2 In respect to the cleanliness of these peoples, there are different overtones. The Germans observe their personal cleanliness only to a certain degree; on the other hand, the cleanliness in the households, on their streets, in their daily life is striking. The Dutch do not in any way care about the cleanliness of their body: women of the lower callings, as in Switzerland, wear woolen petticoats and in spite of this almost never wash themselves; men of the lower classes continually chew tobacco, spit and in general are dirty: instead, the cleanliness that surrounds them all borders on the miraculous. Who does not know, even from hearsay, of the cleanliness of the Dutch homes, which even the outside walls are washed and scrubbed with a brush; or of the unprecedented, hyperbolical cleanliness of the village of Brook, the summer retreat of the wealthy Amsterdam merchants.
But the most rational, irreproachable cleanliness reigns in England, in the land of so many accomplished ideals of social life. The Englishman values dearly, but without Dutch exaggerations, cleanliness around himself; but more than anything else he strongly values his own cleanliness, of his clothes, especially of his underwear. Changing the underwear every day is an English habit, adopted to some degree by other peoples. This habit is so strongly rooted in England that even the poor observe it. In the thirties, in Rome, lived an English language teacher who was so poor that he lived on chestnuts, the cheapest food in Italy, and washed them down with water, the classical acqua vergine. And this man, notwithstanding these meager means, changed his underwear daily, not just the cotton but the dazzling white linen. He denied himself everything, but the unclean or even wrinkled underwear — was more than he could stand. There is the man who loves cleanliness for its own sake, not for others but for himself! The English even in this have achieved the ideal.
