Dear Amanda,
You know when you’re watching Bridgerton and there are these dazzling ballroom shots? Sometimes, they’re shot during the day, in which case it’s quite plausible that you can see every sequin and sparkle on a debutante’s dress. Other times, however, there’s not a window for 50 yards, or maybe it’s nighttime and I can still make out a beribboned shoe or knotted cravat. What gives?
All this is to say, I’m curious about how those gigantic Regency homes were lit during the 19th century, and I’m not about to let a research question go unanswered.
The Basics: Smelly Lamps and Sooty Candles
Let’s say you’re not at a party, but you’re at home relaxing with your dog after a long day. It’s the 18th century, and Courtney Milan has just published a hot new Restoration Comedy, full of bawdy humor and sensuous poetry. You spent the light hours finishing your work, and the only downtime you have is after dark – what do you do?
Well, since it’s the 18th century, you might use one of a few things that have been around for centuries: the fireplace, a torch, a lamp, or a candle.
Fireplaces were great sources of heat and served as communal gathering places for families back in ye olde times. If you had the wood, you and your dog could sit near the fireplace, and if you lived with a group, all of you could huddle together to read, sew, or whatever else you might want to do after dark. By the Regency Era, however, wood fuel was rapidly being replaced by coal;1 though archeological and historical evidence points to the use of coal in the pre-Industrial era,2 coal mining in England burgeoned during the 18th century, and many (if not most) of the homes in London were heated (and lit) by coal by the early 1800s. In fact, coal was so cheap and so effective that coal gas streetlamps were installed in London rom Pall Mall to St James’ Park in 1807 and then expanded to include 40,000 gas streetlamps over the next ten years.3
But while fireplaces are wonderful, they’re not portable, and unless you want to make a bonfire in your parlor, they probably wouldn’t be bright enough to light up a whole room. Torches, lamps, and candles solve the problem of portability. Many of them were light enough to be carried from room to room, and they came in a number of different forms. Rushlights, for example, were made by soaking a rush (you know… the plant) in fuel, usually fat or grease (the cheapest being any leftover from the kitchen – sustainability!). These were extremely common in the British Isles, from the Middle Ages up through the 19th century, and they were extremely inexpensive. However, rushlights had to be held at a 45 degree angle and were typically small, which means they aren’t very practical for something like a party. They also didn’t burn very long – perhaps 10-20 minutes tops (though some sources claim they can make rushlights burn for an hour).4 Maybe that’s enough time for someone like me to endure a party, but most people want to stay longer than that.
If you were wealthier, you could use candles – and those have also been around for ages. According to the Jane Austen Centre, Regency-era candles were “made of beef tallow or beeswax or both. Beef tallow candles though cheaper, smoked, smelled bad, and were rather soft and tended to bend. The gentry preferred beeswax because it smelled better and gave off less smoke. Some thrifty households used tallow candles in the servant’s quarters.”5 But unless you were rich and throwing a ridiculously expensive party, you probably weren’t using candles every day. For one, they were stinky – as mentioned above. For two, these candles weren’t like the ones we have today; you had to trim the wick every few minutes, lest they sputter out and die. For three, they were fairly expensive; by 1792, the price was around 3s 1d for 8 pounds of tallow candles,6 and the government placed a tax on candles in 1709 that kept rising every so often. But a jump in candle technology came in the 1750s, when artisans used spermaceti wax (whale oil) to create their lights. Spermaceti wax was preferable because it was odorless and burned longer and brighter than beeswax or tallow, but candles made from this wax cost around four pence per pound weight more than tallow.7
You could, alternatively, turn to something like an oil lamp. Lamps were in use since ancient times and tended to use animal fat or vegetable oil as their fuel. The Ancient Greeks, for example, burned olive oil, while fish, seal, horse, and cattle oil was more common in the British Isles (until the Industrial Era, when whale oil lamps began to make a splash). The problem with using animal or fish oils, however, is the smell – when burned, these fuels give off a strong odor, which means that your party might be… fishy. By the 18th century, however, inventors were tinkering with lamp designs that had mixed success. The Argand lamp – invented and patented in France in 1780 by Aimé Argand – was perhaps one of the first “practical” models on account of it burning brighter; it worked by using a gravity feed to supply oil (whale oil, olive oil, vegetable oil, etc.) into a reservoir with a wick mounted atop a burner.8 These lamps remained the most popular model until the kerosene lamp was introduced in 1850, but even so, they weren’t necessarily the Rolls Royce of artificial lighting. Estimates put the light output at little more than 60–90 lux (about a tenth of the light given off by a 40-watt incandescent electric bulb).9
It’s Party Time: How to Light Up a Room in Regency England
Ok, so now that we have the basics, let’s talk about how rich people actually lit up a room during parties.
The first thing you want to do is plan your party. This may sound like a no-brainer, but there’s actually a reason for careful planning over spontaneous celebration. Before the era of streetlamps, British nighttime social events would typically take place during the week of the full moon to allow for the most natural light possible. As the Jane Austen’s World blog points out:
They would see, [Sir John] said, only one gentleman there besides himself; a particular friend who was staying at the park, but who was neither very young nor very gay. He hoped they would all excuse the smallness of the party, and could assure them it should never happen so again. He had been to several families that morning in hopes of procuring some addition to their number, but it was moonlight and every body was full of engagements.
– Sir John Middleton, Chapter 7, Sense and Sensibility
Notice that last line. And lest we think that the moon is a stupid light source, compare walking outside in the dark on a full moon to walking outside when there’s a new moon. The moon may not be a blazing ball of hot gas, but it’s enough to allow people to move somewhat freely in the wee hours of the morning. If you don’t want your guests to trip and fall on their faces, you might put up some torches around the outside of your mansion, perhaps by the front door or in the drive up. You might also hire staff to escort guests from their coaches to the house with candles or torches, or your guests might be fancy enough to have lamps attached to their mode of trasport.
The second thing you want to do is choose a room (or set of rooms) with a crap ton of windows to allow for as much of that moonlight to shine through as possible. In the Regency Era (and the eras before it), buildings frequently included large windows and skylights to allow as much natural light into the space as possible. Mirrors could also be strategically placed to bounce light around, giving the impression of a room more brightly lit than it is.
The third thing you do is spend a small fortune on candles. In addition to wall-mounted candleholders or pillars of candle sticks, a Regency ballroom might have a few candelabras or chandeliers. The Assembly Rooms at Bath, for example, had 5 chandeliers in its ballroom (which could hold up to 500 people). According to Richard Wyatt at the Bath Newseum:
The chandeliers in all three very impressive rooms are each an average height of eight feet and were, of course, originally lit by candles. Each chandelier in the ballroom and tearoom held 40 candles and the single drop in the Octagon 48. During evening functions in the 18th century eleven-hour candles were used. This meant they burnt for 7 hours on a ball night but still had four hours for a three-hour concert the next day – allowing for time to arrive and depart… For the Assembly Rooms, with balls from 6pm until 11pm sharp, they probably burned from 5.30pm to 11.30pm and then were extinguished. Perhaps, on the following night, they would have been used for a concert. As such a musical event started at 7.30pm – the four hours remaining would have been enough. With each chandelier holding at least 40 candles – if all the chandeliers were lit – a minimum of 400 candles must have been burning at one time. The cost of 11-hour candles was 2s 10d for four. So we have £55 plus for lighting and, multiply that by whatever the inflationary figure is today, and a staggering sum is reached!
– Richard Wyatt, “Amongst our chandeliers.”
Your side rooms, however, didn’t have to be lit by candles. During Regency-era balls, you don’t just shove all your guests into the ballroom: you also make available a card room, a ladies’ retiring room, a dining area or tea room, etc. so that everyone doesn’t feel too claustrophobic. In these smaller spaces, you might still have candles, but you can also get away with other methods of lighting: Bath’s Octagon room, for example, has four fireplaces.
Still, all this was not sufficient enough to light up the room like a modern-day movie set. Despite all the flames and natural light, there is only so much you can do before you set the whole building ablaze. While I couldn’t find a credible source that talked about exactly how bright (or not) a ballroom might be (there may be one out there, I just can’t find it), I imagine that with the light of 300 candles and a full moon, a room might be light enough to comfortably observe what’s going on, but perhaps not light enough to clearly see things like facial expressions unless you’re at a close distance. Honestly, it seems plausible that guests might have a case of mistaken identity once in a while, though even in Jane Austen’s works, spectators seem to have no problem gossiping from the sidelines about who is dancing with who.
But what I find particularly lovely is this observation from Real Royalty: in a video that documents their attempt to recreate a “country ball” inspired by the works of Jane Austen, the narrators call the ball “a light in the darkness” – a metaphorical bright spot in an otherwise gloomy town where the ball is the biggest event of the season. The hosts talk about cabin fever and how balls alleviated all that, bringing people together in large numbers when they might not otherwise have a reason to do so.
So while your candles might not be enough to fully light up a room, perhaps the smiling faces of 500 of your best friends might.
Anyway. Hope you’re doing well.
Kelly
Footnotes
- For an overview of the history of coal mining in England, see Mark Cartwright, “Coal Mining in the British Industrial Revolution,” World History Encyclopedia. 17 March 2023. ↩︎
- William M. Cavert traces the origins of environmental pollution in the Early Modern period, including England’s turn to coal in the mid-16th century. See The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. Cambridge University Press, 2016. ↩︎
- Cartwright, “Coal Mining in the British Industrial Revolution.” Accessed 23 March 2024. Prior to 1087, streets were typically illuminated by oil lamps or light coming from the windows of homes. Jonathan Taylor describes these lamps as “a simple oil lamp suspended from the rim of a glass bowl and covered by a ventilated metal cowl.” See “Georgian and Victorian Street Lighting” in Building Conservation. You can check out a nice little short video about Regency Gaslamps here. ↩︎
- Ye Olde Wikipedia. ↩︎
- “Period Lighting and Silhouette Making,” Jane Austen Centre. 20 June 2011. ↩︎
- William Savage, “The Cost of 18th-Century Lighting.” Pen and Pension, 27 July 2016. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ye Olde Wikipedia ↩︎
- William Savage, “Let there be Light!” Pen and Pension, 20 July 2016. ↩︎
Cravats, Crinoline, and Craft 