A Room With A View
By E. M. Forster
CONTENTS
Part One.
Chapter I. The Bertolini
Chapter II. In Santa Croce with No Baedeker
Chapter III. Music, Violets, and the Letter “S”
Chapter IV. Fourth Chapter
Chapter V. Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing
Chapter VI. The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them
Chapter VII. They Return
Part Two.
Chapter VIII. Medieval
Chapter IX. Lucy As a Work of Art
Chapter X. Cecil as a Humourist
Chapter XI. In Mrs. Vyse’s Well-Appointed Flat
Chapter XII. Twelfth Chapter
Chapter XIII. How Miss Bartlett’s Boiler Was So Tiresome
Chapter XIV. How Lucy Faced the External Situation Bravely
Chapter XV. The Disaster Within
Chapter XVI. Lying to George
Chapter XVII. Lying to Cecil
Chapter XVIII. Lying to Mr. Beebe, Mrs. Honeychurch, Freddy, and The Servants
Chapter XIX. Lying to Mr. Emerson
Chapter XX. The End of the Middle Ages
PART ONE
Chapter I
The Bertolini
“The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no
business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close
together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a
courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!”
“And a Cockney, besides!” said Lucy, who had been further saddened by
the Signora’s unexpected accent. “It might be London.” She looked at
the two rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the
row of white bottles of water and red bottles of wine that ran between
the English people; at the portraits of the late Queen and the late
Poet Laureate that hung behind the English people, heavily framed; at
the notice of the English church (Rev. Cuthbert Eager, M. A. Oxon.),
that was the only other decoration of the wall. “Charlotte, don’t you
feel, too, that we might be in London? I can hardly believe that all
kinds of other things are just outside. I suppose it is one’s being so
tired.”
“This meat has surely been used for soup,” said Miss Bartlett, laying
down her fork.
“I want so to see the Arno. The rooms the Signora promised us in her
letter would have looked over the Arno. The Signora had no business to
do it at all. Oh, it is a shame!”
“Any nook does for me,” Miss Bartlett continued; “but it does seem hard
that you shouldn’t have a view.”
Lucy felt that she had been selfish. “Charlotte, you mustn’t spoil me:
of course, you must look over the Arno, too. I meant that. The first
vacant room in the front—” “You must have it,” said Miss Bartlett, part
of whose travelling expenses were paid by Lucy’s mother—a piece of
generosity to which she made many a tactful allusion.
“No, no. You must have it.”
“I insist on it. Your mother would never forgive me, Lucy.”
“She would never forgive _me_.”
The ladies’ voices grew animated, and—if the sad truth be owned—a
little peevish. They were tired, and under the guise of unselfishness
they wrangled. Some of their neighbours interchanged glances, and one
of them—one of the ill-bred people whom one does meet abroad—leant
forward over the table and actually intruded into their argument. He
said:
“I have a view, I have a view.”
Miss Bartlett was startled. Generally at a pension people looked them
over for a day or two before speaking, and often did not find out that
they would “do” till they had gone. She knew that the intruder was
ill-bred, even before she glanced at him. He was an old man, of heavy
build, with a fair, shaven face and large eyes. There was something
childish in those eyes, though it was not the childishness of senility.
What exactly it was Miss Bartlett did not stop to consider, for her
glance passed on to his clothes. These did not attract her. He was
probably trying to become acquainted with them before they got into the
swim. So she assumed a dazed expression when he spoke to her, and then
said: “A view? Oh, a view! How delightful a view is!”
“This is my son,” said the old man; “his name’s George. He has a view
too.”
“Ah,” said Miss Bartlett, repressing Lucy, who was about to speak.
“What I mean,” he continued, “is that you can have our rooms, and we’ll
have yours. We’ll change.”
The better class of tourist was shocked at this, and sympathized with
the new-comers. Miss Bartlett, in reply, opened her mouth as little as
possible, and said “Thank you very much indeed; that is out of the
question.”
“Why?” said the old man, with both fists on the table.
“Because it is quite out of the question, thank you.”
“You see, we don’t like to take—” began Lucy. Her cousin again
repressed her.
“But why?” he persisted. “Women like looking at a view; men don’t.” And
he thumped with his fists like a naughty child, and turned to his son,
saying, “George, persuade them!”
“It’s so obvious they should have the rooms,” said the son. “There’s
nothing else to say.”
He did not look at the ladies as he spoke, but his voice was perplexed
and sorrowful. Lucy, too, was perplexed; but she saw that they were in
for what is known as “quite a scene,” and she had an odd feeling that
whenever these ill-bred tourists spoke the contest widened and deepened
till it dealt, not with rooms and views, but with—well, with something
quite different, whose existence she had not realized before. Now the
old man attacked Miss Bartlett almost violently: Why should she not
change? What possible objection had she? They would clear out in half
an hour.
Miss Bartlett, though skilled in the delicacies of conversation, was
powerless in the presence of brutality. It was impossible to snub any
one so gross. Her face reddened with displeasure. She looked around as
much as to say, “Are you all like this?” And two little old ladies, who
were sitting further up the table, with shawls hanging over the backs
of the chairs, looked back, clearly indicating “We are not; we are
genteel.”
“Eat your dinner, dear,” she said to Lucy, and began to toy again with
the meat that she had once censured.
Lucy mumbled that those seemed very odd people opposite.
“Eat your dinner, dear. This pension is a failure. To-morrow we will
make a change.”
Hardly had she announced this fell decision when she reversed it. The
curtains at the end of the room parted, and revealed a clergyman, stout
but attractive, who hurried forward to take his place at the table,
cheerfully apologizing for his lateness. Lucy, who had not yet acquired
decency, at once rose to her feet, exclaiming: “Oh, oh! Why, it’s Mr.
Beebe! Oh, how perfectly lovely! Oh, Charlotte, we must stop now,
however bad the rooms are. Oh!”
Miss Bartlett said, with more restraint:
“How do you do, Mr. Beebe? I expect that you have forgotten us: Miss
Bartlett and Miss Honeychurch, who were at Tunbridge Wells when you
helped the Vicar of St. Peter’s that very cold Easter.”
The clergyman, who had the air of one on a holiday, did not remember
the ladies quite as clearly as they remembered him. But he came forward
pleasantly enough and accepted the chair into which he was beckoned by
Lucy.
“I _am_ so glad to see you,” said the girl, who was in a state of
spiritual starvation, and would have been glad to see the waiter if her
cousin had permitted it. “Just fancy how small the world is. Summer
Street, too, makes it so specially funny.”
“Miss Honeychurch lives in the parish of Summer Street,” said Miss
Bartlett, filling up the gap, “and she happened to tell me in the
course of conversation that you have just accepted the living—”
“Yes, I heard from mother so last week. She didn’t know that I knew you
at Tunbridge Wells; but I wrote back at once, and I said: ‘Mr. Beebe
is—’”
“Quite right,” said the clergyman. “I move into the Rectory at Summer
Street next June. I am lucky to be appointed to such a charming
neighbourhood.”
“Oh, how glad I am! The name of our house is Windy Corner.” Mr. Beebe
bowed.
“There is mother and me generally, and my brother, though it’s not
often we get him to ch—— The church is rather far off, I mean.”
“Lucy, dearest, let Mr. Beebe eat his dinner.”
“I am eating it, thank you, and enjoying it.”
He preferred to talk to Lucy, whose playing he remembered, rather than
to Miss Bartlett, who probably remembered his sermons. He asked the
girl whether she knew Florence well, and was informed at some length
that she had never been there before. It is delightful to advise a
newcomer, and he was first in the field. “Don’t neglect the country
round,” his advice concluded. “The first fine afternoon drive up to
Fiesole, and round by Settignano, or something of that sort.”
“No!” cried a voice from the top of the table. “Mr. Beebe, you are
wrong. The first fine afternoon your ladies must go to Prato.”
“That lady looks so clever,” whispered Miss Bartlett to her cousin. “We
are in luck.”
And, indeed, a perfect torrent of information burst on them. People
told them what to see, when to see it, how to stop the electric trams,
how to get rid of the beggars, how much to give for a vellum blotter,
how much the place would grow upon them. The Pension Bertolini had
decided, almost enthusiastically, that they would do. Whichever way
they looked, kind ladies smiled and shouted at them. And above all rose
the voice of the clever lady, crying: “Prato! They must go to Prato.
That place is too sweetly squalid for words. I love it; I revel in
shaking off the trammels of respectability, as you know.”
The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then
returned moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did not do.
Lucy, in the midst of her success, found time to wish they did. It gave
her no extra pleasure that any one should be left in the cold; and when
she rose to go, she turned back and gave the two outsiders a nervous
little bow.
The father did not see it; the son acknowledged it, not by another bow,
but by raising his eyebrows and smiling; he seemed to be smiling across
something.
She hastened after her cousin, who had already disappeared through the
curtains—curtains which smote one in the face, and seemed heavy with
more than cloth. Beyond them stood the unreliable Signora, bowing
good-evening to her guests, and supported by ’Enery, her little boy,
and Victorier, her daughter. It made a curious little scene, this
attempt of the Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South.
And even more curious was the drawing-room, which attempted to rival
the solid comfort of a Bloomsbury boarding-house. Was this really
Italy?
Miss Bartlett was already seated on a tightly stuffed arm-chair, which
had the colour and the contours of a tomato. She was talking to Mr.
Beebe, and as she spoke, her long narrow head drove backwards and
forwards, slowly, regularly, as though she were demolishing some
invisible obstacle. “We are most grateful to you,” she was saying. “The
first evening means so much. When you arrived we were in for a
peculiarly _mauvais quart d’heure_.”
He expressed his regret.
“Do you, by any chance, know the name of an old man who sat opposite us
at dinner?”
“Emerson.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“We are friendly—as one is in pensions.”
“Then I will say no more.”
He pressed her very slightly, and she said more.
“I am, as it were,” she concluded, “the chaperon of my young cousin,
Lucy, and it would be a serious thing if I put her under an obligation
to people of whom we know nothing. His manner was somewhat unfortunate.
I hope I acted for the best.”
“You acted very naturally,” said he. He seemed thoughtful, and after a
few moments added: “All the same, I don’t think much harm would have
come of accepting.”