Mistaking moonlight for morning
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland, many people – especially chldren – had only limited access to clocks and did not own watches. This Note describes three episodes in which bright moonlight was mistaken for morning. It is offered as a small contribution to the history of the subjective experience of Time.
Henry Cockburn entered the Edinburgh High School at the age of eight in October 1787 and remained a pupil, fearful and resentful, for six years. The arid curriculum was confined to the mechanical study of Latin, inculcated by a combination of boredom and brutality: Cockburn reckoned he was a competent student, but "there were probably not ten days in which I was not flogged, at least once". In summer, the interminable classes began at seven o'clock in the morning, "barbarity" in Cockburn's memory. Nonetheless, it was not a good idea to arrive late. "I once started out of bed, thinking I was too late, and got out of the house unquestioned. On reaching the High School gate, I found it locked, and saw the yards, through the bars, silent and motionless." Frightened, he headed for the nearby High Street where the Tron Church had one of the town's few public clocks. "It was only about two or three. Not a creature was on the street…. I came home awed, as if I had seen a dead city".[1]
There are several curious features about the episode. Henry Cockburn's father was a prominent lawyer who held the office of Sheriff of Midlothian until he became a judge in 1790, half way through the boy's time at the High School. Surely such a household – the property had eight acres of land attached – had resident servants who could be expected to be at work soon after six in the morning. Why did he not notice their absence? It is puzzling too that he "got out of the house unquestioned". The family home had been threatened by a starving mob during a spectacular outbreak of rioting in 1784. In such a packed and turbulent a community, Archibald Cockburn would doubtless have ensured that his doors were locked at night and his windows barred.[2] They lived at Hope Park, on the Meadows that formed the southern fringe of the Old Town. Cockburn remembered fields and gardens in the neighbourhood, but attempts had been made in the late eighteenth century to create a middle-class enclave that would rival the New Town that was growing up to the north.[3] Most of the half-mile walk – or sprint – to school was through built-up streets: it is strange that the panicking youngster did not ask himself why there were no carts making early morning deliveries, no labourers trudging off to work. No doubt fear of corporal punishment overcame any suspicions that he might simply have tumbled out of bed too early.
Of course, the major omission in Cockburn's brief anecdote was any explanation of his – to us – strange belief that two o'clock on a summer morning was time to go to school. Edinburgh is of course a northerly city, but, even around the longest day, 21 June, sunrise begins at 3.26 GMT (there was no daylight saving in the eighteenth century). Although there would have been a pre-dawn glimmer for about an hour before the sun's rays first appeared, it is unlikely that Edinburgh's sombre stone buildings would have basked in an impression of a summer morning at such an hour.[4] No doubt Cockburn omitted to mention that he had been misled by the brilliance of the Moon because the explanation was so obvious. During his school years, there was a Full Moon close to midsummer on three occasions: 1788 (18th June), 1790 (26th) and 1791 (16th). Of course, the peculiarities of its orbit mean that the Earth's satellite often wastes its rays during daytime hours, and the skies over Scotland are often cloudy. I have not located any contemporary almanac, but it seems reasonable to assume that, during one of those three school years when the Full Moon phase overlapped with the longest day, there was a flood of pale light in clearn night-time sky that led a terrified boy to dash through Edinburgh's empty streets. Perhaps the most surprising point to emerge from the episode was that, in one of the elite households in Scotland's capital city, there was no timepiece available to the youngster to check the time. No doubt Archibald Cockburn owned an imposing pocket watch which he used to regulate his professional day, and took with him to his bedroom at night. Servants were probably woken each day by roosters greeting the dawn: cockerels not clocks got them out of bed. Perhaps they timed their subsequent routines on the approximate information supplied by sundials. Unfortunately, sundials may not always have provided crisp readings in Edinburgh's canyon-like streets, and they were certainly not accurate in moonlight.
The apparent scarcity of clocks and watches in eighteenth-century Scotland seems surprising given the degree of technical innovation in the country's dynamic industrial economy.[5] Perhaps equally remarkable were two similar episodes that occurred more than sixty years later in Ireland and England. The County Cork town of Youghal possessed an impressive medieval parish church, now known as Old St Mary's, which attracted discerning visitors. Perhaps its best known feature was the monumental tomb of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, an adventurer and entrepreneur who had purchased the lands originally granted by Elizabeth I to the more dashing Tudor conquistador Walter Raleigh. To ensure that his memory was permanently imposed upon the locality, Boyle had imported a craftsman from London to create his tomb a quarter of a century before his death in 1643, which explains why the monument had a slightly outdated sixteenth-century air. Nonetheless, it was (and is) imposing. Boyle himself reclines on his deathbed, with his two wives, stern-faced and lavishly gowned, kneeling on either side. Below them, also kneeling but miniaturised, his children join in filial mourning. (Unfortunately, the sculptured brood is limited to the nine whom he had fathered before 1619, when he was just getting into his procreational stride: hence one of his younger offspring, Robert Boyle, the Father of Chemistry, born eight years later, does not feature.)[6] Gaudy paint highlighted the doublets and the ruffs of the Boyle tribe, while stained glass windows with armorial bearings commemorating other worthies threw beams of coloured light into the nave. The combination prompted one pretentious tourist into whimsical speculation, which incidentally revealed another example of misinterpreted moonlight.
Sometime in the mid-eighteen fifties, a journalistic travel writer availed himself of the services of a church official to show him the sights of Old St Mary's. His guide was the sexton, the caretaker and probably also the gravedigger, who almost certainly lived in the tiny cottage at the church gate.[7] The visitor was so charmed by the effigies that he wondered aloud whether "some of those old grim gentlemen and ladies here should take a nightly stroll about, just to shake their old limbs…. If such visitors frequent this earth, I would expect to meet them here, going through their midnight promenades, discussions, and intrigue." Perhaps the sexton had encountered this fantasy before and probably he hoped that a dramatic anecdote might trigger a generous tip. He certainly rose to the challenge. One Saturday night, he recounted, "the moon shone so brightly that I thought it was day". Lighted candle in hand, he headed for the gloomy church to prepare for an early Sunday morning service. As he entered the vestry, he heard a noise which he feared meant that there were thieves in the church. He was right to be on his guard: Old St Mary's had been the target of two notorious and still-remembered burglaries in the eighteenth century and, if he was handling communion plate, he would have been at risk.[8] As he cautiously opened the vestry door to check, "a gush of wind blew down the aisle that quenched the candle. I then heard, I thought, the creaking of boots and the rustling of silks, as if persons were walking about." Not surprisingly, he made a rapid exit from the building and, on returning home, "found that it was only about midnight".[9] The local context supports the account even if it does not validate the phantoms. Youghal is an enclosed medieval walled town: Old St Mary's is located on rising ground in the north-west corner, while the only public timepiece was located in a cupola atop the Clock Gate at the former southern entrance. The townscape has not changed much since the mid-nineteenth century, and the clock can be glimpsed from streets close to the church, but it is not visible from the gatehouse cottage. Unlike young Henry Cockburn, who sprinted through built-up streets in his nocturnal school run, the sexton simply crossed the graveyard to enter the church, and would not have expected to encounter anyone on his way. Presumably, after his scary experience, he made a detour to some point where he could check the town clock, just as Cockburn had headed for the Tron Church. I hope the imaginative travel writer rewarded him generously for his material.
The third episode of mistaken moonlight can be precisely dated to the early hours of 21 January 1859, and forms part of the foundation legend of Wellington College, a Victorian boarding school for boys. The death of the great Duke of Wellington in 1852 triggered a national debate on how best to honour the memory of the victor of Waterloo. One popular project proposed the establishment of a college to educate, or at least to train, the sons of Army officers, with an initial emphasis upon preparation for the military. The scheme also aimed to subsidise the fees paid by orphans. (The term was defined to include boys whose officer fathers had died, many of whom had living but impecunious mothers.) The trustees appointed as their first headmaster the twenty-nine year-old Edward White Benson, formerly Fellow of a Cambridge college and currently teaching at Rugby, a school whose devoutly athletic traditions he proposed to transplant. By the force of his intimidating personality, Benson would reshape the intended vocational academy into a major public school, revelling in Classics and funnelling boys on to the ancient universities as well to careers in the Army. Obviously, the successful launching of the project was of crucial importance for the young headmaster's career, an important step in a trajectory that would eventually make him Archbishop of Canterbury.
Much of the cash raised to commemorate the Duke had been spent on an imposing academic quadrangle that overawed the first cohort of pupils on their arrival. However, construction was still in progress: for instance, in particular, the clock turret remained empty. Unfortunately, the high-minded charitable intentions that drove the Wellington College project contrasted sadly with the quality of that initial intake. Some of the boys who qualified for acceptance were the products of undisciplined and unstable backgrounds. Few had benefited from much schooling, which probably explains why they were consigned to such an untried institution. Above all – although this could hardly be their fault – most were only about eleven years of age: had they been older, they would probably have been enrolled at established public schools.
The first intake of 76 boys arrived on the cold, wet evening of 20 January 1859, and were presumably given some outline of the planned schedule for the first school day on the morrow. After a Spartan supper of bread and cheese, washed down by small beer – the low-alcohol beverage that was safer than the available drinking water – they were marched off to the dormitories and ordered to go to bed. Benson planned to establish a prefect system, but on that first night there was no structure of juvenile authority to impose order once the masters left them to their own devices. The boys were excited and many found it difficult to sleep. Almost two-thirds of them were subsidised orphans who had no doubt had been indoctrinated with the belief that they should be grateful for their selection, and were accordingly anxious to please. Outside, the rain cleared. January Full Moon, traditionally known as the Wolf Moon, had reached its peak two days earlier. There were no howling predators in Berkshire, but cold weather probably sharpened the lunar light effect. The boys knew that they were required to get up early to start their first school day. When brilliant light flooded through the dormitory windows, they collectively decided that it was morning.
A.C. Benson, the headmaster's son and his devoted and detailed biographer, takes up the story. "About three in the morning my father was awakened by voices and the tramping of many feet, and looking out, it being a bright moonlight night, saw the boys coming out into the court." Another version claimed that Benson was still at work in his study, checking last-minute arrangements, when one of his staff rushed in to warn him that a mass breakout was in progress. Since Wellington College had been built on bleak heathland, Benson instantly dismissed the notion that any of the hapless pre-teens would manage to escape, although any such attempt would have been embarrassing to the untried institution. Eight years earlier, conditions had been so harsh in another Victorian foundation, Marlborough College, that the inmates had risen in rebellion, an episode that hampered pupil recruitment for some years. Was this a protest against the bread and cheese? On confronting the milling crowd of youngsters, Benson quickly "discovered that the boys had taken the bright moonlight for day, not having a watch among them, and had cheerfully dressed and gone down so as to be certain of being in time for school". The Irish caretaker, known merely as Pat, used his two fierce dogs to round up the stragglers whom the masters then escorted back to bed. The episode, which does not seem to have reported in the press, was actually useful in giving Benson an early opportunity to stamp his furious authority on the school community.[10]
A.C. Benson's apparent surprise that none of the boys possessed a watch is curious.[11] Wristwatches were uncommon accessories until the end of the nineteenth century. In military circles, they became standard equipment for officers during the Boer War, and it would be twentieth-century pre-operation briefings that invariably concluded with the order 'synchronise watches'.
Some early modern British towns did operate a simple nocturnal time-keeping system. Watchmen had long patrolled the streets at night: their notorious inadequacy as a crime-prevention force had been lampooned by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing. By the eighteenth century, they took to proclaiming the hour (but not the minutes), sometimes combined with a weather report. At Brentwood in Essex, a town of about two thousand people, the "dronish, half musical voice" of the watchman was long remembered as he cried: "Eleven o'clock and a moonlight night", "Two o'clock and a cloudy morning".[12] Brentwood's nocturnal custodians were notorious for taking cover on wet nights, but a character in Smollett's Humphry Clinker (1771) complained that in London their announcements were impossible to ignore: "I start every hour from my sleep, at the horrid noise of the watchmen bawling the hour through every street".[13] However, the system was not employed everywhere: Cockburn explained that Edinburgh did not employ watchmen at the time of his moonlight excursion, although they were introduced later.[14] Presumably the watchman system was phased out as modern constabulary policing was introduced throughout Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The twenty-first century world is very different. Atomic clocks, digital timepieces, internet connections, mobile phones, continuous news channels – all combine to calibrate our lives (if we succumb) in an exactitude of minutes and seconds. In urban areas, intrusive street-lighting has virtually detached the night sky from the lives of city-dwellers. The phases of the Moon no longer impinge upon daily life: we are a long way from the convivial Lunatick Clubb formed in 1763 by the farmers of Aveley in Essex to meet and carouse on the first Monday after Full Moon.[15] The three episodes recovered here are reminder of a world that has been lost.
ENDNOTES
[1] H. Cockburn, Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856 ed.), 8. D.S. Landes, Revolution in Times: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass., 1983) remains a major study of time-keeping, but does not refer to false moonlight-morning episodes.
[2] K. Miller, Cockburn's Millennium (Cambridge, Mass, 1976), 9.
[3] Cockburn, Memorials of his Time, 7. A map of the south side of the Old Town, c. 1780, shows the mixture of built-up and open ground: A.J. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh… (Edinburgh, 1966), facing page 68. J. Gifford et al., Edinburgh (The Buildings of Scotland) (Harmondsworth, 1984), 247-52 discusses building dates in these streets.
[4] Edinburgh is close to 56 degrees North. Edmonton, Canada's most northerly major city, is at 53.3 degrees.
[5] A French visitor to London in 1719 commented that "almost every Body has a watch". He probably referred to pocket watches. In comments of this kind, 'everybody' often meant 'everybody who mattered', e.g. clergy, lawyers, merchants, shopkeepers. The term was probably not intended to include carters, costermongers or stevedores, let alone women and children. R. Porter, The Creation of the Modern World … (New York ed., 2000), 205.
[6] F. Keohane, Cork: City and County (The Buildings of Ireland), New Haven, Conn., 2020, 606-7. A tenth child who had died is shown keeled over with a skull.
[7] The cottage survives, and is assumed to date from a restoration in 1854-5.
[8] The burglaries were in 1763 and 1789: The Hand-Book of Youghal (1896), 68, 73.
[9] The account appeared in an undated issue of the Dublin Celt (a publication that I have not traced), and was reprinted in Freeman's Journal (Sydney), 2 October 1858, via Trove, the National Library of Australia's online newspaper archive.
[10] D. Newsome, A History of Wellington College … (London, 1959), 97-8; A.C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson (2 vols, London, 1899), i, 164; J.L. Bevir, The Making of Wellington College (London, 1920), 16.
[11] Born in 1862, Benson spent his childhood at Wellington College before following a standard privileged path through preparatory school and Eton. It is unlikely that he encountered many contemporaries who sported wristwatches. The date of his biography, 1899, perhaps explains the aside.
[12] J. Larkin (ed. P.C.R. Linnecar), Fireside Talks about Brentwood 1906… (Brentwood, Essex, 1989), 85. The Brentwood recollection dates to about 1830.
[13] E. Cockayne, Hubbub… (New Haven, Conn., 2007), 109.
[14] It seems likely that watchmen were introduced to the streets of Edinburgh as part of local police reforms in 1805-12.
[15] A.F.J. Brown, ed., English History from Essex Sources … (Chelmsford, 1952), 160. As late as the 1920s, school concerts at the Royal Liberty School, Romford, were held at Full Moon to make it easier for parents to attend.