The Dirt on Clean by Katherine Ashenburg

Author:Katherine Ashenburg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307368362
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2007-12-15T10:00:00+00:00

The poor were not the only ones who found bathing suspect. Earnest and self-denying, the middle class and the more religious circles of the upper class distrusted the self-indulgence of immersion in warm water and preferred the cold bath, especially for men. Beyond religious affiliation, the English gentry looked askance at modern plumbing. Because the middle classes and the nouveaux riches welcomed gas, water closets and piped-in water, the upper classes drew back. Many a denizen of a sprawling, stony-cold country estate looked on “mod cons” as slightly uncouth, over-eager and—worst of all—middle-class.

Lady Diana Cooper, the daughter of the eighth Duke of Rutland, was born in 1892, but her memories of turn—of-the—century life at Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire, have a medieval ring. It was the same castle where Beau Brummell had frightened the household by pulling the fire bell, and nothing had been modernized in the century that followed. The broad hallways were completely unheated, and candles and oil lamps furnished the only light. “Gas was despised,” Lady Diana wrote. “I forget why—vulgar, I think.” Most primeval of all were the water—men.

The water—men are difficult to believe in today. They seemed to me to belong to another clay. They were the biggest people I had ever seen… On their shoulders they carried a wooden yoke from which hung two gigantic cans of water. They moved on a perpetual round. Above the ground floor there was not a drop of hot water and not one bath, so their job was to keep all jugs, cans and kettles full in the bedrooms, and morning or evening to bring the hot water for the hip-baths. We were always a little frightened of the water—men. They seemed of another element and never spoke but one word, “Water—man,” to account for themselves.

Only after 1906, when Lady Diana’s grandfather died and her father inherited Belvoir, did it begin to emerge into modern times. “Bathrooms were carved out of the deep walls, rooms and passages were warm without the coal—man’s knock, the water—men faded away into the elements.”

Of course, the owners of country houses and large town establishments could maintain the old ways because their servants took care of the drudgery. Even when there was a bathroom on each floor, women often preferred to wash in the privacy of their bedroom or dressing room, with or without a full-size tub. Trotting down drafty corridors in a dressing gown was not as nice as slipping into a warm bath prepared before the fire in one’s room. As late as the 1920s, Lady Fry thought “bathrooms were only for servants.”

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