Then he made me stick two inches of candle in the place where the socket was; after which I pretended to stumble, put out the candle, and broke all the tin part to pieces: at last he was forced to make use of a lanthorn boy out of perfect good husbandry.30

While snuffers may have made trimming candles easier, servants could make it more difficult:

When you have snuffed the candle, always leave the snuffers open, for the snuff will of itself burn away to ashes, and cannot fall out and dirty the table, when you snuff the candles again.31

Snuff the candles at supper as they stand on the table, which is much the securest way; because if the burning snuff happens to get out of the snuffers, you have a chance that it may fall into a dish of soup, sack-posset, rice-milk, or the like, where it will be immediately extinguished with very little stink.

If a servant couldn't find the snuffers, he or she could always:

Snuff the candles with your fingers, and throw the snuff on the floor; then tread it out to prevent stinking: this method will very much save the snuffers from wearing out. You ought also to snuff them close to the tallow, which will make them run, and so encrease the perquisite of the cook's kitchen-stuff; for she is the person you ought, in prudence, to be well with.32

Naturally, candlelight puts one in a romantic mood, even servants, and burning candles gave them a chance to:

Write your own name, and your sweetheart's, with the smoak of a candle, on the roof of the kitchen, or the servants hall, to shew your learning.33

Servants sometimes found advantage in not letting candles burn down:

Never let the candles burn too low, but give them, as a lawful perquisite, to your friend the cook to increase her kitchen-stuff; or, if this be not allowed in your house, give them in charity to the poor neighbours, who often run on your errands.34

Ultimately candles needed to be extinguished, but busy servants could always save time by allowing nature to take its course:

Be saving of your candles, and let those in the sconces of the hall, the stairs, and in the lanthorn, burn down into the sockets, until they go out of themselves, for which your master and lady will commend your thriftiness, as soon as they shall smell the snuff.35

The more industrious servants could always find creative ways of putting them out:

There are several ways of putting out candles, and you ought to be instructed in them all: you may run the candle end against the wainscot, which puts the snuff out immediately: you may lay

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it on the ground, and tread the snuff out with your foot: you may hold it upside down, until it is choaked with its own grease: or cram it into the socket of the candlestick: you may whirl it round in your hand till it goes out: when you go to bed, after you have made water, you may dip the candle end into the chamber pot: you may spit on your finger and thumb, and pinch the snuff till it goes out. The cook may run the candle's nose into the meal tub, or the groom into a vessel of oats, or a lock of hay, or a heap of litter: the house-maid may put out her candle by running it against a looking-glass, which nothing cleans so well as candle snuff: but the quickest and best of all methods is, to blow it out with your breath, which leaves the candle clear, and readier to be lighted.36

Of course blowing the candle out with one's breath had an added “benefit”:

When you go to bed, be sure take care of fire; and therefore blow the candle out with your breath, and then thrust it under your bed. Note the smell of the snuff is very good against vapours.37

ConclusionSatire provides easy access to the realities (or miseries, as Beresford called them) of daily life in the early modern period. And, as we have seen, candles provided enough reality to drive anyone mad. It is a wonder that anyone could keep a thought in their head long enough to finish a task, read a passage, or write a letter (which had the added fun of dipping one's quill repeatedly while also attending the candles). Perhaps it would have been best to follow Swift's final direction to butlers, which was to, "Do all in the dark" to save both candles and one's sanity38

The author would like to thank Kimberly D. Boice, Jane Coughlin, Susan M. Dreydoppel, and Tiffany Fisk-Watts for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. As usual though, any mistakes are mine.

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1 See Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York:Vintage Books, 1992), 124-125; Jane C. Nylander. Our Own Snug Fire: Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 106-111; John C. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities & Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 111-140; Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett, At Home: The American Family 1750-1850 (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1990), 140-162; The most complete source is William O'Dea, The Social History of Lighting (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). The PastMasters, a living history organization dedicated to early southeast Pennsylvania domestic history, have moved beyond the archival sources and experimented with each kind of candle to identify their' qualities of texture, flame, smoke, drip, reflected light, and smell. Joan Pitts, "A Scholarly Pursuit" in PastMasters News, Volume 3, Issue 2 (Spring 2000), 4-5.

2 For examples see the blogs Two Nerdy History Girls at http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/ and Georgian Bawdyhouse at http://georgianbawdyhouse.wordpress.com/. A wonderful study using satire is Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London (New York: Walker & Company, 2006).

3 Found at http://books.google.com/books?id=NqHteIy-lXYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. All page references refer to this text.

4 Found at http://books.google.com/books?id=HpMDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. All page references refer to this text.

5 Found at http://books.google.com/books?id=pJIDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. All page references refer to this text.

6 Found at http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false. All page references refer to this text.

7 One description states that, "the wick ought to be pure, sufficiently dry, and properly twisted; otherwise the candle will emit an unconstant vibratory flame, which is both prejudicial to the eyes, and insufficient for the distinct illumination of objects." Encyclopedia Britannica, 1st ed., s.v. "candle," http://books.google.com/books?id=xnW408_9_SMC&lpg=PA22&ots=BUV774PIwo&dq=encyclopedia%20britannica%201771%20candle&pg=PA21#v=onepage&q&f=false. For early nineteenth-century candlemaking advances including braided wicks and stearine wax, which allowed both the wick and the wax to be self-consuming, see Andrew Ure. A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839), s.v. "wick," http://books.google.com/books?id=IK88AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA1300&lpg=PA1300&dq=candle+making+braided+wick&source=bl&ots=hV4jirvunH&sig=awbqjs1LkqVyQYhHrPqiBj2IWi0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0DYpUP25DsHG6gHPwICYBg&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false. Ivor Noel Hume. A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 97-98; Garrett, At Home, 142.

8 Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Reprint, Eric Partridge, ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc, 1963), 340. The text is of the 1796 edition (this definition is not included in the 1785 edition).

9 James Beresford, The Miseries of Human Life or the Last Groans of Timothy Testy and Samuel Sensitive, Volume II (London: William Bulmer, 1817), 132, http://books.google.com/books?id=pJIDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA132#v=onepage&q&f=false.

10 James Bereseford, Miseries, or the Groans of Timothy Testy and Samuel Sensitive, Volume I (London: William Bulmer, 1816), 247, http://books.google.com/books?id=HpMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA247#v=onepage&q&f=false

11 Ibid., 240, http://books.google.com/books?id=HpMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA240#v=onepage&q&f=false12 Ibid.13 Ibid., 237, http://books.google.com/books?id=HpMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA237#v=onepage&q&f=false.14 Ibid.15 Ibid., 232, http://books.google.com/books?id=HpMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA232#v=onepage&q&f=false.16 Beresford, Miseries II, 17, http://books.google.com/books?id=pJIDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA17#v=onepage&q&f=false.17 Bereseford, Miseries I, 231-232, http://books.google.com/books?

id=HpMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA231#v=onepage&q&f=false.18 Beresford, Miseries II, 32-33, http://books.google.com/books?id=pJIDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false.19 Bereseford, Miseries I, 272, http://books.google.com/books?

id=HpMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA272#v=onepage&q&f=false.20 Beresford, Miseries II, 84, http://books.google.com/books?id=pJIDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA84#v=onepage&q&f=false.21 Ibid., 222, http://books.google.com/books?id=pJIDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA222#v=onepage&q&f=false.22 Francis Grose. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London: S. Hooper, 1785), s.v. "skink"

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http://books.google.com/books?id=NqHteIy-lXYC&pg=PT183#v=onepage&q&f=false; And s.v. "boots" http://books.google.com/books?id=NqHteIy-lXYC&pg=PT34#v=onepage&q&f=false.

23 Swift, 25, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false.24 Ibid., 26, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false.25 Swift, 25.26 Ibid., 28, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA28#v=onepage&q&f=false.27 Ibid, 36, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q&f=false28 Ibid., 25-26.29 Ibid., 16, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA16#v=onepage&q&f=false. One example of

these practices in America can be seen at the restored Pottsgrove Manor, in Pottstown, PA. They have exposed several creosote candle stains on a wall just above the edge of the wainscott.

30 Ibid., 53-54, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false.31 Ibid., 31, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false.32 Ibid., 52, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false.33 Ibid., 7, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false.34 Ibid.35 Ibid., 30, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q&f=false.36 Ibid., 18-19, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA18#v=onepage&q&f=false.37 Ibid., 89, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false.38 Ibid., 36, http://books.google.com/books?id=9tJbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q&f=false. Of course Swift

suggested this as a candle-saving, not stress-reducing, technique.

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