Tea at Trianon: 18th-Century Bathing

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, March 19, 2017

18th-Century Bathing

From JSTOR Daily:

Seventeenth-century bathing was controversial, to say the least. There were two sides to the debate: one that argued bathing was healthy; another that argued it could damage health “except in the most carefully prescribed circumstances.” Given the many plagues of the Middle Ages, it makes sense that people would be a bit squeamish about hygiene—but by the 1700s, royals had gotten the memo that their lavish living spaces should at least include spaces for bathing.

And what spaces they were. Marschner describes marble tubs festooned with water-spewing cocks, double baths for washing and rinsing, and other palatial cisterns. But Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II, was a more simple soaker. She liked round, portable wooden tubs that came in a variety of sizes for small and large baths. These baths proved rickety and hard to maintain and visitors complained they barely held water. Perhaps that explains the special painted leather-bound floor cloths they sat upon.

Caroline covered herself with sheets while bathing. These linen sheets were suspended over the hot tub to create a kind of miniature sauna and keep the queen warm. She also wore clothing while in the tub—garments that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a costume heroine getting clean. Wet but fully clothed, she would have been dunked with warm water, rubbed with flannel cloths and treated with soap solutions and cosmetic preparations like “Maydew” or the milk of asses and mares. (Read more.)