In his book about German homes written at about the same time, the sociologist Alphons Silbermann demonstrates that people even maintained a mental distance from their own bedrooms. Attempts to squelch awareness of the bed went so far that people referred to it as a trap or a nest. But a few years later, when barriers around private and intimate realms lowered in Western societies, it was just a matter of time until attitudes toward the bed would undergo a fundamental shift.
The bedroom was no longer a more or less hidden annex to the home, but a location one could proudly show to guests. Since that time an explosion in bed design has taken place. Beds were expected to express something about the personalities of those who slept in them, a way to create distinctions and even garner respect. Stylish lounges and beds lent their owners an avant-garde flair. Both the “secrecy” and the “inconspicuousness of this silent piece of furniture”—Bollnow’s explanation as to why so few writers took up the bed as a subject or “to what a small extent the bed seems until now to have stimulated human thought”—were of the past. In an age like our own, in which boundaries seem to oscillate almost randomly between prim reticence and compulsive disclosure, embarrassing and potentially painful situations are practically guaranteed.
Just how new are the thousands of lounges and beds unveiled year after year at international furniture shows? Do they really represent innovations, or are they just endless variations of the same thing? Can the art of lying down keep up with all these advances in design? Not everything on the market follows the well-known dictum “Form follows function.” Sofas that their owners can turn into “seating landscapes” in just a few simple steps or that feature laptop stands for use in a (half-)reclining position are in demand. Forty years ago wall beds were sold as the ne plus ultra in sleeping equipment. Muscling them into their horizontal position was no easy feat. But their time has passed, and they’re hard to find these days. Their disappearance is not necessarily something to be sorry about.
Beds range from fussy, plush Laura Ashley models to the sleek Jailhouse Fuck, made of prison bars of dark steel and accessorized with a pair of Smith & Wesson handcuffs. The manufacturer proudly claims that it’s the world’s most exciting bed. We can only hope that the amatory feats of its owners live up to the promise of this backdrop. Other beds can cost as much as a car. The Rolls-Royce of beds is a model from the Swedish brand Hästens manufactured by hand from horsehair, linen, and wood over the course of many hours. The price: $99,000.
Designer lounges and beds are coveted collectibles, of course, but artworks about nothing other than beds—and not even particularly attractive ones, we could add—can fetch a good price, too. One such piece is the installation My Bed by the English artist Tracey Emin, a large, rumpled, messy bed with cigarette packs and butts, used condoms, and underwear as evidence of intense use. The sight immediately calls up the image of a nicotine-addicted figure lying in its midst. A Cama Valium, a more original work by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, is a bed frame covered with pill packaging that criticizes the widespread obsession with tranquilizers. Surrounded by so many tablets, who would ever wake up again?
The Typical Bed
Only a tiny fraction of humankind will ever enjoy the perfect ergonomics of the beds featured in glossy design magazines. But no anthropologist has studied the average bed, the one most typical for an inhabitant of the earth today. If we compared beds in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Manhattan, and any randomly selected city in India, how would they overlap? A common denominator bed would certainly not be particularly luxurious and, lacking a frame and legs, would probably rest directly on the floor. Most likely it would consist of a mattress filled with straw or foam set on a mat. Imagining such a bed can remind members of more prosperous societies of how enormously spoiled they are, even if they constantly complain that their mattresses are too hard or too soft. Let us hope that the average bed provides a pleasant—ideally, a better than average—refuge for the average person who uses it.
We can’t always enjoy optimal conditions for lying down, but having to compromise can have a positive effect. After all, we can only really appreciate luxuries if we learn to live without them. By occasionally experiencing lying down in simple conditions, we enable ourselves to fully soak in the pleasure a comfortable bed or a well-designed sofa offers.
An ideal bed isn’t too long and narrow, but it’s also not so wide that you feel lost in it. You sink into it—but not too much. The sheets are crisp and give off a fresh scent. It stands in a small room, tidy enough to prevent the urge to clean up from keeping you awake. The best bed is the one that is there when you need it.
After serving as the traditional bed in Japan for two millennia, the futon suddenly appeared in bedrooms everywhere in the 1980s. Nowadays, however, the popularity of these cotton-filled mats has waned. They were uncomfortable, despite their manufacturers’ claims that they were good for your back. The trendiness that fueled their popularity eventually faded as word of their disadvantages spread. The futons Westerners can purchase today better accommodate our ways of reclining: they are thicker than their Asian counterparts and come with low frames. As a result, they are sometimes called Asian-style beds instead of futons, and they may contain latex cores and other atypical filling materials, such as coconut fiber. In Japan, futons (actually shikibutons) are placed directly on the floor mats, which are admittedly much softer than Western floors.
Hard but fair: Japanese futon
It’s not easy to fight our way through the complex web of feng shui and the often esoteric ideas and recommendations for interior design that the West has derived from it. Unfortunately, most of us can’t read the rules in the original language. Is it really possible to apply these practices developed in China more than three thousand years ago—and, at Mao Zedong’s order, forbidden there now for over half a century—to the arrangement of elements in a bedroom of a modern prefabricated house? A book by Sarah Shurety respectfully dedicated to the masters of feng shui “who died in the cultural revolution” and promising “positive energy and harmony in the home”—as long as the reader pays sufficient attention to “the position of rooms within the house, which colours to use for decorating, the choice of furnishings, and many other factors”—looks understandable enough to the average reader. According to Shurety, the bedroom, which should be at the back of the house and face southwest, represents the “real you.” The bed should ideally be placed “diagonally opposite the bedroom door” with the head against a wall. This placement within the room is more important than whether the bed is aligned with a particular direction of the compass. “If you have the headboard against a window it will damage your liver,” she warns. Furthermore, “If you have the headboard positioned so that half of the bed is against a window and half against the wall you will not only damage your liver but you will also become more insecure and feel less supported by one of your parents.” A bed with the foot facing the door is said to be in the coffin position and “drains away your energy slowly but surely (especially if the door enters into an en suite bathroom).” Shurety also recommends buying a new bed before the start of each new cycle of life, which occurs about every seven years, because beds “absorb more energy than most items of furniture.” If buying a new bed every seven years is not possible, she suggests that you burn cones of incense around the bed and then place a dish filled with chalk under the bed for twenty-seven days. She notes that you are ill advised “to sleep with a new partner in a bed you previously shared with someone in a relationship that failed” because “it is more likely that your relationship will follow the pattern of the first.” A “picture of a happy, smiling couple” provides just the right decorative touch. Do adherents of feng shui really follow all these rules?
Lying Down on the Road
Whether driven out of their homes, looking for better lives, or simply part of nomadic cultures, people around the world have always been on the move. And those who travel a lot necessarily rest and sleep in many different places. Wi
th sufficient money and leisure, travelers can try out not only new ways of life but also new ways of lying down. During their visit to Majorca in 1838, George Sand and Frédéric Chopin could only shake their heads at the beds offered to them:
In Palma, one must be recommended by twenty influential persons announced in advance, and expected for several months before one can dare hope to avoid sleeping outside. All that anyone could do for us was to provide two small furnished, or rather, unfurnished rooms in a noxious quarter of the town, where travelers could count themselves lucky if they each encounter a cot with a mattress as thick and soft as a slate, a rattan chair, and as much pepper and garlic as they can eat.
Madame Sand was a careful observer, and nothing escaped her sharp glance—neither the wooden beds in the villas and country houses made only “of two saw-horses with two boards and a thin mattress on top” nor (when, as she wrote, she “attempted to pierce the secret of monastic life”) “the very low alcoves decorated above with tiles like a burial chamber” in the dormitory of a Carthusian cloister.
The search for an appropriate spot to lie down away from home can become an existential challenge. If we aren’t already familiar with places we are going, we have to expect that they’ll be different from what we think, even if we saw a picture of the hotel room when we booked it. Perhaps the room is above a tavern that is open until the wee hours. Is the bed long and wide enough? In any case, thoughts of the many unknown people who have also lain, loved, sweated, or suffered in our temporary bed can make for an uneasy night.
Indeed, many people first realize the advantages of their native beds when they have to spend a night outside their own four walls, where they are forced to deal with unfamiliar and perhaps even unpleasant conditions. Not every strange bedroom invites the visitor to stay longer than absolutely necessary. Musty beds and sagging or short mattresses are just two potential problems. For some people, crucifixes or forest scenes with deer at the head of the bed cast a pall over their thoughts and turn trying to fall asleep into an epic struggle. Dubious bedside rugs constitute another common problem—generally shaggy, brightly colored, often matted-looking, they inspire efforts to keep your feet from actually touching them. A clear whiff of room deodorizer raises the question of just what situation necessitated such generous use of this supposedly refreshing scent. It’s hard to keep your imagination in check. The writer Simon Winchester has his reasons for stating that in the age of mass tourism, the best way to travel is in your own easy chair, bed, or bathtub.
Reclining in a full airplane, at least in the economy class, is by definition a compromise. As soon as you lean your seat slightly back, you intrude into the already limited space of the person behind you. At the same time, your own physical and psychological well-being at the end of a long trip primarily depends on how comfortable you are, how far back you can tip your seat, how far you can stretch your legs—in short, whether the seat provides a pleasant environment even under difficult conditions. Frequent fliers share detailed information on-line about which airlines have the best seating and how they stack up in terms of price. Considering the aggression that a sudden reclining motion can unleash, it is amazing that there seem to be no official regulations about what passengers should be prepared to tolerate from those in seats in front of them. Do other laws prevail when we are airborne?
Prominent travelers are notorious for indulging their whims even when away from home—and getting mightily on the nerves of hotel staffs in the process. When on tour, the famous tenor Enrico Caruso supposedly insisted on always having three mattresses and no fewer than eighteen pillows, evoking comparison to the princess and the pea with her twenty mattresses and just as many eiderdown comforters. Gustave Flaubert’s travel companion Maxime Du Camp ascribed to the great writer a special fondness for lying down while traveling: he “would have liked to travel, if he could, stretched out on a sofa and not stirring, watching cities, ruins, and landscapes pass before him like the screen of a panorama.” Flaubert loved the idea of traveling and his memories of his adventures but was less enamored of the experience of traveling itself.
Others visited exotic places but devised strategies for taking in new scents and sounds without the risk of getting lost in crowds. In 1870, the writer Clara Mundt, better known under the pen name Luise Mühlbach, observed the changing scenes of Cairo while lying in her secure room at the famous Hotel Shepheard, which had served as Napoleon’s headquarters and catered to guests with French chefs and Swiss maids. Her hotel bed served as a base within an unlikely theater box, from which she could observe life playing like a film outside the windows:
How delightful was my mood as I lay on my magnificent, comfortable bed and let the surging life of the streets flow past through the half-opened blinds. The boys driving the donkeys cried louder than their donkeys themselves, long trains of camels loaded with boards and beams panted and screeched, the ladies of the harem drove past in luxurious carriages, with the sais [who cleared the way] running ahead of them and the fat ugly eunuchs in their European garb on either side of the coaches.
The spirit of invention brought forth numerous modes of travel that did not require a change of bed and thus offered a measure of protection against unpleasant surprises. Early on, prosperous people devoted considerable resources to having made lounges and beds that could be easily taken along on a trip. Collapsible beds have existed since the time of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and transportable furniture played a large role in the conquest of the American West. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), the wife of a British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, had a folding bed along for her trip from London to Constantinople. And the dowry of Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (1688–1741) consisted in part of a silk-curtained canopy bed that could be taken apart for easy transport. Another example, this one from the second half of the nineteenth century, was the Dormouse or Mayer coach, named for the manufacturer, J. A. Mayer, of Munich. It was a roomy horse-drawn carriage with an interior that could be converted into beds. A Mayer coach was easy to identify thanks to the ventilation slits that funneled fresh air to those sleeping inside. Passengers slept while the coach was parked for the night or even, if necessary, during all-night runs. The long tradition of mobile sleeping units continues today in the Rolling Hotel. Designed by an inventive Bavarian entrepreneur, this conveyance combines a bus and a trailer with numerous sleeping cabins.
Those looking for a special thrill can even sleep in the beds of the famous—or infamous. Baghdad’s Saddam Museum displays not only the former leader’s weapons, uniforms, and other possessions seized when his palace was invaded in 2003 but also his bedroom. Couples can spend the night there for the equivalent of about $220. The neoclassical Villa Torlonia in the middle of Rome also draws tourists. From 1925 to 1943 Benito Mussolini called it home. Many visitors are particularly interested in il Duce’s pompous bedroom, even though it’s not available for overnight stays.
The increasingly popular practice of couch surfing makes it possible to find free accommodations in other cities or countries. It also fulfills a desire to experience a new place from the perspective of the people who live there instead of from a hotel. This new type of transitory, nomadic lifestyle is not, however, for the faint of heart; once in a while, the “couch” may turn out to be the host’s bed.
Strange Bedfellows
In some regions of Africa and Asia, more than two or three people who are neither related nor intimate sleep together without unleashing a scandal or even requiring an explanation. These days in Botswana or the Congo, for example, it’s not uncommon for people to sleep in groups. Pets may even join the mix. Communal sleeping is believed to protect against attacks by wild animals. Some cultures also believe, rather poetically, that your soul can get lost if you sleep alone.
Furthermore, the desire to be warm when sleeping is apparently so elementary that it banishes concerns about disturbances like snoring and limitations on a sleeper’s free movements. In Western societies in the past
, physical proximity to strangers was not considered unpleasant either; personal boundaries were drawn differently. Moreover, sharing a bed with the head of a household could even be a way to reconcile after a fierce argument.
As Danielle Régnier-Bohler makes clear in the chapter she wrote for The History of Private Life, nocturnal promiscuity—that is, sexual relations with varying people in bed—seems to have been par for the course in the Middle Ages and even later. In bed, that peninsula of privacy, as she calls it, people could give their feelings greater rein than almost anywhere else. It sounds a bit like a paradox: the bed was of course a private place, but everyone knew what kinds of things could happen there. Darkness invited deception or the “manipulation of reality” and was associated with guilt, adultery, and crime. Letting someone sleep alone was not only a way to grant him or her a peaceful night but a privilege and sign of honor. Another contributor to The History of Private Life, Philippe Contamine, explains that “sleeping together was often considered a consequence of poverty. Anyone who could afford to sleep alone wished to do so, or at any rate to sleep only with people of their own choosing.”
When it comes to sleep, considerable confusion seems to have reigned in the Middle Ages: a single bed might contain couples, their children, siblings, or servants as well as soldiers, students, invalids, or the poor. Travel could bring complete strangers together in bed. This may seem odd to us, but it doesn’t require extended explanation: another traveler could show up long after you had gone to bed and join you. On the other hand, if you had the misfortune to be a member of a lower class, you might have to clear out to make way for a social superior demanding a bed at your inn for the night.
Here, there, and everywhere: sleeping room at an inn in early modern Europe
The Art of Lying Down Page 7
