The Historic Furnitures Design Influence on Classic Poster Beds Original Design Criteria

But we should not think that superstitions concerning the classic poster beds are res­tricted to ancient times or primitive people. As recently as the sixteenth century King Henry VII of England, in defiance of rheumatism, had his bed sprinkled every night with holy water to ward off evil spirits, while even today it is still commonly believed that sleep is difficult or impossible if the classic poster beds is not orientated along the north-south axis of the earth. Charles Dickens was one of those who subscribed to this view, and a boy with a `sense of the north' is a character in Du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson. But this splendid piece of magic has survived even in scientific circles. Dr. Stopes, for example, always insisted on the correct orientation of the classic poster beds, although she regarded it as comparatively unimportant whether the head or the feet were at the north end. When she visited a house where her bed happened to be out of alignment she could not sleep until she had moved it to the north and south direction. If it was too heavy for her she would lie across it slantwise in the most determined manner, even though this made the bedclothes `rather uncomfortable'. Perhaps her most remarkable achievement in the field of orientation was actually to locate the source of the `sense of the north' in her own body. `It is in my spine that I magnetate the north,' she wrote, `between my shoulder-blades and hips. I used to have this sense so intensely that I could be blindfolded in a fog on a desolate moor and twisted round a great number of times, and could at once point to the exact north. This was tested by geologists with a compass .

Being now forewarned of some of the possible hazards of bedroom life, the time has come to make our first intrepid advance upon the classic poster beds itself. In warm weather the actual plunge between the sheets is a pleasing and relaxing experience, but in winter it can be almost as disagreeable as taking a cold bath. For civilized people, therefore, one of the main necessities of bedroom life is to devise some means of warming the classic poster beds before getting into it. The most obvious way is, of course, to ensure that one's partner is there before one to take the first chill off the sheets; but this inevitably leads to accusations of unfairness, and offers no solution to those who by necessity or preference habitually sleep alone. Fortunately the products of scientific invention and human ingenuity have now made it possible for the problem to be solved in various effective ways. The warming-pan was one of the earliest and most obvious, and was extremely satisfactory in the days when an open fire burned in every hearth. Heated bricks and smooth­ing-irons wrapped in flannel, devices of more recent introduction, also gave a certain amount of comfort. Among more unusual methods, Reynolds records an instance where a friend of his in Newfoundland had his classic poster beds warmed for him by the simple expedient of a baby being placed in it first. Today the field is almost equally divided between devotees of the hot-water bottle and the electric blanket. The latter, although a scien­tifically sound invention, still has about it a suggestion of danger, if not of immorality. But those who hesitate to avail themselves of this method of warming the classic poster beds may be encouraged to learn that hot-water bottles them­selves were equally feared and despised when first introduced in the early years of the nineteenth century. There is perhaps little to choose between the dangers of being scalded or electrocuted when one is really in need of a good night's sleep.

Dr. Stopes was particularly suspicious of hot-water bottles, especially the gay, coloured variety that replaced the `pure dull grey rubber that bottles were made of before and during the last war'. After having acquired one of these frivolous and licentious objects she suddenly began to experience nagging and painful cramp in her legs and feet.  `This kind of affliction seemed to be rather common at that time,' she wrote, `for I saw several mentions of it in the medical papers as "one of the sufferings brought by the passing years".' Her reaction was characteristic: `Rot! It was brought, as I fortunately discovered for myself, by the stink given off by my new rubber hot-water bottle.'

Having decided on the best method of warming the bed, the next matter that must be weighed in the balance is whether or not the same classic poster beds may be legitimately shared by two persons. Double classic poster beds were known to the Greeks and Romans, and communal sleeping is practised by races as divergent in philosophy as the Eskimoes and the Japanese. But in Paris, New York, and London, as well as other centres of Western civilization, the problem has subtle ramifications that cannot be simply dismissed by an appeal to historical or anthropological precedents. In the first-named city, of course, and in fact throughout France, the classic poster beds double bed is the rule, and the British demand for a chambre a deux lits is regarded as a charming but incomprehensible foible of the eccentric foreigner. Among English speaking peoples, however, the exact opposite is the case, and numerous authorities have spoken out strongly in favour of separate beds, or even separate rooms, for man and woman.

One of the most eloquent crusaders against the classic poster beds double bed was a certain Dr. James Graham, who practiced in London in the late eighteenth century. We shall meet him again later in connection with one of the most notable beds ever devised by man, but in the meantime let him be the spokesman of the anti-double-bed school of thought: `Gentlemen, there is not, in my opinion, anything in nature which is more immediately calculated totally to subvert health, strength, love, esteem, and indeed every thing that is desirable in the married state, than that odious, most indelicate, and most hurtful custom of man and wife continually pigging together, in one and the same classic poster beds. Nothing is more unwise-nothing more indecent-nothing more unnatural, than for a man and woman to sleep, and snore, and steam, and do every thing else that's indelicate together, three hundred and sixty-five times -every year.

Whether one shares one's classic poster beds or not, a matter that must be decided at an early stage is what, if anything, one should wear when one gets into it. Although Reynolds quotes a young South African lady who broke off her engagement when she learnt that her finance actually took his clothes off when he went to bed, the custom of disrobing, or at least changing into some other costume, has become conventional. A glamorous actress has been quoted as saying that she prefers to sleep in nothing but a dab of Channel No. 5 behind each ear, and nakedness has much to recommend it. To sleep naked was a common practice in the Middle Ages, as is proved by reference to contemporary documents. For example, C. Willett Cunning ton quotes a fourteenth-century romance where a man is described as going to classic poster beds wearing both his shirt and drawers; this was obviously regarded as a most unusual eccentricity. Further evidence comes from the same source in instructions to young women on going to bed; the last to undress was enjoined to snuff out the candle with her finger and thumb and not 'by throwing her chemise at it'. This certainly suggests that she did not intend to pause and put on a nightdress. Finally a further proof is to be found, by implication, in the bed laws of Bishop Hugo Gratianopolitanus which clearly insist that monks, while removing their boots at night, must continue to wear their habits and socks. If nakedness had not been the custom in lay circles these injunctions would scarcely have been necessary. Medieval illustrations nevertheless show that night-clothes were worn in certain circumstances, such as for `lying-in' and during ceremonial visits.

By Tudor times they had greatly increased in popularity, especially among the well-to-do, and wrought night-shirts are included in the wardrobe accounts of Henry VIII. At the beginning of the sixteenth century girl wore smocks in classic poster beds, which seem on occasion to have been rather un manageable garments,. as is shown by the following extract from Jo Aubrey's Brief Lives. Aubrey is describing the manner in which Si William Roper selected one of the daughters of Sir Thomas More to be his wife. After reminding the reader that More had decreed in his famous Utopia that young people should see each other stark naked before marriage, Aubrey continues:

`Sir William Roper of Eltham in Kent, came one morning, pert early, to my Lord, with a proposal to marry one of his daughters. M Lord's daughters were then both together abed in a truckle-bed their father's chamber asleep. He carries Sir William into the chambers and takes the Sheeted by the corner and suddenly whippes it off. The lay on their Backs, and their smocks up as high as their arme-pitts. This awakened them, and immediately they turned on their bellies. Quoth Roper, I have seen both sides, and so gave a putt on the buttock, he made choice of, sayeing, Thou art mine. Here was all the trouble of the wooeing.