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By Root 826 0

where the Romans were two millennia ago. The one cleansing practice canonized by modern science is the one that has never gone out of fashion—a prelude to prayer, symbolic of respect and civility as well as a practical routine, handwashing was practised by Homer’s characters, medieval knights and ladies, and seventeenth-century people who washed no other part of themselves. Now public health campaigns celebrate the virtues of handwashing, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has annointed it as “the single most important means of preventing the spread of infection.”

“Bath, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.”

—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

The future of cleanliness is a mystery, dependent as it always is on resources as well as mentality. Nothing, for example, would change our bathing habits more quickly and thoroughly than a serious water shortage. One thing is certain. A century from now, people will look back in amusement if not amazement at what passed for normal cleanliness at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The subject of cleanliness inspired a wealth of words and pictures—everything from French postcards, soap ads and plumbers’ catalogues to stories about dirty boyfriends and the first literary appearance of dental floss. My benefactors include Barbara and Buzz Ashenburg, Beth Ashenburg, Sybil Carolan, Mimi Divinsky, Robert Everett Green, Ruth Kaplan, Dagmar LeFrancois, Alberto Manguel, Philip Marchand, Leah McLaren, Erna Paris and Andrea Weinstein. Special thanks to Barbara Ashenburg for introducing me to the Nacirema.

For translations, thank you to Harald Bohne, Birgit Deir, John Ganze and Jose Latour. For expert readings, I am grateful to James Carley, Roger Hall, Ann Hutchinson, Sandra Martin, Tom Robinson and Stephen Strauss. Good counsel came from Robert Fulford, Mary Hanson, Marni Jackson, Val Ross, Geraldine Sherman, Susan Swan and—especially-from my indefatigable agent, Bella Pomer.

Writing a book demands occasional stretches of solitude, and friends and family generously lent me houses and cottages, including Bob and Alicia Ashenburg, Carole Ashenburg, Hannah Carolan and Bruce Townson, Moira Farr, Jane O’Hara and Helen Ryane, and Elizabeth Wilson and Ian Montagnes. I also benefited enormously from residences at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony.

The Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council all provided welcome funding.

It was Rebecca Saletan, then at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who initially smiled on this project. Thanks also to Ayesha Pande and John Glusman, Jim Guida and especially to Jonathan Galassi, who has been unfailingly resourceful and warmly enthusiastic. My first thanks at Knopf Canada go to Louise Dennys, who welcomed the book with open arms, strategy and wisdom. Thank you to Diane Martin for intelligence and encouragement; to Michelle MacAleese and Frances Bedford for efficiency and good cheer; to Freya Godard for excellent questions and a fine eye for commas; and to Kelly Hill for a beautiful book design. To Gary Ross (as usual) for the sub-title, and to Sarah Tanzini for the title. Apparently it is possible to write a book without relying on Barbara Czarnecki’s formidable knowledge and care, but I wouldn’t want to risk it. And, finally, to my editor Angelika Glover, who challenged, provoked and very occasionally flattered me into writing a much better book—thank you.

NOTES

“BUT DIDN’T THEY SMELL?”

2 As St. Bernard said: Roy Bedichek, The Sense of Smell (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 125.

6 The ancient Egyptians: Mandy Aftel, Essence and Alchemy: A Book on Perfume (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), 164.

6 Napoleon and Josephine: Lyall Watson, Jacobson’s Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell (London: Penguin Press, 1999), 90.

9 young women in Renaissance Germany: Hannelore Sachs, The Renaissance Woman, trans. D. Talbot Rice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 22.

CHAPTER ONE

THE