The Bedroom and Boudoir

THE BEDROOM AND BOUDOIR.

BY LADY BARKER.
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1878.
FIFTH THOUSAND. LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
TOO much attention can scarcely be expended on our sleeping rooms in order that we may have them wholesome, convenient and cheerful. It is impossible to over-estimate the value of refreshing sleep to busy people, particularly to those who are obliged to do much brainwork. In the following pages will, we hope, be found many hints with regard to the sanitary as well as the ornamental treatment of the bedroom. W. J. Loftie.

IT is only too easy to shock some people, and at the risk of shocking many of my readers at the outset, I must declare that very few bedrooms are so built and furnished as to remain thoroughly sweet , fresh, and airy all through the night. This is not going so far as others however. Emerson repeats an assertion he once heard made by Thoreau, the American so-called “Stoic,”—whose senses by the way seem to have been preternaturally acute—that “by night every dwelling-house gives out a bad air, like a slaughter-house.” As this need not be a necessary consequence of sleeping in a room, it remains to be discovered why one’s first impulse on entering a bedroom in the morning should either be to open the windows, or to wish the windows were open. Every one knows how often this is the case, not only in small, low, ill-contrived houses in a town, but even in very spacious dwellings, standing too amid all the fragrant possibilities of the open country. It is a very easy solution of the difficulty to say that we ought always to sleep with our windows wide open. The fact remains that many people cannot do so; it is a risk—nay, a certainty—of illness to some very young children, to many old people, and to nearly all invalids. In a large room the risk is diminished, because there would be a greater distance between the bed and window, or a space for a sheltering screen. Now, in a small room, where fresh air is still more essential and precious, the chances are that the window might open directly on the bed, which would probably stand in a draught between door and fireplace as well.