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Updated: May 15, 2025
The backs of the seats were thrown back, bedsteads carefully packed were rolled out by an ingenious system, berths were suddenly improvised, and each traveller had soon at his disposition a comfortable bed, protected from curious eyes by thick curtains. The sheets were clean and the pillows soft.
The turnkey led the way in silence; and gently raising the latch of the room door, motioned Mr. Pickwick to enter. It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man wan, pale, and ghastly. His breathing was hard and thick, and he moaned painfully as it came and went.
I only wish they had known half as well. My first customer was a grumpy old shopkeeper who needed neither tables nor bedsteads, so he said. But I had thought it all over and made up my mind that the first blow was half the battle. Therefore I knew better. I pushed my album under his nose, and it fell open at the extension tables. Cheap, I said, and rattled off the price.
Late in the evening I was led into a crowded inn in a large village, where we were to stay the night. We had come twenty-seven miles, and had begun well. I was shown into a room with three straw-covered wooden bedsteads, a rough table, lit by a lighted taper in a saucer of oil, a rough seat, and the naked earth floor.
The old high-posted bedsteads, which almost required a ladder to get into, went to the lumber heap long ago, and low, sumptuous couches take their places. The great feather tick has been converted into the more healthy mattress, and the straw tick and cords have been replaced by spring bottoms. It used to be quite an arduous undertaking, I remember, to put up one of those old beds.
Capes and leather pouches still lay about on chairs and bedsteads. Half finished letters, written to women in the Fatherland who will never read those words, had been trampled under heel by hurrying boots. I saw similar scenes in Turkey when the victorious Bulgarians marched after the retreating Turks. I never dreamed then that such scenes would happen in France in the wake of a German retreat.
The sleeper would be at the mercy of a thousand crawling things, insects and reptiles. Hammocks, or "redes," as they are called, take the place of bedsteads; and five hammocks, of different dimensions, could be seen about the new house.
These old oaken bedsteads, and sideboards, and chairs have perhaps been in the farmhouse for three or four generations, and are at last sold because the final representative of the family is imbued with modern ideas, and quits farming for trade.
It is no trouble to a German hostess to increase or diminish the number of beds in a room, the narrow bedsteads being carried with ease through the double doors, from room to room, as convenience requires.
Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the 'corded' sort, with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs, splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate size, veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing else in the room.
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