Last winter I spent three afternoons in Queen Square watching a household rearrange its chairs before the season began. The work looked trivial until the eldest daughter moved the smallest table nearer the window, where every caller would see the two letters left deliberately unopened.
Arrangement is argument
In a city that distrusts plain declaration, the room becomes a careful sentence. A screen turned by six inches spares a guest, a bell pull left untouched rebukes a cousin, and the duck-egg wall receives all of it with the composure of a clerk.
Good taste, in these houses, is less a luxury than a form of self-command.