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.