“Sy est cy bon exemple comment l’en ne se doit mie si lingement ne sy joliettement vestir, pour soy greslir et faire le beau corps en temps d’yver, que l’on en perde sa manière et sa couleur.”[57]
“Do not be shaved,” interrupts Master Eustace, who must decidedly have been an ill-dressed, slovenly old poet, “neither have your hair cut, nor take a bath this bitter weather.” The young people might reply that the Roman de la Rose prescribes the hot bath as a sovereign remedy against winter. The bath-room, with its warm pipes, its great wooden tubs, with the carved gilt garlands round them, its lounges for cooling, its little tables spread with a dainty supper, still preserved a souvenir of Roman luxury. People used to bathe in company, sometimes men and women together (as we still do at the sea-side), their heads beautifully dressed and adorned with flowers, their bodies hidden up to the neck in their great cask-like baths, where the water was often thickened with scented bran or strewn with a dust of salutary herbs.
“Quand viendroit la froide saison,”
sings Maistre Jehan de Meung—
“Quand l’air verroient forcenez
Et jeter pierres et tempestes
Que tuassent ès champs les bestes
Et grands fleuves prendre et glacer....
“On feroient chaudes estuves
S’y pourroient tuit nuz demourer
Se baignant entr’eus ès cuves.”
In a German poem, Der nakte Bote quoted by Herr Alwin Schulz, a messenger arrives at a distant castle, and proceeds, as was the custom, to strip and take a bath after his dusty journey before presenting himself before the lord of the castle. What was his surprise on opening the door of the bath-room to behold my lord, my lady, and all their olive-branches disporting themselves in steaming tubs! It was, they explained, the only way they could keep themselves from freezing.
Master Eustace prefers a warm chamber, “nattée sus et jus,” with all the windows shut, a fur-lined dressing-gown, a bowl of old Beaune:
“Le chaud civet et bonne espicerie.”
Contest of youth and age! But which, Master Eustace, would be better for your gout?