Of the dinner-table, as we now know it, little need be said. The ingenious but ugly extension-table with a central support, now used all over the world, is an English invention. There seems no reason why the general design should not be improved without interfering with the mechanism of this table; but of course it can never be so satisfactory to the eye as one of the old round or square tables, with four or six tapering legs, such as were used in eighteenth-century dining-rooms before the introduction of the "extension."
XIV
BEDROOMS
The history of the bedroom has been incidentally touched upon in tracing the development of the drawing-room from the mediæval hall. It was shown that early in the middle ages the sleeping-chamber, which had been one of the first outgrowths of the hall, was divided into the chambre de parade, or incipient drawing-room, and the chambre au giste, or actual sleeping-room.
The increasing development of social life in the sixteenth century brought about a further change; the state bedroom being set aside for entertainments of ceremony, while the sleeping-chamber was used as the family living-room and as the scene of suppers, card-parties, and informal receptions—or sometimes actually as the kitchen. Indeed, so varied were the uses to which the chambre au giste was put, that in France especially it can hardly be said to have offered a refuge from the promiscuity of the hall.
BEDROOM. PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU. LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
(LOUIS XVI BED AND CHAIR, MODERN SOFA.)
PLATE LIV.