This Noisy Old World

By Susan/Miranda

Writers and noise are not a good combination.  While some of us write to carefully chosen music and others prefer as much peaceable silence as is possible, no writer enjoys the general racket of modern life.  Nothing can wither a perfectly good visit from a Muse faster than a monstrous trash truck, working its thumping and crashing way up the street.  Teenagers cranking up rap music, weed-whackers and power-washers, high-decibel fire sirens and low-flying aircraft, all play havoc with writerly concentration. 

And there’s at least one Wench (who, me?) who has been known to charge outside in her bathrobe to confront mystified lawn-crews with leaf-blowers about their misguided commitment to blast every last blade of new-mown grass to ear-splitting oblivion.

Modern folk like to think of this general din as one of the banes of contemporary life, another of our special crosses to bear for being so technologically advanced.  “Noise pollution”, we call it, a splendidly polysyllabic term for something our more peaceful great-grandparents wouldn’t recognize.

Ah, but we history-geeks know otherwise.  The past –– especially the urban past –– was one noisy place.  True, the noises were a very different sort, but the distraction was there just the same.  A famous 18th century illustration by William Hogarth called “The Enraged Musician” shows an earlier creative-type, pitifully tormented by the sounds of the London street outside his open window.

I’ve always tried hard to incorporate sound into my writing, one more way to evoke the past.  Yet it seems my imagination has fallen far short of reality.  I’ve just discovered a splendid new non-history book (oh, be still my history-nerd heart!) called Hubbub : Filth, Noise, & Stench in England, 1600-1770 by Emily Cockayne (Yale University Press, 2007).

This is not history for the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach, either.  (All the following examples and quotes come from Hubbub.) Stuart & Georgian Londoners would have had to contend with constant traffic noise: metal-bound wheels and shod horses against paving stones, squeaking, creaking wagons and carriages, trumpets to herald arrivals and departures of coaches, and the bellowed oaths of drivers and footmen.  Traffic noise was so bad that by the late 18th century, city churches and court houses were being designed without windows on the street levels in an attempt to quiet the spaces within.

Each morning terrified livestock was herded through the streets to market and slaughter, but hundreds of other unneutered animals ran wild through the city: stray dogs, spit dogs, and family pets alike played and barked and fought.  Squabbling cats were also everywhere.  So were goats and squealing pigs, and even city-dwellers were awakened by roosters before dawn.  Early morning was also the time when the dog-skinners (I cannot begin to fathom a market for dog-skins, but then our ancestors were far more unsentimentally resourceful than we) were chasing down yelping strays.

Peddlers and vendors of every kind shouted their wares, striving to outdo one another.  Apparently the pleasing sing-song cries of legend often degenerated into wordless roars.  Milk-sellers were particularly known for their shrillness, and the writer Joseph Addison noted one seller who became infamous for her “inarticulate scream.”  There were also frequent noisy brawls between vendors over sales turf, fights that were encouraged as free sport by cheering spectators.

Scores of church bells in the city rang for services, deaths, fires, and celebrations, and to tell the time.  Street musicians played fiddles, whistles, flutes, and hurdy-gurdys, or simply sang; a loud, piercing voice was highly prized. Puppet shows, jugglers, acrobats, and other street performers added another layer of sound.  Trumpets and drums were used to “drum up” an audience, and were also employed by the recruitment officers for the navy and the army outside of taverns.   Politicians, charlatans, and itinerant preachers alike made impromptu speeches on street-corners and from balconies and windows. 

Land and real estate was valuable, and most houses for rich and poor alike shared common walls.  Without the muffle of 21st century curtains, sound-proof tiles, or wall-to-wall carpeting, voices echoed freely in most rooms and into the next.  Add to that the open windows (before modern houses became so hermetically sealed for “climate control”), and there wouldn’t have been many secrets left between neighbors.

London was a growing city, and the sounds of construction were everywhere: hammering and sawing carpenters and roofers may not have had high-pitched power-tools, but they still contributed their share of noise.  Other trades that involved striking like blacksmiths, masons, tinsmiths, coopers and coppersmiths added the clanging sounds of hammers on metal, while the rumbling grinding of mill-wheels was literally so deafening that the stereotypical miller had lost his hearing entirely.

The “great guns” (cannons) near the Tower of London were fired to celebrate royal births, weddings, victories, and other holidays.  Shooting off muskets was a more common “noisemaker” that needed little excuse, and grand displays of fireworks (from the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall and Ranleigh as well as for civic displays) routinely exploded into the night sky over the city. More ominously, the broadsides exchanged at sea between the Dutch and English ships during the Dutch wars of the late 17th century were so loud that they could clearly be heard like distant thunder in London.   

Things weren’t much quieter after dark, either. Watchmen with rattles or bells cried the hour throughout the night. “I start every hour from my sleep,” complained one visitor, “at the horrid noise of the watchmen bawling the hour through every street, and thundering at every door; a set of useless fellows, who serve no other purpose but that of disturbing the repose of the inhabitants.”  Curfews were often created, and seldom enforced.

And in a city full of ale-houses, rumshops, and taverns that were serving customers well past midnight, those celebrants stumbling home in the wee hours contributed to the noise, too.  “Great hallowing and whooping in the Fields,” noted one sleep-deprived gentleman, “by such Persons who have spent the Day Abroad, and are now returning home Drunk.”

Relative peace doesn’t seem to have arrived until three or so in the morning, when the “Whores, Bullies, and Thieves have retir’d to their Apartments; noisy drunken Mechanicks are got to their Lodgings; Coachmen, Watermen, and Soldiers are mostly asleep.”  But by then, it’s not long until dawn, when the markets and trades come back to exuberant life, and begin the whole day’s cycle all over again.

You know, maybe those leaf blowers aren’t so very bad after all . . . .

So what sounds vex you the most?  What modern "convenience" sound would you like to banish from the earth?  Or do you simply slip on the headphones to that ultimate machine of convenient sound, the iPod, and blot everything else out?

Comments

[Liz]

I love my ipod. I would give up indoor plumbing first.

For me it's human noise. I can sleep through the leaf blower, tune out the motorcycle or band practice, ignore the barking dogs and highway noise, even the ambulance - but stand under my window for a chat and I just want to smother you.

[Nina P]

Oh, Susan/Miranda, what a wonderful post! I could hear every last clank, tinkle and yelp. Fantastic experience.

The first of nine children, human noise – talking, yelling, playing -- doesn't bother me all that much. Barking dogs, buzzing lights and rattling return ducts on the other hand, make me want to throw something. Especially when I'm mid-visit with my muse. Earphones help but only when the music is in sync with the mood.

Thanks again for the wonderful post. I’m off to check out that book.

:-)
Nina

[Jo Beverley]

What a great piece, Susan!

Noises are really interesting, because I think it's not volume so much as the nature of them. Those leaf blowers with a whine to them are just awful, but thunder can be thrilling.

Mind you, I have, at times, covered my ears because the birdsong was just too damn loud. At the same time, when I lived in the country with a motorway in the distance, the continuous traffic noise was soothing, like the ocean.

The human brain is really good at filtering, too. People who live near train lines don't even hear the trains.

I have a book on London gardens, and I wonder if the growing popularity of back gardens with high walls was to keep out unpleasant noises.

Jo

[shscott21]

One person's irritating noise is another's soothing background "music," in the past as well as now. I imagine that for every person that griped about the racket the watchmen made every night, there were others who woke just enough to smile, reassured and comforted, and went right back to sleep.

Perversely, I find too much quiet frustrating, too. Sealed up interiors with no sound at all freak me out, and my headphone-addicted family makes fun of me for my absolute refusal ever to wear them. If there's such a thing as ear-claustrophobia, then I have it. *g* So Liz, I guess I'd take the indoor plumbing!

Nina, it's a great book -- one of those books that you can dip into at any point and find lots of "cool stuff."

Jo, you may be right about those back gardens with the high walls. The ornamental trees and bushes would have absorbed noises, too, as well as the space providing a physical buffer between neighbors.

Susan/Miranda, off for the day to New York, where they REALLY understand noise

[shscott21]

Oops, me again, with one more comment I forgot to include in original post.

Has anyone else seen the recent BBC/PBS series “Regency House Party” (now out on video)? The premise sent a group of modern Englishmen and women to a Regency-era country house to live for a month, with mixed results.

One of the most interesting parts of the show for me was how differently (and loudly) sound echoed inside the house. In those pre-sneaker days, footsteps thumped and floorboards creaked, fires in the hearths crackled and popped, porcelain cups rattled against tea-dishes, and even the politest words seemed magnified. Whenever any newcomer arrived, everyone could hear the approaching horse or carriage through the open windows (it was shot during the summer) long before they were "announced."

I'm sure anyone who has visited a historically correct house has shared the same experience, and felt the same inclination to lower their echoing voices to a more discrete whisper -- just as the chatter of a school-group always sounds MUCH louder! *g*

Susan/Miranda

[Maggie Robinson]

Fabulous post,S/M. Jo, I live on a fairly busy country road and I like to pretend the traffic noise is the roar of the ocean waves!

When I first started to write, we were renting a log cabin on a peaceful lake...except for the neighbors who chainsawed every living plant around their property all summer long, built a humongous garage with a crew of 1,000, had all their teens and friends over shrieking every day, etc. I got so nervous from the noise we actually moved into town. My future as a recluse is assured.

I used to attend a church built in the early 1700s. Very plain wood interior, very echo-y. Let me tell you, those white baby shoes kicking on the pew are pretty deafening. I used to have to hold my poor daughter's ankles and didn't feel at all at peace with God until the service was over.

[KeiraSoleore]

SusanS: I loved your post and just had to add "Hubbub" to my Amazon list.

Maggie: You always have something hilarious to say!! What a great way to start off a Monday morning.

Liz: I couldn't give up the wonders of modern plumbing for the worst screeching kid this side of the Greenwich meridian.

The sound I most dislike is actually an interior sound that I wish could be eliminated with better soundproofing -- people using the toilet.

[B.E. Sanderson]

I can handle most background noise - trucks, mowers, planes, trains, etc. - but what really gets me is other people's music. The neighbor who needs to blast her stereo at all hours of the day, the soon-to-be-deaf teens with the bass turned all the way up in their cars. I lose my focus entirely. I wouldn't get rid of any modern day convenience, I'd just bring one thing back: Common courtesy.

[Kalen Hughes]

I'm with B.E.

I think I FINALLY convinced one neighbor that his garage, at 3AM, is NOT an interior space suitable to blasting music and drunken friends (man drunk people are LOUD). *roll eyes* It’s a funnel that leads directly to my bedroom window.

Now if I could just do something about “Mariachi Sundays” as I call them . . .

[Elaine McCarthy]

Here's another vote for B.E. I used to live within suffering distance of a wanna-be Rock Star who practiced at 11 p.m. with the amps turned up to "Torture," playing the same guitar riff over and OVER and OVER! Death penalty, anyone?

I love silence. I know people who always have music going, or the TV, and I don't know how they stand it. I really feel sorry for anybody who has to work where there's musak going all day long. But when the muse is on me, I can be oblivious to just about anything but the sound of my own name being called (and woe betide anybody who tries it!).

History might be a nice place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't want to live there!

[Patricia Rice]

Great post, Susan! I think we all react to noises that are outside of what we're accustomed to hearing. Jo, were you brought up in a city environment? I grew up in a country environment and have the exact opposite reaction as you. Traffic noise has caused me to reject the purchase of untold houses that would have otherwise been perfect, but birdsong wakes me up smiling, and I'll take a junky house in the country over the city any day.

We're in the 'burbs now, and the blowers and the beep-beep of construction equipment has me closing windows and putting on headphones--no way to enjoy my lovely garden!

[Maureen]

Thank for the interesting information. It's funny that you're writing about noise when I was woken up several times last night from a neighbors car alarm.

[Sherrie Holmes]

Barking dogs. The incessant variety. My neighbor has two, and they must be practicing for the barkolympics.

Trick airplanes that fly loops and dives and barrel rolls in the airspace above my house all summer long.

My blabbermouth cat, who talks from the moment he gets up, to the moment he goes to bed. He talks to me, he talks to the dog, and he talks to himself. And then he goes to bed and talks in his sleep. *g*

Actually I've become rather endeared to his constant chatter. He has an astounding vocabulary, and his conversations are often more interesting than humans'.

Fabulous post, Susan/Miranda, and I found myself nodding to many of the comments, too. Keira, your flushing toilets made me laugh. And B.E., I soooo agree with your statement about bringing back common courtesy!

[Liz]

Oh I love 'Mariachi Sunday!'

It's still people for me - I've run out of my house in my pj's yelling or hung over my balcony yelling (and I do mean yelling) SHUT UP! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! YAP AT YOUR HOUSE!! This is usually not seen in this neighborhood. You can take the girl off the street....

BUT once it was windchimes. A neighbor hung about a dozen windchimes under my bedroom window. I cut them all down, made a ransom note out of magazine letters and taped it to her door. She put them on the other side of her yard, not tied to my rail anymore.

[Liz]

Oh I love 'Mariachi Sunday!'

It's still people for me - I've run out of my house in my pj's yelling or hung over my balcony yelling (and I do mean yelling) SHUT UP! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! YAP AT YOUR HOUSE!! This is usually not seen in this neighborhood. You can take the girl off the street....

BUT once it was windchimes. A neighbor hung about a dozen windchimes under my bedroom window. I cut them all down, made a ransom note out of magazine letters and taped it to her door. She put them on the other side of her yard, not tied to my rail anymore. I don't care if they think I'm crazy, that's good, it makes me have to work less.

[Lois]

Oh geez, I know with all the gadgets and gizmos of today, I would never be able to live in the past (you know, if I found a time machine and all that) because I'm too addicted. Well, at least there are books everywhere. LOL :)

But you know something, it isn't the gadgets that we should get rid of, we should get rid of the people who use them. :) After all, it isn't the cell phone that is annoying, it's the people yapping or put that awful ringtone on them that are annoying. ;) So lets dump the annoying people. :)

Lois

[Edith]

Great post!
I've lived in NYC. You stop hearing city noises after a while, because they're finite. They start, and you know when they stop. This means garbage trucks and drunken tourists under your window, and subway's and bus's roaring too.
I've lived in the countryside, and suburbia.
The countryside?
Coyotes. Definitely coyotes. You can't sleep when all the hairs on the back of your neck are standing up.
My top six worst suburban noises?
6- those machines that spray clean the side of houses.
5- neighbor's parties, because in Suburbia, if the folks are out of town, they can go on all night.
4 - parkways and expressways. If you live near them, and go outside, you can hear them breathing, like it says in the song.
3 - leaf blowers. Definitely leaf blowers.
2 - dogs barking. Including my Daisy. She LOVES to bark. Thinks she is protecting the house. Little does she know it is endangering her life. From me.
and the number 1 noise nuisance?
Sparrows. Much as I love Capt'n Jack and little brown birdies, I have to admit there is nothing worse than a flock of sparrows in your garden. They quarrel like in-laws. They chirp and flutter and chip and shriek. I decided to feed the birds in summer. The finch feeder was a wild success. However, the bigger feeder brought in a flock of sparrows.
I stopped feeding them.
His eye is on the sparrow. His ear obviously isn't.

[Kalen Hughes]

Edith, I second you on the birds. I can't sleep past 5am due to the little suckers (even though earplugs they wake me up). I love winter when they’re gone or sleeping late. My neighbor cut down the tree that used to bang against my window, and that has removed some of the bird pollution (how sad is it when nature tortures me?). I don’t’ mind wolves, coyotes, etc. when I’m up in the mountains though (the frogs are sometimes out of control, and cicada in the South are just awful). But those little finches drive me nuts.

And you would not love Mariachi Sundays, Liz. I promise. REALLY loud Mariachi music, with my neighbor singing along full blast, like he's an opera singer. The dog hides (incidentally, I do NOT allow my dog to bark; she gets a woofle or two if someone comes to the door, but that’s all). The neighbors at my last house had two oopsie-poopsies (I think they were Shitzus) that would yap all night. I love dogs, but those two had me planning some serious mayhem. There’s something about that high-pitched yap that’s just so much worse than the deep baying of larger dog . . .

[Queen Bee]

Wonderful post, S-M! Very evocative!

But I have to ask: what did the dog-skinner ::shudder:: do with the dog skins?

[maryjoputney]

What a great post, S/M! And what great, entertaining comments. I'm another introverted writer who thinks that few thing improve on silence. I grew up on a farm, and tend to think that peace is the natural order of things. And I wanted to KILL the people who ran over our fields in winter in their !#$%& snowmobiles. I will extend that to jetskis on the water, barking dogs, noisy obnoxious music, and a huge list of other other things.

Birds I'm pretty much okay with. And mercifully, I live in a pretty quiet suburban area. One can hear the distant roar of the Baltimore Beltway, but it's quiet enough to be peaceful.

Mary Jo, hoping that every boom box in the world will melt down into a pile of slag

[shscott21]

Queen Bee wrote:
>

Queen Bee, I am very sorry to have to enlighten you about this, but dog skins were being used as a kind of leather in the 18th century. It was a soft, easily worked leather that took dye well and was used for small leather goods like gloves. Dog skin gloves by the dozen are often mentioned in wardrobe listings. Apparently all those English gentlemen and ladies who loved their own pets to distraction failed to see either the irony or the contradiction in this.

Gross, but true.

Susan/Miranda

[Kalen Hughes]

Dog skin and fur (as well as cat skin and fur) are still used in many parts of the world (esp. those parts where these animals are eaten). There have now been at least two documented cases of dog and cat fur being used on winter coats exported from China to the US. While it upsets and disturbs us, we do stuff that offends the sensibilities of other cultures (burger anyone?).

[Susan Scott]

You're right, Kalen. Every culture has its tabus, and modern Americans have become very adept at separating the notion of animals as lovable pets vs. animals as food or other by-products -- whether it's dogs or bunnies or lambs or monkeys. The other, older belief in making use of every part of an animal's body, that it's more wasteful and disrespectful to that animal not to, really makes a good deal more sense.

Yet can you imagine the outcry if the local ASPCA began selling the bodies of euthanized dogs to the local Georgian-style dog-skinner?

Susan/Miranda

[Kalen Hughes]

Well, when meat comes from Safeway . . . I have friends who have land. And they raise goats and chickens. The male kids all have "food" names so that their son understands that they are for eating (my favs were "shish" and "kabob"). Last time I was up there I ask Jack (then 3) what he wanted for dinner and he pointed to the rooster than had pecked him the day before and said "Chicken!". LOL!

[MJ]

I agree with those who find the nature of the noise to be the charm...
My pet peeve? The bass BOOM. When I can't hear the rest of it, just FEEL the beat. Anything Rap. Any other type of music is wonderful, generally.

I actually play a noise machine at night.... the ocean waves sound is a complete addiction for me. (And it masks house sounds well, too). I have traintracks near me and am very used to night trains....they don't bother me....

Soothing music can relax me no matter what else is going on noise-wise.

And I am likely unique in that I like the sound of snoring. It's a tiny childhood thing....it meant my father was still alive as he can be heard blocks away (my mother died when I was two, so of course I had a few issues when I was a wee tad). So it doesn't bother me at all.

[LorettaChase]

I can tune out screaming kids, cars, sirens, jets overhead. What I cannot tune out are barking dogs--and big, deep-voiced ones are as obnoxious as little yappy ones when it goes on for more than two minutes. I want to scream, Watch the Dog Whisperer and Get a Clue!
Loud music, no matter what kind it is--even the kind I love--makes me homicidal. Also people shouting into cell phones, even though I know sometimes that can't be helped. I, too, have suffered bad connections with my DH on the other end saying, "What? What?"
And I hate TVs in public places, like medical waiting rooms. I also hate TVs on when I'm visiting someone, during meals, etc. That seems incredibly rude (not to mention distracting) to me, but I guess I'm old fashioned.

[Kalen Hughes]

Not at all. I feel the same way about phones and tvs. One girlfriend of mine drives me crazy by chatting on the phone when we're together. It's just rude (but then so are the barking dogs, LOL!).

We had a 3am visit from the neighbor's cat last night, which always sets off my dog and puts her in "patrol" mode. Ugh. I hate that cat. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve asked the guy who owns it to keep it inside. I had to get up, go get the dog, and then brow-beat her into sleeping in my room, which she does NOT like to do (she likes having the couch all to herself).

[shscott21]

I think the most maddening part about the barking dogs is that it's not the dogs' fault; it's the *&^%$ owners.

We had a dog in our neighborhood whose owner would leave him alone in the fenced-in backyard from 7:30 in the morning until 8 or so at night, when he came home from work. Dogs are sociable creatures, and I could hardly blame the poor dog for getting lonely, even as the barking, howling, and yowling drove me nuts.

I'd go talk to the dog through the fence, commiserate with him as it were. As anyone with toddlers will tell you, that strategy didn'† help, because he'd stop barking to chat, then rev it up when I left.

Of course the owner didn't believe me, either, because (natch) the dog didn't do it when he was home, and the township's dog warden wouldn't, because the dog was fed, watered, and had a nice doghouse. But ohh, what that dog did to my writing in the afternoons---!

I've often wondered if Stephen King wrote CUJO with a particular neighbor's dog in mind....*g*

Susan/Miranda

[Nina P]

I'm in NYC, sitting in a hotel overlooking 7th Ave as I write this. The noise coming up from the street is nuts! Shrieking sirens. Honking horns. Blaring car alarms. Painfully noisy for a country girl. And if the nut blowing that whistle doesn't give up soon...

Nina, wishing for ear plugs.

[Cathie]

Hi all! Its my first time posting here. I heard about the blog from Mary Jo and Jo at yesterday's chat! It was great to chat with you all!
I was mentioning that after having read a historical romance a few years ago when I discovered the internet, I gobbled up reading so much its my favorite genre now (along with a close of paranormal) But too recently, I've enjoyed reading more about the culture, history, dressing, the people etc. So I've read a historical fiction here and there but want to get something to help me understand more like a guidebook or fact and the like book on Regency and Victorian etc. So I hope to look more here and at your sites. But first when it comes to sound, its different for me. With me being deaf, I need to 'see' things happening around me, so even if I'm sitting reading, I have to put on the TV so I can feel things happening around me. Its more of a comfort thing for me when I'm alone. But I do remember when my kids were younger and if I didn't 'see' or 'feel' them, I knew they were in trouble. LOL. But this book to me sounds interesting! Yeah not the stuff we'd like to read, but it may answer alot of questions because some historical r omances keep out that sort of stuff when it there. So it sounds like interesting reading!

Great to be here! Cathie

[MJ]

Here's the answer to the barking dogs....

http://www.cartoonbank.com/item/121304

[MaryK]

Very interesting post. I've never thought about background noise in all those London set novels. I will now though. This seems like an excellent reason for characters to prefer their country houses.

[Jo Beverley]

Cathie, very interesting to read about this from the perspective of a deaf person. Thank you.

Pat, I was raised not really in town or country, but by the sea. It was a town, but there wasn't a lot of town noise right there, but it certainly wasn't country.

Perhaps I liked the motorway noise because it does sound like the sea if it's far enough away. A continuous murmur.

Jo :)

[Sherrie Holmes]

MJ, thanks for the link to the New Yorker cartoon about barking dogs. Funny! The link was great and now I've signed up for their free "love and romance" daily cartoon.

We have such an interesting group of visitors in this community. I've gotten some great links and book suggestions and learned a lot just by reading the comments!

Jo, I don't think I've ever heard anyone comment favorably on traffic noise, but I can see how the background drone could be soothing if it reminded you of the ocean. I have chronic tinnitis, so I carry my own white noise around with me. I don't even notice it, most of the time. I also like the sound of a ticking clock, so I bought a wind-up Baby Ben with a very loud ticker.

[gretchen F]

Last night I was at the symphony- a sellout audience to hear Joshua Bell. Beautiful performance, but at the end of the second movement,in the awed hush occasioned by the artistry of an incredible violin master, we were treated to THE SOUND OF SOME IDIOT'S CELL PHONE GOING OFF. Last week, I was at mass. The priest lifted the host for consecration- the most sacred and solemn part of the Catholic service- aand, you guessed it, A CELL PHONE WENT DOODLE DOODLE DOODLEEDOO. For cryin out loud- unless that is the hospital calling to tell you they have a kidney, there is no excuse for not muting your stupid phone. That is the noise that drives me crazy.

[Kathy Kremer]

Dear Susan/Miranda: My book arrived today. I'm thrilled! There are many things I should be doing, but guess what I will be doing instead? (grin) Thank you so much. Kathy Kremer

[Queen Bee]

Even with a logical and thrifty explanation, I still don't like the idea of a dog-skinner for strays...too sad.