A Room with a View

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.