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:
1. TWIN BEDS.
2. SEPARATE ROOMS.
3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.
Before applying ourselves to the examination of these three methods of
living together, which must necessarily have different influences upon
the happiness of husbands and wives, we must take a rapid survey of
the practical object served by the bed and the part it plays in the
political economy of human existence.
The most incontrovertible principle which can be laid down in this
matter is, _that the bed was made to sleep upon_.
It would be easy to prove that the practice of sleeping together was
established between married people but recently, in comparison with the
antiquity of marriage.
By what reasonings has man arrived at that point in which he brought
in vogue a practice so fatal to happiness, to health, even to
_amour-propre_? Here we have a subject which it would be curious to
investigate.
If you knew one of your rivals who had discovered a method of placing
you in a position of extreme absurdity before the eyes of those who were
dearest to you--for instance, while you had your mouth crooked like
that of a theatrical mask, or while your eloquent lips, like the copper
faucet of a scanty fountain, dripped pure water--you would probably stab
him. This rival is sleep. Is there a man in the world who knows how he
appears to others, and what he does when he is asleep?
In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown power
which seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddest
shapes; some have a sleep which is intellectual, while the sleep of
others is mere stupor.
There are some people who slumber with their mouths open in the silliest
fashion.
There are others who snore loud enough to make the timbers shake.
Most people look like the impish devils that Michael Angelo sculptured,
putting out their tongues in silent mockery of the passers-by.
The only person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air is
Agamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the moment
when Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover, I
have always had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the king of
kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized with dread
of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence.
In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her
sleep “like a whale,” to use a slang expression, I have added a petition
to the special litany which I address to Saint-Honore, my patron saint,
to the effect that he would save me from indulging in this sort of
eloquence.
When a man wakes up in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquely
surmounted by the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over his left
temple like a police cap, he is certainly a laughable object, and it
is difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated in the
strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleam of
life to illume the stupidity of a countenance half dead--and if you
artists wish to make fine sketches, you should travel on the stage-coach
and, when the postilion wakes up the postmaster, just examine the
physiognomies of the departmental clerks! But, were you a hundred times
as pleasant to look upon as are these bureaucratic physiognomies, at
least, while you have your mouth shut, your eyes are open, and you have
some expression in your countenance. Do you know how you looked an hour
before you awoke, or during the first hour of your sleep, when you were
neither a man nor an animal, but merely a thing, subject to the dominion
of those dreams which issue from the gate of horn? But this is a secret
between your wife and God.
Is it for the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber that the
Romans decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass?
We leave to the gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions the
elucidation of this point.
Assuredly, the first man who took it into his head, at the inspiration
of the devil, not to leave his wife, even while she was asleep, should
know how to sleep in the very best style; but do not forget to reckon
among the sciences necessary to a man on setting up an establishment,
the art of sleeping with elegance. Moreover, we will place here as
a corollary to Axiom XXV of our Marriage Catechism the two following
aphorisms:
A husband should sleep as lightly as a watch-dog, so as never to
be caught with his eyes shut.
A man should accustom himself from childhood to go to bed
bareheaded.
Certain poets discern in modesty, in the alleged mysteries of love, some
reason why the married couple should share the same bed; but the fact
must be recognized that if primitive men sought the shade of caverns,
the mossy couch of deep ravines, the flinty roof of grottoes to protect
his pleasure, it was because the delight of love left him without
defence against his enemies. No, it is not more natural to lay two heads
upon the same pillow, than it is reasonable to tie a strip of muslin
round the neck. Civilization is come. It has shut up a million of men
within an area of four square leagues; it has stalled them in streets,
houses, apartments, rooms, and chambers eight feet square; after a
time it will make them shut up one upon another like the tubes of a
telescope.
From this cause and from many others, such as thrift, fear, and
ill-concealed jealousy, has sprung the custom of the sleeping together
of the married couple; and this custom has given rise to punctuality and
simultaneity in rising and retiring.
And here you find the most capricious thing in the world, the feeling
most pre-eminently fickle, the thing which is worthless without its own
spontaneous inspiration, which takes all its charm from the suddenness
of its desires, which owes its attractions to the genuineness of its
outbursts--this thing we call love, subjugated to a monastic rule, to
that law of geometry which belongs to the Board of Longitude!
If I were a father I should hate the child, who, punctual as the clock,
had every morning and evening an explosion of tenderness and wished me
good-day and good-evening, because he was ordered to do so. It is in
this way that all that is generous and spontaneous in human sentiment
becomes strangled at its birth. You may judge from this what love means
when it is bound to a fixed hour!
Only the Author of everything can make the sun rise and set, morn and
eve, with a pomp invariably brilliant and always new, and no one here
below, if we may be permitted to use the hyperbole of Jean-Baptiste
Rousseau, can play the role of the sun.
From these preliminary observations, we conclude that it is not natural
for two to lie under the canopy in the same bed;
That a man is almost always ridiculous when he is asleep;
And that this constant living together threatens the husband with
inevitable dangers.
We are going to try, therefore, to find out a method which will bring
our customs in harmony with the laws of nature, and to combine custom
and nature in a way that will enable a husband to find in the mahogany
of his bed a useful ally, and an aid in defending himself.