A Room with a View

Unexpected Carriage Seating Mix-Up

A seating mix-up reshuffles the intended arrangement of the party. Mr. Beebe, without consulting Mr. Eager, has doubled the size of the group, and at the critical moment Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish lose their heads. Miss Lavish ends up in the first carriage with Lucy and Mr. Eager, while Miss Bartlett joins George Emerson and Mr. Beebe in the second. The transformation of Mr. Beebe’s hoped-for partie carrée into a more motley company vexes the chaplain, who privately resolves that a “shoddy lady writer and a journalist who had murdered his wife” shall not enter any villa at his introduction. Lucy, elegantly dressed in white, sits erect and nervous amid these explosive ingredients.

Mr. Eager’s Critique of Superficial Tourists

Mr. Eager embarks on a pointed critique of superficial Anglo-Saxon tourists as the carriage climbs toward Fiesole. He pities travellers “handed about like a parcel of goods,” living in pensions and consulting only Baedeker, mixing up towns and rivers in inextricable confusion, and caring only to get “done” or “through.” Miss Lavish adds that their narrowness is “nothing less than a menace.” Mr. Eager contrasts them with the English colony at Florence, genuine students of art such as Lady Helen Laverstock, whose villa they pass and whose hedge he points out. He also mentions an American neighbor who writes monographs and hears, over the garden wall, the electric tram carrying hot, dusty, unintelligent tourists who will “do” Fiesole in an hour. While he lectures, the figures on the box continue to sport disgracefully, provoking a spasm of envy in Lucy.

Dispute Over Separating the Young Lovers

When the carriage stops because Phaethon has at last succeeded in kissing Persephone, a dispute erupts over whether the young lovers should be separated. Mr. Eager insists they must be parted, declaring that Phaethon is a liar and threatening to withhold the pourboire, while Miss Lavish cries that she has always flown in the face of conventions and calls the episode an adventure. Mr. Emerson, suddenly awake, declares that the lovers must on no account be separated and pats them on the back in approval. Mr. Beebe calls out that after this warning the couple will behave themselves, but Mr. Emerson pleads that happiness should not be turned off the box, and that to part them would be sacrilege. Mr. Eager delivers an acid stream of Italian to the driver, but Persephone, appealed to by Lucy, quietly gets down from the box, and Mr. Eager claims a hollow victory that Mr. Emerson insists is really defeat.

Party Splits Into Groups to Explore Fiesole

The party splits into groups as they begin their ramble across the misty, terraced hillside in search of the spot where Alessio Baldovinetti once stood to paint the Val d’Arno. Lucy clings to Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish, the Emersons return to hold laborious converse with the drivers, and the two clergymen are left to each other. Mr. Eager and Miss Lavish had planned to use the expedition to settle scholarly questions about Baldovinetti and The Decameron, but the haze in the valley makes their quest difficult. The party springs anxiously from tuft to tuft of grass, eager to keep together yet pulled in different directions, so that the original scholarly purpose dissolves into private conversations and private discomforts.

Lucy’s Uncomfortable Stay With the Elder Ladies

Lucy finds her stay with the elder ladies increasingly uncomfortable. Miss Bartlett whispers with Miss Lavish about the drive, mortified that she asked George Emerson his profession and received the dreadful answer “the railway”; Miss Lavish collapses in uncontrollable mirth at the image of a South-Eastern porter. Both women grow annoyed when Lucy refuses to leave them, determined to enjoy the expedition only with those to whom she feels indifferent. They produce mackintosh squares and insist that Lucy sit on one while Miss Lavish takes the damp ground in her thinner brown dress, defending the arrangement with a martyrdom that culminates in a performative little cough. At the end of five minutes Lucy is vanquished and departs in search of the clergymen.