The phrase part of the furniture designates a member of a group, organisation, etc., who is so familiar as to be regarded as a permanent feature, and therefore often taken for granted.
This phrase occurs, for example, in the following from The Daily Telegraph (London, England) of Thursday 22nd April 2010:
On the run Sir Paul McCartney leaves EMI
Sir Paul McCartney has quit EMI, the troubled music label owned by Guy Hands, in another blow to the company’s attempts to turn itself around. Sir Paul, who complained he was treated like “part of the furniture” at EMI, extended a deal with independent label Concord, giving the Californian group rights to his full catalogue of post-Beatles albums.
Note: The phrase part of the furniture has occasionally been used literally of a person legally owned by another. These are two examples:
1-: From Universal History Americanised; Or, An Historical View of the World, From the Earliest Records to the Year 1808 (Philadelphia: M. Carey and Son, 1819), by the American historian David Ramsay (1749-1815):
[The Roman law] gave the father uncontrolled and unlimited power over his children; it considered them not as persons, but as things; as part of the furniture of the family mansion, which the master of the family might remove, or sell, or destroy, like any other part of the furniture.
2-: From comments on advertisements published in the Columbus Sentinel and Herald (Columbus, Georgia, USA)—comments published in The Emancipator (New York City, New York, USA) of Thursday 11th July 1839, reprinted from the Youth’s Cabinet (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) of Thursday 4th July 1839:
On the first Tuesday in July, (day before yesterday) the following persons were to be sold by the sheriff, while you at your happy home, were preparing to celebrate American freedom:—“a negro girl levied on as the property of J. C. Calhoun,” “George about 20 years of age,” “Pat a woman, Chaise a woman, and Leander a girl, sold as the negro property of Benjamin Briggs, deceased.”
On the first Tuesday in August, (remember it when the day comes,) the sheriff will sell three girls, “Amelia, Nancy and Priscilla, levied on to satisfy a mortgage.”
Among the other property advertised in the same “lots,” are “three cows,” “one sow,” “two pots,” “one roan horse,” “one bay mare,” “one piano forte, one marble-top side-board, one sofa,” &c.
Perhaps the waiting-maids who were part of the property in the same house with these last named articles, were sold to planters, to be lashed by DRIVERS, instead of being kept in parlors to show northern visiters the happiness of slaves.
The earliest figurative uses of the phrase part of the furniture that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From the New-York Mirror. A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts (New York City, New York, USA) of Saturday 17th May 1834:
THE BEGGAR.
From the French.Not long since, an old beggar, named James, was in the daily habit of placing himself at the principal gate of a church in Paris. […] Every morning, for twenty-five years, he regularly came and sat down at the same place. People were so accustomed to see him there, that he made, as it were, part of the furniture of the porch.
2-: From An Original, about Gustav von Schlabrendorf (1750-1824), who was in Paris during the French Revolution, published in The Morning Post (London, England) of Saturday 5th March 1842:
Events rapidly hurried on; he took no direct part in them, but always played that of the most eager spectator, resolved to see all, and quite reckless of the danger his curiosity might entail. On the capture of the Bastille, he stood amidst the bullets with an opera-glass in his hand. On the 5th of October he hastened to Versailles as fast as the most furious poissard, and the blood of the garde du corps, butchered at their posts, sprinkled his clothes. On the 10th of August, he was in the Tuileries Court, listening with perfect indifference to the cannon thundering by his side; he failed not to attend every sitting of the sanguinary convention; the instant the toisin [sic] sounded he was close to the bell; before a single alarm gun could be fired, there he stood lighting his pipe at the gunner’s matches; in short, he formed, as it were, a part of the furniture of the Jacobin Club.
3-: From The Howadji in Syria (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), by the U.S. author George William Curtis (1824-1892):
We turned suddenly from the unpromising street into a court, in whose centre played a fountain, surrounded with orange-trees, and from one side of which ascended a lofty staircase to a gallery overlooking the court. The orange-trees threw rich mosaics of shadow upon the pavement, and groups of men sat around, smoking tranquilly, as if they were only part of the furniture of the scene.
4-: From Uncle George; Or, The Family Mystery, a short story by the British author Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), published in The National Magazine (London, England) of November 1856:
When my father had been married a little while, he took his youngest brother to live with him as his assistant. If Uncle George had been made president of the College of Surgeons, he could not have been prouder and happier than he was in his new position. I am afraid my father never understood the depth of his brother’s affection for him. All the hard work fell to George’s share: the long journeys at night, the physicking of wearisome poor people, the drunken cases, the revolting cases—all the drudging, dirty business of the surgery, in short, was turned over to him; and day after day, month after month, he struggled through it without a murmur. When his brother and sister-in-law went out to dine with the county gentry, it never entered his head to feel disappointed at being left unnoticed at home. When the return dinners were given, and he was asked to come in at tea-time, and left to sit unregarded in a corner, it never occurred to him to imagine that he was treated with any want of consideration or respect. He was part of the furniture of the house, and it was the business as well as the pleasure of his life to turn himself to any use to which his brother or his sister-in-law might please to put him.
5-: From The Manchester Guardian (Manchester, Lancashire, England) of Friday 29th July 1859:
The forms and ceremonies connected with attendance upon the Judges of Assize are symbols of the power and dignity attaching to persons who filled the office of high sheriff in times when all power and dignity were externally and ostentatiously expressed. […] Even the trumpeters, we suppose, were once the customary blazoners of their master’s might and magnificence; though it is to be hoped that they discoursed more agreeable and seasonable music when they were a part of the furniture of daily life.
6-: From the Daily Evening News (Fall River, Massachusetts, USA) of Tuesday 21st March 1865:
A correspondent of the New Covenant, who attended the late reception at the White House, writes:
“We remained for some time, watching the crowds that surged through the spacious apartments, and the President’s reception of them.—Where they entered the room indifferently, and gazed at him as if he were a part of the furniture, or gave him simply a mechanical nod of the head, he allowed them to pass on, as they elected.”
7-: From Opening a Chestnut Burr (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1874), by the U.S. novelist Edward Payson Roe (1838-1888):
Gregory watched her with increasing interest […].
[…] Now that his eyes were opened, and he closely observed Miss Walton, he saw that his prejudices against her were groundless. Though not a stylish, pretty woman, she was anything but a goodish, commonplace character that he would regard as part of the furniture of the house, useful in its place, but of no more interest than a needful piece of cabinet work. Nor did she assert herself as one of those aggressive, lecturing females whose mission it is to set everybody right within their sphere.
[…]
Annie Walton was now no longer an enigma to Gregory. He had changed his views several times in regard to her. First, she was a common-place, useful member of the community, in a small way, and part of the furniture of a well-ordered country house—plain furniture, too, he had said to himself.
8-: From Willie’s Little Brown Sister, by the U.S. author Jane Grey Swisshelm (born Cannon – 1815-1884), published in St. Nicholas (New York City, New York, USA) of August 1874:
One bright, sunny morning, Mrs. Howe was clearing away the breakfast things in the kitchen of her pretty home in Colorado, and her three little boys were prospecting for silver mines in the yard, when an old squaw came in, and stood bolt upright, looking at her and seeming quite as much at home as if she were a part of the furniture and had been there ever since the house was built.
9-: From A Complete Revenge, a short story published in The Daily Intelligencer (Seattle, Washington, USA) of Tuesday 9th September 1879:
—Context: The narrator, who is the librarian and amanuensis of an old Earl, is in love with Lady Hilda, his employer’s daughter:
As it was, she scarcely seemed to know that I existed. If she entered the library where I was, she took no more notice of me than if I were part of the furniture, and I verily believe that if one of the chairs had declared its love for her, she would have been less surprised—certainly less scornful—than if I had done so.
10-: From Joshua Serlcote’s Lost Son, by ‘Stephen Yorke’, pen name of the British novelist, short-story writer and poet Mary Linskill (1840-1891), published in The Manchester Weekly Times (Manchester, Lancashire, England) of Saturday 22nd May 1880:
—Here, the phrase part of the furniture is used both literally in reference to the fact that Elizabeth’s gowns are of the same colour as the panel, and figuratively in reference to Elizabeth’s insignificance:
Agnes and sometimes Elizabeth used to sit on the sofa opposite, sewing, knitting, talking, smiling. The contrast between the two girls was interesting to Martin. Agnes’s small dark head, her brilliant deep eyes, her refined clear cut features used to stand out in vivid relief against the painted grey panel behind her; while Elizabeth’s colourless hair, her broad, flat placid-looking face, and round stooping figure, usually clad in gowns of the same colour as the paint, made her seem almost like part of the furniture.
11-: From Violet Wood’s Husband, published in All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens (London, England) of Saturday 4th December 1880:
“Did you hear that old fellow Cadbury to-night saying he would go?”
“What, the silent old boy with the whiskers?” asked Beesly. “I never know what he does at the Woods; he never speaks, but he is always there. One gets to look upon him as a part of the furniture.”
The equivalent French phrase is partie du mobilier. The earliest occurrences that I have found are as follows:
– From Le Bonhomme, ou Nouvelles observations sur les mœurs parisiennes au commencement du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris: Pillet, 1818), by Michel-Nicolas Balisson de Rougemont (1781-1840):
Ce Monsieur aux manières si lestes faisait, en quelque sorte, partie du mobilier de la maison.
translation:
This offhand-mannered gentleman was, as it were, part of the furniture of the house.
– From De la justice criminelle en France, d’après les lois permanentes, les lois d’exception, et les doctrines des tribunaux (Paris: L’Huillier, 1818), by Alphonse Bérenger (1785-1866):
Un administrateur prend-il possession de sa préfecture ? Il y trouve […] de ces hommes, qu’on peut avec raison regarder comme faisant partie du mobilier des préfectures, et qui deviennent bien précieux pour l’administrateur habile qui sait les employer.
translation:
Does an administrator take possession of his prefecture? There he finds […] some of those men, who can be rightly regarded as being part of the furniture of prefectures, and who prove invaluable to the skilful administrator who knows how to employ them.
word histories 