“Upon
his return from the Bath, all peccant humours, he finds, are purged out of him;
and his great temperance and economy are so signal, that the first, is fit for
my constitution, and the latter, would enable you to lay up so much money, as
to buy a bishoprick in England.” (Alexander
Pope: Selected Letters, ed. Howard Erskine-Hill, 2000)
Pope
is staying in Bolingbroke’s villa at Dawley, near Uxbridge. With Swift he relaxes
his customary formality, and he goes on to express pleasure in his
soon-to-be-published Dunciad. The
word is peccant. It echoes in my head
with piquant, but that’s a
cul-de-sac. The etymology in the OED is
uncertain and feeds on both Latin and French, but the meaning is clear: “unhealthy,
corrupt, diseased; causing disease. Formerly esp. of a bodily humour.” Which explains
the reference to Bath, where since the days of the Romans one took the
therapeutic waters. In Pickwick Papers,
when John Smauker asks Sam Weller about the taste of the waters at Bath, Weller
replies: “I thought they’d a wery strong flavour o’ warm flat irons.” The
dictionary cites a figurative usage of the word in the “Baltimore” chapter in The American Scene by Henry James: “One
feels that no community can really be as purged of peccant humours as the
typical American has for the most part found itself foredoomed to look.”
The
second reference I found in English Wits
(1940), edited by Leonard Russell. The premise is simple – contemporary wits (Dilys
Powell, Ernest Newman) write about their favorite wits of the past (Pope, Sydney
Smith). Monsignor Ronald Knox, author of Enthusiasm:
A Chapter in the History of Religion with Special Reference to the XVII and
XVIII Centuries (1950), chooses to write wittily about Dr. Johnson: “To
call Johnson a wit is a curiously inadequate definition of him. If anyone
should study his life with the idea of cultivating the art of repartee, the
effect would be disastrous.” What follows is a quick rundown of Johnson’s
greatest conversational hits, including this:
“When
somebody defends Dominicetti’s vapour baths, `Well, Sir, go to Dominicetti, and
get thyself fumigated, but be sure that the steam be directed to thy head, for
that is the peccant part.’”
The
reference is to the entry for Oct. 26, 1769, in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. On that night, Boswell tells us, “Dr. Johnson was
in very good humour, lively, and ready to talk upon all subjects,” and peccant brings us back to baths. Boswell
writes:
“Dominicetti,
being mentioned, he would not allow him any merit. `There is nothing in all
this boasted system. No, Sir; medicated baths can be no better than warm water:
their only effect can be that of tepid moisture.’ One of the company took the
other side, maintaining that medicines of various sorts, and some too of most
powerful effect, are introduced into the human frame by the medium of the
pores; and, therefore, when warm water is impregnated with salutiferous
substances, it may produce great effects as a bath. This appeared to me very
satisfactory. Johnson did not answer it; but talking for victory, and
determined to be master of the field, he had recourse to the device which
Goldsmith imputed to him in the witty words of one of Cibber's comedies: `There
is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down
with the butt end of it.’”
That’s
when Johnson turns on the unnamed gentleman who had the temerity to defend
Dominicetti’s quackery, and suggests he steam his head, “the peccant part.”
Boswell concludes: “This produced a triumphant roar of laughter from the motley
assembly of philosophers, printers, and dependents, male and female.”
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