The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [68]
The connection between opulent bathing and women of ill repute was suspicious enough. But even without the example of actresses and mistresses, the idea of a woman or girl immersing herself, nude, in warm water had an unsavoury tinge. Many convent-educated girls were ordered to bathe in a shirt or shift, but boys and men also had to be protected from “the moral dangers of spending an hour naked in the bathtub.” A Manual of Hygiene, published in 1844, urged that “certain parts of the body” (which are never named) should be washed only once a day. Noting that some people, especially women, washed these parts more than once a day, the author wrote, vaguely but ominously, “We do not advise this. We wish to respect the mystery of cleanliness. We will content our-selves with observing that everything which goes be-yond the boundaries of a healthy and necessary hygiene leads imperceptibly to unfortunate results.”
An early French theme bathroom, a Gothic salle de bain.
Prudery in the name of religion or propriety may partly have been the socially acceptable face of an age-old disinclination to wash all over. Whatever its source, it was real enough that several French women in the second half of the century tried to convince their readers that cleanliness and morality went hand in hand. One was the Baroness Staffe, who published Le cabinet de toilette in 1893. Taking a leaf from the luxurious retreats of the demi-monde, respectable bourgeois and aristocratic women had set up their own cabinets de toilette, ultra-feminine refuges in an alcove in the bedroom or next door, where the serious work of grooming was done in private. The baroness favoured these womanly sanctuaries, as sumptuous as could be afforded.
She sketches such a salle de bain, where the walls are covered in onyx and marble, the shower stands hidden behind a silk curtain in a corner, and “le tub”—she uses the English word when describing a low, portable basin—sits in the other corner, ready when a sponge bath is called for. The bathtub proper has taps for hot, cold and tepid water, and marble shelves nearby hold the necessary perfumes and oils. On a chaise longue covered with a white bearskin, the bather “rests from the fatigues of immersion and hydrotherapy.” She wears an elegant garment with a new name-the robe de bain, or bathrobe, has replaced the peignoir, the robe in which you combed your hair.
CHACUN À SON GOÛT
The French woman’s cabinet de toilette was devoted more to ideas of luxury, femininity and secrecy than efficient, thorough hygiene. When French visitors to the 1900 Exhibition of Hygiene in Paris beheld the American bathroom, with streamlined, fixed appliances and a complete absence of frills, they disdained it as a “laboratory” and a “factory for washing.”
The baroness’s bathing advice was typical of enlightened opinion in her day. To keep the pores open, which is essential for good health, everyone must wash every day. That can be done in a full tub if one is available and the doctor permits a “grand bain,” or with a sponge bath if not. One must be very strong to endure a cold bath, and only under doctor’s orders. Hot baths can be useful for those who are troubled with excessive blood to the brain. But for most people, the lukewarm bath is best, and for no more than half an hour. Wait three to four hours after a full meal before bathing, the baroness advises, and don’t bathe in someone else’s water, no matter how healthy that person. (“Mothers who take their children into the bath with them ignore the fact that this habit is very dangerous to these little beings whose delicate skin can absorb unfavourable, even dangerous exhalations.”) She recommends friction with a brush or a rough towel. Soap, which should not be used every day, should be white, very pure and either lightly perfumed or completely unperfumed.
“Instead of the tub, which freezes your feet, ridiculous with its noisy theatrical thunderclaps, a wooden bucket, a vat, that’s it!