How Far the Candle

Joanna here, talking about light, and how folks avoided being the thing that went bump in the night and banged its shins in 1800 or so.

"How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."  William Shakespeare

For the most part, people took the low tech approach.  Daily life followed the sun.  Country folk got up with the chickens, not just because the chickens were making an almighty determined racket, but because there was a day of work to get to.  Every hour the family stayed awake past sunset cost money.   

They made good use of the daylight while they had it.  The well-to-do had tall  windows in their houses, the better to invite the sunlight inside.  Even the stables had windows. In 1800, if you wanted to shell peas or sew some fine embroidery, you'd take it to the windowseat or go sit on the doorstep of the cottage. 

The hero is apt to find the heroine reading a letter on the garden bench because that's where the light's good. 

"When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent. "
George Carlin

When you didn't have free light from the sky, or didn't have enough of it, you made your own.

The oldest form of lighting known to man is probably collecting a stick of something that burns reliably and poking it into the fire till it catches and then walking around with it till, ouch, it singes the fingers.  The final flowering of this line of thought is the rushlight and the torch.

A rushlight -- sometimes the name says it all -- is made from a rush.  That's a tall weed that grows in marshy places, with which the British Isles are plentifully supplied.   Women and children collected rushes in the summer, peeled off all but a thin layer of the tough green skin.  The pith was long and thin.  Think reeeealy thick spaghetti about two feet long.  This was hung up in bunches, dried, and then drawn through melted  fat.  You can see the dilemma for a poor family here.  They can eat that fat or they can burn it for light.  If you stayed up late chewing the fat, you were also burning it.

"It is not economical to go to bed early to save candles if the result is twins."
Chinese proverb

A typical rush light would burn maybe a quarter hour to as long as an hour.  The rush went into the jaw of a split piece of wood or a metal holder that held it at an angle so it wouldn't burn up all at once.

Rushlight was the poor man's candle -- it gave off about the same amount of light as a candle -- and the rushlight was made even more attractive because candles were taxed in England between 1709 and 1831.  Candlemaking required a license.  That's why your Regency heroine messes about making perfumes, cosmetics, herbal remedies for the poor and maybe some potent cherry cordial, but does not make interestingly scented candles.

Moving along to the other primitive light source -- torches.  A torch is a stick with something at the end that burns . . . not too fast and not too slow.  Pitch is the traditional torch fuel. 

Your Georgian and Regency folks would most often encounter the torches carried by linkboys as they made their way home from the theatre or a party.   According to Samuel Pepys, “links were torches of tow or pitch to light the way.”  Linkboys were men and boys who, for a farthing, ran in front of the carriage, or accompanied sedan chairs and those on foot, to light the road ahead.  In thieves' cant a linkboy was called a "moon-curser" because they didn't find work on moonlit nights.

 Here's a Georgian link extinguisher on the side of the house for the linkboy to douse his glim and save the torch till the next customer.

The other old form of lighting is the oil lamp.  In its simplest form, an oil lamp needs only three elements -- the liquid oil, the wick and the fire.  It's nice if you can add a glass chimney around the fire to keep the flame steady and to keep it from blowing out.  On the other hand, open lamps lit everything from caves to igloos . . . (Igli?) . . . for millennia before glass chimneys.  Long after 1800, primitive crofts in the hills and fishers' huts by the sea might still have an oil lamp on the table that would have been at home in Babylon.

I experimented with primitive oil lamps technology as I was sitting down to write.  I poured olive oil into a dish -- actually a big ole' spoon rest -- and cut a shoelace for a wick and laid it in to soak up the oil.  My 'lamp' burned pretty durn well, with a fine, steady, smokeless yellow light.  I don't know how long it would have continued to burn.  (I was pleased to get it started at all.)  The oil didn't smoke or smell in the slightest.

What's technically interesting about the whole 'oil lamps' thing, is that the wick doesn't burn.  What the wick does is 'wick up' the burnable oil toward the fire.  The fire drinks it off and more oil gets pulled up but the flame burns 'on top' of the wick.  Little, if any, of the wick is consumed.
 
Oil lamps lit the streets of London.  Lamplighters made their rounds, cleaned the glass, trimmed the wick, and refilled the reservoir.  Oil lamps stood at the mouths of harbors to mark the entry to safety.  Oil lamps went underground with the miners.

 

 

 

 The snazziest oil lamp of the Regency period was the Argand -- above and to the left.  This was the space-age technology of the Regency.  It was patented in 1780 and would  have been  a familiar sight in the study of every Regency gentleman.  The oil resevoir is there in the middle and fed down to the lamp.  It had a tubular wick, so it must have produced a round circle of flame, I should think.

"With darkness diminished, the opportunities for privacy and reflection are lessened."
Ekirch

And we come to candles, candles candles -- the go-to choice for carrying upstairs at that country houseparty the heroine is attending.  She picks a candleholder from the table at the bottom of the stairs, lights herself up from the central candle there, and heads off through the long, dark, chilly halls . . . doubtless with the hero sneaking along behind in the Stygean gloom, taking an interest.

Authorial Real Life Tidbit here.  When I was in the upcountry in Africa, some places didn't have any electricity.  When night falls in a land without electricity, it gets DARK.  Walking about a village from house to house I was perfectly willing to believe in hobgoblins, will-o'-the-wisps, boggarts, trolls, witches, nightsneaks, ghoulies, ghosties, long-legged beasties and werewolves.  Dark is scary.

"Let the night teach us what we are, and the day what we should be."
Thomas Tryon, 1691

Ok.  Back to candles.
Candles use the same wicking principle as a lamp.  The wick can slurp up only the fuel that's melted at the top in the upper cup of the candle.  The whole 'puddle of melted wax' situation at the top of a candle is an integral part of its operation, which will certainly make me more understanding next time I have to clean drops of wax out of the carpet.

It was 'one fuel for the rich, another for the poor'.  Beeswax for the parlor; tallow candles in the kitchen.  Tallow candles apparently did not fill the air with a pleasant aroma.  To add insult to injury, beeswax candles burned 30% brighter than tallow.

Let me quote a modern source experimenting with historical candle lighting:
"I had expected the wax candles to smoke and smell more than they did, in line with a number of contemporary references. . . .  a second batch of tallow candles . . . as unrefined as possible, just animal suet in effect, . . . still failed to create a smelly fug.
Martin White

Candles were expensive -- remember the tax?  To light the night with beeswax candles was a statement of wealth.  There was nothing democratic about candlelight.  In Georgian and Regency England it was the province of the wealthy and the growing middle class.   

For those who had to venture out into the night, the lantern was the flashlight of its day.  It could hold oil, but was more frequently a candle affair.  There'd be glass or horn on the four sides to keep it from blowing out.  Others were made of metal where one side opened to show the road ahead.  These 'dark lanterns' were discreet, of course, but they were not solely used to be secretive.  The dark lantern had the advantage of sturdiness -- no glass to break -- and cheapness in a time when glass was expensive.

A single light in a dwelling place, like a single source of heat from the fire, meant that everybody gathered round sociably.  Or not so sociably, depending upon the family.  There was an enforced togetherness in a time when candles were not made to be wasted, rooms were not lit without a good reason, and the bedside taper was extinguished at once to lessen the chance of fire.

"One 60-watt electric bulb generates the light of approximately 60 candles."
Rumor

Candles often had a reflective surface behind them to double the illumination in a thrifty way.   Folks would place them next to mirrors.

 

And there were  'lacemakers lamps' -- used for fine work during the day -- concentrated light by focusing it through a globe filled with water. 

Pepys writes of something that may be similar.  ". . . and so home to my office, and there came Mr. Cocker, and brought me a globe of glasse, and a frame of oyled paper, as I desired, to show me the manner of his gaining light to grave [note -- engrave] by, and to lessen the glaringnesse of it at pleasure by an oyled paper. This I bought of him, giving him a crowne for it; and so, well satisfied, he went away, and I to my business again, and so home to supper, prayers, and to bed."

"I shall make electricity so cheap that only the rich can afford to burn candles."  Edison

[lantern is from the Met, here.  open oil lamp cc attrib surajramk]

 

How do you feel about night?  Aside from the obvious, what do you want your hero and heroine to get up to at night?

 

One lucky commenter will win a copy of The Forbidden Rose, or Spymaster's Lady trade edition, your choice.

Comments

[Martha]

Great post, Jo. I'm going to try a wick in a dish of oil.

My parents bought an antique bronze oil lamp when they were in Scotland in the 1960s. It was round, pyramidal, and in three levels, like a stacked birdbath. It had little lips for the wicks on the three levels, and a chain to hang the thing. About 8" high. I wish I had it now.

When Hurricane Ike came through Houston, we were without electricity for 17 days. I never really knew before that how dark a house is at night without electricity. It's hard to imagine the complete absence of light, except from your flashlight, candle or oil lamp. In those circumstances, things look very different at night than they do in the day.

I have an oil lamp with a circular wick, and the flame starts out round, but merges to look pretty normal almost immediately. I like the warm light an oil lamp gives, but they also produce a lot of heat. That would be good in England, but in Houston, only in the winter.

I only burn beeswax candles, not other kinds of wax, because I start itching then.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Martha --

I went ahead and pulled the reference to the company. Hated to do it, but it's commercial and all. Sorry.

The dish and oil thing was something I'd been wondering about in a desultory manner for years. Why didn't the oil catch on fire? Why didn't the wick just burn up in a minute or two.

This is apart from the question of how so many prehistoric geniuses independently figured this out.

Anyhow, the process is magical and empowering.

For some reason, I always have lots of candles hanging around. I don't burn them much. I should start doing so.

[Patricia Rice]

Your inquiring mind always fascinates me, Joanna! I used to live in the country where power frequently went out, so we kept oil lamps and candles around (because the flashlight batteries were inevitably dead or missing). So I've always known how oil works and wondered how anyone could get any reading done without wearing out the eyes.

These days, all the candles come perfumed and I'm allergic to artificial scent, so any candles just sit there, looking pretty. Still don't want to read by them.

[Susanna Fraser]

We once had a power outage during a party when I was living in Philly in the 90's. I think it was one of those cases where a car hits a power pole or something, because the weather was calm and beautiful. We promptly pulled out every candle we could find, I think one of my roommates had a camp lantern, too, and kept partying. While I'm sure a Regency ballroom would've been far better-lit--more candles, and better placed--it was still something of a time travel in place moment.

[joanna bourne]

I'm another person sensitive to the scents they put in everything. Not allergic or anything -- I just don't enjoy the strong, simplified scents.

The flame doesn't actually touch the wick, really. It sort of floats in the air above it. I lost an hour rabbiting down all these byways when I was doing the research for this. Just fascinating.

All the parts of the flame have different technical names. Who knew?

We do most of our heating with wood, so I'm accustomed to the whole 'how beautiful that fire is and how good it smells' thingum. But you never get over the wonder of it. I think folks who took candles for granted must have stopped once in a while to just think about the beauty of them.

Light bulbs do not have the same effect.

[Janet W]

Wow ... now that was comprehensive. It certainly puts "early to bed, early to rise" in perspective. I feel as if it's never really dark anymore, living as I do in the exurb of a large city. I wonder what that does to our internal rhythms?

[joanna bourne]

It's been speculated that humans are 'meant' to take a long nap in the afternoon, then sleep light through the dark, maybe waking up in about the middle of the night.

Sorta six hour cycles.

I don't know what the total lack of darkness does to us. Something bad to serotonin levels, most likely.

[Louis]

Interesting post. We use candles quite frequently at the dining table.

When we moved into our current home many years ago we had a candle in among decorations at the table. Somehow it fell over and a fire resulted. Quickly put out but it left scorch marks on a couple leaves of the table.

Made us very careful of our candle use...but we still like to use candles.

[joanna bourne]

Only slightly related . . . I was watching a TV documentary on Alaska. The narrator was interviewing a couple who lived waaaay out in the outback. It might have been a hundred miles to the next house.

Narrator indicates a little cabin back a ways from the house. "Your meat storage?" says he.

It was a shed with a stove and good insulation. If the main house burns down in the winter, that secondary shelter would keep them alive.

So I think about 1800 folks who lived with the constant threat of fire. They'd be careful of candles and banking the fire, with the servants using candles in their bedrooms, with the customs of the kitchen. I think householders kept buckets of sand handy to put out little blazes.

[Miranda Neville]

Thanks for a fascinating post, Jo. Light is one of those things one has to constantly remember writing historical fiction: where does it come from and what can the character see. Your African recollection reminds me how rarely in the West we experience true darkness.

It actually astonishes me that there weren't MORE disastrous house fires. Being careful with flames must have become an ingrained habit.

[joanna bourne]

I don't remember the word for it . . . there's a backscatter of light from the city that goes up to bounce off the clouds and mist in the sky. It keeps us from seeing the dark of night.

We've lost a lot. How many adults have literally never seen the Milky Way or a meteorite crossing the sky?

[Kandy Shepherd]

Fascinating, I read somewhere that electric light is the only light that truly banishes the shadows from the corners of the room.

[joanna bourne]

I am kinda waiting till the lights go out for a while so I can light the place with candles and make mental notes of how the house looks and what I can see.

[Beth Elliott]

Thank you for so much interesting information. Actually, my Welsh grandmother lived so far out of town there was no electricity supply. [Not sure if there is even now!]She lit the house with paraffin lamps downstairs and we took candles to our bedrooms. Many's the night I nearly set my hair alight, sitting so close to the candle to read - and many's the morning when I got a scold for using up yet another candle. I remembered that and have put it in my next Regency tale. The heroine is a devoted Byron addict and when the hero gives her a copy of 'The Corsair', she says she'll read until her candle burns away that night.

[Maureen]

We have had our share of power outages and candle light leaves a lot of the room in darkness which leaves a lot to my imagination. When people threw a ball they must have spent a fortune in candles.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Maureen --

They've done some films where the sets are lit by candlelight to create a period atmosphere. I don't remember which films they were -- somebody may have a better memory than I do.

I have no doubt that women, (and men,) past a certain age were delighted with the dim, flattering light at a ball.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Beth --
That is exactly the sort of detail that makes a story ring with authenticity. How lucky you are to have lived in a house without the mod cons. You have some of this history right in your bones.

[LouisaCornell]

Another one for my research notebook, Joanna! Thank you. Very thought-provoking as well. Most of my coworkers are younger than I am and not at all used to going without electricity for any period of time. I first learned the sensibility of having oil lamps and candles close to hand when we lived in England. We lived there during three of the worst winters ever and there were often power outages. My Mom is a country girl from Alabama and knew exactly how to illuminate a room, cook and build a fire in any fireplace in the house when the electricity failed.

I live in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road and even a mild thunderstorm can knock out the power. I have plenty of candles (scented and household) a number of antique candle holders and several oil lamps and lanterns to insure that even when the power fails I can read, write and go outside to check on my rescued dogs.

The thing I love most about living in the country is the absence of artificial light. I can walk onto my back porch and see the stars. I've watched a number of meteor showers from the middle of my pasture.

I think perhaps I love the dark when I am the one who seeks it and there is a purpose for it. Darkness that is forced on me with no hope of relief is another matter entirely.

In my writing I think a dark night is the perfect time for a hero and heroine to get to know each other. It is much easier to be completely honest with another person when you can't see his or her face.

[skittles]

I've had oil lamps for most of my adult life. I like the warmth & the light (when the wick is trimmed properly). I've given many as gifts & so did my parents.

My dad told the story of calling his sister in North Carolina after one of the big hurricanes & she complained about not having electricity & running out of candles. He asked if she was using the oil lamp. No, she had forgotten she had it despite being on a shelf in the living room!

And I don't mind being in the dark. I had a friend who was blind & I learned a lot of "tricks" to getting around & using things without seeing them. Useful accommodations rather than "tricks", although, I have a jug of lamp oil & a couple of pillar candles & a bunch of votives & tea lights. I'll be ok in a warmer weather power outage.

Now I need to find a way to power computers by candle power? ;)

[Lyn S]

We moved from suburban Washington DC to the country 60 miles west 6 years ago. We have no street lights. At first we couldn't sleep because it was too dark. Now it is hard to sleep when there is a full moon because it is so bright. And the stars; who knew the sky was full of them. We have lots of power outages and are upgrading our propane generator to whole house because heating with wood really is difficult. We can deal with the dark, it is the cold that is most bothersome. As with Japan and now Germany rethinking nuclear power, what will we revert to? I like the idea of following sun hours and not Daylight Saving Time. Let you all have enough light to read to your heart's content.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Louisa --

There's a line from Alexei Panshin' Thurb Revolution . . . something about things being possible in the dark that you can't do during the day. "Murder and sleep and thought."

So much 'yes' back at you about it being easier to be honest when you can't see the other person's face. (I think I have used this. Maybe more than once. *g*)

When we move our folks into 'the dark' it's not just that we've increased the difficulty of navigation. It's not just the real villains sneak up behind them and the nameless beasts of the unconscious let loose.

It's also that we change the quality of the dialog. In the dark, one speaks without feedback, as it were. We toss the coin of our thought down a well and wait for the plink at the bottom.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Skittles --

We should buy computers powered by exercise bikes or treadmills. The Romance novel conventions would be filled with lean mean buff-bodied authors. *g*

[joanna bourne]

Hi Lyn --

There's just a whole list of things I do not understand the reason for. Professional sports, platform heels, gin, Justin Bieber, balloon mortgages . . . Daylight Savings Time is on the list.

If you want your factory or your business or your school to open and close an hour earlier in March -- change your opening hours --and leave the rest of us in peace.

*grumble grumble*

[misskallie2000]

I don't mind darkness except when driving in the country without moonlight. To me that is scarey. Even with headlights you can't see anyting on the side of the road behind you or far ahead of you.
Most thriller, scary movies take place in the dark to scare you even more when something happens in movie..
When no moon and power goes out at home you can feel your way around but without some light you can't see to make something to eat so that is when you sleep. Maybe that is where this saying started, Make hay while the sun shines..lol

[joanna bourne]

Hi misskallie --

1800 folks scheduled their parties and nighttime social visiting for the week in the month when the moon was full. Most of the month -- and whenever it was overcast -- it musta been derned dark out there.

They had carriage lamps on the sides of the coach -- but honestly, I don't think that cast much light ahead. If the horses had been properly unionized, they wouldn't have set hoof out on the roads after dark.

We read stories where coaches get run off the road by drunken coachmen, or forced off by young bucks racing on the road, or blown off into the snow drifts. I don't know whereas I've ever read about somebody driving a coach off the road just because it was bloody dark. And yet, this must have happened a good bit.

As to making sandwiches . . . Remember 'The Mousetrap'. I had that trope in mind when I was writing The Spymaster's Lady, but I never found a way to use it. Such a cool idea.

[Anne Gracie]

Fabulous post, Joanna -- I love the night. I love the darkness of it and the night sounds when I'm out in the country, I love moonlight and shadows.

I think most people here don't realize how dark it can get -- we have so much light pollution that city darkness isn't dark at all.

I've never tried making a lamp from a shoelace and olive oil, but I have both, so I'm going to try.

[Margaret]

I was visiting some period property or other when I worked out that the reason there were so many mirrors and mirrored sconces was to reflect and magnify the candlelights. Balls must have been roasting - all those flames and warm bodies!

I was also really fascinated to read about the colour choices for regency clothes being chosen with candlelight in mind. Colours that would seem garish to our modern eyes would be de rigeur to our Georgian ancestors because by candlelight they looked completely different. It made me realise how something so simple as a light could shape so much - interior design, clothing etc.

Fascinating!

[joanna bourne]

Hi Anne --

You must tell me how it works out for you -- the shoelace and olive oil.

I think you need a cotton shoelace for this to work.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Margaret,

I think the mirrors kept the rooms brighter in the daytime, too. Think about the placement of mirrors in these old traditional houses. How often are they at the end of a corridor where they can catch light from some distant window and reflect it across the hall?

I hadn't thought about the color of gowns as it would appear by candlelight. Cool.

[Elisa Beatty]

Wow,another fascinating post that's going straight into my files....

I live in the Bay Area, where brownouts and crazy-high electricity prices a couple years ago had many of us eating our dinners by candlelight. I loved it. Everything seemed softer, slower, and DEFINITELY more flattering to those of us without the dewy look of youth. (And even youths looked prettier.)

Oh--I read recently that one way to fight osteoporosis is to get blackout blinds for the room in which you sleep. Apparently our bones are designed to lay down calcium and grow best in the dark dark dark.

[joanna bourne]

Ah . . . not only aesthetics, but a healthy life style.

I will admit that I turn out the lights when I leave a room. Just habit. I've never worked out whether it saves any appreciable amount of money or not.

What I really want is to turn off all those little blinking lights on every dang electronic thing in the house.

[deniz]

Great post Jo. Reminds me again to check my wip for references to the hero and heroine sitting around after dark. Could she be mending by the light of a candle, not necessarily fine embroidery? She has no creative talents (while he's a painter) and I struggle to find things for her to occupy her hands with - um, before they build up to other stuff [w]
I bought a replica mini Roman oil lamp when writing my other story, just to see what it was like. This time around I'm into candles, but that olive oil light sounds like a good idea too! Lots of that stuff in Constantinople [g]

[deniz]

Oh, and about banking fires... Could you have a brazier "on" all night?

[joanna bourne]

Hi Deniz --

Sewing is something I'd check when you get to the final draft. I see no reason you couldn't hem stuff with your eyes closed -- entirely by feel. I think you'd also be able to knit or crochet. She could grind his paints for him maybe . . .

[joanna bourne]

I think folks did leave banked coals in many situations. Don't see why they couldn't be left in a brazier of some kind.

[Amy Cook in WI]

I do have allergies and watch what is in the wax...don't usually use "real" candles anymore, since the advent of the battery operated waxed pillars and votives. They have a timer and I set them to go on at dusk for 3 hrs. I get the ambience without the itchiness!

My favorite night memory is when I was a kid and we would trick or treat at night and scare each other silly jumping out of bushes. Our town would turn off the street lights and most houses were only lit by the light from Jack O'Lanterns on peoples porches.

That was when we could run around in the dark and know no one would hurt us...we knew every neighbor and could run to anyone of them for help! I'm sure there were bad guys back then, but I never heard of anyone being hurt. The good old days...sigh...

[joanna bourne]

I love those battery operated candles.

Ok. Ok. I'll admit they're faux. But I don't have to worry about the cat taking it into her head to knock them off the table and start a fire.

[Ceriflex]

I'm really happy that you've set up your own web resource and have actually posted your thoughts. I admire your work and feel I can concern to what you've done. A lot of people can't even imagine having such talent. I hope that you know how lucky you are. :) Good luck to you in ALL your endeavors. :)

[joanna bourne]

Hi Ceriflex --

Thank you so very much. Word Wenches is such a great resource. I'm so glad to be here.