Rather unlikely, as most of the ground floor of his apartments at Versailles comprised a series of opulent salles de bains for his own use.
I would strongly suspect that, assuming they actually stank, they wouldn’t notice the smell. For instance, I’m a smoker. A heavy smoker. I do not (and am unable to) notice tobacco smell, though (or rather because) me, my clothes and my appartment are impregnated with it. When I quit smoking (which happens from time to time), I began noticing it (on other people for instance) after some time.
Similarily, if you stay in or close to a farm where there’s manure, you’ll most certainly notice the stench at the beginning. Stay there for some days and you won’t anymore.
It apears that our noses/brain discrimitate amongst odors, and do not convey the message any more when a given odor is always present (after all, that’s an irrelevant information).
So my WAG would be that if you and your spouse stopped washing, despite your issue with BOs, after some weeks, you wouldn’t smell them anymore.
Besides, it’s very possible that the issue with BO is cultural. Were you living in a place and time where people don’t bathe/wash themselves regularily, perhaps, even if you noticed the BOs, you wouldn’t find them disguting, but merely the natural odor of your fellow humans and wouldn’t be disturbed by them the slightest bit.
Then , that could be another of these “historical myths” which belong to the current thread in the pit.
Though I don’t remember having seen these “salles de bains” in Versailles (but I’m not fond of this palace, anyway, and could easily have overlooked them). I’m going to take your word for this.
I’ve been a student of domestic history my entire adult life, and I think it’s true that views on hygene were not static over time. The ancient Celts were known to stress personal cleanliness even at the time of the first Roman contact. Medieval England had some indoor toilets - there are several in the tower of London that consist of a hole and a chute down to the river below. Elizabeth I had indoor plumbing in at least one of her castles, and there are at least two surviving houses of the late Medieval period located in SMALL English towns that have indoor plumbing of some sort. By the way, the contents of the cesspits mentioned in a previous post here, were known as “night soil.”
It was always known and stressed that cleanliness in the dairy was paramount. Though they didn’t know germs were to blame, they understood that safety demanded all dairy equipment be scrupulously maintained, and my domestic manuals go into thorough detail about the exact procedures. Several of my domestic manuals of the late Medieval period (when the middle class started to emerge in Europe and people were concerned about making a proper show) contain many recipes for “sweet soaps,” and shampoos, as well as perfumes.
I also have a print of an illumination from a 14th cent. Book of Hours showing a husband and wife happily sharing a bath in a gigantic wooden barrel in their bedchamber while servants schlep hot water.
It’s true that the sumptuous clothing of the most wealthy were not washable due to being encrusted with gems or embroidered with gold and silver, but they were kept by servants expert in their care, and could be cleaned with a ground absorbent clay called “fuller’s earth” and other concoctions. Washable undergarments of linen were worn primarily to protect the outer clothing from the wearer. The wealthy changed their undergarments as frequently as we do which kept whole armies of laundresses employed.
However, I’m sure they didn’t smell as “nice as us” back then. Bathing was not nearly as frequent, and the city poor had very few opportunities. Country folk could always jump in the river (except in the winter) but it’s not the same as having a water heater in the basement. Speaking of washing in the river, a horsetail rush common in Europe exudes a silica-rich sap which was used as a soap for dishes and people - readily available, and reasonably effective. It was so commonly used that it could be purchased in bundles, a trade sprang up to supply it, and shortages sometimes occured.
Having said ALL that - I’ll refute it with this - By the middle of the 1860s, London’s sanitation had deteriorated to the point where the Thames actually caught fire because it was choked with filth. The stench was often so bad that Parliament couldn’t meet. Finally, Parliament got so fed up that the modern sanitation system was born. In America at roughly the same time, a mental connection was finally made between the foul condition of the streets of New Orleans and other cities and outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera and the sewers finally went “underground.”
Cite? At least for the Thames having “caught fire”.
It’s generally agreed that conditions in London deteriorated badly during the first half of the 19th century. However, the turning point was not the mid-1860s, but the Great Stink of 1858. Most of the horror stories about Parliament and the like date from it. But even that was partly a consequence of modernisation: a significant factor were the newly-built sewers designed to get waste out of the city and into the Thames, thanks to the improvements of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Stink did prompt approval of Joseph Bazelgette’s improvements, which solved the problem, but these were promptly approved and well under way by the 1860s. Though conditions remained bad throughout the decade until the scheme was finished.
There’s a similar, broadly independent, improvement of the conditions in Paris as part of the general Haussmannian redevelopments in the same timeframe.
The usual attribution for recognising a definite connection between sanitation and disease (specifically cholera) is John Snow’s work in Soho in 1854.
[QUOTE=bonzer]
Cite? At least for the Thames having “caught fire”.
I stand shame-facedly corrected. I was indeed, thinking of the big stink of 1858. I have an article on it that I tried to locate when I was writing the post, but couldn’t find it so went with my obviously faulty memory. However I do have cites readily to hand for everything else I wrote.
Your post was very informative - thanks.
Last time I toured Williamsburg (the restored 18th century capital of Virginia), I never saw a bathtub! According to the tour guide, people would bath (occasionally and only in the summer) in streams and rivers. The rest of the year, they might wash with a wet rag.
Perfumes were highly valued in those days! 
They were later converted to other purposes. And you don’t have to take my word for it as they’re discussed in detail in the standard architectural history of the palace - Pierre Verlet, Le Château de Versailles (Fayard, Paris, 1961, reprinted 1985), pp. 88-91.
I’ve always wondered about this subject as it relates specifically to oral sex.
I mean, even in this day and age, that thang needs to be pristine for a go 'round.
Could you imagine what it must have been like in 1400? Flies and shit buzzing around it!! yuck!!!
So then what you’re saying is that the pre 1900 American west cowboy on leave from the cattle drive in town didn’t go to a bath house where a good looking girl poured warm water into a big sudsy deep steel tub while he layed back with a big cigar in his mouth and had his trail clothes laundered in the meantime?