Eau d'Odor

By CALVIN TRILLIN

Some friends of mine returned from a stay in Provence last week, and I had to restrain myself from asking how the French are smelling these days. When I visited France in the past, I hasten to say, I hadn't found the odor of its citizens to be a matter of serious concern, but that was before I read in the New York Times that only 47% of them bathe every day. It's a figure that does, you must admit, give one pause.

So why didn't I just ask? Frankly, I didn't want to come off as one of those unsophisticated Americans who are obsessed by matters of personal hygiene--the yahoos who, in the view of some Europeans, wouldn't think of checking into even a five-star hotel in a foreign country without arming themselves in advance with a bottle or two of lemon-fresh ammonia. I didn't fancy being lumped in my friends' minds with the impeachment managers from the House of Representatives, who give the impression of being the sort of people who bathe about every hour and a half and would like nothing better than to hunt down and prosecute anybody who doesn't.

I may be particularly sensitive on the subject of hyperhygienic Americans, having sprung from folks who were no strangers to the disinfectant bottle. In my mother's later years, she took some pride in visiting distant lands, and she particularly liked Australia. I hadn't thought Australia would hold any charms for her, but then I figured out that she had found it to be the farthest-away clean country.

Of course, I could have pointed out to my friends that the statistics quoted in the Times--they included figures on frequency of deodorant application, underwear changing and hand washing that I would just as soon not go into in detail--had been put together by a French newspaper, Le Figaro. I could have added that hard on the heels of the Times story I saw a Reuters item about Metro officials having spent five years developing a new fragrance designed to dress up the aroma of Paris subway stations.

In other words, the French are aware that a problem exists. So, significantly, are the English. The Times of London responded to the Figaro statistics with the headline IT'S TRUE: THE FRENCH REALLY ARE THE SMELLIEST IN EUROPE. But are they? I know people, some of them holders of British passports, who insist that upper-class English are the filthiest people on earth. In England, there's an old story about the astounded response of the president of an Oxford college whose students, in a past less distant than you may think, asked for the installation of bathtubs: "Bathtubs! Bathtubs! These people are up here only eight weeks a term!"

This is one of those emotional issues that could cause a serious brouhaha within the European Union. And which country is in charge of patching up brouhahas these days? I can envision a richly paneled and heavily chandeliered room in a grand building. French and English diplomats are glaring at one another from either end of a long mahogany table, their stony silence broken by an occasional aggressive sniff. Another diplomat enters. He has a conspicuously soothing manner. He's an American. You can tell because he's carrying a bottle of disinfectant.