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Updated: May 10, 2025
Washington Hawkins' new life was an unceasing delight to him. Senator Dilworthy lived sumptuously, and Washington's quarters were charming gas; running water, hot and cold; bath-room, coal-fires, rich carpets, beautiful pictures on the walls; books on religion, temperance, public charities and financial schemes; trim colored servants, dainty food everything a body could wish for.
In 1812 the Lizard lighthouse, certainly one of the most important in the kingdom, was maintained with coal-fires. The Bidstone, a leading light to the port of Liverpool, was furnished with an enormous spout lamp, with a wick twelve inches in width, the smoke from which was so great as to completely darken the upper surface of its reflector.
It must be remembered that the Lizard is rendered doubly perilous by a sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was introduced for the lamps it is said the lantern was lit by coal-fires a kind of first-hand use of gas. Below the lighthouse is the striking Bumble Rock, and close to this the hollow known as the Lion's Den, formed by a natural sudden subsidence in 1847.
Washington Hawkins' new life was an unceasing delight to him. Senator Dilworthy lived sumptuously, and Washington's quarters were charming gas; running water, hot and cold; bath-room, coal-fires, rich carpets, beautiful pictures on the walls; books on religion, temperance, public charities and financial schemes; trim colored servants, dainty food everything a body could wish for.
And really there was much inspiration to be derived from the lamp-smoke, for the wick being a mass of moss steeped in an open cup of seal-oil, the smoke of it rose in varied convolutions that afforded almost as much scope for suggestive contemplation as our familiar coal-fires.
Yet, as it respects optical effect, the feeble rays which were diffused from the wood or coal-fires at their summits, could never have traversed the thick fogs which in all climates occasionally overspread the lower regions of the atmosphere. Nevertheless, as to the strength of the light, the modern lighthouses were, until lately, little superior to the ancient.
In the country they persevered in using wood and peat. Those who were accustomed to this sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of his clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged that our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why we ought not to have preferred it.
The earlier turfbuilt farmhouses have now been replaced by comfortable concrete buildings which get their electricity from a source of water power virtually inexhaustible. Many of these, e. g. the majority of houses in Reykjavík are heated by water from hot springs, so that the purity of the northern air is seldom spoilt by smoke from coal-fires.
When I first arrived, as the weather was still very cold and wet, my greatest source of discomfort arose from the want of coal-fires, and the draughts, which are innumerable, owing to the slight manner in which the houses are run up; in some the front entrance opens direct into the sitting-rooms, very unpleasant, and entirely precluding the "not at home" to an unwelcome visitor.
"Such a queer story, Mollie! And such an odd bride undersized, very slender, golden ringlets name, Mary! My pretty Cricket, I think I know where you passed that mysterious fortnight!" Mollie Dane sat alone in her pretty room. A bright fire burned in the grate. Old Mme. Walraven liked coal-fires, and would have them throughout the house.
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