The labours of the
candle-snuffers in front of the curtain were probably brought to a
conclusion soon afterwards, when oil-lamps took the place of candles.
The snuffer then found his occupation gone. Probably the trimming of
the lamps became his next duty; and then, as time went on, he
developed into a "gasman," that most indispensable attendant of the
modern theatre.
Thackeray, in his novel of "The Virginians," has some very apposite
remarks upon the limited state of illumination in which our ancestors
were content to dwell. "In speaking of the past," he writes, "I think
the night-life of society a hundred years since was rather a _dark_
life. There was not one wax-candle for ten which we now see in a
ladies' drawing-room: let alone gas and the wondrous new illuminations
of clubs. Horrible guttering tallow smoked and stunk in passages. The
candle-snuffer was a notorious officer in the theatre. See Hogarth's
pictures: how dark they are, and how his feasts are, as it were,
begrimed with tallow! In 'Mariage a la Mode,' in Lord Viscount
Squanderfield's grand saloons, where he and his wife are sitting
yawning before the horror-stricken steward when their party is over,
there are but eight candles--one on each table and half-a-dozen in a
brass chandelier.
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