Читать книгу The Age of Scandal - T. H. White - Страница 10

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The fixed bath, except at spas, was almost unknown—Dr. Johnson observed of baths, ‘I hate immersion’—and Byron was still quite proud of building a bathroom at Newstead in the nineteenth century. Until the days of Jenner, most people were disfigured by smallpox, and the lack of reliable artificial teeth, though this convenience did exist, produced the Punch-and-Judy profile in old age.

In difficult circumstances, however, the aristocracy did its best. Tooth powder was used, and the choice of scents included Spirit of Ambergris, Otto of Roses, Aqua Mellis and Cordova Water. If a footman touched the sugar for the lemonade with his fingers, even the slovenly Dr. Johnson would throw the glass out of the window. They shifted their clothes frequently, and these were well washed at home. Johnson decided that when he kept a seraglio ‘the ladies should all wear linen gowns—or cotton ... I would have no silk; you cannot tell when it is clean ... Linen detects its own dirtiness’. In later days Brummell insisted on ‘country washing’. Their soaps were Joppa, Genoa, Irish, Bristol, Windsor, Black and Liquid. They kept up a diligent campaign against fleas, pared their finger-nails with penknives, used scent with powder and paid attention to their hair. The heads were shaved for the wig or the natural hair worn in a queue, the powder being sometimes tinted when en grande toilette.

The Prince de Kaunitz, who wore satin stays, passed a portion of every morning in walking up and down a room in which four valets puffed a cloud of scented powder, but each of a different colour, in order that it might fall and amalgamate into the exact nuance that best suited their master’s taste.