By the time it was a boudoir again she was exhausted and
irritable. She wants now to give it up to Veronica, but Veronica
objects to the position, which is between the bathroom and my study.
Her idea is a room more removed, where she would be able to shut
herself in and do her work, as she explains, without fear of
interruption.
Young Bute told me that a friend of his, a well-to-do young fellow,
who lived in Piccadilly, had had the whim to make his flat the
reproduction of a Roman villa. There were of course no fires, the
rooms were warmed by hot air from the kitchen. They had a cheerless
aspect on a November afternoon, and nobody knew exactly where to sit.
Light was obtained in the evening from Grecian lamps, which made it
easy to understand why the ancient Athenians, as a rule, went to bed
early. You dined sprawling on a couch. This was no doubt
practicable when you took your plate into your hand and fed yourself
with your fingers; but with a knife and fork the meal had all the
advantages of a hot picnic. You did not feel luxurious or even
wicked: you only felt nervous about your clothes. The thing lacked
completeness. He could not expect his friends to come to him in
Roman togas, and even his own man declined firmly to wear the costume
of a Roman slave. The compromise was unsatisfactory, even from the
purely pictorial point of view. You cannot be a Roman patrician of
the time of Antoninus when you happen to live in Piccadilly at the
opening of the twentieth century.
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