i am one quarter german and three quarters mish mosh northern european. to my knowledge, (although i’ve never used ancestry.com) i do not have a speck of french blood in me. this has always seemed grossly unfair as i spent all four and a half years of college studying french… even spending one semester in paris at the sorbonne in an intensive grammar program and a couple of summers working for french-speaking families as an au-pair. to top it off, i never even had a french boyfriend. 

jacob, my boyfriend from junior year, and i broke up when i left for the sorbonne. after graduation, i moved to san francisco and he moved to la. we did not keep in great touch for the first few years until he called to say he was also moving to san francisco and had something urgent to tell me. we agreed to have dinner. of course, i thought he had realized that he was still madly in love with me and was moving up north in a big romantic gesture. when he came to pick me up, he looked amazing. i was suddenly worried that he would try to kiss me and how would i resist and what if i cheated on my current boyfriend? instead, he told me he was gay and we spent the evening at a gay bar up the street from my apartment and there was a lot of laughing, but no cheating.

both of us ended up moving to new york a year or so later. he fell in love with a cute FRENCH boy named jean and i only managed to date americans. jean was also adorable and the three of us had brunch most sundays at cafeteria in the west village. i loved spending time with them, but i must say, i did resent that jacob had the french boyfriend and had never even studied the language.

i wouldn’t say that i was disappointed about my primarily germanic background, i just would have preferred to have a splash of french in me as well. but last week i attended a plumbing class sponsored by waterworks and now my genetic background all makes sense.

like any good francophile, i have visited the palace of versailles a few times. it never ceases to amaze: the immaculately laid out gardens, the glittering hall of mirrors and the sun king’s seven state apartments where he slept and ate and played parlour games in full view of other courtiers are fascinating.

i guess i never noticed that there was no bathroom on the tour. it turns out that until marie antoinette moved in, there was NO bathroom in the entire 2,300 room chateau. according to daniel duplechien of waterworks, the prevailing belief in 18th century france was that water was not good for the health and could be a conductor for such unfortunate diseases as syphilis. so the noble frenchies regularly washed their hands and faces, but did NOT wash their bodies…EVER! their maidservants laundered their linen undergarments and those were changed daily, but their bodies remained unscrubbed. (i must admit that at this point in the lecture i couldn’t focus on anything else… my entire french construct was upended.) but marie antoinette wasn’t french… she was from the house of hapsburg of austria and her first language was german. reputedly, she didn’t even speak very good french before moving to versailles and more than a french boyfriend, she ended up with a french KING! at any rate, she was raised by the empress maria theresa, who believed in the importance of personal hygiene and instilled that in her children. so marie antoinette built herself a beautiful bathroom.

i love to be clean. i know it’s not very environmental, but i love a bubbly soak in the tub with a hot shower after to rinse off the soapy residue. i love scrubbing off whatever dust or germs may have gotten on me with my loofah and i love soaping up my hair (much to the chagrin of my superstar colorist, liz, who would prefer i not wash it every day.) it’s not that i can’t get grubby… i just like to be clean again before going to bed. i don’t understand the draw of remaining dirty for days on end (like when people camp, which i would never do. i did, actually, do it once, with yet another boyfriend. when i got home, thoroughly distressed, my father said, “doesn’t he know that we don’t camp?” and then observed that this boyfriend’s eyes were too close together.) 

when we were remodeling our house, i told my architect and builder that i wanted my bathroom to have OR worthy lighting. i need to be able to see what i’m doing in there because i also like my children to be clean. from the very beginning i have (carefully and completely) cleaned their ears and noses and nails and toes and weird little cracks that collect what we call “fooey.” i did allow for a dimmer to be included in the switch, mostly for resale value, but i’ve never used it. the relaxing part of bathing for me is the removal of dirty intruders and that is not possible when you can’t see them. i try to make our disinfecting sessions fun by calling them “spa nights.” sometimes we do mud masks and mani/pedis too, but always in bright light so we can be sure that everything is scoured off.

mr. duplechien of waterworks said that the concept of having a large space dedicated to bathing and cleansing and spa nights is brand new in the long history of home building. versailles didn’t even have indoor plumbing in the age of all the louis. those frenchies did have the knowledge to plumb for toilets and tubs, they just preferred to have their waste carried away by humans, rather than pipes. mr. duplechien was teaching us all the basic features of today’s bathrooms, but also sharing their history because waterworks has several product lines that reference significant architectural periods. they even have a copper tub that's very similar to the one marie antoinette introduced to versailles, the clothilde. of course, my favorite tub is the free standing oval called the .25. i love the simplicity of the organic, feminine shape and would so appreciate a good calgon escape in there.

mr. duplechien’s lecture ameliorated decades of frustration about my lack of french dna. of course i am not french, i am compulsively, germanically clean… just like marie antoinette. my daughter, on the other hand, does seem to have a bit of french in her… lately, she refers to showers as “busywork” and i have to bribe her with (non-alcoholic) cocktails and chocolates to get her into the tub.

painting of marie antoinette by martin van meytens

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