A Room with a View

Lucy’s Oppressive Solitude

Lucy’s solitude oppresses her. She is accustomed to having her thoughts either confirmed or contradicted by others, and it is unbearable not to know whether she is thinking rightly or wrongly. Cut off from her usual social mirror, she feels marooned with her own confused impressions of yesterday.

Selecting the Morning Outing

At breakfast next morning Lucy takes decisive action. She must choose between two plans: Mr. Beebe’s walk up to the Torre del Gallo with the Emersons and some American ladies, or shopping and errands with Charlotte. Charlotte declines the walk for herself—she has already been in the rain there—but urges it on Lucy, who hates shopping, changing money, and fetching letters. Lucy, however, refuses, choosing Charlotte instead with real warmth. She resolves to be genuinely nice to her cousin all morning, and the two set off arm in arm.

Walk Along the Lung’Arno

The cousins start along the Lung’Arno, where the river that morning is like a lion in strength, voice, and colour. Charlotte leans over the parapet to admire it and delivers her characteristic wish that Freddy and Lucy’s mother could see it too. Lucy fidgets—Charlotte has stopped precisely at the spot Lucy was covertly watching for the Torre del Gallo party. Lucy does not repent her choice: yesterday’s muddle is best avoided by keeping away from George Emerson, even though the Florence itself, with its stones, Loggia, fountain, and tower, seems loaded with ghostly significance.

Meeting Miss Lavish in Piazza Signoria

In the Piazza Signoria the cousins encounter Miss Lavish, who has been there since eight collecting material for a novel based on yesterday’s killing. She proposes a young lady in place of the original five-franc note and outlines a plot of love, murder, abduction, and revenge, promising local colour, humour, and unmerciful treatment of the British tourist. Miss Bartlett warmly congratulates her; Lucy, fearing she is being sized up as the ingénue, is chiefly concerned not to be put into the book.

Mr. Eager’s Hillside Drive Invitation

Mr. Eager, the resident English chaplain, appears and, with much cultural ornament—Baldovinetti, the neglected view at Settignano—invites the cousins to a drive in the hills, up by Fiesole and back by Settignano, with tea at some Renaissance villa implied. An invitation from Eager is a mark of social distinction, since he alone links the migratory tourists with the permanent residential colony. Lucy, whose priorities have shifted, echoes Charlotte’s raptures only faintly until she hears that Mr. Beebe is also to come.

Shopping with Mr. Eager

Under Eager’s guidance the party selects a host of hideous souvenirs—gilded picture-frames, oak easel-frames, a vellum blotting book, mosaic brooches, Eros and Psyche in alabaster, St. Peter to match, and finally a model of the Leaning Tower—all of which would have cost less in London. The shopping is interrupted by an Italian photograph-vendor whom Eager tries to ignore but who pursues them relentlessly until he has swept their minds clean of every other thought.

Mr. Eager’s Accusations Against the Emersons

While shopping, the conversation turns to the Emersons. Eager reveals that old Mr. Emerson was the son of a labourer, once a mechanic and then a writer for the Socialistic Press in his London parish; he later made an advantageous marriage and his wife is now dead. Eager hints darkly at scandal and, when pressed by the surprisingly defiant Lucy, finally blurts out that “that man murdered his wife”—adding “in the sight of God” in a hasty attempt to qualify the outburst. Lucy, in her first act of open rebellion, refuses to condemn the Emersons on a single word.

Lucy’s Frustration at the Duplicate Invitation

When Eager departs and mentions the drive, Lucy suddenly recalls that Mr. Beebe had already arranged exactly the same outing without any fuss at all. Exasperated, she exclaims “Bother the drive!”—the chaplain’s grand invitation is nothing more than a duplicate of a simpler plan, and she sees no reason why his elaborate overture should be treated as anything special when each party is paying for itself.