There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them,” wrote Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar. As a lifelong bather, I’ve always agreed with this piece of advice, and nearly always found one to be a form of therapy. A well-timed bath is medicinal. Like hot tea after a long journey or cold white wine after a long day, bathing is one of those rare pleasures that is magically simple. The universal appeal of the bath shows that it is one of the few things that can usurp sex — the ancient world did it in alabaster tubs, the poor did it in wooden barrels, the aristocracy did it in linen-lined copper. The need for humans to sink into water is as enduring as it is innate. And yet, to my astonishment, it appears to be on the way out.
A recent survey revealed showering to be the ablution of choice, with the average Briton taking 227 showers in a year and a third of us having a pitiful four baths or fewer. Yet three-quarters of British homes still have bathtubs, presumably collecting dust like a pile of VHS tapes in the attic that no one has bothered to throw out. The stats have spoken. Rubber ducks are homeless. Bombs and bubbles are redundant. Baths are finished.
But the death of the bath signifies a greater problem that needs to be addressed: our creeping resistance to stillness. A shower is undeniably convenient, but it’s also entirely functional. It can last for as little as 30 seconds; you walk in and out.
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It’s a practical pit stop in the journey of your day; it’s the Travelodge of the bathroom.
Whatever happened to “drawing” a bath? How slow and elegant that sounds
The joy of the bath is not in getting clean, but in its enforced pause.
It takes 10 minutes to prepare one and at least 10 seconds to lower yourself into a proper (hot) one. Sorry, Brigitte, there should be no phones in the bath, but there is space for a book.
And whatever happened to “drawing” a bath? What a slow and elegant thing that sounds.
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And basking? Occasionally you hear of people basking in glory, but what about basking in warm water? With the tragic decline of rest, we have no time to stand and stare, or to sit and prune.
Yet in literature and on screen, the bathtub has always been a sensuous haven. Now a much-satirised image of temptation, Mena Suvari sitting in a bath of rose petals is one of the most memorable sequences from American Beauty. Equally sexy is Joan Crawford smoking in the bath in The Women, or Julia Roberts swimming in the tub while listening to Prince on her Walkman in Pretty Woman. Then there’s the gorgeously cheeky image of Marilyn Monroe’s toe stuck in her big, frothy bubble bath in The Seven Year Itch, or Rock and Doris in a split-screen of dual baths while having a phone call soaked in 1950s innuendo in Pillow Talk. The tenderness of the hair-washing scene in Out of Africa is unforgettable. And, my personal favourite (and I think the most romantic of them all), Ma and Pop Larkin eating a fry-up in the bath in The Darling Buds of May.
There are moments in my own life I can recall clearly through the memory of baths. My first experience of proper hair washing — the squinty fear of getting fruity shampoo in my eyes, and the pink bar of Body Shop soap I mistook for a large sweet and nibbled on until I was sick. Those nights in grotty student halls when I lay prone on the floor under my tiny shower to simulate the experience of a bath. The first time I had a stressful day at work and understood the sanctity of a silent bath — feeling suddenly guilty about having interrupted my mother’s soaks with screams when I was small. The first time I craned myself into one with a boyfriend and realised doubling up is never that relaxing if you’re a 6ft woman.
I imagine my baths of the future. At some point, I hope I will sink myself into a rolltop of my own. One day, I might cautiously trickle water onto the skin of a baby. In 60 years’ time, someone I love may have to sponge me with lavender soap.
Bathing is about care for yourself and for others. It’s Saturday night with a vodka tonic and it’s Sunday morning with Radio 4. It’s ancient and it’s sexy. The Romans did it with hot and cold water; Kate Moss and Johnny Depp did it with bottles of champagne.
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Granted, the bath didn’t save Plath in the end, but perhaps there were moments when it made things a little easier. So, isn’t it time we threw away our luminous shower gels and wiped down our beautiful baths?