Soap and Candles
Dip-candles I never saw in common use—but Mammy showed me how they were made back at Ole Marster's, in the days when candle-molds were not to be had. Dipped or molded, the candles were of varying substance. Tallow was the main reliance—mutton tallow as well as that from our beeves. It was tried out fresh, and hardened with alum in the process. The alum was dissolved in a little water, and put with the raw fat as it went over the fire. By and by the water all cooked away, leaving the alum well incorporated through the clear fat. Lacking it, a little clear lye went in—Mammy thought and said, the lye ate up the oil in the tallow, making it firmer and whiter. But lye and alum could not go in at the same time, since being alkaline and acid, they would destroy each other.
Great pains were taken not to scorch the tallow—that meant smelly and ill-colored candles. After straining it clear of cracklings, it was caked in something deep, then turned out and laid on the highest shelf in the lumber house to await molding time. Cakes of beeswax were kept in the Jackson press, so children, white and black, could not take bites for chewing. It ranked next to native sweet gum for such uses—but Mammy felt it had much better be saved to mix with the tallow at melting time. It made the candles much firmer, also bettered their light, and moreover changed the tallow hue to an agreeable very pale yellow. Bee hives, like much else, were to a degree primitive—the wax came from comb crushed in the straining of honey. It was boiled in water to take away the remnant sweetness, then allowed to cool on top the water, taken off, and remelted over clean water, so manipulated as to free it from foreign substances, then molded into cakes. One cake was always set apart for the neighborhood cobbler, who melted it with tallow and rosin to make shoemaker's wax. Another moiety was turned into grafting wax—by help of it one orchard tree bore twelve manners of fruit. And still another, a small, pretty cake from a scalloped patty pan, found place in the family work basket—in sewing by hand with flax thread, unless you waxed it, it lost strength, and quickly pulled to pieces.
We bought our flax thread in skeins, but Mammy loved to tell of spinning it back in the days when she was young, and the best spinner on the old plantation. She still spun shoe-thread for her friend the cobbler, who, however, furnished her the raw flax, which he had grown, rotted and hechtelled, in his bit of bottom land. There were still spinning and weaving in plenty at our house—Mother had made, yearly, jeans, linsey, carpets and so on—but the plantation was not wholly clothed with homespun, as had been the case in her father's house.
Return we to our candle-making. It was work for the very coldest weather—even though we had two sets of molds, needs must the candles harden quickly if the making was to speed well. Molds could be filled at the kitchen hearth, then set outside to cool. For dipping the tallow-pot had to be set over an outside fire, and neighbored by a ladder, laid flat on trestles with smooth boards laid underneath. Mammy spun the candle wicks—from long-staple cotton, drawing it out thick, and twisting it barely enough to hold together. It must not be too coarse, as it had to be doubled over reeds at top, either for molding or dipping.
The molds were of candle-shape, joined in batteries of six or twelve, with a pert handle at one side, and tiny holes at the tips, through which the wick-ends were thrust, by help of a long broom-straw. Well in place they were drawn taut, the reeds so placed as to hold the wicks centrally, then tallow melted with beeswax, in due proportion, was poured around till the molds were brim full—after which they were plunged instantly into a tub of cold water standing outside. This to prevent oozings from the tip—hot grease is the most insidious of all substances. Only in zero weather would the first oozings harden enough to plug the orifice quickly. When the candles had hardened properly, the mold was either held over the fire, or thrust in hot water half a minute, then the candles withdrawn by help of the reeds. They were cooled a bit, to save the softened outside, then nubbed of surplus wick, and laid in a dish outside. Careless or witless molders, by laying candles still soft upon the pile, often made themselves double work.
Tallow for dipping, was kept barely fluid, by setting it over embers a little way off the fire. The pot had to be deep, so the wicks could be sunk in it to full length. They were thus sunk by stickfuls, lifted up quickly, and hung between the ladder rungs to drip. Half the tallow on them dripped away—indeed, after the first dipping they looked little more than clotted ghosts of themselves in their last estate. In very cold weather three drippings sufficed—otherwise there must be four or five. Since the dip was the result of cooled accretions, it was always top-heavy—much bigger at the nose than the base. A quick and skilled worker, though, could dip a hundred candles in the time required to mold two dozen. They burned out so quickly that was a crowning mercy—half a dozen was the average of a long winter evening. Further they ran down, in great masses—hence the importance of saving up drippings. Even molded candles made them plentiful enough to be worth re-molding. This unless discolored with the brass of candlesticks—in that case their last end was soap grease.
Rush lights were dips—this I state on information and belief, since I never saw one. Also on information and belief, it is here set forth, that folk in the back countries where wicking was not easily had, used instead of wicks, splinters of fat pine, known as light wood. In proof, take Candle Wood Mountain, whose name is said to have come from furnishing such fat pine, and of a special excellence. The pine splinters must, I think, have given a better light than real wicks—my father, in Tennessee, never ceased sighing for the lightwood, which had made such cheery illumination back in his boyhood, in a Carolina home.
Every sort of waste fat became at the last, soap grease. Bones even were thrown into kettles of lye, which ate out all their richness, leaving them crumbly, and fit for burying about the grapevines. Hence the appositeness of the darkey saying, to express special contempt of a suitor: "My Lawd! I wouldn't hab dat nigger, not eben for soap grease." Which has always seemed to me, in a way, a classic of condemnation.