When we are fortunate enough to inherit great old houses, of course we
will give them proper furniture--if we can find it.
I remember a house in New Orleans that had a full dozen spacious
bedrooms, square, closetless chambers that opened into small
dressing-rooms. One of them, I remember, was absolutely bare of wall and
floor, with a great Napoleon bed set squarely in the center of it. There
was the inevitable mosquito net canopy, here somehow endowed with an
unexpected dignity. One felt the room had been made for sleeping, and
nothing _but_ sleeping, and while the bed was placed in the middle of
the floor to get all the air possible, its placing was a master stroke
of decoration in that great white walled room. It was as impressive as a
royal bed on a dais.
We are getting more sensible about our bedrooms. There is no doubt about
it. For the last ten years there has been a dreadful epidemic of brass
beds, a mistaken vogue that came as a reaction from the heavy walnut
beds of the last generation. White painted metal beds came first, and
will last always, but they weren't good enough for people of
ostentatious tastes, and so the vulgar brass bed came to pass. Why we
should suffer brass beds in our rooms, I don't know! The plea is that
they are more sanitary than wooden ones. Hospitals must consider
sanitation first, last, and always, and they use white iron beds.
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