curtain lecture

An allusion to the curtains that hung around old-fashioned beds.

curtain lecture (plural curtain lectures)

1. A scolding given by a wife to her husband in bed.
   • 1649, Francis Quarles, Virgin Widow, act II, scene 1:

     I have pawn'd already her Tuftaffaty Peticote and all her Child-bed linnen, besides two tiffiny Aprons, and her bearing-cloth, for which I have had already two curtaine Lectures, and a black and blue eye.

   • 1714, Alexander Pope, The Wife of Bath:

     I still prevailed, and would be in the right, / Or curtain lectures made a restless night.

   • 1819, Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle:

     A curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering.

   • 1829, William Combe, The Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of a Wife, Canto 1:

     Yes, she may toss her head and hector, / But she shall have a curtain lecture ...

   • 1846, Douglas William Jerrold, Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures:
   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 4, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

     ... in a curtain lecture, I say, Mrs. Sedley took her husband to task for his cruel conduct to poor Joe.