Andrew Jackson Downing, "The Favorite Poison of America," 1850

This is one of the most influential, or at least frequently cited and republished, anti-stove diatribes in ante-bellum America, from the celebrated horticulturist and architect Andrew Jackson Downing, "The Apostle of Taste" (or at least middle-class Yankee taste) -- David Schuyler, Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1996), http://books.google.com/books?id=xGZRAAAAMAAJ.  According to a eulogy after his untimely death by drowning following a steam-boat explosion on the Hudson, "This article, copied by numerous journals, read by thousands, and commending itself to their common sense, is fast producing a reform, conducive alike to health, comfort, and long life" -- i.e. the restoration of the open fire-place, or at least attention to the importance of ventilation.  ["Col. Wilder's Eulogy on Mr. Downing (pronounced before the Pomological Congress at Philadelphia, September 13, 1852," The Horticulturist, and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste 7:11 (1 Nov. 1852): 491-500 at p. 496.] 

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Andrew Jackson Downing, Rural Essays (New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1858), http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=S0lNAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA278.

XII. THE FAVORITE POISON OF AMERICA. November, 1850, pp. 278-286

[p. 278] ONE of the most complete and salutary reforms ever, perhaps, made in any country, is the temperance reform of the last fifteen years in the United States. Every body, familiar with our manners and customs fifteen or twenty years ago, very well knows that though our people were never positively intemperate, yet ardent spirits were, at that time, in almost as constant daily use, both in public and private life, as tea and coffee are now; while at the present moment, they are seldom or never offered as a means of civility or refreshment -- at least in the older States. The result of this higher civilization or temperance, as one may please to call it, is that a large amount of vice and crime have disappeared from amidst the laboring classes, while the physical as well as moral condition of those who labor too little to be able to bear intoxicating drinks, is very much improved.

We have taken this consolatory glance at this great and salutary reform of the habits of a whole country, because we need something to fortify our faith in the possibility of new reforms; for our countrymen have, within the last ten years, discovered a new poison, which is used wholesale, both in public and private, all over the country, till the national health and constitution are absolutely impaired by it.

"A national poison? Do you mean slavery, socialism, abolition, mormonism?" Nothing of the sort."Then, perhaps, tobacco, patent medicines, or coffee?" Worse than these. It is a foe more //p. 279 insidious than these; for, at least, one very well knows what one is about when he takes copious draughts of such things. Whatever his own convictions may be, he knows that some of his fellow creatures consider them deleterious.

But the national poison is not thought dangerous. Far from it. On the contrary, it is made almost synonymous with domestic comfort. Old and young, rich and poor, drink it in with avidity, and without shame. The most tender and delicate women and children are fondest of it, and become so accustomed to it, that they gradually abandon the delights of bright sunshine, and the pure air of heaven, to take it in large draughts. What matter if their cheeks become as pale as the ghosts of Ossian; if their spirits forsake them, and they become listless and languid! Are they not well housed and comfortable? Are not their lives virtuous, and their affairs prosperous? Alas, yes! But they are not the less guilty of poisoning themselves daily, though perhaps
unconscious of it all the time.

The national poison that we allude to, is nothing less than the vitiated air of close stoves, and the unventilated apartments which accompany them!

"Stoves" -- exclaim a thousand readers in the same breath -- "stoves poisonous? Nonsense! they are perfectly healthy, as well as the most economical, convenient, labor-saving, useful, and indispensable things in the world. Besides, are they not real Yankee inventions? In what country but this is there such an endless variety of stoves -- cooking stoves, hall stoves, parlor stoves, air-tight stoves, cylinders, salamanders, etc.? Why, it is absolutely the national invention -- this stove -- the most useful result of universal Yankee ingenuity."

We grant it all, good friends and readers; but must also have our opinion -- our calmly considered and carefully matured opinion --  which is nothing more nor less than this, that stoves -- as now used  --  are the national curse; the secret poisoners of that blessed air, bestowed by kind Providence as an elixir of life, -- giving us new vigor and fresh energy at every inspiration; and we, ungrateful beings, as if the pure breath of heaven were not fit for us, we reject it, and breathe instead -- what? -- the air which passes over a surface //p. 280 of hot iron, and becomes loaded with all the vapor of arsenic and sulphur, which that metal, highly heated, constantly gives off!

If in the heart of large cities -- where there is a large population crowded together, with scanty means of subsistence -- one saw a few persons driven by necessity into warming their small apartments by little close stoves of iron, liable to be heated red-hot, and thereby to absolutely destroy the purity of the air, one would not be so much astonished at the result, because it is so difficult to preserve the poorest class from suffering, in some way or other, in great cities. But it is by no means only in the houses of those who have slender means of subsistence, that this is the case. It is safe to say that nine-tenths of all the houses in the northern States, whether belonging to rich or poor, are entirely unventilated, and heated at the present moment by close stoves

It is absolutely a matter of preference on the part of thousands, with whom the trifling difference between one mode of heating and another is of no account. Even in the midst of the country, where there is still wood in abundance, the farmer will sell that wood and buy coal, so that he may have a little demon -- alias a black, cheerless close stpve -- in the place of that genuine, hospitable, wholesome friend and comforter, an open wood fireplace.

And in order not to leave one unconverted soul in the wilderness, the stove inventors have lately brought out "a new article," for forest countries, where coal is not to be had either for love or barter -- an "air-tight stove for burning wood." The seductive, convenient, monstrous thing! "It consumes one-fifth of the fuel which was needed by the open chimney -- is so neat and clean, makes no dust, and gives no trouble." All quite true, dear, considerate housewife -- all quite true; but that very stove causes your husband to pay twice its savings to the family doctor before two winters are past, and gives you thrice as much trouble in nursing the sick in your family, as you formerly spent in taking care of the fire in your chimney corner, --  besides depriving you of the most delightful of all household occupations.

Our countrymen generally have a vast deal of national pride, and national sensitiveness, and we honor them for it. It is the warp and woof, out of which the stuff of national improvement is woven, //p. 281 When a nation has become quite indifferent as to what it has done, or can do, then there is nothing left but for its prophets to utter lamentations over it.

Now there is a curious but indisputable fact (somebody must say it), touching our present condition and appearance, as a nation of men, women and children, in which we Americans compare most unfavorably with the people of Europe, and especially with those of northern Europe -- England and France, for example. It is neither in religion or morality, law or liberty. In these great essentials, every American feels that his country is the birthplace of a larger number of robust and healthy souls than any other. But in the bodily condition, the signs of physical health, and all that constitutes the outward aspect of the men and women of the United States, our countrymen, and especially countrywomen, compare most unfavorably with all but the absolutely starving classes, on the other side of the Atlantic. So completely is this the fact, that, though we are unconscious of it at home, the first thing (especially of late years) which strikes an American, returning from abroad, is the pale and sickly countenances of his friends, acquaintances, and almost every one he meets in the streets of large towns, -- every other man looking as if he had lately recovered from a fit of illness. The men look so pale and the women so delicate, that his eye, accustomed to the higher hues of health, and the more vigorous physical condition of transatlantic men and women, scarcely credits the assertion of old acquaintances, when they assure him that they were "never better in their lives."

With this sort of impression weighing disagreeably on our mind, on returning from Europe lately, we fancied it worth our while to plunge two hundred or three hundred miles into the interior of the State of New-York. It would be pleasant, we thought, to see, not only the rich forest scenery opened by the new railroad to Lake Erie, but also (for we felt confident they were there) some good, hearty, fresh-looking lads and lasses among the farmers' sons and daughters.

We were for the most part disappointed. Certainly the men, especially the young men, who live mostly in the open air, are healthy and robust. But the daughters of the farmers -- they are as //p. 282 delicate and pale as lilies of the valley, or fine ladies of the Fifth Avenue. If one catches a glimpse of a rose in their cheeks, it is the pale rose of the hot-house, and not the fresh glow of the garden damask. Alas, we soon discovered the reason. They, too, live for seven months of the year in unventilated rooms, heated by close stoves! The fireplaces are closed up, and ruddy complexions have vanished with them. Occasionally, indeed, one meets with an exception; some bright-eyed, young, rustic Hebe, whose rosy cheeks and round, elastic figure would make you believe that the world has not all grown "delicate;" and if you inquire, you will learn, probably, that she is one of those whose natural spirits force them out continually, in the open air, so that she has, as yet, in that way escaped any considerable doses of the national poison.

Now that we are fairly afloat on this dangerous sea, we must unburthen our heart sufficiently to say, that neither in England nor France does one meet with so much beauty -- certainly not, so far as charming eyes and expressive faces go towards constituting beauty  --  as in America. But alas, on the other hand, as compared with the elastic figures and healthful frames abroad, American beauty is as evanescent as a dissolving view, contrasting with a real and living landscape. What is with us a sweet dream, from sixteen to twenty-five, is there a permanent reality till forty-five or fifty.

We should think it might be a matter of climate, were it not that we saw, as the most common thing, even finer complexions in France -- yes, in the heart of Paris, and especially among the peasantry, who are almost wholly in the open air -- than in England. And what, then, is the mystery of fine physical health, which is so much better understood in the old world than the new?

The first transatlantic secret of health, is a much longer time passed daily in the open air, by all classes of people; the second, the better modes of heating and ventilating the rooms in which they live.

Regular daily exercise in the open air, both as a duty and a pleasure, is something looked upon in a very different light on the two different sides of the Atlantic. On this side of the water, if a person -- say a professional man, or a merchant -- is seen regularly devoting a certain portion of the day to exercise, and the preservation of 'his bodily powers, he is looked upon as a valetudinarian, --  //p. 283 an invalid, who is obliged to take care of himself, poor soul! and his friends daily meet him with sympathizing looks, hoping he "feels better," etc. As for ladies, if there is not some object in taking a walk, they look upon it as the most stupid and unmeaning thing in the world.

On the other side of the water, a person who should neglect the pleasure of breathing the free air for a couple of hours, daily, or should shun the duty of exercise, is suspected of slight lunacy; and ladies who should prefer continually to devote their leisure to the solace of luxurious cushions, rather than an exhilarating ride or walk, are thought a little tˆte mont. What, in short, is looked upon as a virtue there, is only regarded as a matter of fancy here. Hence, an American generally shivers, in an air that is only grateful and bracing to an Englishman, and looks blue in Paris, in weather when the Parisians sit with the casement windows of their saloons wide open. Yet it is, undoubtedly, all a matter of habit; and we Yankees, (we mean those of us not forced to "rough it,") with the toughest natural constitutions in the world, nurse ourselves, as a people, into the least robust and most susceptible physiques in existence.

So much for the habit of exercise in the open air. Now let us look at our mode of warming and ventilating our dwellings; for it is here that the national poison is engendered, and here that the ghostly expression is begotten.

However healthy a person may be, he can neither look healthy nor remain in sound health long, if he is in the habit of breathing impure air. As sound health depends upon pure blood, and there can be no pure blood in one's veins if it is not repurified continually by the action of pure air upon it, through the agency of the lungs (the whole purpose of breathing being to purify and vitalize the blood ), it follows, that if a nation of people will, from choice, live in badly ventilated rooms, nil! of impure air, they must become pale and sallow in complexions. It may not largely affect the health of the men, who are more or less called into the open air by their avocations, but the health of women (ergo the constitutions of children), and all those who are confined to rooms or offices heated in this way, must gradually give way under the influence of the poison. Hence, the delicacy of thousands and tens of thousands of the sex in America.

p. 284 "And how can you satisfy me," asks some blind lover of stoves," that the air of a room heated by a close stove is deleterious? " Very easily indeed, if you will listen to a few words of reason.

It is well established that a healthy man must have about a pint of air at a breath; that he breathes above a thousand times in an hour; and that, as a matter beyond dispute, he requires about fifty-seven hogsheads of air in twenty four hours.

Besides this, it is equally well settled, that as common air consists of a mixture of two gases, one healthy (oxygen), and the other unhealthy (nitrogen), the air we have once breathed, having, by passing through the lungs, been deprived of the most healthful gas, is little less than unmixed poison (nitrogen).

Now, a room warmed by an open fireplace or grate, is necessarily more or less ventilated, by the very process of combustion going on; because, as a good deal of the air of the room goes up the chimney, besides the smoke and vapor of the fire, a corresponding amount of fresh air comes in at the windows and door crevices to supply its place. The room, in other words, is tolerably well supplied with fresh air for breathing.

But let us take the case of a room heated by a close stove. The chimney is stopped up, to begin with. The room is shut up. The windows are made pretty tight to keep out the cold; and as there is very little air carried out of the room by the stove-pipe, (the stove is perhaps on the air-tight principle, -- that is, it requires the minimum amount of air,) there is little fresh air coming in through the crevices to supply any vacuum. Suppose the room holds 300 hogsheads of air. If a single person requires 57 hogsheads of fresh air per day, it would last four persons but about twenty-four hours, and the stove would require half as much more. But, as a man renders noxious as much again air as he expires from his lungs, it actually happens that in four or five hours all the air in this room has been either breathed over, or is so mixed with the impure air which has been breathed over, that it is all thoroughly poisoned, and unfit for healthful respiration. A person with his senses un-blunted, has only to go into an ordinary unventilated room, heated by a stove, to perceive at once, by the effect on the lungs, how dead, stifled, and destitute of all elasticity the air is.

p. 285 And this is the air which four-fifths of our countrymen and countrywomen breathe in their homes,-not from necessity, but from choice.*

This is the air which those who travel by hundreds of thousands in our railroad cars, closed up in winter, and heated with close stoves, breathe for hours -- or often entire days. **

This is the air which fills the cabins of closely packed steamboats, always heated by large stoves, and only half ventilated; the air breathed by countless numbers -- both waking or sleeping.

This is the air -- no, this is even salubrious compared with the air -- that is breathed by hundreds and thousands in almost all our crowded lecture-rooms, concert-rooms, public halls, and private assemblies, all over the country. They are nearly all heated by stoves or furnaces, with very imperfect ventilation, or no ventilation at all.

Is it too much to call it the national poison, this continual atmosphere of close stoves, which, whether travelling or at home, we Americans are content to breathe, as if it were the air of Paradise?

We very well know that we have a great many readers who abominate stoves, and whose houses are warmed and ventilated in an excellent manner. But. they constitute no appreciable fraction of the vast portion of our countrymen who love stoves -- fill their houses with them -- are ignorant of their evils, and think ventilation and fresh air physiological chimeras, which may be left to the speculations of doctors and learned men.

* We have said that the present generation of stove-reared farmers' daughters are pale and delicate in appearance. We may add that the most healthy and blooming looking American women, are those of certain families where exercise, and fresh air, and ventilation, are matters of conscience and duty here as in Europe.

** Why the ingenuity of clever Yankees has not been directed to warming railroad cars (by means of steam conveyed through metal tubes, running under the floor, and connected with flexible coupling pipes,) we cannot well understand. It would be at once cheaper than the present mode, (since waste steam could be used,) and far more wholesome. Railroad cars have, it is true, ventilators at the top for the escape of foul air, but no apertures in the floor for the inlet of fresh air! It is like emptying a barrel without a vent.

p. 286 And so, every other face that one meets in America, has a ghostly paleness about it, that would make a European stare.*

What is to be done? "Americans will have stoves." They suit the country, especially the new country; they are cheap, labor-saving, clean. If the more enlightened and better informed throw them aside, the great bulk of the people will not. Stoves are, we are told, in short, essentially democratic and national.

We answer, let us ventilate our rooms, and learn to live more in the open air. If our countrymen will take poison in, with every breath which they inhale in their houses and all their public gatherings, let them dilute it largely, and they may escape from a part at least of the evils of taking it in such strong doses.

We have not space here to show in detail the best modes of ventilating now in use. But they may be found described in several works, especially devoted to the subject, published lately. In our volume on COUNTRY HOUSES, we have briefly shown, not only the principles of warming rooms, but the most simple and complete modes of ventilation, -- from Arnott's chimney valve, which may for a small cost be easily placed in the chimney flue of any room, to Emerson's more complete apparatus, by which the largest apartments, or every room in the largest house, may be warmed and ventilated at the same time, in the most complete and satisfactory manner.

We assure our readers that we are the more in earnest upon this subject, because they are so apathetic. As they would shake a man about falling into that state of delightful numbness which precedes freezing to death, all the more vigorously in proportion to his own indifference and unconsciousness to his sad state, so we are the more emphatic in what we have said, because we see the national poison begins to work, and the nation is insensible.

Pale countrymen and countrywomen, rouse yourselves! Consider that GOD has given us an atmosphere of pure, salubrious, health-giving air, 45 miles high, and -- ventilate your houses.

* We ought not, perhaps, to include the Germans and Russians. They also love stoves, and the poison of bad air indoors, and therefore have not the look of health of other European nations, though they live far more in the open air than we do.

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Downing evidently lived according to his own precepts.  As a visitor to his celebrated country house at Newburgh, NY, recalled, "In the winter the family forsook the fine south room, which, on account of its size was not easily warmed, and lived in the library, which, with its cheerful fire and books and busts, became the gathering point of the household, and the chosen seat of the winter's evening mirth and daily study."  Even in his office Downing enjoyed the luxury of "the bright wood fire [which] warms body and soul with its crackling flames." He believed "that men in America are too much absorbed in business, and make it too unlovely.  American men in cities, and those in the country who are not in the open air when at their work, labor from sunrise to sunset in ugly, dark, ill-ventilated rooms, stewing their minds over interminable rows of figures, and their bodies over unhealthy stoves and so year after year until the day is past for the active enjoyment of their money, and the long abused body takes its fair revenge."  [C.C., "A Visit to the House and Garden of the Late A.J. Downing," The Horticulturist, and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste vol. 3 n.s., no. 1 (Jan. 1853), pp. 21-27 at p. 21, and reminiscences of Downing in "Editor's Table," pp. 103-4 at p. 103, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fDYCAAAAYAAJ].  Downing was not an anti-modernist.  He just hated stoves, and was an enthusiast for a more modern (and expensive) form of space heating than the common air-tight or even the basement furnace, by steam or hot water piped from a boiler or perhaps from the waste heat of a kitchen stove -- "Warming & Ventilating Houses," The Horticulturist, and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste 7:5 (1 May 1852): 217-8.

Is This The Worst Stove Poem Yet? Sylvester Judd's "Philo: An Evangeliad"

Sylvester Judd (1813-1853) was a very minor literary figure, but not without interest -- Wikipedia supplies the basic facts and even a picture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Judd.

His huge prose-poem Philo: An Evangeliad (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1850), http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3ygAAAAAYAAJ,  is almost unreadable.  But Judd, like many of his contemporaries, evidently had a thing about stoves.  He described himself ("the Poet") as "A man like other men" -- he "hates / An air-tight stove, but cannot buy a better." (p. 125).  On p. 181 he really goes to town on mid-C19th stoves.  I can do no better than to quote him in full:

ANNIE. "This man unearths a stove, all arabesqued, / And daintily inlaid with birds and flowers."

PHILO. "Its history forenote; that stove doth plait / The Borean zone with tissue of the Line; / Our snowbound parlors, windows intersprigged / With frost, it renders quite Arcadian; / It shelters poverty, and tends the sick, / Relieves the body, purifies the soul; / In winter nights those iron birds will sing / Unto our Poet, and the flowers distil / Castalian sweets."

CHARLES. "Like taxes, toothache, tides / A stove has no respect of persons. Once, / At a vendue, I saw a horse-faced preacher, / A skipjack transcendentalist, a lean / And muzzy artist, barbers, scullions, trulls, / Bidding against each other for an Olmsted."

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Much of this makes no sense to me, but Judd's voices are mostly just talking about recognizable mid C19th parlor stoves. 

• The 1840s was the first great age of decorated cast iron, and Annie sounds as if she is just quoting from a design patent (e.g. Ezra Ripley, Troy, NY, "Stove," Patent D377 (1851), http://www.google.com/patents/USD377?printsec=drawing). 
• Philo's reply is very pro-stove: "plaiting the Borean zone with tissue of the Line" means bringing the warmth of the Equator or at least the Tropics to the northern latitudes of New England.  Stove makers played on this promise in the way they named stoves -- e.g. the Madeira stove, to warm New England interiors until they were as good for consumptives and other invalids as the atmosphere of the Canary Islands to which they'd otherwise have to travel.  See Nahum Capen, ed., The Massachusetts State Record and Year Book of General Information. 1848. Vol. 2  (Boston: James French, 1848), p. 2, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gb8TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA326 for a Madeira Stove advertisement, or http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EqQtAAAAYAAJ p. 132 (including a picture); and John A. Dix, A Winter in Madeira: and a Summer in Spain and Florence (New York: William Holdredge, 1851). 2nd. ed., pp. 9, 81 esp., on Victorian health tourism, http://books.google.com/books?id=eNZ5gS1XoVcC&pg=PA81.
• An Olmsted was a very popular anthracite-fueled heating stove, invented by Prof. Denison Olmsted of Yale.  The patent for his "Stove or Furnace for Burning Anthracite Coal," 9167X (1835), http://www.google.com/patents/USX9167?printsec=drawing lacks his text but has a nice picture.  And he described his stove in full elsewhere -- Denison Olmsted [Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, Yale College], "Observations on the Use of Anthracite Coal," American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1837 (Boston: Charles Bowen, 1837), pp. 61-9, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Vq00AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA61.

An Argument for Fuel-Saving, 1832

I found this an interesting article -- written by the 'progressive' editors of a farmers' magazine in Western New York State (a.k.a. "The Burned-Over District") to try to persuade their readers of the benefits of stove use.  This is a pretty consistent line in agricultural journalism from the early 1820s, i.e. just about as early as there was any such thing as ag. journalism.  One of the important avenues down which the message of modernity reached rural readers.  Nice quotes highlighted.

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[Editors -- N. Goodsell, A.Gordon], "Fuel," Genessee Farmer 2:49 (8 Dec. 1832): 383, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y-LmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA385


FUEL. There are certain seasons for introducing different subjects to our readers, when we hope they will feel more interest in them than they would at other times; and these, by editors like ourselves, who only expect to avoid being termed "absolutely dull," should, never be neglected. ...  So, with the present subject, we know of no time more proper than the present for introducing it, and none when, what little we have to say, will be more likely to be remembered.

In the first number of the present volume, we attempted to give a table showing the relative value of different kinds of fuel made use of in the United States; and also the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods of burning the various kinds for the purpose of heating dwelling houses; to which table we beg leave to refer our readers, or that part of them who received the first numbers during the summer, when the article alluded to might have been past over without a fair perusal. [see note at end]

By that table, it appears that nine tenths of the heat generated in the combustion of fuel in the common fire place is lost. There is a kind of traditional lethargy prevailing in the country on the subject of fuel, which our large towns and cities are more free from; and we are strongly inclined to believe, that it costs the same number of families more to warm their dwellings in the country, where wood is not worth more than one
dollar per cord, than it does in our cities, where it is worth eight or ten dollars.


Were an article to be advertised which would not cost more than from ten to fifteen dollars, simple in its construction and use, and which would last an age, and the public be assured that it would save nine tenths of the expenses of a family for bread, how readily would people purchase it. Now the saving qualities of such an article would be very like a Stove, which many refuse to purchase because they cannot see the fire when it is burning within it. For the accommodation of those people who have such a taste for looking in the fire, (because it saves them the trouble of thinking) we wish some Yankee would invent a representation of a hearth fire, which might be hung up in the room for these mutes to gaze upon.

There are many who through neglect increase the quantity of fuel consumed in an unwarrantable degree. First, their cellars are not sufficiently secured against the frost by banking, caulking &c. by which neglect their vegetables are frozen and lost; and the cold air thus admitted finds its way to every part of the building. Others, who, while they are attentive to their cellars, neglect every other part from the cellar to the garret; their windows, if not broken, are not caulked; their doors are not listed -- and when reminded of their neglect by their neighbors, take refuge under the old adage, that "a free circulation of air is necessary to health" -- then why not stay out of doors entirely?

We wish to have our farmers enter into some mathematical calculation upon the subject of warming habitations, making it a matter of dollars and cents, putting down time as money, and divesting themselves of the idea that a person cannot be warmed without seeing the fire, for it is as ridiculous as it would be to say he could not be cooled without seeing the wind.

[NOTE: The reference is to the editors' article "Relative Value of Fuel," Genesee Farmer 2:1 (7 Jan. 1832), p. 2, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y-LmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA2

"In a climate like ours, fuel is so absolutely necessary, that any calculations respecting the price, relative value, or mode of using it, will at once be considered as coming under the head of Domestic Economy, and we presume will be acceptable to most of our readers."

They reprinted the findings of Marcus Bull's famous Philadelphia experiments a decade earlier, which concluded that an open fireplace lost 90 percent of the heating value of its fuel up the chimney -- for which see Marcus Bull, Experiments to  Determine the Comparative Value  of  the Principal Varieties  of  Fuel  Used in the United States, and also in Europe.  And on the Ordinary Apparatus Used for their Combustion (Philadelphia: Judah Dobson, 1827), http://books.google.com/books?id=OxELAAAAIAAJ ]

An Early Stove Enthusiast

And this is what it takes to make me get off my butt again -- I just thought when I read it "this is really interesting, because it talks about the new technology of comfort and a new way of living in a way that's pitched at the ordinary [middle-class] reader."  Doesn't say anything very novel, but the only evidence of this sort of conversation that I've come across before now has involved members of Philadelphia's scientific elite, whereas this is in an ordinary magazine.  It discusses all of the usual reasons for not liking or using stoves, and it explains their benefits quite pragmatically.

* * *

"A Projector," "For the Evening Fire-side," The Evening Fire-side, or Literary Miscellany [Philadelphia] 2 (1806): 37-8.                                                     http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bVlFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA38

"HABIT is second nature," and often is the reason for our continuing to suffer inconvenience, and not unfrequently absolute pain, rather than make the requisite //p. 38 exertion to emancipate ourselves from its fetters.

Opinion also governs us: not our opinions, neither, but the opinions of others; nor do those ideas always concur with our interest, or the benefit of others: on the contrary, they are frequently at variance with both.

I was led into these reflections while sitting in my parlour by my close stove, where, at a small expence of fuel, I enjoy a more comfortable warmth than is obtained by a common fire side, at this cold season, by a consumption of thrice the fuel. Here I partake of an equability of temperature; there is no part of my parlour where a visitant cannot enjoy himself; he is not compelled to fry his shins and scorch his face to keep the blood of his back in circulation, as he is not annoyed by those cold streams of air, so common in rooms where open fire places are made use of, and which are so prejudicial to comfort and health. Nor are these all my blessings arising from a ten plate stove; the pipe is carried through my chamber, and renders it quite comfortable. When I retire to rest, I do not shiver with cold; when I rise in the morning, a renewal of the fire below has prepared the chamber for dressing with comfort, and I am not oppressed when a-bed, by a dozen blankets, or as many coverlets.

"But I cannot bear the heat of a stove," says one neighbor." I abominate  them," says another: "they look so ugly; nasty black things, they spoil the looks of a parlour." "They are not fashionable," says a third: " Mr. such a one, or Mrs. such another, has none, and I would sooner, for my part, so I would, have my toes frozen, than introduce one into my house." And so, my dear friend, you cannot bear the heat of a stove: and why? if the air is too dry, put a bason of water on your stove; if it is too warm, open the window or door, or moderate the fire. But what shall I say to make an "abominable thing" look handsome? By speaking of its utility; by proving that the parlour is by it in effect enlarged, as every portion of it is made habitable by the warmth it communicates. "But I like the looks of a comfortable fire." Aye, and by looking at a comfortable fire you spoil a pair of fine eyes, and a fine complection too, by the streams of keen air you suffer, which are productive of colds, by destroying the equilibrium of circulation. But, my fashionable neighbor, what shall I do with your objection, while you build your opinions on those of Mr. Spendthrift and of Mrs. Sprightly? I can hardly hope to convince you without converting them: and while you have the courage to brave "the pelting of the pitiless storm," with your sleeves tucked up to your shoulders, and your elbows frozen as black as negro Sam's, I have no hope you will think the article of comfort of any consequence in your vocabulary. And is the economy of fuel of no consequence? Suppose I burn four cords of wood while you burn twelve; is the saving of forty dollars per annum nothing? If I can afford the expence, thousands in this city cannot; and every cord of wood saved, has a tendency to keep down the price for the convenience, yes for the existence of those who can scarcely purchase one.

Although, having overcome some prejudices, I obtain comfort as a compensation, yet I am far from enjoying all that is practicable to derive from such a source. Many houses in the city have their kitchens in the cellar. If we suppose such a kitchen to be supplied with a stove calculated to roast, bake, and boil for the family, an ornamental pipe from such a stove, carried through the back (or other convenient) part of the parlour
above, and thence through the chambers, would render them all comfortable, without any addition to the fuel necessary for the purposes of cooking. It would be a fortunate circumstance for the Community if some persons, capable of giving a tone to the fashions of the fashionable world, would turn their attention to economy and comfort on this point. If Mr. Spanglewit or Madame Beaumonde would invite their dinner or card parties to rooms warmed by invisible fire, it must soon be the rage of the day, and a saving of 20,000 cords of wood per annum in this city would pay all its taxes, and leave a surplus for private charity, or any thing else.

* * *

This actually sounds quite like the "Philosophical and Ventilating Stove" invented and installed in his own house by Oliver Evans, the great engineer -- see his The Young Mill-Wright's and Miller's Guide (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1848; 12th. edition), "The Art of Warming Rooms by Fire," pp. 351-4, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UEW7-CQPFoUC&pg=PA353 -- the not very clear illustration is the upper plate on p. 410.  The difference is that "Projector" only envisaged using the heat from an uninsulated metal stove pipe to warm upper rooms, whereas Oliver Evans wrapped his stove pipe in a metal jacket so that fresh air from the outside of the house would be warmed in the 2" circumferential space and then vented into the rooms.  This is the basic principle of the "Baltimore Heater" popular in row houses there from the mid 19th century -- "invented" by John Latrobe in the 1840s; see "Restoring the Baltimore Heater," Old-House Journal  12:9 (Nov. 1984), pp. 191, 206 -- http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vQ6vo5OwjgAC&pg=PA191

William Cullen Bryant praises Rhode Island, especially its anthracite (1826)

http://books.google.com/books?id=su0RAAAAYAAJ 

From The New-York Review, and Atheneum Magazine 2 (April 1826): 386-8, and see 
http://books.google.com/books?id=Etv1DU4uPgoC&pg=PA33 for the context -- one of Bryant's closest friends was a hopeful (and, as it turned out, unlucky) investor in Rhode Island anthracite mines, which some people believed to have much better prospects than those of Pennsylvania, mostly because of their proximity to water transportation.  They seemed to have a great future, as fuel sources for coastal New England in particular.  Misplaced optimism on this score would recur throughout the 19th and into the 20th century.  What's most interesting about this poem is that it comes from a time when people still had not learned how to burn anthracite properly, and Bryant is trying to overcome this consumer resistance with his vision of a literally glowing future.

* * *

A MEDITATION ON RHODE-ISLAND COAL.

Decolor obscurus, vilis, non ille tepexam
Cesariem regum, non candida virginis ornat
Colin, nec insigni splendet per cingula morsu.
Sed, nova si nigri videas miracula saxi,
Tunc superat pulchros cultus, et quicquid Eois
Indus litonbus rubra scrutalur in alga.—Claudian.


I Sat beside the glowing grate, fresh heaped
With Newport coal, and as the flame grew bright—
The many-coloured flame—and played and leaped,
I thought of rainbows and the northern light,
Moore's Lalla Rookh, the Treasury Report,
And other brilliant matters of the sort.

And last I thought of that fair isle which sent
The mineral fuel. On a summer day
I saw it once, with heat and travel spent,
And scratched by dwarf oaks in the hollow way;
Now uragged through sand, now jolted over stone—
A rugged road through rugged Tiverton.

And hotter grew the air, and hollower grew
The deep-worn path, and honor-struck, I thought,
Where will this dreary passage lead me to ?—
This long, dull road, so narrow, deep, and hot ?
I looked to see it dive in earth outright;
I looked—but saw a far more welcome sight.

[p. 387] 


Like a soft mist upon the evening shore,
At once a lovely isle before me lay;
Smooth, and with tender verdure covered o'er,
As if just risen from its calm inland bay;
Sloped each way gently to the grassy edge,
And the small waves that dallied with the sedge.

The barley was just reaped—its heavy sheaves
Lay on the stubble field—the tall maize stood
Dark in its summer growth, and shook its leaves—
And bright the sunlight played on the young wood—
For fifty years ago, the old men say,
The Briton hewed their ancient groves away.

I saw where fountains freshened the green land,
And where the pleasant road, from door to door,
With rows of cherry trees on either hand,
Went wandering all that fertile region o'er—
Rogue's Island once—but, when the rogues were dead.
Rhode Island was the name it took instead.

Beautiful island! then it only seemed
A lovely stranger—it has grown a friend.
I gazed on its smooth slopes, but never dreamed
How soon that bright beneficent isle would send
The treasures of its womb across the sea,
To warm a poet's room and boil his tea.

Dark anthracite! that reddenest on my hearth.
Thou in those island mines didst slumber long, 
But now thou art come forth to move the earth,
And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong ; 
Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee, 
And warm the shins of all that under-rate thee.

Yea, they did wrong thee foully—they who mocked 
Thy honest face, and said thou wouldst not burn;
Of hewing thee to chimney-pieces talked,
And grew profane—and swore, in bitter scorn,
That men might to thy inner caves retire,
And there, unsinged, abide the day of fire.

Yet is thy greatness nigh. I pause to state,
That I too have,seen greatness—even I—
Shook hands with Adams—stared at La Fayette,
When, barehead in the hot noon of July.

[p. 388]

He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him,
For which three cheers burst from the mob before him.

And I have seen—not many months ago —
An eastern governor, in chapeau bras
And military coat, a glorious show !
Ride forth to visit the reviews, and ah,
How oft he smiled and bowed to Jonathan!
How many hands were shook, and votes were won !

'Twas a great governor—thou too shalt be
Great in thy turn—and wide shall spread thy fame,
And swiftly—farthest Maine shall hear of thee,
And cold New-Brunswick gladden at thy name,
And, faintly through its sleets, the weeping isle
That sends the Boston folks their cod, shall smile.

For thou shalt forge vast rail-ways, and shalt heat
The hissing rivers into steam, and drive
Huge masses from thy mines, on iron feet,
Walking their steady way, as if alive,
Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee,
And south as far as the grim Spaniard lets thee.

Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea,
Like its own monsters—boats that for a guinea
Will take a man to Havre—and shalt be
The moving soul of many a spinning jenny,
And ply thy shuttles, till a bard can wear
As good a suit of broadcloth as the mayor.

Then we will laugh at winter when we hear
The grim old churl about our dwellings rave:
Thou from that " ruler of the inverted year,"
Shalt pluck the knotty sceptre Cowper gave,
And pull him from his sledge, and drag him in,
And melt the icicles from off his chin.

Heat will be cheap—a small consideration ,
Will put one in a way to raise his punch,
Set lemon-trees, and have a cane plantation—
'Twill be a pretty saving to the Lunch.
Then the West India negroes may go play
The banjo, and keep endless holiday.  B.

The Big Stove Is No More

This is what it takes to get me off my butt and do another bit for this poor old blog after eight silent months:

The Big Stove in its original location (after the World's Fair),
in the forecourt of the great Michigan Stove plant.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20110816/METRO/108160364/1409/Historic-stove-a-%E2%80%98total-loss%E2%80%99

Historic stove a 'total loss'

Official says lightning destroyed 15-ton icon at State Fairgrounds

Steve Pardo/ The Detroit News

Detroit — A historic stove, billed as the world's largest, is history following Saturday's lightning strike and fire at the former Michigan State Fairgrounds.

"I've been told today it's a total loss, that the fire just wiped it out," Kurt Weiss, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Technology Management and Budget, said Monday. "I don't know if it would even be possible to rebuild it. That's a bummer."

The 15-ton stove was painted to look like metal but it was made of wood and stood more than two stories high. It was built off a Garland model kitchen range in 1893 by the Michigan Stove Co. and stood proudly among regular stoves at the World's Fair in Chicago that year.

For years it sat on Belle Isle and was restored in 1998 and moved to the State Fairgrounds at Woodward and Eight Mile.

It remained at the 164-acre site, among dozens of structures. Falling attendance, aging infrastructure and state budget woes closed down the fair for good in 2009.

The Department of Technology, Management and Budget is responsible for the security of the property.

"What a shame to keep such an important piece of Detroit's history — and art, for that matter — hidden away," said Barbara Winckler, a former Detroiter who moved to Los Angeles in 1994.

The stove had special meaning for her and her family. Winckler said her great-grandfather, Charles C. Goddeeris, helped build the stove.

"It just breaks my heart," she said. "My mother would always tell us that Grandpa Chuck built that stove, whenever we would drive by it on Jefferson and the Belle Isle Bridge.

"I was so sad to see it moved to the State Fairgrounds, and then to find out that the fairgrounds have been closed to the public for years is just sad."

Security guards saw the stove get struck by lightning during a storm Saturday, Weiss said.

Detroit fire officials confirmed they were called out to the site around 8 p.m. Saturday.

The state has been looking to find another use for the property for the past two years, Weiss said.

spardo@detnews.com

There's one picture with that article -- several others with http://www.detnews.com/article/20110814/METRO/108140324/

The Big Stove in its final resting place

Light Relief: High-Wire Act

The previous posting was all a bit grim.  Here, as yet another example of the way in which stoves entered into American culture by mid-century, is a report on a famous feat of derring-do:



"Blondin Crosses the Niagara River with a Cook-Stove, and Cooks an Omelet," New York Times 26 Aug. 1859, p. 8.


[from the Buffalo Express, 25 Aug.]  

The celebrated French trapeze artist Jean François Gravelet-Blondin (1824-1897) had been working in the United States since 1855 as a circus artist and proprietor.  The stunt that really made him famous was staged at the Niagara River in the summer of 1859, when he crossed it several times on a rope 1100 feet long, 3¼ inches in diameter, and 160 feet above the water. To maintain public interest he put on a different performance each time -- crossing the rope blindfolded, in a sack, trundling a wheelbarrow, on stilts, carrying a man (his manager, Harry Colcord) on his back, standing on a chair with only one chair leg on the rope...  


On the occasion reported, he made his first crossing in manacles, "personating a slave," ["News of the Day," p. 4], which was "more of a curious and laughable spectacle than an exciting one," and then on his way back carried a small stove on which he cooked an omelet when he stopped in the middle of the gorge, and then lowered the finished item to attendants on the deck of the Maid of the Mistdown below.


[additional facts from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Blondin, citing Blondin broadsheet for 1 August 1859, when he performed the chair feat in one direction, and stopped to take a stereostopic photograph on his way back -- http://www.nflibrary.ca/nfplindex/show.asp?id=89311&b=1 -- the charge for watching the show was 25 cents, plus 2 cents for a reserved seat]