On bedrooms

Of all the books that have ever been published on English home decoration — I mean the ordinary everyday sort, not monographs on Inigo Jones’ schemes for Wilton House — the greatest is the not-quite-a-series published in the 1980s including ‘The Englishman’s Room’, ‘The Englishwoman’s House’ and, not least, ‘The Englishwoman’s Bedroom’.

The genius of this latter book lies in the realisation that, while bedrooms usually have something to do with privacy and sleep, these are really the only limitations on their diversity. And so begins a magical mystery tour round social and sexual mores, wealth, class and perhaps most of all, personal taste. The greatest joy of the tour is the way in which the woman depicted in ‘The Englishwoman’s Bedroom’, through their starkly-differing decorative choices and explanations thereof, provide remarkably frank, revealing if not always entirely conscious autobiographical profiles.

‘Ralph and I both like playing, and this is our set’ proclaims Hammer Horror actress Virginia Wetherell coquettishly. ‘The atmosphere is sensual and warm.’ And indeed, the room depicted is a cluttered, crepuscular, airless ‘love nest’ festooned with Victorian lace, curled ribbons, artificial flowers, fringes, frills, an infinity of pointless little cushions, and a fireplace filled with dusty gypsophila. ‘I feel that the bedroom serves three basic purposes: to sleep in, to make love in, and to be ill in.’ Well, quite. Read the rest of this entry »