The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [37]
For Europeans such as Blount and Rauwulf, a culture where people bathed several times a week and regularly washed their genitals was exotic and even bizarre. But European noses, however dulled, could still be offended by egregious smells. Everyone at the court of Louis XIV knew about the Sun King’s halitosis. His mistress, Madame de Montespan, frequently complained to him about it and swathed herself in self-defensive clouds of heavy perfume. The king, in turn, detested her perfume. And at least one person, the same Princess Palatine who was forced to wash her face, found Madame de Montespan, in spite of her penchant for being rubbed with pomade and perfumes while lying naked, to be downright dirty.
The poor lacked the means to wash thoroughly, but the aristocrats’ doctors forbade it. Since the most expensive medical opinion held that bodily secretions furnished a layer of protection, kings and queens bathed as infrequently as the poorest peasants. When the future Louis XIII of France was born, in 1601, the court physician kept notes on the child’s washing history. It was not a lengthy account. At six weeks, his head was massaged. At seven weeks, his abundant cradle cap was rubbed with butter and almond oil. The baby’s hair was not combed until he was nine months old. At the age of five, his legs were washed for the first time, in tepid water. He had his first bath at the ripe age of almost seven: “Bathed for the first time, put into the bath and Madame [his sister] with him.”
Washing for royal adults was not much more thorough. When Louis XIV arose, the chief surgeon, the chief doctor and his nurse entered his room together. His nurse kissed him, according to the Duc de Saint-Simon, and the doctor and surgeon “rubbed and often changed his shirt, because he was in the habit of sweating a good deal.” A valet sprinkled a little spirits of wine on his hands, and the king rinsed his mouth and wiped his face. That ended his ablutions. Nor was this a monarch who scorned physical exertion: after his morning devotions, Louis might vault, fence, dance or perform military exercises so energetically that he returned to his bedchamber perspiring freely. But the sweaty monarch did not wash; instead, he changed his clothes. It was by donning fresh clothes, and particularly a laundered shirt, that Louis XIV indicated to himself and others that he was “clean.” He and his brother, Philippe, were considered particularly fastidious because they changed their shirts three times a day.
“It does not befit a modest, honorable man to prepare to relieve nature in the presence of other people, nor to do up his clothes afterward in their presence. Similarly, he will not wash his hands on returning to decent society from private places, as the reason for his washing will arouse disagreeable thoughts in people.”
—Giovanni Delia Casa, Galateo, 1558
For the seventeenth century, clean linen was not a substitute for washing the body with water—it was better than that, safer, more reliable and based on scientific principles. White linen, learned men believed, attracted and absorbed sweat. As one wrote, with mystifying confidence, “We understand why linen removes the perspiration from our bodies, because the sweat is oleaginous or salty, it impregnates these dead plants [the flax from which linen was made].” In 1626, the Parisian architect Louis Savot considered adding bathrooms to his classically inspired châteaux and mansions but decided they were unnecessary. We can do without baths, he explained, “because of our usage of linen, which today serves to keep the body clean more