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.
