These commonplace objects implied a conscious self-discipline. You could tell from them that whoever lived here did not need to be taught order, that the order sprang from within, that she was quite capable of teaching herself. Do you know enough about servants’ rooms to know what they are stuffed with? Extraordinary objects, all those things their inner lives require: fancy hearts made of candy; brightly colored postcards; ancient, long-discarded cushions; cheap little china figurines; things thrown away by that other world, the world of their social superiors … I once had a chambermaid who collected boxes of the rice powder I had finished with and my empty perfume bottles; she collected this stuff the way wealthy connoisseurs collect snuffboxes, Gothic carvings, or works by the French impressionists. In the world they inhabit, these objects represent what we consider beautiful, as works of art. Because no one can live with just the bare necessities in the real world … we need a little superfluity in our lives, something dazzling, something that sparkles, something lovely, however cheap or worthless. Few people can live without the dream of beauty. There has to be something—a postcard, all red and gold, showing a sunset, or dawn in a forest. We’re like that. The poor are no different.

But what I was confronted with, in that room behind the locked door, was not like that.

The woman who occupied this room had quite deliberately stripped away all elements of comfort, bric-a-brac, and cheap glitter. You could see she had strictly, ruthlessly, denied herself anything the world might cast away or regard as luxury. It was a severe room. It was as though the woman had undertaken certain vows to live here. But the vows, the woman, the room—none of it was welcoming. That’s why it frightened me.