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Updated: June 14, 2025
Nor would they commonly retire, unless the weather was dirty, until the sea-coal fire was lit above the town-gate and the lesser lighthouse upon the town-green answered with its six candles. Now, however, though they met here as usual, no salutation was exchanged. On benches as far apart as possible they drank their beer in silence and watched the players.
The glowing hues of these could be distinctly made out, even at this great distance, by the naked eye. For it must be remembered that there was in those days no sea-coal to send up its murky smoke-wreaths, blurring the bright skies with its inky pall; no factories with tall chimnies, vomiting forth, like mimic Etnas, their pestilential breath, fatal to vegetable life.
Barnet saw the last days of the coal-steam engines upon the English railways and the gradual cleansing of the London atmosphere as the smoke-creating sea-coal fires gave place to electric heating. The building of laboratories at Kensington was still in progress, and he took part in the students' riots that delayed the removal of the Albert Memorial.
But I can see as many castles in the clouds as any man, as many genii in the curling smoke of a steam engine, as perfect a Persepolis in the embers of a sea-coal fire. My life has been spent in such day-dreams. But I cry no roast-meat. There are times a man should remember what Rousseau used to say: Tais-toi, Jean-Jacques, car on ne t'entend pas! January 2.
And the chimney-place! That was unaccountably smaller, and glowed with a sea-coal fire. And the mantel was now but a bit of a shelf, and held many things that seemed scarce at home on the rough and painted wood, gold filigree; and China and Japan, and a French clock that ought not to have been just there. Ah, the teacups!
Evelyn protested against this "hellish and dismal cloud of sea-coal," and Charles II. desired Evelyn to prepare a Bill on this nuisance to put before Parliament. But there the matter rested.
The strong beer was broached, and the black-jacks went plentifully about, with toast, sugar and nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese. Round about our Sea-Coal Fire. Such was the good squire's project for mitigating public discontent: and, indeed, he had once attempted to put his doctrine in practice, and a few years before had kept open house during the holidays in the old style.
For the black frost had broken up at last in a twelve hours' downfall of snow, and this in turn had yielded to a soft southerly wind. The morning sunshine poured in through the school-room window and took all colour out of the sea-coal fire. "One night Joseph dreamed a dream which he told next morning to his brothers.
The golden hands of the parlor clock point glimmeringly to an hour after midnight, and the house is still. The gas is turned almost out, but the flickering of the dying sea-coal fire in the grate fitfully illumines the forms and faces of two young women, who are seated before it, talking earnestly in low tones. It is apparent from their costumes that they have been spending the evening out.
Sir Ommaney, left to himself, took a glance round the poverty-stricken room, and stretched out his long legs to the blaze. The evening air without had been chilly. The sea-coal in the grate, stirred by the Commandant's poker, woke to a warm glow with a small dancing flame on top. Sir Ommaney stared into the glow, lost in thought.... A tapping on the pane awoke him out of his brown study.
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