Tea at Trianon: Sleep in Early Modern England

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, September 5, 2016

Sleep in Early Modern England

From Stuarts Online:

Researching Sleep in Early Modern England has certainly been a challenge, and my attempts to reconstruct how people thought about sleep, how and where they practiced it, and what motivations shaped their rituals and habits has led me to many and varied sources ranging from household inventories, diaries and letters, medical treatises, recipe books, sermons, to surviving linen bed-sheets and wooden bedsteads.

I have become convinced that the early modern period witnessed some major transformations in sleep’s understanding and practice – many of them connected to changing ideas about how, and to what extent, natural and supernatural forces were believed to shape sleep’s quality and duration. The book also includes lots of vignettes that contrast with how we sleep today – the widespread practice of ‘segmented sleep’ – sleep that was divided into two separate phases during the night, which people termed their ‘first’ and ‘second’ sleeps, is one very important difference. The degree of personal and emotional attachment that people had to their bedsteads and bedding textiles is another; and the way that Christian beliefs informed people’s expectations of sleep, and the ways that they managed it, is another. (Read more.)