A Room with a View

Encounter with Sir Harry Otway

As the carriage passes, “Cissie’s” door opens and Sir Harry Otway emerges. Mrs. Honeychurch commands the coachman to stop and demands that Sir Harry pull down the notice-boards at once, for she had warned him he ought to have bought the plot before construction began. Sir Harry explains he cannot turn out Miss Flack, the vulgar, nearly bedridden old lady who lives there rent free, and recounts how he had been apathetic and dilatory, knowing Summer Street so well he could not imagine it being spoilt. When he finally took alarm and called on Mr. Flack, the local builder, he found that tiles had been rejected in favor of cheaper slates and that all the Corinthian columns had been ordered, each with a different capital—one with dragons, one approaching the Ionian style, one bearing Mrs. Flack’s initials—for Mr. Flack had read his Ruskin. Not until an immovable aunt was inserted into one villa did Sir Harry buy, and the futile transaction has left him full of sadness.

Debate Over Villa Tenant Options

Sir Harry explains that he can only salvage matters by finding a desirable tenant for “Cissie,” but the rent is absurdly low, the size too large for peasants and too small for their own class. Cecil, hesitating between despising the villas or Sir Harry for despising them, suggests a bank clerk—prompting Sir Harry to lament that the improved train service and bicycles are drawing the wrong type of people. Lucy, recognizing Cecil is mocking the harmless baronet, intervenes and proposes the Misses Teresa and Catharine Alan, gentlewomen she met abroad, currently homeless and known to Mr. Beebe. Sir Harry is delighted, but Mrs. Honeychurch counsels against decayed gentlewomen with stuffy heirlooms, urging him to let to someone going up in the world. Cecil agrees they would be unsuitable; Sir Harry wavers. Mrs. Honeychurch warns against canaries and advises him to let only to a clean man, a suggestion both Sir Harry and Cecil find galling but wise. Sir Harry invites Mrs. Honeychurch to inspect the villa, and she descends eagerly while Cecil and Lucy walk home.