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An elegant way of referring to a morning bath. This expression, or the variant, “matutinal bath,” may be encountered in a number of works of English literature from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. Although it refers to the act of taking a bath in the morning, Gibson seems to be using to mean a particular type of bath tub or bathing vessel.
But in bad weather, on keenly or damply cold mornings, when people who can afford the time snuggle between the blankets as long as possible, making to themselves all kinds of ingenious hygienic excuses for getting up later than usual, and shirking their matutinal “tub,” or at any rate “taking the chill off” its cold water to an extent which converts it into warm—on mornings when even those who have fortified themselves with a meal to face the outside air, and are sufficiently clad, hurry along snappish and blue-nosed, or stop to clap their hands across their breasts, and stamp their feet to warm their tingling toes—it is pity-moving to see the cress-sellers crawling to their markets through the raw, glimmering1y-gas-lit gloom.
— Life in the London Streets by Richard Rowe, 1881
When abroad one of my amusements has been of an early morning to watch Paris making its toilet. The streets are taking a bath, liveried attendants are blacking the boots of the lamp-posts and newspaper-kiosques, the shop-fronts are being shaved and having their hair curled, cafe's and restaurants are putting on clean shirts and tying their cravats smartly before their many mirrors. By the time the world is up and about, the whole city, smiling freshly from its matutinal tub, is ready to greet it gayly.
— Worldy Ways and Byways by Eliot Gregory
With a deft movement of her fingers she loosed the thong that held her single garment, and as it fell to the ground Waldo, with a horrified gasp, turned upon his face, burying his tightly closed eyes in his hands.
Then the girl dived into the cool waters for her matutinal bath.
— The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Bagamoyo has a most enjoyable climate. It is far preferable in every sense to that of Zanzibar. We were able to sleep in the open air, and rose refreshed and healthy each morning, to enjoy our matutinal bath in the sea; and by the time the sun had risen we were engaged in various preparations for our departure for the interior.
How I Found Livingstone by Henry Morton Stanley
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