Last week I read “Home, A Short History of an Idea” by Witold Rybczynski, which is a historical study of the arrangement of furniture and people in private homes from the haphazard collection of family, servants and apprentices who lived together during the Middle Ages through the “conspicuous austerity” of Soho lofts in 1986 when the book was published.
When I finished that book I went to my bookshelf , picked up and blew the dust off the volume; “Feeling at Home” by Alexandra Stoddard, She’s an interior decorator who lives in an antique-filled, chintz upholstered, Upper East Side Manhattan apartment AND a “cottage” in Connecticut that has 38 windows. She’s into every day rituals like tea and ironed sheets and she uses lots of fresh flowers, scented soap, candles and writes notes on paper imported from France. She has a closet in her apartment with two shelves devoted to ribbon!
“My mother raised me with high standards of housekeeping. When I was little we lived on an old onion farm with a large garage and household help. There were a cook, a maid, a gardener (who doubled as a chauffeur), and an elderly lady who served our meals, smocked our dresses and ironed.” —Alexandra Stoddard
So this morning I awoke and came from the back bedroom part of the apartment to the front everything else part of the apartment to make coffee in the kitchen (a galley row of appliances against one wall of the toy-filled living/dining/media room) The dishes I was too tired to wash last night were still in the sink and My Kid was watching “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel, an episode about making plant pots out of cow manure.
I don’t think people like me should read books by people like her.