Murderous Illumination

C.A. Asbrey

Change has always brought unintended consequences, and the while many welcomed much brighter lighting with the advent of gas and electric light, there were some who did not. And many of those were women. In particular, wealthier women.

For clarity, the average candle burns at twelve to thirteen lumens. The average gas lamp produces seventy to one-hundred-and-fifty lumens. Compare that to an electric light bulb like the Welsbach Mantle (late 19th Century) which was around fifty times brighter than a candle, and you might get the idea. Bright lights are great for close work and detail, but detail might be your enemy if candlelight softens your lines and flaws.

Anyone using modern filters in their photos nowadays is exactly the kind of demographic who complained of “murderous illumination” in the nineteenth century. Candles were their softening filter, but they were seen as having a beauty advantage in one way. Early marketing materials targeted the fears of aging and poor complexion. Ads pointed out that gas lamps cast yellow, aging shadows and deposited black soot on skin and bedroom vanity mirrors. Electric lights were sold as the ultimate tool for a woman’s dressing table because they revealed the “whole truth” of her face while preserving her youthfulness. It let her see how to present herself in her best light by using light. Grooming spaces were moved away from guttering candles, and women were presented with a bright steady light, mimicking daylight. If you look at old bathrooms and bedrooms, dressing tables were mostly set under the main window, and shaving mirrors on the bathroom windowsill. The reason for that was driven by the need for light, but while people wanted to see their flaws so they could camouflage them, a soft candlelight allowed a myriad of minor imperfections to go unobserved. Especially when as Victorian women used a lot more cosmetics than most admitted to; but more of that later.

And light made people consider other things. Gaslight emitted a yellow or orange light, and if you are familiar with the colour wheel, that kind of light blocks blue and violet light while letting yellow, orange, and red light pass through. In 1897, Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms warns that pale shades of yellow looked “muddy in appearance by gaslight,” and that shades of rose disappeared. Purple, as well as darker shades of blues and greens, were known to “lose their brilliance in artificial light.” Under yellow gaslight, pale yellows can appear dirty or muddy, and combinations like purple and orange lose their daytime harmony, but shades of red (crimson, cardinal, and scarlet) stay rich and pleasing, which is why Victorian fashion advice recommended red for evening wear.The 1881 edition of Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms laid all that out for fashionable ladies to read. And that also impacted on the colours we now see as Christmas; and the modern Christmas was invented by the Victorians. Shades of red were almost universally pleasing under gaslight, as was “gaslight green.” And gaslight spectacularly reflected glitter. The new lights cast an indelible mark on the colour we use in the dark season, even though we now use different lights. It set a cultural expectation of what Christmas looks like, and we’ve stuck with it.

Nineteenth century beauty standards dictated that obvious makeup was not acceptable, but that does not mean that nobody used it. They very much did, but it was discreet, natural-looking, and often homemade. Buying it had connotations of the kind of paint that actors and prostitutes used, but pharmacies made their own products and marketed them more as remedies, “embellishments,” and skin care. The word makeup was not commonly used until the 1890s, with the term ”cosmetics” being preferred.

A pale, clear, symmetrical face signalled health, morality (not the flush of a drinker or the sores and chancres of disease), and that a woman was wealthy enough not to work in the open air or have her face over steaming vats. Queen Victoria famously deplored makeup, making it even less acceptable, but perfumes were allowed with the queen preferring floral notes. She famously used rose water and orange blossom, Fleurs de Bulgarie by Creed was introduced to her by Empress Eugénie of France. It was a rich Bulgarian rose scent featuring notes of musk, ambergris, and bergamot became a staple during her reign and earned a royal warrant in 1885. Bouquet de la Reine by Floris was created specially as a wedding gift for her in 1840.

But none of that meant that women didn’t use it. They shaped their eyebrows with tweezers and darkened them with burnt clove paste, charcoal, soot (lamp-black), burnt cork, and Indian ink. Vaseline or petroleum jelly was invented in 1859, and was used to form a paste with such darkening powders to make a rudimentary mascara. Women also used with blends of reddening agents such as beetroot, carmine (cochineal), berries, boiled woods and roots;sandalwood, pernambuco, and alkanet root were mixed with waxes and oils before, and after, the invention of petroleum jelly. Saffron was soaked, pressed, and treated with potash and vinegar to yield a rich, sedimented red powder used for rouge. They also soaked the dyes out of crepe paper and fabrics to create a flush of pink or red on the lips or cheeks. Red mercury was a toxic option, but such concerns never stopped the Victorians. They used arsenic as a depilatory and to remove freckles and blemishes. Brand names such as Dr Campbell’s Arsenic Complexion Wafers and Dr. Mackenzie’s Arsenical Soap were sold in pharmacies. Fowler’s Solution (a potassium arsenite solution) was ingested to enhance skin radiance and overall health. Lead has been used as a paste to whiten skin for centuries, as has belladonna to dilate the pupils. Long-term use was cumulative and highly toxic, leading to nervous system damage, organ failure, skin lesions (arsenical keratoses), hair loss, and eventual death. Stopping the intake often triggered severe withdrawal effects and worsening skin damage. Tubercular pallor was romanticised, and therefore the look was desirable. Before we leap to judgement I have to point out trends like heroin chic, vampire facials, and snail-mucous moisturisers in modern times. And things like radium has shown us that we never seem to learn.

To complete the pale look, some women even painted on blue veins to show how translucent their skin was. These veins could be applied using a blue paste made from a mixture of calcium carbonate, gum arabic and Prussian blue. Guerlain even produced blue pencils for this precise purpose in the late 19th century.

All of this had to be done in secret, of course, and drawing in veins faded from popularity in the early twentieth century when travel became a status symbol, and so did tanning.

But back to the lights. These rudimentary cosmetics had been created in a regime of subtler and more forgiving lighting. Under gas and electric lights these efforts looked positively pasty, heavy, chalky, or unnaturally painted. In gaslight, especially, they could look sallow, and in some cases, greenish. Hosts were seen as considerate and classy if they kept dining rooms and salons lit by candlelight, or discretely placed oil lamps with special shades that filtered light through a pink shade. Remember the colour wheel? Pink absorbs green and blue. When yellow light hits the pink material, the green component of the yellow light is mostly blocked, leaving a blend dominated by red and remaining warm wavelengths that our eyes perceive as peach or soft orange. Peachy skin is generally considered more desirable than green or yellow unless you are in The Simpsons. These shades came in glass, silk, or coloured fabric that was lined in pink. The lining still acted as an efficient filter. Fans of Dominick Dunne will remember characters like Pauline Mendelsohn of An Inconvenient Woman or Lil Altemus in People like Us insisting that lampshades be lined in pink silk. The reason was that it was a virtual photoshop.

And what if you didn’t like pink? Well, as the French say “tout est bon dans le cochon”. That means that everything in the pig is great What you can’t eat, you can use in other ways; including the bladder. Pig’s bladder lampshades were popular from the 19th century to the 1950s. Pig’s bladder shades had a natural yellowish or amber tone and the cured membrane filtered out harsh blue or stark white light spectrums, and the stretched, semi-translucent membrane diffused harsh light into a warm, soft glow that closely mimicked candlelight.

Fairy lights were not the string lights we know today. Also known as fairy lamps, they were small cups covered in a dome that diffused light, and were popular for providing a safer glow. They were used as mood lighting, as well as children’s nightlights, and were another method of providing a more forgiving glow.

Ballrooms themselves were always lit as brightly as possible. In the days of candles it was a conspicuous display of wealth to have beeswax candles everywhere. The lighting could often cost exponentially more than the catering. Hosts placed large mirrors behind candleholders and girandoles, and hung crystal pendants on chandeliers to reflect and bounce the light across the entire room. As ballrooms acted as marriage markets it was important for people to be able to clearly see one another. A ballroom was often the brightest light people saw anywhere. Florence Hartley, in 1872, says, “One rule you must observe; have abundance of everything. Other entertainments may be given upon economical principles, but a ball cannot. Light, attendance, supper, every detail must be carefully attended to, and a ball must be an expensive luxury.” 

It’s telling that the ‘little black dress’ didn’t become a thing until the mid 1920s. In a ballroom, young women tended to either light colours or jewel tones with glistening beading, and sparkling trims that are eye-catching when everything is lit by candles. Fabric and trim choices for clothing directly correlate with the development of gas lights and then electricity. And the use of makeup is also connected to the growing use of electric light. The cosmetic formulas to become smoother and more opaque to look natural under a harsh glare. Celebrity culture embraced the way actresses looked, making their cosmetics more popular in a world where a whole world of advertising was ready to create a new market for new products. After WW1 there was a youth movement who actively rejected the constrictions and obedience of a generation who took them to horror. They had a punk-like approach to throwing themselves into anything their parents disapproved of; and makeup was just part of that bacchanalian tilt towards rejecting the prevailing codes of what was previously considered decent behaviour. After all, those codes had just cost their generation dearly.

But lighting still impacted flapper culture. All those fringes, glass beads, metallic threads, rhinestones, chiffons, and sequins were designed to work with the new technology; and the fashions were meant to keep the women centre-stage and every movment wreathed in glamour.

And instead of working against the new technology, the flappers embraced it. They ushered in an age of paint, glitter, and subversion. They saw themselves as shameless, selfish and honest, and their predecessors as incompetent, hypocritical, and having blind-faith in a system that sacrificed the younger generation on an altar of ideology and crumbling alliances.

Flappers embraced the glare, as did their male counterparts the lesser-known ‘sheiks’, and in doing so, invented the world we know today.