I mentioned in a post yesterday that I was going to start looking for passages in Victorian literature that had descriptions of furniture, and I mentioned Charlotte Bronte in that context. Well, look what I found. A passage from Charlotte Bronte’s great Victorian romance, Jane Eyre, that describes a room in a mansion, full of furniture: a Victorian bed, Victorian tables, and Victorian chairs. Lots of mahogany and lots of red. Hence the room’s name:
“The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.”
Charlotte Bronte lived from 1816 to 1855, and Jane Eyre was published in 1849. This “red-room” certainly predates the Eastlake era, doesn’t it? Pretty dark and ominous. Do you think it’s an accurate reflection of the times?