Annals of Bathing: Episode 2

Susan reports:

I think Loretta pretty well established yesterday that historical cleanliness was often more a matter of class, convenience, and personal preference than any wide-spread cultural mandate. 

While very few people had the fantastical luxury of this 18th c. French lady, left, with her large tub and half-dozen attendants, most people of every rank made some effort to wash at least their hands and face on a regular basis. By 1790, theologian John Wesley (1703-1791) was sternly preaching that "Slovenliness is no part of religion. Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness", and most Englishmen would have agreed.

It's the total-immersion part of bathing that wasn't universal. Even among the wealthy who could afford to have servants heat and carry water to fill a tub,  it was often considered a suspect practice, even unhealthy. Early science maintained that the pores "opened" when the body was relaxed (such as when lolling in a warm tub), admitting all kinds of dangerous poisons. Far safer to wash piecemeal with a damp cloth.  And despite all those recipes for lovely scented soaps, it seems that soap, being made from lye and animal fat, often irritated the skin more than it helped clean it, and most people went for water alone. (This from one of the NHG's absolute fav books, Emily Cockayne's Hubbub: Filth, Noise, & Stench in England.)

There was another dreaded danger, too, as described by diarist James Boswell (1740-1795) in 1763: "A warm bath is, I confess, a most agreeable kind of luxury, but luxury is very dangerous....Above all things a young man should guard against [its] effeminacy. I would advise him to avoid warm baths and accustom himself rather to the cold bath, which will give him vigour and liveliness." Cautiously Boswell restricted his own warm-water bathing to his feet, which he admitted gave him "a kind of tranquility."

But there was no doubt that outward cleanliness was perceived as a sign of gentility. In his oft-quote letters to his son, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) stressed the importance of clean hands for gentlemen, for "nothing looks more ordinary, vulgar, and illiberal than dirty hands, and ugly, uneven, and ragged nails."  Or, as one popular proverb went: "Wash your hands often, your feet seldom, and your head never."

More to come. . . .

Above left: The Bath, by Jean-Baptiste Pater, 1730

Annals of Bathing: Episode 1

Loretta reports:

Liz said,
“I have read in books by other authors that no gentlemen took baths before Beau Brummell made it fashionable. I would be interested to know from you ladies if this is true."

In a word, no. While bathing, at the time, usually meant sea bathing--which King George III is doing in the picture above--that wasn't the only kind.

A wonderful book by Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House, shows photos of bath houses and plunge baths dating to the 18th century. Many country houses before Brummell's time had them, although Christina Hardyment’s Behind the Scenes reminds us that these “should be regarded as roughly the equivalent of the modern domestic swimming-pool--having a bathhouse in the grounds did not preclude having a plumbed in bath in the house itself. Fixed baths, equipped with hot and cold water, were installed in the Palace of Whitehall in the 1670s and at Chatsworth in the 1690s.”

Not all houses had them, inside or out. Just because one had a bath, didn't mean one took a bath.

Ian Kelly’s Beau Brummell tells us “Brummell bathed in hot water, and this was considered remarkable. Almost as remarkable as the fact that he bathed every day 'and every part of his body.'”

This would have been remarkable only a generation or two ago in the U.S. Let’s remember that Brummell may have made it fashionable in his time but that doesn’t mean no one did it before he did or that everyone afterward--even every one of his devotees--bathed as religiously as he did. He attracted attention because he was a celebrity.

Many people, including doctors, well into the 19th century, regarded bathing in hot water as unhealthy. In most cases, it was simply impractical. Brummell’s house had, Kelly informs us, "an unusually large coal cellar"--which simplified heating all the gallons of water required daily.

Look for more about bathing this week from both NHGs. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this food for thought: “A survey in the 1950s showed that one Londoner in five never took a bath . . . . in 1958, over the whole United Kingdom, ‘about one third of the old dwellings’ were bathless.”
--Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent

Receipts for Beauty: To Make Sweete Water

Susan reports:

Take halfe a bushell of damask roses & put them in an earthen pot which will hold 3 gallons of water, & fill it almoste full,  & put into it 2 handfulls of lavender knops and set it in ye sun for a fortnight all ye day. Put in Allsoe a good handfull of sweet margerm & a good handfull of bayse, & when it hath stood ye fore mentioned time in ye sun, put in 2 ounces of cloves bruised, and soe still it, hanging in a little bagg wherein there is 2 gryns of muske. If you would perfume a roome with this water, you must heat a fire shovele red hot & poure some of it into it.

From "A Booke of Sweetemeats", c. late 17th century; included in Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess

Above: Portrait of a Young Woman, Francois Boucher (1703-1770)

Receipts for Beauty: Pearl Water

Loretta reports:

Pearl Water, for the face Put half a pound of best Spanish oil soap*, scraped very fine, into a gallon of boiling water. Stir it well for some time, and let it stand till cold. Add a quart of rectified spirit of wine, and half an ounce of oil of rosemary; stir them again. This compound liquid, when put up in proper phials, in Italy, is called tincture of pearls. It is an excellent cosmetic for removing freckles from the face, and for improving the complexion.

1825
Samuel Adams & Sarah Adams, THE COMPLETE SERVANT

*Castile soap

(The illustration is of much later date, but the "pearliest" one I could find.)

The Royal Governor's Bagnio

Susan reports:

It's awfully easy to generalize with history.  We read of how, before indoor plumbing, people found bathing such a difficult and complicated process that only the wealthy attempted it.  We hear of wooden tubs lined with sheets against splinters (ow!) and laboriously filled with buckets of heated water lugged upstairs by servants.  We assume that, with so much work to wash one's self, that it wasn't done very often.  

Then we NHG stumble across something that tosses all those assumptions right out the window where they belong.

This little brick building next to the Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg isn't a privy, or a guard-house, or a garden folly.  It's the governor's outdoor bath house: his bagnio.  After a hard day governing the royal colony of Virginia, he'd shut himself inside and strip naked. Then he'd sit on the convenient wooden bench and have

buckets of cold water poured over him. Considering that the bath house was installed by the last royal governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore (1732-1809), a transplanted Scotsman, this ritual was probably the only way he survived the notoriously steamy Tidewater summers.  

Being intrepid NHG, we naturally looked inside.  (That's an interior picture to the right.)  We can also report that we found no naked governors on the bench, but then, it was only April.