BATHING IN THE FAR EAST.
Visions of Oriental splendour and magnificence float across the
imagination at the mere mention of the storied East. Soaring above all
the routine of ordinary existence and the commonplaces of history, that
creative faculty within us pictures Pactolus with its golden sands; or
recalls from the legendary records of childhood the pomp of Aladdin's
Princess going to her luxurious bath; or brings back to mind the almost
prosaic minuteness with which the Greek poet describes the bath of
Ulysses when he returned from his wanderings. In the East the bath has
ever been an institution--not merely a luxury, but a necessity; and it
is a proof of the eclectic tendencies of our generation that we have
domesticated here in the West that great institution, the Hammam, or
Turkish bath, which the Romans were wise enough to adopt, after their
Eastern experience, more than two thousand years ago. Of none of these
Oriental splendours, however, has the present narrative to tell. I ask
those interested in social questions to take a very early Sunday
expedition to the East End of London, and catch a glimpse of those whom,
after what I have to relate, it would be libel to call the "Great
Unwashed." We will look at East London engaged in the interesting
process of performing its ablutions.
Very enjoyable is a Saturday afternoon stroll in Victoria Park. Those
gentlemen of London who sit at home at ease are apt to think of the East
End as a collection of slums, with about as much breathing space for its
congregated thousands as that supplied to the mites in a superannuated
Cheshire cheese. Let us pass through Bethnal Green Road, and, leaving
behind the new Museum, go under a magic portal into the stately acres
which bear the name of our Sovereign. On our right is the Hospital for
Diseases of the Chest, of which the foundation-stone was laid by the
Prince Consort, and the new wing of which our Orientals hope one day to
see opened by her Majesty in person. Most convincing test of all is the
situation of this Consumptive Hospital--showing the salubrity of the
Eastern breezes. Inside the imposing gate the visitor will find
extensive cricket-grounds interspersed with broad pastures, whose flocks
are the reverse of Arcadian in hue. Cricket-balls whiz about us like
shells at Inkermann; and the suggestive "Thank you" of the scouts forces
the passer-by into unwonted activity as he shies the ball to the bowler.
Then there are roundabouts uncountable, and gymnasia abundant. There are
bosquets for the love-makers, and glassy pools, studded with islands
innumerable, over which many a Lady of the Lake steers her shallop,
while Oriental sailor-boys canoe wildly along. There are flower-beds
which need not blush to be compared with Kew or the Crystal Palace. But
it is not with such that we are now concerned. On one of those same
lakes over which, on Saturday evening, sailors in embryo float their
mimic craft--and one young gentleman, slightly in advance of the rest,
directs a very miniature steamship--we see boards suggesting that daily,
from four to eight A.M., the Orientals may immerse themselves in the
limpid and most tempting waters. The depth, they are paternally
informed, increases towards the centre, buoys marking where it is six
feet; so that our Eastern friends have no excuse for suicide by
drowning.
East London birds are early birds, and to catch them at their bath you
must be literally up with the lark. Towards six o'clock is the most
fashionable hour for our metropolitan Pactolus; and, as it is some miles
distant from what can, by any stretch of courtesy, be called the West
End, and as there are no workmen's trains on a Sunday morning, a long
walk or cab drive is inevitable for all who would witness the disporting
of our amphibious Orientals. Rising thus betimes on a recent "Sunday
morning before the bells did ring," I sped me to the bathing pond,
judiciously screened off by shrubs from the main path. It was between
the appointed hours that I arrived; and, long before I saw anything, the
ringing laughter of the young East reached me through the shrubs.
Threading the path which led to the lake, I found the water literally
alive with men, boys, and hobbledehoys, revelling in the water like
young hippopotami on the Nile. Boys were largely in the ascendant--boys
from ten to fifteen years of age swam like young Leanders, and sunned
themselves on the bank, in the absence of towels, as the preparative to
dressing, or smoked their pipes in a state of nature. It is only just to
say that while I remained, I heard little if any language that could be
called "foul." Very free and easy, of course, were the remarks, and
largely illustrative of the vulgar tongue; not without a share of light
chaff directed against myself, whose presence by the lake-side puzzled
my young friends. I received numerous invitations to "peel" and have a
dip; and one young urchin assured me in the most patronizing way
possible that he "wouldn't laugh at me" if I could not get on. The
language may not have been quite so refined as that which I heard a few
days before from the young gentlemen with tall hats and blue ties at
Lord's; but I do say advisedly that it would more than bear comparison
with that of the bathers in the Serpentine, where my ears have often
been assailed with something far worse than anything I heard in East
London. In the matter of clothes, too, the apparel of our young friends
was indeed Eastern in its simplicity; yet they left it unprotected on
the bank with a confidence that did honour to our common humanity in
general, and to the regulations of Victoria Park in particular. Swimming
in some sort was almost universal among the bathers, showing that their
visit to the water was not an isolated event in their existence, but a
constant as it is a wholesome habit. The Oriental population were for
the most part apparently well fed; and one saw there lithe and active
frames, either careering gracefully along in the old style of swimming,
or adopting the new and scientific method which causes the human form
divine to approach very nearly to the resemblance of a rather excited
grampus.
But inexorable Time warns the youthful bathers that they must sacrifice
to the Graces; and some amusing incidents occur during the process.
Generally speaking, though the amount of attire is not excessive,
considerable effort in the way of pinning and hitching is required to
get things in their proper places. A young gentleman was reduced to
inexpressible grief, and held up to the scorn of his fellow-bathers, by
the fact that, in the course of his al fresco toilette, one of his feet
went through his inexpressibles in an honourable quarter, instead of
proceeding by the proper route; the error interested his friends
vastly--for they are as critical as the most fastidious could be of any
singularity in attire, and they held the unfortunate juvenile in his
embarrassing position for a long time, to his intense despair, until he
was rescued from his ignoble position by some grown-up friend. Then,
the young East is prone to the pleasures of tobacco. It was, I presume,
before breakfast with most of the bathers, and smoking under those
conditions is a trial even to the experienced. Some, pale from their
long immersion--for theirs was no transient dip--grew paler still after
they had discussed the pipe or cigar demanded of them by rigorous
custom. Fashion reigns supreme among the gamins of the East as well as
among the ladies of the West. Off they went, however, cleaner and
fresher than before--tacitly endorsing by their matutinal amusement the
motto that has come down from the philosopher of old, and even now
reigns supreme from Bermondsey to Belgravia, that "water is a most
excellent thing."
The day may arrive perhaps when, having embanked the Thames, we shall
follow suit to the Seine and the Rhine, by tenanting it with cheap baths
for the many. Until we do so, the stale joke of the "Great Unwashed"
recoils upon ourselves, and is no less symptomatic of defective sanitary
arrangements than the possibility of a drought in Bermondsey. But we are
forgetting our bathers. They have gone, leaving the place to
solitude--some, I hope, home to breakfast, others out among the
flower-walks or on the greensward. It is a gloomy, overcast, muggy,
unseasonable July morning; and the civil attendant by the lake-side
tells me that the gathering has not been so large as usual. The young
Orientals--as is the custom of their race--love sunshine. They get
little enough of it, Heaven knows. The next bright Sunday morning, any
one who happens to be awake between the hours mentioned, and who would
like to add to his experiences of metropolitan existence, may do a worse
thing, and see many a less pleasant sight, than if he hailed a hansom
and drove by the principal entrance of Victoria Park to our Eastern
Bath.