O
ne of my secret pleasures is reading about the
decorating predicaments of the rich and famous in their
memoirs. I find it comforting to know that despite life
lived on an impossibly grand scale in country mansions
or majestic villas, my idols are still beset with the same
mundane problems that we all face at one time or another. Just exactly why I find it heartening to know that
Dirk Bogarde thinks his sofas are hideous, I���m not quite
sure. But I do. Immensely.
A CASE OF FURNITURE FATIGUE
Just listen to the tale Dirk offers up in his 1993 memoir A
Short Walk from Harrod���s. Having purchased a Provencal farmhouse called ���Le Pigeonnier��� with his partner
Anthony Forwood, he writes of becoming disenchanted
with the enormous living room they called ���The Long
Room���:
After about eight years or so I got bored with all
the chairs and fat sofas in the Long Room and
wondered, idly at first and then with growing
interest, if I should try to have them re-covered.
They were fitted and comfortable in coarse blue
linen which I once had considered to be suitable.... But after eight years the cornflower blue
seemed to fade to a kind of drab blotting-paper
haze and looked depressing. Now I felt they had
to be discarded.
HYLAND
