A Room with a View
were overflowing with Italians, who preferred to stand. Children tried
to hang on behind, and the conductor, with no malice, spat in their
faces to make them let go. Then soldiers appeared—good-looking,
undersized men—wearing each a knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a
great-coat which had been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them
walked officers, looking foolish and fierce, and before them went
little boys, turning somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar
became entangled in their ranks, and moved on painfully, like a
caterpillar in a swarm of ants. One of the little boys fell down, and
some white bullocks came out of an archway. Indeed, if it had not been
for the good advice of an old man who was selling button-hooks, the
road might never have got clear.
Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hour may slip away, and
the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of
Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing
but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it. So it was as
well that Miss Bartlett should tap and come in, and having commented on
Lucy’s leaving the door unlocked, and on her leaning out of the window
before she was fully dressed, should urge her to hasten herself, or the
best of the day would be gone. By the time Lucy was ready her cousin
had done her breakfast, and was listening to the clever lady among the
crumbs.
A conversation then ensued, on not unfamiliar lines. Miss Bartlett was,
after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the
morning settling in; unless Lucy would at all like to go out? Lucy
would rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but,
of course, she could go alone. Miss Bartlett could not allow this. Of
course she would accompany Lucy everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy
would stop with her cousin. Oh, no! that would never do. Oh, yes!
At this point the clever lady broke in.
“If it is Mrs. Grundy who is troubling you, I do assure you that you
can neglect the good person. Being English, Miss Honeychurch will be
perfectly safe. Italians understand. A dear friend of mine, Contessa
Baroncelli, has two daughters, and when she cannot send a maid to
school with them, she lets them go in sailor-hats instead. Every one
takes them for English, you see, especially if their hair is strained
tightly behind.”
Miss Bartlett was unconvinced by the safety of Contessa Baroncelli’s
daughters. She was determined to take Lucy herself, her head not being
so very bad. The clever lady then said that she was going to spend a
long morning in Santa Croce, and if Lucy would come too, she would be
delighted.
“I will take you by a dear dirty back way, Miss Honeychurch, and if you
bring me luck, we shall have an adventure.”
Lucy said that this was most kind, and at once opened the Baedeker, to
see where Santa Croce was.
“Tut, tut! Miss Lucy! I hope we shall soon emancipate you from
Baedeker. He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true
Italy—he does not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be found
by patient observation.”
This sounded very interesting, and Lucy hurried over her breakfast, and
started with her new friend in high spirits. Italy was coming at last.
The Cockney Signora and her works had vanished like a bad dream.
Miss Lavish—for that was the clever lady’s name—turned to the right
along the sunny Lung’ Arno. How delightfully warm! But a wind down the
side streets cut like a knife, didn’t it? Ponte alle
Grazie—particularly interesting, mentioned by Dante. San
Miniato—beautiful as well as interesting; the crucifix that kissed a
murderer—Miss Honeychurch would remember the story. The men on the
river were fishing. (Untrue; but then, so is most information.) Then
Miss Lavish darted under the archway of the white bullocks, and she
stopped, and she cried:
“A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you, has
its own smell.”
“Is it a very nice smell?” said Lucy, who had inherited from her mother
a distaste to dirt.
“One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness,” was the retort; “one comes
for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!” bowing right and left. “Look at
that adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at us, dear, simple
soul!”
So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of Florence,
short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without a kitten’s
grace. It was a treat for the girl to be with any one so clever and so
cheerful; and a blue military cloak, such as an Italian officer wears,
only increased the sense of festivity.
“Buon giorno! Take the word of an old woman, Miss Lucy: you will never
repent of a little civility to your inferiors. _That_ is the true
democracy. Though I am a real Radical as well. There, now you’re
shocked.”
“Indeed, I’m not!” exclaimed Lucy. “We are Radicals, too, out and out.
My father always voted for Mr. Gladstone, until he was so dreadful
about Ireland.”
“I see, I see. And now you have gone over to the enemy.”
“Oh, please—! If my father was alive, I am sure he would vote Radical
again now that Ireland is all right. And as it is, the glass over our
front door was broken last election, and Freddy is sure it was the
Tories; but mother says nonsense, a tramp.”
“Shameful! A manufacturing district, I suppose?”
“No—in the Surrey hills. About five miles from Dorking, looking over
the Weald.”
Miss Lavish seemed interested, and slackened her trot.
“What a delightful part; I know it so well. It is full of the very
nicest people. Do you know Sir Harry Otway—a Radical if ever there
was?”
“Very well indeed.”
“And old Mrs. Butterworth the philanthropist?”
“Why, she rents a field of us! How funny!”
Miss Lavish looked at the narrow ribbon of sky, and murmured: “Oh, you
have property in Surrey?”
“Hardly any,” said Lucy, fearful of being thought a snob. “Only thirty
acres—just the garden, all downhill, and some fields.”
Miss Lavish was not disgusted, and said it was just the size of her
aunt’s Suffolk estate. Italy receded. They tried to remember the last
name of Lady Louisa someone, who had taken a house near Summer Street
the other year, but she had not liked it, which was odd of her. And
just as Miss Lavish had got the name, she broke off and exclaimed:
“Bless us! Bless us and save us! We’ve lost the way.”
Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce, the
tower of which had been plainly visible from the landing window. But
Miss Lavish had said so much about knowing her Florence by heart, that
Lucy had followed her with no misgivings.
“Lost! lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we have
taken a wrong turning. How those horrid Conservatives would jeer at us!
What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is
what _I_ call an adventure.”
Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible solution,
that they should ask the way there.
“Oh, but that is the word of a craven! And no, you are not, not, _not_
to look at your Baedeker. Give it to me; I shan’t let you carry it. We
will simply drift.”
Accordingly they drifted through a series of those grey-brown streets,
neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the
city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the discontent of Lady Louisa,
and became discontented herself. For one ravishing moment Italy
appeared. She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the
living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can
ever stale. There they stood, with their shining limbs bursting from
the garments of charity, and their strong white arms extended against
circlets of heaven. Lucy thought she had never seen anything more
beautiful; but Miss Lavish, with a shriek of dismay, dragged her
forward, declaring that they were out of their path now by at least a
mile.
The hour was approaching at which the continental breakfast begins, or
rather ceases, to tell, and the ladies bought some hot chestnut paste
out of a little shop, because it looked so typical. It tasted partly of
the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the
great unknown. But it gave them strength to drift into another Piazza,
large and dusty, on the farther side of which rose a black-and-white
façade of surpassing ugliness. Miss Lavish spoke to it dramatically. It
was Santa Croce. The adventure was over.
“Stop a minute; let those two people go on, or I shall have to speak to
them. I do detest conventional intercourse. Nasty! they are going into
the church, too. Oh, the Britisher abroad!”
“We sat opposite them at dinner last night. They have given us their
rooms. They were so very kind.”
“Look at their figures!” laughed Miss Lavish. “They walk through my
Italy like a pair of cows. It’s very naughty of me, but I would like to
set an examination paper at Dover, and turn back every tourist who
couldn’t pass it.”
“What would you ask us?”
Miss Lavish laid her hand pleasantly on Lucy’s arm, as if to suggest
that she, at all events, would get full marks. In this exalted mood
they reached the steps of the great church, and were about to enter it
when Miss Lavish stopped, squeaked, flung up her arms, and cried:
“There goes my local-colour box! I must have a word with him!”
And in a moment she was away over the Piazza, her military cloak
flapping in the wind; nor did she slacken speed till she caught up an
old man with white whiskers, and nipped him playfully upon the arm.
Lucy waited for nearly ten minutes. Then she began to get tired. The
beggars worried her, the dust blew in her eyes, and she remembered that
a young girl ought not to loiter in public places. She descended slowly
into the Piazza with the intention of rejoining Miss Lavish, who was
really almost too original. But at that moment Miss Lavish and her
local-colour box moved also, and disappeared down a side street, both
gesticulating largely. Tears of indignation came to Lucy’s eyes partly
because Miss Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her
Baedeker. How could she find her way home? How could she find her way
about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never
be in Florence again. A few minutes ago she had been all high spirits,
talking as a woman of culture, and half persuading herself that she was
full of originality. Now she entered the church depressed and
humiliated, not even able to remember whether it was built by the
Franciscans or the Dominicans. Of course, it must be a wonderful
building. But how like a barn! And how very cold! Of course, it
contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values
she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell her
which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be
enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was
no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved
the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one
that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.
Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of
acquiring information, she began to be happy. She puzzled out the
Italian notices—the notices that forbade people to introduce dogs into
the church—the notice that prayed people, in the interest of health and
out of respect to the sacred edifice in which they found themselves,
not to spit. She watched the tourists; their noses were as red as their
Baedekers, so cold was Santa Croce. She beheld the horrible fate that
overtook three Papists—two he-babies and a she-baby—who began their
career by sousing each other with the Holy Water, and then proceeded to
the Machiavelli memorial, dripping but hallowed. Advancing towards it