Discussion of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Eager
Wanting to say something sympathetic, Mrs. Honeychurch volunteers that the clergyman she does hate, one who does have fences and dreadful ones, is Mr. Eager, the English chaplain at Florence. She denounces him as truly insincere, a snob, and a conceited slanderer, recalling how he hinted that a nice old man named Harris at the Bertolini had “practically” murdered his wife in the sight of God. Lucy, agreeing, says she has heard him lecture on Giotto and hates him utterly. Mrs. Honeychurch forbids any further clerical hatred, and Cecil smiles at the incongruity of Lucy’s moral outburst, secretly thinking such rants, though they mar the beautiful creature, are signs of vitality he should not repress.
Carriage Ride Nature and Poetry Discussion
To shift the mood, Cecil praises the surrounding nature—the pine-woods, bracken, crimson leaves, and the serviceable beauty of the turnpike road—though his unfamiliarity with the country shows when he speaks incorrectly of the perpetual green of the larch. Concluding, he expresses admiration for those who live among birds and trees, only to admit that country folk in nine cases out of ten seem to notice nothing. Mrs. Honeychurch has not been attending, and Lucy, her brow wrinkled from too much moral gymnastics, has not been attending either. Cecil quotes Tennyson—“Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height”—and touches her knee with his own. She flushes, asks what height, and rouses herself only when the carriage reaches Summer Street.
Arrival at Summer Street Villas
The woods open onto a sloping triangular meadow lined with pretty cottages, with a new, expensively simple stone church and a charming shingled spire marking its third side. Mr. Beebe’s modest house stands nearby, while great mansions are hidden in the trees. The scene suggests a Swiss Alpine retreat rather than the heart of country society. Its charm is marred, however, by two ugly new villas, “Cissie” and “Albert,” acquired by Sir Harry Otway on the very afternoon Lucy became engaged to Cecil. “Albert” is inhabited and its garden bright with geraniums; “Cissie” is to let, its paths already weedy and its lawn yellow with dandelions. The ladies pronounce the place ruined.
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