It was about seven o’clock in the evening. They were seated upon the
academic armchairs, which made a semi-circle round a huge hearth, on
which a coal fire was burning fitfully—symbol of the burning subject of
their important deliberations. It was easy to guess, on seeing the
grave but earnest faces of all the members of this assembly, that they
were called upon to pronounce sentence upon the life, the fortunes and
the happiness of people like themselves. They had no commission
excepting that of their conscience, and they gathered there as the
assessors of an ancient and mysterious tribunal; but they represented
interests much more important than those of kings or of peoples; they
spoke in the name of the passions and on behalf of the happiness of the
numberless generations which should succeed them.
The grandson of the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round table
on which were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collected
with remarkable intelligence. I, the insignificant secretary of the
meeting, occupied a place at this desk, where it was my office to take
down a report of the meeting.
“Gentlemen,” said an old man, “the first question upon which we have to
deliberate is found clearly stated in the following passage of a
letter. The letter was written to the Princess of Wales, Caroline of
Anspach, by the widow of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV,
mother of the Regent: ‘The Queen of Spain has a method of making her
husband say exactly what she wishes. The king is a religious man; he
believes that he will be damned if he touched any woman but his wife,
and still this excellent prince is of a very amorous temperament. Thus
the queen obtains her every wish. She has placed castors on her
husband’s bed. If he refuses her anything, she pushes the bed away. If
he grants her request, the beds stand side by side, and she admits him
into hers. And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes ——-’ I
will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of the
German princess might in this assembly be charged with immorality.”
Should wise husbands adopt these beds on castors? This is the problem
which we have to solve.
The unanimity of the vote left no doubt about the opinion of the
assembly. I was ordered to inscribe in the records, that if two married
people slept on two separate beds in the same room the beds ought not
to be set on castors.
“With this proviso,” put in one of the members, “that the present
decision should have no bearing on any subsequent ruling upon the best
arrangement of the beds of married people.”
The president passed to me a choicely bound volume, in which was
contained the original edition, published in 1788, of the letters of
Charlotte Elizabeth de Baviere, widow of the Duke of Orleans, the only
brother of Louis XIV, and, while I was transcribing the passage already
quoted, he said:
“But, gentlemen, you must all have received at your houses the
notification in which the second question is stated.”
“I rise to make an observation,” exclaimed the youngest of the jealous
husbands there assembled.
The president took his seat with a gesture of assent.
“Gentlemen,” said the young husband, “are we quite prepared to
deliberate upon so grave a question as that which is presented by the
universally bad arrangement of the beds? Is there not here a much wider
question than that of mere cabinet-making to decide? For my own part I
see in it a question which concerns that of universal human intellect.
The mysteries of conception, gentlemen, are still enveloped in a
darkness which modern science has but partially dissipated. We do not
know how far external circumstances influence the microscopic beings
whose discovery is due to the unwearied patience of Hill, Baker,
Joblot, Eichorn, Gleichen, Spallanzani, and especially of Muller, and
last of all of M. Bory de Saint Vincent. The imperfections of the bed
opens up a musical question of the highest importance, and for my part
I declare I shall write to Italy to obtain clear information as to the
manner in which beds are generally arranged. We do not know whether
there are in the Italian bed numerous curtain rods, screws and castors,
or whether the construction of beds is in this country more faulty than
everywhere else, or whether the dryness of timber in Italy, due to the
influence of the sun, does not _ab ovo_ produce the harmony, the sense
of which is to so large an extent innate in Italians. For these reasons
I move that we adjourn.”
“What!” cried a gentleman from the West, impatiently rising to his
feet, “are we here to dilate upon the advancement of music? What we
have to consider first of all is manners, and the moral question is
paramount in this discussion.”
“Nevertheless,” remarked one of the most influential members of the
council, “the suggestion of the former speaker is not in my opinion to
be passed by. In the last century, gentlemen, Sterne, one of the
writers most philosophically delightful and most delightfully
philosophic, complained of the carelessness with which human beings
were procreated; ‘Shame!’ he cried ‘that he who copies the divine
physiognomy of man receives crowns and applause, but he who achieves
the masterpiece, the prototype of mimic art, feels that like virtue he
must be his own reward.’
“Ought we not to feel more interest in the improvement of the human
race than in that of horses? Gentlemen, I passed through a little town
of Orleanais where the whole population consisted of hunchbacks, of
glum and gloomy people, veritable children of sorrow, and the remark of
the former speaker caused me to recollect that all the beds were in a
very bad condition and the bedchambers presented nothing to the eyes of
the married couple but what was hideous and revolting. Ah! gentlemen,
how is it possible that our minds should be in an ideal state, when
instead of the music of angels flying here and there in the bosom of
that heaven to which we have attained, our ears are assailed by the
most detestable, the most angry, the most piercing of human cries and
lamentations? We are perhaps indebted for the fine geniuses who have
honored humanity to beds which are solidly constructed; and the
turbulent population which caused the French Revolution were conceived
perhaps upon a multitude of tottering couches, with twisted and
unstable legs; while the Orientals, who are such a beautiful race, have
a unique method of making their beds. I vote for the adjournment.”
And the gentleman sat down.
A man belonging to the sect of Methodists arose. “Why should we change
the subject of debate? We are not dealing here with the improvement of
the race nor with the perfecting of the work. We must not lose sight of
the interests of the jealous husband and the principles on which moral
soundness is based. Don’t you know that the noise of which you complain
seems more terrible to the wife uncertain of her crime, than the
trumpet of the Last Judgment? Can you forget that a suit for infidelity
could never be won by a husband excepting through this conjugal noise?
I will undertake, gentlemen, to refer to the divorces of Lord
Abergavenny, of Viscount Bolingbroke, of the late Queen Caroline, of
Eliza Draper, of Madame Harris, in fact, of all those who are mentioned
in the twenty volumes published by—.” (The secretary did not distinctly
hear the name of the English publisher.)
The motion to adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed to make
up a purse for the author producing the best dissertation addressed to
the society upon a subject which Sterne considered of such importance;
but at the end of the seance eighteen shillings was the total sum found
in the hat of the president.
The above debate of the society, which had recently been formed in
London for the improvement of manners and of marriage and which Lord
Byron scoffed at, was transmitted to us by the kindness of W. Hawkins,
Esq., cousin-german of the famous Captain Clutterbuck. The extract may
serve to solve any difficulties which may occur in the theory of bed
construction.
But the author of the book considers that the English society has given
too much importance to this preliminary question. There exists in fact
quite as many reasons for being a _Rossinist_ as for being a _Solidist_
in the matter of beds, and the author acknowledges that it is either
beneath or above him to solve this difficulty. He thinks with Laurence
Sterne that it is a disgrace to European civilization that there exist
so few physiological observations on callipedy, and he refuses to state
the results of his Meditations on this subject, because it would be
difficult to formulate them in terms of prudery, and they would be but
little understood, and misinterpreted. Such reserve produces an hiatus
in this part of the book; but the author has the pleasant satisfaction
of leaving a fourth work to be accomplished by the next century, to
which he bequeaths the legacy of all that he has not accomplished, a
negative munificence which may well be followed by all those who may be
troubled by an overplus of ideas.
The theory of the bed presents questions much more important than those
put forth by our neighbors with regard to castors and the murmurs of
criminal conversation.
We know only three ways in which a bed (in the general sense of this
term) may be arranged among civilized nations, and particularly among
the privileged classes to whom this book is addressed. These three ways
are as follows: