I have been fine-tuning the plumbing. Why have I left it so long? Well, aside from the obvious reason of procrastination, it has taken 'them' this long to fine-tune the gadgetry to the level of efficiency required to make it worth using. It is a strange but gratifying rule that the better something becomes, the cheaper it gets. The pioneers pay through the nose for the R & D which benefits the thrifty.
Just to think, it was only a couple of hundred years ago when this compact but adorable city apartment had no water in it at all, apart from what came through the roof. Servants brought up the water and emptied the piss-pots used by their masters and mistresses. 'Night Soil Men' took away the excreta left on the doorstep when everyone else was asleep. Those were the days when people really earned their Christmas Boxes.
For years, I have been keeping my eye out for a glass object like the one above. This one is very ornate and was extremely expensive in its time, but some of the plainer ones sometimes appear on the market wrongly described as 18th century hyacinth jugs.
A lady going to the opera - particularly in Venice where this one was made - would take one of these receptacles with her. If she needed to urinate during the performance, she simply put it under her voluminous dress, placed the mouth up against her woofie and off she went.
The closed triple spiral blown into the neck of the thing silenced the piss as it flooded down to the bottle. I imagine the sound of piss splashing into a jug in the middle of a performance could be just as irritating as a mobile phone going off is today.
That spiral is the fine-tuning of 250 years ago.
I laughed at the hyacinth jug comparison. There is a lot to be said for indoor plumbing . And again, I learned something from your post. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMy interest in antique glass taught me about these things.
DeleteWhoa. What did the lady do with that thing after she finished peeing? Sit it beside her while she finished watching the show?! I'll bet everyone smelled bad in those days, too.
ReplyDeleteI thought the same thing!
DeleteI think she would hand it to an attendant to deal with. In retrospect, the jug was probably the property of the opera house.
DeleteEwww!!! No telling how many other people had just sat on that thing. That makes me shudder.
DeleteI don't think anyone would have sat on it without breaking it and giving themselves a nasty gash. You just offered it up and hope it had been washed after the last user.
DeletePerhaps not the kind of thing that I'd be searching for, for years. -Jenn
ReplyDeleteMinutes, maybe, but not years.
Delete"Woofie" is my new favorite word. I might be too 20th-century, or I might be too much of a Philadelphian, but even if I were alive at the time when going to the opera was what one did, I can not see myself ever making use of such an object under my skirts. Nope. No way. I'm sure these objets were never made for Anglo-Saxon ladies.
ReplyDeleteMy last comment sounded a bit rude, so I deleted it. I was just saying that I think you would use it under those circumstances!
DeleteHope you cleaned it out well .... just to be sure.
ReplyDeleteIt is not in my possession. I wish it was. Having said that, I cannot count the times when I have willingly done all sorts of things to people I love which makes handling a 250 year-old object like this pale into insignificance.
DeleteThree cheers for the modern era.
ReplyDeleteYes, but where's the fun? Where's the risk? Where's the frisson?
DeleteHear hear! You making it up Tom?
ReplyDeleteNo.
DeleteYour favourite, Lucy Worsley, told us how, in the Georgian Court, ladies would relieve themselves by using a bourdaloue, a little jug like a gravy boat that you clenched between your thighs under your voluminous dress. Are the glass ones the older version ? XXXX
ReplyDeleteProbably just the Venetian version. Cinderella, glass slippers and all that.
DeleteAt a football match you just roll up a programme
ReplyDeleteMost of us here in Great Britain born in the 40s and early 50s had no indoor or flushing toilets, and had the outside bucket emptied once a week.
DeleteI was brought up in a house with 4 bathrooms and 5 WCs. I'm not bragging - H.I. had an outside toilet and no bath in Sheffield.
DeleteWhy the lag in British plumbing compared to the US?
DeleteI have no idea. Probably something to do with a sense of tradition.
DeleteOh, same as central heating then.
DeleteAlso, it took us a whole generation to get over the austerity measures of WW2. We looked upon America as a land of unbelievable plenty for about 50 years.
DeleteOnce again, my mind boggles at how such a fragile object has survived. It looks a little bit like a jellyfish with a sea anemone growing out of it. I would not want to use one of those things. It looks rather dangerous. But genius design.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I am fascinated with old glass is its survival - especially in the hands of inebriated people.
DeleteI peed into coke bottle in a traffic jam on the m62 once, it was the hardest thing I have ever done
ReplyDeleteLorry drivers prefer Lucozade bottles for the wide aperture on the top. Moral: Never drink from a Lucozade bottle you find in a lay-by.
DeleteAt Versailles I believe that diners would just pop behind a curtain when desperate, leaving servants to clear up whatever liquids or solids were left behind. This looks very sophisticated in comparison.
ReplyDeleteThere would have been a pot behind the curtain. That there wasn't is probably just another anti-French slanderous myth.
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