The olfactory sense of History

The  Daily Telegraph has a quite lengthy and scholarly article by the standards of even the contemporary ‘quality’ press which originates with the latest film about King Henry VIII. The fact that whilst filming the set was sprayed with a scent designed to simulate the odours which it was thought would have accompanied the aging monarch with his infected leg ulcers and associated sickroom smells is the starting point for an examination of how sixteenth century people and their predecessors accommodated such odours. It can be read at what is actually a slightly misleadingly entitled article at Yes, Henry VIII really was that disgusting

The article challenges both the idea that everything in the period was rank and gross - a point I have made here on the blog quite a few times - and that covering malodorous airs with pleasing ones was standard practice. It also looks at the fact that people did wash regularly, and change their clothes, so as to avoid giving offence. The fear of bad air as a carrier or vector of disease was well established as health advice. As the article shows King Henry had bathrooms at his palaces, as had his predecessors for at least two centuries. Earlier still King John liked to have a warm bath each day when travelling. What was possible for the monarch might indeed not be available to many, but the use of half casks from the wine trade as baths is frequently shown in illuminated manuscripts or referred to quite far down the social scale. The fact that people did try to make themselves pleasant and presentable is clear, as in the numerous Books of Courtesy to which I alluded recently in discussing Daniel of Beccles’ poem the Book of the Civilised Man.of advice to young men from about 1200.in How to get on in Society in Angevin England

Keeping yourself clean was a way of keeping your clothes clean, and that when the range of most people’s wardrobes was far less than that of today. Ordinary fabrics ran the risk of colour loss with much washing, and washing was not practicable for luxury fabrics. 

The article makes the point that urban streets were often dirty in the period, but that was not for want of civic ordinances against nuisances left or dumped in the streets by traders and householders, and people were apparently quite vociferous in complaining such matters.

Modern bathing facilities are just that, modern. You do not have to look far back to see a society with far more limited resources. They may not have had power-showers seventy odd years ago, but it does not mean that people did not try their best with the resources available to be clean and to present themselves well. That applies for much earlier periods, and survivals of personal grooming tools, and not just combs, bears this out back to the Anglo-Saxon period.

We might well be shaken were we to encounter the aromas of the past, but we should remember their absence from our lives is a very modern thing.