Almost everywhere we find the same plan. You enter from the staircase straight into a large room, the floor of which is often flagged in black and white, and which does duty as antechamber and dining-room combined, for the dining-room as we understand the term does not yet exist. 1 This room opens into the drawing-room. As for the bedrooms, they were nearly always interdependent.
1 Even at the Tuileries there was no regular dining-room for the daily use of the Emperor, who gave orders every morning as to the room in which he wished the table to be laid, whether in l)is own apartment or in Josephine's.
Let us not ask to see the dressing-rooms, still less the bathrooms; nine times out of ten they will prove to be horrible cubby-holes in which the lighting is as poor as the water supply. As often as not there will be just a little basin and a tiny water-jug hidden behind the door of a wall-press. As for another place, of a still more intimate character, it is better not mentioned, for it has been relegated no matter where — on the landing or the half-landing. Sometimes it is non-existent, replaced by a chair which has nothing in common with a chaise de poste.
To complete the inventory we may note that the kitchen — unfortunate transition! - is often situated outside the apartment, and that most houses have no back stairs. Servants, tradesmen, modest tenants of the garrets, everybody must go up and down the main staircase, which is pretty badly kept in consequence. "You know/ writes an Englishwoman, 'the houses in Paris are inhabited by a lot of different people, and their stairs are streets - dirty streets at that/ 1 She was not altogether wrong, but her criticism should have been directed to the architects rather than to the doorkeepers.
For the furnishing and decorating of these houses, so often incommodious, but handsome in appearance none the less, a new style had been evolved, resembling that of the eighteenth century no more than a period of Fontanes* resembled a phrase of Voltaire's. Although this so-called new style was an obvious imitation of the antique, arising so to speak out of the ashes of Herculaneum, the treatises of Winckelmann and the pictures painted by David even before the Revolution, it was nevertheless to be known as Empire style, and it deserves to retain the title, so well did it express the aspirations of an epoch enamoured of force and majesty.
By simplifying their lines, by returning, or thinking they were returning, to the purest classical forms, the artists had blazed the trail. Certain cabinet-makers, the Jacob brothers at their head, contrived to follow it; and soon there came from their workshops those fine masterpieces in mahogany, citrus-wood, maple and ebony, which master-carvers such as Thornas and Raviro decorated with matchless bronzes.
1 Maria Edgeworth, Personal Letters.
Their stocky forms, their gilt motifs represent a symbol, that of Victory. This is the significance of all these crowns, trophies, lions' heads, griffins with clenched talons supporting tables and brackets, proud caryatids with breasts swelling like sails.
Furniture of this type was not only found in the houses of every member of the family, at the Hotel Thelusson where Caroline and Murat lived, at the Folie Saint-James, Elisa's residence, and at the old Hotel Dervieux, Parisian home of Louis and Hortense, it invaded the homes of ordinary people who prided themselves on following the fashion.
Many a cocotte, as a reminder of her liaison with some celebrated military man, adopted a model from the catalogues of the Mesangere described as the 'Bed of a General's Wife'. Two lances crossed behind a shield supported the curtains of the bed-recess, and an upturned Roman helmet served as a toilet-tidy at night.
Another very odd bedroom was that of the actor La Rive. At his house at Montlignon he had a camp bed set up under a tent hung with portraits of Spartacus, Genghis-Khan, Bayard and Tancred, his most famous roles. It seems a miracle that he could sleep peacefully in such company.
But in the heyday of the Consulate the most celebrated bedroom was Mme Recamier's. The incomparable Juliette made a point of showing it off to visitors as a museum of elegance. When she gave a party she greeted each guest with the same question: 'Would you like to see my room?' And a handful of the faithful would accompany her to the sanctuary.
Always easily astonished, Reichardt describes it with somewhat naive admiration. 'This very lofty room was entirely surrounded by tall mirrors all in one piece, with an immense mirror forming the end partition. Here, with its head to the wall, stood the ethereal couch of the goddess of the place — a cloud of muslin, a white vapour! *
Perhaps this profusion of mirrors in the bedroom of an honest woman might seem a little questionable to modern taste. But the learned traveller was not so particular. He was wonder-struck by the antique bed, draped with curtains of violet silk and crowned by a pelrnet of bronze satin. He noticed a statue of Silence, bathed In the rays of a lamp into which a genie poured oil, drop by drop. Alongside the bedroom was the bathroom, with the bath hidden under a sofa upholstered in red morocco, in the inevitable looking-glass recess; and close by, too, was the boudoir with a frescoed ceiling, chairs covered in corded silk of Tours, and in each corner an Argand lamp on a metal,stand. Double curtains in all the windows, drooping veils everywhere. A great deal of mystery for a bedroom and a boudoir in which, if repute is to be believed, nothing ever happened.
The same could certainly not be said of the bedroom of Mme Tallien, who had reverted to the name of Therese Cabarrus on becoming Ouvrard's mistress. In her house in the Rue de Babylone, which she owed to his liberality, she too liked showing off her bed, a bed of ebony ornamented in bronze, sheltering under a sort of tent held up by a pelican's bill. This modern Cleopatra believed the decorations of her bedroom and drawing-room to be in the purest Egyptian style; but her upholsterer - possibly the famous Boulard, later employed by Josephine —had chiefly supplied her with miles of gold fringe and trimmings in decidedly Parisian taste..
The junction of Consulate and Empire was a happy time for luxury trades, with fashion evolving and furniture changing from day to day. At one moment the craze was all for polished wood. A few months later no self-respecting drawing-room could have mahogany or citrus-wood furniture; it must be made of * ordinary wood covered with several coats of matt white paint, relieved by ornaments in burnished gold*. Or again, in the summer, 'for the sake of coolness', some young lady might demand a set of furniture in painted iron, 'Her clock is of iron, her antique vases of iron, the ornaments on her mantelpiece and her window-sills, even her bed is of iron/ And the junk shops of the future would be the richer by some amusing curiosities.
A thousand infectious caprices prove that Parisians could refuse nothing to their wives, still less to their mistresses. Though Madame was not musical she would discover all at once that she could not live without a large-size piano or a gilt-edged harp. Off went the gentleman to Erard's; 1 the handsome harp cost a hundred louis, the grand piano about double, but it meant that a woman was satisfied, while all her friends turned pale with jealousy.
Another lady might have a mania for flowers. She had so many in her apartment that besides the valet and the floor-polisher she would soon need an indoor gardener. Meanwhile she had a conservatory built on, where she spent her days-No matter if she mistook geraniums for hydrangeas, or mixed up pistils and stamens, she would plume herself on botanical knowledge, and declare with intense seriousness: 'I used to love literature, music, dancing, my husband; now I have only one passion in the world ---- Flowers! Ah! They are the joy of my life! I can only exist in my hothouse/