Bathroom

Definition and stakes

Various,  Punch, or the London Charivari…

“ 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. ”
Source: Gutenberg

Various,  Punch, or the London Charivari…

“ Whenever I see one of them I stand and covet it for a long time. Yet even these super-baths fall far short of what a bath should be; and as for the perfect bathroom I question if anyone has even imagined it.
The whole attitude of modern civilisation to the bathroom is wrong. Why, for one thing, is it always the smallest and barest room in the house? The Romans understood these things; we don't. I have never yet been in a bathroom which was big enough to do my exercises in without either breaking the light or barking my knuckles against a wall. It ought to be a big room and opulently furnished.
”
Source: Gutenberg

Portrait of George A. Birmingham George A. Birmingham,  From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America

“ It stimulates a man to feel, as he sallies forth with his towel over his arm, that any one of the other fourteen inhabitants may have reached the bath before him, that thirteen people may possibly be waiting in a queue outside the door. To get into the bathroom in a house of that kind at the first attempt must be like holding a hand at bridge with four aces, four kings, four queens and a knave in it, a thing worth living and waiting for. In America all this is denied us. A bathroom, luxuriously arranged, adjoins each bedroom. ”
Source: Gutenberg

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