SOAP

We take soap so much for granted that we forget it was only in the 19^th century that soap-making became an industrialised process. Previously it was a dark art mastered by modest groups of artisans, hand-made in centres like Marseilles, London and Castile in Spain. A version of soap was known to the Ancients but well into the Middle Ages the product was decidedly rough as it normally contained arsenic and lead – nothing smooth or balmy about it. The Romans much preferred to rub olive oil over their bodies and scrape off (or get their slaves to scrape off) dirt and sweat with metal strigils (stigli), effective but hardly comfortable. All that had ended by the 19^th century.

Pear's Soap Advert "Bubbles" by Millais

  

The ancient Romans generally avoided soap, like many British schoolboys today, and you do not want to get windward of some modern Greeks on a hot day, nor indeed of the sad groups of derelicts wandering about British South Coast towns unhoused and abandoned by their local authorities. Yet today the joys of soap and hygienic practices are fully indulged. Step into a hot bath and it need not be only simple Radox bubbles and humble Palmolive but, if you fancy, a glittering array of unguents, creams, oils containing all the fragrances and perfumes of Cathay and the dizzying aromas of coconuts, wild flowers, lavender and passion fruit. Cleopatra’s ass’s milk comes expensive but even bourgeois Britain can run to luxury of a kind undreamt of by Alexander the Great or Henry VIII. Thank Lever Brothers of Port Sunlight and other industrial pioneers for our sweet smelling comeliness. It was a soapy revolution epitomised by the school playground joke (c. 1914) my father would recall for me: Thome people thay that I thpeak with a lithp but I don’t think tho mythelf coth I can thay: thalt thoap, thented thoap, thoft thoap and thoda!

The eloquent Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, 1805-73 (3^rd son of the anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce), was one of those religious orators venerated by the outwardly pious Victorians. He was known as Soapy Sam at the instigation of Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli, not an admirer of Anglican divines, who described his manner as “unctuous, oleaginous and saponaceous” – quite a mouthful and not the kind of words that would fall easily from the lips of a Conservative leader nowadays! He is famous for clashing with the Darwinian Thomas Huxley in a discussion in Oxford in 1860. After a lengthy speech, Soapy, who knew little of biology, made a jibe at Huxley enquiring whether it was by descent from his grandmother or grandfather that he considered himself descended from a monkey? Huxley’s riposte was that he was not ashamed to have a monkey as an ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected to a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth! It does not sound much but it was a seminal moment and henceforth the scientific establishment had no compunction about denying criticisms from the Church with no scientific basis.

Soapy Sam Wilberforce

“Soapy” as a nickname has rather gone out of fashion, although I understand it is still heard in Navy circles. If, like me, you were once a devotee of the Oor Wullie cartoon strip in the Dundee Sunday Post, you will recall that one of the members of Wullie’s gang was Soapy Joe, who was a mere extra and seldom a protagonist although he often sat too on a bucket like Wullie.

Wullie's gang: Wullie, Wee Eck, Fat Bob and Soapy Joe

Finally I want to revisit the great Soap producer, namely Turkey, whose TV soaps are avidly followed in Greece and across the developing world. The present favourite is Kara Sevda (Endless Love). It is, I think, as I only half-watch or understand it, the usual rigmarole about a doomed love affair, family secrets, murder most foul, a rich gold-mine, treacherous siblings and corrupt officials. It has only got to episode 35 and there must be another 45 to come. The hero and heroine are undeniably handsome and lovely and the production values in up-market Istanbul are high. Escapism for the hard-pressed Hellenes!

Hero Kemal

Heroine Nihan

           

SMD

17.10.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016