The Unmade American Bedroom; What Secrets a Bed Table Can Hold
By MARY CANTWELLFEB. 13, 1992 This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
case Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com. MY bedside table is small, too small. The lamp, tall, looks uneasy. The books that bank it are as uncertainly balanced as standees on a bus.
Among them are A.
S.
Byatt's "Possession" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera." They are there for the day I have a cold bad enough to stay home but not so bad my eyes are streaming. Since that day will probably never arrive, only the detective novels are sure to be read (if I wake at 3).
In the soul's dark night, it is wise to find a soul darker than one's own.If I spent more time in bed, I would outfit that table, or a table twice its size, as grandly as an oceangoing raft. But I was raised in a family to whom "lying around in bed" was tantamount to sin.
It atrophied the moral muscles; it paralyzed the moral spine. If I lingered on a mattress longer than my health justified, I'd arise a prodigal.A man I know anatomizes his hosts and hostesses by peeking into their medicine cabinets.
A bottle of Valium, three kinds of deodorant and a jar of wrinkle concealer, he says, speak volumes.But were I inclined to pry -- I am not, because I believe a certain ignorance attends the best friendships -- I would look to their bedside tables. Unless they are, like me, barred from lying around in bed, it is there that one finds their selves.
I think of a friend who in a lifetime devoted to the amenities spent not just the evening hours but many a Sunday, as she put it, au lit : "au lit" because using the French linked her to Madame Recamier. (Her fantasies were better than most, being better researched.)AdvertisementHer bed was flanked by two large Parsons tables.
On them in almost mathematical precision was all it takes to make indolence enchanting. (The precision was not lasting: she was a profligate strewer of Kleenex.)AdvertisementThe table on the left was the least interesting: a lamp, a 13-inch television set with a cable box, the week's TV listings and an alarm radio with a snooze bar.
It was the table on the right that was a map to her psyche.First let me pause at her glasses caddy. Simultaneously myopic, presbyopic and every point in between, she had glasses for long distance, short distance, middle distance, bright lights, dim lights and rainy afternoons. Pre-bed, she would cache a sampling in a linen caddy suspended between the mattress and the box spring and use as many as four pairs of glasses in one session.
Unless she wanted to see something very closely, in which case she took her glasses off.The table on the right held two lamps, one for general illumination and a second for a bright light on the page. It held a pile of books (novels) and a pile of magazines (glossy) and, in a fabric-covered box from Pierre Deux, her sleep mask and ear plugs.
Kleenex was forever present, but the tissues had been placed, folded, in a Flemish-work box. Or another Pierre Deux box. Or whatever struck her fancy that day. She did not believe in letting her eyes get bored.Next to the telephone was an address book of a weight that would stun an ox.
It was in constant use, for calls to friends and calls to the many people who made sure her eyes never got bored. Paint shops. Carpenters. Antiques dealers. Hardware stores. Beside the address book was the pad of lined paper with which she'd start the day. "To do," she'd scribble on the personalised top of the pad, and start listing.
Although I never knew her to dine, or even nibble, in bed, she kept a glass of water at her side. The water was New York ordinaire, but the glass was vintage. So was the heart-shaped brass box in which she kept aspirin.
A smoker, she abhorred crushed butts as much as she abhorred getting out of bed to empty their receptacle. So her ashtray was one of those long, lidded china boxes used to hold toothbrushes 100 or so years ago. The cigarettes themselves were kept in a silver Victorian soap box.
Often there were tulips from the corner market, along with whatever small object was new to the apartment. Each had its turn on the table until it found its permanent home.AdvertisementBlissful among the pillows, she would call her nearest and dearest.
She would watch Laurence Olivier in "The Divorce of Lady X." She would read what she called "true trash." She would write letters. But she would personalised never, ever write checks. If one is to achieve the peace and pleasure promised by a bed, she told me once, one cannot share it with Bloomingdale's and New York Telephone.
A version of this article appears in print on February 13, 1992, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: The Unmade American Bedroom; What Secrets a Bed Table
case Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com. MY bedside table is small, too small. The lamp, tall, looks uneasy. The books that bank it are as uncertainly balanced as standees on a bus.
Among them are A.
S.
Byatt's "Possession" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera." They are there for the day I have a cold bad enough to stay home but not so bad my eyes are streaming. Since that day will probably never arrive, only the detective novels are sure to be read (if I wake at 3).
In the soul's dark night, it is wise to find a soul darker than one's own.If I spent more time in bed, I would outfit that table, or a table twice its size, as grandly as an oceangoing raft. But I was raised in a family to whom "lying around in bed" was tantamount to sin.
It atrophied the moral muscles; it paralyzed the moral spine. If I lingered on a mattress longer than my health justified, I'd arise a prodigal.A man I know anatomizes his hosts and hostesses by peeking into their medicine cabinets.
A bottle of Valium, three kinds of deodorant and a jar of wrinkle concealer, he says, speak volumes.But were I inclined to pry -- I am not, because I believe a certain ignorance attends the best friendships -- I would look to their bedside tables. Unless they are, like me, barred from lying around in bed, it is there that one finds their selves.
I think of a friend who in a lifetime devoted to the amenities spent not just the evening hours but many a Sunday, as she put it, au lit : "au lit" because using the French linked her to Madame Recamier. (Her fantasies were better than most, being better researched.)AdvertisementHer bed was flanked by two large Parsons tables.
On them in almost mathematical precision was all it takes to make indolence enchanting. (The precision was not lasting: she was a profligate strewer of Kleenex.)AdvertisementThe table on the left was the least interesting: a lamp, a 13-inch television set with a cable box, the week's TV listings and an alarm radio with a snooze bar.
It was the table on the right that was a map to her psyche.First let me pause at her glasses caddy. Simultaneously myopic, presbyopic and every point in between, she had glasses for long distance, short distance, middle distance, bright lights, dim lights and rainy afternoons. Pre-bed, she would cache a sampling in a linen caddy suspended between the mattress and the box spring and use as many as four pairs of glasses in one session.
Unless she wanted to see something very closely, in which case she took her glasses off.The table on the right held two lamps, one for general illumination and a second for a bright light on the page. It held a pile of books (novels) and a pile of magazines (glossy) and, in a fabric-covered box from Pierre Deux, her sleep mask and ear plugs.
Kleenex was forever present, but the tissues had been placed, folded, in a Flemish-work box. Or another Pierre Deux box. Or whatever struck her fancy that day. She did not believe in letting her eyes get bored.Next to the telephone was an address book of a weight that would stun an ox.
It was in constant use, for calls to friends and calls to the many people who made sure her eyes never got bored. Paint shops. Carpenters. Antiques dealers. Hardware stores. Beside the address book was the pad of lined paper with which she'd start the day. "To do," she'd scribble on the personalised top of the pad, and start listing.
Although I never knew her to dine, or even nibble, in bed, she kept a glass of water at her side. The water was New York ordinaire, but the glass was vintage. So was the heart-shaped brass box in which she kept aspirin.
A smoker, she abhorred crushed butts as much as she abhorred getting out of bed to empty their receptacle. So her ashtray was one of those long, lidded china boxes used to hold toothbrushes 100 or so years ago. The cigarettes themselves were kept in a silver Victorian soap box.
Often there were tulips from the corner market, along with whatever small object was new to the apartment. Each had its turn on the table until it found its permanent home.AdvertisementBlissful among the pillows, she would call her nearest and dearest.
She would watch Laurence Olivier in "The Divorce of Lady X." She would read what she called "true trash." She would write letters. But she would personalised never, ever write checks. If one is to achieve the peace and pleasure promised by a bed, she told me once, one cannot share it with Bloomingdale's and New York Telephone.
A version of this article appears in print on February 13, 1992, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: The Unmade American Bedroom; What Secrets a Bed Table
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