Remember that by rooms bedrooms were meant; the reception rooms
and parlors and dining halls and offices, and the like, were listed
separately.
I asked a well-informed Englishman how he could reconcile this
discrepancy between bedrooms and bathrooms with the current belief
that the English had a practical monopoly of the habit of bathing.
After considering the proposition at some length he said I should
understand there was a difference in England between taking a bath
and taking a tub - that, though an Englishman might not be particularly
addicted to a bath, he must have his tub every morning. But I
submit that the facts prove this explanation to have been but a
feeble subterfuge.
Let us, for an especially conspicuous example, take the house that
has thirty-four sleeping chambers and only two baths. Let us
imagine the house to be full of guests, with every bedroom occupied;
and, if it is possible to do so without blushing, let us further
imagine a couple of pink-and-white English gentlemen in the two
baths. If preferable, members of the opposite sex may imagine two
ladies. Very well, then; this leaves the occupants of thirty-two
bedrooms all to be provided with large tin tubs at approximately
the same hour of the morning. Where would any household muster
the crews to man all those portable tin tubs? And where would the
proprietor keep his battery of thirty-two tubs when they were not
in use? Not in the family picture gallery, surely!
From my readings of works of fiction describing the daily life of
the English upper classes I know full well that the picture gallery
is lined with family portraits; that each canvased countenance
there shows the haughtily aquiline but slightly catarrhal nose,
which is a heritage of this house; that each pair of dark and
brooding eyes hide in their depths the shadow of that dread Nemesis
which, through all the fateful centuries, has dogged this brave
but ill-starred race until now, alas! the place must be let,
furnished, to some beastly creature in trade, such as an American
millionaire.
Here at this end we have the founder of the line, dubbed a knight
on the gory field of Hastings; and there at that end we have the
present heir, a knighted dub. We know they cannot put the tubs
in the family picture gallery; there is no room. They need an
armory for that outfit, and no armory is specified in the
advertisement.
So I, for one, must decline to be misled or deceived by specious
generalities. If you are asking me my opinion I shall simply say
that the bathing habit of Merrie England is a venerable myth, and
likewise so is the fresh-air fetish. The error an Englishman makes
is that he mistakes cold air for fresh air.
In cold weather an Englishman arranges a few splintered jackstraws,
kindling fashion, in an open grate somewhat resembling in size and
shape a wallpocket for bedroom slippers. On this substructure he
gently deposits one or more carboniferous nodules the size of a
pigeon egg, and touches a match to the whole. In the more fortunate
instances the result is a small, reddish ember smoking intermittently.
He stands by and feeds the glow with a dessert-spoonful of fuel
administered at half-hour intervals, and imagines he really has a
fire and that he is really being warmed.
Why the English insist on speaking of coal in the plural when they
use it only in the singular is more than I can understand. Conceded
that we overheat our houses and our railroad trains and our hotel
lobbies in America, nevertheless we do heat them. In winter their
interiors are warmer and less damp than the outer air - which is
more than can be said for the lands across the sea, where you have
to go outdoors to thaw.
If there are any outdoor sleeping porches in England I missed them
when I was there; but as regards the ventilation of an English
hotel I may speak with authority, having patronized one. To begin
with, the windows have heavy shades. Back of these in turn are
folding blinds; then long, close curtains of muslin; then, finally,
thick, manifolding, shrouding draperies of some airproof woolen
stuff. At nighttime the maid enters your room, seals the windows,
pulls down the shades, locks the shutters, closes the curtains,
draws the draperies - and then, I think, calks all the cracks with
oakum. When the occupant of that chamber retires to rest he is
as hermetic as old Rameses the First, safe in his tomb, ever dared
to hope to be. That reddish aspect of the face noted in connection
with the average Englishman is not due to fresh air, as has been
popularly supposed; it is due to the lack of it. It is caused by
congestion. For years he has been going along, trying to breathe
without having the necessary ingredients at hand.
At that, England excels the rest of Europe in fresh air, just as
it excels it in the matter of bathing facilities. There is some
fresh air left in England - an abundant supply in warm weather, and
a stray bit here and there in cold. On the Continent there is
none to speak of.
Chapter IV
Jacques, the Forsaken
In Germany the last fresh air was used during the Thirty Years'
War, and there has since been no demand for any. Austria has no
fresh air at all - never did have any, and therefore has never felt
the need of having any. Italy - the northern part of it anyhow - is
also reasonably shy of this commodity.
