Fahrenheit 212
CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN
Miss Faye Dunaway, whose appearance as Bonnie Parker was such an unforgettable eye- opener. looks as good in today's fashions as in the gear of the depression years. Achance publicity had put the number of costume changes in her next movie at thirty-one But having sneaked an American preview. 1 do wonder whether this count included several feet of film where her only apparel is a fetchingly tiny Turkish towel. The scene, it must be explained, takes places in a private sauna owned by a Bostonian so rich as to stage gigantic bank robberies simply and solely for kicks. That his mansion should be equipped with a Finnish sauna presumably gives the theatrical coup de Pion to his conspicuous con- sumption. marked otherwise by nothing more exotic than some Brooks Brothers suits. a Patek Philippe watch and a Rolls.
Yet on neither side of the Atlantic is it really necessary to be a millionaire tycoon. let alone a criminal master-mind, to afford a sauna. I did hear the other day of a peer of the realm who'd paid best part of £3,000 for his, and every bead of lordly sweat must now be worth its equivalent volume in gold. But you com- moners can get a perfectly respectable sauna chalet erected in the garden for half or even a third that price. And should you happen to have a suitable vacant room. an interior sauna (not an inferior sauna) can come as cheap as f250-£300. So, considering what people will pay nowadays for luxuries beyond their fathers' dreams of avarice, a sauna-owning democracy is not intrinsically impossible.
It isn't likely either, just yet. The principal importers and suppliers of the genuine article —Nordic Sauna Ltd of Croydon and Banta- salmi Saunas Ltd at Birmingham—both say that their market, though rapidly expanded these past three or four years, remains small. Mr Antti Sarkaner., who runs the Midland. firm, describes himself being dragged into th, business where he could anticipate no demand by a sense of 'apostolic mission.' This metaph.i- I find somewhat ironic in view of the wet,. known attitude of the early Church. Did not St Benedict command that 'to those that ar.t well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted'? Did not St Francis of Assisi list dirt among the insignia of holiness? The old pagan Romans were the ones who spread the joys of the thermae throughout their colonies and when They withdrew, say the historians of balneology, Europe went un- washed for a thousand years.
Even in our own enlightened age it has taken Which:' "eleven years to get round (in its August issue) to the comparative merits of ordinary baths. And who can fault its responsiveness to consumer priorities, since there are fewer British homes with tubs fixed than there are with Tvs? Samuel Butler was not merely parading a passion for paradox when he remarked that cleanliness was almost as bad as godliness; for there does persist in our society an atavistic notion of the bath as penance or purgation rather than as pleasure. This explains, perhaps, why promoters of the sauna always put such earnest stress on its clinical virtues—how it eliminates our body poisons, relieves our muscular ailments, improxes our general meta- bolism, reduces our adiposity and 'bids fair to replace tranquillisers, barbiturates and shock treatment for the emotionally disturbed and distressed'—when their biggest selling point ought surely to be SAUNA IS I.UN.
Not quite such fun. I admit, as in ancient Scythia or modern Scandinavia. Students of Lis), will search in vain for the hempseed which, when thrown with water on to heated stones, created steam intoxicating enough for the most demanding flower person. Masochists wishing to have their skins flagellated with birch twigs must normally make do with being smacked by a masseuse. And snow to roll in is not part of the deal. But if you haven't yet experienced the cocooning comfort of dry heat at 212 degrees F (at which temperature water boils), if you haven't yet alternated this with an icy plunge or shower (learning what Milton meant by 'The bitter change/Of fierce ex- tremes, extremes by change more fierce'), if you don't yet know that perspiration can be a pleasure and refrigeration a refreshment, then (provided your doctor approves) it's time you sought out a sauna.
You don't actually have to buy one. For, like the citizens of classical Rome, you may now walk abroad to your baths. In our capital, it is true, you will pay more than the quadrans that Horace mentions. A quid is nearer the mark. Indeed, if you are a 'major business or professional man' you might qualify for an exclusive private club called the Mayfair Sauna that has just opened in Deanery Street, where the swish atmosphere is quasi-oriental, the annual subscription £21 and the standard treat- ment £5 5s. Dear-bought, to put it mildly; but so, I believe, are admission tickets to Nirvana.
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