THE BATH.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 519, 30 July 1932, Page 20 (Supplement)

THE BATH.

CONTINENTAL IDEAS. There is not a traveller who returns to Australia after a visit to France who lias aot some tale to tell about the fuss there was when lie wanted a bath, states a correspondent of the Melbourne “Herald.” Even in luxury hotels in Paris and the Riviera (unless a room with bath attached is taken) there is all the ritual of a State occasion to be gone through with in tlie matter of having a bath. Ring for the femme de chambre; order a bath; the bathroom door to be unlocked; special towels and voluminous bath-robes laid out; the bath filled to overflowing with boiling hot water (they always think this necessary, however much one begs them not to); and finally: “Madame the bath is ready,” v’ith much elaborate flourish and gesticulation. As for smaller hotels and pensions—you must order a bath well in advance —and oven then it is safe to assume that it will be an hour late. The charge for this piece of British extravagance (senseless extravagance in French eyes) ranges from five to ten francs, at present rates of exchange from 1/3 to 2/0. No running along informally to the bathroom, as in Australian hotels, and taking a hurried shower. Shower baths, by the way, are practically unheard-of in France. And although nearly every small hotel and pension has hot and cold running water in the bedrooms, until now the French have considered it necessary to instal only wash basins, with which they, as a nation, have managed to make their toilettes with every manifestation of comfort. But there aie signs that this characteristic is becoming modified, for in Paris recently, at the Ninth “Salon des Arts Managers,” an exhibition of arts relating to the home and to all housewifely affairs, there was a whole section devoted to the latest designs in baths and bathrooms. Some inventive French brain had been at work, and had designed an entirely new idea in baths—one that would find much favour in Australia for fitting into small flats, where the space is very much restricted. Instead or a bath in which one lies down, he had thought of one in which the bather sits up—quite comfortably, and with none of the cramping which resulted from the old-fashioned hip bath. The shape provides for a kind of “seat,” with an elongated “trough,” in which the feet are placed. ■*' “Why reserve for a few privileged persons the benefits of a healthful and comfortable dwelling?” stated the French Minister of Public Health, in a propaganda leaflet specially compiled for the bathroom section. He goes on to say that before long every house and flat, however small, would, as a matter of fact, possess its own healthful and adequate bathing arrangements. He mentions, too, that it is doubtless through the insistence on baths by “les Americanes” and “les Anglais” that France has at last abandoned its prejudice against bath tubsl