Bathhouse

“ The gentlemen's bath-house, a substantial brick building, contains ten large bathing-rooms. The baths are of cement, 12 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 41⁄2 deep, filled from a reservoir by a four inch pipe, and contain about 1600 gallons each. The luxury of these capacious plunges can only be appreciated by those who have tried them. The ladies' bath-house, on the opposite side of the grove, contains nine baths of similar dimensions, and adjoining this is an establishment for shower, spout, and artificial warm baths. ”

“ Near the house where we lodged, as guests, is the bath of Zál Páshá, which is also a soul-delighting bath, owing to its fine water and excellent attendance; the walls are faced with porcelain, and the floor paved with jasper, marble, and granite of various hues. In the large basin ten feet square, which is underneath the cupola, the young people swim like angels of the sea: the bath-keeper every day pours into the basin, a basket of rose-leaves, which attaching themselves to the bodies of the bathers forms a kind of veil which is very becoming ”

“ The walls were papered, not tiled, and the bath itself was of japanned tin, framed in mahogany. These things, on the evening of her arrival at the Warden’s, had rather distressed her. But she was the better able to bear them because of that well-remembered past when a bath-room was in itself a luxury pined for—days when a not-large and not-full can of not-hot water, slammed down at her bedroom door by a governess-resenting housemaid, was as much as the gods allowed her. ”

“ If the company prove agreeable, the bath occupies hours. More open-air pavilions are at the end of the village, where more bronze figures boil and cool themselves in the same exoteric fashion. The public bath-houses, that alternate with the tea-houses in the village streets, have roofs and sides of solid wood, except the street front, which is open and curtainless, and within which men, women, and children meet in the hot-water tanks, as at the market-place or street-corners in other countries. ”

“ A Plunge-bath sunk below the surface of the bath-room, lined with white glazed tiles, and nearly full of clear water, into which one can take a header, and clamber out by the aid of a rope and gently sloping ladder, is perhaps the best and most luxurious form; it is to be regretted that there are few such baths in modern houses. ”

“ During the same year, (1810) , a sixth well was opened on the north side of the river, where a magnificent suite of baths and a spacious pump-room are erected, at the expense of twenty-five thousand pounds; there are twenty in number, hot, cold, tepid, vapour, and shower; one of them being a chair bath, which is an admirable contrivance to immerge the invalid, on the chair where he was undressed, into the bath, in a secure and easy manner.—These baths are spacious, and admirably constructed with Dutch tiles, and most of them have the accommodation of dressing-rooms. ”

“ The marble floor and whitewashed walls breathe freshness, the water in the stone reservoir is limpid and cold as that of a pool that gleams in rocky hollows. And, as the bather dips in his bucket, and send the frigid stream pouring over him, he washes away, not heat and dust alone, but weariness and vexatious thought in a purification of both body and soul, and he understands why all Eastern creeds have exalted the bath into a religious observance. ”

“ The bath-room, with its warm pipes, its great wooden tubs, with the carved gilt garlands round them, its lounges for cooling, its little tables spread with a dainty supper, still preserved a souvenir of Roman luxury. People used to bathe in company, sometimes men and women together (as we still do at the sea-side) , their heads beautifully dressed and adorned with flowers, their bodies hidden up to the neck in their great cask-like baths, where the water was often thickened with scented bran or strewn with a dust of salutary herbs. ”

“ The bath, which is coated with white marble, is 12 feet 10 inches in diameter, about 3 feet deep and has two marble steps to facilitate the descent into it, and a seat surrounding it at a depth of 10 inches from the bottom, for the purpose of enabling the bathers to sit down and wash themselves. It is probable that many [50] persons contented themselves with cold baths only, instead of going through the severe course of perspiration in the warm apartments ”

“ I went into the matter of bathrooms pretty carefully a few months ago, but since I have been in this hotel I see that there are one or two aspects of hotel bathing which still require attention.
To begin with, there is the question of the Korban or free bath. It is, of course, a scandal that a bath should be an extra, and an eighteen-penny one at that. After all, what is the bathroom for? We are not charged extra for smoking in the smoking-room or drawing in the drawing-room; why should we be bled for bathing in the bathroom? ”

“ The feeling after quitting the Calidarium is one of defiance of cold; the bather has a longing for the cool air of the [117] outer world, and with no other covering than his cotton mantle, a lawn or a terrace would be his chosen resort if the opportunity were within his reach. In the hands of Mr. Urquhart, the bath has presented us with one remarkable instance of the power of endurance of the skin developed by its aid. A fine, athletic child of five years old has been brought up in the bath, and has never worn other clothes than a loose linen garment. ”

“ As the after-bath garment and towel are to be thus exhibited before the eyes of their admirers new fashions arise every year in regard to them. The fashion changes not so much in tailoring as in the color and pattern.
We are not without private baths, too. Large aristocratic families are all provided with them. The bath-house is usually fitted up in a wing at the back of the building; in it a tub large enough to admit a person in a squatting position is placed on a caldron. The loose wooden bottom of the tub is left floating while the water boils, serving as the cover ”

“ As for baths, they are for the rich,—even the more modern structures are parsimonious of baths. You realize all this when in a close omnibus, or smell some well-dressed Parisienne ten feet away. When one of the dwellers of Rue St. Jacques takes a bath a battered old tub is brought around on a wagon and unloaded in the court with a noise and ceremony that arouses the entire neighborhood, which puts its head out of the window and wonders who is going to be married.
"And here's a private closet, too," continued Mlle. Fouchette,—"everything! ”

“ Dear Sir,—In the interests of personal cleanliness, we have—not without considerable hesitation—decided to install a fourth bathroom at our historic home, 'White Ladies'. This decision will necessitate the loss or conversion of one of the dressing-rooms, a fact which fills us with the gravest misgivings, since there are only eleven in the whole mansion. At the same time, thee conventions of a prudish age make it undesirable that a second bath should be installed in one of the rooms already existing for that purpose. ”

“ If you love the beauties of your house you can often pay too dearly for conveniences. The same remark applies to baths. You will probably have to find extra space for them, but it is obviously a sacrifice to give up to one a good bedroom on the main front. With modern plumbing, in which the bath water is at once taken outside the house and discharged in the open into a rainwater-head, there is, in my opinion, no objection to a small bath in each bedroom provided a suitable recess or space can be found for it. ”

“ The heating chamber for the bath adjoins it, and on a cloudy day we turn in steam to take the place of the sun's warmth. Next comes a roomy and cheerful undressing room for the bath, from which you pass into a cool chamber containing a large and shady swimming bath. If you prefer more room or warmer water to swim in, there is a pond in the court with a well adjoining it, from which you can make the water colder when you are tired of the warm. Adjoining the cold bath is one of medium warmth, for the sun shines lavishly upon it, but not so much as upon the hot bath which is built farther out. ”

“ The lavatorium and shampooing room now engage our attention. In elaborate baths they may, for the sake of effect, be distinct apartments, while, where strict economy must be studied, they may be comprised in one room; and where, again, space is extremely valuable, the plunge bath and douche may be also included. If the first arrangement be adopted, the shampooing room must be connected with the tepidarium, and the lavatorium placed next. Where the combination apartment is used, it will take the position of the shampooing room. ”

“ The story of the man who asked an Indiana hotel clerk to "give" him "a room and a bath," to be greeted by the instant response, "We'll give you the room; but you'll have to wash yourself," contains quite as much truth as humor. I had to forego my dip in a Southern hotel on one morning because "the last feller that took a bath [205] here run off with the key to the door," and then on the following morning when the bathroom door had been forced open I found the tub constructed of tiles, with a lush growth of morning glory vines sprouting up between them. ”

“ John cackled with raucous glee.
“Bath?” he snorted. “Hey, guys, here’s an _hombre_ wants to know where he can take a bath.”
“Bath?” said Fat. “Why, Paris is the last place I had a bath, and I don’t expect to have another one till I die and go back there. You’ll get no baths here. There’s a bath-house in town, but you can’t go there, for the post’s been quarantined ever since it was started. The M.P.’s know that anybody that goes A. W. O. L. will want a bath, so they keep a special guard over the bath-house to pick you up, just like at the barrooms.” ”

“ The bath occupies from three to four hours, with the smoking, chatting, music, and dancing, which accompany it, in an atmosphere that excludes every unpleasant sensation. The women are not, like the men, contented with the bathing-linen and apparatus, which they find there; but are followed by female slaves, who bear bundles of towels in silk and satin wrappers, boxwood pattens, incrusted with mother of pearl, silver basins and bowls, or sometimes enamelled ones, and aloe-wood and ambergris to perfume both the apartment and their coffee. ”

“ But if we cannot make the bathroom what it ought to be, the supreme and perfect shrine of the supreme moment of the day, the one spot in the house on which no expense or trouble is spared, we can at least bring the bath itself up to date. I don’t now, as I did, lay much stress on having a bath with fifteen different taps. ”

“ A portable bath was part of the furniture of every decent house—we had one so large that the frequent monthly nurse made her bed in it—but, like the warming-pan, it was not for common use; it was a medical appliance chiefly. Such is the case, I find, in many English houses still. We children were severely scrubbed and scoured in washing-tubs every Saturday night—"tub night"—and we did a great deal of sea bathing in summer; between whiles we ran constant risk of being sent from table to obliterate the line of demarcation between the washed and unwashed portions of face and neck. ”

“ Bathers would like a large pool or tank where, by a system of planks fastened to a central post, two bathers could go alternately up and down, one being in the water while the other was in the air, an arrangement like the see-saw which children are so fond of. It should have sufficient capacity to accommodate a number of bathers at once, and should be as near as possible to the sea, so as to be available by persons in bathing suits, who have already had a salt bath. ”

“ The bath-house is very high, and terminated by a dome, in which a circular opening is contrived to light the whole interior. The stoves and baths are handsome, and very clean. When the bathers come out of the water, they seat themselves on small hurdles of thin osiers, dry themselves, and comb their beards. ”

“ But the greatest and most important development of ordinary baths in modern times was in England, though it has extended gradually to some parts of the continent. The English had long used affusion and swimming-baths freely in India. Cold and hot baths and shower baths have been introduced into private houses to an extent never known before; and, since 1842, public swimming-baths, besides separate baths, have been supplied to the public at very moderate rates, in some cases associated with wash-houses for the poorer classes. ”

“ The bath-rooms, as in all eastern palaces, are the great feature, and occupy the largest portion of this palace. Running round the centre room there is a shallow channel, inlaid with an ingenious serpenting pattern in black, and the water coursing swiftly over this, produces the effect of fishes swimming about in the water. In other rooms we see the children's smaller baths, and the shower-bath formed by a fountain springing up through the floor. The centre hall contains a pool inlaid with jade. ”

“ Whether the plunge bath be placed in a separate chamber, in the lavatorium, or partly in the frigidarium, its construction will remain essentially the same. If not in shape and size, in other respects it is a small swimming bath. The weight and pressure of the water must be remembered. A good foundation must be prepared for the bath, with a thick layer of concrete passing well under the side walls and covering the whole floor. The side walls should be built of concrete and lined with white glazed bricks. ”

“ A few years ago in Chicago I resided in a large establishment which had as an auxiliary feature a fine Turkish bath. Many of our best people would come to the bath every afternoon, first steaming themselves in the vapour room, then scrubbing themselves, then a shower, and after that a plunge—by which time most of the coal dust could be removed. Henry Billkamp came to the bath one afternoon and brought with him a suit case containing his evening clothes and accessories. ”