Bedchamber

“ Every bedchamber should have a washstand, bowl, pitcher, and tumbler, with a washbucket under the stand, to receive slops. A light screen, made like a clothes-frame, and covered with paper or chintz, should be furnished for bedrooms occupied by two persons, so that ablutions can be performed in privacy. ”

“ Shortly afterwards the king appointed him one of his grooms of the bedchamber, in which capacity he served him until his execution, being during the last few months of his life his sole attendant, sleeping in his bedchamber, and attending him on the scaffold. ”

“ It was no uncommon thing for two or three children or young persons to sleep in one bed and there was often more than one bedstead in a room. Truckle or trundle beds for children were frequently put in the bedchambers of their elders, while indentured servants and apprentices oftentimes slept in the kitchen, or else master and mistress slept in the tempered atmosphere of the kitchen fire and underlings took to the frigid regions above. ”

“ Never fear to open chamber windows in stormy weather. If the rain or snow beats in badly, drop the window from the top a little way, or spread an old bit of bagging or oil-cloth before the window to protect the carpet; but in spite of wind or weather, have a full current of fresh air pass through your bedchambers every morning. Once a week mattresses must be thoroughly brushed with a whisk-broom, and the tufts or buttons that tack them together cleaned with a round pointed brush, called a button-brush, so that no lint or dust can lodge about them to shelter moths. ”

“ I have, after all, obtained some refreshment, and towards midnight a little chamber also, in a house or magazine out of the hotel. It is true, the chamber is like a prison cell, with cobwebs in every corner and at all heights; iron bars before the dirty window, and so on; but it contains, nevertheless, a bed, a chair, and a table. A little active “Nina” assists me to prepare my bed, and then I rest deliciously, whilst I listen, at intervals, to the loud claps of thunder, and the torrents of rain which again pour down through the livelong night. ”

“ Our sleeping chamber with its dome is of such elegant form that I should like to transport it afar, but spoiled with gaudy frescoes on wall and ceiling, by dirty floor, and ragged furniture. The eating room, a noble hall, with a range of pillars down its centre, and hung round with paintings for sale—some few good, several curious; luxury and poverty, dirt and elegance, everywhere blended—even in the yard, which is an abomination, yet where a coved trellis-work forms a roof which a splendid vine covers with its thick leaves, making the loveliest of ceilings. ”

“ I know what these occasional visitors beheld, because it, too, I have seen with my own eyes: seen the two balayeurs staggering downstairs with a bed (consisting of a high iron frame, a huge mattress of delicious thickness, spotless sheets, warm blankets, and a sort of quilt neatly folded over all) ; seen this bed placed by the panting sweepers in the thoroughly cleaned and otherwise immaculate cabinot at the foot of the stairs and opposite the kitchen, the well-scrubbed door being left wide open. ”

“ In those times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the night, and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fireplace and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely Righteous manner. ”

“ IN A LUMBER-ROOM
I went into the lumber-room glowing with an emotion of apostolic fervour. I would clear out this rubbish of the past. It was a shame that it should cumber the ground when space was so exiguous and rents so expensive. Why, this room, said I to myself (looking sternly meanwhile at the chaos within) , would take a bed. At a squeeze it would take two beds. Let in the light and the air, and it would be a bedroom fit for the most delicate sleeper, remote alike from the noise without and the disturbing sounds within. ”

“ A bed, or couch, ought to stand free on all its sides, and, if possible, in the middle of the chamber: which is farther of consequence to timid individuals, who tremble during the prevalence of a tempest, or thunder-storm. We know from experience, that a flash of lightning, should it unfortunately strike a building, or enter through any of the windows, uniformly takes its direction along the walls, without injuring the furniture in the centre of a room. ”

“ If, as too often is the case, that chamber is looked upon as a sort of cupboard, where, amongst other things, there is room for a bed, so much the worse for any one who has to sleep there. If the sleeper arises in the morning in a dazed and semi-suffocated state and quite unfitted for the day’s work before him, instead of feeling refreshed, there is no occasion to seek far for the cause. ”

“ The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be an hermetically closed box, opened only twice a year, for spring and fall cleaning; but for the rest of the time closed to the sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty country housekeepers often adopt the custom of making their beds on the instant after they are left, without airing the sheets and mattresses; and a bed so made gradually becomes permeated with the insensible emanations of the human body, so as to be a steady corrupter of the atmosphere. ”

“ I felt at the side, and discovered that what had appeared to me from beneath to be the ordinary light canopy of a four-post bed was in reality a thick, broad mattress, the substance of which was concealed by the valance and its fringe. I looked up and saw the four posts rising hideously bare. In the middle of the bed-top was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. ”

“ This evening will be my second night at the Hermitage, and I shall spend it alone. If you only saw the bed! It is a rustic bed, a monumental hymeneal altar, large as a field, deep as the slumber of the just—thalamus thalamorum! The mattresses contain the wool of an entire flock, the straw-bed contains the shucks of an entire field of maize. Can these chaste things have the presentiment of your nudity?
"Good-by, good-by. How slowly the hours go by! Who says time has wings? I do not know what I would give if I could go to sleep in this enervating languor, and not awake until Tuesday morning. ”

“ The bed-chambers are still more plainly furnished than the drawing-room; true it is that they are made use of only for sleeping in, as they never use them for sitting-rooms; and the bed-chambers of the women are as inaccessible to the men as the Harems of the East. ”

“ They lodged me like a prince in a tributary country that first night. I was tired. 'Twas a stiff stage I had come the day before, and they gave me a couch whose ethereal softness seemed to close like the wings of a bird as I plunged at its touch into fathomless slumbers. But the next day had hardly broken when I was awake, and, stretching my limbs upon the piled silk of a legless bed upon the floor, found myself in a great chamber with a purple tapestry across the entrance, and a square arch leading to a flat terrace outside. ”

“ How these six-foot men can sleep in any comfort in five-foot beds is a mystery. The mattress is a well stuffed feather bed, the coverlet is of eider down. The down is stuffed into a tick like a pillow and like a pillow it has a white case. One virtually sleeps between two feather beds. In the nightly struggles to kick the foot board out of my short bed, the overgrown pillow, used as a blanket, often fell to the floor and sometimes as a last resort to straighten out, I followed the coverlet to the floor, used it for a mattress and with a steamer rug slept in peace. ”

“ But a kerosene stove gave out an odorous heat, and heavy Kirghiz carpets had been placed over the gaps in the teakwood.
Candle lanterns, hung from the beams, revealed a hasty attempt to make the chamber habitable—a mattress and disordered blankets in one comer, saddlebags with their contents of cooking utensils and clothing piled in the center of the uneven flooring that was littered with dust and ashes of former fires. ”

“ I perceived that I was upon a low couch of elegant construction—without curtains—but in their stead a mosquito-netting spread its gauzy meshes above and around me. The snow-white colour and fineness of the linen, the silken gloss of the counterpane, and the soft yielding mattress beneath, imparted to me the knowledge that I lay upon a luxurious bed. ”

“ The frowsy old feather bed of one’s infancy has so completely gone out of favour that it is hardly necessary to place one more stone on the cairn of abuse already raised over it by doctors’ and nurses’ hands. A couple of thick mattresses, one of horsehair and one of wool, will make as soft and comfortable a bed as anyone need wish for. ”

“ Certainly, in a bed-chamber, it is best that the fire-place should always be left entirely open. A frame made to fit in exactly, and having open slats, like a Venetian door, is a good screen for a summer-hearth. ”

“ When he reached the side of the bed, he rose to his full height, and slipping adroitly his left arm right under the head of the sleeper, he in one moment lifted it from the pillow, and with his right hand he placed the silken envelope over the head and face, and drew it close round the neck.
‘Utter one sound of alarm,’ he said in a low, clear voice close to the ear of the bewildered occupant of the bed, ‘and it is your last upon earth. Be quiet and submissive, and no sort of harm is intended you. ”

“ The position of the bed is always “vu de pied,”—standing out in the room.
According to the Dictionnaire de Trévoux, a lit d’ange was a bed without pillars or posts, and whose curtains were looped back. To add to this, other authorities say that the ciel, or canopy, while being the same width as the bed, must not be as long. If it covers the entire bed, then it is a lit à la duchesse, and if it lacks a carved or decorative cornice, then it becomes simply a lit à pavillon. ”

“ Sometimes, in the night, she would suddenly sit up on the edge of the bed, rest her bare feet on the cold floor, and remain there, wild-eyed, listening to the things that breathe in a sleeping-chamber. ”

“ Many smart and pretty-looking bedrooms are discovered by their sick owner to be very different abodes to what they seemed to him in health. Awkwardly-placed doors and windows produce unsuspected draughts; the too close proximity of an ill-arranged staircase or housemaid's closet becomes a serious trouble, and a low pitched ceiling prevents proper ventilation. It is more difficult than one imagines to find in a badly proportioned room a single convenient place for the patient's bed. ”

“ Of course a great deal can be done to modify existing evils, by a judicious arrangement of screens and curtains, by taking out useless furniture, by substituting a comfortable low bed, easy to get at, for a cumbrous couch where the unhappy patient’s nose seems as if it was intended to rub against the ceiling, and various other improvements. But what can remedy a smoky chimney, or a grate where all the heat goes up the chimney, or windows that rattle, and doors that open in every direction except the right one? ”

“ This style of bed canopy absolutely belongs to the decoration of the wall to which it is attached. But when we have to deal with a large four-post bed—“a room within a room,” as poor Prince Lee Boo said—the bed may, in its own decoration, be totally independent of the wall hangings; and care must be taken that we do not injure the effect of both by too much contrast or too much similarity. Every room has its own individuality, and the first beginning of its decoration must be the key-note to guide the rest of the furnishing and adornment. ”

“ But you should have seen the beds, or 'bunks,' as they called them, for the men. I don't believe you could ever sleep on them. They were nothing but board platforms all around three sides of the room, built on a slant so that your head was higher than your feet; so you see I'd have had nothing better than the soft side of a plank for a mattress if you hadn't fitted me out with one. ”

“ My father was always a sound sleeper, and not easily disturbed by noise in the night, and it was not by any noise that he was now awakened, but by feeling the bed-clothes gently moving, as if some one were pulling them towards the foot of the bed. The bed, I should observe, stood just as you saw it last night, facing the fireplace, on each side of which stand those high-backed chairs, and with the left side towards the door. ”

“ At length the welcome midnight hour arrived, and with a beating heart I repaired to the chamber of her ladyship. It was a large apartment, furnished with exquisite taste and elegance,—in fact, a perfect bower of the graces; and, to my somewhat voluptuous mind, not the least attractive feature of it, was a magnificent and luxurious bed, mysteriously hidden beneath a profuse cloud of snowy drapery, heavily laden with costly lace. ”

“ Obsession of all the beds in all the pigeonhole bedrooms, tangled sleepers twisted and strangled like the roots of potbound plants. Obsession of feet creaking on the stairs of lodginghouses, hands fumbling at doorknobs. Obsession of pounding temples and solitary bodies rigid on their beds. ”

“ Close to temples or market places are brothels with four or five or six small chambers designed for so many women. The chambers are so small as to be simply loathsome to the lowest pleasure-seekers of modern days, but were in keeping with the size of houses in the olden times. The very beds are there, beds of masonry which were probably covered with mattresses, while the walls are disfigured by paintings, the most obscene that human imagination can invent. ”