The end better be near

Loretta reports:

Though Susan and I don’t live in the same dormitory or even the same state, we both get our deadlines at the same time. That would be now. Call us crazy but we thought it might be a good idea to devote the next few days to finishing our books.

This means we don’t expect to be posting this week. It might happen but don’t count on it. We might put up some amusing pictures, if we can see straight.

Otherwise, just imagine us up all night in front of our computers, fighting with the writing gods and hoping our editors don’t yell at us too much.

Annals of Bathing 6: The Last Word (For Now)

Susan reports:

From the Diary of Samuel Pepys, written between 1660-1669:

"My wife being busy in going with her woman to a hot-house to bathe herself, after her long being within doors in the dirt, so that she now pretends to a resolution of being hereafter very clean. How long it will hold I can guess. . . .

"At night late home, and to clean myself with warm water; [now] my wife will have me, because she doth [wash] herself, and so to bed."

Above: The King's Bath and the Queen's Bath at Bath 1675, by Thomas Johnson (1634-1676 fl.) from the collection of the British Museum; copyright The Trustees of the British Museum.  The King's Bath is the oldest of the baths, dating from at least the 13th c.  This drawing from the 17th c. shows a lively scene worthy of a modern swimming pool, with bathers of all ages (and of all dress and undress) and both genders, plus many spectators gathered along the rails and watching from the windows of surrounding houses.  To learn more, click on the title of the print.  

Annals of Bathing 5: Tepid bath

Loretta reports:

From The New Female Instructor or Young Woman’s Guide to Domestic Happiness (first published in the 1830s):

"Hence tepid* baths are of eminent service where the body has been overheated, from whatever cause, whether after fatigue from travelling, or severe bodily exercise, or after violent exertion and perturbation of mind; as they allay the tempestuous and irregular movements of the body, and frequently, in the strictest sense, invigorate the system. By their softening, moistening, and tumefying power, they greatly contribute to the formation and growth of the bodies of young persons; and are of a singular benefit to those in whom we perceive a tendency to arrive too early at the consistence of a settled age; so that the warm bath is particularly adapted to prolong the state of youth, and retard for some time the approach of full manhood. This effect the tepid baths produce in a manner exactly alike, in the coldest as well as in the hottest climates."

* “about the temperature of the blood, between 96 and 98° of Fahrenheit”

This book review Susan found offers a nice summary of the complex subject we've tackled this week.

Above is a detail fromThomas Eakins's The Swimming Hole.

Annals of Bathing: Episode 4

Susan reports:

No matter whether an English gentleman or lady believed in full into-the-tub bathing, or more cautiously followed popular medical advice and washed rather than bathed, there was one area in which both sides were in complete agreement: what they wore next to their skin was impeccably clean.

For gentlemen, a linen shirt was an all-purpose garment well into the 19th century. Whether fine Holland linen or coarse homespun, the shirt was always voluminously cut and always white.  It slipped over the head and hung nearly to the knees, with buttons at the throat and the cuffs.  (It's only romance cover artists who make a historical hero wear a silk tux shirt open to the waist.) 

A shirt served as underwear as well as a nightshirt, and was the one "layer" that lay directly on the skin, absorbing sweat and preserving coats and waistcoats. A clean shirt was a point of pride for men of every rank. Even laboring men tried to have at least two, one to wear and one being washed.  Fine gentlemen might change their shirts several times a day; some might own as many as fifty. But as long as a gentleman's shirt was clean, then he was considered clean as well.  

It probably worked pretty well, too.  Linen is a soft, absorbent fabric, and by the time a laundress had washed and rinsed it repeatedly with strong soap, dried it by the sun, and pressed it with steaming-hot irons, a linen shirt would have been clean and fresh-smelling enough to please even a fastidious 21st c. nose.  Wealthy Londoners sent their linen to the country to be washed, in cleaner water far from the sooty air of the city.

The same thing applied to a lady's smock, shirt, or chemise; the name changes over the centuries, but the billowing square shape doesn't. It, too, was invariably white linen, though it could be trimmed with lace or discreet embroidered initials.  The smock went beneath petticoats, stays or corsets, and gowns, and protected those costly pieces from sweat and dirt.  (Again it's only on book covers or in Madonna videos that corsets are worn next to the skin.) Shifts were changed at least daily, and as with a man's shirt, a clean shift meant a clean lady.  

Above left: Woman Doing Laundry, by Henry Robert Morland  (1716-1797)

Annals of Bathing 3: George & Caroline

Loretta reports:

Anybody wondering whether people were concerned with cleanliness before Beau Brummell’s reign might want to consider the Prince of Wales and his bride, Caroline of Brunswick.

The Earl of Malmesbury, charged with bringing Caroline to England, had grave misgivings about the pair’s compatibility. In his diary he wrote, of his attempts to encourage her to bathe: “‘I endeavoured, as far as was possible for a man, to inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of dress, as well as to what was hid, as to what was seen.’”

“‘I knew she wore coarse petticoats, coarse shifts, and thread stockings, which were never well washed or changed often enough,’” and he asked her dresser to explain to her “‘that the Prince was extremely fastidious and would expect from his wife a long and very careful toilette, which at present she neglected sadly--‘and is offensive from this neglect.’” (From Caroline: A Biography of Caroline of Brunswick by Thea Holme).

Since Malmesbury made these observations before Brummell’s influence was being felt in London, it’s clear that cleanliness was in fashion at least in some circles by the late 1700s.

The era is deeply misogynistic, and I’ve learned to view the caricatures and negative characterizations of women with a jaundiced eye. Still, it seems pretty clear that Caroline fell well below court standards of personal hygiene.

“In fact she frequently stank,” writes Kenneth Baker in George IV: A Life in Caricature. “She seldom washed her hair or feet.” This was a marriage made in hell, obviously: “George was fastidious in his clothes, his manners and his life. He did not want a wife who smelt.”

The Baker book contains a marvelous collection of caricatures. One, by Isaac Cruikshank, shows the Prince standing in his nightshirt next to the bridal bed, holding his mouth and looking as though he’s gagging. The caption is “Oh! Che Boccone! (Oh, what a mouthful!)

Oddly enough, this caricature of her with her lover Bartolomeo Pergami, shows her bathing.