IOO 



THE HOUSEAND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



THE BATHROOM. 



Thuckcrav on liaths The Shower Some Historical Notes Healing of Bath Water Treatment 

 of Walls and Floors Baths and Lavatory Basins. 



B 



ATMS and bathing have become so much a part of one s everyday life that it is a little difficult to 

 realise that times are not so far distant when they were regarded as luxuries for the over-nice 

 and as whims of the foolish. An interesting sidelight is thrown on the subject by Thackeray, 

 in &quot; Pendennis,&quot; when he says : Gentlemen, there can be but little doubt that your ancestors 

 were the Great Unwashed : and in the Temple especially, it is pretty certain that, only under 

 the greatest difficulties and restrictions, the virtue which has been pronounced to be next to godliness 



could have been practised at all. 



Old Crump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more than thirty 

 years in the chambers under those occupied by 

 Warrington and Pendennis, and who used to be 

 awakened by the roaring of the shower baths which 

 those gentlemen had erected in their apartments 

 part of the contents of which occasionally trickled 

 through the roof into Mr. Crump s room declared 

 that the practice was an absurd, new-fangled, 

 dandyfied follv, and daily cursed the laundress 

 who slopped the staircase by which he had to pass. 

 Crump, now much more than half a century old, 

 had indeed never used the luxury in question. He 

 had done without water very well, and so had 

 our fathers before him.&quot; This shower-bath of 

 Pendennis must have been of the same type that 

 Leech drew in his Punch pictures a sort of foot 

 bath at the base forming a foundation on which 

 stand four columns, about as high as a man, and 

 these in turn support a cistern on top. There are 

 curtains between the columns to enshroud the 

 hardy bather, and a sort of bell-pull arrangement 

 released the water on to him. In one of his 

 pictures, called &quot; Domestic Sanitary Arrangements,&quot; 

 a stern papa brings four small boys to bathe, all 

 looking very miserable and protected as to the 

 head with conical caps. Meanwhile a page, house 

 maid and a very fat old cook are filling the upper 

 reservoir. One can understand that, in use. such 

 a shower-bath would roar in quite a terrifying way 

 for a small boy. 



An illustration is given of a modern treat 

 ment of this fitting at Ardkinglas, designed by 

 Sir Robert Lorimer. Here the walls and floor are 

 treated with vitreous mosaic, and one imagines 

 that the only difficulty which would be encountered 

 with small boys in their use of this shower would 

 be to persuade them to leave off in time for other people to share its joys. There are several other 

 drawings by Leech of baths and bathers, all going to prove that the former were novelties, 

 and so material for his facile pencil. One cannot but feel, then, that many of our forbears were 

 distinctly unsavoury. Yet it is, perhaps, hardly kindly to probe the past and quote authorities, 

 though, on the other hand, the subject is of great interest, and it might be found that certain periods of 

 culture included cleanliness and, on the other hand, times of stress left no leisure for baths. There are 

 many references in English literature to the subject, and Shakespeare in &quot; Coriolanus &quot; talks of being 

 &quot; Conducted to a gentle Bath and balms applied to you.&quot; The scene of the play being Rome recalls the 



129. SHOWER BATH AT ARDKINGLAS. 



