Bathing house

“ In all my travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton Institute, I have always in some way sought my daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not been easy to do except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should be a part of every house. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bathing in seawater is a grand preservative. If your bath be in the house, the best time is an hour or two before dinner. Tepid bath; none of your cold baths for such a machine as yours. If you have no convenience for a warm bath in the house, set a mason to work to-morrow and make one in each of your country houses. ”

“ Every house of any pretension ought to have a bathroom. Nothing would be more conducive to health than regular systematic bathing. A hot and cold bath, a sitz bath, and a shower bath—each and all in their turn—are grand requisites to preserve and procure health. ”

“ One side of the house is devoted to the dressing-rooms of the ladies and the other to those of the gentlemen, and long wooden stairs on each side enable the bathers to reach the sands. A few yards brings into sufficient depth for bathing, but at low water the sea goes back so as to land one among the rocks, especially in spring tides, and bathing is then not so pleasant, especially to non-swimmers ”

“ The surf, too, was much discolored with sea-wrack and the nameless rubbish it is always turning over and over. Groups of bathing-houses were dispersed along the upper margin of the strand. [Pg 383] They are not much larger than, and bear a strong resemblance to, sentry-boxes. When feasible, bathing is regulated by signals, flags of different colors being used to designate the hours assigned to males or females. The floor of the beach is hard and gently shelving. There being little tide, a plunge into the sea may be enjoyed without danger from quicksands or under-tow. ”

“ Men were lazily coming and going through a door that led into the baths. There were large rooms with high ceilings and painted walls. In one we can still see the round marble basin. The walls are painted with trees and birds and swimming fish and statues. It was like bathing in a beautiful garden to bathe here. Another room was for the hot bath, with double walls and hot air circulating between to make the whole room warm. The bathhouse was a great building full of comforts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I will turn to the more agreeable subject—the operation of the bath, which is quite luxurious. The sensation experienced on first entering the hottest chamber is almost overpowering—the heat is extremely oppressive; and at first I believed that I could not long support such a temperature; but after the first minute, I was relieved by a gentle, and afterwards by a profuse perspiration, and no longer felt in any degree oppressed. It is always necessary for each lady to send her own bathing-linen, a pair of high clogs, a large copper vessel for hot water, two copper bowls, and towels. ”

“ Yet it is only very gradually that houses more attractive in appearance, and more adapted to the ways of civilisation, are taking its place. Even in modern bungalows, the extremely primitive arrangements for bathing, which formerly had to suffice because there was nothing better, are still perpetuated. The bathroom is often a dingy, lean-to shed, opening out of your sleeping room. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the fashionable season the town is visited for sea-bathing, and excellent accommodations are now provided, bathing-machines having been introduced, and the private baths rendered most convenient. They stand in a large reservoir of sea water, which is changed at every tide, and supplied with fresh water every hour, by a contrivance on the principle of a natural syphon. In some of these baths, the water is made hot for invalids, who, if they have neither strength nor courage to plunge themselves into the water, are assisted with a chair. ”

“ Among our must-be’s, we would lay by a generous sum for plumbing. Let us have our bath-rooms, and our arrangements for cleanliness and health in kitchen and pantry; and afterwards let the quality of our lumber and the style of our finishing be according to the sum we have left. The power to command a warm bath in a house at any hour of day or night is better in bringing up a family of children than any amount of ready medicine. In three quarters of childish ailments the warm bath is an almost immediate remedy. ”

“ A good bath does not necessarily mean an elaborate and expensive one, but primarily one where the heating and ventilation are on the latest and most approved principles, and where the shampooing and washing rooms are kept sweet and clean, the bathing appliances effective, and the cooling rooms ample, and supplied with an abundance of fresh air. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There are twenty-two large two-room bathing apartments for each sex—forty-four in all—and each is supplied with hot, cold or warm mineral water, and the same temperatures of fresh water, and also showers of either. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Are always ready for the accommodation of hot or cold bathing, and also for immersion or amusement, together with sudorific apartments. The swimming bath is in length thirty-six yards, and in breadth eighteen yards, containing more than 2000 hogsheads of spring water, and gradually slopes from the depth of one to five feet; being situated in the centre of a garden, wherein are twenty-four apartments to undress and dress in; the whole being surrounded by a wall, ten feet high, and fine lofty trees. There are also very decent baths in Newtown-row, near Lancaster-street. ”

“ 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 Romans in early times took their baths in the Tiber. Later, the lavatrina, or washhouse, connected with the kitchen by a heating apparatus, served as a bathroom. In those days they bathed only for health and cleanliness. Under the empire, bathing became a fashion and it was carried to excess. When the supply of water became abundant by means of the aqueducts, baths multiplied rapidly and public baths were established. ”

“ Moreover in well-regulated houses, the bath towels should be dried by the housemaid at the fire, and each person should bring his or her towels into the bathroom when he or she is about to use it, and take them away again when the bathing is finished, the brass rod being used merely to hang up the bath blankets, though they also must be duly dried by the fire, and not be laid down on the floor except the bath be in the process of being used. ”

“ If you love baths of oriental luxury, here are the Bains Chinoises just opposite. Personal cleanliness is the French virtue par excellence. Bathing in other countries is a luxury, in France a necessity. Hot baths{66} as good as yours at Swaim’s are at fifteen sous. The Bains Vigiers at twenty sous a bath made their proprietor a count. You can have baths here simple and compound, inodorous and aromatic, with cold or warm, or clarified or Seine water; and you have them with naked floors and ungarnished walls, and with all the luxury of tapestry and lounges ”

“ We bathe in well-warmed rooms, often in cold water, but with steaming hot water in ample command at a turn of the hand. Had we to carry all the water for our bathing use from a well whence we laboriously raised it in small amounts, and were we forced to bathe in an icy atmosphere, with cutting draughts striking us on every side, with the basins of water freezing on the hearth in front of a blazing fire, and the juices of the wood freezing at the ends of burning logs, we might not deem our daily bath such an indispensable necessity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is highly unadvisable to be leisurely over this part of the bath, however one may dawdle in dressing: the coldness of the water would gain upon the warmth of the body, but without waiting for this, the bather at once quits the cold bath, and proceeds to make ample use of dry towels. ”

“ But I detest such contrivances, and they are absolutely inadmissible on any other score except economy of service. All bathing arrangements would be better in a separate room, but if this should be impossible, then they should be behind a screen. But indeed [Pg 67] I prefer, wherever it is feasible, to contrive a small closet for all the washing apparatus, and to keep basin-stand, towel-horse, and bath in it. ”

“ Cool bathing, in hot weather, is very useful; but the water should be very little cooler than the skin of the child. When the constitution is delicate, the water should be slightly warmed. Simply sponging the body freely in a tub, answers the same purpose as a regular bath. ”