½d · garstang's tallow works · single · 1919
hand-dipped, mutton fat over linen wick, sold one at a time and rarely in pairs. the smell is sweet and faintly carnal — not unpleasant if you have always known it. better candles exist; the buyer of this one is buying because better is unaffordable, or because tallow is what is wanted: the smell, the slow burn, the soft drip.
burns for four hours steadily, six in a draught-free corner, two when carried up a stair. used to walk to the privy after dark, to wait for someone to come home, to read one further chapter, to keep a vigil at the head of a bed. one candle, one task; never two at once.
what happens to it: a small saucer of cooled tallow, the wick a hard black knot, the smell of dinner from the day before. the stub is dropped into the jar in the pantry with the soap-slivers. nothing here is wasted, not even silence.
field-note · counter the candle's twin, dipped the same minute, was bought yesterday by another household and is already half-spent. they will reach the wick at the same hour, on different streets, in different weathers.