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Posted by Michael Sympson on 12/3/2002, 3:30:36
Sometimes I try to imagine how people in the past had whiled away their time on that certain place where all of us sacrifice to the great cycle of being. Despite the fact that proper plumbing hadn't been around before 1887, the water closet has a long history. It reaches way back to Roman and Hellenistic times. King Henry VIII had a spectacular loo: a communal seating area in several rows, grandstanding high up over a valley and with a stunning view into pastures and hillsides.
The spaces between the seats were open, it was an early unisex loo: one could start a flirt, play cards, or read the poems by Sir Thomas Whyatt. The droppings fell into a system of running water that filled subterranean septic cisterns where the lesser run found some job security in cleaning up the aristocratic slush. I am not sure how many people at Henry's court could actually read. But back in antique Ephesus many could. In the public loos, they used to face each other in a four seat arrangement.
The conversations in ancient loos are not beyond conjecture - we do have graffiti. Somebody might even have read to the others. Back then, everybody used to read aloud, and often on the walk. Personally I don't envy the slave who would read to his master from a 60 lbs scroll, but the well heeled idler of course would hold in his hand an elegant little scroll, like a marshal's baton; just to show status, like today some people flash their cell phones. Does papyrus make good toilet paper? I have no idea.
Silent reading is a comparably late innovation - we know the inventor, according to St. Augustine it was Ambrose of Milan. He was the first to turn the pages in perfect silence, and without moving his lips, in a kind of inner prayer. We write the year 380 AD. A codex still had a forbidding weight and was too expensive to be brought to the loo to assist some more intense meditation, but then the loo itself was no longer a place of comfortable conviviality. In fact plumbing got out of fashion - we enter the Dark Ages.
As for so many things, the printing press brought the big change. Medieval grandees who could afford it, had tiny hand painted breviaries, neatly illuminated with miniatures and worth an entire farm a piece. Today we admire them under glass in our museums, the odors have dissipated long ago. But with print, came cheaper editions, and with cheaper editions came more demand. The loos however were still far from spectacular - French aristocrats still shat behind the floor-long portieres onto Versailles' parquet.
Obviously, the court architect of Louis XIV, in his infinite wisdom had decided against plumbing and septic tanks, presumably because it could have upset the symmetry of the flower-beds in his Majesty's "deer-park." So the royal bowels relieved themselves into a pot de chambre which could be locked out of sight into a cabinet - after the royal physicians had had a good sniff. Sniffing feces was still the preferred method of diagnosis in the medical profession.
It was an idyll of almost biblical cosiness. "And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee" (Deut. 23:13). Of course gentlemen packed rapiers, not a shovel. At often frequented spots in Louis' palace the parquet started rotting and had to be replaced. Even the little Dauphine didn't wear pants till he was twelve, and for laughs peed in high arcs at the courtiers.
If you could afford a valet he would wait behind you to perfume and powder your royal rectum. These were smelly times. But everybody who could read carried with him a book for the occasion, and not necessarily for a wipe. A bibliophile better remembers the original use of those small formatted editions, printed in a tiny typeface and sometimes even crudely illustrating their lewd little stories of literally butt-naked couples who flagellated each others buttocks with thorny rose flowers.
I must confess, I too am fond of the small format. I wish all my books would be of the size and quality of the old Oxford Classics from the pre-paperback age. They are just lovely and the most mobile book ever invented. It fits almost every breast pocket or back pocket at your jeans. And when Nature calls, you make yourself comfortable, forget the smells and noises, and just read away - sheer bliss. Nothing can touch you, no commercial breaks, no stupid muzac, just quiet meditation.
© - 3/11/2002 - by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved